Love by the Morning Star (12 page)

“He was scorned, so now he himself scorns the world,” Teddy went on. “Then the singer begs the Father of Love to help him. To open the clouded eyes of the thirsty wanderer, so he might see the thousand springs surrounding him.”

His eyes burning and wet as that thrilling voice sang on, Lord Liripip knew his best days were behind him. His love was gone, belonged to another, and his pride, his joy, his son, was embarking on a dangerous new journey that might well end in death. But was there a way to seize both of those things, the lost and the soon-to-be-lost?

Vivified with a sudden inspiration, Lord Liripip felt young again. The perpetual throbbing in his foot receded, his breath came easier. He knew what had to be done.

No one, not even Lady Liripip, would ever work with more determination as matchmaker. He decided then and there that, come hell or war or revolution, Teddy would marry Caroline Curzon's daughter.

Then he would never risk himself in spy work.

Then Lord Liripip would have a piece of his lost love after all, grafted onto the family in perpetuity.

“Go to her, my boy,” he said throatily. “No girl sings like that without calling to someone. It's you she hopes hears her. Go!”

“I thought you didn't take to her,” Teddy said with a grin.

Lord Liripip didn't, really. He never could quite care for that big, busty blond sort, and there was something in her manner—exactly what, he wasn't certain—that he didn't trust. But he dismissed his concerns.
That was only because I loved and hated her mother
, Lord Liripip thought.
And because she is so different from what I'd imagined. I'll cultivate her, I'll be her friend. Between the two of us, we'll make Teddy marry her
.

But since he knew that children thrive on opposition, he only backpedaled and said with a shrug, “She'll get by with a good shove.”

“Goodbye, Father,” Teddy said, taking the arthritic fingers tenderly in his own oar-callused hand.

“Don't rouse your mother, boy, but as she's awake, you might as well let your cousin-in-law, or whatever she might be, know that you're leaving.”

Teddy left without answering.

“She's not really a relative, you know,” Lord Liripip shouted to the closed door. “Not by blood.” Then he staggered to the window and watched. The anodyne of hope fled, leaving his gouty foot to throb again, but still he stayed standing until he saw a shadow he thought must be Teddy slip out the door and stroll into the garden.

“There,” Lord Liripip said. “Night and solitude and stars. Drink that potion and anything can happen, even in a few moments.” He looked up and saw one star, particularly bright, the diabolical morning star.

Lord Liripip glared up at it with an old man's anger. “I asked you,” he told the star. “I begged you for it, and you wouldn't give her to me, damn you. You owe me now, star!” He shook his fist at the luminous dot hanging in the plum-dark sky just over the grand yew. “You owe me one loving wife, one happy marriage.”

The little boy in him, the part that made him whining and petulant, also made him steadfastly believe in the power of a wish made on a star. It was the part of him that Caroline Curzon had loved. But she had not loved it enough to marry him.

The morning star winked at him, but it made no promises.

T
HOUGH IT WAS CALLED
the Liripip Yew, it was not one yew but two (a tongue twister Hardy the under-gardener had perfected for his occasional tours), growing so close together that they had merged before Caesar's troops set foot in Britain. Now they were barely distinguishable, their lumpen, gnarled trunks fifteen feet wide with a hollow cave big enough for a hermit's comfort in the bole. It was a squat tree, fat at the bottom, dense at the top. It was not nearly as tall as some of the nearby firs, but they were callow youths, a mere two hundred years old. It was smaller even than some of the old oaks, enjoying a spry middle age of five hundred years. But it was dense with years and patience, well rooted.

Teddy ambled with his hands clasped loosely behind his back. Another time he would have whistled, but he was too charmed by a reprise of the Rhapsody, breathy this time, broken at odd intervals, as if she were talking to herself. He could hardly see; the moon was new, and what had been a gently starlit garden of mixed geometric beds and isolated specimen trees from above was now dim as a cave. He knew the paths intimately and he did not hesitate, but still he walked slowly, and even when he was quite near he couldn't see the singer. Her voice had taken on a strange muffled quality.

