Soul

‘You will. You know me—the dateless agoraphobic.’

The phone clicked off. Again, premonition brushed across Julia’s skin. Determined not to fall victim to the psychological tricks of her hormones, she dismissed her fear as irrational.

16

Mayfair, 1861

THE COACHMAN LOITERED at the stone entrance to St George’s. As an Irish Catholic at the door of one of London’s most prestigious Protestant churches, it was impossible for him not to feel intimidated.

Smoothing down the lapels of his jacket, he pulled himself upright in an attempt to shake off an insidious sense of inferiority. A pox on the English, I’ll not bend to their arrogance, he muttered as he peered through the darkened archway. He could see his young Irish mistress kneeling inside, the lilac brim of her bonnet sitting high amid the pews.

Despite her ambition, she seemed deeply uncomfortable with the authority foisted upon her, and there had been complaints in the servants’ quarters about the way Mrs Huntington contradicted her husband’s commands and confused the senior staff with her over-familiar manner. ‘She should know her place,’ Mrs Beetle had muttered more than once. There were only two servants who defended Mrs Huntington’s unorthodox ways—her personal maid and the cook.

Aloysius pulled out a small clay pipe and packed it with tobacco, the besieged sunlight falling across the broken fingernails and mottled skin of his working hands.

A robin perched on the font stone looked at him quizzically. Feeling in his pocket, Aloysius found some oats and threw the bird a few flakes. At least the English birds are friendly, he consoled himself. Lavinia’s mouth—that slightly wry curl of her lip—came to mind as he studied the bird’s red plumage. Struggling to dismiss the image, Aloysius reluctantly acknowledged that he was partial to the young wife, whatever her politics, whatever her station, not just because she was unconventional but in the way a man likes a woman.

‘Take the gifts God gives you and don’t waste your life hankering after the unobtainable’ had been the advice of his grandfather, who had adopted the small boy after his father, an itinerant farmhand, had disappeared from the village. Well, God had given him and his family nothing but grief and starvation. Everything Aloysius had, he’d earned through his own labour.

So he liked the woman, so what? Looking was not an offence. Could it be because she was Irish, a warm beacon in all this phlegmatic sensibility? Again, the coachman chastised himself—to imagine he could be anything but a servant in her eyes was an unforgivable vanity and most probably a sin. He held his hand out to the robin, who, after examining him with one beady eye, flew off as if to challenge his luck.

Aloysius then turned to watch several city gentlemen stride through Hanover Square. The sight of such industry was still a source of wonder to the village boy. The whole of London was a warren of frantic activity: hackneys taxiing merchants to and fro; the ragged army of children that lurked beneath tarpaulins, carts, archways and in doorways—a river of grimy life all ambling towards the one grave. Three flower girls and a hurdy-gurdy man had set up on the pavement opposite the church; the girls’ cries adding a curious lyric to the whirling music cranking out of the painted box.

It is an idyllic picture, this enclave of Mayfair, the coachman thought, all pomp and circumstance with its parks, its lamps blazing and footmen at the entrance of every grand house. But Aloysius knew that he would have to walk barely a mile to find himself in some typhoid-ridden slum lane. This is a metropolis of many cities, and I should be thankful to be living in a golden corner of it, he concluded, crossing himself for good luck.

Inside the church, Lavinia was conducting a conversation with her God. It was a dialogue in which her prayers were answered by a voice within herself; an alter ego whose pragmatism always provided a comforting but humorous counterbalance to her own idealism.

‘May James desire me again,’ she prayed, before noting that it was both ridiculous and sacrilegious to be asking the Almighty for guidance on such earthly matters. Better to ask the music hall actress or the courtesan—the reply popped irreverently into her mind, prompting her to rise to her feet guiltily. By the time she had wrapped her cloak about her, the afternoon light was already fading.

She made her way to the imposing main doors, where the coachman was waiting.

‘You do not worship yourself?’ she asked, sensing Aloysius’s reluctance to enter the church.

‘Madam, I was born a Catholic so I’ve no love of the English steeple. Anyhow, I’ve not been inside a church for over four years.’ He lifted the edge of her cloak to prevent it dragging in the mud.

‘Four years is a considerable lapse of faith for any denomination.’

‘I lost my faith while watching my mother starve, despite her prayers.’ His face tightened, deterring further inquiry.

Lavinia paused before stepping up into the carriage. ‘I also have found myself wondering about the value of faith when there appears to be no redemption.’

‘Not in this world, anyhow, madam,’ Aloysius added, trying not to notice her slender stockinged ankle, visible for a moment beneath her petticoats.

The lamplighters had begun their determined circuit, ushering in the evening with depressing swiftness. The coachman paused with his hand on the coach door, the chilly afternoon air making steam of his breath.

‘Madam, forgive my impertinence, but it is now past four o’clock and it would be considered unseemly for a young woman such as yourself to be seen in Bond Street at this time.’

‘In that case we shall definitely make the visit, and I shall take you along as my valet.’

Was this an example of her determination to shun convention and court controversy, or was it simply ignorance, Aloysius wondered as he swung himself up to the front of the carriage.

The carriage wound its way past the elegant Georgian arcades of Regent Street, negotiating the omnibuses, carts, the mingling crowds, and on towards Piccadilly Circus. The evening’s entertainment at the Princess Theatre was ‘M. Fechter’s Hamlet’, proudly advertised on a banner illuminated by burning gaslights, only just visible through the yellowish fog that had moved in from the Thames—as it did most afternoons.

An omnibus materialised out of the haze. It was filled with singing drunken men—a guild of journeymen from the north on an excursion to the big city. Their deep voices boomed out like an invisible chorus as Aloysius swerved to miss the vehicle with its heaving carthorses.

The brougham turned back into secluded Mayfair, where omnibuses were banned and only muffin-men, lavender-sellers and the occasional wandering musician with his barrow organ and monkey were allowed entry. Instantly it was quieter, and the smell of seclusion and money gave the insidious impression of safety. Lavinia, who had been staring out of the window, settled back against the leather upholstery.

They entered Bond Street, trotting past the booksellers and publishers and the gentlemen shoppers, several of whom tipped their hats at Lavinia—a woman strikingly alone at this hour of the day.