Eva Ibbotson - The Morning Gift

Quin did not think. He liked Chelsea; the little shops in the streets that ran back from the river; greengrocers and shoemakers and picture framers, and the pubs where the bargees still drank, and though he did not go to his lectures at Thameside by boat, it amused him to think that it was possible.

Just as a man’s friends are those who get there first and refuse to go away, so his servants are those who have installed themselves and become, for one reason or another, impossible to dismiss. Lockwood had been butler at Bowmont and should not have been shopping and cooking and valeting Quin, a job which meant a considerable loss of salary and prestige. Nevertheless, since Quin at the age of eight had brought his first discoveries up from the beach and demanded that the Somerville Museum of Natural History be set up in the stables, Lockwood had regarded the boy as his responsibility. This involved no show of amiability on the butler’s part. He was a tall, thin man with a Neanderthal cranium and mud-coloured eyes and there were those who maintained that Quin’s unmarried state was due to the fact that Lockwood had dismembered all aspiring Mrs Somervilles and thrown the pieces in the river.

Quin arrived in the middle of the afternoon, having dropped Ruth off in Belsize Park. Though he had been away five months, Lockwood’s greeting was measured.

‘Saw you on the newsreel,’ he said, and carried Quin’s suitcase to the bedroom.

But the furniture glowed with polish, the post was stacked in neat piles, there were fresh flowers in the vases, and now he returned with the tea tray and a plate of muffins.

‘Will you be dining at home, then?’ When he left Bowmont, Lockwood had dropped the obsequious manner of an upper servant and now addressed Quin as if he was a wayward, but gifted, nephew.

‘Yes, I will, Lockwood. That isn’t boeuf en daube I can smell, by any chance?’

Lockwood bared his teeth in what he regarded as a smile and agreed that it was. Knowing that he had made his servant happy, for Lockwood was a formidable cook, Quin turned to the post. There were innumerable invitations from hostesses who were presenting their daughters, or giving dances for them, or making up little parties for Ascot and Henley, and the knowledge that he had missed most of these without the necessity of refusing, was pleasant. Though his professional mail went to the university, there was a letter from Saskatchewan offering him the Chair of Zoology and the usual missives from people who had found bones in their gardens and were sure they were mammoths or mastodons. Among the list of names of those who had telephoned, that of Mademoiselle Fleury, who was back from Paris, was prominent.

But it was not Claudine Fleury whom Quin now telephoned, though the thought of her brought a smile to his face; it was his long-suffering deputy and senior lecturer at Thameside, Dr Roger Felton.

Quin had not intended to accept an academic post. It was the journeys, the freedom to follow clues wherever they turned up that he valued in his professional life, and though he kept a room in the Natural History Museum, he had resisted all offers of a chair.

The man who had changed this was Lord Charlefont, the Vice Chancellor of Thameside, an enlightened despot who had changed Thameside from a worthy but undistinguished college of further education into a university with its own charter and a reputation throughout the country. Under Charlefont’s reign, Thameside had merged with an art college in Pimlico, taken over the Institute of Natural Sciences and moved into a gracious Palladian building on the south bank of the river which he had wrested from the Ministry of Works.

‘I know you don’t need the job,’ he had said, offering Quin the Chair of Vertebrate Zoology, ‘but we need you. I want excellence; I want someone with an international reputation. There shouldn’t be any trouble about going off on journeys — I can always find someone to fill in for a term or two — and I think you’d like teaching.’

So Quin had accepted, specifying a personal chair at a lower salary and no administration, and the arrangement had worked well. He found he did like teaching; in Roger Felton he had a willing and efficient deputy, and the field course he ran at Bowmont had become a model of its kind. Moreover, in Lord Charlefont he discovered not only the ideal employer but a friend. The Vice Chancellor’s Lodge at Thameside was built into the main courtyard and Charlefont kept open house. A first-year student with problems was as welcome as the most eminent academic and Quin had enjoyed some of the best conversations of his life in the long drawing room with its terrace on the river.

But six months ago, just before Quin left for India, Charlefont had had a heart attack and died within hours. A good end for a strong and active man, but a blow to Thameside and to Quin. Of his successor, Desmond Plackett, who had spent ten years in the Indian Educational Service and been rewarded with a knighthood, Quin, as yet, knew nothing.

Now, dialling the university, he was put through at once to Felton in his laboratory. His deputy taught the Marine Biology course, as well as dealing with admissions: a friendly man, deeply concerned about the students, whose spectacle frames seemed to lighten or darken according to his mood.

‘Oh, you’re back, are you?’ said Felton.

Since Quin himself had abolished the protocol and rank-pulling which still existed in so many university departments, he now had to endure some strong remarks about professors who left their underlings to mark their exam papers while they gallivanted about in foreign cities.

‘It wasn’t quite like that — but I’m sorry about the extra load. How have they done?’

‘Oh, brilliantly on your questions, of course. I dare say you could teach Palaeontology to a chimpanzee and get him a First. The new intake looks promising too — numbers are up again.’

‘You haven’t had any applications from refugee organizations, have you? University College is taking foreign students, I know.’

‘Not so far.’

‘Well, if you get any, accept them — it’s hell over there, I can tell you. Even if it means putting them to work in a broom cupboard, say yes.’

‘All right, I will. Though I don’t know what the new VC will say; he doesn’t seem to be much of a one for the huddled masses yearning to breathe free.’

‘Plackett’s a dud, is he?’

‘He’s one of those faceless men — adores committees. The paperwork’s trebled since he came, but there’s no harm in him; it’s his wife that’s the bother. Wants to improve the moral tone of the university and makes the college servants run her errands. She’s a Croft-Ellis by birth — one of the Rutland Croft-Ellises. Mean anything to you?’

‘Nothing earth shattering.’

‘But that’s not all,’ said Felton ghoulishly. ‘There’s a daughter!’

‘There usually is, I’ve found,’ said Quin resignedly.

‘Ah, but it’s worse than that! She’s coming to us to do a Zoology degree and she’s going straight into the third year because she’s covered most of the ground in India. I interviewed her last week and she was kind enough to tell me that she thought our course would be acceptable.’

‘Good God,’ said Quin.

‘Exactly so.’

Quin spent the next two days in the Natural History Museum, supervising the disposal of the specimens which Milner had steered safely through the customs. Thameside he avoided, deciding to go up to Bowmont first and come back to prepare for the autumn term when the man who was filling in as visiting Professor had gone back to the States. Professor Robinson was prone to anxiety: he had worried because Quin’s name was still on the door of his room, and about the length of his gown, and it seemed tactful to let him complete his tenure without interference.