The Morning Gift

Chapter 20

Ruth woke, bewildered, from a drugged sleep. The clock beside the bed said three o’clock — the pre-dawn hour in which demons gibber and people die. At first she didn’t know where she was… she seemed to be in a large bed covered by some kind of animal skin: the pelt of a bear or something even more exotic. Then, as she touched it, she remembered.

She was in Quin’s tower. He had given instructions to have her carried there after the boat landed — still furious, taking no notice when she said that she was perfectly well, that she wanted to go back to the boat-house with the others. He’d told the students to keep away and sent for two men from the farm to carry her.

‘No one is to go near her till she’s seen a doctor,’ he’d said.

This wasn’t help; it wasn’t concern; it was punishment.

The doctor had come earlier, an old man, sounding her chest, feeling her pulse.

‘I’m all right,’ she’d kept saying, and he said, ‘Yes, yes,’ and left her something in a bottle to make her sleep.

But she wasn’t all right. Even the news brought in by Martha — that the dog was safe — couldn’t make her all right. It wasn’t the waves breaking over her head that had troubled her half-sleep. It was what Quin had said: his rejection, his cruelty. She was in disgrace, she was to be sent home.

She got up, her bare feet feeling the wooden boards. This was the most masculine room she had ever seen; almost without furniture, the uncurtained windows letting in pools of moonlight, the bear skin thrown carelessly over the bed with its single pillow. To sleep thus was to get as close as one could get to sleeping out of doors.

The nightdress she was wearing must have belonged to Aunt Frances; made of thick white flannel, it billowed out over her feet; the ruffles on the neck half buried her chin. Turning on the lamp, she saw, on a small desk pushed against the wall, the photograph of a young woman whose dark, narrow face above the collar of the old-fashioned dress was startlingly familiar. Picking it up, she carried it to the window and examined it.

‘What are you doing?’

She turned abruptly, caught out again, once more in the wrong.

‘I’m sorry; I woke.’

Quin’s face was still drawn and closed, but now he made an effort. ‘There’s nothing wrong with her physically,’ the doctor had said to him, ‘but she looks as though she’s had some kind of shock.’

‘Well, obviously,’ Quin had replied. ‘Nearly drowning would be a shock.’

But old Dr Williams had looked at him and shaken his head and said he didn’t think it was that; she was young and strong and hadn’t been in the water long. ‘Go easy,’ he’d said, ‘treat her gently.’

So he came over, took the picture from her hand. ‘Are you feeling better?’

‘Yes, I’m perfectly all right. I wish I could go.’

‘But you can’t, my poor Rapunzel; not till the morning. Even your pretty hair wouldn’t be long enough to pull up a prince to rescue you.’

‘And there’s a shortage of princes,’ she said, trying to speak lightly for the edge was still there in his voice.

Quin said nothing. Earlier he had found Sam on the terrace, looking up at Ruth’s window, and sent him away.

‘It’s your mother, isn’t it?’ she asked, looking down at the portrait.

‘Are we so alike?’

‘Yes. She looks intelligent. And so… alive.’

‘Yes, she was, I believe. Until I killed her.’

It was Ruth now who was angry. ‘What rubbish! What absolute poppycock. Schmarrn!’ she said, spitting out the Viennese word, so much more derogatory than anything in English. ‘You talk like a kitchen maid.’

‘I beg your pardon?’ he said, startled.

But his attack on the boat had freed Ruth. Born to please, trained to put herself at the service of others, she now abandoned the handmaiden role.

‘I shouldn’t have said that. Kitchen maids are often highly intelligent, like your Elsie who told me the names of all the plants on the cliff. But you talk like someone in a third-rate romantic novel — you killed her, indeed! Well, what does one expect from a man who sleeps under dead animals… a man who owns the sea!’

She had succeeded better than she’d hoped in riling him. ‘Nobody owns the sea,’ he said. ‘And if it interests you, I’m giving away what I do own. The year after next, Bowmont goes to the National Trust.’

She took a deep breath. She was, in fact, totally confounded and worse than that, utterly dismayed; she felt as though she had been kicked in the stomach.

