Soul

by Tobsha Learner

  ‘Who’s “we”?’

  ‘A ten-man Delta squad; top of the evolutionary tree, Professor Huntington, the very best. I was in command. We were dropped by a bird upriver then travelled down by canoe in the middle of the night. The settlement was located in the centre of thick jungle and we were told there were hidden gunposts protecting it. We arrived at 3 a.m., suited up in camouflage with our NODs hanging around our necks. We crept up through the foliage to the central cleared area of the village. We didn’t see the gunposts but we’d deliberately avoided their marked locations. The village itself wasn’t what we’d expected. There were these spherical huts made of reeds—about twenty of them clustered around. It was like stepping back a hundred years. I mean, there was nothing—except one antenna coming out of one hut—to tell you what century we were in. I remember that antenna because it was what I clung to in the moment. Tom, I remember telling myself, it’s a front, the activity’s all underground, some buried bunker where the hostage will be right now, chained, his head covered by a sack that smells of shit, fear hacking away at his religion. We’d been briefed to expect guards, but as we circled the huts we found none. And it was so quiet. I’m telling you, when we reached the centre of the group of huts, with no sound at all but the crackle of the jungle, it spooked even me. Then there was a movement, a quick darting, and this terrible face came out of the dark—screaming mouth, huge eyes. Patrick—he was the youngest—he jumped on it, knife ready. It was an old man—some mad tribal elder wearing this crazy wooden mask. It took us all by surprise—we’d been briefed to expect machine-gun-wielding pimps in flak jackets.

  ‘There was something so out there about this man’s fury, his fucking mad blind courage. I suspected he was on something, some kind of local hallucinogen. He struggled like a wildcat, but Patrick finally took him down as silently as he could. Not silently enough though—suddenly, all hell broke loose. Villagers started running out from the huts—men, women, boys, even old men armed with machetes, knives, sticks. Some of my boys panicked and started firing. When the screaming stopped, there was only the wail of a baby and those whispering trees, those horrible whispering trees.

  ‘I gave the order to search the huts for the entrance to the bunker. In the fourth hut we found a trapdoor leading down to a small dug-out, but all it contained was a couple of rusty AK–47s, a few tribal masks and a stack of leaflets in Portuguese ranting about land rights and some local mining company. No cocaine baron, no kidnapped American diplomat. It had been a set-up. The villagers were armed because they were defending their land, and it turned out the Brazilian official who’d given us the intel coordinates had some powerful mining friends who wanted them moved.

  ‘We cleaned up as much as we could, left the appropriate clues to make it look like a local raid. Shot the two remaining witnesses because they’d heard our voices, knew we were American. The Brazilians found the body of the diplomat a week later, dumped in some trash can in a São Paulo slum.

  ‘Don’t get me wrong, Professor, I’m a pragmatist, wouldn’t have had my job if I hadn’t been. But this time we had our own casualties—not on the day, but within a few months. Of my ten-man squad, three went AWOL: one shot his wife on leave, two committed suicide. Four developed psychotic episodes: three of them resigned voluntarily; the fourth was committed to an institution. The eighth man took up heroin full-time. Only two of us developed no symptoms whatsoever. One went straight onto covert operations in the Middle East, and the other filed the report. He also asked for an inquiry, but was warned he’d be facing a court martial, not an inquiry, if he didn’t shut up.’

  ‘That was you?’

  Donohue didn’t answer. Instead, he stood and pulled out a photo pass for her laboratory and placed it on the desk.

  ‘The Department hired you six months later. You see, people like me represent a huge financial investment—money the Department can’t afford to lose. You’ll find your mutant gene function—that I don’t doubt. And it would be very nice to be able to prevent the kind of misery those eight guys in my squad endured. But I suspect it’ll turn out like the Hydra—there won’t be just one propensity attached to your gene function, and some will be good, some bad.’

