Authors: Stephen Curran
“I have had my personal effects removed.”
“I'm sorry to hear that. Do you want me to have a word with Hennessey? He'll listen to me, I'm sure. I won't give him a choice, the old fool.”
“That won't be necessary... When was the last time we met, do you suppose? It is difficult to keep track of time in here.”
“I'm not sure. I assume I came for an evening visit to your home. It couldn't have been long after I came back from America.”
There is another prolonged pause.
“My family are doing well,” he continues. “Andrew is flourishing at university. Marie wasn't well pleased at my new appointment, of course, seeing how frequently it takes me away from home, but she became accustomed to it soon enough. I rather suspect she prefers it when I'm gone.”
“And how are things at the Commission?”
“That's something I wanted to discuss with you, actually. It looks very much like Henry Drinkwater is about to be selected as the Secretary. What do you make of that?”
I am shocked he would ask me: “I am in no position to comment. Surely you know that.”
“Please, Richard, you know I always trusted you on such matters.”
“He may have changed completely, for all I know. I've had no contact from anybody at the Commission since I came here. None at all.”
“I can assure you, he has not changed in the least. Still the same old stubborn mule. Still pontificating.”
“In which case I would say the suggestion is startlingly idiotic. The man has never displayed any understanding whatsoever of life in a madhouse. Besides which he insists on expressing himself like he's speaking from pulpit rather than in the proper language of a doctor. It is infuriating. He is a buffoon.”
David nods: “Yes, that was my assessment too. Thank you. It's always good to have your own opinions reinforced.”
We speak for a while about further changes at the Home Office, the progress of my old acquaintances. The Evangelical clique, I am glad to hear, have begun to lose their influence. Then, just as I am beginning to relax and enjoy the company of my friend, it is time for him to go, leaving me with promises of another visit as soon as his schedule allows. Returning to my room I am elated. He cannot know how transforming it is to have my opinion sought and valued, to feel useful in some small way. Even the four walls around me seem altered, as if I am perceiving them through new eyes. For a while it is possible to think of myself as Doctor Renfield, ex-Superintendent of Devon County Asylum and an admired Visitor in Lunacy, rather than an outcast, an imprisoned lunatic.
The rest of the day I spend in rumination. In this new attitude I find myself questioning for the first time whether I am as rational as I believed. Had someone challenged my view of the world only a few hours earlier I would have directed them to the evidence: the miraculous gift of the sparrow, the church conjured from air, the Death's-head Hawkmoth. But now I find myself re-evaluating.
I stare through my window, out over the empty landscape. Something moves in slowly from the left of the scene. A farmer working with a horse-driven plough. There is no great plague. Beyond these walls life continues as it always has.
Could I, in the grip of a delusion, have misinterpreted everything? Is a bat nothing more than a bat?
٭
When Seward returns I am reluctant to ask where he has been. My thinking has been so clear recently I am worried his answer might upset me and disturb the balance. I have been sleeping regularly for the past few weeks, free from visions or hallucinations. Although it takes a feat of concentration I am mostly able to keep my more troubling thoughts pushed to the back of my mind. If I have been sick then I am recovering.
The Superintendent looks in good health. When he arrives in my room it is clear he has just come from the grounds: his hair is tousled from the wind and his cheeks are flushed. On saying hello he passes me a newspaper, presumably aware Hennessey put a stop to my daily delivery. No mention is made of our last encounter, when I behaved so unforgivably. It is as if it never happened.
“How are you, Renfield? You look well. You've gained a little weight around the face.”
“I have been feeling a great deal more settled.”
“I'm very glad to hear it. Look, I hope you don't mind but I have brought someone who would like to meet you.”
I am startled: “Another visitor? Waiting outside?”
“A good friend of mine, come to see where I spend my days.”
My last meeting with someone from the outside world did so much to improve my spirits I am barely able to conceal my enthusiasm: “Very well. Let them come in, by all means, but just wait a minute while I tidy the place.”
