Chapter Forty-Five
Bram had gone back to work the moment we returned from Deal.
When The Vicar of Wakefield closed a couple of months after it opened, no-one, least of all Bram, was surprised.
Even so, it was a blow. Managing a theatre company had been Bram’s main source of income for almost three decades.
Who would take him after the failure of this production?
Kept awake at night worrying about how he was going to rescue us from our impecunious straits, Bram was up before dawn each day.
Unable to do anything by halves, and ignoring his brother’s advice, he threw himself into finding work.
He applied for so many jobs, often dictating the letters to me just so they would be written quickly and make the morning’s post. He published a book, started another, wrote some short stories, planned others, gave talks, accepted freelance work with the Daily Telegraph, interviewing our famous friends and acquaintances – including Gilbert, and Randolph Churchill’s son, Winston.
Ironically, young Winston, who was making a name for himself, only agreed to talk to Bram because we’d known his father and because Bram was ‘the author of Dracula’.
Dracula. Of all the books Bram had written, it was this one that continued to make money for us; not much, but it was consistent. The Germans had recently bought the rights to a translation.
While it must have been a blow to Bram’s ego to be interviewing some of those he’d helped find success, he took whatever work was offered and refused to accept that perhaps he should consider ‘slowing down’.
‘Don’t say those words in my hearing again, Florrie,’ he complained one evening. ‘I’ll slow down when I’m dead.’
‘That’s what worries me,’ I said. He laughed and planted a kiss on my cheek before retreating to his study.
Though our residence had changed, the location hadn’t.
We were still in Chelsea, in the hub of things, and I soon resumed my Sunday salons with Bram’s blessing.
Though the guest list had shrunk, and the wine wasn’t as fine a quality, the number of platters of food not quite as generous, and the room smaller, no-one complained.
Our friends still attended, and we even welcomed a fading Mr Samuel Clemens one afternoon, who’d crossed the ocean to receive an honorary degree from Oxford.
Yet, I’d never felt so impotent, so feeble, so utterly dependent. Along with my husband, my currency was in decline, even though Noel, bless him, would always tell me how proud he was to escort his lovely mother anywhere.
Sons should say that kind of thing to their mothers, shouldn’t they?
It didn’t mean anything. Likewise, I put little stock in Bram’s pretty reassurances.
It was his duty. And like most duties, he performed it well.
We’d reached a stage in our lives where we could appreciate each other in ways we maybe hadn’t before; build upon our strengths and ensure we kept our weaknesses securely hidden.
One Tuesday evening in mid-winter, as the snow fell thickly, muffling the cabs and motor cars outside, cocooning the house in its icy embrace, I heard a loud bang from the study.
Afeared Bram had collapsed again, I burst in the door, only to find him sitting behind his desk with his head in his hands.
He looked up, bleary-eyed.
‘Bram!’ I exclaimed. ‘Are you alright? What was that noise?’ I crossed to the desk, put a hand on his shoulder and looked about the room. Only then did I see the magnifying glass on the floor in front of the fire.
‘I’m fine.’ He tried not to snap, but I could hear the frustration in his voice.
‘Really?’ I retrieved the magnifying glass and slid it towards him. ‘You’re lucky it didn’t break.’
‘I’ve others.’ He leaned back in his chair and opened the desk drawer. Tucked inside were more magnifying glasses. Noel had bought him one with an ivory handle for Christmas. Violet and Hall had also gifted him one each.
I sat opposite and lay my hands on the desk, palms up.
He hesitated a moment and then placed his huge hands over mine.
We sat, looking at each other. I studied him, this great bear of a man I’d been married to for nearly thirty years.
Now sixty, he stubbornly determined to press on as if he was half that age.
The fire crackled and coughed to our right.
I could just hear a ship’s horn sounding in the distance.
The white lacing his hair was prominent in the lamp’s soft glow. So was the evident strain in his eyes. The large pupils, the broken veins that surrounded those lovely grey orbs. ‘Let me be your eyes,’ I said finally.
Bram withdrew his hands and made a scoffing sound.
‘I’m serious, Bram.’ I was a little affronted by his reaction. ‘You let me write letters for you, read through contracts and other important documents before you sign them. Let me write your —’
‘Books? You want to write my books?’ Bram pinched the bridge of his nose and shook his head. ‘Honestly, Florrie, you want to take away —’
‘No, you great eejit,’ I said. ‘I don’t want to write your books.
As if I could. I want to write your words.
If you dictate to me, because God knows I can’t decipher your codes and shorthand or read your dreadful handwriting, I can scribe on your behalf.
It doesn’t have to be all the time. Just when you need to rest your eyes, when holding the magnifying glass and writing becomes too arduous. ’
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.