Eva Ibbotson - The Morning Gift

Quin rose and went to the window. It struck him that the view was the most beautiful, possibly, in the world, and that he must be careful not to smile. ‘You mean you never got as far as making love at all?’

‘No. And it’s so awful because Heini took such trouble getting the contraception things from the machine and getting cream chocolate instead and then I rushed out into the night like a frightened hen. He’s scarcely spoken to me since and you can’t blame him.’

Quin came back and sat down beside her on the sofa. ‘And why do you think me saying “I divorce you” three times would make it better?’

Ruth looked at her empty glass, then down at the carpet. ‘You see, I want to be liberated and giving and, of course, I love Heini very much. But my family… it’s difficult to get away from one’s upbringing and they are old-fashioned and marriage has always been… marriage. Even ones like ours that aren’t proper ones. And I thought, maybe it isn’t just my nervous system being deformed or having seen something horrible in a haystack on the Grundlsee. Maybe some part of me is going to go on running down fire escapes till I’m un married. Which is why I want you please to do this thing now. It’s perfectly valid, I promise you.’ She looked about her and her eyes rested on two silver candlesticks on the mantelpiece. ‘We could light some candles,’ she said. ‘That would make it more solemn.’

‘So we could,’ he said. He got up, carried the fluted candlesticks to the low table, lit a match.

‘Now,’ he said.

She turned to him. ‘Now you’re going to do it?’ she asked breathlessly.

‘Well, no,’ he said apologetically. ‘What I’m going to do now is not exactly that. What I’m going to do now, is kiss you.’

‘Oh, God — you mustn’t go away! I shall die at once if you leave me.’

He turned to where she lay beside him on the pillow. The window framed the night sky and the constellations named for the heroines of legend: Andromeda, the Pleiades… She belonged in their company now, this gallant girl who had taken her first journey into love.

‘I was going to get us something to eat,’ he said. ‘It’s nearly midnight. You must be starving.’ He ran his fingers down the curve of her cheek, her throat; gathered a handful of her tresses. ‘ I am looped in the loops of her hair,’ he murmured, his face in the hollow of her shoulder.

‘Miss Kenmore didn’t teach me that,’ said Ruth, not pleased with this gap in her education.

‘No. We have rather moved out of Kenmore country.’

A long way out of it. He had evidently decided against killing her by getting out of bed and as she folded herself against him, she realized that she must be careful not actually to become him, which would be impractical. Then suddenly she drew away.

‘Quin, something terrible has happened! I haven’t had my tristesse !’ She gazed at him, her eyes huge. ‘You know, the thing you have afterwards. Total despair. Postcoital tristesse , it’s called. It’s in all the books! It’s when you realize that in spite of everything, every human soul is tragically and hopelessly alone, and I don’t feel it at all; I feel absolutely marvellous. I told you I wasn’t like other people.’

‘No,’ he said rather shakily. ‘You’re not in the least like other people. If you were, all the gods would come down from Olympus and proclaim Paradise on Earth.’ And presently: ‘We’ll eat later.’

But later, quite suddenly, he fell asleep and she followed him into his imagined dreams as he twitched, chased into a Utrillo landscape of rich green trees and hounds and huntsmen in scarlet — and she vowed to keep awake because she must miss nothing of this night, not one instant… but she did sleep in the end, briefly, and woke up in wonderment because she understood now what people meant when they said: ‘She slept with him.’ That it was part of the act of love, this sharing of oblivion.

When he too woke it was suddenly and with contrition. ‘Now you shall eat , my poor love,’ he said, and they went into the kitchen hand in hand because she wasn’t prepared to be separated from him even for as long as it took to cross the hallway, and had a picnic of bread and cheese and a wine that was not very much like the Liebfraumilch that she had drunk in Janet’s flat.

‘Oh, I’m so hungry,’ said Ruth, and she seemed to be tasting food for the first time. And pausing with a hunk of Emmentaler in her hand: ‘Do you think it will come later, the tristesse? The terrible, tragic hopelessness — the feeling that everyone is really alone?’

‘I am not alone,’ said Quin, coming round behind her, holding her. ‘And nor are you. We shall never be alone again.’

When they had eaten, they opened the French windows and stood looking out at the sleeping city and the river which never slept. Wrapped in Quin’s dressing-gown, feeling his warmth beside her, she took great breaths of the night air.

‘Sweet Thames run softly till I end my song,’ she quoted. ‘I may not know improper poems about people’s hair, but Miss Kenmore taught me a lot of Spenser. I love it so much, this river.’

‘I too,’ said Quin. ‘As a matter of fact I think I might go in for some bottle-throwing on my own account. I shall go out tomorrow and buy a thousand lemonade bottles and put a note in each and every one and drop them from the bridge.’

‘What will they say, the notes? What will you put in them?’

He turned his head, surprised at her obtuseness. ‘Your name, of course. What else?’

Hand in hand, still, they wandered back to bed. ‘It’s strange,’ said Ruth. ‘I thought love would be like the slow movement of the Mozart Sinfonia Concertante… or like one of those uplifting paintings my mother used to take me to look at with putti and clouds and golden rays… or even like the sea. But it isn’t, is it?’

‘No. Love is like itself.’

‘Yes.’ She sighed… curled herself, warm and relaxed and pliant against his side.

But when presently she indicated that in spite of her deep frigidity and the tristesse which she expected at any moment, she was, so to speak, there , and he gathered her into his arms, he did not use any of the endearments in either of the languages which they spoke.

Clearly and quietly in the darkness, Quin said: ‘My wife.’

He had dropped Ruth off at the corner of her street soon after it was light. Now, punctually at nine o’clock, he parked the Crossley outside the elegant premises of Cavour and Stattersley, Jewellers, since 1763, to His Majesty the King, and made his way up the steps.

It had come to him unbidden — this uncharacteristic desire to buy her a present that was sumptuous beyond reason; a useless, costly gift that would blazen his love to the skies. Uncharacteristic because there was no such tradition at Bowmont — no family tiara stowed in the bank and brought out for high days and holidays; no Somerville parure handed down through the generations. His grandmother had kept her Quaker faith and her Quaker ways; Aunt Frances possessed one cameo brooch which appeared, listing slightly, on the black chenille on New Year’s Eve.

But now for Ruth — for his newly discovered wife — he wanted to make a gesture that would resound through the coming generations, a proclamation! The times were against it, his conscience too: as he passed through the wide doors held open by a flunkey, the orphans of Abyssinia, the unemployed, stretched out imaginary hands to him, but to no avail. Later they would be sensible, he and Ruth: they would plough and sow and make rights of way; they would sponsor yet more opera-loving cowmen, but now, instantly, he would send a priceless, senseless gift to his beloved, and she would rise from her bed and know!