Soul

by Tobsha Learner

  She also began to see it as a way of Klaus securing himself geographically, as if the immigrant was trying to anchor himself in a sea of images that viscerally linked him to America.

  Then suddenly, after five years of marriage, Julia began to take her own photos. At last, she herself had come home.

  The ultrasound image was propped up against the bedside lamp. The embryo was an amorphous bundle of sudden twitches, kicks and alien sensations that Julia struggled against to maintain her own hormonal equilibrium. But there he was: flesh made into logic; chemicals, genes, all twisted up into living structure—a child, a male child. It was the final jigsaw piece of their marriage. Touching the slippery surface of the scan she whispered out loud. ‘Aidan.’

  ‘What are you muttering?’ Klaus walked across the room naked, his heavy sex lolling against his thigh, his skin peppered with soft brown-blond hair. His limbs retained the slender musculature of a younger man while his hips and stomach had just begun to thicken into maturity. But he was most handsome in his hands. Finely chiselled, long-fingered, with arched bones, they fanned out from his wrist like white coral. Both hands constantly caressed the air whenever he spoke, as if he were unable to prevent a gestural rendering of his sentences shooting to the tips of his fingers. It had been his hands and his height that she had first noticed—a streak of a masculine presence across the room at a party. He had two physical defects: his torso and his feet. His torso was too long for his legs. This imperfection made him human; made him more like her. And his feet were wide and long, the feet of a peasant. They had become her private metaphor for what she saw as his innocence—a trait she associated with his unquestioning enthusiasm for life.

  Klaus started to climb into the bed.

  ‘Baby, can you just walk around some more?’

  ‘Julia! I’m cold.’

  ‘Please, you know how I like to watch you.’

  Grumbling, but with a lop-sided grin, he did two laps of the television at the foot of the bed, as naturally and unselfconsciously as he could.

  Klaus didn’t like to be looked at, resenting the assumptions made about him because of his physical beauty. Nevertheless, his penis began to harden under Julia’s scrutiny.

  ‘Satiated, you pervert?’ He stopped and stood before her, his hips and groin level with the edge of the bed. She glanced down; he was now almost fully erect. It was a sight she had always found a paradox—the way a penis, erect or otherwise, somehow rendered a man defenceless.

  ‘You enjoy it, admit it. I can see that it’s turning you on.’

  ‘Because I think you’re objectifying me, and I can feel myself morphing into a beautiful stranger who happens to be standing naked in your bedroom ready to fulfil your every fantasy.’ He placed his hands ironically but provocatively on his hips.

  ‘Liar. Besides, it would only be the male gaze that found such a scenario erotic. I find your nudity erotic because it’s you and you happen to be the man I wisely or unwisely publicly pledged eternal love to.’

  Walking over to his side of the bed, he climbed in between the sheets. ‘Husband, Julia. Remember—we’re married.’

  ‘And that means I can’t define you as my lover?’

  ‘Perhaps,’ he answered ambiguously as she reached over to take his mouth.

  Groaning, he kissed his way across her body, then pulled her thighs over the sides of his head like a veil, his lips taking her sex into his mouth, while she ran her tongue down, tracing a path to his belly button. His long torso was an undulating panorama of hair, skin and scent. She gently bit the inside of his thighs, caressing him, teasing him, knowing that with each indirect stroke his sensitivity heightened, aching for the direct touch, the moment she would fasten her mouth over his cock.

  And as she arched over him, his mouth sending tremors of intense pleasure up and down her thighs, his cock hard against his belly as his hands cupped her breasts, the astounding revelation that she had never been happier flooded her body a second before her own orgasm.

  The beating of the helicopter pounds through Julia and seems to push her view of the mountain further and further away. The soldier sitting next to her in the Humvee turns and smiles. Something vitally significant tugs at the edge of her mind. They bounce over the pothole, Julia’s flak jacket jarring against her stomach. She knows now what she has to say. She shouts a warning but the two men—the driver and the soldier—can’t hear over the noise.

  In a magical instant the Humvee is full of bleating, terrified goats. Their hooves tear into the canvas seat covers; Julia is pushed against the window. From the corner of her eye she sees the dying soldier, now outside, slide down the glass, leaving a filter of red.

