Page 103 of The Extraordinary Florence Stoker

He didn’t say anything, just perused the top of his desk. Half-written pages were strewn about, many with great lines through them.

‘I’d be like one of those New Women, hired as secretaries and such. I can’t use a typewriter, though I’d like to.’ It was true. I did. ‘But I have a neat hand. You’ve said so yourself.’

I waited.

‘You don’t ask for much, my dear,’ I continued softly. ‘I want to help. Let me help you.’ I laughed quietly. ‘Imagine what your publisher will say when you hand over pages he can actually read without transcribing them.’

Bram followed the direction of my gaze. Then, he began to chuckle. ‘Thank you, Florrie. I’d be most grateful.’

After that, a few evenings a week, usually when he wasn’t committed elsewhere, I would sit with Bram, and, as his latest work flowed from his mind, write. I didn’t pen the entire novels; there were days and nights where Bram worked on them himself. But when I did, it fascinated me that so rarely would he alter a phrase or change a plot point or reconsider a character’s motivations or action. It was as if the story landed fully formed in his head and just had to stroll out.

Gone were the days he’d read a first draft to me. Now, the tables were turned, and I would read the completed work back to him. Only then, and only very occasionally, Bram would ask me to make a correction, changing a word or sentence, sometimes deciding he didn’t like a character’s name. Overall, the first draft didn’t suffer much adjustment and was what the publisher would see. Perhaps that was the problem. Perhaps if Bram had taken more care; if I’d gently persuaded him to rethink a scene or plot (frankly, there were places in the stories where I felt a rethink would have served them better), he might have listened. I didn’t feel I’d the right. I told myself I was merely the conduit; these works were not my creation. They were Bram’s.

All the same, I couldn’t help but think it was no coincidence that the book that took him almost seven years to write was considered his best to date.

We toasted each other when, in 1908, Snowbound was published. A semi-fictitious recounting of Bram’s travels across America with the Lyceum crew, it had been difficult for me to transcribe and even harder to read aloud. Though Henry Irving had by now retreated into the background of our lives, it reminded me he was always there, waiting in the wings for his cue. Or like my phantom, skulking in corners. I imagined he was biding his time until he took centre stage again.

I sometimes wondered, when I caught Bram in repose, a finger pulling his lip as ideas flourished, how often he thought of the man he’d called ‘the Chief’. Did he still miss him? Were the memories excruciating or pleasant? Did he dream about Henry (I pushed back the memory that thought conjured) and, if so, was it the man’s final flagging years, or those early triumphant ones where nothing, not the Wife, children, lovers or distance, could tear them apart?

I never asked. I humoured myself it was because I knew the answer.

Truth was, I was afraid of it.

CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

London, 1910

Though Bram wrote more books over the following two years, what I recall most are the great difficulties and sorrows that afflicted us. I began to feel that we’d frittered away that early period when the world really was our stage and Bram and I made entrances that turned heads.

I’d wasted so much time feeling bitter towards a man who likely didn’t give me a second thought, and being fearful of a malignant spirit. I’d always blamed Henry Irving for consuming my husband, draining him of energy and ruining any chance Bram and I had of a normal relationship. If it wasn’t Henry, I was blaming Bram. But as time passed, I came to understand that I’d allowed them to devour so many of my waking hours. Likewise, I began to wonder if the spirit or whatever it was that still occasionally haunted me and had metamorphosed into something akin to a shadowy warden, was nothing more than a projection of my own anxieties, my own dread of death, ageing, of being rejected, of public humiliation. I felt sure that psychoanalyst who was all the rage, Dr Sigmund Freud, would have something to say about it.

I’d kept Phil abreast of most of our situation (I didn’t like to reveal just how grim things were), and whilst I didn’t tell Thornley about our financial tribulations (did Bram?), I maintained regular correspondence.

Poor old Bram is not worse, I wrote. This wet weather stiffens him so; it makes it hard for him to get about. He is an angel of patience, and never complains, and it is so hard for him being so helpless.

That was the crux of it. Bram might smile and pretend he was still his once robust self, but nothing could be further from the truth. Yet he continued to write, accept invitations to speak, to attend opening nights, exhibitions, dinners and clubs, the races.

Then, out of the blue (or so I thought), Lady Ritchie, a writer and editor herself, and the daughter of no less a luminary than William Thackeray, approached Bram with an offer. Excited about what it might entail, I helped him dress for the meeting. He looked resplendent in tails and top hat. Even with a walking stick, he still cut a fine figure.

I paced the drawing room until his return, imagining him being invited to edit some collection, take up a post in a publishing house, accept a contract at an esteemed newspaper. My imaginings were boundless and, it turned out, fruitless.

When he finally hobbled back into the room, I could tell by the look on his face that the news wasn’t good.

I stayed by the window, gripping the back of a chair. ‘What did she say?’

First removing his hat and coat, which he passed to Maria along with his cane, he sank onto the sofa. Maria lingered, wanting to hear. There wasn’t a thing happened in the house that either Maria or Mary didn’t know about. Bram remained stubbornly tight-lipped.

‘Maria, could you please fetch a tea-tray,’ I asked finally.

Flashing a look of disappointment, she went to obey.

‘And bring some more whisky, if you please,’ added Bram.

Somehow, I didn’t think it was for a toast.

The door closed and Bram leaned over and grabbed the poker, breaking up the coal in the hearth with surprising fierceness. Sparks sizzled in protest.

‘I gather whatever it was Lady Ritchie offered you, it wasn’t to your liking.’ I sat in the chair, stiff-backed, hands clasped, trying to ignore the traffic outside. The engine of a motor car was whining.