The Morning Gift

Chapter 22

At the beginning of December, Leonie decided to celebrate Hanukkah, the Jewish Festival of Light.

One way or another, she felt that light would be a good idea. Kurt was still in Manchester and she missed him; the news from Europe grew increasingly grim and the weather — foggy and dank and not at all like the crisp, snowy weather she remembered in Vienna — did little to lift the spirits.

There was also the problem of Heini. Heini had been sleeping on the sofa for a month and practising for eight hours a day in her sitting room, and though Leonie accepted the need for this, she found herself wondering, as she crept round him with her duster, about the friends and relatives of earlier piano virtuosos. Was there, somewhere in an attic in Budapest, an old lady whose mother had run screaming into the street to escape yet another of Liszt’s brilliant arpeggios? Did the sale of cotton ear plugs soar in some French pharmacy as the inhabitants of the rue de Rivoli adjusted to Chopin’s practice hours? What did those Viennese landladies really feel when Beethoven left another piano for dead?

There was also the question of food. Heini had brought some money from Hungary, but he needed it to insure his hands; she saw that, and the rest went on fares as he sought out agents and impresarios who could help him.

‘It’s for Ruth,’ Heini would say with his sweet smile. ‘Everything I do is for Ruth.’

Everyone accepted this; Heini had declared his intention of marrying Ruth as soon as he was established and keeping her in comfort, so there could be no question of criticizing anything he did. If he stayed an hour in the bathroom it was because he had to look nice at interviews; if he left his clothes on the floor for Leonie to pick up it was because he was working so hard at his music that there was no time for anything else, and without complaint the inhabitants of Number 27 adapted to his presence.

Mishak was not musical. Silence was his metier; he navigated through the day by gentle sounds: a thrush outside the window, the fall of rain, the whirr of a lawn-mower. Now, as Heini pounded his piano, he was cut off from all these. He got up even earlier and worked in the garden till Heini rose; then walked. But the days were drawing in, Mishak was sixty-four — and increasingly, for he was not convivial by nature, he too was driven to the Willow.

Paul Ziller, when Heini came, had hoped that they would play duets, for the repertoire for violin and piano is varied and very beautiful. But Heini, understandably, wanted to concentrate on a solo career and since the house was not sufficiently soundproof to accommodate two practice sessions, the sight of Ziller carrying his Guarneri to the cloakroom of the Day Centre once more became familiar in Belsize Park.

Hilda too altered her routine. The Keeper of the Anthropology Department now trusted her with a key. She took sandwiches and stayed in the museum till late, timing her arrival at Number 27 to coincide with the ascent of Fräulein Lutzenholler onto her bedroom chair.

That they could grow to be grateful to the gloomy psychoanalyst was something none of them could have foreseen, but it was so. For at 9.30, come rain or shine, she climbed on to her chair with a long-handled broom and pounded on the floor of the Bergers’ sitting room as a sign that she was now going to bed and the music must stop.

Only, of course, that meant Leonie could not complain about the state of the cooker so all in all, a Festival of Light was badly needed and since she herself was vague as to how it was performed, she took her problem to the Willow.

‘I buy you a cake?’ said Mrs Weiss.

Leonie accepted and asked the old lady for instructions.

‘There are candles,’ said Mrs Weiss positively. ‘That I know. One lights one each day for eight days and they are put in a menorah.’

‘How can that be?’ asked Dr Levy. ‘If there are eight days there are eight candles and a menorah only has seven branches. And there are certainly prayers. My grandmother prayed.’

‘But what did she pray?’ asked Leonie, tilting her blonde head in resolute pursuit of Jewishness.

Dr Levy shrugged and Ziller said that von Hofmann would know. ‘He’ll be here in a minute.’

‘Why should he know? He has no Jewish blood at all,’ said Mrs Weiss dismissively.

‘But he was in that Isaac Bashevis Singer play, don’t you remember? The Nebbich. That’s a very Jewish play,’ said Ziller.

