Eva Ibbotson - The Morning Gift

Dr Felton now came down to earth and assumed the mantle of Senior Lecturer, Tutor for Admissions and Acting Head (in the continuing absence of his Professor) of the Department of Zoology. ‘Are you by any chance Miss Berger? Because if so, I’ve been expecting you.’

Half an hour later, in Dr Felton’s room, the technicalities of Ruth’s admission were under way.

‘Oh, it will be lovely!’ she said. ‘Everything I like! I’ve always wanted to do Marine Zoology. In Vienna we didn’t do it because there was no sea, of course, and I’ve only been to the Baltic which is all straight lines and people lying in the sand with nothing on reading Schopenhauer.’

Her arms flew upwards, her cheeks blew out, as she mimed a portly nudist holding a heavy book above his head.

‘Well, that’s settled your basic subjects then,’ said Dr Felton. ‘Parasitology, Physiology and Marine Biology. Which leaves you with your special option. With your father’s record I imagine that’ll be Palaeontology?’

For a moment, Ruth hesitated and Dr Felton, already aware that silence was not Miss Berger’s natural state, looked up from the form he’d been completing.

‘Professor Somerville teaches that himself,’ he went on. ‘It’s usually oversubscribed but I think we could squeeze you in. He’s a quite brilliant lecturer.’

‘May I take it, then? Would it be all right?’

‘I’m sure it will be. There’s a field course too; we usually have it in the spring, but with the Professor having been away we’re holding it in October.’

He frowned because the field course was officially full, the last place having been taken by Verena Plackett a few days before, but Dr Felton did not intend to let this stop him. There were no nudists reading Schopenhauer on the curving, foam-fringed sands of Bowmont Bay.

‘I don’t think I’ll be able to go to that. The Quakers are paying my fees but there won’t be anything extra for travel. My parents are very poor now.’

‘Well, we’ll see,’ said Dr Felton. There was a hardship fund administered by the Finance Committee on which he sat, but it was better to say nothing yet.

‘You are so kind,’ she said, lacing her fingers in her lap. ‘You can’t imagine what it means to be here after… what happened. I remember it all so well, you know. The smells and everything: formalin and alcohol and chalk… I didn’t think I should come to university, I thought I should work for my parents, but now I’m here I don’t think anything could get me away again.’

‘It was bad?’

She shrugged. ‘One of my friends was thrown down the steps of the university and broke his leg. But here it is all going on still, people trying to understand the world, needing to know about things…’

‘Sea slugs,’ said Dr Felton a trifle bitterly. ‘They won’t even reproduce!’

‘Ah, but that’s difficult… compatibility.’ She glanced up, testing the word, and he marvelled again at her command of English. ‘Even in people it’s difficult and if one is both male and female at the same time that cannot be easy.’

Dr Felton agreed, obscurely comforted, and sent her to the Union where one of the third years was waiting to show newcomers round. When she had left, accompanying her handshake with that half-curtsy which proclaimed the abandoned world of Central Europe, he drew her form towards him and looked at it with satisfaction. Quin was always complaining that students these days were without personality. He’d hardly be able to level that charge at his new Honours student. Quin, in fact, would be very pleased. Whether he would feel the same about Verena Plackett, whose application form lay beneath Ruth’s, was another matter.

‘Vell?’ said Mrs Weiss, and cocked her head in its feathered toque at Ruth, determined to extract every ounce of information about her first day at college.

‘It’s going to be wonderful,’ said Ruth, setting a pot of coffee in front of the old lady, for she had not yet given up her evening job at the Willow Tea Rooms.

Everyone was in the café, including her own family, for Ruth’s return to her rightful place among the intelligentsia demanded celebration and discussion. They had heard about the niceness of Dr Felton, the majesty of Dr Elke and her parasites, the beauty of the river and the Goethe-loving sheep.

‘And Professor Somerville?’ enquired her father, who had only just arrived, for on Fridays the library stayed open late.

‘He isn’t back yet. He went to Scotland to try and join the navy,’ said Ruth, frowning over the slice of guggle she was bringing to Dr Levy. She had been certain that a man of thirty should not have to go to war. ‘But everyone says he is the most amazing lecturer.’

The lady with the poodle now arrived, and in deference to her the conversation changed to English.

‘You haf met the students?’ Paul Ziller enquired.

‘Only one or two,’ said Ruth, vanishing momentarily into the kitchen to fetch the actor’s fruit juice. ‘But there’s a girl starting at the same time as me — Verena Plackett. She’s the daughter of the Vice Chancellor and I expect she could choose any course she liked, but she’s doing the Palaeontology option too which shows how good it is.’

Ziller put down his cup. ‘Wait!’ he said, raising a majestic hand. ‘Her I haf seen!’

The eyes of the entire clientele were upon him.

‘How haf you seen?’ enquired Leonie.

Ziller rose and made his way to the wicker table on which lay the piles of magazines which the Misses Maud and Violet, bowing to the need of the refugees for the printed word, now brought downstairs. Ignoring Woman and Woman’s Own provided by the poodle-owning lady, and Home Chat , the contribution of Mrs Burtt, he sorted through the copies of Country Life , selected the issue he wanted, and began to turn the pages.

Considerable tension was by now generated, and Mrs Burtt and Miss Violet came out of the kitchen to watch.

‘Hah!’ said Ziller triumphantly, and held up the relevant page.

In the front of Country Life there is always a full-page photograph of a girl, invariably well bred, frequently about to marry someone suitable, but whether engaged or not, presenting a prototype of upper-class womanhood. Here are the Fenella Holdinghams who, in the spring, will marry the youngest son of Lord and Lady Foister; here the Angela Lathanby-Gores after their victory in the Highlingham Steeplechase… And here now was Verena Plackett — daughter of the newly appointed Vice Chancellor of Thameside — and not just Verena Plackett, but Verena Plackett gowned for presentation at Their Majesties’ courts in flesh-coloured satin with a train embroidered in lover’s knots of diamanté, and ostrich feathers in her hair.

Ruth, putting down her tray, was awarded first look, and studied her fellow student with attention.

‘She looks intelligent,’ she said.

Passed round, Verena seemed to give general satisfaction. Ziller liked her long throat, von Hofmann praised her collar bones and Miss Maud said she’d have known her anywhere for a Croft-Ellis by her nose. Only Mrs Burtt was silent, giving a small sniff which it was easy to attribute to class hatred.

But it was Leonie who looked longest at the picture and who, when she left the café, asked if she could borrow the magazine.

‘I’m not a snob,’ she said to her husband, who smiled a wise and matrimonial smile, ‘but to have Ruth back where she belongs… Oh, Kurt, that is so good.’

It was not till Ruth had gone to bed that Leonie set up her ironing board for she did not want her daughter to know how long she worked, or for how little money. But as she smoothed the fussy ruffles and frills on Mrs Carter’s blouse, she was humming a silly waltz she’d danced to in her girlhood and presently she put down the iron and once more examined Verena’s face.