Sophie and the Sibyl (37 page)

‘Madonna!’ he yelped, delighted.

His mother turned round, her face outlined in white light, and found herself facing both the unsuspecting Sibyl and Mr. John Walter Cross.

Max recognised the visitors at once, and, tingling with horror, saw what had happened. He sped down the church towards them. But the Sibyl had not recognised Sophie. She was now near-sighted and stood there, vulnerable without her glasses. She addressed the young woman in French. Above her Sophie glittered in a blaze of white light.

‘
Voilà, Madame
,
votre fils
. I think nothing’s broken.’

‘Mrs. Lewes! How very extraordinary –’ Max jumped in, appalled, alarm rather than pleasure evident both on his face and in his voice. Everybody stared at one another.

The Sibyl switched to German. ‘Can it really be you, Max?’

She then glanced at the illuminated figure standing at the centre of the apse. Then this young woman must, almost certainly, be that denouncing venomous harpy who forced entry into my household, and prevented me from sleeping for almost a week. She froze, horrified, all the formulas of politeness dying on her lips. But Johnny Cross recognised Max as the sympathetic gentleman of the frozen gardens and began shaking hands vigorously.

‘What a pleasure, sir. A great pleasure to see you again. And in much happier circumstances.’

Sophie murmured an excuse, snatched up Leo and evaporated in two rapid stages, down the nave at full tilt, then out of the door into the brilliant white light and away round the side of the
campanile
. She flashed past the beggars, vendors and hucksters, who had no chance to regroup in importunate postures, and came to rest in a deserted corner overlooking the mudflats and the far lagoon. Her breath pumped out in thick gasps. She leaned against the warm brick of the
campanile
and set Leo down beside her on the browning grass. She noticed the missing shoe.

Max, abandoned before the altar, like a jilted bridegroom, was left with the task of being polite and enquiring after everybody’s health. He addressed the Sibyl once more as Mrs. Lewes. She smiled fleetingly, now clearly unsettled and deeply embarrassed.

‘We seem doomed to misunderstand one another, Max. May I formally introduce you to my husband, Mr. John Cross, who was indeed a dear friend to Mr. Lewes?’

‘But we’ve already met, dearest,’ said Johnny Cross, confused and perfectly oblivious of any awkward atmosphere generated by this chance encounter. Max stared at the Sibyl, open-mouthed. Was she telling the truth? She called the last one husband, when he wasn’t. The Sibyl ploughed on.

‘We are in fact visiting Venice on our wedding journey. We are staying at the Hôtel de l’ Europe.’

‘Where we should be delighted to receive you and your wife,’ declared Johnny Cross, hospitable but ill-advised. He misread the rapid squeeze of the Sibyl’s hand upon his wrist, and went on issuing polite invitations. The Sibyl, desperate to escape and terrified that the vanished harpy would reappear and begin screaming further accusations for all the church to hear, now bowed so deeply that her lace mantilla detached itself slightly from her heavy netted hair, and hung askew. Then she fled from the basilica, Johnny Cross trailing in her wake. Max was left standing in front of the Virgin still clutching his son’s hat and shoe. Shunted aside by a guide with a fresh party of tourists, he collapsed in a chair above the crypt, and waited for the storm to pass.

From the far side of the canal that led to the village Sophie watched the odd couple making off in the direction of the jetty. There goes Mrs. Lewes and her
cavalier servente
! She found herself, if not exactly victor of the field, at least the last to leave.

A letter from Wolfgang waited in reception.

Berlin, 6th June 1880

My Dear Max,

She is indeed married! And in church! All London is simmering with the scandal. There was an announcement in
The Times
, but I did not see it. I have, however, received a postcard from Herr und Frau Klesmer simply asking, ‘Is it true?’ News travels fast, but, it seems, not so fast as to reach you both in Venice. You must call upon them at once and present our congratulations and good wishes. It will be an unlooked-for honour that Sophie cannot have expected – to meet her idol at last! If they are on their wedding journey they will not wish to discuss business. But it would be very helpful if you could get to know the husband. I gather he is her financial adviser, so we may be dealing with him, rather than Charles Lewes, for the Cabinet edition. I have it on good authority that
Theophrastus Such
has sold over 6,000 copies. We must secure the contract if we can. It is therefore imperative that you should show Mr. and Mrs. Cross every courtesy. Flowers perhaps, and a formal message first. She seems to generate controversy whatever she does, whether married or unmarried.

