‘Bessemer’s converter—what do you make of it?’ the Colonel barked suddenly. Henry, for a moment completely disorientated, struggled to grasp the connection between love and the manufacture of steel.
‘You mean the machine he has set up?’
‘I do. What are the commercial advantages?’
‘Well, it may be mere knives and forks now, but I dare say there shall be a greater industrial application in the future. The stocks will be floated, and when they are, I, for one, shall be buying.’With what capital he had no idea, but, vindicated by the authority of his own declaration, Henry sat back, relieved that the conversation had moved to a more masculine theme.
‘It’s bound to have something to do with railways; that’s the new world you know—to use industry to carve mystery up into small palatable pieces,’ Charles offered. ‘Soon there will be nowhere left where Man has not been, except for your Amazon, Huntington. That shall remain impenetrable for some time, I should imagine.’
Charles’s ironic tone left the Colonel pondering whether his friend meant the Amazon as a metaphor for his own impenetrable psyche.
‘Colonel James Huntington?’
The trio looked up. A young man clad in a black evening coat with a white silk waistcoat, satin top hat in hand, bowed elegantly.
‘Sir, allow me to introduce myself: Mr Hamish Campbell. I was Lady Morgan’s companion at that delightful supper at your home several weeks ago.’
‘No need to remind me, sir, you were quite memorable,’ the Colonel responded drily.
Campbell indicated his companion, a tall, pencil-thin man of about thirty years, dressed in what appeared to be a Grecian-style smock with a dark purple velvet cap rakishly pulled over one ear. ‘My friend Lord Edward Valery, a painter of socialites and other dubious beauties.’
The men laughed.
‘Campbell, you do me a disservice,’ the painter complained in a booming baritone that almost had the others looking around for a more corpulent figure. ‘Trust me, my friends, I can make any wife ravishing under my brush.’
‘And not just under his brush,’ Campbell added, invoking more laughter and a coughing fit from Henry Smith. ‘I swear he’s well worth the investment,’ Campbell finished, grinning broadly, ‘but we didn’t come over to sell you Valery’s services.’
He pulled over a vacant chair and sat himself down. The Colonel, amused by his audacity, put it down to youth. On closer examination, Hamish Campbell looked far younger than he remembered.
‘I have read several of your articles since that dinner, sir,’ Campbell declared loudly, ‘and I must say I am impressed.’
The Colonel, not believing the student actually followed his work, stayed silent.
Undeterred, Campbell went on. ‘The article in The Gentleman magazine on the Amazon tribes’ rite of initiation into manhood was wickedly intriguing, and I particularly enjoyed your treatise in The Spectator on the moral responsibility of the colonial powers.’
The Colonel glanced at Henry, who smiled wryly.
‘You are ambitious indeed, sir. At your age I was soldiering and chasing skirt,’ Huntington condescended, but the young scholar was not to be deterred.
In truth, he found the youth’s praise a little intoxicating.
Sensing some influence, Campbell leaned forward, his eyes glinting. ‘I have aspirations myself, sir. It would be a great honour if you cared to show me your collection of artefacts. I am going up to Oxford next year and I would like to include reference to them in my studies.’
There is no greater flattery than the informed admiration of one’s achievements, and certainly the Colonel was aware of this as he noted the charms of the young man before him: the faint hue that coloured his cheeks, and the depth of intelligence in his eyes. Eyes that were curiously almond in shape and sat beneath a dark brow that only served to heighten the illusion of light dancing around the youth’s uncovered head. If he were to take on an acolyte, he could have not asked for a fairer one, the Colonel observed.
Before replying, he ordered another bottle of the fine port they were drinking. Hamish Campbell settled into the lounge chair, assuming that this was a signal that he and his associate had permission to linger at the table. But the Colonel had other ideas; the old sensation of sexual play had begun to rap at his veins and he did not care for the implications. Charles, recognising the conflict behind the slight smile that now played across his oldest friend’s lips, broke the uncomfortable pause.
