Eva Ibbotson - The Morning Gift

But there was one chore which he intended to tackle before he went north: the undoing of his marriage.

The affairs of Bowmont were in the hands of a long-established and dozy firm of solicitors in Berwick-upon-Tweed, but for quick action in this highly personal matter, Quin had selected Dick Proud-foot, of Proudfoot, Buckley and Snaith, whom he had known in Cambridge.

Proudfoot was in his early thirties, a chubby, balding man whose amiable expression became considerably less amiable as Quin began to speak.

‘You have done what?’

‘I have married an Austrian girl to get her over here. She’s partly Jewish and she was in danger — there was nothing else to do. Now I want you to get me a divorce as quickly as you can. I’ll provide the evidence, of course. I imagine that business still works about being caught in bed in a hotel by the chambermaid?’

‘Funny, I thought you were intelligent,’ said Mr Proudfoot nastily. ‘I remember people saying it in Cambridge. What sort of quixotic idiocy is this? Even if it were possible for you to convince the judge that this kind of caper represents a genuine adultery — and they’re getting very suspicious these days — it would hardly secure you a speedy divorce. You can’t even begin to petition till three years after the marriage.’

Quin frowned. ‘I thought the Herbert Act had changed all that? The poor man worked hard enough to get it through.’

‘It has increased the grounds on which a divorce may be granted, but in this case the three-year clause still stands.’

‘Well, it’ll have to be an annulment then,’ said Quin cheerfully. ‘That was my first idea, but it sounded a bit ecclesiastical.’

Mr Proudfoot sighed and wrote something on a piece of paper. The laws on nullity were archaic and complex, and his subject was company law. ‘What do you suggest? Nullity can be declared if one or both parties are under sixteen at the time of the ceremony, if there is a pre-existing marriage, if the parties are related by prohibited degrees of consanguinity, if there is insanity in one partner unknown to the other at the time of the marriage, or if the bride is a nun.’

Quin waved an impatient hand. ‘Well, she’s not my sister or a nun and she’s not technically insane unless trying to swim out of Switzerland with a rucksack can be regarded as mental derangement. What else?’

‘There is nonconsummation,’ said Mr Proudfoot reluctantly, seeing minefields ahead.

‘That’s the one,’ said Quin cheerfully. ‘I spent our bridal night in the corridor of the Orient Express.’

‘You may have to prove it.’ The lawyer made another note, adding snarkily that he presumed Quin would plead wilful refusal to consummate rather than incapacity. ‘And there’s another difficulty’

‘What’s that?’

‘Well, you married this girl to give her British citizenship. But if you prove nullity ex causa precedenti — that is to say if you dissolve the marriage on grounds existing before it took place — then it is possible that the British citizenship which followed from the marriage could be imperilled. Of course, nonconsummation isn’t in this category, but if she’s under twenty-one we could be in trouble. The naturalization of minors is under review, but in my opinion we’d be unwise to go for nullity until her status as a British subject is confirmed and she has her own passport.’

Quin looked at his watch. ‘Look, do what you can, Dick, and as quickly as possible. The girl’s very young and she’s in love with a soulful concert pianist. Oh, and write to her, will you, and say we’re putting it through as fast as we can. Offer her any help she needs and charge it to me, but I think it’s best if I don’t see her again.’

‘That isn’t just best, it’s absolutely essential,’ said Mr Proudfoot. ‘If there’s anything that can scupper any kind of divorce or annulment, it’s the three Cs.’

‘The three whats?’

‘Connivance. Collusion. Consent. Any suspicion that you’ve been fixing things between you and the courts will throw out the evidence then and there.’

‘Good God! You mean they’d rather we parted in anger than sensibly and in accord?’

‘That is precisely what I mean,’ said Mr Proudfoot.

It was hot, the summer of 1938. In the streets of Belsize Park and Swiss Cottage and Finchley, the pavements glittered, the dustbins gave out Rabelaisian smells. In the ill-equipped kitchens of the lodging houses, milk turned sour and expiring flies buzzed dismally on strips of sticky paper. Children in buggies were pushed up the hill to Hampstead Heath to picnic in the yellowing grass or catch tiddlers in Whitestone Pond. In Spain, Franco’s Fascists scored victory upon victory; in Germany, Hitler stepped up his tirades about the Sudetenland, ready to move against the Czechs. Mussolini started to ape, though less effectively, the Führer’s measures against the Jews.

The British would have found it vulgar to let the ill-bred ravings of foreigners interfere with their pleasures. Trenches were dug in the parks, leaflets were issued giving instructions about the issue of gas masks; the fleet stood ready. But the rich left without signs of perturbation for their grouse moors or houses by the sea. The poor, as always, stayed behind and took the sunshine on their doorsteps or in their tiny gardens.

The refugees were poor and they stayed.

Ruth’s arrival had enabled her family to try to reconstitute their lives. Professor Berger now left for the public library each morning with his briefcase, to sit between Dr Levy and a tramp with holes in his shoes who came to read the paper, and hid from Leonie, and partly even from himself, the knowledge that without the references and notes he had left behind, his book could only be a travesty of what he might have written. Aunt Hilda, having discovered that entry to the British Museum was free, spent hours wandering round the Anthropology section and found (among the exhibits from Bechuanaland) an error which caused her the kind of excited melancholy so common in scholars presented with other people’s follies.

‘It is not a Mi-Mi drinking cup,’ she would say each evening. ‘I am quite certain. The attribution is wrong.’

‘Well then, go and tell someone, Hilda,’ Leonie would suggest.

‘No. I am only a guest in this country. I have no right.’

Uncle Mishak now had park benches he had made his own, and friends among the gardeners who kept London’s squares and gardens tidy. Like a small boy, he would come home with treasures: a clump of wallflowers which still retained their scent, thrown onto a compost heap; a few cherries dropped onto a pavement from an overhanging branch. As for Leonie, once she’d accepted the miracle of Ruth’s return, she began to repair the network of friends and relations, of good causes and lame dogs, that had filled her life in Vienna. Dispersed and scattered these might be, but there was still her godmother’s sister, newly arrived in Swiss Cottage, a schoolfriend married to a bookbinder in Putney, and an ancient step-uncle from Moravia, a little touched in the head, who sat under the statue of Queen Victoria on the Embankment, convinced that she was Maria Theresia and he was still in his native city.

As for the ladies of the Willow Tea Rooms, they responded to the worsening of the situation in Europe with a gesture of great daring. They decided to stay open in the evening — to the almost sinfully late hour of nine o’clock. This, however, meant engaging a new waitress — and here they were extremely fortunate.

Ruth’s first concern when she arrived had been to hide her marriage certificate and all other evidence of her involvement with Professor Somerville whom she could now only serve by never going near him or mentioning his name.