‘All of it?’ she stammered. ‘The house and the gardens and the farm?’

‘Yes.’ He had recovered his equanimity. ‘As a good Social Democrat I’m sure you’ll be pleased.’

She nodded. ‘Yes…’ she struggled to say. ‘It’s the right thing to do. It’s just…’

But what it was was something she could not put into words. That she was devastated by the loss of a place which had nothing to do with her, which she would never see again. That she had been storing Bowmont in her mind: its cliffs and flowers, its scents and golden strands… There would be a lot of waiting in her life with Heini: sitting in stuffy green-rooms, accompanying him in crowded trains. Like the coifed girls in medieval cloisters who wove mysterious trees and crystal rivers into their tapestries, she had spun for herself a dream of Bowmont: of paths where she could wander, of a faded blue door in a high wall. And the dream meant Bowmont as it was — as Quin’s demesne, as a place where an irascible old woman bullied the flowers out of the ground.

‘Is it because you will benefit the people?’ she asked, sounding priggish but not knowing how to say it otherwise.

Quin shrugged. ‘I doubt if the people — whoever they are — are all that interested in Bowmont; the house is nothing much. What they want, I imagine, is access to the sea and that could be arranged with a few more rights of way. I’m afraid I don’t share your passion for “the people” in the abstract. One never knows quite who they are.’

‘Well, why then?’

Quin took the portrait of his mother from her hands. ‘You chose to sneer when I said I killed her. Yet it is not untrue. My father knew that she was not supposed to have children. She’d been very ill — they met in Switzerland when he was there in the Diplomatic Service. She was in a sanatorium, recovering from TB. He wanted a child because of Bowmont. He wanted an heir and he didn’t mind what it cost. An heir for Bowmont.’

‘And if he did?’ Ruth shrugged. She seemed to him relentless, suddenly; grown up, no longer his student, his protegée. ‘Men have always wanted that. A tobacconist will want an heir for his kiosk… the poorest rabbi wants a son to say kaddish for him when he’s dead. Why do you make such a thing of it?’

‘If a man forces a woman to bear a child… if he risks her life so that he can come to his own father — the father he quarrelled with and loathed — and say: “Here is an heir” — then he is committing a sin.’

But she wouldn’t heed him. ‘And what of her? Do you think she was so feeble? Do you think she didn’t want it? She was brave — look at her face. She wanted a child. Not for Bowmont, not for your father. She wanted one because a child is a marvellous thing to have. Why do you patronize women so? Why can’t they risk their lives as men do? They have a right, as much as any man.’

‘To jump into the sea for a half-grown mongrel?’ he jeered.

‘Yes. For anything they choose.’ But she bent her head, for she knew she had risked not only her own life, but his and perhaps Sam’s — that his cruelty down there on the boat had had a cause. ‘I’m a mongrel too,’ she said very quietly. ‘And anyway your aunt loves it.’

‘Loves the puppy? Are you mad? She’s done nothing but try to give it away.’

Again that shrug, so characteristic of the Viennese. ‘My father always says, “Don’t look at what people say look at what they do.” Why did your aunt choose the carpenter — everyone knew his wife had asthma and she wasn’t allowed to have pets? Why the publican when his mother was attacked by an Alsatian when she was little and she was terrified of dogs?’

‘How do you know all this?’ he said irritably. How did she know, in a week at Bowmont, that Elsie was interested in herbalism, that Mrs Ridley’s grandmother knew the Darlings? It was infuriating, this foible of hers: this embarrassing ability to go in deep. Whoever married her would be driven mad by it. Heini would be driven mad by it. ‘Anyway, my father never recovered. He carried the guilt and wretchedness for the rest of his life. It probably killed him too — he volunteered in 1916 when there was no need to do so.’

‘There you go again. The English are so melodramatic! A bullet killed him.’

‘What’s the matter with you?’ asked Quin, not accustomed to being deflated by a girl whose emotionalism was a byword. And amazed by what he was about to do, he went over to the desk, unlocked a drawer, and took out a faded exercise book with a blue marbled cover.

‘Read it,’ he said. ‘It’s my father’s diary.’