“Anna,” he called into the darkness as he neared the twin yews.

From very near, the singing stopped.

“Anna?” he called again.

Another moment of silence, then, in German, “Is that you, Lord Winkfield?”

He answered in the same language. “It is, but you must call me Teddy.”

“I can hardly hear you, which I think is a good thing after what you have said today.”

“Where on earth are you?” Teddy asked, circling the bulbous trunk.

“In my concert hall,” she answered. “I am trying very hard to make a joke of it, but I'm afraid I can't quite. The acoustics are lovely, but the audience is so small.”

“It has grown,” he said. “I was listening upstairs in Starkers. My father, too.”

“You could hear me? Ah, I'm not supposed to sing. Or talk, more than necessary. I thought that the garden was big enough, your stone walls thick enough, that I wouldn't bother anyone. If you're not to let me sing you may as well shoot me. It would be kinder.” She gave a little laugh to lighten it, but again, it fell flat. “I forgive you, you know,” she added.

“You do?” he asked, bemused. For what, exactly, was he forgiven? For his little scene at dinner, he assumed.

“Yes. One must be allowed to say what one thinks and do what one likes. Now more than ever. Others have the right to disagree, but you have the right to say such things, I suppose.”

“And do you agree that the lower classes are a different species, and that everyone is foreign except the English?”

“Oh, your poor mother!” Hannah said with a low giggle. “Despite everything, I almost feel sorry for her.”

“I am not a good son,” Teddy said, mock solemn.

“But I think—also despite everything—you might be a good man. Too flippant and flirtatious, but perhaps good, too.”

“I try,” he said.

“It is a start. But you must do so much more than try. I wish there were something I could do. I am safe, and I have my troubles still, yes, but there are so many who have not been able to leave, or who, like my father, will wait and wait, never believing the moment for running has come. Your family doesn't care for my father, I know.”

“I don't think any of us knows your father,” he said to the talking tree, trying to see her in its pit, wondering if he dared join her. There was plenty of room for one, but it would be a tight squeeze for two. Particularly if one of the two was so amply buxom.

“But still you condemn him, because my mother married him. Which is silly, because if she hadn't, she might have married your father, and then none of us would have been born. Do you know, your accent is truly atrocious. Where did you learn German?”

“At school. My first teachers weren't natives, and I'm afraid I've gotten in bad habits. What do I sound like?”

“Like a turnip-headed child. People would hear you speak and think,
The poor thing
—
when he was a baby his mother picked him up after making sausages and he slipped right out of her greasy hands and landed on his head
. And then you leave off bits of sounds, and add others. Quite as bad as dropping your
H
in English, which I do not like to point out, but you also do on occasion.”

“Never!” he said, delighted.

“You do. You just did a moment ago.” It had been hard to hear him from her little cavern, but he had definitely mangled her name. Still, it was sweet, somehow, to hear her name on his lips at all.

“Will you correct me?” he asked. “In German, I mean. I need to develop a very good accent, and quickly.”

“Perhaps. If I have time. I have a great deal to do.” Sally had written out a list of her daily chores, a shocking schedule that had Hannah rising at five and laboring until the family had gone to bed. She was so nervous she'd oversleep that she got up at three, splashed water on her face, and paced her tiny room before finally succumbing to the calls of music and the outdoors and slipping outside.

“My mother can be very demanding, but surely you can find a little time for me.” He leaned his head into the hollow but still couldn't see her, though he caught a faint whiff of strong lye soap, a jarring, unexpected note where he had thought to smell violets or lavender.

“I have time now,” she said.

“So do I. But only a little. I have to go.”

“Back to Oxford?”

“No . . . not exactly. To Germany for a while. I wish I could tell you more. You of all people would appreciate it.”

“Ah, is it an assignation? A secret lover?” Hannah giggled.

