“Do you want me to leave?” he asks, sounding as amazed as she is.
“Why . . . only if you want to leave.”
“Why should I want to leave you?”
“Because it’s unclean!”
“Look,” he says, resuming the buttons, “if you don’t want me to touch you, I won’t touch you. But I’ll be damned if I spend the night in any other bed but yours. There’s a particular lump in your mattress that I simply can’t do without.”
She laughs. He stays. They whisper and cuddle and kiss each other, and she doesn’t remember falling asleep. But she does remember waking. That’s because the house starts shaking.
“What the devil?” Wilfred growls in English, bolting upright beside her.
“I think it’s the door.”
He looks out the window. “It’s not even dawn, by God. Stay here.”
“You can’t—”
But he does. Throws on his dressing gown—of course he keeps one in the wardrobe—and an expression of vicious resolve, and simply marches out the door as if he owns the place.
Elfriede stares at the door in horror, bedclothes clutched to her chest. Follow him? Stay abed and trust in Wilfred’s military training? She throws off the covers. The pounding stops. Voices rise up the stairway. Wilfred, of course.
And a woman. Who speaks in German.
Helga is a baron’s daughter, a baron’s sister, and a baron’s aunt. (Through marriage, she’s also the sister of a minor prince, though at some point you have to stop counting.) Is she appalled beyond her worst possible nightmare to discover her brother’s widow almost in flagrante with an English lover, inside this house she shares with her late husband’s mistress and bastard children, in Florida of all places? One can only imagine, because Helga’s been bred to maintain an icy resilience in the face of such outrage to decent behavior.
“I’m so sorry to arrive at such an inconvenient hour,” she says, casting a slight, proud glance at Wilfred’s dressing gown, “but I’m afraid the train was delayed for some time outside of a town named Savannah, or I should have appeared yesterday evening.”
“Think nothing of it, Fraulein von Kleist,” Wilfred says. “Would you like tea? Coffee, perhaps? I imagine the housekeeper’s awake.”
“No, thank you. Elfriede, you may show me to a spare bedroom. If you have one.” (This last with a telling, lifted eyebrow.) Then, to some patch of skin in the middle of Wilfred’s forehead: “You may bring up my luggage, sir.”
Elfriede leads Helga upstairs. Shows her the bathroom while Wilfred stacks her trunks at the foot of the bed of the second-best spare bedroom. (He still nominally occupies the best one.) An awkward moment passes as he makes his exit and they’re forced to maneuver around each other in the corridor. For some reason, the children haven’t wakened. Charlotte’s probably still unconscious.
“Good night, then, Fraulein,” says Wilfred, in the grave voice of somebody trying not to laugh. Elfriede refuses to catch his eye.
“Good night, Mr. Thorpe.”
She and Elfriede proceed to the second-best spare bedroom. Helga stops her at the door.
“Of course, we will discuss all this in the morning,” she says, and shuts the door in Elfriede’s face, before Elfriede can even observe that it’s already morning, according to the clock. So she returns to her bedroom, hoping to discuss all this with Wilfred first, but dawn’s beginning to make itself known outside the window, and he’s already left for his own room. Propriety.
Elfriede imagines some reprieve, because Helga surely won’t rise until noon. But Helga’s Helga, you know, and appears in the breakfast room at eight-thirty sharp. The children are shocked. Aunt Helga’s face is creased, but her eyes are bright. “Good morning, my dear boy,” she says to Johann. She walks around the table to plant a kiss on her nephew’s astonished forehead and straighten his collar. She passes a swift eye over the remaining small fry and says briefly, “Good morning, Elfriede. Mr. Thorpe. Children. Nurse.”
Elfriede rings the bell for the housekeeper. “Good morning, Aunt Helga.”
“Good morning, Fraulein,” Wilfred says amiably. He rises from his chair at the opposite end of the table from Elfriede. The master’s chair. Charlotte sits on Elfriede’s left. An empty chair to the right. Helga tries to settle herself before Wilfred can reach this chair and pull it out for her, but he’s too quick, too clever. She swallows her chagrin and forces out a word of thanks.