  Now she is outside herself and the dead Afghani convulses at her feet. A drop of blood hits her boot, menstrual blood, a thin trickle from between her legs. Touching it, she is deeply ashamed; ashamed at the killing, ashamed that she feels nothing.

  Julia woke. Stretching her legs across to Klaus’s side of the bed, she curled her toes, searching for him. The bed was empty. She lay there for a moment, dawn saturating the bedroom as the sounds around her gathered into an audible mass.

  The low murmuring of her husband’s voice emerged from beneath the early morning birdsong. Still half-asleep, Julia walked to the window. Klaus stood in the garden, his muscular calves flexed, his bare feet white against the sandstone paving, the pale blue towelling robe wrapped loosely around his body. The small mobile phone was tucked against his shoulder, his neck and head bent over it as if he were protecting an intimacy. Sensing a movement he glanced blindly at the bedroom window, then, not seeing Julia, stepped into the growing sunlight.

  Blearily, she tried to ascertain whether he was speaking Flemish or English until a wave of morning sickness forced her to run to the bathroom. Surprised to be nauseous this late in the pregnancy she wondered whether she should contact her gynaecologist, then decided she was probably overreacting.

  10

  Mayfair, London, November 1860

  LAVINIA PAUSED AT THE TOP of the staircase, revelling in rare solitude. Smoothing down the silk of her skirts, she took courage, breathed in deeply, then moved towards the banister. For a moment she lost her balance. Her dress—the latest crinoline from Paris—was a cumbersome instrument of physical limitation. The huge circumference of quilted silk arched from her narrow waist to bump and rustle against every possible surface—such a ridiculous fashion and thoroughly impractical she concluded, irritated by her own clumsiness.

  Steadying herself, Lavinia looked down the staircase to the palatial entrance hall. She still found it hard to believe she was actually there, surrounded by such opulence. Beneath her, the stairs cascaded in a semi-spiral of marble and gilt. An arched glass canopy in the ceiling above allowed natural light to filter in, illuminating the whole stairwell during the daylight hours. It reminded Lavinia of the delicate inner compartments of the sea snail, but on a grandiose scale. The neo-classical staircase was the spine of the whole house, dominating the large entrance hall. At the foot of the stairs stood a bronze statue of Mars, commissioned by the Colonel’s grandfather.

  A service staircase was located at the side of the house, solely for the use of the servants and house staff. Its access doors were hidden behind mirrors on each floor, thus allowing the staff to discreetly appear and disappear.

  On the top floor were the bedrooms, the nursery and the Colonel’s study. The second floor had six reception rooms: the library, a second study, two drawing rooms, the dining room, and a gallery which doubled as a ballroom. The ground floor contained the entrance hall and an inner hall, used as a small waiting room to receive less important guests. The kitchen, wine cellar, laundry and all other domestic necessities were located in the basement, while behind the mansion lay a landscaped courtyard backed by stables that led onto mews cottages and a lane.

  The Georgian mansion had been designed by Robert Adams in the early part of the century, and built by the Colonel’s grandfather—an army gene
ral. The Colonel’s mother, the Viscountess, had imagined she would live out the rest of her widowed years in the family residence, in defiant ostentation, but to her surprise—and that of much of Mayfair—the Viscountess had found herself dying of influenza at the age of thirty-eight.

  After her death, the Colonel had had gas lamps installed—the first in the square. The ornate brass and glass fittings flung light into the darkest corners, illuminating the depths of the many paintings he had inherited.

  A portrait of the Viscountess in her youth hung on the wall opposite. Handsome rather than beautiful, with a pronounced chin and sweeping jawline, she posed in pale cream silk, a pair of greyhounds—restlessly thin and eyes bulging—at her feet.

  Lavinia glanced at her own portrait, which her husband had commissioned in Dublin, insisting that Lavinia should pose as the huntress Diana despite the goddess’s legendary virginity. ‘How are you to explain the presence of a baby?’ Lavinia had asked him, smiling at the time, indicating her pregnancy. ‘We shall place him into the composition and disguise him as an infant wood sprite,’ he’d replied, determined to incorporate a personal symbolism into the painting that embodied his own love of adventure and hunting.