But von Hofmann, when he came, was hazy. ‘I wasn’t on in that act,’ he said, ‘but it’s a very beautiful ceremony. All the actors were very much moved and Steffi bought a menorah afterwards in the flea market. I could ask her — she’s selling stockings in Harrods.’

No one, however, wanted to trouble Steffi who was an exceedingly tiresome woman though a good actress, and Miss Violet and Miss Maud, who had been listening to this exchange, now said that they’d soon have to start thinking about getting their Christmas decorations up.

Leonie brightened, approaching familiar ground.

‘What do you do for Christmas?’ she asked the ladies.

‘Well, we go to evensong,’ said Miss Maud. ‘And we decorate the tea rooms with paper chains and put a sprig of holly on each of the tables.’

‘And the advent rings?’ asked Leonie.

‘We don’t have those,’ said Miss Maud firmly, scenting a whiff of popery.

‘But a little tree with red apples and a sliver star?’

The ladies shook their heads and said they didn’t believe in making a fuss.

‘But this is not a fuss,’ said Leonie. ‘It’s beautiful.’ And shyly: ‘I could make some Lebkuchen… gingerbread, you know… hearts with icing and red ribbon?’

‘Georg has a big fir tree in his garden,’ said Mrs Weiss. ‘I can cut pieces from it in the night when Moira sleeps.’

‘My wife brought her little glockenspiel,’ said the banker unexpectedly. ‘I said to her she is stupid, but she had it from a child.’

Back in the kitchen, Miss Maud and Miss Violet looked at each other.

‘I suppose it won’t hurt,’ said Miss Maud, ‘though I don’t want pine needles all over the place.’

‘Still it’s better than that Hanukkah thing of theirs. I mean, they won’t get very far if they can’t remember how to do it,’ said Miss Violet.

Mrs Burtt wrung out her cloth and hung it over the sink, above which Ruth had pinned a diagram showing The Life History of the Pololo Worm.

‘And it’ll cheer Ruth up to see the place look pretty,’ she said.

Miss Maud frowned, wondering why their waitress should need cheering. ‘She’s very happy since Heini came. She’s always saying so.’

‘But tired,’ said Mrs Burtt.

Three days after Leonie’s failure over the Festival of Light, Ruth called at the post office on her way to college and drew out of her private box a small packet with a red seal which she opened with a fast-beating heart.

Minutes later, she stood in the middle of a crowd of hurrying people, staring down at the dark blue passport with its golden lion, its prancing unicorn and the careless motto: Dieu et Mon Droit.

‘I am a British subject,’ said Ruth aloud, standing on the pavement opposite a greengrocer’s shop and seeing the Secretary of State in a top hat wafting her through foreign lands.

If only she could have shown it to everyone: the naturalization certificate which confirmed her status; the passport she held in her own right! If only she could have marched into the Willow holding it aloft and danced with Mrs Burtt and hugged her parents. People in Europe would have killed for what she held in her hand — yet no one would have grudged her her luck, she knew that.

But, of course, she could show it to no one. It was Ruth Somerville, not Ruth Berger, that His Britannic Majesty wished to pass without let or hindrance anywhere in the world, and the passport would have to go with the rest of her documents to be scuttled over by the recalcitrant mice.

She was early for college. Since Heini came, Ruth had slept with the alarm under her pillow set for 5.30 so that she could do two hours of work while it was still quiet, Now, as she sat in the Underground, she wanted to mark this day; pay some kind of tribute — and on an impulse she left the train three stops before her destination and climbed the steps of the National Gallery to look down at Trafalgar Square.

She was right, this was the heart of her adopted city. The fountains sparkled, the lions smiled… Through the Admiralty Arch opposite she could see the end of The Mall leading to Buckingham Palace where the shy King lived who was being so good about his stammer, and the soft-voiced Queen looked after the princesses on her biscuit tin.

