Soul Page 26

  ‘I am so pleased the Protestants don’t demand that their clerics practise celibacy. It seems such an unnatural restriction upon a man, even a holy one.’ She turned to Lavinia. ‘I should imagine it is to do with the notion of dedication. One sacrifices all for the worship of God. Sacrifice is a terrible thing. I don’t believe in it, nor in martyrdom. We only live once, my dear. There is no redemption in suffering. Now, I believe a stroll down Regent Street is required. There is nothing like the purchase of something frivolous to counteract an attack of religious fervour.’

  ‘I have my man with me.’

  ‘He can follow with the phaeton. The wind has blown the stench of the Thames away from the city and I, for one, need to oust the cobwebs from my bones.’

  They stepped outside, where Aloysius was waiting beside the carriage, his cap tipped back, his eyes closed as he turned to the sun before another cloud obscured it, his countenance luminescent in its pale beauty.

  Lavinia coughed politely. But Lady Morgan had already observed a subtle shift in the young woman’s poise. Taking Lavinia’s arm, she propelled her gently down the street. ‘We really must find you an occupation—charity work perhaps?’ she announced, glancing back at the coachman who was now swinging himself up to the carriage. ‘And quickly,’ she concluded.

  Lavinia was perplexed. What had the aristocrat observed that she, herself, was unconscious of?

  ‘Trust me, my dear,’ Lady Morgan continued, ‘there is nothing more joyful than being exempt from the marrying game, the race to land a rich husband. Because, my dear friend, as the weaker sex, that is what we are all driven to: to seek the shelter and support of the male. And what a feckless sex we are. Economics drives the world, not the ridiculous notions of passionate love the novelists and poets peddle to us. I was indeed blessed by the benevolence of my late husband, for his premature passing allowed me to discover my vocation.’

  ‘Your vocation, Lady Morgan?’ Lavinia ventured, wondering what that might be, other than to act as catalyst for the scandals of Mayfair.

  ‘It is men and the study of them, to put it bluntly. And I have not regretted a second of it, no matter what that lewd scandal sheet Punch might insinuate. For, you see, widows have a moral duty to enjoy all the pleasures long-suffering wives are denied.’

  Lavinia glanced back at Aloysius driving alongside them, sitting up on the phaeton seat and oblivious to their conversation. Lady Morgan’s carriage followed behind, flamboyantly embellished with her late husband’s family crest and a pattern of fleurs-de-lis.

  ‘Is that how you perceive me—as a long-suffering wife, Lady Morgan?’

  ‘My dear, you are the very archetype. And that is precisely why I am telling you that we women must not allow the peccadilloes of our husbands to oppress us.’

  Taking care to hide the distress that suddenly gripped her, Lavinia turned away to admire a milliner’s window display.

  ‘The Colonel was, arguably, the most accomplished of my salon. He is an extraordinary individual, Lavinia.’

  The young woman started, for it was the first time Lady Morgan had used her Christian name. It led her to believe the aristocrat was, for once, speaking entirely without irony.

  ‘And extraordinary individuals have extraordinary infatuations,’ Lady Morgan went on, ‘as I have recently experienced myself. I am losing someone very dear to me, just as you are. Mr Hamish Campbell is my touchstone of youth; he was to be my last indulgence. But I find now, to my great chagrin, that I cannot do without him.’ She took Lavinia’s arm. ‘So now you know: even the most cynical of us have our follies.’

  The phaeton pulled away from Hanover Square and made for St James’s Square. Although there was still a faint chill in the breeze, it was evident to Lavinia that summer had arrived. The streets were full of couples walking arm in arm. Lavinia enviously watched a man and his wife promenading: the synchronicity of their stride indicated a seasoned knowledge of each other, the ease of trust, she thought. The husband was portly in tails and a top hat, his brocade and satin waistcoat gleaming like the breast of a punchy cockerel, his wife fluttering beside him.

  A few yards on, a young clerk skipped around a couple of girls, both skittish in striped damask. The young man’s antics drove the girls to laughter, and they fled their pursuer, their ringlets bouncing. A watching rat catcher, his traps hanging from his belt, lounged against a lamppost, pipe in hand, while his terrier snapped at the passing girls.

