Eva Ibbotson - The Morning Gift

She shut the box, hid it in the pocket of her dressing-gown. How physical it was, this kind of pain, like being terribly ill. Why couldn’t one stop the shivering, the giddiness? And if one couldn’t, why didn’t the next part follow — the part that would have made it right again? Just dying? Just being dead?

‘Look at this!’ said Lady Plackett. ‘It’s outrageous! Professor Somerville must be informed immediately and take the necessary steps!’

Unaware of Verena’s expectations over Africa, she was no longer so pleased with Quinton who seemed to be doing nothing to further his involvement with her daughter.

Verena, taking the newspaper from her mother’s hands, entirely agreed. She had not been able to find anything to pin against Ruth, but there were things that still niggled on the edge of her mind. Why had Ruth been carried to the tower at Bowmont where no one else was allowed to go? What was the Austrian girl’s connection with Quin before she came?

‘The impression is one of lewdness,’ she remarked in her precise voice, and felt a glow of satisfaction, for if the Professor still harboured protective feelings for the foreigner, this photograph would surely banish them.

‘I shall ring his secretary now,’ said Lady Plackett.

Thus Quin, on the way back from the museum where he had arranged Ruth’s passage, and still treading on air, found a message from Lady Plackett and made his way to the Lodge.

‘We feel that you would wish to be informed of how one of your students conducts herself in her spare time,’ said Lady Plackett, and opened the newspaper.

Quin did not consider how the Daily Echo had got through the august portals of the Vice Chancellor’s Lodge. He did not stop to consider anything because the picture — a half-spread on the centre page — hit him a blow for which he was entirely unprepared.

It was of Ruth and Heini side by side and very close together. They were not entwined, not lolling on a sofa — not at all. Heini sat by a grand piano and Ruth was leaning across, one arm in a curve behind his curly head and her face, as she followed the instructions of the photographer, turned directly to the camera. Her wide mouth, her sweet smile, thus stared out of the page, trusting and happy and Heini, gazing up at her adoringly, was brushed by a straying tendril of her hair.

The caption said — of course it said — Heini and his Starling.

‘I’m sure you will agree that this kind of exposure in the gutter press is quite unacceptable,’ said Lady Plackett.

‘And that isn’t all,’ said Verena. ‘She has endeavoured to bring the university down with her. Thameside is specifically mentioned. She is referred to as one of its most brilliant students.’

Quin was silent, bewildered by the effect the picture had on him. He would have found it less painful to have seen her photographed with Heini in bed. People went to bed for all sorts of reasons, but the homage and devotion with which she bent to the boy was devastating.

‘She seems to have been the victim of a somewhat unscrupulous journalist,’ he said.

He spoke no less than the truth. It was after the débâcle in Janet’s flat that Mantella had sent for Ruth and confronted her with Zoltan Karkoly, a Hungarian journalist now working for the Daily Echo. Karkoly had explained that his article would be one of a series devoted to the more outstanding competitors in the Bootheby Piano Competition and the music they would play, and had drawn her out skilfully on her favourite topics. He thus found himself in possession of a great deal of information about the livestock favoured by Mozart: not only the starling bought for thirty-four kreutzers in the market, but a subsequent canary and the horse which the composer had ridden through the streets of Vienna. His questions about Ruth herself and her relationship with Heini were thrown in casually and answered trustingly. Yes, she worked in the Willow; yes, she loved Thameside — and yes, she would follow Heini to the ends of the earth, said Ruth who had left him in a tumbled bed and escaped down the fire escape. And yes, she would pose for photographs if it would help Heini’s career.

So they had adjourned to the Bechstein in the Wigmore Hall and Karkoly had taken several photographs, but printed only the last one in which she turned her head a little, asking if it was over, and her hair tumbled forward over Heini’s shoulder so that only an idiot would fail to catch the allusion to the painting By Love Surprised which hung in every other drawing room.

Ruth had not seen Mr Hoyle’s article about the Willow and she had not seen Karkoly’s piece in the Echo — no one had money for newspapers in Belsize Park. But Quin now, staring down at the fulsome words of adoration put into her mouth, found himself crushed by a jealousy so painful that it must have shown him, if nothing else had done, how utterly he was committed to this love.

