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PENELOPE&039;S SHROUD

I sought to be what I have becoain with Arthur, Lord Godale for well, I expect you can iine I&039;ht that life is trade, that favours iven It&039;s a very Victorian attitude, one that served to irls, panders of all irl&039;s &039;value&039;

Can you ree, I knew I had power Over my parents, overpretty Katie, you were cleverer than I And more honest That&039;s why Charles preferred you But you could never have he to you This, you ine how er I became as a vampire, when I could exert a spell of fascination At first, I was drunk with the possibilities

Then, as you know, I became unwell

Other new-borns drank tainted blood and shrivelled to death That wouldn&039;t happen to Penny But it did You, Genevieve, savedmore of his leeches to h-necked blouses

I ed, but at bottom I am still Penelope Churchward Pretty Penny Bad Penny It may not be an entirely happy position I admit that I envy you both You have freedoms I have never known Charles favoured you both over me and I do not blame hiht I hated you all I tried to avengeCharles I could have drained hiht then, made hiedno one told iven to understand va of blood Fros that cas, the contradictions, the infor va blood could fill me up with other persons A weak va warm person and lose her own self, become a reincarnation of her victih for that If I had, he would have been drained dead But I took enough to see h his eyes, to see Pamela&039;s face over my vanished reflection, to see the ht the blood in e myself of Charles Since then, I have only drunk from the weak, the hollow and the professional Weak tea, with lots of milk

I was putting the blaard did not make me what I was, did not colour my world with blood Nor, really, did Art Behind it all, behind the Changes, was Dracula

He was Prince Consort then Later, he called hiht to King of the Cats I always think of him as he first presented himself to Jonathan and Mina Harker, to ht toounfair I was the one who thought too much of titles When Lucy said she was to becoreen with envy I would only be Mrs Charles Beauregard, though I had hopes he would earn and accept a knighthood, perhaps a peerage Nevertheless, Charles could only be a new-born in society, while Art was an elder

Dracula Yes, I shall get to him

I recovered slowly from my unwise predations, over a decade I et Most of my brood perished in the First World War and the years afterwards I had chosen only those ouldn&039;t put up a fight and would accept me as their reat sadness There are re line I boasted of them to you, Katie That was the old Penny, I&039;raded beyond redemption Sometimes they turn up, after a handout of er than their personalities

England becaot the vote, you reh I couldn&039;t iine why any wo suffragist opinions - as you did, Katie, heroine of the age - devalued one&039;s worth in the arena that really counted My ed, hemlines rose Everyone talked on the telephone all the tilass, admired sometimes, not really cared for You, Katie, were always in the thick of things You didn&039;t turn into a wax flower That proved it was not an inevitable part of beco in me, in Penelope Bad Penny&039;s Blues It became of paramount importance that I find soht out the Count

I secured an introduction through Mina, of all people She was his get, after all, and had kept in touch with his household When Dracula was established here, at Palazzo Otranto, I visited, and placed eration to say he accepted my offer He did not resist

Picture the scene I arrive at the palazzo above this beach My head is full of the stories Of Jonathan Harker ascending that reeted by the King Vampire and his bloodthirsty hareham Palace when the Count held court there, to put an end to his red reign

I thought I knehat to expect If Dracula chose to kill or enslave me, I would accept that I owed hiuard, then It was 1946, and the fires of Europe still suards - I was shocked to find I was required to bribe them - I was admitted into the Royal Presence I was prepared to be crushed by the sheer weight of his person I knew second- and third-hand that the Count was like a whirlpool Those ent near hiht up by the currents and swirled under

Dracula sat in a chair, not on a throne I was not crushed, not whirled I was not killed, not enslaved

I thought, at first, that he was dead Truly dead

Then an eye opened Bright scarlet in that rey

I had one of those blood flashbacks, a scraham Palace in &039;88, silver scalpel in hand All around was spilled blood and threat, roused arded me with no apparent interest AllI had half expected to throw myself into this maelstrom, to lose the last of the old Penny If I had become one of Dracula&039;s brides, it would all have been over

Instead, I found myself mistress of the monster&039;s house

It was a position so of a surprise to me, a shock even, that the Count was so biddable I do not er had an interest in the world

It had all become too much for even him

This is the secret I have kept Dracula was not what he had been He slepthours, he would feed and wander in his thoughts History had caught up with him, and passed him by

Once, he had been passionate, obsessed with novelty and energy, with new inventions and new slang I found evidence of his bygone enthusiasms everywhere, from half-built war machines to reports froo and now cast aside unread The papers are under that coffin, waiting to be burned I give myself the credit for that I have been under pressure to turn the material over to various factions Mr Profumo of the War Office appealed to my patriotism, Mrs Luce of the United States to my paranoia, and Mr Gromyko of the Soviet Union to my pacifism I have resisted them all and Dracula&039;s secrets shall die with him

That Dracula, the plotter and scheoverness to his ghost, the walking shell of the King Vaed hiet who perished in the Nazi Death Ca down of the Iron Curtain So, the &039;Dracula Cha Cha Cha&039;

The man who had mastered Bradshaw&039;s Guide and could whistle airs from Gilbert and Sullivan could not cope with broken sound barriers and rock &039;n&039; roll You can take so much on board, Katie I&039;ve read your articles on Kerouac and Eddie Cochran, on the Mau Mau and Brigitte Bardot, and my head spins I&039;ve tried to keep up, honestly I have I&039;ve read Peyton Place and The Catcher in the Rye and From the Terrace But sometimes, I just want it all to stop, to be frozen as it was That&039;s the sliver of ice that first pricks the heart of a va sort of elder, the type the Cri I understand why the Count wanted to climb into his coffin and pull down the lid