Soul

by Tobsha Learner

  ‘Nach mé an t-óinseach cáillte. (What a fool I’ve been.)’

  ‘The man still loves you,’ he replied, as directly as if she had been a weeping serving girl and he her brother.

  ‘You think?’

  ‘I am sure,’ he answered, as unconvinced as the young woman before him.

  Mama, I no longer know if you are alive or dead, but my imaginings have made a habit of you, rendering you as substantial as the walls of this bedroom, sitting there listening to me patiently, and now this habit has become an addiction. Ridiculous, really, to be comforted by whispering into a plain wooden box, but perhaps that is the very nature of faith.

  It is almost day, and I have had the most fearful night. James quite abandoned me after the theatre, claiming he was to join a game of commerce at his club. He has not returned. The whole night I have tortured myself by imagining him engaged in all manner of debauchery. Now my anger has become resignation. I still love him, but I do not want to live in a marriage without affection. Can I win him back? Could I ever forgive him? I know I cannot live without him—without his love or approval. Tell me, Mama, what does a wife do in such circumstances?

  Lavinia crouched at the window, the whispering box open on the sill. Every one of her muscles had become gnarled wood; exhaustion gripped her as the house seemed to inhale and exhale with the growing dawn.

  The sound of approaching wheels on the street below brought her to her feet. A hansom cab pulled up to the kerb and a coachman leapt down and opened the door. The Colonel stepped out. Even from this height, Lavinia could see his face looked worn and haggard, as if he had not slept.

  Stamping the ground, the coachman turned his back on the cab, hugging himself in an effort to keep the cold from his bones. There was something deliberate about his movement that caught Lavinia’s attention.

  Hamish Campbell emerged from the coach, coatless, his shirt rumpled, his collar collapsed, his colour as high as if he were intoxicated—a dishevelment that gave him a reckless beauty. Grabbing the Colonel’s lapels with both hands, he pulled the older man towards him. At first, Lavinia thought Campbell might strike him, so rough and fast was the gesture. But instead he embraced him, full and passionately.

  Lavinia watched transfixed, her face a small white oval in the high window. Her husband responded, his hand resting for a moment on the younger man’s waist before pulling away. Without any further exchange, Campbell climbed back into the hansom cab as the Colonel slipped a coin into the waiting coachman’s hand before disappearing under the portico.

  ‘You waited up, I warned you not to.’ James stood at the door, shoes in hand. His eyes were bloodshot, his speech slurred. A sweetish smell emanated from his clothes. Lavinia recognised it as the odour she had noticed before in his study—opium.

  ‘Sleep would have been more constructive.’ She turned away from him, distress hollowing her face.

  James sat heavily, resting his head in his hands. She walked over to him.

  ‘You had affection for me once,’ she said.

  He lifted his face to kiss her, but she could not respond.

  ‘And I still have!’

  Outside, a church bell began to peal plaintively.

  ‘Where have you been?’

  ‘I told you—at a card game, at the Carlton. Mr Campbell and myself were challenged by Lord Ealing and some young squire. I won. Ealing’s a fool—he wagered some hunting lodge north of Carlisle and lost it. I suppose one shouldn’t expect too much from the offspring of first cousins.’

  ‘Was the card game the only event of the night?’ she asked, trying to hide her anger.

  ‘Don’t question me, Lavinia. I am weary to the bone.’

  Suddenly losing control, Lavinia began pounding him with her fists—short blows that rained down on his head and shoulders.

  Only once had such blind emotion overtaken her: when, as a child, she had stabbed the peat-cutter boy. The expression of surprise on the boy’s face came back to her now as she railed at her husband; she wanted nothing in that moment but to destroy him.

  Astonished, the Colonel leapt to his feet and wrestled her down to the bed. He stared down at her through the film of veins that snaked through his eyes, his puffy red face inches from her own. ‘Have you entirely lost your mind?’

  He slapped her across the face, knocking her back to the mattress. Then, standing, he touched the bruises now blossoming on his neck and face.

  ‘You are suffering from hysteria. Of this I am now certain.’

