He pushed the box over to her, then struck a match and lit for both of them.
“Do you think you could meet Sam’s train?” he asked, exhaling with obvious relish.
“He’ll be expecting you to be there, too.”
“I know he will. I’m simply too energized by what my little midnight artisans have tossed my way. I must play about with them before they flit away.”
Fanny sighed. “What do you have, then? Tell me.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
She glanced at him impatiently. “This could get tiresome, you know? All this newfound ma’aming.”
Stevenson eyed her from beneath an arched brow. “Yes, dearest.”
He detailed excitedly the flight through the darkened streets, the powder, and the transformation—judiciously omitting the curious but intriguing portrait in the public house mirror of the dreamer himself. “There was that,” he said, “and before that there was a very vivid scene of the man in the mirror, the transformed man, but this time he was sitting at a window high up on a wall. A particularly filthy wall. It was inside a narrow courtyard of some sort, and the evening sky was fading higher up above. And as he sits there, disconsolately, two acquaintances walk into the musty court—perhaps I myself was one of them, I don’t recall—and they see him sitting there. And as they speak with him, just pleasantries you know, this look of fright creeps over the poor soul’s face. And, even as he reaches out to lower the sash, a dreadful change sweeps over his features and this poor old gent turns into…well, a horror.”
“Fascinating.” Fanny tapped the ash of her cigarette into his saucer. “And may I ask…?”
“Of course.”
“Was this horror he turned into anything like your runner in the streets?”
Stevenson laughed. “You are acute, Pig!”
“Goodness! I’m getting a bit of a chill.”
“And I as well,” cried Stevenson. “The wretched man just…reverts under the cool eyes of friends. There’s no stopping the transformation!”
“No,” responded Fanny. “I can’t wait to see how you flesh it all out.”
“Nor can I, to be honest. Thus my appeal to you.”
Fanny reached across the table to clutch his hand. “I’ll be happy to fetch Sammy, then. And you can devote your whole day to cavorting with your brownies.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Fanny reached for his teacup, pretending to toss it at her husband. She failed to notice it was still half-full, and a good measure of tea spilled out onto her robe and the tablecloth below. “Fuck and piss!” she exclaimed, reaching up to cover her mouth in embarrassment.
“‘Oh, is that you, Millie?’” sang Stevenson, cupping his hand dramatically behind his ear. “‘Yes, indeed. That was Mrs. Stevenson calling out for you.’”
Home for a brief vacation and filled with tales of arrogant sixth-formers, Latin grammar, and wretched food, Sam had taken up rugby football and had both a swollen nose and a blackened eye to prove it.
They shared a late luncheon together, after which Stevenson excused himself and retreated to the bedroom, where he had been writing the entire morning. Fanny had been surprised to find him sequestered there when she returned from the railway station, propped as he was against a huge bank of pillows in a cloud of tobacco smoke, oblivious to Sam’s racket as he barreled into the house and up the stairs with his luggage. When she had questioned his location, he mumbled something about the best place to recapture the dream being the same place he had had it.
So it went, remarkably, for three full days, two of them marked by as nasty a tempest as Bournemouth had experienced in decades. Never had Fanny seen Stevenson so consumed by a project. He left strict instructions with the maids not to be disturbed, and the few times when Fanny, in daylight hours, deigned to come into the room, she found him hunched intently over his manuscript, heedless of the torrents of rain lashing at the windowpanes three feet from his head. Only twice could she prevail upon him to come down to the dining room—for lunch the second day and a late breakfast the third. Once, when Valentine knocked at the door with a light supper on a tray, he sent her away with a snarl.
After a full day of this, Sam, as unaccustomed as Fanny to seeing his stepfather so totally consumed by his writing, swung between filial concern and clear disappointment at being ignored, such that Fanny felt she had to say something. “It’s for Sam that I am doing this,” Stevenson shot back at her. “Sam and the rest of you.” Each of the nights, Fanny fell asleep amidst the flicker of candlelight and the scratching of the nib, and two of the mornings she awoke to the same sound.