She tilted her head up at Nelson on his column; the little man who was the favourite hero of the British and who had said, ‘Kiss me, Hardy,’ or perhaps, ‘Kismet, Hardy,’ — talking about fate — and then died. He had been so brave… but then they were brave, the British. Their girls felled each other with hockey sticks and never cried; their women, in earlier times, had stridden through jungles in woollen skirts to turn the heathen to the word of God.

And she too would be strong and brave. She would do well in the Christmas exams and stay awake for Heini when he needed to talk late at night. It was ridiculous to think that anyone needed more than four hours’ sleep. She could do it all: her essays, her revision, her work at the Willow and still help Heini with his interpretations.

The Will Has Only To Be Born In Order To Triumph quoted Ruth who had read this motto on a calendar and been much impressed.

It was only now that she gave her mind to the letter which Mr Proudfoot had enclosed and saw that she was bidden to attend his office on the following afternoon.

Proudfoot had thought it simplest to see Ruth personally and had said so to Quin. ‘It would make sense if you came together, but I suppose we can’t be too careful.’

For after naturalization came the next stage — annulment. To facilitate this, a massive document had been prepared, requiring to be signed by both parties in the presence of a Commissioner for Oaths — and involving Dick Proudfoot’s articled clerk in several hours of work. This affidavit was to be submitted to the courts in the hope that it would come before a judge who would accept it as evidence of nullity without demanding further proof. Whether this would in fact happen was anyone’s guess since the procedure involving annulment in foreign-born nationals was under review and things that were under review never, in Mr Proudfoot’s experience, became simpler.

It so happened that Ruth was waiting in the outer office and that he saw her first with her back turned, looking at a small watercolour on the far wall. The sun came at a slant through the window and touched her hair so that it was the golden tresses, the straight back, he saw first — and immediately he steeled himself, waiting for her to turn. Mr Proudfoot was deeply susceptible to women and had once driven his car into a telephone kiosk on the pavement of Great Portland Street because he was watching a girl come out of her dentist and he knew that when girls with rich blonde hair turn round there is disappointment. At best mediocrity, at worst a sharp, discontented nose, a petulant mouth, for God sensibly preserves his bounty.

‘Miss Berger?’

Ruth turned — and Mr Proudfoot felt a surge of gratitude to his Creator. At the same time, his view of Quin as a chivalrous rescuer of unfortunates receded. What surprised him now was Quin’s haste to get rid of a girl most people would have latched on to with a bulldog bite.

‘This is such a nice picture,’ she said when they had shaken hands. ‘It’s so friendly… the way the tree roots curve right down into the water. It was like that where we used to go in the summer, on the Grundlsee.’

‘Yes. It was done in the Lake District; I suppose it’s the same sort of landscape.’

‘Who painted it?’

‘Actually, I did. When I was a student. I used to dabble in watercolours a bit,’ he said, retreating into British modesty.

Ruth did not care for this. ‘It has nothing to do with dabbling,’ she said reproachfully. ‘It’s beautiful. But I suppose now you paint the river and the places round here?’

‘No. As a matter of fact, I haven’t put a brush to paper for years.’

‘Why is that? Because there is so much to do here?’ she said, following him into the office.

‘Well, yes… but I suppose I could find time. One gets discouraged, you know, being an amateur.’

Ruth frowned. ‘I don’t want to be impertinent when you’ve been so helpful about getting me naturalized and now annulled — but I think that’s very wrong. An amateur is someone who loves something. In all the Haydn Quartets there is a part for an amateur — the second violin, usually, or the cello — but it’s just as beautiful.’

But the sight of the document Mr Proudfoot had prepared for her now silenced Ruth as she waded, biting her lip, through its several pages of parchment, its red seal, its Gothic script and the strange words in which she wished the law to know that she had never been laid hands on, or laid hands herself, on Quinton Alexander St John Somerville.

‘I don’t know if this will work, Miss Berger — some judges won’t accept an affidavit without medical evidence and Quin is determined not to put you through anything like that.’ He flushed, unable to pursue the subject.