The book fell open at the page he had read a hundred times and not shown to a living soul, and Ruth took it and moved closer to the lamp.

Ruth shut the diary. ‘Poor man,’ she said quietly. ‘But why do you embalm him? You should grow radishes, like Mishak.’

‘What?’ For a moment he wondered whether her brain had been affected by the accident.

‘Marianne didn’t like radishes. His wife. He never grew them when she was alive. When she died, he said, “Now I must grow radishes or she will remain under the ground.” He meant that the dead must be allowed to move about freely inside us, they musn’t be encapsulated, made finite by their prejudices.’ She paused, moving her hair out of her eyes in a gesture with which he was utterly familiar. ‘He grows a lot of radishes and I don’t like them very much as it happens, but I eat them. All of us eat them.’ She paused. ‘Perhaps it’s right to give Bowmont away; I don’t know about that, and it’s none of my business — but surely it must be because you want to, not because of what you think he might have wanted? He would have grown and changed and seen things differently perhaps. Look how you hated me this afternoon — but you have not always done so and perhaps one day you will do so no longer.’

Quin looked at her, started to speak. Then he took the diary and locked it up again in the bureau. ‘Come,’ he said, ‘I think it’s time you met the Basher.’

He took his old tweed jacket off the peg behind the door and put it round her shoulders. As he led her downstairs, he made no attempt to be unheard, switching on lights as he came to them, walking with a firm tread. He knew exactly what he would do if they were discovered and that it would cause him no moment of unease.

They made their way down the corridor that connected the tower with the body of the house and as he steered her, one hand on her back, through the rooms, she touched, here and there, the black shabby leather chair, the surface of a worn, much-polished table, learning Quin’s house, and liking what she learnt. Inside the fortress was an unpretentious home, and the hallmark of the woman who had been its curator was everywhere. Aunt Frances, who had left Quin alone, had left his house alone also. There was none of the forbidding grandeur Ruth had imagined; only a place waiting quietly for those who wished to come.

But this was a journey with a particular end, and by the far wall of the library, Quin stopped. In Aunt Frances’s flannel nightgown, Quin’s jacket hanging loose from her shoulders, Ruth stared at the portrait of Rear Admiral Quinton Henry Somerville in his heavy golden frame.

The Basher had been seventy when the portrait was commissioned by his parishioners and the artist, a local worthy, had clearly done his best to flatter his sitter, but his success had been moderate. The Basher’s cheeks, for which a great deal of rose madder had been required, showed the broken veins caused by the whisky and the weather; his short, surprisingly snub nose was touched at the tip with purple. In spite of his grand dress uniform and the bull neck rising from its braided collar, Quin’s grandfather, with his small mouth, bald pate and obstinate blue eyes, resembled nothing so much as an ill-tempered baby.

‘And yet,’ said Ruth, ‘there is something…’

‘There’s something all right. Pig-headedness, ferocity… in the navy he bullied his officers; he thought flogging was good for the ratings. He married for money — a lot of money — and treated his wife abominably. And when he died, every single soul in North Northumberland came to the funeral and shook their heads and said that the good times were past and England would never be the same again.’

‘Yes, I can see that it might be so.’

‘He despised my father because he liked poetry — because he liked to be with his mother in the garden. He was terrified that he’d bred a coward. Cowardice frightened him; it was the only thing that did — to have a son who was a weakling. My father was wretched at school — he went when he was seven and he cried himself to sleep every night for years. He hated sailing, hated the sea. He was a gentle soul and the Basher despised him from the bottom of his heart. He was determined that my father should go into the navy, but my father wouldn’t. He stood up to him over that. Then at fifteen he ran away to one of his mother’s relatives. She took him abroad and he joined the Diplomatic Service and did very well — but he never went back to Bowmont. He loathed everything it stood for — power, privilege, Philistinism — the contempt for the things he valued. Yet you see when it came to the point, he risked my mother’s life so that it could all go on.’

Ruth was silent, looking at the portrait, wondering why this ferocious Englishman should have a nose like Beethoven’s, wondering why she did not dislike that hard old face.