‘We were just discussing the idea of marrying for love. Such a modern concept.’
Campbell tipped back his head and laughed, displaying a manly jaw—an agreeable counterbalance to the Byronic curls he affected. ‘I utterly agree. Marriage should be a coldblooded economic exchange. For example, Valery here, who owns a small estate in Buckinghamshire, has been trying to hook a rich Jewess whose grandfather was a furrier, but she’s decided not to have him! Why, the world is topsy-turvy and refuses to be righted. As for myself, I am young enough to relish the guidance of a mature, and preferably wealthy, woman.’
‘And Lady Morgan is the doyenne of such guidance. Trust me, you are in the hands of an expert,’ the Colonel parried.
Campbell blushed, momentarily losing his composure for the first time in the conversation, which lead the Colonel to wonder whether he was in fact the aristocrat’s lover.
‘So you will allow me to view your collection, sir?’ Campbell returned to his original quest, now more confident of his host’s approval.
‘The artefacts are of a suggestive and primitive nature. A man must have a full comprehension of the culture from whence they spring, otherwise the viewing of them is a wasted exercise.’
‘As I mentioned before, I have a burgeoning interest and am well-informed. But to learn from a man who has been there himself, who has surrendered all civilisation in order to see through the eyes of another…’
Campbell’s flattery threatened to become excessive. Glancing at his companions’ wry expressions, the Colonel decided to save the boy from potential ridicule.
‘Give me your card and I may send for you.’ And with that, Hamish Campbell was forced to be content.
The moonlight glittered in the puddles, broken only by the sweep of the coach wheels. The night tribe of the homeless and itinerant workers had emerged, loitering around railway stations and the gin shops with their smoky crowded windows, hoping to beg a penny from the emerging carousers. The carriage swung into Regent Street and the Colonel watched a chestnut seller pushing his barrel wearily home. Nearby, a family of gypsies huddled around a fire; their distant expressions, those of a lost people, illuminated by the dancing flames.
If Colonel Huntington felt any empathy for the dispossessed it was this; that no one should suffer the chill of an English winter’s night. Like many members of his class, he saw no inherent nobility in the impoverished. He had been educated to believe such disparity was inherent. He did not regard the poor as his equals in intellect or humanity, witnessing, as he had often described, the great wash of human degradation pouring daily into London: the country fieldworkers; the swathes of Eastern European Jews that arrived, swarthy and exotic, at the docks; the thousands trying their luck at the new industries with only a lucky few pushing their way up through the rigid social strata.
It would have never occurred to the anthropologist to apply his studies to his own race and the inequalities it perpetuated. Instead, he chose to believe that those who ruled were born to rule. Yet, paradoxically, the Colonel was tolerant of the mercantile class whose ingenuity had begun to erode centuries of order, even as he was aware that individuals like himself—the landed gentry whose own work ethic had been destroyed—were slowly but inevitably heading towards extinction. This was the decay of the natural order, of this he was certain.
As a representative of this brave new order, young Hamish Campbell held a fascination for Colonel Huntington. The son of an industrialist, who surely had not foreseen his son would aspire to the loft
y ambitions of science, Hamish Campbell was energy, he was the future. Unlike himself, the Colonel observed, with his own decadent breeding.
Perhaps this was the real natural order, he pondered, an evolution that favoured adaptation, that favoured the creature who dared, fought and schemed successfully. He had observed this phenomenon in the Crimea, in the Amazon and in the Guildhall, and nothing he had seen in his travels and in the lives around him had encouraged him to question his growing conviction.
The coach passed an infamous molly house, one the Colonel had visited before his marriage. Through the mist he made out two young men loitering outside. One glanced over at the passing brougham, seeming to sense its occupant’s interest across the square.
