Sophie and the Sibyl (24 page)

‘Forgive me, my dear. I had no right to enquire. Affairs of the heart, things like that, I know, it’s all very personal.’ So he and the Count had guessed correctly, a proposal that failed to please. We jumped to exactly the right conclusion. Poor Max, clearly a blow to his self-esteem. ‘But listen, it’s not the end of the world. Come on. Other people will be there. It isn’t as if we are invited to dinner. And the first encounter is always the worst. Once that’s over, things will settle down. And then, who knows?’

Women always expect to be asked twice, thought Wolfgang. We’ll have them engaged by Candlemas.

‘Excuse me.’ Max rose, his toast abandoned. ‘I find it very difficult – that is – it’s not quite as you think –’

He gave up on explanations, and rushed out of the room. Wolfgang helped himself to more coffee and began planning a little letter of mutual congratulation to the Count.

Max, locked upstairs, alone in his rooms, sailed through an emotional hurricane. Before the ill-fated expedition to Stuttgart he had weathered many a squall, and odd days of turbulence, but the scene with the Sibyl had undone him utterly. He felt stupid, humiliated, diminished, and completely out of his depth. He understood neither Sophie nor the Sibyl, both of whom now took on a monstrous aspect. He was trapped between Scylla and Charybdis, the sea monster or the whirlpool, from whose swirling centrifugal force protruded great lumps of wreckage. Too late, too late, he saw the justice of Sophie’s rage. No gentleman would ever have read that letter. And had he handed her the note, in its original envelope, unread, he would never have hesitated in his passion for Sophie, nor ever known that she had questioned her own love for him. He, and not Sophie, had been weighed in the balances and found wanting. He faced yet another evil reckoning. And yet, and yet, he still could not accept Sophie’s conclusion, that the Sibyl had intended him to read that unguarded confession. What motive could she possibly have? Sheer spite? A perverse desire to make trouble? No, surely the Sibyl could not be responsible. He alone was to blame. He had treated his childhood sweetheart abominably, out of mere affronted vanity. Nothing could now be unsaid, undone, forgotten. He faced himself and loathed what he saw.

But what had he done that was so very bad? He had taken offence where none was intended, misread an ardent girl’s outpourings to the writer she idolised, and got everything out of proportion. Then, falling under his icon’s spell, and steered well off course by a catastrophic combination of Darwin and Wagner, he had sought security and salvation in the motherly folds of the great lady’s gown. Who could save him? She could.

And oddly enough – here Max banged down a clothes brush on his dressing table – he still believed this. The Sibyl’s uncanny power to illuminate and forgive glowed as strong as ever. But she was not free. And he had been a brute to suggest that she was. Marriage, of course, given those thirty years between them, was out of the question. But he could adopt the role of ‘
cavalier servente
’, her courtly adorer, carrying gloves and shawls around opera houses, becoming the butt of Lewes’s jokes and innuendoes. No shortage of applicants for that role, however. Max had watched the fawning hordes creeping towards her at Homburg. No wonder the celebrated couple fled to dull places and rented obscure country houses, where the chimneys smoked and the wallpaper gave you nightmares.

Max confronted his abiding sensation of shame. He abandoned the moral high ground and sank into the dust. Yes, he must accept the von Hahns’ invitation, and set forth, magnificent but sombre, to attend the New Year’s Eve festivities, and to face the music.

Snow fell on New Year’s Eve. By midday the city, coated in quiet white, echoed with soft thuds, as accumulated snow abandoned the rooftops in little avalanches. Bare trees in formal gardens, all picked out in white on the windward side, resumed their former shapes, handsome in winter colours. The box hedges at the house in Wilhelmplatz, white above and evergreen beneath, circled the dug beds like untouched elevated roadways, free from slush and underlying mud. The great pond froze over, but not hard enough to skate.

‘Oh no,’ cried Sophie, gazing at the descending white curtain, ‘no one will come.’

‘Nonsense, my dear.’ The Count glowed with confident hospitality. ‘Rain keeps the guests indoors, not snow. Besides, your mother’s menu will have them all here by four, salivating. And God knows, we have sufficient rooms. If anyone’s nervous about the late-night ice they can spend the night with us. I’ll have the fires lit upstairs.’