‘But you liked him?’

‘No.’ Quin hesitated. ‘I was eight when I came to Bowmont. I’d heard only awful stories about him and he was all that I had heard. He put me into the tower to sleep under the bear he’d shot, teeth and all. I was there alone, a child with a father blown to pieces in the war. I was terrified of the dark — I’d come straight from Switzerland and heard the servants talk about my mother’s death — the screams, the blood when I was born. Going to bed was purgatory. I liked the tower but I wanted a night light — I begged for one, but he said no. I wasn’t afraid of anything out of doors… climbing, sailing… I loved the sea as he did. He saw that, but he was obstinate. One day I said: “If I sail alone to Harcar Rock and back, can I have a night light?” He said: “If you sail alone to Harcar Rock, I’ll beat you within an inch of your life.” He used to talk like that, like a boy’s adventure story.’

‘Harcar? That’s where the Forfarshire went down? Where Grace Darling rowed to?’

‘Yes. Anyway, I did it. I got the dinghy out at dawn — I was small but I was strong; sailing’s a knack, nothing more. Even so, I don’t know why I wasn’t killed; the currents are terrible there. When I came back he was standing on the shore. He didn’t say anything. He just frogmarched me up to the house and beat me so hard that I couldn’t sit down for a week. But that night when I went to bed, there it was — my night light.’

‘Yes,’ said Ruth, after a pause. ‘I see.’

‘I could do it, Ruth. It’s no trouble to me to be Master of Bowmont. Physical things don’t bother me. I can find a wife —’ He checked himself, ‘a new wife — I can breed sons. But I don’t forget what it did to my father. I don’t forget that my mother died for his dynastic pride. So let someone else have it. I shall be off on my travels again soon in any case. Unless —’ But there was no need to speak to her of the war he was sure would come.

Back in the tower, he took the jacket from her shoulders, turned back the covers.

‘Tomorrow you shall go back to your friends, Rapunzel,’ he said. ‘Now get some sleep.’

The sudden gentleness almost overset her.

‘Can I stay, then?’ she managed to say.

‘Yes, you can stay.’

‘Oh, my dear!’ said Lady Plackett as her daughter turned from the mirror on the evening of the dance. ‘He will be overcome!’ — and Verena smiled for she could not help thinking that her mother spoke the truth.

Miss Somerville’s letter suggesting a party for her birthday had sent Verena to Fortnum’s in search of a suitable dress, where their chief vendeuse had suggested a simple Greek tunic of white georgette for, as she pointed out, Verena’s beauty was in the classical style.

Verena had refused. She wanted, on the night that she hoped would seal her fate, to be thoroughly and unexpectedly feminine and ignoring the ill-concealed disapproval of the saleswoman, she had decided on a gown of strawberry-pink taffeta with a tiered skirt, each tier edged with a double layer of ruffles. The big leg-o’-mutton sleeves too were lined with ruffles, as was the heart-shaped neckline, and wishing to emphasize the youthful freshness which (she was aware) her high intelligence sometimes concealed, she wore a wreath of rosebuds in her hair.

Had this been the informal dance originally planned, her toilette might have been too sumptuous, but the party, as the Placketts hoped, had snowballed to the point where the word ‘informal’ hardly applied. As Verena stepped into her satin sandal — carefully low-heeled since Quin, now past his thirty-first birthday, could not really be expected to grow any more — other girls all over Northumberland were bathing, young men were tying their black ties or putting on dress uniforms, ready to make their way to Bowmont. For after all, it had always been rather special, this sea-girt tower with its absent owner, its fierce chatelaine — and perhaps they knew what Quin knew; that Fate was knocking on the door and pleasure, now, a kind of duty.

Ann Rothley and Helen Stanton-Derby had come over early to help Frances. Helen had brought armfuls of bronze and gold chrysanthemums, of rosehips and traveller’s joy, and disappeared with rolls of chicken wire to transform the drawing room into a glowing autumnal bower while Ann had slipped upstairs to supervise Frances’ toilette. Had Miss Somerville worn anything other than her black chenille and oriental shawl, the County would have been seriously upset, but Ann could sometimes succeed where Martha failed in coaxing her friend’s hair into a less rigorous style and persuading her that a dab of snow-white powder in the middle of her nose did not constitute suitable make-up.

