This and other dilemmas coursed through him, churning up nostalgia for a simpler time when he would, without hesitation, have knocked twice on the carriage to direct the coachman to Leicester Square and Kate Hamilton’s infamous brothel where his predilections would be catered for without judgement.
Lavinia was asleep, her head and torso slumped over his papers. The Colonel watched her. There was a defencelessness about her that was arousing. Her cheek rested awkwardly on her wrist, the pagoda-embroidered sleeve bunched beneath. Her eyelashes fluttered slightly with each inhalation: ebony against marble. Lavinia’s skin was so pale one could almost see the blue of her blood flowing beneath it. He marvelled at how the demarcations of adulthood could be suspended in sleep. Now, before him, he could see the child he had first met—her skirts swirling in the wind outside the vicarage, her curious gaze.
He thought that he would like to make love to her now, but knew there would come a point during their caresses when his detachment would erase his desire completely. He could not help himself. I have disappointed her, he thought, profoundly saddened. And placing her sleeping arms around his neck, he carried her up to her bed.
21
Los Angeles, 2002
AT HER GYNAECOLOGIST’S INSISTENCE, Julia took two weeks’ leave. During the first seven days of her husband’s absence, she couldn’t bear to think at all. The depth of her despair surprised her. She simply didn’t want to confront the realities of her changed life. I’m in shock, she kept telling herself, soon I will be angry. At least anger will be better than this bleak, flat sensation.
Between bouts of uncontrollable weeping, she watched endless cartoons on the Disney channel. She didn’t just watch; she became the cartoon characters; mouthing the simplistic dialogue, driving in the cartoon car through the cartoon world, with its postcard reds, lime greens and acid yellows. Willing herself into a fictional character was a comforting sensation; it transported her into an acerbic two-dimensional parody of all that she knew. Julia didn’t want to be human any longer. More exactly, she didn’t want to be.
Meanwhile, the frantic sensation of missing Klaus deceived her into thinking he must be feeling the same bereavement. It was the habit of intimacy that Julia pined for: sharing observations of their respective days; his body at night; the innate expectation of being able to turn around and sound out an idea, make a joke, tell him about her work. It was as if she’d lost a limb and yet the shadow image of that limb stayed fatally glued to her. It was a searing loss amplified by the miscarriage.
‘Whatever I did, consciously or unconsciously, I can change, I know I can. Klaus? Are you still there?’
Sitting in the yard, watching a determined troop of ants dragging the twitching body of a dying beetle into the grass, Julia tried to read her husband’s emotions through the sound of his breath down the phone. His silence seemed to echo the great space that yawned between them.
‘Julia, look, I’m really sorry you had a miscarriage, but the dynamic between us has been skewed for years.’
‘I thought we were happy. How was I meant to know when you never said anything?’
‘That’s the point I’m making. You should have known; you should have had the time and the empathy to realise—’
‘I’m not a mind-reader.’
‘It was always about you and your career. Half the time I couldn’t tell you how disempowered I felt; I was frightened to burden you with yet another problem to solve.’
‘But I supported you, so you could stay at home and write…’
‘There you go, undermining me again.’
‘Klaus, come home, please. I need you.’
‘Haven’t you heard a word I’ve said? Carla’s my chance at having a full life, my chance at functioning as a complete person. Even my work has started to take off…I’m sorry.’
The line clicked then went dead. Frantically, Julia redialled the number but Klaus had switched off his mobile. She lay curled up on the grass, the sun burning her skin, phoning again and again until finally he answered.
They sat awkwardly at the kitchen table, the three of them: Klaus on one side, Naomi at the head of the table, Julia facing Klaus.
Julia had put on a dress for the occasion, the first she’d worn for weeks, and painted her eyes and lips. Somehow the desire to appear beautiful was important—to make him realise what he’d lost. It was the strategy that had propelled her through the morning—albeit a perilous one—and now her stomach clenched with increasing nervousness.
She was unable to stop herself from staring at her husband, who couldn’t look back. He appears so unchanged, Julia thought, still believing that if she could only reach out and take his hand everything would miraculously revert to how it was before.
‘Klaus, this is ridiculous. I mean—look at us. This is us—me and you.’ She tried smiling, but instead a grimace cracked her face. ‘I forgive you and Carla,’ she went on. ‘I was away, you were both left alone, these things happen. But nothing’s irreversible. We have so much…’ Julia faltered, loathing her wheedling tone, her bargaining, when she knew that there was a border beyond which emotions could not be negotiated. ‘How long?’ She didn’t really want an answer—a confirmation of long-term betrayal would turn her instantly into a pillar of salt—but the litany of clues that she had begun obsessively to string together compelled her to ask.
‘That’s irrelevant.’ Averting his gaze, Klaus turned to Naomi. ‘I want to keep this to practical arrangements, things that need addressing immediately. I’ve started divorce proceedings.’
The table began to slide away from Julia. ‘You can’t be serious?’
On the other side of the kitchen, the fridge kicked into action, the mundane humming slicing through her despair.
Klaus continued to look fixedly at Naomi. ‘Julia will be served papers in the next week or so. In terms of the estate, I’m happy for Julia to buy me out of my half of the house as soon as she can raise the money—’
‘Your half of the house? I paid for the house!’
Julia stood, her hands now bolted into fists, her face pounding red. Stepping around the table, Naomi placed an arm protectively around her shoulders.