The Loves of Leopold Singer (8 page)

So she had thought, why not? It was unlikely she would ever marry, and it wasn’t as if she were some Vestal virgin. Why should she not have a taste of the happiness Fate had stolen from her? Matthew Peter was in no way stupid, but he wasn’t educated. He didn’t read. No matter how low she fell, Susan could never think of a man who didn’t read. She wouldn’t give false hope.

She continued to visit Leopold Singer in his rooms on her free days, and on occasion she stole time with him while away from Gohrum House on errands. He became a sickness with her, an addiction as potent as opium.

In December word came from Bath that her mother was ill. She welcomed the excuse to get away from London, away from Leopold. She sent him a letter explaining her departure. She expected he would be as glad to be rid of her. She suppressed the hope he might miss her, or even follow her.

He did. He left for Bath the day he received her note and wrote to her from his rooms at the Sidney. Susan visited her mother for three days and came to him for the next ten. As it was midwinter and the weather was frightful, they stayed mostly indoors.

Once near midnight, a storm punctuated their lovemaking with thunder. Flashes of lightning illuminated their forms. During a lull while he waited to be ready for her again, a clock began to chime. “Why did you not learn German?” he asked, picking up a conversation they had had, it seemed now, so long ago. The last chime faded amid cracks of thunder.

She was undressed, her arms and legs spread lazily, unmoving as Leopold traveled about her body. He was an artist, she thought, in the way he pressed and pulled, coaxed and demanded. She liked to give over to him this way, to feel like clay in his hands, as if she had no cares, no responsibility but to be, and to be moved by him.

She was in danger. She was beginning to want what she could not have: this, to go on forever. If only things had been different.

“My father was a gentleman’s oldest child,” she whispered. Leopold stroked her stomach and breasts; she felt him grow hard against her. “My mother was—no one, but he loved her utterly. He married her. The estate wasn’t entailed, and his family disowned him.” It was only partly a lie, and the truth was too complicated.

Leopold inched down, the warm wet of his tongue on her belly. With a flash of lightning she groaned, her fingers in his hair. “My father died. He was killed, actually.”

“You are a lady here with me.” His lips were at her ear, and he was inside her and around her, like light and like thunder.

Let it all go
, she thought.
Forget about life now, and just feel. Feel him on you now, in you, the luxury of this bed, the rain and the thunder, and him inside you now, there is only now.

Morning came like a fairy story, with sunshine and flowers, coffee and oranges and hot scrambled eggs. As if the white lady her mother always spoke of had come at last and carried Susan to the other world. For a few days she ate and slept and made love and almost believed she had at last found enchantment.

But reality makes a cruel mirror. She saw the truth in the knowing looks of the hotel staff. She might have the memory and the manners of a gentleman’s daughter and a better vocabulary than most, but not the clothes and certainly not the conviction of gentle standing. She was one of them, and they knew it; they would not let her go with the white lady.

On the fourth morning, the sun came out, and the couple took their breakfast in the teahouse. Leopold said, “Today I wondered if you’d like to visit the waterfalls at the gardens.”

“I’ve never seen them. I’ve been in London these last years. Most of the niceties of Bath are unknown to me.”

“Of course.”

She felt him withdraw, as if he’d only just understood what it meant to have to work for one’s living, that she was limited to less than the gods had meant for her. “Ancient as Bath is,” she said, “it yields to change. The place was a shrine to a Celtic divinity before the Romans installed their own goddess at the waters. Seventy years ago, excavators unearthed the carved stone head of Minerva.”

He warmed to her again.
 

“Then, not ten years ago, the old Roman foundations of her temple were uncovered. The local worthies have been building this tourist attraction ever since.” She chuckled. “Now a shrine to Mammon, I suppose.”

“Before we leave, you will see it all,” he said.

The last day, they breakfasted on their room’s balcony as a group of players gathered on the grounds below. Amid a cacophony of instruments being tuned Leopold said, “This is a nice send-off.” He offered her a section of orange. “Whenever I have oranges and coffee, I will think of Miss Gray and the pleasures of Bath.”

There it was. He was leaving her. He had already done so in his mind. She had expected as much, sooner or later. Oh, why could it not be later? The wedge of orange in her mouth became a flavorless lump. She studied the acrobats and musicians below. “That is how I will always think of you,” she said.

“As a street player?”

“As a musician. You are the man who plays while the world pays rapt attention.” She hadn’t meant to do it. She wanted only a diversion, a temporary escape from her fate. But she had fallen in love with this young man who quoted philosophers and tyrants and made sense of them all. “I don’t think of you in Europe, you know. The new century is coming. You belong in England, where your qualities are prized. Or America, perhaps.”

“I beg your pardon, sir.” A hotel footman brought a letter on a tray. As Leopold read the message, his face drained of color.

“My father is very ill,” he said. “I am called home.”

He hired a private post-chaise, and they changed horses rather than stop to rest on the flight back to London. He’d already slipped away. He didn’t touch her hand or inquire after her comfort. He looked at the landscape, or at his own hands. When he slept a little, he leaned away from her into the corner. Awake, he didn’t allow even his foot to stray near hers. Well before they reached St. James Square, she asked to be let out.