‘Yes. He is being so kind — so very kind — which is why I must get this annulment through quickly so that he can marry someone else.’

Proudfoot, who had been led to believe that it was Ruth who was in a hurry, looked surprised.

‘Does he want to marry anyone else?’

‘Perhaps not he, but other people. Verena Plackett, for example.’

‘I don’t know who Verena Plackett is, but I assure you that Quinton can look after himself. People have been trying to marry him since he was knee-high to a goat.’ He pulled the formidable paper closer. ‘Now listen, my dear, because this document is unique and it’s complicated and you have to get it right. You must sign it exactly where I’ve pencilled it — there and there and again over the page — with your full name and in the presence of a Commissioner for Oaths. He’ll make a charge and Quin has asked me to give you a five-pound note to cover the cost. Any commissioner will do, there’s sure to be one in Hampstead. When you’ve done it, bring it back to me — I wouldn’t trust the post; if it’s lost we’ll miss the next sitting of the courts and then we’re in trouble. And if there’s anything you don’t understand, just let me know.’

‘I think I understand it,’ said Ruth. ‘Only perhaps you could wrap it in something for me?’ For her straw basket contained, in addition to her dissecting kit and lecture notes, the remains of Pilly’s sandwiches which, now that Heini was eating with them, she took back to Belsize Park rather than feeding to the ducks.

‘Don’t worry — there’s a cardboard tube — it gets rolled up and put inside. I’ll expect you in a few days, then. Take care!’

‘What do you think?’ said Milner, looking at Quin with his head on one side and an ill-concealed glint of excitement in his eyes.

Quin stood looking down at the drawer of fossil-bearing rocks which Milner had pulled open, first unlocking the storage room with rather more formality than usually went on in the Natural History Museum.

‘You’re right, of course. It’s part of a pterosaur. And I’d have sworn it was from Tendaguru. The Germans have got two casts like that in Berlin from the 1908 expedition. I’ve seen them.’

‘Well, it isn’t. Do you know where this was found?’

Quin, tracing out the beaked skull, still partly embedded in the matrix, shook his head. A wing-lizard, immemorially old and very rare.

‘On the other side of the Kulamali Gorge — eight hundred miles away. He showed me the place on the map. Farquarson may be no more than a white hunter, but he’s no liar and he knows Africa like the back of his hand. I’ve written down the exact location.’

Quin laid the bone back in the tray. ‘Are you serious? South of the Rift?’

‘That’s right. He didn’t know how important it was and I didn’t tell him. It’s a bit of luck, him not being a palaeontologist, otherwise we’d have everyone down on us like a ton of bricks. Whereas as it is…’

Quin held up a restraining hand. Milner had been six months in England, caught in the administration of the civil service which ran the museum, sorting, annotating, preparing exhibitions he regarded as a waste of time. That he wanted to be off again was clear enough.

‘I can’t follow this through now. I spent most of last year away; it isn’t fair on my colleagues.’ He pushed the steel cabinet shut, turned away. ‘Still, I’d like to see Farquarson’s report. You do get those sandstone plateaus there… it’s not impossible. Oh, damn you, Jack — I’ve got to go and set the end of term exams; I’m a staid academic now!’

Milner said nothing more, content to have sown a seed. Sooner or later Quin would crack. Milner had other chances to travel, but he would wait. Journeys weren’t the same without Somerville — and it would do the Professor good to get away. He hadn’t been quite himself the last few weeks.

Verena had returned well satisfied with her time at Bowmont. True Quin had not declared himself, but he had been extremely attentive at the dance, and if it hadn’t been for that madwoman throwing a stone, they might have got much further. Quin had come back from dealing with her in a different mood: sombre and absentminded, and who could blame him? Having an insane person on one’s estate could hardly be a pleasure.

Meanwhile back at the Lodge, she settled down to work. For one of the best ways to approach Quinton was through his subject and Verena, as the Christmas exams approached, worked harder than she had ever worked before.

