Eva Ibbotson - The Morning Gift

‘America! Oh, Heini, that’s so far !’

What he had said then, standing in his shirtsleeves looking out at the grey, slanting rain, had shaken her badly.

‘Far?’ said Heini. ‘From where?’ — and she had seen what he saw in her adopted country: the shabby lodgings, the poverty, the unfamiliar language and ill-cooked food. But she struggled still.

‘I couldn’t leave my parents.’

He’d taken both her hands then, looked into her eyes. ‘Ruth, you’re being selfish. We can bring them over as soon as I’m established. Everyone says there’s going to be a war — what if London is bombed?’

‘Yes.’ He was right. She was being selfish. She could help her parents best that way… and help herself. Three thousand miles of ocean should ensure that she was never tempted to crawl cravenly back to Quin and the remembrance of happiness.

‘All right, Heini; if you win and Mantella can arrange it, I’ll come. And I’ll help you all I can.’

That had been two weeks ago and Ruth had helped. She glued Heini’s tattered music; she massaged his fingers; she sat beside him as he mastered the dreaded arpeggios of the Hammerklavier.

She helped Pilly too, travelling to her house and writing even more revision notes to paste on her bedroom wall, till even Mr Yarrowby, shaving each day under diagrams of Reproduction in the Porifera or graphs of Dinosaur Distribution in the United States , became quite a competent zoologist. And she continued to work at the Willow.

Just before Easter, Professor Berger, whose tenure in Manchester had been renewed for three months, moved into a larger room and asked Leonie to join him. Torn between her husband and her daughter, Leonie became distracted and it was Ruth who bullied her.

‘You must go, Mama,’ she insisted. ‘I’m fine. I have Mishak and Tante Hilda and it’s only a few weeks. When the competition is over, and the exams, we’ll have a marvellous holiday.’

So Leonie went and Ruth, freed from the constraints of maternal care, worked even harder and felt even iller — and then it was time for the beginning of the summer term.

Quin’s lectures had ended at Easter. In the weeks before the final exams he only gave two revision seminars, spending the rest of the time in the museum.

He had been quite prepared to deal with Ruth when he saw her: anger had been succeeded by an icy indifference. The past was done with; Thameside itself, as the day of his departure grew nearer, was growing shadowy. In the event, his studied indifference, the cool nod he meant to bestow on her, were not needed. Ruth cut his seminars and managed never to be anywhere that he might be. This was not the game of invisibility she had played at the beginning of the year; this was a sixth sense bestowed on those who love unhappily and one which seldom failed her. She knew when Quin was in college — even before she saw the Crossley at the gates she knew — and took the necessary action. That her work suffered was inevitable, but that no longer seemed to matter. Survival was what mattered now.

Her friends, of course, saw that she looked ill; that she had lost her appetite.

‘What is it, Ruth?’ Pilly begged day after day — and day after day Ruth said, ‘Nothing. I’m fine. I’m just a bit worried about Heini, that’s all.’

From being a girl tipped to get a First, she became someone whom the staff hoped would simply last the course. Dr Elke wanted to speak to her and then, for reasons of her own, decided against it and Dr Felton, who normally would have made it his business to find out what ailed her, was himself struggling through his days, for the Canadian ballet dancer, to everyone’s consternation, had produced twins. The babies were enchanting — a boy and a girl — so that Lillian, after years of frustration, achieved in one fell swoop a perfect family, but among their accomplishments, the babies did not number an ability to sleep. Night after night, poor Dr Felton paced his bedroom and thought wistfully of the days when his wife’s thermometer was all he had to contend with. He knew that Ruth was unwell, that her work was slipping, but he too accepted the general opinion: that she was anxious about Heini, that her work at Thameside was now second to her life with him.

There was only one treat which Ruth allowed herself during those wretched weeks, and it arose out of a conversation she had with Leonie before her mother went north.

‘That old philosopher,’ Ruth had asked. ‘The one who used to meditate on the bench outside the Stock Exchange. What happened to him?’

‘Oh, they locked him away in a Swiss sanatorium years ago. He was completely batty — when they came to clear up his flat they found it full of women’s underwear he’d stolen from the shops, and he treated his housekeeper like dirt.’

That settled it. A man could be mad and one could still heed his words; even being an underwear fetishist could be forgiven — but ill-treating one’s housekeeper was beyond the pale.

And then and there, Ruth gave up her long struggle to love Verena Plackett.

The results of the first round of the piano competition were a surprise to no one. Heini was through, as were the two Russians and Leblanc; and the second round confirmed the general opinion that the winner must come from one of those four. But the Russians, though exceedingly gifted, had been shut away in their hotel under the ‘protection’ of their escorts and Leblanc was a remote, austere man whom it was difficult to like. By the time of the finals in the Albert Hall, Heini, with his winning personality and his now well-known romance, was the public’s undoubted favourite.

‘I feel so sick,’ said Ruth, and Pilly, beside her, pressed her hand.

‘He’ll win, Ruth. He’s bound to. Everyone says so.’

Ruth nodded. ‘Yes, I know. Only he was so nervous. All last night he kept waking up.’

All last night, too, Ruth had stayed awake herself, making cocoa for Heini, stroking his head till he slept, but not able to sleep again herself. Not that that mattered much: sleep was not really one of her accomplishments these days.

A surprising number of people had come to the Albert Hall for the finals of the Bootheby Piano Competition. Of the six finalists, three had played the previous day: one of the Russians, a Swede, and Leblanc whom Heini particularly feared. Today — the last day — would start with the pretty American girl, Daisy MacLeod, playing the Tchaikovsky and end with the tall Russian, Selnikoff, playing the Rachmaninoff — and in between, came Heini. Heini had been disappointed when they drew lots: he had hoped to play at the end. Whatever people said, the last performer always stayed in people’s minds.

The orchestra entered, then the conductor. To get Berthold to conduct the BBC Symphonia for the concertos was a real coup for the organizers. Heini, rehearsing with them in the morning, had been over the moon.

On Ruth’s other side, Leonie turned to smile at her daughter. She had come down from Manchester and meant to stay till the exams the following week. Her anxiety about Ruth, who was clearly unwell, was underlain by a deeper wretchedness for she knew that if Heini won it meant America and the idea of losing Ruth was like a stone on her chest.

‘You must not show it,’ Kurt had said. ‘You must want it. She’ll be safe there and nothing matters except that.’

Since March, when Hitler, not content with the Sudetenland, had marched into Prague, few people believed any more in peace.

The whole row was filled with Ruth’s friends and relations. Beside Pilly sat Janet and Huw and Sam. The Ph.D. student from the German Department was there, and Mishak and Hilda… even Paul Ziller had come and that was an honour. Ziller was very preoccupied these days; the chauffeur from Northumberland was pursuing him, begging to be heard — there was pressure from all sides for him to lead a new quartet.