He stamped outside in his greatcoat, teetering behind his estates manager. Was the ballroom roof holding up? The repairs, still incomplete, were covered with sacks, canvas sheeting and a weighty layer of tiles. Inside the house swags of yew, adorned with red ribbons, pine cones and glittering crystal bells, carried the winter scents of outdoors through the halls and salons. The great drawing room, polished in festive readiness, flickered with candles and firelight. The huge ceramic oven in the corner, stoked up since dawn, smouldered and glowed. The Countess lit the logs in the fire at the other end of the room herself. Fruit cup and
Glühwein
, a great silver vat, smelling of cloves and cinnamon, stood steaming on a tripod; sugared pastries laid out in patterns tempted the first arrivals. Two rooms were set aside for coats, boots, capes, hats and galoshes, with selected chairs and sofas designated for each party. The young seamstress who made Sophie’s dresses lurked in the ladies’ dressing room to execute repairs as necessary. She peeked out at the great hall and the furore bubbling in the kitchen. The Countess inspected every servant’s hands and nails before issuing fresh white gloves. ‘If the gloves are clean then the flesh should be so too.’ She made it sound like a divine imperative. The younger staff, wildly excited at the prospect of a party, didn’t mind having their nails trimmed and the dirt dug out. The Countess, a lady of the old school, knew all her people by name and provenance. Her reputation for generosity flourished in the kitchens. Her mania for hygiene was generally considered insane.

Wolfgang and Max arrived early and stood in the hall shaking the snow from their shoulders, mobbed by the younger children. The Count gave no sign whatever that anything had ever been amiss between Max and his family or that he had not set eyes on the younger Duncker brother for over two months.

‘Ah! There you are, young man! Capital! Sophie’s dying to see you and tell you all about those blasted horses that we acquired in Homburg.’

At a stroke, all offence, error and misapprehension stood erased. Max found himself embraced by the old Countess, whose warm sugary smells welcomed him back into the heart of the family stronghold. He opened his eyes, and found himself at home. And there in the rumbustious bustle of the great hall, with the porters struggling to close the huge draught curtains across the double doors, he made out the hesitating figure of his wronged maiden, and bowed, never taking his eyes from her shadowed face. This gesture of acknowledgement and humility produced an electric response. Sophie stepped boldly through the mob, reached up and grabbed his shoulders, none too gently, pulling him down face to face, and then she kissed both cheeks in turn with gentle violence. Her bright freckled nose brushed against his own as she bounced on his boots. For one moment he held a scented armful of satin and ribbons.

‘I’m very glad to see you,’ declared Sophie, deliberately rising into detonating decibels, so that everyone could hear. ‘We’ve all missed you dreadfully. But I have more than anybody else. Come and see how we’ve decorated the drawing room. And don’t touch the crystal bells. Father’s already broken one and they all come from Venice, and cost more than my annual allowance!’

Sophie von Hahn refused to be cowed, embarrassed, resentful, dishonest or passed over. Max gazed at her in grateful adoration. Had he really chastised and abused this guileless, ardent girl? He deserved a long session inside the Iron Virgin, until his bared chest, sprinkled with pricks of blood, hurt enough for him to merit her affection. He strode after her, prepared to inspect the decorations, lured by that torrent of loosened gold, her ribboned mane of hair, which shook out behind her, boisterous, uncontained. For Sophie stood upon her threshold of possibilities. She intended to bewitch her straying childhood lover all over again, and free him from whatever noxious enchantment had induced him to be censorious and horrid. No fear, no guilt, no shame. She set out to win.

The Klesmers, given unfettered encouragement by the hospitable Count, brought along a jolly host of English residents, settled in Berlin, in addition to their Christmas family visitors. And so, alas, there was a moral majority, perfectly able to grasp both the plot and all the implications of Sophie’s ballad. This occurred to Miss Arrowpoint as was, who wondered if she should recommend a little judicious editing, but the English presence never struck Sophie as anything untoward. And indeed, the heat of the room, the roaring good cheer of the company, the opening salvos of festive drink and food put the guests in a mood to enjoy more or less anything.