Seward stands by patiently as I tuck my bed sheets and straighten what few possessions I have left. When I am ready I sit myself down on the edge of the bed, crossing my legs and leaving the chair free for my guest.
“Please, show them in.”
The doctor steps into the corridor and returns followed by a black haired woman in a white dress. My breath catches.
It is Magdalene.
She offers her hand. I stand and accept it while she performs a shallow bow. She is a grown woman now but it as if she has barely aged at all: her complexion is rich and brilliant, her features small and beautifully formed: “Good evening, Mr Renfield. You see, I know you, for Doctor Seward has told me of you.”
The Superintendent introduces my guest as Mrs Harker.
I release her hand, realising I have been holding it for too long: “Delighted to meet you.”
“I am sorry not to have given more warning of my visit. We seem to have given you a shock.”
“Not at all. You are very welcome. Please, sit. Mrs Harker, yes?”
“That's right.”
I cannot tear my eyes from her face. If she is not Magdalene after all then her resemblance to my childhood friend is uncanny. Momentarily I entertain the notion that she might have changed her name and forgotten who I am.
“So how long have you been here for, Mr Renfield?”
I am still trying to work out who she might be: “You're not the girl the doctor wanted to marry, are you? You can't be, you know, for she must be dead by now.”
A hesitant sideways glance at Seward is followed by a smile: “Oh no, I have a husband of my own, to whom I was married before I ever saw Doctor Seward, or he me. Mr Harker has come to help your Superintendent with some work and I have accompanied him.”
“How did you know I wanted to marry anyone?” Seward, I see, has been regarding me quizzically.
I splutter: “What an asinine question.”
Mrs Harker jumps to her friend's defence: “I don't see that at all, Mr Renfield.”
Wishing to ingratiate myself with this sweet lady I quickly change my tone: “You will, of course, understand, Mrs. Harker, that when a man is so loved and honoured as our host is, everything regarding him becomes of interest in our little community. Doctor Seward is loved not only by his household and his friends, but even by his patients, who, being some of them hardly in mental equilibrium, are apt to distort causes and effects.”
My little speech pleases me. Something of my old voice is returning.
Mrs Harker turns to the doctor: “Your Mr Renfield is not at all as I imagined, John.”
We continue to talk for some time. She tells me of her experiences as a schoolmistress and how she has been practising shorthand in the hope of assisting her husband in his work as a solicitor. I, in turn, allude to my past lives as a Superintendent and a member of the Lunacy Commission. None of this appears to surprise her. It seems Seward has already done a thorough job of detailing my fall from grace.
She asks, also, about my interest in spiders and flies, bringing the matter up none-too-subtly. The subject clearly intrigues her and I am happy to have the chance to disassociate myself from some of my former ideas.
“I used to fancy that life was a positive and perpetual entity, and that by consuming a multitude of live things, no matter how low in the scale of creation, one might indefinitely prolong one’s own existence: relying of course, upon the Scriptural phrase, 'For the blood is the life.' Though, indeed, the vendor of a certain nostrum has vulgarized the truism to the very point of contempt. Isn't that true, doctor? I am much recovered now. The delusion is fading and I am lucid once again.”
“It pleases me to hear it, Mr Renfield.”
Seward is unconvinced. He thinks I have some ulterior motive and this is all a part of my greater plan. He makes a show of checking his pocket watch: “We should go. Van Helsing will be waiting for us at the station.”
“Very well,” says Mrs Harker, then, turning her dark and lustrous eyes towards me: “Goodbye, and I hope I may see you often, under auspices pleasanter to yourself."
Again I stand and take her hand, even though she did not offer it: "Goodbye, my dear.”
After they have gone I am presented with a plate of food, my afternoon meal of carrots, boiled potatoes and beef. Sitting on the foot of my bed I pull my chair towards me to use as a table. The carrots are eaten first, then the potatoes, and finally the meat. Not long ago I would have pushed the meat to one side, rejecting the lifeless flesh as disgusting and lacking in sustenance. Chewing it thoroughly I allow myself to become reacquainted with the taste. Once the last piece has been swallowed – the only full meal I have eaten for as long as I can remember – I lay the cutlery neatly side by side.
