Eva Ibbotson - The Morning Gift

Miss Maud, unasked, set down Leonie’s usual cup of coffee. The actor from the Burg Theatre — a fair-haired, alarmingly handsome man exiled for politics not race — said many people were escaping through Portugal, a fact confirmed by the couple from Hamburg at a corner table.

Paul Ziller said nothing, only patted Leonie’s hand. Lonely beyond belief without the three men with whom he had made music for a decade, he was remembering the comical, blonde child who had climbed out of her cot the first time the quartet had played for Professor Berger’s birthday and come stamping down the corridor in a nightdress and nappies, refusing absolutely to be returned to bed.

Mrs Weiss, her auburn wig askew under her hat, now launched into an incoherent story involving a missing girl who had turned up unexpectedly on a milk train to Dieppe. The scourge of the Willow Tea Rooms, she was seventy-two years old and had been rescued by her prosperous lawyer son from the village in East Prussia where she had lived all her life. The lawyer now owned a mock Tudor mansion in Hampstead Garden Suburb, a fishpond, and an English wife who deposited her dreadful mother-in-law each morning in the café with a fistful of conscience money. The words ‘I buy you a cake?’ struck dread into the other habitués who knew that acceptance meant listening to Mrs Weiss’s interminable lament about her daughter-in-law who did not allow her to fry onions, speak to the maids, or help.

When she had finished, the English lady, who for a year had refused to speak across the tables, said that if Leonie really was an Aquarian, the stars in the Daily Telegraph that morning had been entirely favourable.

‘It definitely said that you can expect a pleasant surprise,’ said Mrs Fowler, feeding a biscuit to the dog.

But when Professor Berger came in, weary from his long walk up the hill, and then Uncle Mishak, it was clear that the stars in the Telegraph had not prevailed.

‘Well, tomorrow, perhaps,’ said Miss Maud, putting down the plate of bread and butter which was the Bergers’ lunch.

‘Yes, tomorrow,’ echoed Miss Violet.

And Leonie said, yes, and thank you, and remembered to ask about the wedding of Mrs Burtt’s niece, and the cat which had had kittens in an unsuitable linen basket in the ladies’ flat above the shop.

Then Professor Berger picked up his manuscript on The Mammals of the Pleistocene and went with Dr Levy to the public library, and Paul Ziller went to play Bach partitas among the wash basins and lockers of the Day Centre, and the actor (who had declaimed Schiller from Europe’s most prestigious stage) made his way to the casting offices in Wardour Street to see if someone would let him say Schweinehund in a film about wicked German soldiers in the Great War.

‘We go to look for schnitzel?’ said Mrs Weiss, cocking her raddled head at Leonie. And Leonie nodded and accompanied the old lady out into the street and into the shop of the nearby butcher with whom Mrs Weiss did daily battle — for helping Mrs Weiss to procure the delicate veal suitable for frying and thus confound her daughter-in-law was so time-consuming and so tiresome that it had — oh, surely — to be classed as Being Good.

Until the long day was done at last and Hilda returned with a hole in her skirt where she had caught it in Mrs Manfred’s carpet sweeper, and Uncle Mishak changed into his pyjamas in his cupboard of a room and said, ‘Good night, Marianne,’ as he had said every night for eighteen years and not stopped saying when she died. And Leonie and her husband climbed into their lumpy bed, and held each other in their arms — and did not sleep.

But in the flat above the Willow Tea Rooms, a light still burned.

‘I suppose we could serve some of those cakes of theirs,’ said Miss Maud as the two ladies, in flannel dressing-gowns, sat over their cocoa.

‘Oh, Maud! Not… strudels? I’m sure Father would not have wished us to serve anything like that.’ Three years younger than her sister, Violet was less skeletally thin and, at forty-three, her hair still retained traces of brown.

‘No, not strudels, I agree. That would be going too far. But there’s one they all talk about. It begins with a G. Sounds like guggle… Guglhupf or something.’

Violet put down her cup. ‘Buy it in from the Continental Bakery, you mean?’

‘Certainly not. There is no question of anything being bought in. But I did just glance at the recipe when I was in the library,’ said Miss Maud, blushing like someone admitting to a peep at a pornographic magazine. ‘You need a mould, but it isn’t difficult.’

There are many ways of helping. That early summer evening when Ruth was lost in Europe and the first airraid sirens were tried out in Windsor Castle, the ladies of the Willow Tea Rooms let compassion override principle.

‘Well, if you think so, Maud,’ said Violet — and they put the cat in with the kittens, and washed up their cocoa cups, and went to bed.

The Franz Josef Station, at two in the afternoon, was relatively quiet. Only local trains left from platform seven. Here there were none of the tragic scenes of parting; weeping parents, children with labels on their coats being sent to safety abroad. The wooden third-class carriages were filled with peasant women carrying bundles and babies, or chickens in coops.

Ruth, leaning out of the carriage window, was dressed as they were in a dirndl and loden cape, a kerchief round her head. She had found an old rucksack in one of her father’s cupboards and repacked her few belongings. With her unruly Rapunzel hair straight-jacketed into two pigtails, she looked about sixteen years old and seemed to be in excellent spirits.

‘And I can do the local dialect; you’ll see, I’ll be fine. Only you shouldn’t have given me so much money.’

‘Don’t be silly, I can well afford it, I’ve told you.’

Quin had put off his departure for yet another day, determined to hear of her safe arrival, schooling his impatience as cables and telephone messages from England collected at Sacher’s. Ruth had spent two nights at the museum; no one had given her away, not the cleaning lady, not the night watchman, and Quin, relieved that his task was nearly done, smiled at her with avuncular kindness.

‘I think I must be the richest peasant girl in the whole of Austria,’ she said. ‘But I’ll pay you back. On Mozart’s head, I swear it.’

He made a dismissive gesture. ‘No need to trouble the composer.’

The guard came by, doors were slammed. The self-important engine emitted clouds of steam, and under cover of the noise, Ruth leant over to speak into his ear.

‘Please, when you go and see my parents will you tell them not to worry —’

‘Of course.’

‘No, I mean tell them I’ll be with them very soon. In less than a month, I hope. I know exactly what to do.’

Apprehension seized him. ‘What do you mean?’

The mail had been loaded now. A last door slammed — and Ruth’s face came out of the steam, radiant and self-assured.

‘I’m going to walk over the mountains into Switzerland,’ she said. ‘I’ve done it before when I was staying there. You go over the Kanderspitze; it’s only a few hours. I did it with one of the boys from the farm and the guards didn’t even turn round!’

‘For God’s sake, girl, that was before Hitler and all his devilry. The Swiss are armed and on the alert. Next thing they’ll shoot you for a spy.’

‘No, they won’t. I promise I’ll be all right. Then when I’m safe in Switzerland I’ll make my way to the French border and swim the Varne — it’s a tributary of the Rhône and it’s not at all wide; I’ve looked it up on the map. After all Piatigorsky swam the Sbruch with his cello over his head to get away from the Russians so I ought to manage with a rucksack. I’m a very good swimmer because of my Aunt Hilda… Do you remember she did this breast stroke where she never actually moved and I got used to pushing her across the lake. And once I’m in France all I have to do is contact my father’s cousin. He’s got a boat and he’ll take me across the Channel, I know, so —’ She broke off. ‘What are you doing? You’re hurting me! Let me go!’