Eva Ibbotson - The Morning Gift

‘I can help you?’ said Leonie — and then: ‘Are you perhaps the aunt of Professor Somerville?’

‘Good heavens, woman, how did you know?’

‘There is a look… and Ruth has spoken of you. Please come in.’ Then, with the sudden panic which assails women the world over at an unexpected apparition: ‘There is nothing wrong at the university? All is well with the Professor… and with Ruth?’

‘Yes, yes,’ said Miss Somerville impatiently, wondering again why she had come. The house was appalling: the worn lino, the smell of cheap disinfectant… ‘I brought some bulbs for your uncle. You are Mrs Berger, I take it? Ruth mentioned that he liked autumn crocus and I have more than I know what to do with. Would you please give them to him?’

‘For Mishak?’ Leonie’s face lit up. ‘Oh, he will be so pleased! He is in the garden now, you must of course take them yourself — he will want to thank you. And I will make us a cup of coffee. No; tea, of course… I forget!’

‘No, thank you. I won’t stay.’

‘But you must! First I will show you the garden… it is best to go through the house because the side door is stuck.’

Frances followed her reluctantly. Now it was going to be impossible to get out of an invitation to drink tea. Foreigners could never make it properly and she would probably be expected to eat something sickly with a spoon.

Mishak was digging his potato patch — and as he straightened and turned towards them, Frances was gripped by a fierce, an overwhelming disappointment.

I have come to fetch you, he had said to Marianne, opening his briefcase, lifting his hat, and she had imagined a dapper little man in an expensive overcoat, a man of the world. But this was an old refugee, a foreigner in a crumpled jacket and cloth cap, shabby and poor and strange. It was all she could do to force herself to approach him.

Leonie explained their errand and Mishak leant his spade against the fence.

‘Autumn crocus?’ he said. ‘Ruth told me how they grow under the cherry tree.’

He took the box, pushed aside the shavings. His hands, as he searched for the bulbs, were earth-stained, square and stumpy-fingered. Hands that planted and mended, that hammered and turned screws. Not really foreign; not really strange…

‘Yes,’ said Mishak, touching a bulb. ‘How I remember them!’ He didn’t even thank her; he only smiled.

The tea was excellent, but Frances could not stay.

‘I have to shop,’ she said wearily.

Leonie’s eyes lit up. ‘Where do you go?’

‘Fortnum’s in Piccadilly.’

‘Ah, that is a wonderful place,’ said Leonie wistfully. ‘You buy a dress?’

Frances nodded. ‘And shoes.’

‘What kind of shoes?’ It was Mishak who spoke, and Frances glared at him as shocked as if it was a tree which had dared to interest itself in her concerns.

‘The same as I always buy,’ she said testily. ‘Brown strap shoes with a side button and low heel.’

‘No,’ said Mishak.

‘I beg your pardon?’ Frances was unable to believe her ears.

‘Not strap shoes. Not low heels. Not buttons,’ said Mishak. ‘Fortunati pumps with a Cuban heel, in kid. From the Milan workshops; they use a different last.’

Leonie nodded. ‘He knows. He worked for many years in my father’s department store.’

Frances was in no way appeased. ‘Certainly not! I wouldn’t dream of it. I’ve had the same shoes for years and I haven’t the slightest intention of changing now.’

‘You have a high arch; it is a gift,’ said Mishak. He felt in his pocket for his pipe, remembered that it was filled with the stumps of cigars which Ziller brought from the Hungarian restaurant, and abandoned it.

‘Anyway, no one sees what I wear up there,’ said Frances, still glowering.

‘God sees,’ said Mishak.

Ruth, coming in late from the university, heard about Miss Somerville’s visit and was instantly transformed.

‘Oh, what did she say? Tell me, Mishak — tell me everything she said! Did she talk about the garden?’

‘Yes, she did. They’ve had a hard winter, but the alpine gentians are almost out, and the magnolias.’

‘What about glassing in that bit of the south wall by the sundial? Is she going to do it? She wanted to see if she could grow a lapageria so far north — everyone said she couldn’t and you can imagine the effect that had on her!’

