‘Can I have your documents, please?’

Quin laid the papers down on the desk, and saw Ruth’s knuckles tighten on the back of her chair. Scarcely twenty years old, and a child of the new Europe Hitler had made.

‘We shall need two witnesses. Have you brought any?’

‘No.’

The deputy sighed and went out into the corridor. The sound of hoovering ceased and a lady with a large wart on her chin, wearing a black overall, entered and stood silently by the door. She had cut a piece out of the sides of her felt slippers to give her bunions breathing space and this was sensible, Ruth appreciated this, and that someone whose feet were giving such trouble could not be expected to smile or say good morning. Then the plumber came, divested of his oilskins, and smelling strongly — and again this was entirely natural — of the drains he had been trying to clean and it was clear that he too was not pleased to be interrupted in his work — why should he be?

The Consul himself now entered, distinguished-looking, formally suited, with his finger in the Book of Common Prayer, and the ceremony began.

Quin had not expected what came next. ‘It’ll just be a formality,’ he’d promised Ruth. ‘A few minutes and then it’ll be done.’ But though the Consul was using a truncated version of the marriage service, he was still pronouncing the words that had joined men and women for four hundred years — and Quin, foreseeing trouble, frowned and stared at the floor.

‘Dearly beloved, we are gathered together here in the sight of God to join this Man and this Woman in holy Matrimony…’

Beside him, Ruth moved uneasily. The lady with the cut-out bedroom slippers sniffed.

‘… and therefore is not by any to be enterprised, nor taken in hand unadvisedly, lightly or wantonly… but reverently, discreetly, advisedly, soberly…’

It was as he had expected. Ruth made a sudden, panicky movement of her head and a last drop of water fell from her wet hair onto the bare linoleum.

The Consul listed the causes for which matrimony was ordained. The procreation of children brought an anxious frown to her brow; the remedy against sin worried her less.

It was only briefly that the plumber and the cleaning lady, neither of whom understood a word, were required to disclose any impediment to the marriage or for ever hold their peace and the Consul came to the point.

‘Quinton Alexander St John, wilt thou have this Woman to thy wedded Wife…? Wilt thou love her, comfort her, honour, and keep her in sickness and in health; and, forsaking all other, keep thee only unto her, so long as ye both shall live?’

‘I will.’

‘Ruth Sidonie, wilt thou have this Man to thy wedded Husband…’

Her ‘I will’ came clearly, but with the faint, forgotten accent of Aberdeen. A stress symptom, it would appear.

The Consul cleared his throat. ‘Do you have a ring?’

Ruth shook her head in the same instant as Quin took from his pocket a plain gold band.

He too was pale as he promised to take Ruth for his wedded wife from this day forward, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health. The ring, when he slipped it on her finger, was a perfect fit. Her hands were as cold as ice.

‘With this Ring I thee wed, with my Body I thee worship, and with all my worldly Goods I thee endow.’ His voice was steady now. The thing was almost done.

‘We will omit the prayer,’ said the Consul and allowed the final injunction to roll off his tongue with a suitable and sombre emphasis. ‘Those whom God hath joined together let no man put asunder.’

It was over. The register was signed, Quin paid his dues, tipped the witnesses, put a note into the collecting box for orphans of the Spanish Civil War.

‘If you come back at four o’clock your passport will be ready with your wife’s name on it, and her visa.’

Ruth managed to reach the gravelled driveway before she burst into tears.

‘For God’s sake, Ruth, what’s the matter? It’s all over now. Tomorrow evening you’ll be with your family.’

She blew her nose, shook out her hair.

‘You see, we shall be cursed!’

‘Cursed! What on earth are you talking about? Could we have less of the Old Testament, please?’

‘Ha! You see… Now you are also anti-Semitic.’

‘Well, I do think this might be the moment to take after the goat-herding grandmother rather than some gloomy old rabbi. What do you mean, we shall be cursed?’

‘Because of the words. Because we said those words before witnesses. I didn’t think the words would be so strong. And you shouldn’t have said that about with my worldly goods I thee endow because even if we were going to do the worshipping with the body, there would still be Morgan.’

‘Ah, Morgan. I thought we hadn’t heard the last of him. Look, Ruth, it doesn’t become you, this kind of fuss. You know what Hitler is like, you know what had to be done.’