  Lavinia curled up and buried her face in the coverlet. The Colonel took a small vial from a drawer beside the bed. Pulling open her lips, he squeezed several drops of laudanum between her gritted teeth.

  ‘Now go to your room.’

  Lavinia fled, clenching her face in an effort not to weep.

  The Colonel walked up to the nursery, profound weariness resounding in every step. Pushing the door open, he was thankful for the anonymity of the shaded twilight beyond.

  Aidan lay folded tightly into his bedding, one hand pressed against a cheek. The Colonel, careful not to wake him, crept over to the cot. The expression on Lavinia’s face as she had attacked him; a twisted detachment he’d never seen before except on the faces of some soldiers in the throes of war, stayed with him. She cannot be allowed to carry such potential within her, he thought. I must find a cure for this derangement.

  He brushed a lock of hair away from his sleeping son’s eyes, then silently lowered himself into an armchair and watched Aidan sleep until the first sunlight slid under the room’s heavy drapes.

  47

  Los Angeles, 2002

  THE STEAM SPIRALLED UP TOWARDS the pale orange ceiling. A plastic submarine (one of Klaus’s abandoned toys), propeller spinning, circled Julia’s knees with endearing intent. The scented candles in a row along the edge of the bath were unlit. It had been one of Julia and Klaus’s rituals: a prelude to lovemaking in the bath. The thought of lighting them now made her ill.

  The bathroom was at the back of the house, on the ground level. Klaus had planted gardenia and roses around the window that ran the length of the bath, so that in the summer they could open it and let in the scent of the garden. The window was slightly ajar now, and in the distance Los Feliz Boulevard rumbled faintly like a faraway sea.

  The water was as hot as it could be without scalding her. Julia wanted to draw all pain to the surface so that she would feel nothing, be nothing. The skin on her fingers was wrinkled and her feet felt like sand. She rocked herself backwards and forwards, backwards and forwards; the movement was comforting, as if the axis of the world was tilting with her. Her face was swollen from weeping, her burning eyes puffy sponges under her fingertips. She knew that if she stopped rocking, Klaus’s face screaming with anger would loom up from the milky surface of the bath water, followed by Carla standing in the diner, staring at her blankly.

  There was a rustle outside the window, audible even underwater. Julia sat up, water streaming off her body. Coyotes? Skunks? Opossums?

  The rustling grew louder. Now frightened, she reached across and grabbed a towel. Just then Gabriel appeared at the window. Julia screamed and he dropped back down.

  ‘Sorry.’ His muffled voice came from somewhere beneath the window.

  Laughing out of sheer relief, the towel wrapped around her dripping body, she opened the window completely. He lay on his back clutching a large bottle of tequila, which appeared to be a quarter drunk.

  ‘It was meant to be a romantic surprise but I guess I messed up. Also, in case you think I’m some kind of sexual pervert, I had no idea that this was your bathroom.’

  He stayed lying, the patch of grass beyond the flowerbed was surprisingly comfortable and he calculated that it might be sensible to appear vulnerable until he gauged her emotional reaction.

  ‘Gabriel, it’s been a rough day and an even rougher evening. I really need my solitude.’

  Julia started to close the window, but before she had a chance to pull
it shut he’d stretched his long leg out and jammed his left sneaker into the gap.

  ‘Julia, I stole my best friend’s car to drive here, Mom has no idea where I am and I’m missing my favourite band. You’ve got to let me in.’

  ‘Promise you won’t jump me?’

  ‘On Einstein’s grave and the whiskers of Schroedinger’s cat.’

  Julia looked down: Gabriel resembled a cross between a fallen Renaissance prince—his shoulder-length black hair spread across the surrounding leaves—and a toppled circus clown, one foot still caught in the window. He grinned back, one of those eternally youthful smiles that split the world into optimists and pessimists; the smile of a beginner.

  ‘Besides, if I continue to lie here I’ll catch pneumonia, or maybe rabies from an angry squirrel, and you’ll have an incredible amount of explaining to do to my mother.’

