Love by the Morning Star (16 page)

“But they are getting out?”

“For my mother it will be easy. She is English, you see. But my father may have some difficulty. It is another reason why I must be here, at Starkers. In times of trouble people get lost. I don't know if my parents are still at our home, or in France or Poland. I cannot write to them. So I must be here, until they write to me or show up at the doorstep.” Hannah wondered if her mother would deign to use the back door.

Anna quizzed her new lady's maid incessantly.
Tell me what you sang, tell me what you wore. Tell me of the boulevards you strolled upon
. And finally, she asked her to teach her German.

“Just enough to get by,” Anna said. “Enough to sprinkle a phrase or two here and there in conversation.”

She would keep poor Hannah up till all hours, never caring that Hannah had to rise at five to stoke the Aga and scrub, and scrub, and scrub . . .

But every day at post time, no matter what else she was doing, Hannah dropped her half-plucked pheasant or her bouquet garni and ran to intercept Coombe with his silver salver.

“Nothing for you, my dear,” he'd say with a long face, and Hannah would try to bear it one more day.

In the second week of December, though, she spied a German postmark among the envelopes.

“It's not for you, Hannah,” Coombe insisted, but she snatched it off his platter and had it half torn open before she saw the address. It was indeed from Teddy . . . but it was addressed to Anna Morgan.

“Oh,” she said, hanging her head and handing it back. “Never mind.” When Coombe adjusted the disarranged pile, she saw that there were two more from Teddy, one each to his mother and father.

It is only right that he writes to his parents first
, she thought,
and Anna's letter must just be another obligation
—
hello, how are you, I'm fine, the weather is lovely. My letter will come tomorrow
.

But it didn't. Several times, she was sure she glimpsed Teddy's hand, but Coombe kept the envelopes tucked against his chest and she could never be sure.

Finally, when she had almost despaired of hearing from them, a note came from her mother. Cora had evidently tried to make it cavalier and unworrying, but she'd failed miserably.

 

Dearest Hannah
,

We are both alive and well, and most of all happy that you are safe and sound at Starkers. I'm sure you're having a splendid time. Have you learned to ride to the hounds yet? Give Peregrine a kiss from me, with my thanks. I have moved from Der Teufel to a charming little apartment, so much more convenient. I won't give you the address, though, for I might be moving again soon—to someplace more charming still—and you know with things as they are it is better not to draw attention to oneself with foreign postmarks. Too many people ask questions. Better days are ahead. They must be
.

Love
,

Cora

 

Hannah's heart beat in her breast like a trapped bird, fluttering, panicked. So many things were wrong with this letter!
We are alive
—how dire that reassurance sounded, making her instantly sure there had been some danger of death. And Benno would never have made them move from Der Teufel. That simple, big-hearted boy would never betray his benefactor, never consider the cabaret as belonging to anyone other than Aaron Morgenstern, no matter what the deed said. Why had she moved? And where?

And worse—oh, worst of all—the letter was from her mother alone. There was that
we
in the beginning, then it was all
I
.
I
have moved. Not
we
have moved. Always before, when Hannah had gone on schoolgirl holidays or trips to Austria with her singing master, her parents had written
ensemble
. Usually her father added a lengthy postscript and jotted amusing notes in the margin of Cora's letters, or at the very least, signed his name and his love. To get a letter signed only by Cora boded ill.

He's alive
, she thought.
At least I know that much
.
She wouldn't lie about that—would she?

But they weren't living together, and that meant . . . what? Was Aaron in hiding? In Buchenwald or Dachau?

Oh, Teddy, please write to me. Tell me you've found them. You promised you'd look
.

But he did not write to her.

Despite her mother's warning, she penned a hasty letter to Benno.
Tell me what's happened
, she begged. Then she waited.