‘I believe she means to; yes.’

He exchanged a glance with Leonie. They had not seen Ruth look like this for weeks.

‘Oh, Mishak, it was so beautiful up there, you can’t believe it! It’s so clean and everything has its own smell, completely distinct, and the air keeps moving and moving. There must be more air there than anywhere in the world! Did she tell you whether Elsie has got on to the WEA course in Botany?’

‘No, she didn’t. Who is Elsie?’

‘She’s the housemaid. She’s really interested in plants and so nice! And what about Mrs Ridley’s grandmother — I told you about her — she was going to be a hundred in February.’ She looked up, suddenly afraid. ‘She’s still alive, isn’t she? She must be — she was so looking forward to her telegram from the King.’

‘We didn’t speak of her either,’ said Mishak.

‘I suppose the lambs will just be being born — John Ridley said the end of March. They’re like sheep in the bible up there, so clean, and you can hear them cropping the turf… And it’s full of rock roses; and the birds…’ She shook her head, but it wouldn’t go away; sometimes she thought it would never go away, the vision of blond grass and blue sky and the white horses of the sea.

‘But she told me about the little dog,’ said Mishak. ‘She’s keeping it and they’re calling it Daniel. She said I should tell you and you would understand.’

‘Daniel? Oh, yes — of course.’ So Miss Somerville had not betrayed her foolishness on the journey to the Farnes. ‘After Wagner’s stepdaughter — you know, Cosima von Bülow’s daughter, Daniella, only it’s a male, of course. Yes, that’s good! He looks like a Daniel — God help any lions if he gets into their den; he’s really fierce!’

Leonie, who had been listening to this conversation with increasing puzzlement now said: ‘But, Ruth, you see Professor Somerville every day. Why don’t you ask him about these things yourself? Whether the old grandmother is dead or the lambs are born? He must know.’

Ruth flushed. ‘I wouldn’t talk to him about Bowmont; it’s none of my business — and anyway he’s always working; he’s incredibly busy this term.’

Busy and abstracted and not at all friendly… And there were rumours that he was leaving.

She took out her lecture notes, but before she could settle down to work, the door opened and Heini came in. It was a quarter to ten, too late to practise without incurring the wrath of Fräulein Lutzenholler and he now went to sit disconsolately on the sofa, avoiding Ruth’s eyes. It was a fortnight since the meeting in Janet’s flat and he had still not forgiven her properly, but as she pushed back her notes and went to make him a cup of cocoa, Ruth understood what she had to do. For it was not only Mishak and Leonie who had learnt something from Miss Somerville’s visit. Ruth herself had obtained rather more insight into her own mind than she cared for — and now it was necessary to act.

And this meant changing the way she had been thinking. It meant repudiating her goat-herding grandmother and the consolations of her mother’s Catholic faith. It meant saying goodbye to the Baby Jesus in his crib and the consoling angels with their feathered wings, and calling on her other heritage: the stern, ancient and mysterious Jewish faith where the word of the rabbis was law and it was the God of the Ten Commandments and not of the Sermon on the Mount who reigned supreme. It was there that she would be cured of her disability and find her way back to Heini. She had not quite wanted to admit kinship with those black-bearded, shut-off figures in their skull caps… the Hassidim wandering poverty-stricken through Polish forests, the thirteen-year-old boys who studied and chanted like old men, ruining their eyes. Yet it was in the traditions of just those people that she would find deliverance.

The laws of England had failed her — or she, with her carelessness had failed them. Mr Proudfoot could not give Heini what he needed, but there were other and older laws she could evoke.

It would take courage — a great deal of courage — but she knew now what she had to do.

She tried not to run… tried to keep to a decorous walk, but it was impossible because she had to get there quickly. To Quin’s flat while her resolution held… to Quin who even now might save her.

She was beside the river, on a path between the Thames and the road with its busy end-of-the-day traffic. The lamps had just been lit, their reflections shone on the water, for the tide was high and the current raced out towards the sea.