Now the three women sat in the hall, drinking a well-earned glass of sherry before the arrival of the guests.

‘Doesn’t everything look lovely!’ said Ann. ‘You can just see the place preening itself! You’ll see, it’s going to be a tremendous success.’

‘I hope so.’ Frances was looking tired.

‘And Verena being such a heroine, too!’ said Helen, a little blood-stained round the fingers from the chicken wire. ‘We’re all so impressed.’

For Verena’s version of what had happened on the Farnes had gained general currency. Everyone knew that a foreign girl had lost her head and jumped into the sea, putting everyone’s life into jeopardy, that Quin had been furious, and that Verena, by keeping calm and holding the boat steady, had been able to avert a tragedy.

‘I’m not quite sure why the girl jumped in the first place?’ asked Helen. ‘Someone said it was to save that mongrel puppy of yours, but that can’t be right surely?’

‘Yes, that seems to have been the reason,’ said Frances.

Though they could see that Frances didn’t really want to discuss the accident, her friends’ curiosity was thoroughly aroused.

‘It seems such an extraordinary thing to do,’ said Ann. ‘And for a foreigner! I thought they didn’t like animals. Though I must say the cowman was the same — when a calf died you had to drag him away or he’d have spent all night weeping over the cow.’

‘How is he getting on?’

‘He’s gone down to London — they’ve taken him on in the chorus at Covent Garden and the dairymaid’s distraught. Silly creature — he never gave her the least encouragement.’ But the change of subject had not, as Frances hoped, diverted her. ‘What’s she like, this girl? The one who jumped?’

‘She’s blonde too,’ said Frances wearily.

Helen Stanton-Derby sighed. ‘Well, it’s all very unsatisfactory,’ she said. ‘Let’s just hope something can be done about Hitler before the place is flooded out.’

But Ann now was looking upwards — and there stood Verena ready to descend!

Just for a moment, the faces of all three ladies showed the same flicker of unease — a flicker which was almost at once extinguished. It was touching that Verena had taken so much trouble, and in the softer light of the drawing room or beneath the Chinese lanterns on the terrace, the colour of the dress would be toned down. And anyway, it wasn’t what they thought of her dress that mattered — it was how she looked to Quin.

They turned their heads and relief coursed through them. Quin had entered the hall and moved over to the staircase. He meant to welcome her, to tell her how nice she looked.

And up to a point, this was true. Reminded of Verena’s unfortunate tumble on the night she came, touched by his aunt’s mysterious but undoubted affection for the Placketts he smiled at the birthday girl and though Lady Plackett was standing by to pay the necessary compliments, it was he who said: ‘You look charming, Verena. Without doubt, you’ll be the belle of the ball.’

As he led her through to the drawing room, a distant telephone began to ring.

Down on the beach, Ruth was gathering driftwood. It was a job she loved; a kind of useful beachcombing. The puppy was with her; ‘helping’, but cured of the sea. When she went too near the water, he dropped the sticks he had been corralling, and sat on his haunches and howled.

‘It’s going to be a lovely bonfire; the best ever,’ said Pilly, and Ruth nodded, wrinkling her nose with delight at the smell of wood smoke and tar and seaweed, and that other smell… the tangy, mysterious smell that might be ozone but might just be the sea itself. The happiness that Quin had shattered on the boat had returned. She felt that she wanted to stay here for ever, living and learning with her friends.

Looking up, she saw a man come down the cliff path and go into the boathouse, and presently Dr Felton came out and made his way towards them.

‘Your mother telephoned, Ruth. She wants you to ring her back at once. She’s waiting by the phone.’ And seeing her face: ‘I’m sure it’s nothing to worry about. I expect Heini’s come early.’

‘Yes.’ But Ruth’s face was drained of all colour. No one telephoned lightly at Number 27. The phone was in the hall, overheard, rickety. The coins collected for it always came out of a jam jar as important as hers for Heini, one spoke over a buzz of interference. Her mother would not have phoned without a strong reason when she was due home so soon in any case. It could, of course, be marvellous news… Heini on an earlier plane… it could be that.

