Soul

‘Sleep would have been more constructive.’ She turned away from him, distress hollowing her face.

James sat heavily, resting his head in his hands. She walked over to him.

‘You had affection for me once,’ she said.

He lifted his face to kiss her, but she could not respond.

‘And I still have!’

Outside, a church bell began to peal plaintively.

‘Where have you been?’

‘I told you—at a card game, at the Carlton. Mr Campbell and myself were challenged by Lord Ealing and some young squire. I won. Ealing’s a fool—he wagered some hunting lodge north of Carlisle and lost it. I suppose one shouldn’t expect too much from the offspring of first cousins.’

‘Was the card game the only event of the night?’ she asked, trying to hide her anger.

‘Don’t question me, Lavinia. I am weary to the bone.’

Suddenly losing control, Lavinia began pounding him with her fists—short blows that rained down on his head and shoulders.

Only once had such blind emotion overtaken her: when, as a child, she had stabbed the peat-cutter boy. The expression of surprise on the boy’s face came back to her now as she railed at her husband; she wanted nothing in that moment but to destroy him.

Astonished, the Colonel leapt to his feet and wrestled her down to the bed. He stared down at her through the film of veins that snaked through his eyes, his puffy red face inches from her own. ‘Have you entirely lost your mind?’

He slapped her across the face, knocking her back to the mattress. Then, standing, he touched the bruises now blossoming on his neck and face.

‘You are suffering from hysteria. Of this I am now certain.’

Lavinia curled up and buried her face in the coverlet. The Colonel took a small vial from a drawer beside the bed. Pulling open her lips, he squeezed several drops of laudanum between her gritted teeth.

‘Now go to your room.’

Lavinia fled, clenching her face in an effort not to weep.

The Colonel walked up to the nursery, profound weariness resounding in every step. Pushing the door open, he was thankful for the anonymity of the shaded twilight beyond.

Aidan lay folded tightly into his bedding, one hand pressed against a cheek. The Colonel, careful not to wake him, crept over to the cot. The expression on Lavinia’s face as she had attacked him; a twisted detachment he’d never seen before except on the faces of some soldiers in the throes of war, stayed with him. She cannot be allowed to carry such potential within her, he thought. I must find a cure for this derangement.

He brushed a lock of hair away from his sleeping son’s eyes, then silently lowered himself into an armchair and watched Aidan sleep until the first sunlight slid under the room’s heavy drapes.

47

Los Angeles, 2002

THE STEAM SPIRALLED UP TOWARDS the pale orange ceiling. A plastic submarine (one of Klaus’s abandoned toys), propeller spinning, circled Julia’s knees with endearing intent. The scented candles in a row along the edge of the bath were unlit. It had been one of Julia and Klaus’s rituals: a prelude to lovemaking in the bath. The thought of lighting them now made her ill.

The bathroom was at the back of the house, on the ground level. Klaus had planted gardenia and roses around the window that ran the length of the bath, so that in the summer they could open it and let in the scent of the garden. The window was slightly ajar now, and in the distance Los Feliz Boulevard rumbled faintly like a faraway sea.

The water was as hot as it could be without scalding her. Julia wanted to draw all pain to the surface so that she would feel nothing, be nothing. The skin on her fingers was wrinkled and her feet felt like sand. She rocked herself backwards and forwards, backwards and forwards; the movement was comforting, as if the axis of the world was tilting with her. Her face was swollen from weeping, her burning eyes puffy sponges under her fingertips. She knew that if she stopped rocking, Klaus’s face screaming with anger would loom up from the milky surface of the bath water, followed by Carla standing in the diner, staring at her blankly.

There was a rustle outside the window, audible even underwater. Julia sat up, water streaming off her body. Coyotes? Skunks? Opossums?

The rustling grew louder. Now frightened, she reached across and grabbed a towel. Just then Gabriel appeared at the window. Julia screamed and he dropped back down.

‘Sorry.’ His muffled voice came from somewhere beneath the window.

Laughing out of sheer relief, the towel wrapped around her dripping body, she opened the window completely. He lay on his back clutching a large bottle of tequila, which appeared to be a quarter drunk.