  He sat down on the desk again and held Julia’s gaze. ‘I don’t know what I’m defending anymore. You see, when I did, it was easy; now life’s got complicated, my job’s got complicated. I know this much: I might lack the ability to feel remorse, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t the intellectual capacity to develop compassion. But I’m one of the lucky ones. There’ll be hundreds of thousands out there, for generations, who won’t be so lucky; a sub-set of men targeted for one thing and one thing only, who will blindly follow orders, never fall out of the tree, and never find their compassion.’

  ‘You want me to stop my research,’ Julia said.

  ‘I’m asking you to consider the human consequences of releasing that information. There, now you know the truth. Tom Donohue is a dangerous idealist, so strike me down.’

  He stood and started for the door.

  ‘If you don’t know who to trust, keep the gun. It wasn’t me who broke into the lab last night.’

  After he’d left, Julia opened the chamber of the Magnum and spun it. There were no bullets.

  55

  London, 1861

  THE LECTURE HALL AT THE BRITISH Association for the Advancement of Science was a large auditorium that had been built to commemorate the coronation of Queen Victoria herself. It contained at least four hundred wooden seats trimmed with green leather cushions, lined up in neat rows that ran from wall to wall with a central aisle cutting through from the double entrance doors to the podium. The side walls were decorated with wooden plaques upon which, immortalised in gold lettering, were listed the members of the society as far back as 1670.

  Above the stage was a large stained-glass window consisting of a quartet of panels, each depicting famous explorers. The first was a scene of Christopher Columbus arriving in the Americas. The Spaniard (in pantaloons and feathered hat) stood on the shores of the New World holding out what appeared to be a string of beads to an awestruck native. The next panel was of Captain Cook at Port Jackson, about to be speared by an Australian Aborigine; the third (a more recent addition) was of Dr Livingstone at Lake Victoria; and the fourth panel showed Marco Polo standing on the Great Wall of China.

  The podium below held a piano (used for the occasional social gathering, and this evening pushed to one side) and a long table in the middle, upon which, at this moment, stood a large decanter of the best port the society had to offer, a glass in front of each panellist, and a jug of water. The air was thick with cigar and pipe smoke; a cloud of which had one of the speakers, the Reverend Gilbert Rorison, struggling for breath.

  ‘I cannot believe that this creature,’ he coughed, pointing to the pelt of a large male gorilla, which his co-speaker and fellow anti-evolutionist, gorilla hunter Paul Du Chaillu, had displayed in a rather gory fashion, hung from a steel stand to mimic the living creature’s erect position, ‘that this creature is my direct ancestor. My learned colleague Paul Du Chaillu will confirm the reasons for my convictions, having hunted and observed the creature at close quarters—’

  At this point, half the audience—the charterists and workers to the left of the hall, who equated the plight of the gorilla (a creature they had embraced as their long-lost primate brother) with conflict over slavery in America—booed heartily.

  The chairman, the eminent Professor Horatio Thorn, president of the society and famous for his 1830 essay entitled The Breeding Rituals and Gestation of the Egyptian Dung Beetle, hit the table with a wooden hammer. ‘Can we please have order in the hall! Order!’

  At which the audience, after a few shouts of ‘Murderer!’, relishing the volatility of the debate, settled into good humour.

  ‘As I was saying,’ the Scottish Episcopalian minister continued, undaunted, ‘I have wondered publicly in my article on genesis whether Professor Owen—an associate
of the good Professor Huxley here—believes that Man was produced by Creative Law, and in that manner supernaturally through the womb of the ape?’

  Professor Huxley, a man in his late forties, one of the Society’s more youthful members, sprang to his feet.

  ‘Semantics! Divine intervention is not the issue; the issue is evolution. As an anthropologist, I can assure you that however uncomfortable the notion might be, we are descended from apes. Transmutation is a reality, my friends.’

  Du Chaillu rose to speak. ‘I have observed these heartless and ruthless beasts at considerable length, and I can reassure you that no ancestor of mine ever bore any relation to this demonic creature.’

