‘Yes what, my dear?’
‘Yes, I will marry you.’
7
Los Angeles, 2002
CARLA WAITED IN THE LOUNGE room, tapping her foot nervously. Unable to keep still, she walked over to the fireplace. A frenetic energy seemed to beat beneath her translucent skin, a restlessness—some might call it unhappiness.
She ran her finger along the mantelpiece, past the pictures of Klaus and Julia—the wedding photo, the holiday in Cuba, Julia receiving her doctorate. As Julia’s closest friend, Carla knew the history of each of the pictures intimately, almost as if they were her own memories.
Her finger paused at the photograph of Klaus in Antwerp, posing outside his university. Taken when he was twenty, it was one of the few images that pre-dated the marriage. His face appeared optimistic, as yet unlined by disappointment. Carla traced his mouth. Do not make judgement, do not, she caught herself thinking, before glancing away. I love both of them—that’s the terrible paradox.
A large portrait hung over the fireplace. It was of a young woman dressed as the goddess Diana and sitting in a mossy glen, a quiver slung over her shoulder. A baby boy played at her feet. In the foreground lolled the majestic head of a huge stag the goddess had just shot down, the arrow still impaled in his rust-coloured hide. An engraved brass plaque set into the bottom centre of the frame read: Mrs. Lavinia Huntington as Diana. Darcy Quinn, Dublin 1860.
The young woman looked no older than about seventeen, and was clothed in a draped tunic that provocatively displayed one naked shoulder, her hair incongruously coiffed in elaborate coils. But it was her expression—the direct gaze that stretched beyond the canvas and the artifice of her setting—that was most captivating. An unnerving intelligence shone in the blue eyes. Carla stared back at her, and found that the realism of the young woman’s stare made it difficult not to feel, as a spectator, that one was both an impostor and a voyeur.
Despite the summer heat beating in through the windows Carla shivered. She turned at the sound of her friend entering the room.
‘I’ve never seen this painting before,’ Carla said.
‘An inheritance from my father. I had it hung just before my trip. It’s my paternal great-grandmother, Lavinia Huntington, painted in the early days of her marriage to my great-grandfather, James. He was an eminent explorer and gentleman soldier and wanted her painted as Diana as a tribute to his own exploits. The child at her feet is my grandfather, Aida
n. See the dead stag? That was weirdly prophetic—Lavinia stood trial for her husband’s murder just a year later.’
‘Jesus, Julia, did she do it?’
‘My grandfather always claimed that she was innocent.’ Julia held out the wrapped present. ‘Sorry, it took a while to get through all the boxes, but here it is. Don’t get your expectations up too high—it’s sort of humorous.’
‘Thanks.’
Carla submitted reluctantly to Julia’s embrace and the two women held each other briefly, the sunlight slanting in through the low windows throwing their melted shadows into stark relief. The blonde-haired television producer was ten years younger than Julia and a good deal slighter in frame and in height. If Julia had been an observer, she would have seen Carla staring emotionlessly over her shoulder, but, holding her friend in her arms, she was oblivious.
Pulling the paper free, Carla glanced down at a set of DVDs, the cover showing a cheap Xeroxed image of a man holding a gun to a woman’s head, then laughed as she recognised the title beneath—a TV series she’d worked on.
Julia smiled. ‘I found them on this tiny stall on the West Bank—counterfeited copies, subtitled in Arabic. I couldn’t resist.’
‘I guess that makes me an internationally renowned producer,’ Carla remarked ironically as Julia sat down beside her. ‘You look amazing. Two months striding through the killing fields of the Middle East suits you.’
‘Well, I’m definitely changed, but I’m not sure I like what I’m turning into. It’s the Minotaur syndrome—the monster within. There’s a definite danger of becoming politically cynical—the disease of the morally bereft.’
‘Let me guess: you don’t believe in free will and Democrats any more?’
‘Try secular democracy, capitalism and satellite technology…’
‘Wow, is there anything left?’
Julia smiled. ‘I dunno—reproduction, white picket fences, escapist television?’
‘You are changed. Next thing I know we’ll be doing baby showers and the outlet malls.’
They had slipped into their particular banter—a humorous shorthand developed over the years. Julia loved this breezy word play; it was a grounding distraction from the pressures of her work. Apart from Klaus, Carla was Julia’s closest companion, the friend who had counselled her through the bouts of professional insecurity that, at times, had threatened to overwhelm the geneticist. Julia regularly discussed her more private and lateral theories with Carla, spilling them in an impassioned stream across the warm afternoons spent together on the back porch, margaritas in hand. The two friends functioned as emotional ballast for each other; in a city as transient and disseminated as Los Angeles, one needed such camaraderie to survive.
‘Unconditional friendship, it’s a hell of a burden,’ Julia joked, but Carla averted her eyes. Julia wondered what was troubling her normally resilient friend. Despite the armour of her professionalism, Carla had a tenderness that shimmered at unexpected moments—an aspect of her personality Julia had always found redeeming. But now, sensing Carla was in one of her morose moods, she decided to wait before telling her she was pregnant.
The bleeping of Carla’s pager cut through the sun-laced air.
‘Great, the spa’s confirmed. We have fifteen minutes to get there.’