Love by the Morning Star

by Laura L. Sullivan

  Hannah pulled his hand to her breast.

  “All those people you asked, they knew nothing?”

  “They seemed never to have heard of your father.”

  “But that is impossible! Everyone in Berlin knows the name of—”

  Before she could say her father’s name, they heard a low thump and a sharp muttered curse in fishwife patois. They both froze until the person passed.

  “Someone is in love with Hardy the under-gardener,” Hannah said. They heard the distant hothouse door open and close.

  “I did my best to find them, darling,” he said when the danger of discovery had passed. “People have become suspicious and close-lipped, and understandably so. They might just be refusing to speak of him for some reason. Maybe they don’t trust me. Maybe he’s gone underground, doing secret work.”

  “Maybe he’s being tortured in Buchenwald. Maybe he’s being interrogated by the Gestapo. Maybe he’s dead.” Her tears fell onto their clasped hands.

  “I’ll be going back soon. I graduate in May. I’ll be able to come to Starkers for a day or two and then fly to Germany again . . . presuming things remain as they are. I’ll look for them again, I promise.”

  “And my mother, you heard nothing of her either?” She told him about her mother’s troubling letter with its muted undercurrents of disaster.

  “Nothing. She’s in no danger, though, I’m sure. It was mostly men being taken, it seemed. Unless there’s reason to think she’s working as a spy or saboteur?”

  “Mother? Good Lord, no. Unless, of course, my father was in danger. She’d sink the entire German fleet to save him. Oh, Teddy, you should see how they love each other. No force on this earth could keep them apart. Not war, not death, I think. Do you know they changed their religion so they could imagine themselves together after death?”

  “She converted?” he asked.

  “Ah, no. They were both essentially atheists, you see, though he was brought up Jewish and of course she had the Church of England thrust on her as a child. As atheists they couldn’t believe in an afterlife, and though they knew their molecules would mingle for all eternity—you know how they say we’re breathing bits of Marc Antony every day—it wasn’t quite as satisfying as getting to hold hands in paradise. So they became agnostics. Not believing, not not believing. This way they thought that if there was someone in charge, perhaps he wouldn’t be offended and would let them into whatever good place he had available. And of course my father donated to the synagogue, which might be like slipping money to the maitre d’—you get a seat in heaven even if you don’t have a reservation.” She added solemnly, “It is quite a big thing to change one’s religion for a beloved.”

  Teddy laughed. “I’m not sure our bishop would see a switch from atheism to agnosticism as a conversion.”

  “It was! A veritable road to Damascus. It is as much a comfort to them as an actual religion is to most people. They do not need liturgy and law, only a little wiggle room on the matter of an afterlife.”

  “And what do you believe?” Teddy asked.

  She stroked the back of his hand. “In this. I stepped on the road to Damascus when you pulled up in your car, though I didn’t know it.”

  “And when did you love me?”

  “Did I ever say I love you?” she asked archly.

  “With every word.”

  “I love you,” she whispered.

  “I love you,” he echoed. “Come out so I can see you.”

  “You can’t see in the dark, darling Dummkopf.”

  “But I can feel you. Let me hold you. I won’t do anything more, I promise.”

  “Ha! And what if I do the more, eh? You might be able to control the fiery passions of youth, but I cannot. If I leave this yew bole I am lost, a fallen woman.” She spoke with levity, but she was serious, too. She didn’t know if she could control herself, and it wouldn’t be right to give in to desire when her parents’ whereabouts were unknown. It felt almost wrong to be in love when they were in danger . . . but there was nothing she could do about that.

  Another thing held her in check, kept her hidden inside her cave so that all he could possess was her hand. Men love with their eyes, Waltraud had said, and when it came to men, she trusted Waltraud’s judgment absolutely. In all the time they’d spent together—and it was little enough, though it felt like so much more—Teddy had been looking at her for only a fraction of the time. I can charm him with my words, with my voice and wit, she thought, but she didn’t know if she could charm him with her body and face. She liked this utter darkness, where they were just two souls in their own paradise, unencumbered by physical form.