Give Sophie and Leo my love. Keep me informed of everything that happens. This could be a wonderful opportunity for us. And don’t fail me,
petit frère
.

Liebe Grüße

Dein Wolfgang

Max waited two days, then sent the flowers surreptitiously, so that Sophie’s enduring rage against the Sibyl would not be rekindled. That dreadful business with the necklace in Homburg now lay shrouded in the wastes of past time. Why, that was in the days when he found himself seriously compromised, begging Wolfgang for money! Anyway, the congratulations and good wishes came from Duncker und Duncker, as her German publishers, not from Max himself. He decided that he could keep Sophie circumscribed within the domestic sphere without appearing impolite, or suggesting that the Sibyl still could not figure among the acquaintances of virtuous married women. But he certainly ought to follow up the flowers with a brief visit.

Karl went out spying upon Max’s instructions and returned with the necessary information. He had quizzed their gondoliers and, after parting with a small bribe, discovered that the interrupted visit to Santa Maria Assunta had been followed by a trip to Murano, Santa Maria Formosa and then back to the Accademia. On Thursday they had been to San Zaccaria and spent hours peering at the paintings in bad light. On Friday they pounded off to San Vitale and took tea with someone called Mr. Bunney, whom they met again on the following morning in the Piazza, then all three set off back to Santa Maria Formosa, and then on to the Salute. They listened to the music on Sunday in the Scuola Grande di San Giovanni Evangelista, then returned to Mr. Bunney. A Mrs. Bunney now entered the picture, a stout lady with a bright green parasol, who escorted them all to the Manfrin Palace and the Palazzo dei Quattro Evangelisti. They took all their meals in their rooms, avoided the dining hall and never loitered in the foyer. Max mopped his damp cheeks and throat in sympathetic horror at this rapid and inexorable process of cultural consumption. He found himself literally sweating with tourism.

On Tuesday 15th June they went back to the Accademia, but Mr. Cross felt unwell in the afternoon and so they did not go out. Next morning, on Wednesday 16th June, Sophie departed for a day at the Lido with another German family they had befriended in the hotel. Max decided to send up his card to the Sibyl with a little message, wishing Mr. Cross a speedy recovery, and then to beat a retreat. He arranged to have himself rowed to the wharf before the Hôtel de l’Europe, but there was Karl, just outside the Danieli’s rotating doors, bristling with fresh information.

‘Herr Cross is seriously indisposed, sir. The lady has summoned Dr. Richetti for an urgent consultation.’

The clatter of bells and the mass of morning traffic bringing deliveries of fish and fresh vegetables to the market on the wharf blurred Karl’s urgent report. Max hauled him into the gondola and yelled at him to say it all again. So, the young man had fallen in the battle to keep pace with the Sibyl.

Even in the midst of his embarrassed dismay at the church of Santa Maria Assunta, beneath the ironic indifference of the gigantic Madonna, Max registered the fact that Mrs. Lewes, now a decidedly old lady, had blossomed beneath her appalling mantilla, and marched off down the nave with a bounce in her stride. Her young
cavaliere
, red and sweating, tramped beside her. And it was the handsome athletic red-beard who lay toppled upstairs, not the old frail dame.

A breathless rush through a damp German forest surged across Max’s memory of the woman, who still, obscurely, haunted his imagination. He heard Lewes’s voice urging him to take Polly out for a canter, and remembered his own chagrin upon discovering that the racehorse rarely proceeded at anything less than a gallop.

‘Oh well, that’s probably for the best. I won’t have to persist with visits. We’ll deliver our deepest respects and sincere concern for Mr. Cross’s health, wish him a rapid recovery and retreat at once to the Lido.’

Max imagined Sophie’s glowing face emerging from her bathing machine as he approached, like the wicked stepmother in ‘Snow White’, carrying a basket of fresh fruit and a melting bowl of ice cream.