“Did you sleep at all, Louis?”
“Enough.”
On the third morning, Fanny woke to the gentle whistling of her husband’s breath. She raised her head from the pillow and looked over to see him lying on his back, his mouth slightly open and one arm tossed back over his head. The counterpane lay halfway down his chest and, since the room was chilly, she pulled the cover gently up to his unshaven chin. She sat up slowly so as not to disturb him and, looking at the table to his side, noted a pile of paper stacked neatly beneath the extinguished candle. Next to it lay Stevenson’s pen and an uncapped bottle of ink.
She slipped her legs out from under the covers and, dropping her feet to the floor, slid them into her slippers. She cringed at the creaking bedstead as she rose from the mattress, but Stevenson whistled on as she donned her robe and tiptoed around the bed to stand there next to him.
The tempest had abated. Outside the window, the nearly naked branches of an oak tree scarcely moved against the brightening sky. Somewhere in the middle distance, a rook or two cawed away. She screwed the cap onto the inkbottle and gazed down at her sleeping spouse, wishing he would close his mouth. How many marriages would ever be solemnized, she wondered, if everyone who intended to marry were required to see a future spouse lying asleep before the banns could be proclaimed? How often might Louis have wondered the same thing while he peered at her dozing? She clenched her jaw tightly and looked down at the stack of papers. There was a look of finality about it. Should she slip the manuscript out from under the candle stand and begin reading it at once? She decided against it, adjusted the covers once more around him, and slipped quietly out of the room.
Valentine must have heard her descending the stairs, and she came into the drawing room to find her mistress standing in front of the fire, warming her hands.
“Are you wanting breakfast now, madame?”
“I don’t think so, Valentine. I believe I’ll wait for Sam.”
The maid nodded. “And Monsieur Stevenson? Will we be seeing him today, do you think?”
Fanny stared at the young woman, vaguely galled by the secure smile on her lips. She was tempted to reply that it was hardly any business of hers. “I don’t know, Valentine. We’ll just have to see, won’t we? I wouldn’t be surprised.”
“The master is finished with his writing, then?”
“I don’t know. I expect he might be. But you know him almost as well as I do,” she added, regretting it as soon as she said it.
“Not at all,” Valentine replied. “But I do know he is not always content with what he writes.”
Her smile seemed completely open and sincere. In place of her doubts, Fanny felt a sudden and unlooked-for kinship with this woman, as far removed as she herself was from her native home and all things familiar.
“So,” said Valentine. “I will be in the kitchen. Tell me, or send Millie, when the young master has come down. Or monsieur himself.”
She turned and left the room without a curtsy—leaving Fanny to wonder what, if anything, that might mean.
Sam tramped down the stairs shortly past nine, calling out loudly for his mother.
“Shhhh,” hissed Fanny, rushing out into the hall to quiet him. “Your father is asleep.”
“Oooh, sorry,” said the lad, hunching his shoulders. “You’re still in your robe?”
“I didn’t want to wake
Louis by dressing.” She looked askance at his jacket and tie. “And look at you! I keep telling you you don’t need to dress for breakfast here.”
Sam looked down at himself and laughed. “I promise to be more slovenly tomorrow. So has Louis finished writing whatever it is he’s been writing? Or are we going to spend yet another day in collective banishment?”
“I know,” sighed Fanny. “But the signs are promising. I found papers stacked neatly by his bedside. I didn’t dare touch them, of course. We’ll just have to see. Breakfast?”
“Hell, yes! I’m bloody well starving.”
Fanny cringed theatrically. “I’m glad to see your fellow scholars are having such a positive effect on your language. Or is it the masters?”
“Oh, Mother. I am learning so much,” exclaimed Sam as they passed into the dining room. “I can conjugate the verb ‘bugger’ in Latin.”
“Samuel Lloyd Osbourne,” cried Fanny, turning and shaking him by the shoulders. “That’s awful.”
“I’m joking, Mother. All we’ve been doing is amo, amas, amat. Cogito, cogitas, cogitat.”
