Page 13 of The Extraordinary Florence Stoker

It wasn’t until we were heading home that we resumed our conversation. It was a mild night and Mr Stoker suggested we walk along the Liffey. Tactfully, Phil and Catherine remained a distance behind us. Stars shone, the river reflecting their sparkle and the moon’s beams. Others took advantage of the pleasant evening, strolling arm in arm. We even passed a couple locked in an embrace.

‘Ah, young love,’ sighed Mr Stoker.

‘You say that as if you’re not young yourself, Mr Stoker.’

‘There are many who would argue I’m not, at almost thirty-one years old.’

He had eleven years on me. ‘Some say youth is as much a state of mind as a physical reality.’

We paused by the railing, facing the river, shoulder to shoulder. Phil and Catherine stopped, pretending to be distracted by something on the water. There were shouts in the distance, the whistle of a policeman.

‘How others treat you can also affect how old you feel; even how others perceive you,’ he said.

‘Much like being a woman then. How others see and behave towards us, how they judge us, determines how we’re allowed to be in society – and within families.’

He turned to regard me. ‘There’s a lot goes on in that lovely head of yours, isn’t there, Miss Florence Balcombe?’

I raised my chin and met his steady gaze. My body thrummed. Was he going to kiss me? Did I want him to? Yes, I did.

‘You have no idea,’ I said, ever so softly. ‘It’s uncharted territory.’

‘Then, let me be the first to explore it,’ he said, and captured my mouth with his.

Over the next few months, I saw a great deal of Mr Stoker, or Bram, as I came to call him. I was introduced properly to his family, and he was made welcome at Marino Court. When he went to London to help his friend, the actor Henry Irving, who was becoming famous, he wrote to me three times, though he was only gone a week. Bram even invited me to accompany him to his sister Margaret’s quiet wedding at the beginning of summer.

I tried not to contrast Bram and Oscar, but since my experience with men was so limited, I’d no other point of comparison. Both were clever, lovers of literature and the arts, aficionados of the theatre, and both dreamed of being writers. But there, the similarities ended … Or should have, I kept telling myself.

Bram and I shared books and discussed their merits, cut out pieces from the various newspapers and debated them. He began to join my family for meals, and I was invited to share his home. By late July, we were attending church together. Unlike Oscar, after that first kiss, Bram never attempted to kiss me again. Oh, he’d link arms or hold my hand when I alighted from a cab or help me over uneven ground on one of our many walks; occasionally, he’d throw an arm about my shoulders and squeeze, the way one might a sibling. Sometimes, he’d kiss my cheek, my hand, even the top of my head.

But I wanted him to kiss my mouth. The more time we spent together, I longed for him to caress me the way Oscar had. When we bade each other goodnight after he’d brought me home, I would lift my face expectantly, and he would gaze down at me with those twinkly eyes, and either press his lips to my hand, or stroke my face.

‘You’re ridiculously lovely, you know,’ he’d say.

‘Does that mean you don’t take me seriously?’ I’d ask playfully.

‘Beauty, Florrie, is a very serious thing. It’s truth, don’t you know?’ he’d chuckle, alluding to the line from Keats. Then he’d depart.

‘I think his intentions are serious,’ said Mother one day, hope creeping into her voice.

I didn’t answer. I knew all too well what it was like to have hope cruelly dashed.

When I accepted Bram’s proposal, everyone except Phil was both pleased and relieved.

‘A civil servant trumps a student any day,’ said Father. It was the first and last time he ever referred to the Oscar debacle.

It took a great deal to impress my father, a retired army officer who’d seen action in the Crimea. He had very fixed ideas about men and women, husbands and wives, and though he never expressed it, he was always afraid I would do something foolish, like elope, or run away to London with a ne’er-do-well and ruin not only my reputation but the family name. Father didn’t understand that was something I’d never do. Bram met with his approval because he represented solidity, stability. We were from the same stock. Bram would ground me, Father said, which really meant bestow his family name and keep me in Dublin.

Unbeknownst to Father or Mother, while Bram loved Dublin, he too longed to leave.

‘London is where I want to go. If one is serious about being a writer, it’s the only place to be,’ he told me the day we went to the library.

‘It’s the city where dreams can come true,’ I replied. Oscar had said that, and I’d no qualms repeating it. ‘It’s where I long to go as well.’

‘One day,’ whispered Bram, his whiskers tickling my ear, ‘we’ll both go.’

I think it was this conversation that changed the way I felt about Bram. Overnight, he went from being a well-liked suitor to a potential husband who shared my desire to escape. Shared my first choice of destination …

We celebrated our engagement with champagne and a small gathering of his family and mine. Like me, Bram was a third child. His mother, Charlotte, was a widow and a highly regarded activist who championed women’s rights (though she was remarkably intolerant of her own daughters and other women in her sphere), and those of the poor and crippled. His older brother, Thornley, was married to a vivacious woman named Emily. His older sister, Matilda, an artist of growing repute, was a delight, as was his younger sister, Margaret. But it was his brother George, a doctor like Thornley, who I liked the most. Hard-working but keen to enjoy life, when he found out Bram and I were engaged, he whooped and picked me up and twirled me around the room. Tom, two years younger than Bram, and Richard (another doctor), four years younger, both worked in India.