  She had completely escaped the village, Lavinia thought to herself, smiling at her own image, proof of her success. She had freed herself of the claustrophobia of the place and all that went with it. She had arrived. Even now she was incredulous at her achievement. Most of all she had the freedom of study, the opportunity to indulge her intellectual curiosity. For that alone she would love her husband.

  As if in answer, his melodious voice boomed out of the half-opened dining room doors.

  ‘My studies have convinced me there is a natural hierarchy—even in the animal kingdom. After all, what is a human being? We display the same tendencies as our animal cousins.’

  ‘Speak for yourself, James. I like to think of myself as slightly more advanced.’

  Lady Frances Morgan’s alto voice was distinctive and decidedly flirtatious, Lavinia observed unhappily. She had not yet fathomed the nature of the intimacy between her husband and the aristocrat he described as an ‘old, dear friend’.

  ‘I entirely agree with the Colonel. As far as I am concerned, many of our politicians are hardly more than baboons. Disraeli himself has often displayed behaviour in the house which could more properly be ascribed to an ape.’ Lavinia recognised the voice as belonging to a cartoonist for Punch magazine—a gentleman of forty with the most protruding forehead.

  ‘As you have so sensitively illustrated on many an occasion,’ the Colonel retorted smugly.

  ‘Whig!’ shouted Mr Hamish Campbell—Lady Morgan’s latest prodigy—in mock accusation. The party erupted into laughter.

  One sole voice remained stern. ‘Come now, I do believe some politicians have transcended their more bestial impulses. Abraham Lincoln, for example—any humane person would support his campaign against slavery…’ the Colonel replied before Lady Morgan interjected.

  ‘Lincoln fights for cotton not the Negro. You may wish to assume otherwise, especially if you have the advantage of youth and naivety, like the Colonel’s sweet wife. But the rest of us must be pragmatic and look to our investments as Mr Lincoln does. He needs to impose his export cotton tax to prevent the Lancashire mills from undercutting the cost of manufacturing cloth. The north of the United States is the manufacturing centre, and so he naturally wishes to bring prosperity to those States. I believe this means that our sympathies may more naturally lie with the southern States, n’est-ce pas?’

  Now anxious she might eavesdrop upon a conversation that could prove compromising, Lavinia stepped into the flurried atmosphere of the dining room.

  The Colonel, sensing her presence before the others, turned. Lavinia radiated a warmth that had initially made him believe she would serve as the ideal counterbalance to his own compulsively critical eye. The young Irishwoman was naturally generous, whereas he was not. Misanthropy was one of the Colonel’s natural tendencies and one he tried to conceal. He stood, followed by the other male guests, as one of the footmen pulled out a red velvet-covered oak chair for Lavinia.

  The female guests turned towards the hesitant young woman in the doorway. The coiled plaits visible under a filigree of black lace and seed pearls—a little too ornate for the season, Lady Morgan noted spitefully—gave her the air of a Medusa. The young Irish girl reminded her of a Ford Madox Brown model with her chalk-white skin and disproportionately large eyes. A common look, Lady Morgan observed ungenerously. London’s streets were awash with such women.

  It was true that Lavinia Huntington’s most startling feature was her eyes; aquamarine ringed by yellow, they gave her a feline quality. Over the years, fascinated, the Colonel had watched those eyes mature, shifting in light like the mist over a distant lake, a burgeoning intelligence behind the beauty.

  Impervious to Lady Morgan’s scrutiny, Lavinia concentrated on gliding with grace across the room, guiding her crinoline with both hands. To her relief, she successfully navigated her way into her seat at the table.

  ‘Please forgive my absence, but my child required my attention.’

  ‘My wife insists on feeding the babe herself,’ the Colonel ventured.

  ‘How quaint.’ Lady Morgan did not bother to disguise her disapproving tone.

  ‘I believe it to be healthier, but perhaps in the present company such a belief might be considered naive?’

  The other guests laughed politely, while Lady Morgan broke a piece of bread with her fingers.

