Eva Ibbotson - The Morning Gift

‘Good God, Verena,’ he said, ‘you don’t think that I meant to take you!’

The final examinations for the Honours Degree in Zoology took place in the King’s Hall, a large, red-brick building shared by all the colleges south of the river. An ugly, forbidding place, its very walls seemed steeped in the fear of generations of candidates. Dark wooden desks, carefully distanced each from the other, faced a high rostrum on which the invigilators sat. There were notices about not smoking, not eating, not speaking. A great clock, located between portraits of rubicund Vice Chancellors, ticked mercilessly, and the stained floorboards were bare.

To this dire place, Ruth and her friends had crawled, day after day, their stomachs churning… had waited outside, pale with fear and sleeplessness, trying to crack jokes till the bell rang and they were admitted, numbered like convicts, to shuffle to the forbidding desks with their blue folders, the white rectangles of blotting paper which they would see in their dreams for years to come.

But today was the last exam, if the most important. In three hours they would be free! It was the Palaeontology paper, the one in which Ruth would have hoped to excel, but she hoped for nothing now except to survive.

‘It’ll be all right, Pilly.’ Wretched as she was, Ruth managed to smile at her friend, glad that whatever else had gone wrong with her life she had not neglected to help Pilly. ‘Don’t forget to do the “Short Notes” question if there is one; you can always pick up some marks on those.’

The bell rang. The door opened. Even on this bright June morning, the room struck chill. The two invigilators on the platform were unfamiliar: lecturers from another college whose students also had exams this morning. A woman with a tight bun of hair and a purple cardigan; a grey-haired man. Not Quin, who was sailing in a week, and Ruth was glad. If things went wrong, as they had before, she wouldn’t want him watching her.

‘You may turn over your papers and begin,’ said the lady with the bun in a high, clear voice.

A flutter of white throughout the hall… ‘Read the paper through at least twice,’ Dr Felton had said. ‘Don’t rush. Select. Think.’

But it would be better not to select or think too long. Not this morning…

What do you understand by the Theory of Allometric Growth? She could do that; it was a question she’d have enjoyed tackling under different circumstances — the kind of question that enabled one to show off a little. Discuss Osborn’s concept of ‘aristogenesis’ in the evolution of fossil vertebrates. That was interesting too, but perhaps she’d better do the dunce’s question first — Question Number 4. Write short notes on a) Piltdown Man b) Archaeopteryx c) The Great Animal of Maastricht…

Clever candidates were usually warned against the ‘short notes’ questions; they didn’t give you a chance to excel — but she wasn’t a clever candidate now, she was Candidate Number 209 and fighting for her life.

Verena had started writing already; she could hear her scratching with her famous gold-nibbed pen. Verena frightened her these days. Verena was solicitous, her eyes bored into Ruth.

But Verena didn’t matter. Nothing mattered except to get through the next three hours of which seven minutes had already passed.

The Theory of Allometric Growth, which quantifies the relationship of small animals to large ones, wrote Ruth, deciding to take a chance.

Pilly scratching out her views on Piltdown Man, whose reconstructed skull mercifully hung above her father’s shaving mirror, looked up, saw Ruth’s bright head bent over her paper, and exchanged a relieved look with Janet. The clock jerked forward to the first half-hour. One question done, thought Ruth; four more… The short notes, then, because it was beginning; it was getting quite bad, actually, but she would fight it off; she would take deep breaths and it would pass. Oh God, I’ve worked so hard, she thought, suddenly swamped by self-pity. It can’t all be wasted!

The Great Animal of Maastricht was discovered in 1780 in the underground quarries of St Peter’s Mountain, wrote Ruth, her pen moving very fast because nothing mattered except to get something down for which someone could give her a mark. If she failed this paper, she would fail her degree… there could be no resits in December; not for her.

But there was no way of writing fast enough. She could feel the sweat breaking out on her skin, the dizziness… Another deep breath.

Ruth put up her hand.

On the dais the lady with the bun looked up, said something to the man beside her, and made her way slowly, agonizingly slowly, between the desks.

‘Yes?’

‘I need to go to the toilet.’

‘So soon?’ The lady was displeased. ‘Are you sure?’ She looked again at Ruth, at the beads of sweat on her forehead. ‘Very well. Come with me.’

Everyone watched as Ruth was led out. It was a complicated procedure, taking out a candidate — no one could go unwatched. It was like escorting a prisoner, making sure there was nothing secreted behind the lavatory seat — no file to saw through the bars, no crib giving the geological layers of the earth’s crust.

Pilly bit her lip. Huw and Sam exchanged worried glances. Ruth had had to go out before, but never so early.

Then Verena, too, put up her hand.

This wasn’t just inconvenient; this had the making of a minor crisis. No candidate could leave the room unattended — on the other hand at least one invigilator had to be present at all times. Up on the rostrum, the grey-haired man frowned and pressed a bell beneath his desk. A secretary from the Examination Office appeared in the doorway and was directed to the desk where Verena, still writing with her right hand, continued to hold her left arm aloft.

‘I wish to be excused,’ said Verena.

The secretary nodded. Verena rose — and the incredulous gaze of all the Thameside candidates followed her to the door. It was hard to believe that Verena even had bodily functions.

The gold hand of the great clock jerked forward… three minutes… four…

Then Verena returned. She looked pleased and well, and immediately took up her pen again. Of Ruth Berger there was no sign.