“I will have your things sent to you.” He motioned toward her bag.

“Hm-mm.” She forced the refusal in a grunt, unable to open her mouth. She couldn’t get out of the coach soon enough.

He stopped her. “Susan, sir.” He attempted levity now, now she was going. “I won’t ever forget our time together. I am so very glad to have known you.”

He’d never made a declaration. Indeed, she had been the aggressor. He had treated her with respect, even kindness. He had never said the word love.

“I will never fully understand your … generosity to me.” Odd that he had to search for the right thing to say.

“It was necessary.” She choked on the words. “It was necessary to my happiness.”

She understood then why he would never love her. He could not see her in his world. He might have stretched out his hand to her, and she might have taken a step up. But he did not, and so she could not. Her heart gave way at last, compressed within her chest wall, and left her breathless.

“I nearly forgot.” He was still talking, still holding her hand. It hurt, how good his touch felt. She knew she couldn’t bear it when he let go. If only he would kiss that hand, hold it to his cheek. If only once more. He turned her palm up and placed a book in it, a beautiful leather volume by Mary Wollstonecraft.
A Vindication of the Rights of Women
.

A rueful sound escaped through her nose.

“Susan. Dear Susan. I hope you will remember me fondly. Please take this.”

“Goodbye, Mr. Singer.” She choked the words out, barely breathing. Somehow, she got out of the coach with her bag and into the street. The clop-clop of the horses receded. She could cry now, a silent torrent of wet pain.

Her heart, her heart. She had believed a broken heart to be a mere saying, a poet’s way of putting something. Now hers would never beat free again. Bound to him, even after parting, she searched the book’s leaves for an inscription. Surely he would not be so cruel to deny her that? A note fell, but it was not a letter. It was fifty pounds. Fifty pounds! The insult was a blunt trauma against her sorrow. Was she his whore, then? But t
here
was an inscription after all:

To my dear friend, Susan, sir, who taught me how dignified and noble a woman can be.
Lpld S
.

But not noble enough to marry. She tucked the money into her satchel. She would need it for the apothecary.

Carinthia

“Promise me.” Leopold’s mother grabbed his hand.

He looked up from where he knelt at her bed. She was but a faintly animated skeleton covered with bloodless skin. “Rest, Mutti.”

She hadn’t spoken in the hours since he’d returned. An occasional gasp for air had been the only sign she still struggled against her fate. She glanced at Reverend Haas sleeping in a chair at the foot of her bed and squeezed Leopold’s hand. “You must promise.”

“Anything, dear.”

“You must remove yourself from your father’s English business.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Promise me!” Her grip intensified with uncanny power until he really thought she would bruise his skin. “Reverend Haas says I will not see Mr. Singer in Heaven. I could not bear it if there were no hope of you.”

The long speech was too much. She closed her eyes and let his hand go. Her bed cap fell away, exposing a few wisps of hair that had been full and gray when he last saw her. He hadn’t quite believed it that his father was dead and his mother dying until he saw that pathetic, thin strand of white matted against his mother’s sallow skin.
 

He shook Haas fully awake and put a finger in the man’s face. “A word.” When they were outside the sick room he said, “What does she mean by this? Did you say to my dying mother that her husband, whose body is not yet cold, will not be in heaven to greet her? How could even you be so cruel?”

“I could not lie, sir.” Haas was all wounded piety.

“Lie! My father was an exemplary man—an exemplary man!”

“Your father is gone. You can no longer be shielded from the truth.”

“Then do speak plainly.”

In a tone probably meant to signify most sorry compassion, but which Leopold had always found insufferable, Haas said, “God does not allow us to coat our sins in virtue.”

“Either you’re a fool or you think me one. Surely, God allows this daily. But what has that to do with my father?”

“Mr. Singer built his fortune on contraband. Is that plain enough? That is the ‘English business’ your mother refers to.”

Inconveniently, the accusation rang true. Things fell into place: the spot at Cambridge, the correspondence with an English duke, his father’s trips to Amsterdam and London. Still, selling sugar to people denied it by governments was no path to eternal pain. “You were glad enough to take my father’s tithes, and now you would send him to hell for their source. Get out.”

“But your mother!”

“Yes, my mother.” Leopold motioned toward the bedroom. “You will ease her conscience regarding my father’s soul. I don’t suggest you lie. I suggest you reconsider the matter.” But by the time Haas re-entered the sickroom to report his error, Mrs. Singer’s soul had already taken flight.

That night Leopold found the dulcimer his father had taught him to play and softly pounded out a Mozart rondo. The notes vibrated through him and soothed his soul like mystical raindrops falling in an untended garden. His heart opened, and he sent the rondo into the ethereal realm to ease his parent’s transcendent journey.

-oOo-

Marta Schonreden walked through the village with no real purpose. She just needed to be away from the house for a while. There was no one there who might object to her walking alone; illness had rendered everyone else insensible.