The first frost came, and after it light snow, sugaring the garden and the half-tame forest surrounding the house. Sleep came hard for Hannah. When she lay her head on the pillow, her mind raced from worry to worry about her parents. Then when she finally drifted off into fitful slumber, she was plagued with dreams about Teddy that should have been pleasant but seemed a mockery upon waking. She would get up too early, before anyone else in the house was stirring, and go to the entwined yews. Hiding in the cavern, she would ask herself, again and again,
Why does he write to everyone but me?

“Obviously because his mother would see the letter and it would cause trouble for him,” Waltraud said when Hannah repeated the question to her. “Men may feel one thing and wind up doing another, because it is easier. Why do you care so much for him? You knew him for barely a day.”

“Have you been in love, Traudl?” Hannah asked.

“Yes, many, many times. Why, just last night I'm sure I was in love with Corcoran—you remember him, the tall, dashing footman with black hair and such very vigorous sideburns that almost amount to muttonchops, so he looks like a Victorian cad. Though that might only have been to annoy Judy, who fancies him. He came tap-tapping at my door, and . . .”

“That is not love,” Hannah said with a laugh.

“It felt quite good enough for me. And love is a pretty name for something so nice. Don't they call it
making love
?”

“If you have to make it, like a schoolgirl's papier-mâché craft, bit by bit, it is not love. Love springs fully formed. It is Athena.”

“I thought she scorned love,” Waltraud quipped.

“Well, Aphrodite too sprang fully formed from the sea foam, which was really you-know-what. Those Greeks!”

“Has there been springing sea foam for you?” Waltraud asked.

Hannah gave her a light, playful slap. “Of course not! We have only talked. But . . . how can I say it? Without sight, almost without touch, with only our minds and words, we have connected. Sitting in the dark, inside that tree, it was like conversing with my own soul, my own self. I love him already. I am sure of it, and sure he feels the same.”

“Then you must overcome his fear of what his parents will think.”

“How?”

“By seducing him so absolutely in one passionate moment that he cannot live without you.”

Hannah shook her head sadly. “I don't know how to seduce, only talk.”

“Words,
pff!
Men love with their eyes. They can't help it. He will be here in time for the Servants' Ball, no? On that night, offer him a spectacle—the spectacle of you—and he will be won forever. Give him décolletage. Give him thigh. Lay out the appetizers for the grand banquet you promise him.”

“I'm afraid I'm hardly more than an afternoon snack,” Hannah said, looking down at her compact form.

Waltraud cupped her friend's cheek in her hand. “Little blossom, I will turn you into a smorgasbord! Now, what shall you wear?” They were in her bedroom, and she sprang for the wardrobe.

“Oh!” Hannah cried when her friend flung open the doors. “You got them all out of Germany!”

Inside were all of Waltraud's glamorous outfits. Other women wanted their admirers to give them jewels. The provocative entertainer insisted her presents be in the form of haute couture.

“You have the Chanels,” Hannah gushed. Though she didn't pay much attention to her own fashion, she knew her friend's collection like an often-visited museum. Waltraud's apartment had been next to Der Teufel, and Hannah had often sipped lemonade and nibbled on crackers while the entertainer got ready for one of her many dates.

“And the lime Schiaparelli, and the one she made with Dali, the autumn-colored leaf-skeleton gown.”

“You would not believe what I did to get that dress,” Waltraud said with a snigger.

“You enjoyed every minute of it, I'm sure,” Hannah said, rising to stroke the dresses like old friends. “And the Lanvin blue with those outrageous sleeves. Do you know what these must be worth?”

“I do, but luckily the border guards didn't. I piled them willy-nilly and said they were scraps to make dolls' clothes for poor children.” She made her face serenely pious. “I only just got the creases out of them. I'm going to wear this one to the ball, I think.”

She pulled out a demure-looking floral on pale pink silk, ruched at the waist, trailing at the hem.

“You, in a floral?” Hannah asked, amazed. She'd been sure her friend planned to shock on her first occasion to dress up. Something daringly low cut, or slit to the hip.

“But see?” Waltraud held it up to the fading winter light. It was entirely see-through.

“Traudl, you couldn't!”