  She compared herself to the brazen, buxom laundry maids of whom Teddy was said to be so fond, and to the statuesque goddess Anna, whom she had feared once but no longer, thanks to Hardy’s cocky presumption. If Teddy holds me in his arms, he’ll remember I’m not like those girls. He’ll hold a sharp little stick of a creature and wonder what he ever saw in me.

  “No matter,” he said, caressing the little scar on her thumb, which had become his favorite square inch of skin in all the universe. “Tomorrow I’ll claim the first dance with you, and then you won’t be able to escape my embrace.”

  “Will it be a waltz?” she asked.

  “Of course.”

  “Do you know the waltz was once considered the most degenerate, corrupting dance? It was banned for ages, simply because the couples touched at more than the fingertip.”

  “Fingertips aren’t nearly enough,” Teddy said, tracing each one of hers.

  “They must be, for now.” And then, like the painful debriding and cleansing of a wound, she made him tell her about her beloved Berlin.

  “It is both a reassurance and a kind of betrayal to know that the river Spree still flows despite what is happening in my natal land,” she said afterward. “You would think it would stop itself in protest. Did you go to the Neues Museum? Did you see Queen Nefertiti? When I was a child I used to stare at her for hours, wishing that one day I might be as elegant as she. Alas, I’m not the right height. She always struck me as being sublimely good and just. If she had legs and was not a mere bust, she would storm out of the museum and out of Berlin and out of Germany until it came to its senses.”

  “Where would she go?”

  “I don’t know. She needs some new world to rule.” A spirit of mischief took her and she said, “Perhaps she could come here and be the next Lady Liripip. She looks like one who could keep the servants in their proper place.”

  Very softly, so she had to strain to hear, Teddy murmured, “I rather have someone else in mind for the job.” He drew her hand out of the bole and kissed her knuckles, her scar, the tip of her pinky.

  “You must not wear gloves to the ball tomorrow,” Teddy insisted. To which Hannah readily agreed, for she had none.

  They talked until the owls hushed and the song thrush started its morning melody. When Venus began to brighten the sky, peeping through the overcast haze to warn the world that sunrise was nigh, Hannah said, “I’ve done it now. I’ll be too tired to dance tomorrow night.”

  “Tonight, you mean. Go to bed straightaway and sleep all day. I’ll do the same, and we’ll both be daisies by evening.”

  “I doubt Cook will be so understanding.”

  “Let my mother worry about our menu,” he said, thinking Lady Liripip had co-opted her for household management chores. “I want you gay and chipper when we dance, not yawning in my face. Though your tonsils are one part of you I’m longing to see. I bet yours are the most appealing pink.”

  Hannah chuckled. “Another intimacy that must wait for another day. Good night, my own Teddy.”

  “I am your own,” he said. “Your very own, forever. Let me walk you inside.”

  But Hannah, who was feeling a little faint with giddiness over his last remark, said, “No, you go. I believe I’ll stay here and sing before the household rises. They really don’t like me to sing indoors. Apparently the
walls of Starkers reverberate in a most distressing way when they hear a contralto.”

  “My family’s musical tastes run more toward the hey-nonny-nonny faux country ballad. Shrill virgins and all that. But I love opera, and if I didn’t, I still love you, so the house will ring with arias. Will you sing for everyone tomorrow at the Servants’ Ball?”

  “I just might,” she said coyly, “if your mother doesn’t object.”

  “If she does,” he said, “I’ll tell her she can stuff a sock in it.”

  He listened to her serenade him as he walked off, dreaming of the moment he could take the tall, luscious blond woman he adored into his arms and kiss her sweet mouth.

  Hannah’s Boxing Day Dismay

  “THERE YOU ARE,” WALTRAUD HUFFED when Hannah dragged herself into her bedroom in the rosy pinkness of morning. Hannah had gone straight from the garden to the kitchen, doing her early chores before running up to her room to bathe her tired eyes.