‘We take it you will speak to her?’ said Lady Plackett.

‘Yes; I shall certainly do that.’

By the time he drove back over Waterloo Bridge, Quin was calm again. The article was certainly days old; he himself knew of the tricks and distortions practised by journalists, but the joy and wonder had gone from the day and, for the first time, he saw the unlikeliness of what had happened. A man who has known countless women marries a girl out of chivalry and finds in her his true and only love…

He let himself into the flat and found Lockwood back from his weekend.

‘There’s a message for you from Cavour and Stattersley,’ he said. ‘It was Mr Cavour what rung. You’re to ring him back when you get in; he’ll be there till 6.30. The number’s on the pad.’

‘Thank you.’

Now what? Surely they couldn’t have made a mistake — he’d been absolutely clear about Ruth’s address, and his instructions.

He went to the telephone. Dialled… sat down; a thing he didn’t generally do when he phoned.

‘Ah, Professor Somerville. I’m glad I’ve caught you. Something very strange has happened. The necklace has been returned to us.’

‘What?’

‘At lunchtime. Miss Berger came in herself and handed it back.’

‘For alterations? It’s too long?’

‘No, not for that, not to be exchanged. I thought she might prefer different stones. Green is considered unlucky by some people, you know. I had a client —’

‘Yes, yes. Just tell me what happened. What did she say?’

‘She appeared to be very angry. She said I was to tell you that she didn’t want it. She was only in the shop a moment. Very upset she seemed to be. We’ll keep it here, sir, awaiting your instructions. It can stay in our strong-room till then — only we’d appreciate hearing from you soon; something as valuable as that is best kept in the bank.’

‘Yes.’ One must be polite. One must thank Mr Cavour. One must eat the supper Lockwood had prepared.

Was it really that, then: that old, old story? Using an experienced man to teach you the arts of love so that you can return, unafraid, to your lover? Not such a bad idea, really. She had probably read it in a book.

No, that wasn’t true. It couldn’t be true. ‘I shall die if you leave me,’ she had said not twenty-four hours ago. But she had said other things too. She had said, ‘I would follow Heini to the ends of the earth.’

Resting his forehead against the glass of the window, he struggled for belief, for the conviction of her goodness which alone made life worth living. He would see her tomorrow. She would come to his lecture; there would be an explanation. It couldn’t be real, this descent into hell.

‘Oh, God — give me faith!’ begged Quin, reduced by this unfamiliar agony to the prayers of his childhood.

But God was silent and the Thames, as Ruth had bidden it, flowed on and on and on.

Ruth sat in the Underground and stared at the advertisement opposite.

Mr Therm, a sort of flame on legs, would have had to work very hard to drive the chill spots from her heart… from her very soul. It wasn’t true that she hadn’t slept — after she’d returned the necklace, she’d gone back home and told her mother she had a migraine and got into her bed and pulled the blanket over her head and she had slept, because being dismembered made one extremely tired. It wasn’t the sleeping that was the problem, it was the waking — the whole cycle of agony repeated every hour: it cannot be true, I cannot have mistaken what went on that night. And the green stones snaking into her dreams…

But in the morning she had decided to go to college.

‘Ruth, you’re not fit to go,’ said Leonie, looking at her daughter’s drawn face and quenched eyes.

‘I must, Mama. It is the last day of term and Professor Somerville’s last lecture.’

She had said his name. She had been British like Lord Nelson on the column.

But in the Underground, she faced the truth. It wasn’t courage, it was the impossibility of not being where he was, and it was then, staring at Mr Therm and the Phonotas girl who would come weekly to clean and sterilize your telephone, that the abject, crawling thoughts came back again. For she had pleased him a little; she knew that. If she accepted his terms, if she kept away from Bowmont and his public life… if she got a job somewhere here in London and found a flat… a cheap flat like Janet’s where he could come sometimes? The annulment could go ahead, he could marry some girl of his own world if he wished, but she would be there. Just to see him once in a while… just to know that she didn’t have to be pushed forward into grey deserts of time without him.