  Courtship was everywhere; even the pigeons nesting precariously on the ledges of the soot-blackened buildings seemed to be either engaged in the act of fornication or in contemplation of it.

  And what of my marriage, Lavinia wondered, is it just a pretence? A sham union? What right did her husband have to banish her from his study and his bed?

  Was Lady Morgan insinuating that James and Hamish Campbell were lovers? Horrified, Lavinia contemplated the possibility. She had hoped the encounter with Polly Kirkshore was an abnormality, a weakness for the exotic in which her husband indulged occasionally, an indulgence that would not destroy their marriage. The notion was barely tolerable, but she had found a logic within herself to accept such behaviour. But if James’s friendship with Hamish Campbell was that of an intimate nature—she remembered how Hamish Campbell had looked when the Colonel complimented him. She knew that sensation, that excitement at having won a rare tribute. Was James really capable of such a betrayal.

  The breeze lifted a mass of dead leaves, discarded newspapers, chicken feathers and an abandoned child’s bonnet blackened with horse manure; the medley whisked down the cobblestoned road like a whirling dervish. Watching, Lavinia could only think of this spinning confusion as herself.

  Prospero’s face, lit by the gas footlights, was instantly transformed into a wizard’s head of shadow as he lurched toward Caliban to grasp a handful of the half-man, half-beast’s matted hair.

  ‘Abhorred slave,’ the actor’s voice rumbled across the stage.

  ‘Which any print of goodness wilt not take,

  Being capable of all ill! I pitied thee,

  Took pains to make thee speak, taught thee each hour

  One thing or other: when thou didst not, savage,

  Know thine own meaning, but wouldst gabble like

  A thing most brutish, I endow’d thy purposes

  With words that made them known. But thy vile race,

  Though thou didst learn, had that in’t which good natures

  Could not abide to be with; therefore wast thou

  Deservedly confined into this rock,

  Who hadst deserved more than a prison.’

  Caliban reeled blindly under Prospero’s hand, and for a moment Lavinia felt a great rush of empathy for the ragged creature, here depicted as a primitive man, a manifestation of primal emotions unfettered and unchecked. Caliban cannot help himself, she suddenly realised, he is the victim of his mother’s polluted seed. It was an epiphany that depressed her greatly.

  Caliban, a great mane of hair hanging down his naked torso, whirled violently, like a Minotaur cornered in a labyrinth of his own making, yet he could not reach Prospero.

  ‘You taught me language; and my profit on’t

  Is, I know how to curse. The red plague rid you,

  For learning me your language!’

  Was this what was meant by ‘the noble savage’? Lavinia wondered, thinking on the Bakairi and what complexity her husband might have inadvertently brought to their pristine world.

  Lavinia was distracted by a rustling from the box next to them, which had been empty at the beginning of the play —conspicuously so, as this was the opening night at the Strand Theatre and the famous thespian Charles Kean was playing Caliban. Peering into the semi-darkness, Lavinia recognised the box’s recent arrival as Lord Arthur Clinton—Hamish Campbell had pointed him out to her at the ball so many weeks before. But who was the young woman sitting on his far side? She wore a dark blue velvet gown with an elaborate collar of diamonds and pearls, one languid
hand draped over the edge of the balcony. As the woman leaned forward to gain a better view of Kean, Lavinia recognised her: Polly Kirkshore.

  Lavinia glanced sideways at her husband watching the performance through opera glasses.

  ‘Don’t you know her?’ she whispered, indicating the couple.

  A startled expression crossed the Colonel’s face for a moment, before he collected himself.

  ‘Don’t be absurd. I barely know Lord Clinton.’

  Lifting the opera glasses, he turned back to the stage.

  The foyer was crowded. Its walls were hung with red velvet and large gold chandeliers dripped candle wax onto the milling spectators below. The Huntingtons stood pressed against the gilded banister, the Colonel searching the faces for the possibility of advantageous commercial encounters.