“We will take a turn in the garden after breakfast,” she says to Elfriede, as the housekeeper arrives with fresh coffee.
At last, at last Helga’s spleen is set free. Elfriede, wandering among the hibiscus with her garden shears, pretends to listen. Helga gets such pleasure from her lectures, after all, such luxurious satisfaction from her exhibitions of piety. One by one, snip snip, Elfriede lays the hibiscus in the basket and nods along. She meditates on this human craving for moral authority, more powerful perhaps than the craving for sex. Why? What power do we gain from believing, asserting, tirelessly burnishing our virtue? To shame others, that’s the point of life. When Helga pauses for breath—the heat is laying on fast this morning—Elfriede hands her a hibiscus and says, “But there’s nothing improper in my friendship with Mr. Thorpe. He’s a houseguest, that’s all. He stays in the spare bedroom.”
“Do you take me for some kind of fool?”
“I don’t know why you would imagine such a thing, that’s all. Maybe you possess some special insight into such matters?”
Helga’s face is already pink from the heat, so there’s no telling just how deeply this suggestion moves her. Her eyes widen and then narrow. “What an impertinent thing to say,” she sputters.
Elfriede shrugs and turns away. “No more impertinent than what you’ve just said to me. It’s been over a year since my husband died, Helga. I’m simply raising my children as I see fit.”
“Children! You have one child, Elfriede, and your duty—your only duty—belongs to him.”
“But Gerhard has four children, and he’s left me responsible for them all. He wouldn’t want his daughters to be raised under the shadow of your disapproval. I’m only honoring his wishes.”
“His wishes! What do you know of his wishes?”
“My God. A great deal more than you do. I was, after all, his wife.”
“His wife. If you’d been a better wife, we wouldn’t find ourselves in this disgraceful situation.”
That’s the other thing about moral authority: there’s never any use in arguing with someone who wants it so badly. Elfriede stares at the flowers in the basket, at the long, thick, sharp gardening shears in her hand. She says softly, “What a pity you never found someone to marry, Helga.”
Upstairs, Wilfred’s emptying the drawers of his bureau.
“You’re not leaving!” Elfriede exclaims.
“Not at present, no. I’m merely giving way to Fraulein von Kleist. The little room at the end of the corridor is more than sufficient for my needs.”
“Oh, of course. That’s kind of you.”
He places a stack of shirt collars on the bed. “I can’t claim all the credit. The lady herself offered the hint a short while ago, when she returned from the garden.”
“Ha. That sounds like Helga.”
“She’s not lacking for nerve. She also asked me to confirm whether I was or was not engaging in carnal relations with my hostess.”
Elfriede’s palm falls away from the doorknob. “What did you tell her?”
“What did I tell her?” He turns to face Elfriede. “I denied it, of course. I lied to her face. What else is a gentleman supposed to do, to protect his lady’s honor?”
“Thank you.”
“Then you don’t mean to tell her the truth?”
“I—I don’t see any purpose in it. It will only give her one more reason to force us back to Germany. One more arrow in her quiver.”
“Back to Germany? Is that the idea, then?”
“Of course it is. Not yet, of co
urse. But eventually I must. Because of Johann’s inheritance, you know.”
“Yes, of course.” Wilfred turns back to the bureau. “Then I suppose we’ll have to observe the proprieties, from now on.”
“What?”
“We can’t have the floorboards creaking at dawn. The bedsprings squeaking, God forbid. She’ll cotton on to us in no time.”
“But—but surely we can find some way to—”
“To what?”
“Before you leave,” she says. “Before you return to England.”
The top drawer’s empty, the contents stacked on the bed. Shirt collars and linens. Wilfred opens the second drawer. The wood’s swollen with heat, and he has to jiggle the box carefully to extract it from the frame. He gives this task his full attention.
“Besides,” Elfriede continues desperately, “she’ll be gone before long. Once she sees it’s no use.”
“What’s no use?”
“Forcing me back to Germany before I’m ready.”
