Chapter Twenty-Two #2
A few nights later, after Bram returned from the theatre and had been in his bedroom awhile, I screwed my courage to the sticking place and tiptoed down the hallway, knocked on the bedroom door and poked my head around.
‘Florrie!’ exclaimed Bram. ‘Is everything alright?’ He was in his shirt and trousers, sitting on the edge of his bed.
The glass in the window shook as a late-night cab rattled past.
I shut the door and leaned against it. ‘I … I’ve something I need to ask, Bram. Something I’ve been meaning to ask for months now, and —’ I paused, nervous fingers plucking at the lace of my nightgown. ‘I want you to tell me the truth.’
I waited until his eyes met mine and moved closer. ‘Why do you never seek to be … intimate with me anymore? Not since the opening night of The Cup.’
Oh, Henry.
I hated that my voice shook. ‘Is something wrong with me … do I fail to … please you? Or is something, someone …?’ I couldn’t finish.
Bram gave an almost inaudible groan and stared at the ceiling before returning his gaze to me.
‘Oh, Florrie.’ His lips began to tremble, and great tears welled.
‘I … I knew that one day you might ask this … Dreaded the moment you would …’ He released a drawn-out sigh.
He looked at me with such trepidation. ‘There’s nothing wrong with you.
’ He gave a dry, bitter laugh. ‘You’re beautiful.
The most beautiful woman I know. A woman any man would be proud to call wife … but …’
Silence stretched, expanding to fill the distance between us.
‘But?’ The word was both hard and soft, a whisper with sharp edges.
Bram went to stand, then changed his mind. ‘What if I can’t tell you the truth because … because I don’t know what that is?’ He lowered his head into his hands, his fingers ploughing his hair.
I waited. And waited. ‘I don’t understand. You’ll have to explain to me.’ More silence.
Finally, with another low groan, Bram raised his head.
His eyes were grey orbs of sorrow. ‘I’ll try …
’ His mouth moved, but no sound came. He swallowed, looked at me, then away, preferring the pockets of darkness behind me.
‘When I met you, I thought I could be a regular husband. Be like other men. Turns out, I was wrong. I cannot …’ He dropped his chin.
‘There’s something in me, Florrie …’ He struck his chest, forcefully.
‘Something I cannot help, nor … control.’ To my horror, he began to weep; deep, shuddering sobs that he swallowed as soon as they arose.
I took another step towards him, then stopped.
He needed to finish. I needed him to finish.
‘I’m sorry,’ he cried. ‘The thought I might lose you … to consider what my life would be without you by my side, is unbearable. I know there are men who desire you, who seek to possess you, pleasure you – how could I not? Yet, even knowing I’ve such eager competition, the choices available to you …
’ He bit his lip so hard, the skin broke.
Blood bloomed, a single ruby drop trembling in the candlelight.
‘I cannot be the man you want. The husband you deserve; not in the manner expected. I don’t …
’ He shook his head, the droplet ruptured, blood dotted his mouth.
‘It’s not you, Florrie. By God. It’s … it’s me.
’ He thumped his chest repeatedly. ‘It’s all me. Me.’
His face blurred as my eyes filled. The lamp by his bed became a small sun, glowing brightly, throwing his shadow onto the wall behind him, distorted, monstrous. Could he hear my heart? It was like the drums the queen’s guards beat when she rode through the city.
‘Florrie,’ he whispered. He licked his lips, smeared the blood. There were tears in my name. Mine were poised to fall.
‘Is there …’ I began with a quaver, then cleared my throat. ‘Is there someone else?’
He waited until my gaze found his again. ‘You’re the only woman I have ever and will ever love.’
I hesitated. Was that an answer? ‘Are you telling me you prefer … men, that —’
‘Please!’ He held up his palm as if to prevent the rest of my question reaching him. ‘Enough. Leave it, Florrie.’ His eyes became red-rimmed coalholes, dark and impregnable. ‘I beg of you. Leave it.’
Days passed, centuries. I grew old, died, was reborn.
I was an iceberg, a desert. A raging river, a stagnant pool.
My worst fears were confirmed; my doubts assuaged (oh, God).
My stomach lurched and bile rose in my throat.
