Soul

‘Is it?’ he ventured.

Her whole body tightened against him and for a moment he was terrified he’d lost her. They lay there in silence, the smell of sex sharpening the air.

‘It’s strange,’ Julia said eventually, ‘I keep thinking I’m going to drop back into that one minute and then my marriage will continue uninterrupted, as it did before. It seems so completely against nature, the idea that Klaus is happy with someone else and his life has moved on, whereas mine’s still in suspension.’

‘But this is life. I am life.’

He made her turn towards him. She looked through him in a way that made him shudder.

‘No, you’re not,’ she replied softly.

Julia sat at one of the lab computers, studying a set of graphs. The incubator hummed behind her. Gabriel had run the tests for Jacob syndrome but none of the subjects had proved to have the extra Y chromosome. She’d been forced to discount it as a factor.

Julia pulled up ten files: half were identical twins, the other half non-identical. A file lay open on the desk: a report on one set of identical twins, the Taylors. Horace Taylor, a corporal, had been court-martialled in 1991 for breaking the Geneva Convention on Treatment of Prisoners of War during the first Gulf War. Acquitted due to lack of evidence, he had again faced charges during the Kosovo crisis while stationed there with UN forces, accused of using unnecessary force during a raid on a Serbian gunpost.

Julia scanned down the page: there was a small mention of his twin, Jack, but as he had spent less than one year in the military before resigning, there was very little data about him. Julia googled his name. Up came three links: one was about a retired baseball player from the 1950s—same name, different guy. The other two were articles from the Los Angeles Times and the San Diego Times: Actuary slays family in rage ran one of the headlines. Julia read on:

Actuary Jack Taylor, thirty-eight, was arrested yesterday for the murders of his wife, Joan, and their two young sons. Taylor, described as a quiet, fastidiously neat man and a chess fanatic, came home from work early on Wednesday to discover that his sons had accidentally knocked over a chess game he was halfway through. Furious, he went to his garage, collected a rifle and shot all three members of his family dead. He then changed his bloodstained clothes, walked to the nearest police station and made a full confession.

Julia checked the date: two years after his brother had stood trial for the Gulf War incident. Jack Taylor must have experienced an impulse towards the same uncontrollable violent outbursts.

Would it have been possible for Jack Taylor to have controlled himself if he had known about his genetic susceptibility, she wondered. Could he have sought help to circumnavigate situations that could trigger violent reaction? Could he have stopped himself from murdering?

58

Mayfair, 1861

THE PAINTED TIN SOLDIERS WERE DIVIDED into two lines. On one side of the toy brick barrier crouched the Russians, their rifles aimed at the platoon of mounted British cavalry on the other side. The horsemen held tiny steel swords raised above their heads. Miniature green plaster hedges and trees—stolen from another game—formed an incongruous no-man’s-land between the trenches.

The Colonel moved the leading horseman forward, pushing the tiny tin man and his horse through a hedge, knocking it sideways. Aidan, sitting on a blanket beside his father, watched appreciatively while the nanny, knitting in a corner, looked on.

‘You see, it was like this,’ the Colonel told his son, ‘blind hubris, the collision of old warfare with new weaponry. We did not stand a chance, my lad.’

He knocked the cavalry piece down. Suddenly, Stanley’s face flashed before him and he was there, back in the trench, clutching at the torso of his dead friend.

‘Papa.’

The sound of Aidan’s voice brought him back to the moment. He knelt against the ottoman, his hands trembling. He’d noticed these lapses had started to intensify recently, the nightmares becoming more frequent. I cannot continue like this, the Colonel thought. I cannot escape my nature.

He glanced down at the fallen cavalryman. The roaring sound of a thousand galloping hooves swept through him like a wave as he sat pinned, trying to control his dread. Aidan leaned forward and with one flailing arm knocked over the whole platoon. Immediately, the Colonel was back there on the battlefield, clutching the neck of his panicked horse.

‘No!’

Terrified, he struck the child, who broke into loud wailing.

The nanny sprang to her feet and snatched the crying child away. The Colonel, coming to his senses, went to comfort his son but the child pulled away from him, flinching.

‘It’s all right, my lad. Papa was just having a nightmare, that’s all.’

The Colonel kissed his son’s wrinkled, screaming face then, ashamed, left the nursery. Outside, he paused, resting against the banisters, trying to stop the shaking that racked his entire body. He knew that only one man’s touch could drive out the terror that possessed him. I must see him, he decided.

I don’t know who I’m whispering to any more, but you are my creation, and the solace I take from these confessions compels me to continue.

It is late July. My hair has grown back to my shoulders and I have fashioned it into ringlets. Unknown to James, I have stopped my dosage of laudanum and that dreadful time seems almost behind me. I am close to completion of James’s pamphlet and am most proud of my handiwork.

I had assumed us happy again, but three weeks ago his nightmares of war worsened again. He has become a haunted man. On one occasion he terrified the housemaids by barking orders at invisible soldiers. He neglects his scientific duties and returns from his club later and later. My queries are met with a sullen aggression, as if he is intent on enclosing himself in a citadel of private grief. Even his companion, Hamish Campbell, has stopped visiting the house.

I am at my wits’ end. James has been gone for three days and nights now, with no message. I have sent a man to the Carlton but even they have not seen him. I cannot just sit and wait for his return. I find I do not wish for him to disappear from my life.