  Staring down into the throng, Lavinia caught sight of Polly Kirkshore as he pushed his way towards the ladies’ parlour. His coiffure and shoulders stood out among the surrounding women. Lavinia observed that the transvestite’s great deceit lay in the confidence with which he moved, completely at ease in the social milieu. He looked like any wealthy debutante, perhaps a little tall, perhaps slightly ungainly in the feet and hands, but if one had any doubts they would surely be dismissed by the natural arrogance of his carriage.

  ‘I must reacquaint myself with a friend,’ Lavinia told her husband.

  ‘Be quick.’ The Colonel turned back to the crowd.

  The ladies’ parlour was a large low-ceilinged chamber, its walls lined with mirrors. Uniformed maids stood beside a rack of steaming face towels, while a seamstress, kneeling, mended a tear in a woman’s skirt. Several women reclined on chaises longues, fanning themselves furiously. Polly Kirkshore sat at a dressing table, fastidiously reapplying rouge to his cheeks and lips. The youthfulness of his skin and his impeccable grooming made him a personification of feminine beauty—something many of those present, all ignorant of his true sex, aspired to.

  Lavinia sat on a stool behind him and caught his eye in the mirror.

  ‘I suspected it was you in the next box. How is the Colonel?’ Polly Kirkshore lowered his rouge.

  ‘He doesn’t know you.’

  A very slight vulnerability ran across the transvestite’s face.

  ‘They never do. I suppose he will not know me in the foyer either.’

  ‘Do you think my husband could love me or any of my sex as a man should love a woman?’ Lavinia’s voice was barely a whisper.

  ‘I believe we are not fixed beings but creatures whose affections lie beyond the dictates of Society. Besides, my friend, there are many loves, therefore he must love you in his own particular manner. But you haven’t sought me out for this question alone?’

  He applied paint to a beauty mole just below his eye. His green irises and painted eyelids reminded Lavinia of an Egyptian goddess, his beauty amplified by the studied ruse.

  ‘You asked me whether I had an elder sister or a mother in London,’ she replied softly.

  ‘It was nothing, merely a remarkable resemblance.’

  ‘But if I did…have a mother…’

  ‘If you did, I am not convinced you would want to claim this woman.’

  Lavinia leaned closer to avoid being overheard. Some intuition told her to trust the youth. ‘I have a whispering box—a simple ornament they gave me after they told me she had died. For years I have spoken into this box, to a mother I imagined would embody all of the qualities one would want in a parent. Now I have discovered that I have lived my life in imagined projections. I no longer wish to be so credulous.’

  Without turning from the mirror, Polly Kirkshore reached into his jewelled purse and pulled out a small pencil. Turning his theatre program over, he scribbled down a name and an address.

  ‘I know her only as Meredith. She would be about forty years of age. I believe she was originally from Anascaul.’

  Polly, watching her amazed face through the looking glass, slipped the paper scrap into Lavinia’s hand.

  The bell rang for the next act. With no more to say, the two rose.

  46

  ALOYSIUS OPENED THE CARRIAGE door. As he helped Lavinia down, he held her gloved hand longer than necessary.

  ‘Pardon the impudence, madam, but another letter has arrived from my brother and I was wondering whether you had the time…’ His voice trailed off as his courage failed him.

  Lavinia, distracted by the events of the evening, had entirely forgotten his presence.

  ‘Of course, come to my study once you have seen to the horses. No one will be about at this time.’

  She smiled sadly, leaving the coachman wondering about her happiness.

  ‘The tenth of May, in the year of our Lord eighteen sixty-one.

  It was a week ago, brother, that the bugle call took us into battle, the first real engagement in over two months. The Union was to storm Camp Jackson, outside of the Confederate city of St Louis, and there was much civil disorder. I had not slept the night before, knowing that the infantry would be the first to face the muskets and bayonets of the enemy. We Irish had armed ourselves with prayer, hardtack and some good whiskey a rogue foraged from the other side, but there was not a man amongst us who did not feel fear in that terrible silence as we waited for the order.

  As for the fighting itself, Aloysius, I am beginning to believe there are fellow soldiers who feel a horrible excitement at killing. I have seen them slaughter the enemy as if he were less than a hog. I am not one of them. It is only the loss of a comrade that can madden me enough to treat the dead like wood and the living like animals. There is no joy in bayoneting another man, be he Confederate or otherwise. It was terrible. A quarter of our platoon was slaughtered by musket fire, and many will die later under the sawbone’s knife, but we have secured the camp.