‘Oh, God, let him be in,’ she prayed. ‘Let him be in and alone!’

But what right had she to pray? She wasn’t even a proper sinner who was entitled to the Almighty’s ear; she was a cold rejective failure. God hated the mean in spirit, she was sure of that. Or would he have understood about Krafft-Ebing and Havelock Ellis and the terrifying Eugene Feuermann? Would he think of her as simply ill and heed her after all?

It had been raining ever since she came out of the Underground; fine, slanting rain which soaked through her loden cape. Leonie had taken the hood off for relining; the cloak was dreadfully shabby, and her hair too was sodden. Not that that mattered — perhaps the rain would wash her clean once more.

A street sign opposite said Cheyne Walk, and she saw the crescent of Regency houses and the shapes of the fine trees in the gardens.

‘Henry the Eighth had a palace there,’ Quin had told her in Vienna, talking about his London home. ‘You can see a mulberry from my window that’s supposed to have been planted by Elizabeth the First. Not likely, but a nice idea.’

All the trees in the gardens of the tall houses looked as though they might have been planted by a queen. There were streaks of orange and amethyst still in the west, and turning she could see the necklace of lights on the Albert Bridge. It was a beautiful street. Well, of course. Quin was rich, he could live where he liked whereas she and Heini had had to make do with Janet’s flat. Perhaps that was why it had all gone so wrong.

But it was no good blaming anyone. The fault lay in herself. Only not entirely, perhaps. If Quin would only do what she asked it might still come right.

She was passing the wrought-iron gates of the houses now; the elegant carriage lamps, and the graceful fan windows which sent semicircles of light out onto the steps. There was no need to peer at house numbers. She had seen the Crossley at once, parked outside the door. Best to get it over then — and she walked resolutely up to the door and rang the bell.

Quin put down his pen, frowning. He had counted on a couple of hours’ work before dinner. It was Lockwood’s weekend off; he’d taken the phone off the hook and planned to finish his paper for the museum journal.

‘Good God! Ruth!’ And seeing her face, ‘What is it?’ Are you in trouble?’

She shook out her hair like a dog and followed him upstairs. ‘Yes, I am. I’m in very serious trouble.’ She spoke in her native language, her words gaining an extra and metaphysical weight.

‘Come in and get warm.’

He took the sodden cloak from her shoulders and led her into the drawing room, but though the curtains were drawn back, she did not go to the window, nor to the grate where a bright fire was burning. Instead she held out her hands to him, the palms upwards in the age-old gesture of beseechment.

‘I can’t stay. I just want you to do something for me. Something terribly important.’

‘What is it, my dear? Just tell me.’

Her head went up. Her entreating eyes held his.

‘I want you to divorce me. Completely and absolutely. This minute. Now.’

There was a pause. Then Quin, schooling his expression, said carefully: ‘I will, of course, do anything I can to help you. But I’m not quite clear how I can divorce you now. Dick Proudfoot is doing —’

‘No!’ she interrupted. ‘It’s nothing to do with Mr Proudfoot and documents and things. It’s much more fundamental than that. It’s to do with undoing a curse.’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘I’m sorry. I don’t mean that our wedding was a curse. But I knew when we said those words before witnesses… I mean, you might think if someone has bunions and cuts the sides out of their slippers it wouldn’t feel like a wedding, but bunions can’t stop oaths from mattering. So you have to absolve me and I know how you can do it because I asked Mrs Weiss. She wasn’t good about Hanukkah, but she knew about divorce and so did Paul Ziller, and anyway I knew before that. All you have to do is say “I divorce you, I divorce you, I divorce you”, three times. With your hand on my shoulder, I think, but I’m not sure about that. It’s an old Jewish law, truly, and it dissolves the marriage then and there. You should say it in front of a rabbi, but just saying it and really meaning it is what counts. Really repudiating me and wanting to be free. Only you have to say it — the man — because the old Jews were like that; it was the men who counted. And I know if you did it, things would get better. They might even be all right.’