The coachman, unwilling to be pulled into an intimacy that could compromise his position, stayed with his formal English. ‘Madam, three months yesterday and I am mighty thankful for the job. I will not disappoint either you or the master.’
‘Good, in that case you may collect me at two o’clock this afternoon. I wish to attend church and then visit Bond Street, where there is a book I wish to purchase.’
‘Very good, madam.’ He tipped his cap and left.
Returning to the stables, he wondered if she was the daughter of the Protestant minister Reverend Augustus Kane, infamous for his outlandish scientific hypotheses and for fighting with his patron over the fate of his lordship’s starving Catholic tenants. If she was Kane’s daughter she must be a good woman, he thought, then remembered his grandfather mentioning some disreputable rumour involving the minister’s wife. But that was years ago, and what did he, a Catholic, care about a Protestant scandal?
Before leaving the house, Lavinia slipped quietly into the Colonel’s study. It was a large room with ceiling-to-floor windows through which the English sun struggled periodically.
The pungent scent of dried plant specimens mixed with old tobacco, wood polish and turpentine, reminded her of her father and his own study. In the middle of the room stood a magnificent circular table, the top inlaid with a marquetry of exotic flowers, the ornate border depicting all manner of tropical fruits—each section representing a part of the world James had explored. A commissioned piece, the table had been a gift from the Royal Society to celebrate the Colonel’s achievements. Atop its varnished walnut surface were scattered various specimens and papers—the anthropologist’s current work. Apart from the chair at the table, there was an alcove containing a cushioned window seat, and several green leather armchairs grouped around the fireplace.
A majestic mahogany bureau bookcase presided against one wall. Always locked, it held the Colonel’s collection of skulls, which he had gathered in his youth when under the brief tutelage of the Scottish phrenologist George Combe. Behind the decoratively glazed glass doors, the shelves were stacked with a variety of tribal artefacts, a single skull on each ledge, representing the different tribes the Colonel had studied. Each was surrounded by the icons of its people—masks, small statues, hunting tools.
Smaller display cabinets lined the opposite wall, their shelves bursting with books, manuscripts and bound notebooks full of dried flowers, pressed insects, scribbled pencil sketches, each description illustrated with excited annotations in the margin. The enthusiasm of the younger man radiated from these pages, his fervour visible in the jittery handwriting.
The sun, breaking through the clouds, streamed in through the skylight, carved a thin arc across the parquet floor and fell over her head, warming her in one delicious lick. The Colonel’s recent presence in the room had left an olfactory shadow of sandalwood soap, leather and hair oil. The rustling leaves outside melted into the sound of the Liffey River as the scent drew Lavinia into the memory of one particular afternoon—the first time they had made love in daylight.
Kneeling, James had fumbled with her waistband, peeling each layer away—of silk, of damask, of lace—until she lay in her undergarments. Trembling with frustration, Lavinia had untied the ribbons at her side herself, then lifted his hand to that secret part of her she had now discovered for herself. Leaning into her, he had shut his eyes, his face inches from her own, as he let her guide him. Watching him, she wrestled with her own raising orgasm until the moment she felt herself clenching. Then she pulled him into her, begging him to take her.
‘Look at me,’ she’d whispered, and in that moment when the Colonel opened his eyes, her bliss had become his and she had screamed, overwhelmed by a pounding rapture that drowned out the sound of the river outside.
Would they ever love like that again?
Lavinia walked over to the secretaire. Her husband’s diary rested against a carved walnut lectern, open at its last entry.
The use of certain poisons during the initiation rituals of the Amazonian peoples and the Indians of the South Americas must not be underestimated. Belladonna, mescaline, Spanish Fly, Morning Glory are just some of the flora used to enhance religious trances and often to communicate with the ‘Gods’ themselves. I myself have experimented with ayahuasca, used by the Bakairi in their spiritual practices. Naturally, the administration of such dangerous substances is hazardous and it is only the shamans or wise men of the villages that have both the skill and the permission to wield this ‘sorcery’…
Pinned next to the note was a curiously twisted root. Lavinia squeezed the spongy substance lightly between her fingers. Its toxicity was evident in the acrid scent.
15
Los Angeles, 2002
JULIA DROVE UP THE WIDE tree-lined Westwood Boulevard and turned into Le Conte, where red-brick university buildings now dominated either side. There was a bland affluence to Westwood that she loathed. After the eclectic architecture of Haight-Ashbury in San Franciso, where she had grown up, the suburb appeared insipid with its relatively new shopping malls plastered with the generic consumerist icons that littered middle America—the movie house, the hamburger joint, the supermarket, the Mex-Tex restaurant. A district designed to service the student community and medical facilities, there was nothing to distinguish it from a thousand others across the country. As in much of Los Angeles, most of the historical landmarks had been torn down and with them any organically evolved sprawl; the place was user-friendly but soulless. Why did rampant capitalism always reduce history to a bulldozed cliché, Julia wondered as she turned into the research centre. Still, it was good to be back on her own territory, with all the necessities within reach—no more living out of a suitcase, packing samples in polystyrene coolers, going days without a shower.
Despite their disagreements it had been more profoundly emotional to return to Klaus than she had imagined. Sometimes when Julia went on field trips, she became so preoccupied she forgot that she missed him, really missed him.
Remembering their embra
ce before she left the house, she decided to ring him when she got to the office, then made a second mental note to check on Carla to see if she’d recovered from her drinking stint at the restaurant. Humming to the radio Julia parked the car.
The Neuroscience and Genetics Research Center was a red-brick and sandstone building constructed only two years before. At the front of the block was a small landscaped quadrangle with a futuristic bronze sculpture, an abstract representation of the double helix of DNA. Privately sponsored, the Center housed several cutting-edge research laboratories; Julia’s laboratory was located on the first floor.
Clutching her briefcase, Julia ran up the granite stairs, past the eucalyptus trees and into the cool shadow of a stone arch leading into the building.
Her office was a small room removed from the bustle of the main laboratory, which was separated into a wet lab and a dry lab, with a low white partition dividing the two.
The dry lab consisted of two wooden benches facing one another, holding five computers that were constantly running. Invariably, at least three of Julia’s eight employees were using the space to work on their individual research projects as well as the larger commissions the lab took on as an entity.
The wet lab—where the hands-on experiments were carried out—was lined with benches stocked with equipment and bottles of various chemicals and reagents. All available floor space was occupied by fume hoods, huge freezers, and centrifuges plastered with instructions and warnings.
Down the corridor, in their own separate alcoves, were the electron microscope and the culture room. A photograph of someone’s eighty-five-year-old grandmother suspended in a full lotus position smiled beatifically down on all the activity, and jazz played constantly from a CD player in the corner. Julia prided herself on creating an atmosphere that allowed the imagination of her employees to soar—the laboratory’s record for innovation evidence of this.
Jennifer Bostock, a precocious young scientist from New York clad in a vintage velvet dress that gave her the appearance of a slightly aggrieved Gothic tragedienne, swung around from her desk.
‘Julia, welcome back! Everything stored safely and shipped?’
‘The samples arrive tomorrow. You got my email about the commission?’