  Now there is rioting in St Louis itself. The Union is the invader here, not the liberator, and I see the hatred in the faces of both men and children. Ireland is as distant as the night stars.

  I am glad to hear of your employment and that you have not gone the way of many a young Irishman in a city not renowned for its hospitality. I trust that you have remained a good Catholic and ask you to remember me in your prayers.

  In great affection, your brother Seamus.’

  Lavinia folded the letter and pushed it across the desk towards Aloysius, who stood with his back to the fireplace, his hessian shirt tucked into his riding trousers. Picking the paper up awkwardly, he hid it in a pocket.

  ‘Thank you, madam. I would have asked Mr Poole to read it, except I have no desire to confirm his prejudices about the uneducated Irish.’

  ‘Indeed, he is a withered stick of a man who worships nothing but the starch in my husband’s collars.’

  ‘As for the housekeeper…’

  ‘Pray have no inhibitions for my sake.’

  ‘Well, they say she has the second sight, which speaks through her gout-ridden knee. If I were you, madam, I’d be careful.’

  They laughed, the constraints between them vanishing momentarily. Lavinia rose and walked towards an octagonal cellaret; opening the lid, she took out a decanter of sherry and two glasses.

  ‘Not for me, madam. I should get back to the stables.’

  She poured two glasses anyway.

  ‘I’m sure the horses can wait.’

  Handing the crystal glass to Aloysius, she took a sip herself, thankful for the spreading warmth that briefly suspended any outside concerns.

  Aloysius, amazed at the delicacy of the glass, held it up to the candle.

  ‘It is for drinking, not for gazing at,’ Lavinia said, amused.

  The coachman, determined not to be considered vulgar through any haste to taste its contents, placed the glass on the desk and, covering his embarrassment, picked up the stereograph sitting there. Turning it sideways, he tried to see how it worked.

  Lavinia slipped a stereoscopic card into the gadget, then held it up to his face, enveloping him in her perfume. Its scent disoriented hi
m further.

  ‘It is a stereograph, Aloysius; the images are made more vivid through the two photographs.’

  ‘A wonder. I can see a small bird suspended above the soldiers, its wings beating the air.’

  ‘The series is on the Crimea War. The Colonel keeps them as a memento—the point of which escapes me, as every night he dreams he is back there and wishes it were otherwise.’

  Aloysius stared through the two lenses. It was as if he could smell the rotting flesh of the dead cart horse that lay just beyond the trench, could feel the mud caking on his skin as it had on the young soldiers. A terrible shame came over him as he realised that the two infantrymen had quite likely been killed and he was looking upon the faces of the dead. He did not care for the sensation. Placing the machine firmly back onto the table, he took a large gulp of the sherry only to break into a coughing fit.

  ‘Tell me about the friendships of men, Aloysius.’

  Startled by the question, he carefully placed the glass down again.

  ‘I shall try, madam, but I am not a social creature myself. In truth, I prefer horses to men.’

  Lavinia smiled despite her growing apprehension. ‘You drive my husband some nights, do you not?’

  Aloysius, now seeing the stratagem she had embarked upon, deliberately emptied his face of any judgement.

  ‘Aye, madam.’

  ‘Is he often with Mr Campbell?’

  ‘They visit the clubs and sometimes other houses.’

  ‘What manner of houses?’

  ‘I am not at liberty to say, but you should take comfort in that they are the same houses frequented by most of Mayfair’s married men.’

  ‘Cold comfort. I have lost him, I fear.’ At which her whole demeanour collapsed. Near tears, she looked down, painfully aware of her trembling hands.

  Aloysius, flabbergasted at her sudden loss of composure, spontaneously reached across to take her hands. Then he remembered his place and instead leaned over her with a clumsy grace.

  ‘Ná bídh ag caoineadh anois, ná bídh ag caoineadh (Don’t cry, please don’t cry),’ he whispered in Gaelic, not knowing whether she would understand him or not. To his amazement, she looked up at him and replied in the same tongue.