‘I agree; however, the rationalist in me also asks the question: could it not have been simply a set of fortuitous circumstances that advanced Man over his ape cousin—the wielding of tools, the move to two feet?’
‘Not to forget that most momentous event—the eradication of fleas?’ the cartoonist added helpfully, an irreverent grin on his face. At which the whole room dissolved into laughter.
11
THREE HOOPS STRUNG WITH pearls. Lavinia held the earrings up to the candlelight remembering the occasion James first made love to her in the hotel room on the Rhine. She tried to recognise herself in that woman: it was impossible.
She still loved her husband; if anything, her desire had intensified as James had increasingly distanced himself. At first she had thought it due to the intrusion of the child, but Aidan was almost eighteen months now and James was an adoring father. No, it must be something else. A hidden dissatisfaction he had with her? But what? Back in Ireland he had loved her many times, professed desire for her, but since their arrival in London his attentions had waned. Increasingly, Lavinia felt as if she were absent to him; only at social events and in discussion of his work did he seemed appreciative of her presence. All of which would be tolerable if she were not in love with him.
After dismissing the maid, she unpinned her headdress and lay it carefully across the polished wood of James’s dresser, taking care not to scratch the surface. The formality of the bedroom was intimidating; it was a territory that was very much the Colonel’s. Heavy maroon velvet curtains, hung with a brocade, covered the windows, and the Louis XVI bed’s ornate headboard was adorned with carvings of pine cones interwoven with garlands. Alongside the bed stood a Japanese porcelain and metal mounted cabinet—where James kept his secret papers and his pharmaceuticals. Opposite, beside the window, a walnut marquetry cabinet displayed James’s medals, received for his service in the Crimea. The clasps were engraved with the names Balaclava, Sebastopol, Inkerman and Alma, indicating he had fought in all four battles. Every surface radiated luxury in a manner Lavinia was unaccustomed to, and it was hard not to feel a little awed by the value of the objects that surrounded her.
The order of the room reflected her husband’s soldierly habits. Lavinia knew it was also his way of dealing with his hidden terror of the uncontrollable. His dreams were often nightmares—of the battlefield, of a tribal sacrifice in a smoke-filled rainforest, of dying suddenly like his mother. Lavinia forgave him this foible, but within such a controlled environment there was no space for natural chaos, and certainly not the chaos she had been used to as a child.
She reached across to his pocket watch, which was sitting on the rosewood cabinet. The exquisitely crafted timepiece, its miniature springs and cogs marking off eternity, ticked loudly. It reminded her of the relentless heartbeat she heard when she lay with her head upon her husband’s chest, drawing them closer with each subterranean thud. It had been months since they had lain together like that.
‘That was rather a success.?
??The Colonel stood ready for bed in his Turkish robe, the silk of his nightshirt visible beneath. At six foot one he was a striking figure, despite the corpulence of middle age. His features boasted a luminous ferocity—people often took him for a statesman—and his eyes were large and heavy-lidded, conveying an intelligence that was penetrating and, at times, intimidating. Luxuriant eyebrows betrayed his Celtic heritage, and his upper lip, although on the thin side, was counterbalanced by a full lower companion that suggested a hidden sensuality. The shape of his face was oval, with fashionable sideburns and a beard serving to hide his jowls. It had the contours of both the optimist and the realist, the Colonel himself would have remarked if asked—regarding himself as an authority on such matters, having trained under the phrenologist George Combe. Skull and face shape, he was convinced, were a strong indication of character.
Caught now in her husband’s gaze, Lavinia felt she was being examined and judged.
‘It was successful, except for my little disagreement with Lady Morgan.’
‘My dear, it is perfectly appropriate to call her Frances. She is, after all, a dear friend of mine.’
Again, Lavinia wondered about her husband’s association with Lady Morgan. Her father had made an oblique reference to some great disappointment in love when the Colonel was younger—an engagement that had been broken off, with no explanation—but the Reverend Kane had the delicacy not to press the Colonel for further information, and James himself had never mentioned such a thing. Was it a fiction? Or could his acquaintance with Lady Morgan have been more than mere friendship?
‘What did you think about her young companion?’ the Colonel asked. ‘He’s another Etonian, I believe.’
‘The sycophantic Hamish Campbell? He seemed presentable enough.’
‘Sycophantic but charming, wouldn’t you agree?’
‘Is he Lady Morgan’s consort?’
Irritated by the artlessness of the query, the Colonel pulled at his whiskers. ‘Frances has a weakness for the conversation of handsome young intellectuals, especially ambitious ones, but then she has some gifts of her own so it is a fair exchange of talents, one could say.’ He sat heavily on the edge of the bed and took off his slippers. ‘I think she took a liking to you, my dear.’
‘I think not.’
‘Come now, Frances adores an opinionated woman.’
‘She thinks I am an Irish heathen with unruly manners and she cannot fathom why you have married me. This makes her both curious and nervous.’
‘Succinctly observed; you have the callous eye of the scientist. You do realise her father was a Jew and her mother’s family are in the wool trade. It was sheer beauty and strength of character that propelled her into a profitable marriage. You must charm her; she will be your entry into society. It was Frances who introduced me to Darcy Quinn, the portraitist whom I commissioned to paint you as Diana. Frances knows everyone.’
He leaned over to kiss the top of her head before slipping between the sheets. Lavinia watched as he picked up a copy of the latest newsletter from the Entomological Society and placed his spectacles on his nose.
‘I sat for him myself once, when I was young—Icarus on the Mount, about to make his leap of faith. There was some rationale to it at the time—rash youth or something…Couldn’t see it myself.’
Lavinia knew the painting—it hung in the library above a desk the Colonel liked to work at, which was usually covered by his drawings of the various specimens he’d collected. Some specimens sat on the drawings themselves: outlandish seed pods that looked like bunches of withered grapes, the skin carefully peeled back to reveal the small yellow fruit nestled against the blackened leaves; plants with fronds so exotic in shape Lavinia found it impossible to imagine the landscape they could have been plucked from; exotic sea shells; desiccated ocean monsters—one he had once humorously described as the foot of a mermaid: a frail arched ivory bow that looked as if it had been carved by centuries of rushing undercurrents.
The painting, looming above, dominated this plethora of objects. Mounted in an ornate gilded frame, it displayed the heroic figure of Icarus—a pale-skinned youth of no more than twenty—entirely naked and standing on a boulder below which shimmered the outline of Crete, the columns of its temples and citadels a hazy blur in the afternoon sun. The boy’s wings were spread as if he were about to plunge defiantly into the abyss, the evening sun streaking his sweaty face. The soft down of his cheeks, the faint shadow of a moustache, heightened the poignancy of his imminent demise.
Lavinia had gazed at it, transfixed. Recognising the muscularity of the body, she’d initially wondered whether it was not in fact a portrait of some lost younger brother of her husband’s, so youthful was the figure’s stance—so different from the solid uprightness of the man she knew. But there was a look about the eyes that she recognised, the same gleam of inspired ambition Lavinia had seen in James as he worked on his illustrations and scribbled observations of the Bakairi, the Amazonian tribe he had studied, and other indigenous peoples.
In such moments, his inspiration transported her along with him into the fecund world of the Amazon, and provided an escape from the stifling atmosphere of the household—of dealing with Mrs Beetle, the contemptuous housekeeper; the territorial struggles with her son’s nursemaid; and the ennui of being trapped in the endless grey of the English winter.
She glanced over at the bed. The Colonel was propped up on the pillows peering through his reading spectacles.