“My dear love,” he says, “I don’t mean to contradict you, but your sister-in-law strikes me as the sort of woman who doesn’t give up until she’s got what she wants. Unless you forcibly evict her, she’s won’t depart the premises without you and the little baron on each arm.”
“I can’t evict her. She’s Gerhard’s sister.”
“Yes. Quite.” Wilfred drops a pile of starched shirts on the bed. “Well, there’s one silver lining in all this.”
“What’s that?”
“At least she didn’t arrive a month earlier. She’d have spoiled our little interlude altogether.”
“Don’t say that. Don’t say it like that. Don’t call it an interlude.”
“But what else is it, dearest? What future do you see for us?”
“I don’t know!”
“Bring me home to Germany with you, perhaps?”
Down the corridor, Charlotte’s getting the children dressed. Elfriede can hear their piping voices, their little shrieks as bathing costumes are dragged over small heads and shoes emptied of sand. Johann’s old enough to dress himself, which he does in a methodical fashion in his own room. If Elfriede closes her eyes, she can picture his solemn look of concentration over buttons and laces. But she can’t close her eyes. They’re fixed painfully on Wilfred’s face. His grave blue gaze.
“Stop,” she whispers.
Wilfred steps toward her and puts his hand gently on the back of her head, near her neck, that little hollow he likes to kiss. “I wouldn’t hurt you for the world, my love,” he says. “The choice is yours.”
“What choice? There’s no choice. I’ve never had any choice.”
“Only if you think you don’t, Elfriede. That’s all.” His hand falls away. He turns back to the bed and starts to gather up his shirts and collars and things. “Lend a hand, perhaps?”
Silently she picks up a few shirts, his drawers. How virtuous they look, all washed and folded, instead of shamefully crumpled on the floor of her bedroom. She follows him down the hallway to the small single room at the end, on the other side of the children’s rooms, past Charlotte’s stern voice and the girls’ chorus of replies. Wilfred’s new room is tiny, just a bed and dresser, a narrow window. Elfriede puts the shirts and drawers in the dresser and goes to open the bottom sash.
“Another silver lining,” Wilfred says, arranging his clothes just so in the top drawer. “At least you’re not pregnant.”
The next morning, Elfriede wakes to a premonition. Her eyes fly open, her heart’s pounding in her chest. She rolls on her side and observes the gray light of dawn, the empty pillow, which she folds into her arms. A few faint noises reach her ears from downstairs, but maybe that’s her imagination. She sits up and sees the envelope on the floor, small white rectangle against the dark boards.
No! she gasps aloud. She leaps out of bed and flies downstairs, but the rooms are empty and dark. She flings open the front door, heedless of her nightgown, but the road’s empty too, the air’s warm and silent, the horizon pink, and she falls to her knees on the wooden porch. She simply can’t stand.
The letter. The letter. How long until she can bear to read it? Not long, as it turns out. Once she drags herself inside and shuts the door again, there’s nowhere she can go that doesn’t contain some reminder of Wilfred. So she climbs the stairs and returns to her bedroom—no point in checking Wilfred’s little chamber at the end of the hall, that will be painfully empty—and the hole in her chest is so vast, makes breathing so difficult, that she’ll take anything to fill it. Even this letter.
As before, there’s no salutation.
We are back to pen and paper again, my love, and this time it will be worse than before. Maybe it’s better we don’t write at all. I’ve lain awake all night, recalling every moment of the past three weeks. Do you remember that time we took the children into town for ice cream? As afternoons go I suppose it was ordinary enough. Frederica climbed on my knee and dribbled most of her ice cream on my jacket. The baby had syrup all over her face and you were trying to wipe it off. It was all very messy and loud and the proprietor, I think, wanted to throw us out of his parlor. But I don’t believe I have ever loved you more. Have I made that perfectly clear? I fear I have not. In my determination to leave all decisions regarding our future in your hands—in my painful awareness of how little I have to offer you in material terms—our unequal stations, your duty to your children—all the obstacles that stand between us—I never told you what sort of future I selfishly dreamed of. Possibly this is the wrong moment altogether for a marriage proposal, but here it is: From the moment we met, I’ve longed for nothing more on this earth than to stand before God as your husband. I sail from New York in six days’ time, aboard RMS Cedric. W.
