Eva Ibbotson - The Morning Gift

Yet when he began to lecture the magic was still there. Only one thing had changed — his exit. Moving with deceptive casualness towards the door, Quin delivered his last sentence — and was gone. Alone among the staff, Professor Somerville did not get thanked by Verena Plackett.

She had been told to come at two, but he was late and she had time to examine the hominid, looking a little naked without Aunt Frances’ scarf, and wander over to the sand tray where the jumbled reptile bones were slowly becoming recognizable.

Quin, coming into the room, saw her bending over the tray as she had done in Vienna. It seemed to him that she looked as she had looked then; lost and disconsolate, but he was in no mood for pity. His own evening with Claudine Fleury had been an unexpected failure. Their relationship was of long standing, well understood. A Parisienne whose first two husbands had not amused her, she lived in the luxurious Mayfair house of her father, a concert impresario frequently absent in America, and was the kind of Frenchwoman every full-blooded male dreams up: petite and dark-eyed with a fastidious elegance which transformed everything she touched.

Last night, the evening had fallen into its accustomed pattern: dinner at Rules, dancing at the Domino and then home to the comforts of her intimately curtained bed.

If there had been a fault, it had been his, he knew that, and he could only hope that Claudine had noticed nothing. The truth was that everything which had drawn him to her: her expertise, her detachment, the knowledge that she took love lightly, now failed in its charm. He had experienced that most lonely of sensations, lovemaking from which the soul is absent — and Ruth, seeing his closed face, laced her hands together and prepared for the worst.

‘What can I do for you?’

Ruth took a deep breath. ‘You can forgive me,’ she said.

Quin’s eyebrows rose. ‘Good God! Is it as bad as that? What do you want me to forgive you for?’

‘I’ll tell you… only please will you promise me not to mention Freud because it makes me very angry?’

‘I shall probably find that quite easy,’ he said. ‘I frequently go for months at a time without mentioning him. But what has he done to upset you?’

‘It isn’t him, exactly,’ said Ruth. ‘It’s Fräulein Lutzenholler.’ And as Quin looked blank, ‘She’s a psychoanalyst: she comes from Breslau and she’s been nothing but trouble! She burns everything — even boiled eggs and it’s difficult to burn those — and her soup gets all over the stove and my mother is sure that it’s because of her we have mice. And every night at half-past nine she gets on a chair and thumps on the ceiling to stop Heini practising. And then she dares…’ Ruth’s indignation was such that she had to stop.

‘Dares what?’

‘She dares to talk to me about Freud and what he said about losing things.’

‘What did he say?’

‘That we lose what we want to lose… and forget what we want to forget. It’s all in The Interpretation of Dreams or something. I would never have told her that I’d left the papers on the bus, but there was no one else in and I’d been up and down to the depot and the Lost Property Office and I was absolutely frantic. I didn’t tell her what I’d left on the bus, of course, only that it was important — and then she dares to talk about my unconscious — a woman who leaves black hair all over the bathtub and tortures carrots to death at ninety degrees centigrade!’

Quin leant across the desk. ‘Ruth, would you just tell me very quietly what this is about? What did you leave on the bus?’

She pushed back her hair. ‘The annulment papers. All those documents that Mr Proudfoot gave me. They were in a big cardboard tube and he took such trouble!’

Quin had risen, walked over to the window. His back was turned towards her and his shoulders were shaking. He was really angry, then.

‘I’m so sorry. I’m terribly sorry.’

Quin turned and she saw that he had been trying not to laugh.

‘You think it’s funny,’ she said, amazed.

‘Well, yes, I’m afraid I do,’ he said apologetically. He came over to stand beside her. ‘Now tell me exactly how it happened. In sequence, if possible.’

‘Well, I’d been to Mr Proudfoot and I had my straw basket and this huge scroll and I thought I would go straight to Hampstead on a bus to get it signed by the Commissioner for Oaths because I knew there was one in the High Street. And I got one of those old-fashioned buses which are open on top, you know, and of course there aren’t any double-deckers in Vienna, so I went upstairs and I got the front seat too! And I was just looking at everything because being so high and so open is so lovely and when we came to the edge of the Heath I looked down and there was a patch of Herrenpilze; you know — those big mushrooms we found on the Grundlsee? They were behind the ladies lavatory and I knew they wouldn’t be there long because you sometimes get bloodshed up there with the refugees fighting each other for them, so I rushed down to get off at the next stop and pick them because food is a bit tight since Heini — I mean my mother is always glad of something extra. And when I turned into the park I realized that I’d forgotten the papers, but I wasn’t in too much of a panic because I was sure they’d be at the depot, but they weren’t and they weren’t in the Lost Property Office either and I’ve been back and forward the last two days and it’s just hopeless. And I don’t know how to explain to Mr Proudfoot who’s been so kind and taken so much trouble.’