  Waltraud was immaculate in her starched black uniform, which she wore against orders (blue was for morning, black for evening), claiming chicness as her defense. “And whose bed were you sleeping in, if not your own, as if I didn’t know, or presume, or hope. If you have stolen Corcoran from me I will never forgive you until after lunch, because frankly he is becoming a bit of a bore, and his formidable whiskers are giving me an irritation just here.” She caressed a place that women would not generally expose in public for another fifty years, and even then . . .

  “I was in no one’s bed,” Hannah said a bit primly.

  “Oh, Hannah, why did I not take pains to instruct you better? Never, positively never do it out of doors. It sounds so romantic, but you’ll end up with bites and scratches—not the good kind—and a sore body—though not in the right places. Never become attached to a man who cannot provide a comfortable bed. Even the lowest prostitutes manage to get a bed for an hour.”

  “Traudl!” was all she could manage.

  “Let me guess,” her friend went on. “You talked. All night.”

  “In fact we did.”

  “Well, I hope it was worth it . . .”

  “It was.”

  “ . . . because you missed your Christmas present. You missed your Hanukkah present too, for that matter, but since you’re neither this nor that, I’m sure you don’t mind in the least if I give your present to the deserving poor. And that is me. But alas, it would not do for me, not anymore.”

  “I have nothing good to give you,” Hannah admitted as she went to her chest of drawers and took out the little parcel for Waltraud. “I would like to give you a strand of pearls, but they are my mother’s, and when my parents come to England we might need them.”

  “You will,” Waltraud said. “There is an exit tax now, you know. One percent.”

  “Oh, that’s not too bad.”

  “One percent is what a Jew is allowed to keep when she leaves Germany, that is, if she can hide it well enough.” She hugged away Hannah’s worried look. “They were probably whooping it up in Paris last night, kissing under the mistletoe at the Ritz. You’ll get word soon enough. Keep your pearls, Liebchen. I’m quite happy with these violet mints and the toffee,” she said as she tore open the package. “Though what I got you is slightly, just ever so slightly better, I’m afraid. But because you were a naughty girl who stayed out all night with a most unsuitable boy, you may not see it now. Ah, but wait until it is time to dress for the ball tonight, and you will see! My gift is my seamstress skills. I’ve altered the . . . No, I won’t tell you which one, after all. It must be a surprise. And the dress is yours now, for I had to take four inches off the bottom.”

  “Oh, Traudl, you shouldn’t have!”

  “Don’t fret. It never suited me. I only kept it for sentimental reasons. It was given to me by a man who reminded me of a pug I had as a child. Did your handsome young lord propose yet, by any chance?”

  Had he? He’d said so many things that seemed to point to a life together. I love you. They’d both said it. That, to her, was bended knee and diamond ring in itself. I am your very own, forever. Waltraud might have explained to her that funny way some men have of saying forever when they really mean for now, a linguistic quibble they never seem to be clear on. But to Hannah, forever was simply forever.

  “He prefers me to Nefertiti,” she said at last. “But I think he’s still afraid of his mother.”

  Waltraud gave an exasperated shake of her head. “The idiot. Well, when he sees you at the ball tonight he’ll defy an entire army of mothers to have you.”

  “That must be some dress you have for me.”

  “Darling, you’d set the Rhine on fire in this gown. Now, I’m afraid we must go and receive our Christmas presents from our employers. Brace yourself.”

  “Why?” Hannah asked.

  “You’ll see.”

  They ran downstairs and were lined up in the servants’ parlor (really an odd-job room with a few chairs and an old print of Queen Victoria on the wall) with their hands folded demurely, waiting to receive their Christmas bounty.