Part of me wanted to leave the room, the house, the city, and never turn back.
Another part, when I regarded him – cowed, broken, trusting me, terrified I’d abandon him – could not revile him.
A memory arrived unbidden. Me and Phil, lying in bed, discussing Plato’s Symposium, embracing Aristophanes’ explanation for all kinds of love; that sometimes one cannot control to whom they give their heart.
Oh, how liberal we thought ourselves, how non-judgemental.
Love is love, God is love, we thought innocently; naively.
But it’s one thing to profess such a beneficent attitude towards a stranger, to congratulate yourself for your tolerance, quite another when the man you’re married to all but admits you do not make him whole. That other desires take precedence.
Sweet Jesus. If what Bram had all but confessed was ever discovered, we’d all be condemned to social purgatory: me, Irving, Bram. He would be branded a criminal, outcast from society. I would be a laughing-stock, a pariah. We would be utterly ruined.
Yet I could not abhor him. I’d asked the question and, as hard as it was, he gave me an answer. Incomplete in some respects, raising many more questions in its wake, but an answer nonetheless. Gaps could be filled in later, over time.
I inhaled and ever so slowly released a tear-filled breath. ‘I see.’
‘Do you?’ His voice was deep. Manly. ‘I’m not sure you do.’
I both did and didn’t. Before, I lived in ignorance; from here on in, through sheer force of will, I would live in awareness, but also blind, deaf and mute.
Nevertheless, as I stood before my husband, more spirit than woman, denied and affirmed, relief coursed through me. Relief that it wasn’t me who repelled him; it wasn’t something I had or hadn’t done. It was some other inclination – or lack of inclination – that drove him.
If my tortured thoughts over the last months and years had taught me anything, it was that with this knowledge, I could do something.
‘Does anyone else know?’ I asked.
‘That I’m … an unnatural man? There are those who might wonder,’ he admitted. ‘But I’ve not given anyone cause to be assured one way or another.’
I drew closer. ‘You’ll not embarrass me or yourself, will you, Bram? Shame our name, sully our standing?’
‘I’ll never do anything to shame either of us, or Irving.’
For a moment, I wasn’t sure whether he meant our son or his Chief.
‘Never,’ I repeated. It was a vow.
He raised mournful eyes to mine. ‘And what of you, Florrie? Would you take your pick of those who wish to bed you, knowing what you do now? Knowing that the man you call your husband failed in his duties?’
‘Failed in only one respect, Bram.’
He made a mocking sound. ‘Only one?’ I didn’t reply. ‘You could renounce our marriage. Seek divorce. I would understand …’
I stepped closer, and as the space between us contracted, he held out his arms. I hesitated, then entered them and knelt.
Encircled in his warm embrace, I nestled my head under his chin, surreptitiously wiping the tears from my cheeks. His lips rested against my hair. We were an inverse Pietà, a father and daughter. There was nothing sensual in our hold, yet I’d never felt closer to my husband than this moment.
‘I won’t abandon our marriage, Bram. I promise. Or you. You are my husband. I’m your wife. Mrs Bram Stoker.’
He gave a quiet sob and held me tighter. The night cocooned us in its silence. ‘I don’t think you’re shocked – are you?’ he asked eventually. He’d ceased to cry, to tremble.
I didn’t answer immediately. I wasn’t shocked. Did that make me unnatural? Maybe.
‘No,’ I admitted finally. And more forcefully, ‘No.’
I was more surprised that Bram disclosed what he had. Sex didn’t interest him, at least not in the usual ways. I’d no desire to have relations with him again – I hadn’t since the night he’d uttered Henry’s name. But nor would I desire any other man. Not anymore. Did that make us well suited?
I decided in that moment, it had to.
We had a child; no-one could cast aspersions upon Bram.
We’d both fulfilled our obligations to the institution of marriage and society’s unspoken laws.
There would be no scurrilous gossip to taint his reputation, nor mine.
As God was my witness, I would make certain of that.
I swore then and there to do whatever was in my power to protect Bram and, in doing so, protect us all.
If we were not lovers in the traditional sense of husband and wife, we could at least be friends.
The closest kind. The kind who, I thought as I soundlessly wept for what I’d never know, shared the darkest of secrets.