Soul

‘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.