And what about Charlotte, after all? How’s she getting on with all these houseguests from across the ocean? A year’s passed since the death of her lover and patron, that terrible shock she’s been numbing in the customary fashion. In Germany it was schnapps, taken on the quiet before bedtime. Once in America, where schnapps isn’t so cheap or plentiful, Charlotte turned to whiskey. Kentucky bourbon, to be exact, a type of whiskey made from corn mash, or so Elfriede understands. First Charlotte would take some wine with dinner, perfectly acceptable, and then after dinner the amber bottles came out of the liquor cabinet, one by one. Because Charlotte was generally good and soused in the evenings, Elfriede—who had started bathing the children by herself, tucking them into bed, from the time of Gerhard’s death, when the heavily pregnant Charlotte couldn’t summon the will to rise at all—called up Charlotte only when it was time to nurse Gertrud. Sometimes Elfriede worried whether the effects of corn mash, nicely fermented, distilled with water, and aged in oak casks, were transmitted through the human breast, but Gertrud seemed healthy enough, and anyway what else could she do?
Enter Wilfred.
If Charlotte’s astonished by this turn of events, she doesn’t show it. She makes no judgments. She asks no questions. Here comes this charming, odd-looking Englishman with his bright copper hair, joyously fucking Charlotte’s mistress in the privacy of her bedroom, where did he come from? Charlotte doesn’t care. Servants don’t ask such questions, even when they’re no longer servants. She just takes the Englishman’s hand and dances obediently around the room with him. Maybe she doesn’t stop drinking—certain habits become a biological necessity, it seems—but then Wilfred’s joyousness starts to spill over into all the other rooms too, the happiness in the house becomes palpable, and how can you sit in an armchair drinking morose Kentucky bourbon when there’s all this sunshine splashing over the place? She pours a glass or two and kicks off her shoes and starts to laugh a little, like she means it. Of an evening, she tells Wilfred about her humble life before she came to Schloss Kleist, her French mother raped by a Prussian soldier who eventually married her, the baby who died—it was a boy—and made it possible for her to nurse the little von Kleist infant whose mother had gone crazy. (She doesn’t speak of her
baby’s father, and nobody ever asks.) Then Elfriede brings her Gertrud and she takes her daughter and waves the two lovebirds off into the garden. In the morning, she doesn’t complain of headaches quite so much. Things are maybe not so bleak. Maybe she glimpses some future or another, who knows? Some solution to her terrible dilemma?
Enter Helga.
Exit Wilfred.
“Where’s Mr. Thorpe, Frau?” Charlotte asks a pale Elfriede, as they gather around the breakfast table, and the master’s chair remains empty.
“I’m afraid Mr. Thorpe has been called home early.”
Immediately, Frederica spills her milk, so Elfriede’s rescued from having to make any further explanation. She blots and blots with her napkin, soothes the weeping Frederica. She’s not quite sure whether Frederica’s crying over spilled milk or over Wilfred. Maybe a little of both. By the time the spill’s sopped up and the fresh milk poured, all’s forgotten, because Aunt Helga has just appeared in the doorway of the breakfast room, and young minds can only occupy themselves with one dragon at a time. Well, except Johann. He keeps glancing at the chair, almost as if he can’t believe his eyes, right up until the moment when Aunt Helga settles herself there, in the place formerly occupied by Mr. Thorpe.
But Charlotte won’t be denied, not in so important a matter as this. She has her future to think of, after all. When the older children are let outside to play in the garden, she follows Elfriede to her room, carrying Gertrud.
“What’s happened?” she asks. “Why has Mr. Thorpe left?”
“That’s none of your business, Charlotte. What’s wrong with the baby?”
“She wants to nurse.”
“Haven’t you nursed her already this morning?”
“No, I’m trying to wean her, she’s almost a year.” Charlotte pulls Gertrud’s hands from the buttons of her dress, and the baby starts to cry. “Is he coming back?”
The Golden Hour Page 25
