Eva Ibbotson - The Morning Gift

And even now, an official ‘unmarried mother’ from whom the older villagers averted their eyes, even now when Quin had unmistakably rejected her, there was, deep down below the anxiety and fear for the future, an unquenchable sense of joy because she was carrying his child.

Only the child itself had lately disconcerted her. This fishlike creature still unable to breathe or eat except by her decree, had developed a will of its own. Ruth did not need the doctors in the antenatal clinic to which she travelled once a fortnight on innumerable buses, to tell her that her baby was fit and well, but what about its mental state — its obstinacy? It disagreed completely with Ruth’s careful plans and was profoundly uninterested in her voyage of self-discovery.

Bowmont is only sixty miles away, it said, twisting its foot merrily round her spinal nerves. You may be an upstart and an outcast, but I’m half a Somerville.

I want, it said, my home.

At the end of November, Leonie received a visit from Mrs Burtt who had left the Willow to work in a munitions factory and was greatly missed by the customers. Smartly dressed in a new brown coat and a hat with a feather, she was carrying a small parcel wrapped in silver paper and seemed a little shy and tentative which was not her usual state.

‘I’m sorry to be bothering you,’ she said, ‘but… well, I thought you wouldn’t mind; you wouldn’t take it amiss.’

‘How could I do this?’ asked Leonie. ‘I am very happy to see you.’

She led Mrs Burtt into the sitting room, in which one could actually sit once more now that the piano had been sent back, and offered coffee which Mrs Burtt refused.

‘I don’t want to pry,’ she said, after asking rather oddly if they would be undisturbed. ‘But well, I really like her, you know, and people sometimes say things, but I know Ruth is as good as they make them. And her going off like that to have it on her own… well, it’s like her. Not wanting to bother anyone. But I want her to know that whatever she’s done I know she’s a good girl and I’d like you to give this to her. Afterwards. Not before, because that’s bad luck, but when it’s all over. I knitted it myself.’

She laid the parcel on the table, and Leonie, who was having trouble with her breathing, stretched out her hand. ‘May I see?’ she said.

Mrs Burtt removed the wrapping paper. Pride shone for a moment on her face. ‘Took me hours, that did. It’s a brute of a pattern. It’s those scallops, see? But it’s come out nice, hasn’t it? I kept it white to be on the safe side, but she can put a blue ribbon through it or a pink when it’s all over.’

Leonie was still having difficulty with the business of drawing air into her lungs. ‘Thank you — she will be so pleased. It is the most beautiful jacket. I will see that she has it… and tell her… what you have said.’

Mrs Burtt nodded. ‘I don’t want to know any more now,’ she said. ‘It’s not my business. Just to know she’s all right and the baby’s safe.’

Leonie, swallowing the unbearable hurt her daughter had done her, said: ‘Did she tell you… herself… about the baby?’

Mrs Burtt shook her head ‘Bless you, no. She’s no blabber. But I was one of four daughters and I’ve three girls of my own. I guessed soon enough. There’s ways of being sick that’s a bug in the tummy and there’s ways that isn’t. And she got so tired. I came out with it and I think it was a relief she could talk to someone.’

‘And… where she was going… her plans? Did she tell you about that?’

‘No. And I didn’t ask her. I knew it wasn’t Heini that was the father, so there wasn’t any more for me to say.’

Leonie lifted her head. ‘How did you know?’ she asked.

‘Well, you could see she didn’t love ’im, couldn’t you? Tried too hard all the time… And if it wasn’t him, I wasn’t going to go nosing around.’

‘I didn’t see… as well as you,’ said Leonie out of her deep despair.

Mrs Burtt’s work-roughened hand rested for a moment on her own. ‘You was so close, the two of you,’ she said. ‘You loved her so much. It’s a real killer, love is, if you want to see.’

Left alone, Leonie sat as still as a statue, holding the exquisite, tiny garment in her hands. Ruth had not trusted her. She had confided in a lady who washed dishes and not in her. She had gone off alone.

Professor Berger, returning home, found her still in a state of shock.

‘What has happened, Leonie? What have you got there?’

‘It’s a baby’s jacket.’ She traced the scallops on the collar, the lacy frill, with blind fingers. ‘Mrs Burtt brought it for Ruth.’

She watched as her husband’s face changed; saw the incredulity, the dismay… then the tightness of anger.

‘My God, that scoundrel, Heini. I’ll force him to marry her,’ he said furiously.

‘Oh, Kurt, it isn’t Heini’s child. If it was she’d have gone with him.’

This was worse. His beloved, protected daughter a fallen woman, the bearer of an unknown child. Pitying him as he paced the room, Leonie had no energy to retrieve him from his conventional hell of moral outrage. What is it I have not understood? she thought. What is it that is missing here? And if I was right all along, how could it have come to this?

The doorbell rang, shrill and insistent. Neither of the Bergers moved.

‘What are you going to do?’ asked the Professor — and the sudden helplessness of this proud man did touch her.

‘I’ll tell you what I’m going to do,’ she began.

A second ring… and now Fräulein Lutzenholler’s door could be heard opening, and her indignant footsteps as she made her way downstairs. The easing of laws against refugees at the onset of hostilities meant she was allowed to practise her profession and, incredible as it seemed, people came to her room and paid to have her listen. Answering the doorbell would annoy this exalted person very much.

She returned, as displeased as Leonie had anticipated, and with her was a red-faced man in some kind of uniform.

‘It’s the rodent officer,’ said Fräulein Lutzenholler — and as Leonie stared blankly at this man she had awaited with hope and passion for month after month: ‘He has come about the mice.’

‘Oh, yes… thank you…’ Leonie rose, tried to collect herself.

‘Please go where you will. They are everywhere. The kitchen is bad… and the back bedroom.’

‘That’s all right, ma’am. I’ll just get on with it. Looks like a sizable infestation you have here — I may have to take up some boards.’

He left the room and they could hear him moving about, tapping the walls, opening cupboards.

‘I’ll tell you what I’m going to do,’ said Leonie, turning back to her husband. ‘I’m going to take Ruth’s letter to the post office and make them tell me where it comes from and then I’m going to go there and find her. And when I have found her I’m going to bring her back here and look after her and after my grandchild. And if the father’s a chimney sweep I’m going to do it.’ She swallowed. ‘Even if he is a Nazi chimney sweep, because if Ruth gave herself to him it’s because she loved him and she is my blood and yours also, so you will please not —’

A knock at the door and the rodent officer reappeared.

‘I found this under the boards in the back room,’ he said — and deposited on the table a large, square biscuit tin covered in mouse droppings and adorned with a picture of the Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret Rose patting a corgi dog.

She had come by bus as far as Alnwick, but there were eight miles still to go before she reached Bowmont. She’d have walked it easily enough in the old days, but not now, and she spent some of her meagre stock of money on a taxi as far as the village. It would have made sense to be set down by the house itself, but she couldn’t face that. She didn’t want to sweep up as a claimant — it was sanctuary she sought at Bowmont, not her rights.