  ‘Not at all,’ she responded carefully. ‘And in any case, there is nothing whatsoever wrong with naivety. It allows one to get away with the most outrageous of behaviours—at least for a short time. Is that not true, James?’

  The Colonel was determined to rescue his wife from Lady Morgan’s sarcasm. ‘Indeed, in battle it is often the quality that underpins the greatest acts of courage,’ he counteracted.

  Lavinia turned to Lady Morgan. ‘I believe you were talking of Lincoln. I am a great supporter of his ambitions. How else to unite a nation in the face of such conflicting interests?’

  ‘Ah, my dear, but is it a nation or merely a gaggle of colonies of disparate refugees?’ Lady Morgan curled her fingers around the stem of her wine glass; a small gesture that indicated much.

  There was a pause, as if the room itself had inhaled. Aware that a starting pistol of sorts had been fired, the diners turned towards Lavinia.

  ‘If it is not a nation now, it certainly will be if there is a civil war. For what else defines sovereignty so aptly—a bill of rights, a war of independence and perhaps now a civil war? The Irish could learn much from the Americans.’

  A half-smile flitted across the mouth of the cartoonist sitting opposite and Lavinia’s diatribe faltered as she suddenly became aware that her intensity did not suit the timbre of the evening. After all, she reminded herself, these were people who took art more seriously than politics.

  ‘And no doubt they will.’ Hamish Campbell smiled at the young wife; the smile of a co-conspirator in youth. Judging by the softness of his whiskers, Lady Morgan’s companion couldn’t have been much older than Lavinia herself.

  ‘Your wife has strong opinions for her age.’ Lady Morgan turned to the Colonel.

  James Huntington’s betrothal had been a source of surprise to many of his circle. There had always been a swirl of mystery and speculation around the Colonel and his perennial bachelorhood. There had been rumours of various liaisons over the years—including one with Lady Morgan—but those who called themselves friends (and there were not many) had concluded that Huntington had become too addicted to his private pleasures to marry. His sudden change of status was a cause of some irritation, disrupting as it did the delicately balanced equilibrium of those unspoken strictures by which the wealthy aristocracy lived. Not one of them approved of the Colonel’s unexpected union with one so apparently unsuitable in terms of class, and the concept of marrying for love w
as preposterous, dangerously modern and vaguely obscene.

  Huntington’s young wife was annoyingly ‘earnest’, Lady Morgan observed, a characteristic she could only just tolerate in younger men, and then only when they were particularly beautiful or particularly wealthy. Furthermore, she subscribed to some bizarre political ideas. Obviously the Irish Question was one of them—rather peculiar considering the girl was a Protestant. What was her maiden name? Kane. Lady Morgan tried to recall the names of all the Irish aristocrats she knew, but Kane was not among them.

  Plucking a gooseberry from the bowl of fruit on the table, she furtively studied the couple. Hamish Campbell, noting her scrutiny, smiled—a gesture Lady Morgan found irritatingly insincere. She glanced back across the table. The Colonel no longer appeared in a hurry to rescue his young wife from the political quagmire she seemed so determined to mire herself in; perhaps a certain heartlessness had replaced his original intrigue? Lady Morgan had herself fallen victim to his caprices in the past.

  ‘Are you not Church of Ireland, dear?’ she asked Lavinia patronisingly.

  ‘I am, but as a child I witnessed the horrors of the great Famine. Those people were human, not the sub-human caricatures portrayed in your English newspapers.’

  ‘James, darling, you must introduce your wife to the honourable Mr Hennessy,’ Lady Morgan declared. ‘You must know him from the Carlton Club? I hear he is doing some wonderful things for our Celtic friends.’

  ‘Indeed, I have met the gentleman in Dublin, but I fear my opinions were too Whiggish for his Tory tastes.’ Lavinia, her face now ablaze, was having trouble controlling the tremor in her voice.

  ‘My wife, the revolutionary. You see I married her for the idealistic fervour which has evaporated in myself.’ Nevertheless, the Colonel, pinching a piece of bread between his fingers, was secretly disturbed by Lavinia’s obstinate pursuit of the Irish Question. Lord, did the child not know when enough was enough?