“Well, I’m relieved to hear that. Just don’t let your father hear you talking that way.”
“Six thousand miles away? I doubt he will.”
“You know what I mean.”
Sam and Fanny were just finishing their breakfast when they heard a creak on the stairs. Moments later, Stevenson stepped into the doorway in his striped pajamas and hastily donned robe. He raised a packet of papers in his hand, beaming.
“Good morning, beloved family.”
“Good morning, Lou,” replied Sam. “I can call you Lou, can’t I?”
Stevenson felt a curious stab of emotion. “I suppose we have outgrown ‘Lulu,’ haven’t we?”
“Well…”
“You may call me anything you like. Lou. Lulu. Velvet Coat. Writer of Genius.”
Fanny motioned briskly to her husband, fumbling at her waist.
Stevenson looked down and, throwing the papers onto the sideboard, belted his robe. “Thank you, dearest.”
“Writer of genius,” repeated Sam. “Are we talking about something recent?”
“My goodness!” exclaimed Stevenson, picking up the manuscript and walking over to the table. “Am I to assume from your phrasing that nothing I have penned in the past decade is worth a goat’s bleat?”
Sam laughed and shook his head. “Lou! Lulu! Really! Have you finished, then?”
“I have!” He threw the lot of paper onto the table, halfway between his wife and stepson. “At least a solid draft.”
“And?” asked Fanny.
“And…” He reached up to stroke his moustache. “I do believe it may be the best thing I’ve written. Ever!”
“Honestly? The best?”
“It came like a tidal wave. I could barely stop writing.” He held up his right hand like a withered claw, then shook it energetically.
“So we noticed,” grinned Sam. “What’s it about?”
Stevenson looked at Fanny. She tipped her head briefly from side to side, weighing the situation, then nodded.
“A rather bad man, I would say. Who makes a show of being good.”
“Oh, like Brodie,” observed Sam. “Not another cabinet maker, though?”
Stevenson chuckled. “No, not another cabinet maker. A doctor.”
Sam reached over and laid his hand on the papers. “Can I read it?”
“I’m not sure it’s quite ready for such an important eye. Perhaps your mother will oblige me by being the first to subject herself to my immodest scribblings.”
“So they’re immodest, are they?” asked Fanny.
“I shall leave that for you to judge.”
“Very well, then. Perhaps I can find a few moments for a quick look-through. You’re sure it will be worth my while?” Her grin was especially impish.
“If you would indulge me, dear heart, I would be ever so grateful.” Stevenson held the manuscript out to her. “Remember, it’s the fruit of only three days’ labor.” He smiled cautiously as she snatched it from his hand.
After Sam’s time away at school, Stevenson was prepared for his stepson to have outgrown forever their war games of yore, especially given his new preference in names. Nonetheless, once the lad had run upstairs to brush his teeth and tromped down again to the drawing room, it was Sam himself who proposed the idea.
“I don’t suppose you have any old soldiers lying around, do you?” the boy asked as he idly picked up the latest copy of Punch.
“Of course I do. I must tell you, though, that their pensions are costing me a fortune.”
Sam laughed and closed the paper. “Do you suppose you could dig them out? Perhaps we could fight a battle or two…for old times’ sake?”
The expression hit Stevenson, for the second time that morning, with unlooked-for poignancy. Could Sam the growing boy already be mourning a vanishing age of innocence and play? Or was Sam the young man revealing a maturing solicitousness for him, Stevenson, for whom games of war had so long been the surest means of rapport between them? He thought back to his own most recent visit to Heriot Row, when he had found his father standing alone in the old day nursery, a toy boat in his hand. Thomas Stevenson claimed he had felt a draft flowing down into the hall below; he was just checking, he’d protested, to be sure all the windows were latched.
“Nothing would please me more. Let me just go fetch a pair of armies. Who shall it be?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Napoleon and the Russians? Borodino?”