It’ll be all right, thought Pilly frantically. Ruth had had to go out in the Physiology exam too, and in the Parasitology practical… but never for as long as this. Never for twenty minutes… for half an hour… for forty minutes… Ruth was clever but no one could miss so much of an exam and still pass.

The woman with the bun had returned long ago; she was conferring with the grey-haired man, they were looking at Ruth’s empty desk.

Three-quarters of an hour… an hour…

And then it was over and still she had not come.

She was the most famous ship on the Atlantic route: the Mauretania, still Queen of the Ocean with her luxurious salons, her cinema, her glamorous shops. Film stars travelled on her and Arab princes and business tycoons. Even now a woman in a fantastic fur coat was coming up the gangway, pursued by photographers for whom she turned and produced a dazzling smile. Heini too had been photographed as he left on the boat train; his life, since the competition, had been completely transformed. Even half the prize money had enabled him to leave Belsize Park and move into a small hotel. He could have travelled First Class too, but Fleury was bringing Ruth over and that meant travelling Tourist. Having made that sacrifice made Heini feel benign — and actually even the Tourist accommodation was luxurious enough. Leaning on the rail watching for Ruth, who should have been here by now, Heini let his eye travel over the bustle of the docks — cranes loading mysterious packages, vans bringing last-minute cargo — and drank in the smell of tar and rope and seaweed. The Mauretania might be a kind of floating grand hotel, but she was still a ship, and a dockside the world over catches at the heart strings with its promise of adventure.

It was all beginning, his new life, the life he knew from childhood was really his. America and fame! And he would share it with Ruth, young as he was. There would be many women who would want him — Heini, without conceit, knew that — but a musician needs roots and a wife. Horowitz’s playing had taken on a new depth when he married Toscanini’s daughter; Rubinstein’s wife protected him from all disturbance. Ruth would do that for him, he knew.

Only where was Ruth? He looked at his watch, for the first time a little anxious. He had respected her wish to make her own way to the docks — in fact he had been rather patient with all Ruth’s moods and foibles in the month since the end of her exams. The results weren’t out yet, but he sympathized with her disappointment. Having gastric flu during the finals was rotten luck and having missed almost the whole of the last paper was a real blow to a girl as ambitious as Ruth. The most she could hope for now was an aegrotat and that wasn’t worth much, but he didn’t see that it mattered greatly now that her life was linked with his.

Only an hour before they sailed. Some of the relatives and friends who’d come on board were leaving. Perhaps he’d given Ruth too much freedom? She’d insisted on making her own arrangements for her visa and he’d given way over that too, but he hoped in general that she wasn’t going to be obstinate.

A poor family, obviously immigrants from the East — the men in black wide-brimmed hats, the women in shawls, pushing children, made their way up the gangway to the steerage — bound for some sweatshop in Brooklyn perhaps. Two old women belonging to them waited on the quayside, waving and keening: steerage passengers were not allowed to bring relatives on board to see them off. There’d have been plenty of weeping and wailing in Belsize Park as they said goodbye to Ruth; he was glad he’d missed all that. He’d have to be a bit careful about Ruth’s determination to bring her family over. He’d promised to do it and he would do it, but there were expenses to take care of first: a decent apartment, a Steinway, insuring his hands…

Ah, thank God, there she was, making her way through the crowd. She wore her loden cape, buttoned up even on this warm day, and carried her straw basket so that she looked even more like a goose girl on an alp, and for a moment he wondered if he had made a mistake… if she would fit in with the sophisticated life he was bound to lead. But Mantella thought the world of her, and Fleury… and his father ate out of her hand. He had never met a man who didn’t like Ruth, and now as she came up the gangway, a sailor walking down turned his head to look at her.

‘Ruth!’

‘Heini!’

They were in each other’s arms; he felt her hair against his cheek, the warmth, the familiarity.

‘You’ve been crying, darling.’ He was solicitous, wiping a tear away with his fingers.

‘Yes. But it doesn’t matter. It’s all right now. And I’ve brought us a present. A lovely present. It was a chance in a million, finding them in the summer, but look!’

She bent down to the straw basket and took out a small brown paper bag which she put into his hands. Heini felt the warmth before he opened it, and smiled.

‘Maroni! Oh, Ruth, that takes me back!’

He took out a chestnut, almost too warm to hold, gazed at the split skin, the wrinkled, roasted flesh — drank in the delicious smell. Both of them now were back in the city they had grown up in, wandering along the Kärntnerstrasse, dipping into the bag… sharing… sniffing… Ruth had carried them in her muff for him, walking to fetch him from the Conservatoire… Once they had eaten three bags of them, driving in a sledge through the snowbound Prater.

‘I’ll peel one for you,’ said Ruth — and she freed it deftly from the skin and held it out to him — as she had held out wild strawberries on the Grundlsee, a piece of marzipan pilfered from her mother’s kitchen.

‘Shall we take them down below?’ he suggested.

‘No, let’s eat them here, Heini. Let’s stay by the sea.’

So they stood side by side and emptied the bag and threw the skins into the water, where they were swooped on — and then rejected — by the gulls.

‘Is your luggage aboard, then?’ asked Heini. ‘We sail in less than an hour.’

‘Everything’s taken care of,’ said Ruth. She put her arms round him and once again he felt her tears. ‘Only listen, darling — there’s something I have to tell you.’

No one ever forgot where they were on the morning of the 3rd of September.