  “Corcoran explained it all to me last night. In a bed, I might add.” Waltraud gave her friend a pointed dig with her elbow. “You see, Christmas is the day when equals exchange presents. The Liripips gave each other, oh, Rolls-Royces and pearl chokers yesterday. But today is the day for giving presents to your underlings. Boxing Day, they call it, though I’ve no idea why. Wouldn’t it be nice to have underlings? As an aside, I wish Lady Liripip would choke on her choker, and all of her silly old ropes of dingy pearls. She was in a tizzy last night, insisting they be cleaned, and had Tilly and me going at them with toothbrushes. They’re still grubby, and since some of the royals are coming she insists on wearing them. No amount of pearls will make her look like anything other than an old harridan. Pearls are for young skin, not her wrinkled, yellow old wattle.”

  “That’s not kind,” Hannah said. “If we’re lucky, we’ll all grow old and get wrinkles.”

  “But we won’t grow mean, no matter what sorts of hardships the world throws at us. She’s been thrown nothing but cream, and look at her. She deserves every bit of chicken skin. Diamonds­—now, they might help her. Enough of them twinkling under bright light and they might make so much of a glare that no one can see her face, or her soul. But not pearls. Oh! You must wear your pearls tonight!”

  “But I’m a servant,” she protested.

  “You’re serving. There’s a difference. Cora’s pearls are better than old Lady Liripoop’s by a mile. Please wear them. They will be quite the epitome of chic with the dress I’ve picked out for you. And it is a day to honor the underclass—us. We have to be at our best. Clean aprons and starched caps, and miles and miles of Europe’s best pearls.”

  “The dress isn’t something scandalous, is it?”

  “Heavens, no,” Waltraud said, crossing her fingers behind her back. “Would I do that to you?”

  They waited for Lady Liripip to come down, while their chores waited for them, undone. She would be cross if anything in the household schedule was delayed or unfinished, but she would also be cross if the servants weren’t waiting for her in their orderly rows, standing at attention, primed to bow and scrape and curtsy and tug their forelocks the moment she appeared.

  She came down the stairs, those symbolic steps that had divided the classes as a rift or ocean divides species, forcing them into polar evolution. Her hands were empty, for a lady’s hands are always empty. Even purses are a sign of the middle class. The nobility has people to do the carrying of even dainty objects—a mouchoir, a coin. Though of course a coin would not be needed, as the nobility buy on credit, having their purchases delivered without question, the bill sent and settled by some other minion.

  A great many things had changed in England over the course of the last few centuries. But in the best families, things did not change quite so quickly.

  Lady Liripip’s stepdaughters trailed behind her, picking their way uncertainly down the stairs like
amateur mountaineers. They were more hampered than their stepmother, because they could not hold on to the rickety railing. Their arms were filled with soft, paper-wrapped bundles tied up with string, piled to their chins. Behind them, humming strains of a wassailing carol, came Teddy.

  Hannah’s heart leaped, then crashed, then leaped again. She met his gaze with open, radiant joy. Teddy’s delighted, delightful smile rested on her for a moment, then passed, with equal charm and sincerity, to Waltraud, and Glenda, and all of the others in succession. It’s as if he doesn’t know me, she thought. As if I’m just another servant in his house for whom he feels a vague benevolence but nothing more.

  Then she caught Lady Liripip’s stern, unforgiving visage. Of course he can’t look at me with the love he poured out upon me last night. I am still a secret. She resented being swept under the rug like a stray bit of fluff. Is that all I am to him, his bit of fluff? No. If I had been in his bed last night I might believe that. But no man spends a freezing night in a December garden with a bit of fluff. He is sincere, in what he said and what he feels. He will tell his mother soon.

  An amusing, wicked thought struck her. If he doesn’t, I will. Just to see her face.

  But a not-so-amusing thought followed: What if he is not strong enough to resist her orders? He has known me for a few hours, all told. She is his mother.

  Then that hard woman celebrated the brotherhood of mankind, peace, and goodwill by dispensing charity.

  Charity had always been a good word, for Hannah. To her it meant kindness, compassion, understanding. Her father gave to charitable causes because he saw a need and wanted to answer it. He brought a homeless man off the street and fed him on oysters and veal and the little marzipan and rosewater treats called Bethmännchen. He gave with love. His gifts were Christmas gifts, all year long, given in the spirit of equal to equal.