Eva Ibbotson - The Morning Gift

‘That’s Heini.’

Quin did not doubt it. The photo, taken on the day of his graduation from the Conservatoire, was in colour and emphasized Heini’s dark curls, his light grey, long-lashed eyes. He stood beside a Bösendorfer grand, one hand resting on the lid, and he was smiling. Across the right-hand corner of the picture, in large, spiky Gothic script, were the words: To my little starling, with fondest love, Heini.

‘How do starlings come into it?’ Quin wanted to know, remembering the distress that mention of these robust birds had caused her in the flat.

Ruth explained. ‘Mozart had one. He bought it in the market for thirty-four kreutzers and he kept it in a cage in his room. It used to sing and sing but however loud it sang it never bothered him…’ She told the story, her face alight, for she never forgot that first time when Heini had claimed her.

Quin listened politely. ‘And what happened to it?’ he asked when she had finished.

‘It died,’ Ruth admitted.

‘It would,’ commented Quin.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Well, they’re not cage birds, are they? Perhaps Mozart didn’t know that?’

‘Mozart knew everything,’ she flashed.

Quin grinned and left her. She put on an extra sweater and made her way onto the deck. As she emerged from the First-Class Lounge, she saw two fur-clad and unmistakably upper-class ladies, settled for sea sickness in reclining steamer chairs.

‘Wasn’t that Quin Somerville?’ said one.

‘Was it? I didn’t see.’

‘I’m pretty sure it was. That crinkly face… so attractive. I thought I saw him on the platform with a girl. One of those little peasants in a loden cape.’

‘Goodness! Could he be serious?’

‘I wouldn’t have thought so, she hardly seemed his style. Not nearly soignée enough.’

A steward passed and the ladies demanded rugs.

‘If he is serious, poor Lavinia will go into a decline. She still thinks she’s going to get him for Fenella.’

‘Well, you can’t blame her. All that money and —’

Ruth drew back and went out by a different door. Quin was standing in the bows, his hair blown by the wind, absorbed in the pattern of the water as the ship drew away. I knew he was rich, of course, she thought: I must have known, and that the world is full of Fenellas waiting to marry him. Well, good luck to them — a man who sneers at Mozart and runs from Strauss as though the devil is at his heels.

‘I suppose we won’t see each other again after we land,’ she said resolutely.

‘I’d like to see you safe to Belsize Park, but after that it would certainly be best if we went our separate ways. If you want anything you have only to contact my solicitor — not just about the annulment, but about anything with which you need help. He’s an old friend.’

Yes, she thought; your solicitor. Not you.

‘I owe you so much,’ she said. ‘Not just that you got me out, but money. A lot of money. I must pay you back.’

‘Yes, you must do that,’ he said — and she turned to him in surprise. His voice was harsh and forbidding and she had not expected that. All along he had been so open-handed, so generous. ‘And you know what that means?’

‘That I must find a job and —’

‘That’s exactly what it doesn’t mean! The most stupid thing you can do is to take some trumpery job for short-term gain. I can just see you being a shop assistant or some such nonsense. The only sensible thing to do is to get yourself back to university as soon as possible. If University College has offered you a place you couldn’t do better. Remember there are all sorts of grants now for people in your position; the world is waking up at last to what is happening in Europe. Then when you’ve got a degree you can get a decent job and pay me back in your own good time.’

She digested this, but he noticed that she made no promise and he frowned, fearing some quixotic nonsense on her part — and Ruth, seeing the frown, remembered something else he had bestowed.

‘What about the ring?’ she asked. ‘What shall I do with it?’

‘Anything you like,’ he said indifferently. ‘Sell it, pawn it, keep it.’

Quelled, she looked down at her hand. ‘Anyway I’d better take it off before my parents ask questions. Or Heini, if he’s there already.’

She tugged at the ring, turned it, tugged again. ‘It’s stuck,’ she said, bewildered.

‘It can’t be,’ he said. ‘It slipped on so easily.’

‘Well, it is,’ she said, suddenly furious.

‘Perhaps your hands are hot.’

‘How could they be? It’s freezing !’ And indeed they were well clear of the harbour now and in a biting wind.

He laid a hand lightly on hers. ‘No, they seem to be cold, but I can’t see any chilblains. Try soap.’

She didn’t answer, but turned away and he watched her stamp off, her hair flying. She was away for a considerable time and when she returned and laid her hand on the rail once more, he was startled. Her ring finger was not just reddened, it looked as though it had been put through a mangle.

‘Good God,’ he said. ‘Was it as bad as that?’

She nodded, still visibly upset, and, realizing that she had retreated into her Old Testamental world of omens and disasters, he left her alone.

When he spoke again, it was to say: ‘Look! There they are!’

And there, indeed, they were: the White Cliffs of Dover, the hymned and celebrated symbol of freedom. So much less impressive than foreigners always expected; not very high, not very white… yet Quin, who had made light often enough of this undistinguished piece of Cretaceous chalk, now found himself genuinely moved. After the horrors he had left behind in Europe, he was more thankful than he could have imagined to be home.

At the end of the Bergers’ second week in Belsize Park, Hilda was sacked. She had climbed onto a stepladder to dust an ornament on the top of Mrs Manfred’s bookcase, and the bookcase had fallen on top of her. It was the only one in the house, Mrs Manfred not being a reader, but glass-fronted, and a splinter had hit the dog.

No one was surprised, and no one blamed Mrs Manfred, but Hilda took it hard and stayed in bed, covered in zinc plaster, and wrote letters to the district officer in Bechuanaland enquiring after the Mi-Mi, which she did not post because she had no money for stamps and Leonie looked as though she would keel over if asked for anything at all.

Uncle Mishak, as the days passed and Ruth still did not come, got up at dawn and walked. He covered vast distances in his slow, countryman’s gait and he knew that this was risky, for in one month, or perhaps two, his shoes would wear out, but he had to be out of doors.

Mishak’s beloved wife was beyond hurt. He had brought a handful of earth from her grave into exile, but he needed nothing to remind him of Marianne. She was inside his soul.

But to Ruth, in the nightmare world his country had become, there could befall unthinkable harm. Mishak had not wanted to come to the Felsengasse when Marianne died. He appreciated Leonie’s kindness, but he had wanted to stay in the house he had built for his wife on the slopes of the Wienerwald. He had come to the flat to thank Leonie for her offer and to refuse it. But Leonie was out. It was the six-year-old Ruth, fresh from her bath, who had thrown her arms around him and said: ‘Oh, you’re coming to live, won’t it be wonderful! You’ll take me to the Prater, won’t you — I mean the Wurstlprater, not the healthy part with fresh air — and can we go and see the llamas at Schönbrunn? Inge says they spit and make you quite wet. And you’ll let me lean out of the window of the cable car when we go up to the Kahlenberg, won’t you? You won’t keep holding my legs?’