48

Mayfair, 1861

‘NO, JAMES, I WILL NOT allow it!’

‘It has to be done. The examination will not be thorough otherwise!’

‘But you don’t even entirely believe in the science.’

‘As a tool for diagnosis, I believe phrenology to have merit. You are ill, Lavinia, with an ague of both spirit and mind.’

Lavinia sat on a chair in front of the fireplace, her hair loosened around her, her maid hovering nervously with a pair of scissors in hand.

‘But my hair, James! The indignity of it! And how, pray, am I to present myself in public?’

‘We shall purchase a wig, a beautiful wig. Please, my dear, I shall tolerate no argument.’

Lavinia, a bruise still visible under hastily applied pearl dust, touched the ends of her long mane. Could she endure the humiliation? And would she be able to conceal such an outrage?

The Colonel gestured to the maid, who moved forward and tentatively lifted a lock of hair. She paused, scissors open. ‘But madam has such beautiful hair.’

‘Oh, for pity’s sake!’

The Colonel grabbed the scissors from the maid and began hacking at the great length of his wife’s hair. Mute with horror, Lavinia watched the locks fall and curl about her feet like the abandoned fur of some extinct animal.

Minutes later, Colonel Huntington stepped back from his handiwork. Lavinia, shorn, had the appearance of a beautiful youth: her large eyes, incandescent with rage; the wide cheekbones, exaggerated by the lack of framing; her small lips disappearing into the pallor of her face. Without cosmetics, the only hint of femininity was the delicate cast to her features, but this too suggested a youthful masculinity. To his great and secret shame, the Colonel found the transformation to be of sensual fascination.

‘Mama!’

Both the Colonel and Lavinia swung around to the door. The nursemaid holding Aidan in her arms stood shocked by the fragility of the young woman’s face. The boy stared at his mother then burst into loud sobbing, hiding his face in the nursemaid’s shoulder.

‘Come now, come, it is still your dear mama.’ Lavinia held out her arms.

The nursemaid, avoiding the Colonel’s disapproving gaze, carried the child over and placed him in his mother’s embrace, where, after some coaxing, he fell into an awed silence as he reached up to touch the shorn head in wonder.

Later that day, well concealed under a wig that her husband had promptly purchased, and over that a large straw bonnet, Lavinia climbed into the carriage.

Aloysius, assisting her, took the opportunity to glance into her face. There was no doubt the young woman had been struck. For one insane moment the waiting coachman considered confronting his employer, but then reminded himself that what was between husband and wife should remain there, whether they be royalty or beggars. Let their quarrel stay their quarrel, he warned himself, but his fists tightened under his riding gloves nevertheless.

The Huntingtons sat before a large, heavy-legged Jacobean oak desk that was covered in piles of documents. Dr Jefferies was an unprepossessing individual of five foot or so, with copious amounts of hair springing from both his nostrils and ears, and two thick black eyebrows that bristled like outraged caterpillars above small deep-set eyes, all contrasting with a smooth low brow and bald pate.

The physician’s head was disproportionately large and wobbled atop a thin scrawny neck from which hung flaps of wrinkled skin. He resembled a turkey, Lavinia thought; one of those absurd, childlike observations that occurred in moments of great distress. A short benevolent turkey. It was a strangely comforting notion: a short benevolent turkey could not condemn her as insane, surely? Petrified as she was, he may indeed discover an inherent trait she had no control over.

The dimensions of Dr Jefferies’s head were particularly conspicuous when set against the gallery that lined the wall behind him. The room was crammed with models of heads—some, plaster casts of living beings; others, bone-white craniums. At least a dozen, each mapped with the different areas common to emotional organs, stood about the room. Here, one labelled The Negro; there, another labelled The Jew, The Slav, The Indian.

Lavinia couldn’t help but be mesmerised. A large skull with deep-set eye sockets that appeared to stare at one had the title Aryan (Germanic) written beneath its pronounced jawbone. Beside it sat a smaller skull marked The Anglo Saxon. A whole row rested below these: The Schizophrenic, The Megalomaniac, The Melancholic and The Nymphomaniac. Suddenly horrified, Lavinia wondered what she would be labelled: The Celtic Madwoman? Did these categories really exist or were they just prototypes?

To distract herself from her growing dread, Lavinia concentrated on the phrenologist. Had he been drawn to the science by the gigantism of his own brain? Wouldn’t such an ambition be described as a form of narcissism? The laudanum, which she had been taking since the night before last, had leaded her mind but had also infused her imagination with an eccentric logic.

A small coal fire glowed in an oversized hearth, a bamboo screen discreetly masked one corner of the room, and three of the bookshelves covering the walls spilled forth all manner of tomes and documents. The fourth wall was hung with a plethora of charts: phrenological graphs, acupuncture charts, and ancient anatomical diagrams inscribed in Sanskrit.

Dr Jefferies stood up and came around from behind his desk, revealing the rest of his worn green velvet topcoat, tweed trousers, and a pair of purple Turkish slippers upon his large feet.

‘Open your eyes wide, please,’ he requested in the manner of a friendly family physician.

Lavinia obeyed, and he bent to look into her dilated pupils, enveloping her in a miasma of unwashed clothes and stale tobacco laced with a faint trace of old beef stew.

‘Laudanum, Colonel Huntington?’ he asked.

Tags: Tobsha Learner Fiction
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