‘Don’t worry, I’ll tell him. Only, Ruth, don’t you think there’s a case now for telling Heini and your parents about our marriage? We haven’t after all done anything we need be ashamed of. I’m sure they’d be —’

‘Oh, no, please, please!’ Ruth had seized his arm and was looking entreatingly into his face. ‘I beg of you… My mother’s very good, she does all Heini’s washing and she feeds him and she doesn’t complain when he’s in the bath for a long time… but being a concert pianist is something she doesn’t altogether understand. You see, when Paul Ziller found a job for Heini two evenings a week playing at Lyons Corner House, she really wanted him to take it.’

‘But he didn’t?’

‘No. He said once you go down that road you never get back to being taken seriously as a musician, but, of course, Paul Ziller does it and my mother… She’s already so grateful to you for getting work for my father and she’d come to see you and you’d hate it.’

‘Would I?’ said Quin, in a voice she hadn’t heard him use before. ‘Well, perhaps. Anyway, I’ll phone Dick and he’ll get some new papers drawn up. Don’t worry, we’ve probably only lost a month or two.’

She smiled. ‘Thank you. It’s such a relief. I can face my essay on “Parasitism in the Hermit Crab” now. It was just a blur before.’

It was not till the end of the day that Quin, mysteriously restored to good humour, could ring his lawyer.

‘She has done what?’ said Proudfoot incredulously.

‘I’ve told you. Left the annulment papers on the bus.’

‘I don’t believe it! They were in a damn great roll as long as an arm and tied up with red tape.’

‘Well, she has,’ said Quin, outlining the saga of the edible boletus. ‘So it’s back to the drawing board, I’m afraid. Can you get another lot drawn up?’

‘I can, but not this week — my clerk’s off ill. And after that I’m going to Madeira for a fortnight so you can forget the next sitting of the courts.’

‘Well, it can’t be helped,’ said Quin — and it seemed to Dick that if he wanted to marry Verena Plackett, he did not do so badly. ‘What are you going to do in Madeira?’

‘Have a holiday,’ said Proudfoot. ‘And paint. Your wife thought I should take it up again.’

‘My —’ Quin broke off, aware that he had never used those words about Ruth.

‘Well, she is your wife, isn’t she? God knows why you want to get rid of her — you must be mad. However, it’s none of my business.’

‘No, it isn’t,’ said Quin pleasantly. ‘And I warn you, when she comes to see you again don’t mention Professor Freud or you’ll get your head bitten off.’

‘Why the devil should I mention him? I don’t understand the first thing about all that stuff.’

‘That’s all right then. I’m only warning you.’

It was Paul Ziller who introduced Heini to Mantella.

‘He’s a very good agent. A bit of a thruster, but they have to be. Why don’t you go and see him?’

‘Do you use him?’

Ziller shook his head. ‘He’s only interested in soloists and celebrities.’

‘Well, you could be a soloist.’

‘No. I’m an ensemble player.’ Ziller was silent, pursuing his thoughts. Returning to the Day Centre to re-establish his claim, he had found, among the wash basins, an emaciated and exceedingly shabby man playing the cello — and playing it well. This had turned out to be Milan Karvitz from the Prague Chamber Orchestra, just returned from the International Brigade in Spain… and Karvitz, in turn, had brought along the viola player from the disbanded Berliner Ensemble. The three of them played well together though it was a tight fit in the cloakroom, but the repertoire for string trio was limited and now a man had written from Northumberland where he was working as a chauffeur. Ziller knew him by reputation — a fine violinist, an unselfish player — but it was out of the question. He could never replace Biberstein; never. ‘Anyway,’ he went on, pulling himself out of his reverie, ‘I’ve spoken to him about you. Why don’t you go along?’

Mantella, though brought up in Hamburg, was a South American by birth, with an olive skin, a pointed black beard and a legendary nose for sniffing out talent. In Heini, presenting himself the following day in the elegant Bond Street office, he at once saw possibilities. The musical gift could not be in doubt — all those medals from the Conservatoire and a debut with the Philharmonic promised in Vienna — but more importantly, the boy had instant emotional appeal. Even Mantella, however, could not get a concert for a pianist unknown in England and not yet established on the continent.