Eva Ibbotson - The Morning Gift

Quin turned to her. ‘No reason at all,’ he said firmly. ‘Absolutely none. It’s a subject I feel strongly about, as it happens — giving women a chance.’

Verena, that night, was a happy woman. It could not mean nothing, the vehemence of his assurance, the warmth in his eyes — and she now decided that exercising in her rooms was not enough. If she wanted to be sufficiently fleet of foot she would need something more challenging — and the obvious game for that was squash. Squash, however, needs a partner and fighting down her hesitation (for she did not want to elevate him too markedly) she invited Kenneth Easton to accompany her to the Athletic Club.

She could not have known the effect of this summons on poor Kenneth, living with his widowed mother in the quiet suburb of Edgware Green. Piggy banks were emptied, post office accounts raided, to equip Kenneth with a racket and a pair of crisp white shorts to brush his even whiter knees.

And the very next Tuesday, he had the happiness of leaving Thameside with the Vice Chancellor’s daughter, bound for health and fitness on the courts.

‘I feel so guilty ,’ said Ruth to the sheep. ‘So ashamed.’ Since her naturalization she had taken to talking to it in English. ‘I don’t know how I came to do such a thing.’

The sheep shifted a hoof and butted its head against the side of the pen. It had consumed the stem of a Brussels sprout which Mishak had dug out of the cold ground of Belsize Park, and seemed to be offering sympathy.

‘I know it’s wrong to complain to you when you have such a hard life,’ she went on — and indeed the future of the sheep, rejected by the meat trade due to its contamination by science, and by science due to its solitary state, was bleak. ‘I would give anything to be able to help you and I know exactly where you should be… it’s a Paradise, I promise you. There are green, green fields and the air smells of the sea and every now and then a tractor comes and tips mangelwurzels onto the grass.’

But it was better not to talk about Bowmont even to the sheep. She still dreamt about it almost nightly, but that would pass. Everything passed — that was something all the experts were agreed about.

‘I just hope he’s in a good mood,’ she said, picking up her basket.

But this was unlikely. Quin, since Heini came, had scarcely thrown her a word. Well, why should he? The shame of that moment when she had thrown the stone would be with her for always. There were other rumours about the Professor: that he was living hard, burning the midnight oil.

She made her way to the lecture theatre, and as he entered her worst fears were confirmed.

‘He looks as though he’s had a night on the tiles,’ said Sam.

Ruth nodded. The thin face was pale, the forehead exceedingly volcanic, and someone seemed to have sat on his gown.

Yet when he began to lecture the magic was still there. Only one thing had changed — his exit. Moving with deceptive casualness towards the door, Quin delivered his last sentence — and was gone. Alone among the staff, Professor Somerville did not get thanked by Verena Plackett.

She had been told to come at two, but he was late and she had time to examine the hominid, looking a little naked without Aunt Frances’ scarf, and wander over to the sand tray where the jumbled reptile bones were slowly becoming recognizable.

Quin, coming into the room, saw her bending over the tray as she had done in Vienna. It seemed to him that she looked as she had looked then; lost and disconsolate, but he was in no mood for pity. His own evening with Claudine Fleury had been an unexpected failure. Their relationship was of long standing, well understood. A Parisienne whose first two husbands had not amused her, she lived in the luxurious Mayfair house of her father, a concert impresario frequently absent in America, and was the kind of Frenchwoman every full-blooded male dreams up: petite and dark-eyed with a fastidious elegance which transformed everything she touched.

Last night, the evening had fallen into its accustomed pattern: dinner at Rules, dancing at the Domino and then home to the comforts of her intimately curtained bed.

If there had been a fault, it had been his, he knew that, and he could only hope that Claudine had noticed nothing. The truth was that everything which had drawn him to her: her expertise, her detachment, the knowledge that she took love lightly, now failed in its charm. He had experienced that most lonely of sensations, lovemaking from which the soul is absent — and Ruth, seeing his closed face, laced her hands together and prepared for the worst.

‘What can I do for you?’

Ruth took a deep breath. ‘You can forgive me,’ she said.

Quin’s eyebrows rose. ‘Good God! Is it as bad as that? What do you want me to forgive you for?’

‘I’ll tell you… only please will you promise me not to mention Freud because it makes me very angry?’

‘I shall probably find that quite easy,’ he said. ‘I frequently go for months at a time without mentioning him. But what has he done to upset you?’

‘It isn’t him, exactly,’ said Ruth. ‘It’s Fräulein Lutzenholler.’ And as Quin looked blank, ‘She’s a psychoanalyst: she comes from Breslau and she’s been nothing but trouble! She burns everything — even boiled eggs and it’s difficult to burn those — and her soup gets all over the stove and my mother is sure that it’s because of her we have mice. And every night at half-past nine she gets on a chair and thumps on the ceiling to stop Heini practising. And then she dares …’ Ruth’s indignation was such that she had to stop.

‘Dares what?’

‘She dares to talk to me about Freud and what he said about losing things.’

‘What did he say?’

‘That we lose what we want to lose… and forget what we want to forget. It’s all in The Interpretation of Dreams or something. I would never have told her that I’d left the papers on the bus, but there was no one else in and I’d been up and down to the depot and the Lost Property Office and I was absolutely frantic. I didn’t tell her what I’d left on the bus, of course, only that it was important — and then she dares to talk about my unconscious — a woman who leaves black hair all over the bathtub and tortures carrots to death at ninety degrees centigrade!’

Quin leant across the desk. ‘Ruth, would you just tell me very quietly what this is about? What did you leave on the bus?’

She pushed back her hair. ‘The annulment papers. All those documents that Mr Proudfoot gave me. They were in a big cardboard tube and he took such trouble!’

Quin had risen, walked over to the window. His back was turned towards her and his shoulders were shaking. He was really angry, then.

‘I’m so sorry. I’m terribly sorry.’

Quin turned and she saw that he had been trying not to laugh.

‘You think it’s funny,’ she said, amazed.

‘Well, yes, I’m afraid I do,’ he said apologetically. He came over to stand beside her. ‘Now tell me exactly how it happened. In sequence, if possible.’

‘Well, I’d been to Mr Proudfoot and I had my straw basket and this huge scroll and I thought I would go straight to Hampstead on a bus to get it signed by the Commissioner for Oaths because I knew there was one in the High Street. And I got one of those old-fashioned buses which are open on top, you know, and of course there aren’t any double-deckers in Vienna, so I went upstairs and I got the front seat too! And I was just looking at everything because being so high and so open is so lovely and when we came to the edge of the Heath I looked down and there was a patch of Herrenpilze; you know — those big mushrooms we found on the Grundlsee? They were behind the ladies lavatory and I knew they wouldn’t be there long because you sometimes get bloodshed up there with the refugees fighting each other for them, so I rushed down to get off at the next stop and pick them because food is a bit tight since Heini — I mean my mother is always glad of something extra. And when I turned into the park I realized that I’d forgotten the papers, but I wasn’t in too much of a panic because I was sure they’d be at the depot, but they weren’t and they weren’t in the Lost Property Office either and I’ve been back and forward the last two days and it’s just hopeless. And I don’t know how to explain to Mr Proudfoot who’s been so kind and taken so much trouble.’