  Julia’s head disappeared. A minute later he heard the back door being unlocked.

  ‘Yes!’ he whispered, punching the air.

  She threw on an old jumper of her father’s, which had been knitted for him by her grandmother—one of those early 1960s-style knits with a wide neck and loose cables that rippled down to her knees. Julia had had it since she was a child, having rescued it from the opportunity shop when her mother had given up darning it. Whenever she wore the jumper she’d imagined she could detect the faint aroma of tobacco and shaving soap on the neck—a scent that had instantly placed her back in his arms.

  Wearing it now, she thought somewhere in the recesses of her mind how absurd it was to wear a ratty old article of clothing that was over thirty years old, however comforting. Unchaining the door, she peered into the darkness. Beyond the yard, the valleys and hills of Silver Lake were peppered with small oases of light and activity—other people’s lives. The view used to inspire her.

  Gabriel appeared, shaking the leaves from his hair. Julia pushed open the fly screen and he stepped in.

  ‘Your eyes are all swollen.’

  ‘Today is Klaus’s birthday. I tried to ring him but…’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘It was stupid really—it’s been a week of accidental confrontations. I ran into Carla, someone I once thought of as my closest friend. Everything feels as if it’s unravelling and I can’t seem to exorcise a terrible fight I had with Klaus. If only I hadn’t lost the baby things might have worked out differently.’

  Julia turned away, hiding her face as it folded up in grief again. Pretending not to notice Gabriel pulled two glasses from the cupboard, then orange juice from the fridge.

  ‘What are you making?‘

  ‘Tequila sunrises—Mom taught me. It’s the only legal remedy to post-separation trauma I know.’

  He handed her the drink, the blood-red orange juice settling to the bottom of the glass like honey.

  ‘Fighting is part of life. I used to hit Mom all the time.’

  ‘You did?’

  ‘Sure, and she hit me back. The classic was when I was about eleven and my parents were arguing about something—school fees, I think. Dad hit Mom, then I hit Dad for hitting Mom, then Mom hit me for hitting Dad.’

  ‘Gabriel! That’s terrible.’

  ‘No, that’s family. We live in this fucked-up politically correct world that suppresses nature,’ he said grandly, trying not to be distracted by the length of naked thigh that had crept out from under the pullover she was wearing.

  ‘It’s called civilisation.’

  ‘Whatever.’

  Julia shivered despite the warmth of the kitchen. He touched her hand.

  ‘Are you okay?’

  ‘You don’t understand. It was terrifying, I really wanted to kill him. It wasn’t so much that I’d lost control as much as something else had got control of me. It’s happened before, with far more devastating consequences.’

  Gabriel moved closer; he’d never wanted someone this much, nor been so calculating about it. With every other girl it had been spontaneous, instant lust, instant gratification, but with her it was different, adult. Fascinated by the soft down on her forearms, he was finding it hard to concentrate. Dragging his eyes away he spoke up.

  ‘Anyway, terror is good, isn’t it? I experience it all the time. Like the other night outside the bar—you were terrified but you were enjoying yourself. Admit it.’

  His persona suddenly slipped into the bravado of the adolescent—so patently insecure yet ridiculously audacious. Julia couldn’t help smiling.

  ‘Gabriel, you weren’t scary.’

  ‘I wasn’t?’

  Deflated, he wondered why the idea was emasculating. He’d hoped she had been a little frightened—of the consequences of them actually making love.

  ‘Neither were you,’ he lied, trying to navigate the excruciating anticipation he felt about making a pass. When was the right time? It had always seemed to him that such events opened up magically: the man simply moved towards the woman and it happened miraculously, without any clumsy banging of noses, clashing of teeth, misdirected tongues; without the woman pushing the man away in horror.

  How do you read women, he’d asked his father once. All José had said was that it was like the weather: you look for a moment between the clouds. When the shifting, impenetrable emotions of the woman momentarily cleared, then you pounced. Gabriel had listened doubtfully. His father was an old-fashioned Latino who inherently believed that a woman wanted to be taken, whatever she might think consciously. Naomi’s friends had taught Gabriel otherwise. And then there was Julia: complex, distraught and intriguingly intelligent. Whatever his head might think, his body and its pounding hormones were propelling him towards one action and one action only.