How did he know? Do I give out some invisible signal? the Colonel wondered as he moved away from the carriage window, frightened the youth might be some past furtive conquest. Perhaps I am denying my own sensibility, he thought bleakly. The uniqueness of individuals and their desires was an issue that had occupied him much of late. It wasn’t just his studies of other cultures that had led him to such musings, but also the manner in which many of his peers lived and loved, often exploiting others. And what was morality other than the order of the day when set against a broader canvas? Why, he had even read of tribes that defined sexuality in terms of three groupings.
This and other dilemmas coursed through him, churning up nostalgia for a simpler time when he would, without hesitation, have knocked twice on the carriage to direct the coachman to Leicester Square and Kate Hamilton’s infamous brothel where his predilections would be catered for without judgement.
Lavinia was asleep, her head and torso slumped over his papers. The Colonel watched her. There was a defencelessness about her that was arousing. Her cheek rested awkwardly on her wrist, the pagoda-embroidered sleeve bunched beneath. Her eyelashes fluttered slightly with each inhalation: ebony against marble. Lavinia’s skin was so pale one could almost see the blue of her blood flowing beneath it. He marvelled at how the demarcations of adulthood could be suspended in sleep. Now, before him, he could see the child he had first met—her skirts swirling in the wind outside the vicarage, her curious gaze.
He thought that he would like to make love to her now, but knew there would come a point during their caresses when his detachment would erase his desire completely. He could not help himself. I have disappointed her, he thought, profoundly saddened. And placing her sleeping arms around his neck, he carried her up to her bed.
21
Los Angeles, 2002
AT HER GYNAECOLOGIST’S INSISTENCE, Julia took two weeks’ leave. During the first seven days of her husband’s absence, she couldn’t bear to think at all. The depth of her despair surprised her. She simply didn’t want to confront the realities of her changed life. I’m in shock, she kept telling herself, soon I will be angry. At least anger will be better than this bleak, flat sensation.
Between bouts of uncontrollable weeping, she watched endless cartoons on the Disney channel. She didn’t just watch; she became the cartoon characters; mouthing the simplistic dialogue, driving in the cartoon car through the cartoon world, with its postcard reds, lime greens and acid yellows. Willing herself into a fictional character was a comforting sensation; it transported her into an acerbic two-dimensional parody of all that she knew. Julia didn’t want to be human any longer. More exactly, she didn’t want to be.
Meanwhile, the frantic sensation of missing Klaus deceived her into thinking he must be feeling the same bereavement. It was the habit of intimacy that Julia pined for: sharing observations of their respective days; his body at night; the innate expectation of being able to turn around and sound out an idea, make a joke, tell him about her work. It was as if she’d lost a limb and yet the shadow image of that limb stayed fatally glued to her. It was a searing loss amplified by the miscarriage.
‘Whatever I did, consciously or unconsciously, I can change, I know I can. Klaus? Are you still there?’
Sitting in the yard, watching a determined troop of ants dragging the twitching body of a dying beetle into the grass, Julia tried to read her husband’s emotions through the sound of his breath down the phone. His silence seemed to echo the great space that yawned between them.
‘Julia, look, I’m really sorry you had a miscarriage, but the dynamic between us has been skewed for years.’
‘I thought we were happy. How was I meant to know when you never said anything?’
‘That’s the point I’m making. You should have known; you should have had the time and the empathy to realise—’
‘I’m not a mind-reader.’
‘It was always about you and your career. Half the time I couldn’t tell you how disempowered I felt; I was frightened to burden you with yet another problem to solve.’
‘But I supported you, so you could stay at home and write…’
‘There you go, undermining me again.’
‘Klaus, come home, please. I need you.’
‘Haven’t you heard a word I’ve said? Carla’s my chance at having a full life, my chance at functioning as a complete person. Even my work has started to take off…I’m sorry.’
The line clicked then went dead. Frantically, Julia redialled the number but Klaus had switched off his mobile. She lay curled up on the grass, the sun burning her skin, phoning again and again until finally he answered.
They sat awkwardly at the kitchen table, the three of them: Klaus on one side, Naomi at the head of the table, Julia facing Klaus.