‘I’ll come with you,’ said Pilly.

‘No, Pilly, I’d rather go alone. You keep the dog.’

The servant was waiting, ready to escort her.

‘If you come with me, miss, I’ll take you to Mr Turton. There’s a bit of a row going on at the house with the guests arriving, but Mr Turton’s got a phone in his pantry. You’ll be private there.’

‘Yes,’ said Ruth. ‘Thank you.’ And swallowed hard because her mouth was very dry, and dredged up a smile, and followed him up the path towards the house.

She had managed the bonfire; she had said nothing to the others. She had joined in the singing and helped with the clearing up. But now, lying beside Pilly in the dormitory, she knew she could endure it no longer, being here in this untouched place which washed one clear of anguish, which deceived one into thinking that the world was beautiful.

She had to get back; she had to get back at once. Three more days here were unendurable now that she knew what she knew — and her mother’s incoherent voice, scarcely audible, came back to her yet again — her desperate efforts to tell all she had to tell against the interruptions and the noise.

It was well past midnight; everyone was asleep. Ruth rose, dressed, scribbled a note by torchlight. She would take only the small canvas bag she used on her collecting trips — Pilly would bring the rest. She’d get a lift to Alnwick and wait for the milk train which connected with the express at Newcastle. It didn’t really matter how long she took, only that she was on her way. Every half-hour she spent here was a betrayal.

She crept down the ladder, let herself out. The beauty of the moonlit sea, even in her wretchedness, took her breath away, but she would not let herself be seduced again, not ever — and she began to walk quickly up the lane between the alders and the hazel bushes.

Then, as she came up behind the house, she heard music. Cole Porter’s ‘Night and Day’, a wonderful tune, dreamy… and saw light streaming out onto the terrace.

Of course. Verena’s dance. She had entirely forgotten — inhabiting, since her mother’s phone call, a different world. As she crossed the gravel, meaning to take a short cut to the road, she saw that the drive was full of cars: two-seaters mostly, the colour bleached out of them by moonlight, but the shape — predatory, privileged — perfectly clear. Cars for laughing young men with scarves blowing behind them, young men with goggles and one arm round their giggling girls, driving too fast.

There had been a shower earlier. As she made her way across the lawn, her shoes were soaked. The Chinese lanterns swayed in the breeze, but the long windows were uncurtained and open at the top. She could see as clearly as on a stage the couples revolving. The melody had changed; it was a tango now. She knew the words: It was all ’cos of my jealousy. Some of the guests were dancing cheek to cheek, most were hamming it up, because it was impossible for the British to take anything seriously; certainly not jealousy, certainly not love.

The room, now that the double doors were open, seemed vast; the banks of flowers, the silver champagne buckets belied the informality of Verena’s dance. A few older women sat round the edge, watching the girls in their perms and pastels, the arrogant young men.

And how arrogant they were; how they brayed and shrieked as the music stopped, tossing their heads, pulling their girls to the array of glasses, pouring out more drinks. How they laughed, and slapped each other on the back, while in Vienna people were being piled into cattle trucks and taken to the East, and Heini –

But her mind drew back. It would not follow Heini.

Now she could see Quin. He had come into the room and he was carrying something in a tall glass — carrying it to Verena, to where she sat in a high-backed chair. He didn’t look like the braying young men, even in her anger she had to admit that. He looked older and more intelligent, but he was part of all this. He belonged.

Verena was simpering and he bent his head attentively, squiring her, while the dowagers smirked and nodded. It seemed to be true, what everyone said — that he would marry Verena. She was pointing to something on the floor and he bent to pick it up and handed it to her, gallantly, with a bow. A rose from her extraordinary headdress! Quin as a Rosenkavalier — that was rich! A man who’d rushed out of the Stadtpark as though the music of her city was a plague…

And as if they read her thoughts, the three serious dark-suited men on the dais launched into a waltz! Not Strauss, but Lanner whom she loved as much. She knew it well, she had danced to it with Heini in the Vienna Woods.

