Eva Ibbotson - The Morning Gift

No, that was Heini’s dress — her page-turning dress, for it mattered what one wore to turn over music. One had to look nice, but unobtrusive. The dress was the colour of the Bechstein in the Musikverein — it had nothing to do with an Englishman who ran away from Strauss.

She wandered through the galleries and, in the grey light of dawn, her old friends, one by one, became visible. The polar bear, the elephant seal… the ichthyosaurus with the fake vertebrae. And the infant aye-aye which she had restored to its case.

‘Wish me luck,’ she said to the ugly little beast, leaning her head against the glass.

She closed her eyes and the primates of Madagascar vanished as she saw the wedding she had planned so often with her mother. Not here, but on the Grundlsee, rowing across to the little onion-domed church in a boat — in a whole flotilla of boats, because everyone she loved would be there. Uncle Mishak would grumble a little because he had to dress up; Aunt Hilda would get stuck in her zip… and the Zillers would play. ‘On the landing stage,’ Ruth had suggested, but Biberstein said no, he was too fat to play on a landing stage. She would wear white organdie and carry a posy of mountain flowers, and as she walked down the aisle on her father’s arm, there would be Heini with his mop of curls and his sweet smile.

(Oh, Heini, forgive me. I’m doing this for us.)

Back in the cloakroom, she looked at her reflection once again. She had never seemed to herself so plain and unprepossessing. Suddenly she loosened her hair, filled the basin with cold water, seized the cake of green soap that the museum thought adequate for its research workers…

Quin, letting himself in silently, found her ready, her suitcase strapped.

‘Does the roof leak?’ he asked, surprised, for from the curving strands of her long hair, drops of water were running onto the floor.

She shook her head. ‘I washed my hair, but the electric fire doesn’t work.’

He saw the shadows under her eyes, the resolute set of her shoulders.

‘Come; it’ll be over soon — and it isn’t as bad as going to the dentist.’

At the bottom of the staircase, as they prepared to leave by the side door, a small group of people waited to wish her luck. The cleaning lady, the porter, the old taxidermist on the floor below. They had all known she was there and kept their counsel. She must remember that when she felt despair about her countrymen.

She had expected something grand from the British Consulate, but the Anschluss had forced a reorganization of the Diplomatic Service, and the taxi delivered them in front of a row of temporary huts, on the tin roof of which the rain was still beating down. A disconsolate plumber in oilskins was poking at an overflowing gutter with an iron tool. Inside, in the Consul’s makeshift office, the picture of George the Sixth hung slightly askew; out in the corridor someone was hoovering.

The Consul’s deputy was there, but not in the best of tempers. He had pinkeye, an unpleasant inflammation of the conjunctiva, and held a handkerchief to his face. Though he had found Professor Somerville personally courteous, he could not approve of the way the Consul, presumably on the instruction of the Ambassador, was rushing this ceremony through. Procedures which should have taken days had been telescoped into hours: the issuing of visas, the amendment of passports. Someone, thought the deputy, whose origins were working class, had almost certainly been at school with someone else. Professor Somerville’s father with the Ambassador’s cousin, perhaps… There would have been those exchanges by which upper-class Englishmen, like dogs round a lamppost, sniff out each other’s schooling — faggings at Eton, beatings at Harrow — and realize that they are brothers beneath the skin.

‘Can I have your documents, please?’

Quin laid the papers down on the desk, and saw Ruth’s knuckles tighten on the back of her chair. Scarcely twenty years old, and a child of the new Europe Hitler had made.

‘We shall need two witnesses. Have you brought any?’

‘No.’

The deputy sighed and went out into the corridor. The sound of hoovering ceased and a lady with a large wart on her chin, wearing a black overall, entered and stood silently by the door. She had cut a piece out of the sides of her felt slippers to give her bunions breathing space and this was sensible, Ruth appreciated this, and that someone whose feet were giving such trouble could not be expected to smile or say good morning. Then the plumber came, divested of his oilskins, and smelling strongly — and again this was entirely natural — of the drains he had been trying to clean and it was clear that he too was not pleased to be interrupted in his work — why should he be?

The Consul himself now entered, distinguished-looking, formally suited, with his finger in the Book of Common Prayer, and the ceremony began.

Quin had not expected what came next. ‘It’ll just be a formality,’ he’d promised Ruth. ‘A few minutes and then it’ll be done.’ But though the Consul was using a truncated version of the marriage service, he was still pronouncing the words that had joined men and women for four hundred years — and Quin, foreseeing trouble, frowned and stared at the floor.

‘Dearly beloved, we are gathered together here in the sight of God to join this Man and this Woman in holy Matrimony…’

Beside him, Ruth moved uneasily. The lady with the cut-out bedroom slippers sniffed.

‘… and therefore is not by any to be enterprised, nor taken in hand unadvisedly, lightly or wantonly… but reverently, discreetly, advisedly, soberly…’

It was as he had expected. Ruth made a sudden, panicky movement of her head and a last drop of water fell from her wet hair onto the bare linoleum.

The Consul listed the causes for which matrimony was ordained. The procreation of children brought an anxious frown to her brow; the remedy against sin worried her less.

It was only briefly that the plumber and the cleaning lady, neither of whom understood a word, were required to disclose any impediment to the marriage or for ever hold their peace and the Consul came to the point.

‘Quinton Alexander St John, wilt thou have this Woman to thy wedded Wife…? Wilt thou love her, comfort her, honour, and keep her in sickness and in health; and, forsaking all other, keep thee only unto her, so long as ye both shall live?’

‘I will.’

‘Ruth Sidonie, wilt thou have this Man to thy wedded Husband…’

Her ‘I will’ came clearly, but with the faint, forgotten accent of Aberdeen. A stress symptom, it would appear.

The Consul cleared his throat. ‘Do you have a ring?’

Ruth shook her head in the same instant as Quin took from his pocket a plain gold band.

He too was pale as he promised to take Ruth for his wedded wife from this day forward, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health. The ring, when he slipped it on her finger, was a perfect fit. Her hands were as cold as ice.

‘With this Ring I thee wed, with my Body I thee worship, and with all my worldly Goods I thee endow.’ His voice was steady now. The thing was almost done.

‘We will omit the prayer,’ said the Consul and allowed the final injunction to roll off his tongue with a suitable and sombre emphasis. ‘Those whom God hath joined together let no man put asunder.’

It was over. The register was signed, Quin paid his dues, tipped the witnesses, put a note into the collecting box for orphans of the Spanish Civil War.

‘If you come back at four o’clock your passport will be ready with your wife’s name on it, and her visa.’

Ruth managed to reach the gravelled driveway before she burst into tears.