٭
For the first time since my incarceration I go to another room along the corridor and knock on the door. As I wait for a response the Irish attendant at his gas jet raises his hand to me in greeting and I do the same in reply.
“Hold on a moment,” comes a voice from within. When Mr Wainwright opens the door he is wiping his paint-spattered hands with a cloth. “Oh. It's you.”
I introduce myself as Richard: “And you are Mr Wainwright, is that correct? May I come in?”
After checking over his shoulder he smiles beneath his carefully cultivated moustache then steps to the side: “Yes, please do.”
If his room is the same size as my own then it doesn't appear so, crammed as it is with canvases. Every inch of hanging space is occupied and stacks of paintings, five or six deep, lean against the walls. In the centre is an easel covered by a sheet, next to which stands a small table where he has rested his cigar. Clearly Seward arranged for his things to be removed from storage. As he organises a place for me to sit we go over the details of the night of our escape. He was chased around the lawns for over an hour, he tells me, spending ten minutes amongst the branches of a tall tree before finally being apprehended.
“So, what brings you all the way over here to see me?”
I hesitate, having momentarily failed to understand that he is making a joke concerning the short distance between his room and my own: “I wondered if you'd be kind enough to show me your paintings? I saw them fleetingly when Hennessey was having his clear out and now they've been returned I wanted to have a proper look.”
In truth, I have decided that it would be nice to make a friend here, and expressing an interest in his art work seems like a reasonable way to strike up a conversation.
“I'm afraid I'm sure they're of no interest to anyone but me. But you're welcome to have a look around. All I'd say is, please, don't touch them.”
On closer inspection the collection reveals itself to have a clear order. The paintings occupying the left hand side of the room are comical in style, like illustrations for children's books. The felines stand on their hind legs, engaging in everyday human activities. One depicts a cat in a nightgown holding a candlestick, getting ready for bed. Another has a tabby sitting on a train hiding behind a newspaper while an elderly, grey haired cat sits opposite. At the front of a stack leaning against the wall is one that particularly catches my eye: a tom in a morning suit taking a stroll in a park, tipping his hat towards what appears to be a molly pushing a pram, although she is half concealed by a rose bush.
Following the paintings to the right reveals a gradual change in style. Landscapes are replaced by full face, head and shoulder portraits and the subjects lose their clothes. Their eyes become unnaturally wide and the pallet expands to include greens, reds and purples. Beyond the midpoint of the room they have come to barely resemble animals at all, their fur having expanded like an explosion to fill the whole canvass, a blast of colours: part cat, part Catherine wheel.
“Are these arranged in the order they were painted?”
“Roughly, I suppose. Not by design. It just seems to have happened that way.”
“Have you never thought of selling them? They are excellent.”
I detect a crack in his amiable and relaxed exterior: “No,” he says, taking a brush to clean as something to occupy his hands. “No, I could never do that. They are too much a part of me.”
“I understand. There's no reason why you should. May I see what you're working on currently?”
He is somewhat reluctant, I can tell, but the compulsion to be friendly encourages him to remove the sheet. Beneath is a work-in-progress that shows another clear break in style. Gone are the vivid colours of his recent creations, replaced by muddy browns and dull reds. In some ways the picture bears more resemblance to his earlier works and features two cartoon-like cats up on their hind legs, side by side. One figure is a sketch in pencil, yet to be filled in. It wears a blank expression and stares directly out at the viewer. The other is painted in full, with spiky grey fur and large black eyes. Unique amongst all Mr Wainwright's creations it is baring its fangs, hissing angrily at something to its side, beyond the confines of the frame.
I ask where he draws his inspiration from. Do the pictures represent scenes from stories he has read? Why is he so fascinated by cats?
He shrugs: “I have given that a great deal of thought. I really have no idea. You don't choose your subjects, I suspect. It's more as if they choose you.”
“And this fellow here, up on his claws: what is he hissing at?”