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‘So, Jack,' Phryne eyed the Inspector over the top of her second Martini, ‘you don’t believe in ghosts or spirits, how about souls?’
Jack considered her question seriously, the corners of his mouth pulling down in contemplation.
‘Not of the dead. The living maybe.’
She raised her eyebrows at him, a silent entreaty to continue his line of reasoning. He paused, collecting his thoughts and took a sip of his drink before he spoke.
‘I suppose it depends on what you mean by a soul. You could say every person has a unique essence about them; a force of personality filtered through experience, the charming and infuriating idiosyncrasies that make them who they are.’
His mouth twitched slightly at these last words and her eyes twinkled acknowledging the compliment as he continued without pause.
‘But there’s nothing supernatural about it. At least I wouldn’t say so.’
‘Sounds a little clinical or well, straightforward to me. Not very romantic or mysterious.’
‘No, I disagree.’ He replied with an unusual energy, shaking his head. ‘If you see the soul as something real within the laws of science but changeable and incredibly complex, then the understanding of one – your own or another person’s – must be infinitely profound. Adding mysticism to that just cheapens the experience.’
She mused on his response, thinking back to her conversation with Warwick Hamilton about the currents that flow between people and the connections formed between spirits and souls.
‘Perhaps that’s how soulmates are created.’ She suggested. ‘You get to know another soul well enough then you start to merge together, feel each other’s moods, pick up on subtle gestures, anticipate their reactions, act on their imagined responses to situations, like a kind of sympathetic resonance.’
He raised his eyebrows at her.
‘It’s a thought certainly, but not one I’d have anticipated from you Miss Fisher.’
‘No?’
‘A soulmate suggests a predestined fate. I wouldn’t have thought the idea of the universe picking out a partner for you would appeal?’
‘Oh, it would be a very poor universe indeed if you only got one!’
He smiled ruefully at that. The comment was so very Phryne.
‘Besides, this kind of soulmate is formed over time not foisted upon a person from on high.’
‘Although,' she continued a little more seriously, 'there are certainly souls that harmonise more readily than others, some connections that burn bright and brief and others that endure.'
She looked at him and he held her gaze for a second before returning to his now half empty glass, his expression not quite readable. They both sipped their Martinis before he replied.
‘Given my own experience in that regard, I find that philosophy rather appealing. Although when I was younger I think I would have found it somewhat unromantic.’
‘Yes. I can’t imagine Shakespeare would have written so many plays about tragic star crossed lovers if Romeo and Juliet could just have sulked for a few months and moved on.’
‘And a great loss to literature that would have been, although if that’s all it took to move on I’m not sure I’d count them as soulmates. Anyway, I suspect that kind of melodrama is more entertaining in iambic pentameter than real life.’
‘Such cynicism Inspector! I don’t believe a word of it.’
‘Perhaps I just prefer your idea - that it takes time to make a soulmate. Without the stars to intervene you have to know a person to truly love them, that’s the kind of connection that endures, even when they’re gone.’
Phryne hesitated, theirs was a delicate dance, all nuance and intimation and she didn’t want to upset the balance but he had raised the issue at least by implication.
‘Was Rosie your soulmate?’ She asked gently, eyes kind, she was asking not teasing.
He frowned slightly but did not avoid the question.
‘I thought so once, but I was young, I didn’t realise how much my own soul would change as we grew older, or hers. Or how the war would change us both. Realising how much we had grown apart certainly provided more chaotic discord than sympathetic resonance for a time.’
‘And now?’
‘I suppose part of her will always stay with me, speak in her voice – usually when I’m about to do something terribly inadvisable - a connection like that can’t and probably shouldn’t be forgotten entirely. But I can’t say I miss it exactly, it’s like remembering something that happened to another person. I’m not the man I was and I don’t think I’d want to be, even if it was an option.’
Phryne smiled, a little of the goading twinkle back in her eyes.
‘I take it her voice is chastising you for your ‘inadvisable behaviour’?’
He nodded, her comment earning her a wry half smile and an expression of slightly guilty amusement, like a little boy caught in minor mischief.