‘I should have escaped over the border; I should not have let you swear things that are lies.’

Quin too was very weary. It was with difficulty that he repressed his views on her ascent of the Kanderspitze. ‘Come, we’ll go to the Imperial and have two whopping schnitzels. Because one thing you’ll find it hard to come by in London is a decent piece of frying veal.’

‘I can’t go in these old clothes. And if I’m seen…’

Quin’s arrogance was quite unconscious. ‘Nothing can happen to you now. You are a British subject — and in my care.’

The schnitzels were a success. When they left the restaurant, her hair was dry and enveloped her in a manner that was disorganized, but cheerful. He had already gathered that it was a kind of barometer, like seaweed.

‘We’ve still got three hours left. Where would you like to go on your last afternoon in Vienna?’

To his surprise, she suggested they take a tram to the Danube. He knew how little the wide, grey river, looping round the industrial suburbs of the city, actually concerned the Viennese. Gloomy Johann Strauss, with his dyed moustaches and inability to smile, might have written the world’s most famous waltz in tribute to the river, but the Danube’s vicious flooding had compelled the inhabitants, centuries ago, to turn their backs on it.

But when they stood on the Reich Bridge, it was clear that Ruth was on a pilgrimage.

‘Do you see that little bay over there, just by the warehouse?’

He nodded…

‘Well, my Uncle Mishak used to fish there — only he’s my great-uncle really. That was years and years ago. Imagine it, the Kaiser was still on his throne and Austria and Hungary were joined up. One could take a barge down to Budapest — no passport, no restrictions. Anyway, Uncle Mishak had joined my grandfather in his department store, but he loved the open air and every Sunday he went fishing. Only on this particular Sunday, instead of a fish, he caught a bottle!’ She turned to Quin, full of narrative self-importance. ‘It was a lemonade bottle and inside it was a message!’

Quin was impressed, knowing how rarely messages in bottles are ever read.

‘It said: My name is Marianne Stichter, I am twenty-four years old and I am very sad. If you are a kind and good man, please come and fetch me. And she’d put the address of the school where she taught. It was in a village on the river near Dürnstein — you know, where Richard the Lionheart was imprisoned.’

‘Go on.’

‘The school was run by her father and he was a sadist and a bully. There was an elder sister who’d married and escaped, but Marianne was quiet and plain and shy, and she had a stammer, and he’d made her teach the junior class. Of course, the children all imitated her — every time she entered the classroom, she just wanted to die.’

Ruth paused and looked at Quin, savouring, on his behalf, what was to follow.

‘Then one day she was giving a Geography lesson on the rivers of South America when the door opened and a small man in a dark suit and homburg hat came in, carrying a briefcase.

‘The children started tittering but she didn’t even hear them, she just stood and looked at the little man. Then my Uncle Mishak took off his hat — he was pretty bald by then, and he wore gold pince-nez, and he said: “Are you Fräulein Stichter?” He wasn’t really asking, he knew, but he waited till she nodded and then he said: “I have come to fetch you.” Just like that. “I have come to fetch you.” And he opened his briefcase and took out the note from the bottle.’

‘And she came?’

Ruth smiled and parted her hair with her fingers so that she could narrate unimpeded. ‘She didn’t say anything. Not a word. She picked up the duster and very carefully she wiped off the rivers of South America — the Negro and the Madeira and the Amazon. Then she put the chalk back into the box and opened a cupboard and took out her hat and put it on. The children had stopped tittering and started gawping, but she walked down between the desks and she didn’t even see them; they didn’t exist. At the door, Uncle Mishak gave her his arm — he didn’t come much above her shoulder — and they walked across the play yard and down the road and got on the paddle boat for Vienna — and no one there ever saw them again!’

‘And they were happy?’

Ruth put a hand up to her eyes. ‘Ridiculously so. People laughed at them — plumping each other’s cushions, pulling out footstools. When she died he tried to die too, but he couldn’t manage it. That’s when my mother made him come to us.’

Back in the Inner City, Ruth pointed out the balcony on which she had stood stark naked at midnight, at the age of nine, hoping that pneumonia would release her from disgrace and ruin.