Eva Ibbotson - The Morning Gift

At this extremely unscientific apparition, Verena stared for a few moments in perhaps justifiable distress.

Then she said: ‘I think it would be inadvisable for two newcomers to work together.’

The snub was unmistakable. Ruth flushed and turned away, and Verena proceeded to don a snow-white and perfectly starched lab coat before she decided on the partner of her choice. The group round Miss Berger was obviously unsuitable and a possible candidate — a handsome, fair-haired young man — moved away to another bench before she could catch his eyes. But hovering rather flatteringly near her was a nicely turned-out youth, tall and thin, with sandy hair which he kept short and under control.

‘What about you?’ she said to Kenneth Easton.

She had made an excellent choice. Kenneth, who watched birds (but only if they were rare) was a conscientious, painstaking young man who now saw his career take off under this august patronage and moved eagerly to her side.

‘I hope she chokes to death,’ said Sam viciously, looking across at Verena. But of course she didn’t. While the sycophantic Kenneth stood beside her, ready to receive the contents of her stomach, Verena lifted the rubber tube to her mouth — and calmly, competently, in a series of python-like gulps, she swallowed it.

Because there were so many more men than women at Thameside, and because they were so very disposed to be friendly, Ruth told everyone early on about Heini: that he was coming, that he was incredibly gifted, that she meant — after she got her degree — to spend her life with him.

‘What’s he like?’ asked Janet.

‘He’s got curly dark hair and grey eyes and he plays like no one else in the world. You’ll hear him when he comes — at least you will when I’ve got the piano.’

Heini’s existence was a blow to Sam, but he took it well, deciding to play a Lancelot-like role in Ruth’s life which would be better for his degree than a public passion — and he, and all Ruth’s friends, quite understood that if Ruth only joined those clubs that were free, or refused to come to The Angler’s Arms after college, it was because any spare money she might collect in tips at the Willow had to go into Heini’s jam jar. And soon even Huw Davies (the Welshman who was not called Morgan) could be seen staring into the windows of piano shops, for there is nothing more infectious than involvement in a noble cause.

Afterwards, Ruth wished that there hadn’t been that week at the beginning of term when Quin was not yet back from Scotland. She heard too much about Professor Somerville’s achievements, his intelligence, the wonderful things he had done for his students.

‘I’d give my soul to be taken on one of his trips,’ said Sam, ‘but I haven’t a chance; not even if I got a First. There’s always a queue of people waiting to go.’

Even Janet, who had such a poor opinion of the male sex and continued to bite the heads off her unsuccessful suitors in the manner of the wind spider in the Natural History Museum, spoke well of him.

‘His lectures are really good — he sort of opens up the world for you. And there’s absolutely no side to him. It makes my blood boil to hear Verena go on as though she owns him — she hasn’t even met him!’

But it was from Pilly that Ruth heard most about Professor Somerville. Priscilla might be unable to grasp the concept of radial symmetry in the jellyfish, but her loving heart made her perceptive and skilful where the needs of her friends were concerned, and she now decided that Ruth was not getting enough lunch.

This was true. Ruth had told Leonie that lunch in the refectory was free. She then got off the tube three stops early, used the tuppence she saved to buy a bread roll, and ate it by the river. Ruth was entirely satisfied with this arrangement, but Pilly was not, and on Ruth’s third day at Thameside she asked if she might bring a picnic and join her.

‘Wouldn’t you rather go into the refectory?’

‘No, I wouldn’t. The food doesn’t agree with me,’ lied Pilly.

She then went home and consulted her mother. Mr Yarrowby did not just make aspirins, he made a great many of them. Priscilla was driven to college in a Rolls-Royce which dropped her two streets away because she was shy about her wealth, but her mother was a down-to-earth Yorkshire woman. Mrs Yarrowby had never been overcome by pigeons in the Stephansplatz, but she and Leonie were sisters under the skin.

‘Oh dear!’ said Pilly, opening her lunch box on the following day. ‘I can’t possibly eat all that — and if I leave anything my mother will be so hurt !’

That was a cry to which Ruth couldn’t help rallying. Leonie’s desperate face when she stopped at one helping of sauerkraut had been a feature of her childhood. She shared Pilly’s flaky meat patties, the hard-boiled eggs, the parkin, the grapes… and even then there were crusts over to throw to the greedy birds which gave Ruth a special happiness.

‘Oh, Pilly, you can’t imagine how lovely it is to be able to feed the ducks again. It makes me feel like a real and proper person, not a refugee.’

‘You’d always be a real and proper person,’ said Pilly staunchly. ‘You’re the most real and proper person I’ve ever met.’

But it was as they sat leaning against the parapet with Ruth’s loden cloak wrapped round their shoulders against the wind, that Ruth learnt how much Pilly dreaded the onset of the Palaeontology course.

‘I’ll never get through,’ she said miserably. ‘I can’t even tell the difference between Pleistocene and plasticine.’

‘Yes you can… But, Pilly, why do you have to take that option? I mean, there are rather a lot of names.’

Pilly looked depressed and threw another crust into the water. ‘It’s to do with Professor Somerville.’

There was a pause. Then: ‘How is that? How is it to do with him?’

‘My father thinks he’s the perfect Renaissance man,’ said Pilly. ‘You know, he does everything. My father saw him on a newsreel about three years ago when he came back from Java with the skull of that Neanderthal lady and some other time when he was riding through Nepal on a yak. Or maybe it was a mule. You see my father had to go into a factory at fourteen and he never had a chance to do a degree or travel — that’s why he’s pushing me through college though I told him I was too stupid. And Professor Somerville is the sort of person he wants to have been.’

‘I see.’

‘He cuts all the articles about him out of the National Geographic. And then there’s the sailing — Professor Somerville won some race in a dinghy with the sea banging about over his head and my father liked that too. And he’s a Great Lover, like the Medicis, though I don’t suppose he poisons people so much.’

‘How do your parents know he’s a Great Lover?’

Pilly sighed. ‘It’s in the papers. In the gossip columns. An actress called Tansy Mallet chased him all over Egypt and now he’s got some stunningly beautiful Frenchwoman he takes to the theatre — and everyone’s always trying to get him to take them on field trips. You wait till he gets back — his lectures are always absolutely packed with people from the outside. They pay the university ten pounds a year and they can go to any lecture, but it’s his they go to.’ She bit into her sandwich. ‘And there’s Bowmont too.’

‘What’s Bowmont?’

‘It’s where Professor Somerville lives. You’ll see when we go on the field course.’

‘I’m not going on the field course,’ said Ruth. ‘But what’s so special about Bowmont? I thought it was just a house with no central heating?’

Pilly shook her head. ‘It can’t be because Turner painted it.’