Eva Ibbotson - The Morning Gift

‘I think I must be the richest peasant girl in the whole of Austria,’ she said. ‘But I’ll pay you back. On Mozart’s head, I swear it.’

He made a dismissive gesture. ‘No need to trouble the composer.’

The guard came by, doors were slammed. The self-important engine emitted clouds of steam, and under cover of the noise, Ruth leant over to speak into his ear.

‘Please, when you go and see my parents will you tell them not to worry —’

‘Of course.’

‘No, I mean tell them I’ll be with them very soon. In less than a month, I hope. I know exactly what to do.’

Apprehension seized him. ‘What do you mean?’

The mail had been loaded now. A last door slammed — and Ruth’s face came out of the steam, radiant and self-assured.

‘I’m going to walk over the mountains into Switzerland,’ she said. ‘I’ve done it before when I was staying there. You go over the Kanderspitze; it’s only a few hours. I did it with one of the boys from the farm and the guards didn’t even turn round!’

‘For God’s sake, girl, that was before Hitler and all his devilry. The Swiss are armed and on the alert. Next thing they’ll shoot you for a spy.’

‘No, they won’t. I promise I’ll be all right. Then when I’m safe in Switzerland I’ll make my way to the French border and swim the Varne — it’s a tributary of the Rhône and it’s not at all wide; I’ve looked it up on the map. After all Piatigorsky swam the Sbruch with his cello over his head to get away from the Russians so I ought to manage with a rucksack. I’m a very good swimmer because of my Aunt Hilda… Do you remember she did this breast stroke where she never actually moved and I got used to pushing her across the lake. And once I’m in France all I have to do is contact my father’s cousin. He’s got a boat and he’ll take me across the Channel, I know, so —’ She broke off. ‘What are you doing? You’re hurting me! Let me go!’

Quin had opened the door; his hand gripped her arm; he was pulling her out of the train.

‘Will you be quiet,’ he said furiously. ‘Climbing the Kanderspitze, swimming the Varne… you’re like a child of ten. Do you think this is a girl’s adventure story? “Ruth of the Remove”? The world’s on the brink of — oh, to hell!’

She was down on the platform now. Tightening his grip as she struggled, he reached out for the rucksack which a peasant lady, approving of masterful males, had taken from the rack. The guard, scowling at the commotion, closed the door and raised his whistle to his mouth.

‘You have no right,’ said Ruth. Still fighting him, twisting her head, she saw her train draw away, gather speed, and vanish.

‘Get me a taxi,’ Quin snapped at a grinning porter.

‘I’ll never forgive you for this,’ she said.

‘That is something I shall have to live with,’ said Quin and pushed her into the cab.

It had been a mistake to introduce the word morganatic into a conversation that was already going badly. Quin had had a sleepless night and spent the last forty-eight hours bullying, bribing, cajoling and confronting a series of officials or he would not have done anything so stupid, the more so as they were speaking English. Ruth’s Aberdonian accent was only vestigial now, she was entirely fluent, but over the concept of a morganatic marriage, this over-educated girl had clearly met her Waterloo.

‘Who is he, this Morgan?’ she asked.

‘He isn’t anyone,’ said Quin, sighing. They were sitting in a café in the Stadtpark and he was almost certain that at any moment someone would start playing Strauss. ‘The word morganatic comes from the Latin matrimonium ad morganaticum — a marriage based on the morning gift. It’s a gift given the morning after the bridal night with which the husband, by bestowing it, frees himself from any liability to the wife. Like Franz Ferdinand. His wife didn’t have any of his titles or responsibilities.’

If he had hoped to dispose of the subject by mentioning Austria’s most unpopular archduke, he was unfortunate.

‘But you say we wouldn’t have a bridal night, so Morgan doesn’t come into it.’

Quin drained his glass of schnapps and set it down. He was not a man for headaches, but he had one now. ‘Yes, that’s right. Ours would simply be a marriage in name only. A formality. I’m merely pointing out that there are many ways of dealing with marriage other than the conventional —’ He broke off. It was as he had thought. At least a dozen ladies in braided uniforms had come on to the bandstand. Not just Strauss, but Strauss played by women dressed like Grenadier Guards.

‘What’s the matter?’

‘Are they going to play Strauss?’

‘Yes,’ said Ruth happily. ‘They’re the All Girl Band from the Prater — they’re terribly good!’ And looking at him incredulously: ‘Don’t you like waltzes?’