  Again, the crowd roared in indignation. Colonel Huntington, sitting four rows from the front, glanced nervously at the side door. His student was late. Wondering at the capriciousness of the younger man, the Colonel realised how much he had invested in Mr Hamish Campbell and how vulnerable that made him. And now what? He did not know if he could go on repressing his great, secret desire without falling into an abyss of despair—with which he was not unfamiliar. If he were to pursue it, he risked everything: his standing as an anthropologist and both their careers and reputations. Yet he found it impossible to keep away. He had to see him, to know that he was close. It was a compulsion; a fatal affection.

  A movement at the periphery of his vision caught his attention. Dressed in a summer suit with a canary yellow silk waistcoat, Hamish Campbell appeared the embodiment of youthful confidence. But as he drew near, the Colonel could see dark shadows under his eyes and exhaustion in his face.

  Hamish took the empty seat the Colonel had kept for him and turned his face to the front. The men barely acknowledged each other.

  ‘You got my message?’ the Colonel said eventually.

  ‘Evidently.’

  The Colonel’s eyes slid sideways, furtively searching the boy’s face.

  ‘Are you well?’

  ‘As well as can be expected. I am in arrears with my rent and my servant complains he has nothing with which to keep the creditors at bay.’

  ‘My secretary will take care of it.’

  Hamish pressed the carved ivory head of his walking cane against the Colonel’s knee; it was the head of a horse, a gift. It was a tiny movement, barely visible to those around them, but to the two men it was momentous.

  ‘I cannot erase my affection for you, as dangerous as it might be to pursue it. But I would rather not continue working by your side. It is too great a torture,’ Campbell murmured, audible to the Colonel alone.

  Just then, the audience, following the heated debate on stage—which now had the Reverend Rorison holding the Bible high in his right hand and Darwin’s On the Origin of Species in his left, demanding they should decide between Man or God—rose to its feet in outrage. The two men were left seated, an island in a sea of legs.

  ‘Do you think it easy for me? I am trying to protect both our welfares.’ The Colonel, taking advantage of the distraction, turned to face Campbell, the distance between them now physically painful.

  ‘James, I don’t want protection, I want to live. Do you understand?’ Hamish fought the desire to caress the older man with every inch of his body. ‘I need an answer. I cannot feign indifference for much longer.’

  56

  THE TWO COACHMEN SAT ON hay bales, their game of All-Fours barely illuminated by the tallow candle burning in its tin pan. Samuel, his jacket loosened around the neck, his teeth stained brown from chewing tobacco, slapped his hand down triumphantly.

  ‘That is a high trump for the Yankee!’

  ‘Bejesus, I’m glad it’s only glass marbles we’re playing for.’

  As Samuel swept up the cards, his sleeve rose above his wrist and Aloysius noticed a small circle with a cross within, branded into his dark skin. He grabbed the wrist and held it to the light.

  ‘The mark of a slave, my friend, so my master knows whose property I am.’

  ‘You can be owned by no one, Samuel, not you, not your soul.’

  ‘But I am, and no matter how many liberties my master might afford me, in the end this speaks.’

  He rolled his sleeve down. In the distance church bells rang eleven o’clock.

  ‘Boss’ll only be reaching his port and cheese,’ Samuel said, looking out toward the yard. ‘Lucky for you I’ve only got an hour before I have to be back on that coach.’ He swept the three marbles into the leather pouch he had pinned between his knees. ‘So how is it, my friend? Has she got you reading and writing yet?’

  ‘No, but I have sent two letters back to Seamus, with her assistance.’

  ‘She sweet on you?’

  Aloysius cuffed his friend about the head. ‘You keep your wicked thoughts to yourself, Samuel, and pray you won’t go to Hell.’

  ‘She’s a woman, ain’t she? With all them same sweet parts any woman has.’

  ‘She is Mrs Huntington and my mistress. I’ll not think of her in any other way.’

  Samuel whistled disbelievingly.

  ‘All I knows is that a stallion and mare don’t concern themselves with who’s master and who’s mistress.’

  ‘If men were horses, we’d both be rich.’

  As if in reply, one of the geldings whinnied. Both men looked up as footsteps sounded outside. Indicating that Samuel should keep silent, Aloysius crept to the barn door.