Herr Klesmer stretched their good will to the limits, however, by playing a piano reduction of Siegfried’s ‘Rhine Journey’, followed by one of his own compositions, which left everyone shaken, apprehensive and faintly menaced. Max whispered to Sophie:

‘Oh dear, I hope the spirit of 1873 isn’t going to resemble Herr Klesmer’s creations.’

‘Father’s not pleased. He says that the Wagner is a lot of triumphal Prussian bombast. And not in good taste. He’s gone to spice up the fruit punch with more brandy. Oh good, look.’ Sophie stood on tiptoe. ‘Frau Klesmer is going to play something more cheerful.’

A virtuoso performance of Scarlatti delighted them all and ended in laughter and applause. The beaming little apple of a woman stood up and announced, with unfeigned enthusiasm, that the eldest daughter of the household, Sophie, Countess von Hahn, would sing them a Scots ballad to the traditional tune and in the original tongue. All the English cheered. Sophie turned a little pale, squeezed Max’s hand and then marched to the piano, ribbons flying, head high. Max edged himself close to the windows so that he had a clear view of her profile. The white night cloaking the terrace remained just visible through a crack in the drapes.

‘Shhhhh,’ Klesmer snarled at one of the English ladies for asking who she was.

Miss Arrowpoint stroked the keys. A little sigh arose from all the guests who recognised the tune. Then Sophie began to sing, gathering confidence and strength with every verse. Klesmer had transformed her performance from a girlish star-turn into a declaration of sexual freedom, confident, lurid, and as disconcerting as Vashti’s burning performance in
Lady Macbeth
. Her green eyes raged as she clutched her enchanted beloved and defied the Fairy Queen to do her worst. The extraordinary denouement –
Had I known, had I known, Tam Lin
– bewitched the guests. A thrilled hush enveloped the company as Sophie, the last transformation past, sank back, breathless against the piano, her crisped fingers clutching the braid on her patterned silk. She raised her head, and a red stain crept across her neck and collarbone, but her eyes, blue green and snow-cold, faced the audience, unrepentant, defiant. Her eldest aunt, very deaf, and therefore seated in the front row, now incapable of understanding words in any language, began to clap with touching recklessness. The drawing room roused itself from the shocked stupor induced by Sophie’s ballad, and joined in.

Wolfgang set about saving the day. ‘Well, what a dramatic tale! One woman’s courage in rescuing her love from the clutch of the evil fairies. And wonderfully performed, Countess. Bravo! Janet is quite the heroine.’

Klesmer’s visiting mother-in-law swiftly objected.

‘But she went out to Carterhaugh looking for trouble. I’m sorry for the Fairy Queen. She’s the older woman here and she’s been wronged. One of her knights – and the prettiest one too – has been stolen away.’

Immediately conversation and argument ignited the room.

‘My dear, you have a quite beautiful voice, but I don’t think you should sing about maidenheads in mixed company.’

‘Oh, stuff and nonsense. Those verses are perfectly genteel.’

‘Carterhaugh is a real place in the Scottish Borders, where two rivers meet, the Ettrick and the Yarrow. We were out with a shooting party near there last year, and came home very cold, clad in mud.’

‘Gloomy ballads make for disagreeable entertainment in the festive season. You should sing something more joyful, child. Drink some mulled wine, you look quite flushed and done up.’

Sophie accepted a large red glass, which smelt like a cordial for curing coughs. She sensed an odd breathlessness in her chest, as if she had removed her dress in company and stood there, all exposed, in her shift and stockings. Max stared at the receding blush on her cheeks, which matched his own.

He had understood her perfectly. But it was his beloved who took the lead.

‘There’s a fire in the library. Come with me.’

The heroine of Carterhaugh refused to negotiate. The encounter, this time, would take place on her territory and her terms. The sound of male laughter from the dining room followed them into the chillier spaces of the Count’s leather-bound collections. Max bumped into the globe, which lurked beside the armchairs. Sophie dragged him into the firelight, pulled the heavy wrought-iron guard aside and wedged two more logs in the grate. Wood shavings clung to her gloves.

‘Did you like my ballad?’