  ‘You know it was wrong, don’t you?’ Julia finished her drink. It had been strong, the tequila a slow burn momentarily erasing her sorrows. ’You know that as your employer and elder, I have responsibilities, an emotional understanding of events that gives me an edge over you.’

  ‘Right, like that’s really apparent.’

  ‘And…it should be special…you know…with a girl your own age.’

  Christ, she thinks I’m a virgin. Gabriel almost burst out laughing. He would have, but Julia looked so solemn sitting there, her face scrubbed clean, her skin a red and cream patchwork.

  And suddenly, there was the break in the clouds. He saw it just as his father had described: an infinitesimal shift in her features. Fearing that any hesitation might lead to a lost opportunity, Gabriel reached across and lifted her hand. Turning the palm up, he kissed it. Then, standing, he pulled her towards him, threading his fingers through the loose knit of her pullover, touching her skin, reaching for her breasts, taking her mouth into his.

  This time Julia didn’t want to hesitate; she craved the release, to know she was desirable, that he desired her. And the loveliness of him was wondrous. Marvelling, she cupped his head with her hands, engulfed by the sweet, clean smell of his hair. His shoulders, on the brink of bursting into their full breadth, reminded her that he wasn’t quite a man, but she was beyond caring. She forgot herself, who she was and who she was with, as his lips caught at her. Teasing out that cord of sex, the edgy precipice between lust and desire. Amazed at the fierce trembling that had started somewhere below her belly, she stared down as he pulled the jumper up to her breasts. Then, her buttocks resting against the edge of the stool, his mouth travelled down her body, biting gently along the way until he reached her and spread her, his lips and tongue greedy for her clit. Gasping, she leaned back against the bench, her elbow almost knocking over the half-finished glass of tequila.

  Gabriel looked up from her pubic hair, along the whole terrain of her body as it rose above him. He thought she looked magnificent, her features softening as her ecstasy came in mounting ripples he could read beneath his fingers, against his lips. He wanted to make her scream, make her take him seriously, to see him as an equal.

  As she drew close, she pulled him up by his hair then kissed him deeply, his face and mouth smelling of her. Wi
thout a word, he slipped out of his pants and pushed inside her, his cock rigid against his slight hips, his soft pubic hair. The shape of him was so profoundly different that she struggled, her body adjusting to the new parameters, fighting part of her that clung to the illusion that by making love she was breaking a spell, severing a visceral cord that still existed between her and Klaus. Irrational. Animal knowledge.

  Enjoy this. Relax, she argued with herself.

  But before she had a chance to protest, Gabriel had hoisted her onto his hips. Her legs wrapped around his waist, her arms around his neck. The fragrance of mouthwash, gum and, strangely, chocolate rising up as he walked her, trousers still caught around his shins, in a half-shuffle into the lounge room.

  They reached the couch; slowly he lowered her down while trying to stay inside her. He succeeded. They lay there for a moment, Julia’s legs wrapped around him, his cock still hard in her, her breasts pushed up against his face.

  ‘Okay, so you’re not a virgin.’

  And they both broke into laughter, the shape of him vibrating within her. Then, as he took her breasts into his hands, she rode him until all was burnt away.

  Afterwards, they lay there together, Gabriel curved around her back, Julia staring out into the room, its familiar corners now alien.

  ‘I would have killed him,’ she whispered into the creeping darkness, to no one in particular.

  ‘I know.’ He softly kissed her neck.

  PART THREE

  The Fall

  48

  Mayfair, 1861

  ‘NO, JAMES, I WILL NOT allow it!’

  ‘It has to be done. The examination will not be thorough otherwise!’

  ‘But you don’t even entirely believe in the science.’

  ‘As a tool for diagnosis, I believe phrenology to have merit. You are ill, Lavinia, with an ague of both spirit and mind.’