‘Oh no! Not that old stuff!’ She could hear the braying, blond young man with the slicked-back hair. ‘Give us something decent!’ A second youth, almost identical, staggered up to the band, shaking his head.

But the band went doggedly on: playing not well, perhaps, but carefully, and the young men gave in and pulled the girls out and began to lurch about, parodying the sweetness of the waltz, exaggerating the steps. Most of them were drunk now, they enjoyed colliding with each other, enjoyed deriding the music of another land. Now one of them stumbled and almost fell — a tall youth with black curls and that was really funny. His partner tried to pull him up and then a red-haired boy with freckles flicked champagne into his face. It was all so hilarious. All such a scream…

The stone was in her hand before she knew that she had picked it up. She must have seen it earlier, for it was the right size, heavy enough to make an impact, small enough for her to propel it with force. The act of throwing it was wonderful: a catharsis — and the crash of the splintered glass. It seemed that she waited for seconds, minutes almost, yet it was not so, for by the time Quin came out on to the terrace, followed by an excited, angry group of revellers, she was already running back out of the light, across the grass… was down in the lane which would lead her to the road.

‘There she is!’

‘It’s a girl! Come on, let’s get her!’

Then Quin’s voice, quiet, yet a whiplash. ‘No. You will all go back inside. I know the girl, she comes from the village and I will deal with her.’

They obeyed him. He had seen where she went, but there was a danger she would turn from the lane into the copse for shelter, and though he knew she could not escape, for the wood ended in a high fence and a stream, there were sometimes gin traps there, set by poachers. Even so, he schooled himself not to run till he was out of sight of the house.

He caught up with her easily. She had done exactly as he had expected.

‘Wait!’ he shouted. ‘There may be traps! Take care!’ He spoke in German, using all the means to calm her, approaching slowly. ‘Don’t move.’

But she had already stopped. When he came up to her she was leaning against a spruce sapling, her posture, in the fleeting moonlight, that of a young St Sebastian waiting for arrows.

His words, when they came, punctured her martyred pose in an instant.

‘I don’t like bad manners,’ said Quin quietly. ‘These people are my guests.’

Her head went up. ‘Yes. The kind of guests one would expect you to have — a man who owns the sea. Braying, mindless idiots who mock at music. Don’t they know what is going on? Can’t they even read? Have they seen the papers? No, of course they only read the sporting pages; which horse has gone faster than another and the report of who curtseyed to the King in a headdress of dead ostriches.’ She was shaking so much that her words came in bursts between the chattering of her teeth. ‘Today… now… while they get drunk and scream in their ridiculous clothes, my people are gathered up and put into cattle trucks and sent away. While they pour wine onto the floor and fall over, young boys who believed in the brotherhood of man are beaten senseless in the street.’

Quin made no move to comfort her. He was as angry as she was, but his voice was entirely controlled. ‘I will not point out to you that your people — using the word in a different sense — stood in the Heldenplatz and yelled in their thousands for Hitler. But I will tell you this. In mocking at the people you saw here, you commit more than ill manners; you commit an injustice over which you will burn with shame — and very soon. For it is these braying boys who the moment war comes will flock to fight. It is they who will confront the evil that is Hitler even though they do it for a jape and a lark. The boy who drank too much and fell over has just passed out of Sandhurst. He’s Ann Rothley’s only son and if war breaks out I wouldn’t give him six months. His friend — the one who poured champagne over him — is a lieutenant in the Marines. He’s engaged to that girl in the blue dress and they’ve put their wedding forward because he’s being posted overseas. The Bainbridge twins — the ones who don’t like waltzes — are in the air force. Both of them. I suppose they might last a year because they’re excellent pilots, but I doubt it. You will be able to look into that room this year or next year or the year after and see a roomful of ghosts — of dead men and weeping women. While your Heini, I wouldn’t be surprised, will still be playing his arpeggios.’

‘No!’ Her voice was scarcely audible. She could not turn from the shelter of the tree. ‘I had a phone call this evening. They’ve caught him. Heini is in a camp.’