“Don't worry,” Waltraud said, hanging it back up. “The plum-colored flowers are the only ones that aren't transparent, and they're strategically placed. At least, they are until I start dancing! Now, for you—”

“I have to run, Traudl. Dinner to get ready, and then Anna to dress for it.”

Waltraud made a rude noise. “Why do you have to serve that cow?”

“Be kind, Traudl. She's not so bad.”

“Why do you have to serve at all? If you just went down on your knees to Lord Liripip—”

“No!” Hannah drew herself up and flushed. “They want to humiliate me, well, let them. They will see.”

“They will see the vixen who will capture their boy and enjoy this pile of rocks when they're dead and buried. Just wait until the ball. Teddy really doesn't know who you are?”

“I'm sure he thinks I'm only a servant.”

“I don't care if he thinks you're Lizzie Borden or Typhoid Mary. When I'm through with you, you'll have a proposal.”

C
HRISTMAS HAD BEEN MAGICAL
at Der Teufel. Hannah's secular father (who would have been atheist had he not considered God almost a relative, a rich absent uncle who might do favors if he was in a benevolent mood, but who was also the butt of many japes) preferred the holiday to Hanukkah, believing the world should proceed as the stage did, with a bang and a punch line, not drawn out interminably. His customers, too, being predominantly Christian, welcomed the holiday décor, wreaths and holly bathed in a diabolical glow, the crimson of flame and blood miraculously imbued with holiday cheer. Whatever the day or days celebrated, the entire month was a holiday of champagne and song. The season itself was comforting, a companionable hunkering-down against the fading year, a tendency to draw near to one another against the encroaching darkest nights. To be in dim, cozy light with friends while all around is dark was somehow better to Hannah than to be alone in the sunshine.

Christmas at Starkers was, at least for the servants, just another day. There was a church service, which Hannah ostentatiously didn't attend (having driven the point further home the week before, telling everyone about the Festival of Lights and begging for candles, though she got muddled and celebrated for only seven days). There were extra birds to pluck, a great ugly pudding to boil, and everyone's hair reeked of Brussels sprouts. (“Which,” Hannah told Waltraud later, “taste so nice and smell so horrid when they cook. Is there a metaphor for life there, do you suppose?”) Samuels and Corcoran pulled a cracker near Sally's ear and made her drop the chocolate and buttercream yule log she'd concocted for dessert, so she sent Hannah to the hothouse to see if there were any forced strawberries for a makeshift trifle.

It was a treat to leave the house in daylight. Her diurnal life had been confined to the kitchen, the narrow linoleum-covered back stairs, and Anna Morgan's bedroom. If she wanted to breathe real (Brussels sprout–free) air she had to wake up extra early. It was worth it, though, to cat's-paw her way through the dark garden to the edge of the timberline and imagine she was in the Black Forest, listening for the crepuscular hiccup of a cuckoo, the whistling wings of one of the last capercaillies. The Morgensterns would go to Baden in the off-season, to hike beneath the conifers, to giggle at the maidens in their fantastically pompommed hats called
bollenhuts
, to argue about whether to buy a cuckoo clock, weighing their undoubted charm against the annoyance of having something cheep at you on the quarter hour.

But this was not the Black Forest. It smelled different. It sounded different. It
felt
different, creeping over her skin in its unfamiliar way instead of sinking inside her like a second self.
I am German
, she thought each early morning.
But I must become English
. And so she breathed deeply of the English air, and listened intently to English chirps and tweets, and did her best to feel the spirit of the place, to make it her own.

It still seemed acutely foreign to her as she walked to the hothouse. Familiar, as a scene from a book she had imagined so many times, but still foreign.
Yes, that's it
, she thought as she strolled slowly, drawing out her freedom as long as possible.
England is still fiction to me
,
Wodehouse and W. S. Gilbert
.

She took a slight detour, peering around to the garage. There was Teddy's feline Bugatti, crouching under the chauffeur's chamois. But where was Teddy? Wouldn't he come to her right away?