They rocked slowly up to the jetty where a drenched red carpet led directly into the Grand Foyer. A gaggle of English visitors wobbled into their gondolas, exclaiming and fanning themselves. The hotel foyer steamed gently with foliage, a tropical palm court, designed to host Sunday-afternoon concerts. Max stepped aside on to the wooden planks, paused to light a cigarette and give himself time to compose a suitable sentence or two that he could slither into the envelope along with his visiting card. But he had no time to compose more than a single phrase. A great shout went up from the gondolas. He sprang back against the cold stone of the hotel wall in time to see a black figure tracing a giant curved arc in the air, the feet whirling like chariot wheels. The man leaped from the balcony above him, cleared all four gondolas and landed with a gigantic splash directly in the middle of the Grand Canal. Karl, stationed in the outermost gondola, immediately hurled himself into the water. So did one of the gondoliers, who later turned out to be one Corradini, the man employed by Mr. and Mrs. Cross to squire them around on their Venetian visits. Corradini had recognised his employer, flying through the air. For the man struggling to sink beneath the green water, resisting all attempts at rescue, was none other than Mr. John Walter Cross.

Max rushed to help the hotel staff, who hoisted the limp and sodden man out of the water. His shirt ripped open, revealing a hairy, virile, barrel chest, beneath the dripping beard. The sad fellow gave up the fight and lay groaning on the jetty, helpless and dishevelled. He wore no shoes. Max clasped his naked ankles and raised them up to stop them dragging on the marble squares as they transported him into the foyer. Five men, all shouting at once in desperate Italian, carried him rapidly up the stairs. The affair shuddered through the public rooms in a slow motion of whispers and stares. Someone’s fallen in. He didn’t fall. He leaped. Who is it? Who is it? The banker married to the much older lady. I didn’t catch the name.

On the wide landing decorated with worm-white copies of classical statues Max confronted a vision of the Sibyl, gaunt and terrified, visibly aged before his very eyes, as if the magic potion of her energy had been drained away. She uttered a low cry and staggered against Dr. Richetti who clutched his watch chain, as if he too needed support. They rushed the dripping body into the marital bedroom and laid him out upon the rumpled sheets and tossed pillows. Max relinquished the collapsed ankles and found the Sibyl attached to his arm like a dying clam.

‘Max, help me,’ she whispered.

The San Marco police station classified the incident as a ‘suicide attempt’ and reported the event in the following manner:

J.W. Cross, an Englishman of forty years, had been lodged for two weeks at the Hôtel de l’Europe with his wife, a woman over sixty. For some days he had been looking sad and melancholy, prompting his wife to call in a doctor. While they were talking, the husband, in the next room, made the aforementioned attempt on his life.

Max spent the rest of the day composing telegrams and organising their rapid expedition to William Cross, the unfortunate banker’s brother, begging him to come at once. Cross himself, doused with chloral, passed out. Max insisted on a little brandy for the shaking, distraught Sibyl. Karl was dispatched to the Lido, where he found Sophie, who had been waiting for hours, expecting Max at any moment, livid with fury, ready to eat the tablecloth, and once she had heard the story, prepared to drown the Sibyl herself.

What happened in those days leading up to The Great Leap? Well, the Sibyl’s real identity remained concealed. No hint that the elderly lady married to the mad banker was in fact the famous novelist, known under many other names, ever leaked out in Venice. But Rumour, that fleet-footed creature, raced across the mountains. London society rippled with malicious speculation. Even the police reports noticed the age difference between husband and wife. Had the lascivious demands of the elderly widow simply exhausted the young man? Had the very suggestion that he should enjoy the body of a woman old enough to be his mother rushed him to the edge of the balcony? Did he prefer boys? I’m told Venice is the right place for that. Was there madness in the family? The Sibyl said so. That’s what she told the doctor; but genetic insanity lets her off the hook, doesn’t it? Had Johnny Cross previously suffered from some kind of personality disorder, and the sudden onset of suicidal melancholy? An earlier incident is recorded, but nothing so serious as the Venetian defenestration. Who knows the truth, especially when it is disagreeable and embarrassing for all concerned?