Eva Ibbotson - The Morning Gift

‘It was no trouble,’ said Quin, handing her the menu sheet.

But in fact the bribing and manoeuvring to get a compartment at such notice had been considerable. He’d done it, wanting to give her an interval of comfort between the days of hiding in the museum and the poverty which awaited her in London, and now, as she bent over the gold-lettered menu, he summoned the waiter and instructed him to pull down the blinds, for they were approaching the familiar country round her beloved Grundlsee.

‘I ought to be a Hungarian countess,’ said Ruth, looking round at the other diners. ‘Or at least a spy.’ She had taken one look at the people getting onto the train and unpacked the page-turning frock. Even so, she felt badly underdressed — whereas Quin, in the mysterious way of Englishmen who return from the wilds, was immaculate in his dinner jacket. ‘Look at that woman’s stole — it’s a sable!’ she said under her breath.

‘I dare say she’d swop with you,’ said Quin, glancing at their middle-aged neighbour with her heavily painted face.

‘Because I’m with you, do you mean?’

‘No, not because of that,’ said Quin, but he did not elaborate.

‘Do you think you might help me to order?’ asked Ruth presently. ‘There seems to be so much. ’

‘I was hoping you would suggest that,’ said Quin. ‘You see, I think we should pay particular attention to the wine.’

The wine, when it came, was presented by the sommelier who undid its napkin and held it out to Quin rather in the manner of a devoted midwife showing the head of a ducal household that he really has his longed-for son.

‘Try it,’ said Quin, exchanging a look of complicity with the waiter.

Ruth picked up her glass… sipped… closed her eyes… sipped again… opened them. For a moment it looked as though she was going to speak — to make an assessment, a comparison. But she didn’t. She just shook her head once, wonderingly — and then she smiled.

All Ruth’s acquaintances in Vienna knew that she could be silenced by music. It fell to Quinton Somerville, proffering a Pouilly-Fuissé, Vieux, to discover that she could be silenced too by wine.

‘You know, I shall be sorry to relinquish your education,’ he said. ‘You’re a natural.’

‘But we can still be friends, can’t we? Later, I mean, after the divorce?’

Quin did not answer. The wine seemed to have gone to Ruth’s hair rather than her head: the golden locks shone and glinted, tendrils curved round the collar of her dress — one had come to rest in a whorl above her left breast — and her eyes were soft with dreams. Quin had friends, but they did not really look like that.

Ruth’s vol-au-vents arrived: tiny, feather-light, filled with foie gras and oysters, and she had time only to eat and marvel and throw an occasional admiring glance at Quin, despatching with neat-fingered panache his flambéed crayfish. It was not until the plates were cleared and the finger bowls brought that she said: ‘About our wedding… about being married…’

‘Yes?’

‘Would you mind if we didn’t tell anyone about it? No one at all?’

Quin put down his glass. ‘No, not in the least; in fact I’d prefer it; I hate fusses.’ But he was surprised: the Bergers seemed a family singularly unsuited to secrets. ‘Will you be able to keep it from your parents?’

‘Yes, I think so. Later I suppose they’ll find out because I’ll have my own passport and it’ll be British, but we’d be divorced by then.’ She hesitated, wondering whether to say more. ‘You see, they’re very old-fashioned and they might find it difficult to understand that a marriage could mean absolutely nothing. And I couldn’t bear it if they tried to… make you…’ She shook her head and began again. ‘They’ve been very good to Heini; he practically lived with us, but I don’t think they altogether understand about him… my mother in particular. She might think that you… that we…’

No, she couldn’t explain to Quin how she dreaded her parents’ approval of this marriage, the gratitude which would embarrass him and make him feel trapped. To make Quin feel that he was still part of her life in any way after they landed would be an appalling return for his kindness.

The sommelier returned, beaming at Ruth as at a gifted pupil who has passed out of her confirmation class with honours. The wine list was produced again and consulted, and it was with regret that he and Quin agreed that in view of mademoiselle’s youth it would be unwise to proceed to the Margaux he would otherwise have recommended with the guinea fowl.

‘But there is a Tokay for the dessert, monsieur — an Essencia 1905 which is something special, je vous assure.’

‘Is this how you live in your home?’ asked Ruth when her new friend had gone. ‘Do you have a marvellous cook and a splendid wine cellar and all that?’

He shook his head. ‘I have a cellar, but my home is not in the least like this. It’s on a cold cliff by a grey sea in the most northern county in England — if you go any further you bump into Scotland.’

‘Oh.’ It did not sound very inviting. ‘And who lives in it when you aren’t there? Does it stand empty?’

‘I have an old aunt who looks after it for me. Or rather she’s a second cousin but I’ve always called her aunt and she’s a very aunt-like person. My parents died when I was small and then my grandfather, and she came to keep house after that. I’m greatly beholden to her because it means I can be away as much as I want and know that everything runs smoothly.’

‘Were you fond of her as a child?’

‘She left me alone,’ said Quin.

Ruth frowned, trying to embrace this concept. No one had ever left her alone — certainly not her mother or her father or her Aunt Hilda or the maids… Not even Uncle Mishak, teaching her the names of the plants. And as for Heini…

‘Did you like that?’ she asked. ‘Being left alone, I mean?’

Quin smiled. ‘It’s rather a British thing,’ he said. ‘We seem to like it on the whole. But don’t trouble yourself — I don’t think it would suit you.’

‘No, I don’t think it would. Miss Kenmore — my Scottish governess, do you remember her? — she was very fond of Milton and she taught me that sonnet where you do nothing. The last line is very famous and sad. They also serve who only stand and wait. I’m not very good at that.’

The dessert came — a soufflé au citron — and with it the Tokay in a glass as graceful as a lily… And presently a bowl of fresh fruit straight out of a Flemish still life, and chocolate truffles… and coffee as black as night.

‘Oh, this is like heaven! If I was very rich I think I would spend my life travelling the world in a train and never get there. Never arrive, just keep on and on!’

‘It’s a dream many people have,’ said Quin, opening a walnut for her and inspecting it carefully before he put it on her plate. ‘Arriving means living and living is hard work.’

‘Even for you?’

‘For everyone.’

Ruth looked up, wondering what could be difficult for a man so independent, so successful, the citizen of a free and mighty land. ‘It’s odd, even before the horror… before the Nazis, people used to say to me, oh, you’re young and healthy, you can’t have any problems, but sometimes I did. It seems silly now when all one hopes for is to be alive. But you know… with Heini… I love him so much, I want to serve him, not by standing and waiting but by doing things. But sometimes I didn’t get it right.’

‘In what way?’

‘Well, Heini is a musician. He has to practise most of the day and he likes me to be there. But I love being out of doors… everybody does, I suppose, only you can’t play the piano out of doors — not unless you’re in the Prater All Girls Band,’ she glanced reproachfully at Quin who grinned back, unrepentant, ‘and Heini isn’t. So sometimes I used to get very resentful sitting there hour after hour with the windows tight shut because draughts are bad for pianos. It seems awful to think of now when I realize how lucky I was and that all of us were safe. Do you think we shall go back to being petty like that if the world becomes normal again?’