  Peering into the night, he could just see a slight hooded figure making its way across the cobble-stoned courtyard to the back gate. Recognising Lavinia’s profile, Aloysius watched as she lifted the latch of the gate and disappeared into the mews lane beyond, leaving him wondering where and whom she was visiting so late in the evening.

  The hansom cab driver glanced over his shoulder at his passenger, perplexed by the address she had given him. She appeared respectable enough: the dress coat she wore was velvet, and he had seen her step out of one of those expensive mansions. A governess perhaps, fallen on hard times? Burton Street was not a place where the cab driver cared to transport anyone, lined as it was with the less salubrious brothels.

  He peered closer at her face; she was young and appeared refined, authoritative, in her manner. Could she be one of those notorious women who ‘collected’ maidens? He had heard about such women offering to mind young girls at railway stations for their parents, then disappearing with the girls never to be seen again. A gentleman could pay as little as three pounds for the pleasure of deflowering an eleven-year-old virgin, and there were many who were happy to sell their children. His wastrel brother had been one, and the driver had a secret horror of accidentally encountering his niece, her face painted, skirts tucked up, whoring under the gaslights of Burton Street.

  As the hansom cab approached the East End, the streets narrowed and became more squalid. Open sewers ran alongside the gutters, and the stench of the river rose with the night fog. Some streets lacked gaslights and the driver was forced to navigate solely by the cab lantern and the candles barely illuminating the grimy windows of the passing terraces.

  Lavinia hadn’t seen such hovels since the time she’d visited the shanty towns with her father during the Great Famine. She could see children sleeping beneath parked carts, atop piles of horse manure, under bridges, curled against each other in small groups, the filthy soles of their naked feet turned against the world.

  As the carriage approached the docklands, the stench got worse. Holding a handkerchief to her nose, Lavinia felt nauseated. She was terrified about what she might come upon. What kind of debauchery did Meredith Murphy live in? Was it possible the woman could be her mother—a creature so profoundly different from the imagined companion who had been her solace all these years?

  Finally the coach pulled into a long street filled with terrace houses end to end. Unlike the rest of the sleeping city, however, the houses here were blazing with light. Over each door hung the sign of a brothel. The hansom cab driver gruffly informed her that this was the correct address, and then, after the tip of a florin
, reluctantly promised to wait for her.

  Determined not to show her growing apprehension, Lavinia stepped down, skirts held high to avoid the thin stream of raw sewage that floated past. She ignored the wolf whistles from the street workers who clustered under the gaslights calling out for gin or rent money.

  Lavinia pushed open the wrought-iron gate and climbed the steps to the door, which was painted a lurid green. A brass knocker cast in the shape of a lascivious mermaid hung in the centre beneath a brass plaque, scratched and defaced, which read: Meredith Murphy’s School for Wayward Young Ladies. We cater for the discerning gentleman. Underneath was nailed a piece of board with Ready Gilt. Tick Being No Go scrawled upon it.

  Before Lavinia had a chance to use the brass knocker, the door swung open. A young boy of ten years or so, dressed incongruously in an oversized sailor’s tunic and trousers rolled to the knees to fit, squinted at her suspiciously then looked down at her expensive and now dung-splattered boots.

  ‘Our souls don’t need saving. Mrs Murphy reckons we’re all living in ’eaven here anyways,’ he declared before slamming the door shut.

  Undaunted, Lavinia lifted the brass knocker and banged it against the heavy wood. A second later the boy opened the door again.

  ‘I am no evangelist, young man. I am here to see Mrs Meredith Murphy. I assume she still lives here?’

  ‘Lives ’ere? She owns the bleedin’ joint.’

  Lavinia followed the boy into the hallway. Some of the doors along it were ajar, and a couple of prostitutes, flushed and with tousled hair, peered out to see the cause of the commotion. A well-dressed portly man in his sixties, sitting in a chair against a wall, immediately hid his embarrassed face behind a ha’penny rag upon seeing Lavinia.

  Whistling, the boy escorted her to the foot of a narrow staircase that ascended steeply into darkness.

  ‘Mrs Murphy,’ he squawked, ‘you got a visitor! Well-heeled and all posh at the mouth!’