Soul

‘Please, Julia.’ Naomi, regretful for losing her temper, put her hand on Julia’s shoulder, as if touch might sway her.

‘You’ll be up against several doctorate students at the top of their field, and you’d have to keep up with me.’

‘Hey, I didn’t get my scholarship for nothing.’

Julia turned to Naomi. ‘It just so happens there is a vacancy, but he’d have to start almost immediately.’

‘I’m free after June the first, and that’s like next week,’ Gabriel answered before his mother had a chance. Naomi’s eyebrows shot up; she’d never seen her son volunteer for anything so enthusiastically before.

‘Okay,’ Julia fianlly replied, ‘but your mother will have to drive you to the lab and pick you up afterwards.’

‘Hey, I’m nineteen. I drive,’ Gabriel growled, but grinned anyway.

‘Thanks.’ Naomi hugged Julia. ‘And don’t worry about Klaus and Carla—I’m sure it is only a temporary hormonal relapse. He’ll come to his senses.’ She seemed to have conveniently forgotten her original argument.

As the front door closed, Julia’s loneliness sucked her back like a vacuum.

30

Mayfair, 1861

LAVINIA HAD INHERITED A PARLOUR of her own from the Viscountess; a small room tucked away at the back of the house, it was located on the ground floor and had French doors that opened directly onto the garden. Lavinia suspected it might have once functioned as a storage room of some sort, and that the Viscountess had had it furnished for herself almost as a secret folly. Situated away from the kitchen and servants quarters, it was a refuge in the mornings when most of the servants were occupied in other parts of the mansion.

Against one wall stood an oak bookcase full of books Lavinia had brought from Ireland; amongst them novels by Victor Hugo, George Sand and Thackeray, plus a slender volume entitled Prison hours: a diary of Marie Lafarge wrongfully imprisoned for the murder of her husband. It was the autobiography of a young French woman who claimed she had been erroneously accused of her husband’s murder. A celebrated crime de passion, the case had gripped the imagination of Lavinia’s father and the British and French public. It had provoked moral outrage, dividing those who supported the wife (she had suffered great physical abuse) from those who condemned her as a heinous criminal, viewing murder of one’s husband as an effrontery to the very stability of society. The Reverend Kane, appalled that the French should waive the death penalty, had written a letter to The Times. Years later, however, when the adolescent Lavinia secretly read the diary, she had greatly admired Madame Lafarge’s pursuit of idealistic love and her desperate attempt to free herself of an abusive husband forty years her senior.

Lavinia now sat at a desk positioned below the bookcase, her head bent over the whispering box.

Dear Mama, it has been a good three months since I arrived in Mayfair. At first the lack of female companionship and social engagement depressed me greatly. But now, since James asked me to assist him in the composition of his book, my days are filled with the most extraordinary intrigue as I walk beside him through the jungles of South Amazon, and experience his exhilaration and awe at the discovery of some exotic creature or primitive man. It has given us a new intimacy and I plan to reintroduce such sentiment to the bedroom, where my husband has, alas, been most absent of late…

The rattle of pebbles against the French doors disturbed her. She looked up from the whispering box and opened one of the shutters. Aloysius stood on the other side, glancing around nervously. Lavinia indicated that he should wait. After wrapping the whispering box carefully in a silk kerchief and hiding it in a drawer, she went to the parlour door. She checked that none of the servants were lingering in the corridor outside, then locked the door and quickly opened the French doors to let the coachman in.

‘You were not seen?’ she asked.

‘I believe not, madam.’

‘Good. I fear I am the subject of unnecessary malice amongst the servants; is it not so, Aloysius?’

‘They cannot place you, madam, and that always makes downstairs nervous.’

‘I thank you for your plain and honest speaking,’ Lavinia said, and pulled a blank sheet of paper from her writing desk. ‘So, we are to compose a letter to your brother.’ She dipped her pen into the inkpot. ‘I trust you have a correspondence prepared?’

Every part of the coachman radiated agitation, as if the bulky awkwardness of his body belonged only in Nature. In this room, with its dainty furniture, delicate china and carved objects, he felt fettered and clumsy, fearful he could accidentally smash an ornament with an ill-judged stretch of his arm. Taking a

deep breath, he began dictating.

‘My dear Seamus, I am content to hear that you are safe and well. Five years is a long time not to hear from a brother.’ Lavinia’s nib squeaked against the paper as she raced to keep up. ‘I write to wish you good luck and courage in your soldiering, but also to tell you that our grandfather is now with the angels. He passed last spring and it were—’

‘Was, Aloysius; was is the correct tense.’

‘I will say it how I speak. Then he will know it is from me,’ he replied defiantly.

Lavinia couldn’t help but smile. His vernacular brought Ireland right into her parlour. ‘In that case were shall stay. Pray continue.’ And, dipping her pen into the inkwell, she waited, nib poised.

Aloysius paused, relishing the moment: the sight of a gentlewoman waiting for his command a furtive but satisfying pleasure.

‘And it was a grim and tortured struggle,’ he resumed. ‘In short I were happy to see him finally at peace. I have a good position here in London as head coachman. You always said I would get ahead. And I strive to send coin back to Ireland for our poor sister Maureen and her child, Peter. Now that you have an address, please write as often as you wish. Stay safe and may God’s protection be over you, Your brother Aloysius.’

The pen continued to scratch into the silence.