‘Good thing too, I hardly need anyone else encouraging me to misbehave.’
‘Well I can’t imagine you doing so without serious provocation Inspector. Now I know what I’m up against I’ll have to redouble my efforts.’
She grinned, draining the last of her drink and moved over to the sideboard, offering a whiskey with a tilt of crystal decanter and a slant of her head. Jack drained his Martini glass and nodded almost imperceptibly, reaching out and accepting the tumbler as she returned to the couch.
‘And you Miss Fisher? A soulmate in your past? Or too many to count?’
Passing over the entirely unveiled reference to her sex life with a sarcastic raise of her eyebrow, Phryne considered her answer for a long moment.
‘I suppose any intimate connection can touch the soul a little but a soulmate would be something more profound. As to that, a few perhaps…Janie’s voice is there of course although I suppose that’s not quite the same thing.’
She sighed and he reached out gently and touched the back of her hand. An unaffected gesture of friendship and comfort for which she was grateful. When he spoke, his voice was soft.
‘If those we love become part of us then perhaps the ones we’ve lost do live on in a way.’
She nodded, her eyes moving from earnest contemplation of her drink to his face, his expression serious but gentle, hers unusually solemn, letting him catch a brief glimpse of the vulnerability she normally kept so tightly locked away.
‘Echoes of them at least.’ She sighed again. ‘I suppose that’s one way to achieve immortality, although I wish all of the voices haunting me were as welcome as Janie’s.’
The twin spectres of Murdock Foyle and René Dubois hovered invisible between them as she steadied herself, shifting position on the sofa, setting down her whiskey and dislodging Jack’s hand with a gentle squeeze of his fingers. When she continued, it was in a stronger voice, much more her normal self.
‘No, I’m too selfish to share too much of my soul with another person I think. Perhaps I’m not made to have a soulmate.’
‘Or too generous to limit yourself to only one.’ He responded gallantly and she rewarded him with an appreciative smile.
‘Warwick told me that when his brother died he felt it, like a part of him had died as well, although he said he didn’t believe the dead have a claim on our souls.’
Biting down on an acerbic comment about the supposed ‘sanctity of the boudoir’ with barely an eyeroll, Jack forbore to comment on the mention of her erstwhile lover.
‘Well I wouldn’t lay good odds on their survival if anyone tried to lay claim to yours.’
‘It would indeed be a deeply foolish thing to attempt.’ She paused and took another sip of her drink.
‘It’s a frightening thought in a way though.’ She added. ‘Letting yourself become so tied to a single person that your souls start to merge. You could lose yourself entirely if you weren’t careful.’
Jack met her eyes steadily and his mouth twisted up ever so slightly at the corner.
‘Not worth the risk Miss Fisher? And I thought you liked to live dangerously.’ He intoned, is voice low and resonant.
Phryne mentally awarded him full marks for that comment which managed to at once hit solidly home and send a delicious frisson of electricity down her spine. Never one to be outdone at this particular game, she let her eyes linger for a second on his lips, lowering her voice as she spoke and matching him smirk for smirk.
‘I do indeed Inspector. And as you so graciously pointed out, I can be very generous with my affections.’
He swallowed, his gaze drifting down to her lips for a fraction of a second before he martialled his features into careful inscrutability. In the silence the hall clock struck the quarter hour.
‘It’s getting late Miss Fisher, I should be going home. Thank-you for the nightcap and the company.’
She rose with him as he downed the last of his whiskey and saw him to the front door.
‘Until next time then.’ She twinkled at him.
‘Good night Phryne.’ He inclined his head with the ghost of a lopsided smile as he donned his hat.
‘Good night Jack.’ She smirked at the use of her given name, a quiet acknowledgement that they had shared just a little more than whisky and words that evening.
As the night stretched between them and they were left alone, they each replayed the evening’s conversation in the privacy of their own heads, hearing echoes of other’s voice as it took greater purchase in that illusive space where the soul sits, somewhere between conscious and sub-conscious, a subtle blend of heart and mind. Quiet and largely unacknowledged they both felt it, the slight shift in their balance, the slow and inexorable strengthening of a connection that endures.