Read Online A Christmas Homecoming by Anne Perry - Free Book Online

that was what you were going to say.”

    alf an hour later they were back rehearsing again. This time Caroline was taking notes for the lighting that would be required, as well as any further props that could be used to suggest a scene. They had bright limelights with them, and Joshua had shown her the equipment, and how to use it. It was a strange contraption with little taps to turn on the hydrogen and oxygen, and a screw for rotating and raising the calcium oxide. Just at the moment, all she wanted to do was make decisions about where in the script the lights needed to be focused, or changed.
    Joshua and Alice had done some further rewriting,and they began with a scene from earlier in the play. They had cut out Jonathan Harker’s account of Renfield’s travels in Transylvania, and given the speech referring to Renfield’s circumstances to Van Helsing instead. With the other character cuts, the changes worked far more smoothly than the earlier version had.
    Vincent was reading from the new script. Even though he described the reduction to insanity of a previously decent man, it seemed to Caroline to be without either honor or pity. She found her attention wandering, and was very much afraid that the audience’s would also. Was Alice’s writing really so poor?
    She looked at Joshua’s face and saw his frustration. Alice was standing just below the stage; her pale face and tight jaw betrayed that she also knew it was not working.
    Ballin stood up.
    Vincent stopped reading at once and glared at him. “Does your superior knowledge of vampires, or of good and evil, suggest how this could be better written?” he asked sarcastically.
    “Not at all. But I have a suggestion about how it could be differently played,” Ballin replied mildly.“Though it would alter the character of Van Helsing somewhat.”
    Vincent spread his arms wide. “By all means. After all, what does Bram Stoker know about it? Or about anything?”
    “We can’t avail ourselves of his knowledge,” Ballin replied. “At least not before Christmas, and we need a remedy rather sooner than that.”
    “In what way would it alter Van Helsing, Mr. Ballin?” Alice asked, cutting across Vincent.
    Ballin moved toward the steps up to the stage. The lights shone on his coal-black hair and his unnaturally pale face with its powerful features.
    “By giving him a little lightness,” he replied, glancing at her, then at Joshua. “It is possible to be very serious about fighting evil without taking yourself so … pompously. Allow him a sense of humor, some eccentricity or talent other than his obsession with vampires.”
    “That’s the whole point of him.” Vincent was really angry now. “If you can’t see that, then you have missed the essence of the character.”
    “That he has but one dimension?” Ballin concluded.“Do you you truly believe so?” Again he looked at Alice. “I do not.”
    Vincent opened his mouth to retaliate, then decided against it. He abruptly threw the script down on the floor, leaving its pages scattered.
    Joshua was pale, the lines around his mouth deep-etched. He looked so weary that Caroline longed to help him, but could think of no way at all to do so.
    Ballin climbed up the steps onto the stage, picked up the fallen script, and found the place where Van Helsing described Renfield.
    “May I?” he asked.
    Alice nodded.
    “If you wish,” Joshua conceded.
    Ballin began, using exactly the same words as Vincent had, but in a totally different voice. He was not Van Helsing using language to tell the audience how Renfield had caught flies and eaten them, or pulled the heads off rats to drink their blood: He was Renfield doing it in front of them. He buzzed, mimicking the flies. His hand moved so fast it was barely visible, as if he had caught the insect on the wing. Thebuzzing ceased. He put it to his mouth and crunched his teeth.
    In the audience Lydia gasped and stifled a cry. Eliza Netheridge groaned. Mercy put her hand