“What? No, of course not! Only, a friend and I are traveling . . .”

“And this friend, she is beautiful?” Hannah made sure there was not the slightest trace of pique in her voice.

Nonetheless, she was relieved when Teddy said, “This friend smokes a pipe and wears bespoke suits from Savile Row with creases sharp enough to cut a good steak.”

“Sounds like a dear friend of mine, and
she
is quite beautiful. Though she cannot afford good clothes these days.”

“Well, my friend is named Maurice and he is also quite beautiful, but since the days of Wilde we in England don't admit to such things.”

“Oh, are you Wildean?” She felt another little quiver of alarm.

“No.”

“Ah, good.” She paused. “Not a good in and of itself, because there is neither good nor evil in desire. But good because you seem to have a knack for making women smitten with you on short notice. Even by insulting them you seem to attract them.” She sighed.

“Are you smitten?” he asked.

“Would I be such a fool as to admit that? You are charming. I say no more. It would not be appropriate to feel a jot of anything for you. What would your mother say?”

“I figured out long ago that only one of us could ever be happy. When I was a child I tried to make sure it was her. As I grew up, I realized it had to be me. We cannot live our parents' lives.” Even as he said this he had a vague romantic notion, the same his father had had not long ago.
My father loved her mother and lost her
, he thought.
What an interesting idea it would be if I loved Anna
.

Gregarious, joyous, vital Teddy liked nearly every congenial person he met and fell half in love with every attractive woman. That first half always came easily, the second half, never. In the last week alone he had been momentarily enchanted by four women. There was a femme fatale in clocked stockings whom Burroughs had brought in to teach them some of the most common slip-ups for an Englishman masquerading as a German—forgetting to slash their sevens, looking the wrong way before crossing a street. There was a piquant redhead in a coffee shop. There was the extraordinarily loquacious servant girl who looked like a small, dark bird. And there was his glorious, golden kissing cousin.

The more they talked, speaking always in German, interspersed by her gently teasing corrections, the more he forgot everyone but Anna. It was better, almost, to hear her without seeing her. Her beauty was so incandescent that if he could have indulged his eyes he might have fallen for her looks alone, and he was idealistic and self-analytical enough to know that this would not do. All the same, as she spun her delightful stories of cabaret life, of the lost bohemian Weimar era, he did enjoy knowing that concealed within the intertwined yews was one of the great beauties of her generation. It was like talking to a dryad, a nymph, a secret voice that transcended flesh . . . though the flesh was there too, waiting to be touched.

To his astonishment they agreed on nearly everything, and where they differed it was only that she pushed him beyond the places where even the most liberal aristocrats dare to go.
Yes, believe that
, she would tell him,
but believe it more intensely! I feel that too, but you must think beyond that, to the next step!
Nothing shocked her, except when they discussed their species' capacity for stupidity and brutality.

“And even that is not so surprising anymore,” she said. “That is the worst sign. Those things should always shock, completely and absolutely. If I, a victim, am hardly surprised, only think what most common people in Germany, in England, feel. Oh, another twenty professors fired for being Jewish? Another thousand people rounded up and sent to labor camps? The paper says it every day and it becomes commonplace. Then the paper stops saying anything, and no one cares.”

At last, with dawn creeping closer, Teddy said, “These have been among the most delightful moments of my life.”

He heard a little catch of breath from inside the tree's hermit hole. Then, softly, shyly: “And mine.”

“I have to hurry or I'll miss my train. I'll be back for Christmas, though, and the Servants' Ball afterward. Will you give me the first dance?”

To dance again! She could waltz, of course, and knew some country dances, but what she really loved were the smoky golden nights in jazz clubs. She danced the Lindy, the shag, the Balboa—all kinds of swing—and in the Berlin clubs even the old Charleston and Black Bottom could still be found. It had all come from America, and officials had been looking at it with suspicion for years.
Do they still swing in Berlin?
she wondered.

“I would love to dance with you,” she said from her hiding place.