Julia had put on a dress for the occasion, the first she’d worn for weeks, and painted her eyes and lips. Somehow the desire to appear beautiful was important—to make him realise what he’d lost. It was the strategy that had propelled her through the morning—albeit a perilous one—and now her stomach clenched with increasing nervousness.
She was unable to stop herself from staring at her husband, who couldn’t look back. He appears so unchanged, Julia thought, still believing that if she could only reach out and take his hand everything would miraculously revert to how it was before.
‘Klaus, this is ridiculous. I mean—look at us. This is us—me and you.’ She tried smiling, but instead a grimace cracked her face. ‘I forgive you and Carla,’ she went on. ‘I was away, you were both left alone, these things happen. But nothing’s irreversible. We have so much…’ Julia faltered, loathing her wheedling tone, her bargaining, when she knew that there was a border beyond which emotions could not be negotiated. ‘How long?’ She didn’t really want an answer—a confirmation of long-term betrayal would turn her instantly into a pillar of salt—but the litany of clues that she had begun obsessively to string together compelled her to ask.
‘That’s irrelevant.’ Averting his gaze, Klaus turned to Naomi. ‘I want to keep this to practical arrangements, things that need addressing immediately. I’ve started divorce proceedings.’
The table began to slide away from Julia. ‘You can’t be serious?’
On the other side of the kitchen, the fridge kicked into action, the mundane humming slicing through her despair.
Klaus continued to look fixedly at Naomi. ‘Julia will be served papers in the next week or so. In terms of the estate, I’m happy for Julia to buy me out of my half of the house as soon as she can raise the money—’
‘Your half of the house? I paid for the house!’
Julia stood, her hands now bolted into fists, her face pounding red. Stepping around the table, Naomi placed an arm protectively around her shoulders.
Klaus moved towards the door. ‘I knew this was a mistake.’
‘Klaus, wait! We can’t just separate like this. At least let’s go to a therapist—surely you’d do that for me?’
He looked directly at her for the first time.
‘You don’t understand. I’m not prepared to give up my future.’
‘Klaus, don’t go! Don’t…’
As she crumpled into silence, the front door slammed.
22
&
nbsp; Mayfair, 1861
OVER THE WINTER, LAVINIA spent her afternoons in the study collating the notes for each chapter, which James then used as reference for the writing itself. And so the two of them worked together, marking their labour by the lengthening shadows.
Promptly at three, announcing his arrival with a distinctive little cough, Mr Poole would light the gas lamps, then kneel and stir up the embers of the fire with the poker before throwing fresh coal into the grate. Lavinia would then hear the characteristic wheezing of the leather and copper bellows as the servant encouraged the flames.
Tea was brought on a tray at five and left carefully beside the table, the maid not daring to disturb the couple as they sat side by side. The mantelpiece clock under the domed glass would chime and, for a moment, both the Colonel and Lavinia would glance up from the rainforest, the savannah, the rocking hull of a river steamship or whichever landscape lay described on the page and then look down again.
A symbiosis developed. Lavinia found that she could deduce the next piece of research James needed, handing over the page before he even asked. The need to communicate verbally evaporated as quickly as the words manifested beneath James’s furiously scratching pen. It was an inspired dialogue that gave new hope to Lavinia, who decided she would attempt to seduce her husband anew. But opportunity proved elusive. Most evenings, he excused himself to attend a science lecture, a late supper at his club, a theatre opening. Sometimes Lavinia went with him, but on many occasions he insisted on going alone.
It was on one such evening in February that Lavinia received a card informing her that Lady Morgan would be visiting the following Sunday.
‘It is not my custom to be this familiar, my dear, but there it is and here I am. You are, after all, the wife of one of my dearest friends.’ Lady Morgan turned from Lavinia to hand her ermine and velvet cape to the maid. ‘Your husband has wanted me to make this visit for several weeks and you must forgive my tardiness. I entirely blame the distraction of the oncoming season. It must be difficult for you, my dear, to be so alone amidst such social activity. This will be your first London season, will it not?’
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