Chapter Forty-Nine
I rose, sat back down, and clasped the necklace at my throat. Once again, I was aboard the steamship Victoria, fighting to reach the lifeboats, choking on smoke, trying to keep hold of Noel. Praying to Almighty God to save us.
I resumed reading, this time from The Globe. The numbers of dead were too large to comprehend.
A commotion outside distracted me. I put the newspapers aside and went to the window. A veritable throng had gathered below. A couple of enterprising newspaper boys had wandered into the square and were doing a roaring trade.
‘The Titanic at the bottom of the ocean!’
‘Hundreds dead in freezing seas!’
Their high-pitched voices carried as men and women flocked to purchase the papers and discuss the catastrophe.
Two women held each other, sobbing. A rather large lady with a huge feathered hat snatched a newspaper from the hands of a bespectacled gentleman and began to exclaim, beckoning others to her side.
Another woman reeled and would have tumbled to the ground but was swiftly caught by a tradesman in an apron and carried to a nearby bench.
As Bram always said, ‘bad news sells’. This was the worst kind. I couldn’t remember feeling like this since Jack the Ripper stalked the streets.
I glanced at the clock, then scooped up the newspapers. Bram would want to know.
I burst into his dim bedroom. ‘Oh, Lord, Bram, you won’t believe what has happened.’ I dropped the newspapers on the end of the bed and dragged open the curtains.
Ever since we’d returned from Whinnyfold last summer, Bram had steadily declined.
Not that his condition had prevented him from trying to work.
With my help, he’d been selecting which of his short stories to include in a new collection.
We’d managed to sort at least three editions for the publishers.
There was also a novel he’d started years earlier called The Russian Professor. I doubted it would ever be finished.
It aggrieved me to see all that work, that imagination, for so little reward.
‘What is it, Florrie?’ Bram’s voice was cracked, as he made a feeble attempt to sit up, blinking against the grey light.
I rushed to help, holding his body forward while I plumped the pillows behind him.
Then I heaved him upright. It wasn’t as hard as it used to be.
Before my very eyes, Bram was diminishing, until I imagined him rising, mist-like, from the bed to join the fog that lurked outside the windows most mornings.
‘Do you need the bedpan, dear?’ I asked. He was badly in need of a wash. A rather sour smell surrounded him, an odour not even the most perfumed soaps could disguise. He didn’t like me bathing him and insisted on completing the task himself. Not very well, it seemed.
Bram shook his head. ‘Not yet.’ He preferred to await the doctor, who, in the last weeks, had taken to calling twice daily. ‘There are some things a man doesn’t need his wife to see,’ he muttered.
He leaned against the pillows with a deep sigh, closing his eyes. I tucked the bedclothes around him. ‘What’s got you acting as if the house is afire?’ He opened one eye. ‘It’s not, is it? I’m not about to be cremated alive, am I?’
For all Bram was so very ill, he managed to keep his sense of humour.
‘No, Bram,’ I said solemnly. I perched beside him and reached for the papers. Some of his work slid onto the floor. I left it there.
‘Why, Florrie,’ he said, both eyes open now. ‘Have you been crying?’
I raised a hand to my cheek. ‘Yes, I have. I’m afraid I’ve some terrible news.’
I felt him stiffen, bracing himself.
‘Oh, no, dear, it’s not Thornley.’ Like Bram, his older brother’s health had worsened in the last months and he was mostly bedridden. The men had written the most plaintive letters to each other. I know because I wrote Bram’s and read Thornley’s to him.
I cupped his bearded cheek. It was so soft, the skin above so desiccated. Almost yellow-grey in colour, like aged porcelain. He leaned into my palm.
‘Then it can’t be very terrible.’
‘I’ll let you decide,’ I said and, inhaling, began to read from the Daily Mirror.
Bram sat breathing heavily. Every intake of air was an effort, as if his lungs were antique bellows that should have been retired long ago.
I tried to ignore the painful sound, the monstrous wheeze, even as a racket grew outside.
Within the house I could hear the women, hurried footsteps, doors opening and closing, agitated chatter drifting about the corridor.
There was a series of knocks on the front door, rushed conversations as maids from neighbouring flats, workers, and a voice that was distinctively the postman’s, debated the sinking.
Bram remained motionless, his gaze fixed somewhere over my left shoulder. His frown deepened; his lips disappeared. A look of distress flashed across his face.
Before I could finish the reports in The Globe, Dr Browne arrived.
I hovered briefly as he undertook his usual assessment, listening to Bram’s heart, looking into his mouth, prodding and poking.
The entire time, he discussed the Titanic disaster.
Bram grunted and nodded, tried to raise an arm in dismay, not that Dr Browne seemed to notice.
When he began to move Bram out of bed so he might relieve himself, I repressed a gasp.
The night clothes had ridden up his legs, and his shirt was mostly open.
When had those sores appeared? When had he become so gaunt?
I knew he’d lost weight, that his once burly body was naught but a memory, but my husband had become a hanger upon which a swathe of scabrous flesh draped.
I had to leave before he saw my face and the knowledge it now held.
Death awaited him.
A shadow shifted in the corner. A constant presence of late. His eyes glowed red, his cape rippled. He began to smile. Only, he no longer resembled the drowned man, or Oscar, or even Henry Irving. I risked another look.
The deathly spectre hovering in the darkness wore the face of Bram.
Sick to my stomach, I swiftly excused myself, shutting the door with unseemly haste and falling against it. My hands were shaking; I tried to catch my breath.
‘Are you alright, missus?’ Maria came out of the kitchen.
No, I’m not.
‘Dreadful news about the Titanic, isn’t it?
’ Her ever-present duster glided across a demilune table as she waited for me to agree.
She manoeuvred around a clock, a vase, a peculiar statuette that had been a gift from Sarah Bernhardt.
Her neat white apron, the ridiculous thing she wore atop her head, her sensible shoes, which had dirt from the stoop upon them, brought me back.
‘Appalling,’ I answered. About to go to my bedroom to compose myself, I changed my mind.
‘Maria. Please see to it that warm water for bathing is brought to Mr Stoker’s bedroom.
Add some fragrance to it; I don’t care what.
Oh, and ask Mary to prepare Mr Stoker’s favourite broth. Serve it with bread and butter.’
‘Yes, Mrs Stoker,’ said Maria, and with a compassionate glance, went to the kitchen.
I crossed to the drawing room and scrawled a note to Noel.
Make certain you come to see your father today.
Love, Mother.
Noel had been dropping by the house more often of late. It was more important than ever he was here.
Five days after the sinking of the Titanic, Bram died.
His death wasn’t peaceful, though I know that will be said.
It wasn’t a kind death either, not in the sense most mean when they refer to someone dying at home surrounded by loved ones, because though Noel and I were there, Bram had been dying for weeks.
A kind death, I’ve decided, is a quick one.
Not brutal, like those poor women Jack the Ripper killed, or like Henry Irving, who was a spinning top careening everywhere before gradually slowing and toppling; nor what the victims of the Titanic suffered, drowning in a frigid sea.
Rather, a kind death is one where one moment, you’re embracing life, planning your next adventure, what you’ll eat for dinner, who you’ll visit, what book to read next. Then, nothing.
Perhaps Bram was right. Gilbert had the best death. Not because he was a hero attempting to save someone, but because he didn’t know that the Grim Reaper was coming for him.