‘Not before tea.’ He frowned, mastering his impatience. By day, he and Ruth, speaking only English, could pass for foreign visitors, but she was still sleeping in the museum and it was only a matter of time before someone gave her away.

‘Look, Ruth, let’s not waste any more time. I’ve got to get back to England, you want to go there. The consul here will marry us — it’ll take a few minutes, it’ll be a mere formality. Then you’ll be put on my passport as my wife — in effect you become a British subject. When we get to London we go our separate ways and dissolve the marriage on the grounds of —’ He stopped himself just in time. Non-consummation on top of morganatic marriage was not something he was willing to discuss to the sound of Strauss with this obstinate girl.

Ruth was silent, tilting the lemonade in her glass. ‘It is a pity there is no Morgan,’ she said. ‘He could help one to choose the morning gift. It would have to be something very nice so that one would not mind not having responsibilities. A St Bernard dog, perhaps.’

‘Well, there isn’t. If there was, he would probably be a Welshman from Pontypool and a rugger blue.’

‘A Welshman? Why is that?’

Quin leaned across the table and laid a hand briefly on hers. ‘Listen, Ruth, we have finished with Morgan, right? The subject is closed. I’ll fetch you at eleven from the museum; we’ll be married at noon and by the evening we’ll be on the sleeper.’

He had risen, but she did not follow suit. ‘Don’t you see, I can’t let you do this,’ she said in a low voice. ‘There must be someone in England that you want to marry.’

‘Well, there isn’t. As for your Heini, surely he’d rather you were safe and reunited with him even if it means waiting a little while before you can be married? Think how you would feel if the positions were reversed?’

‘Yes, I would do anything to be with Heini,’ she said quietly. ‘Only it isn’t fair. I can’t ask it of you and —’

But Quin was looking at the bandstand where the worst was happening. ‘For heaven’s sake, let’s get out of here,’ he said, pulling her to her feet. ‘That trout in the helmet has raised her baton.’

‘It’s Wiener Blut,’ said Ruth reproachfully, as the luscious waltz soared out over the park.

‘I don’t care what it is,’ said Quin — and fled.

The night had been stormy, but now the sky was clearing and over Lindisfarne, the Holy Island, a thin strip of silver light appeared, widened… and the sea, which minutes before had been turbulent and dark, became suddenly, unbelievably blue. Three cormorants skimmed over the water, heading for the Farnes, and from the bird-hung cliffs came the incessant mewing of the nesting kittiwakes and terns.

But the elderly lady, formidably dressed in dark purple tweeds, her iron-grey hair concealed under a woollen scarf adorned with the bridles of horses and their whips, was not gazing either at the birds, nor at the round heads of the seals bobbing off Bowmont Point. Standing on the terrace of Bowmont, she trained her binoculars on the long, golden strand of Bowmont Bay. The tide was out, revealing the rock pools at either end, and the crescent of perfect sand ran for half a mile before the next headland, but polluting its emptiness, ruining its peace, were… people. Three; no, more… A whole family, paddling and, no doubt, shrieking, though they were mercifully out of earshot. She could make out a man and a woman, and another woman… a grandmother. And a child. Not fishermen or village people going about their business.

‘Trippers!’ pronounced Miss Somerville. Her voice was deep, her outrage total.

They would have to go. They would have to be shooed away. It was happening more and more. People came up from Newcastle or down from Berwick. Holiday-makers, tourists, defiling the empty places, catching shrimps, wearing idiotic clothes…

Bowmont had been built on a promontory: an old peel tower to which, generations ago, had been added a wing of ochre stone. Lonely, wind-buffeted, its history was Northumbria’s own — raided by the Danes from the sea, by the Scots from the land, besieged by Warwick the Kingmaker; ruined and rebuilt.

Turner had painted it in a turbulent sunset, a sailing boat listing dangerously at the base of its sea-lashed cliffs. St Cuthbert, on Lindisfarne, had preached to the eider ducks which still nested on Bowmont Point, and from the white needle of Longstone lighthouse, Grace Darling had rowed into legend, bringing rescue to the shipwrecked wretches on Harcar Rock. Quin, as a child, had known exactly where God lived. Not in the Holy Land as painted in his illustrated bible, but in the swirling, ever-changing, cloud-wracked sky above his home.

Frances Somerville had been forty years old, a spinster still living at home, when old Quinton Somerville, the legendary and terrifying ‘Basher’, retired from the navy, had sent for her.