“Very well. And I suppose you’ll want to be the French,” sighed Stevenson in mock resignation. On his way to the stairs, he stole a glance into the dining room. Fanny sat at the table, her chin propped on a fist as she pored intently over his work. Hearing him pass, she looked up and smiled. She seemed, from the relative size of the piles, to be a fair way into it. As he turned again to climb to his room, Stevenson registered, for reasons that were hard to ascertain, more concern than he was used to feeling over the customary spousal review.
They had fought the battle of Borodino more than once before, and it unfolded with reasonable speed. Stevenson’s roundly beaten Cossacks were already retreating from the field when Fanny stepped quietly into the room.
“Borodino,” he explained in response to her puzzled look. “Sam is Napoleon. I am Kutuzov. I am in full retreat.”
“Oh my!”
“And look at Sam, if you would. You can tell how much he wants to break the rules.”
“I do not,” laughed the youth.
“Yes, you do. Do you see those troops over there?” he asked Fanny, pointing to a clutch of lead horsemen massed around Sam’s left knee. “That’s the Imperial Guard.”
“I see. They do look imperious.”
“And if Sam—Napoleon—if Napoleon were to send them after me right now”—he looked up at her with an air of helplessness—“it would result in a terrible, crushing defeat. Cataclysmic.”
“Oh my! But he can’t?”
“Well, he could. But that’s not the way it happened.”
“Napoleon wouldn’t risk them,” explained Sam. “So I won’t risk them either.”
“So the battle’s over?” asked Fanny.
“Nothing to do but bury the dead,” replied her son.
“And dash home for some vodka,” added Stevenson. “A great deal of vodka, I should think.”
They shared a happy laugh.
“So,” said Stevenson, climbing up from the floor and walking over to lean on the mantle, “have you finished as well, love?” He pointed to the papers in Fanny’s hand. “Am I now to be crushed on this front as well?”
“Not at all.” Fanny stepped carefully over the battlefield and seated herself in James’s chair. She laid the papers in her lap and patted them gently, an uncharacteristically prim smile on her face.
“What do you think?” asked Stevenson. Again he felt a curious surge of anxiety.
“I can certainly see why i
t consumed you totally. For days.”
“And by that you mean…?”
“I mean it is remarkable, Louis. It is remarkable.”
“You like it?”
“I do.”
Stevenson’s knees nearly buckled with relief. A part of him bridled, as always, at depending on Fanny for approval, but at least this insistent little fable seemed to pass muster. “What do you like about it, then?”
“Well, the plot is ingenious. Brilliant, even. Your resolution took me completely unawares.”
“Goodness,” said Sam. “Now you really have to let me read it.”
Stevenson smiled at him. “We shall see.”
“It is so, so suspenseful, Louis. And the language all through is perfect. Powerful. There were times when I felt I was right there in the streets of London—caught up in all of the city’s tumult, swept along by the rush of the crowd. Even choking on the fog.” She made a little gesture towards her mouth. “I declare, when I finished the last page, I felt as though I might have to jump in the bath to wash away all the filth.”
“It sounds just delightful,” quipped Sam. “Maybe Pear’s Soap will decide to publish it, Lulu. To further their sales, you know.”
“Then I shall have truly arrived,” chuckled Stevenson. “What a consummation, to have penned the first shilling shocker destined to improve its readers’ hygiene.” He looked at Fanny, who laughed more guardedly than he might have expected.
“It is a shilling shocker,” she remarked.
“I know it is,” replied Stevenson. “A perfect book-end for ‘The Body Snatcher.’ Or worse. But I expect it will help us buy our Christmas goose.”
For a moment, Fanny sat there silently. “You know, Louis,” she said at last, “it could be a masterpiece.”
“You are too kind.” Stevenson reached up to adjust the watercolor over the mantle. “Unless by ‘could be’ you mean that it’s not.” He turned and looked at her uncertainly. “Quite. Yet.”
Fanny slid forward in her chair and restraightened the papers in her lap. “You said you thought it might be the best thing you’d ever written.”
Stevenson wagged his head equivocally.
“Well, I really think it could be.”
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