Needless to say the Placketts did everything they could to help. No one was allowed to talk outside the study door, the maids knew better than to hoover when Verena was writing her essay; a special consignment of textbooks was brought over from the library, including reference books which were needed by the other students.

Not only did Verena work, she also exercised with even greater vigour for she had never lost sight of her ideal: that of accompanying Quin to foreign parts. There was only one point on which she had been doubtful and Quin himself now provided the assurance that she sought.

It happened at a dinner party to which her mother had invited Colonel Hillborough of the Royal Geographical Society. Hillborough was a celebrated traveller and a modest man who worked selflessly for the Society, and he had expressed the hope that Professor Somerville, whom he knew well, would be present.

Whatever Quin’s views on the Placketts’ dinners, there could be no question of refusing, and three days after he had talked to Milner in the museum, he found himself once more sitting at Verena’s right hand.

It was a good evening. Hillborough had just come back from the Antarctic and seen Shackleton’s hut exactly as he had left it: a frozen ham, still edible, hanging from the ceiling, his felt boots lying on a bunk. As he and Quin talked of the great journeys of the past, most of the other guests fell silent, content to listen.

‘And you?’ asked Hillborough as the ladies prepared to leave the room. ‘Are you off again soon?’

Quin, smiling, put up a hand. ‘Don’t tempt me, sir!’

It was then that Verena asked the question that had long been on her mind. ‘Tell me, Professor Somerville,’ she said, giving him his title, though in private, now that she had waltzed in his arms, she always used his Christian name. ‘Is there any reason why women should not go on the kind of expeditions that you organize?’

Quin turned to her. ‘No reason at all,’ he said firmly. ‘Absolutely none. It’s a subject I feel strongly about, as it happens — giving women a chance.’

Verena, that night, was a happy woman. It could not mean nothing, the vehemence of his assurance, the warmth in his eyes — and she now decided that exercising in her rooms was not enough. If she wanted to be sufficiently fleet of foot she would need something more challenging — and the obvious game for that was squash. Squash, however, needs a partner and fighting down her hesitation (for she did not want to elevate him too markedly) she invited Kenneth Easton to accompany her to the Athletic Club.

She could not have known the effect of this summons on poor Kenneth, living with his widowed mother in the quiet suburb of Edgware Green. Piggy banks were emptied, post office accounts raided, to equip Kenneth with a racket and a pair of crisp white shorts to brush his even whiter knees.

And the very next Tuesday, he had the happiness of leaving Thameside with the Vice Chancellor’s daughter, bound for health and fitness on the courts.

‘I feel so guilty,’ said Ruth to the sheep. ‘So ashamed.’ Since her naturalization she had taken to talking to it in English. ‘I don’t know how I came to do such a thing.’

The sheep shifted a hoof and butted its head against the side of the pen. It had consumed the stem of a Brussels sprout which Mishak had dug out of the cold ground of Belsize Park, and seemed to be offering sympathy.

‘I know it’s wrong to complain to you when you have such a hard life,’ she went on — and indeed the future of the sheep, rejected by the meat trade due to its contamination by science, and by science due to its solitary state, was bleak. ‘I would give anything to be able to help you and I know exactly where you should be… it’s a Paradise, I promise you. There are green, green fields and the air smells of the sea and every now and then a tractor comes and tips mangelwurzels onto the grass.’

But it was better not to talk about Bowmont even to the sheep. She still dreamt about it almost nightly, but that would pass. Everything passed — that was something all the experts were agreed about.

‘I just hope he’s in a good mood,’ she said, picking up her basket.

But this was unlikely. Quin, since Heini came, had scarcely thrown her a word. Well, why should he? The shame of that moment when she had thrown the stone would be with her for always. There were other rumours about the Professor: that he was living hard, burning the midnight oil.

She made her way to the lecture theatre, and as he entered her worst fears were confirmed.

‘He looks as though he’s had a night on the tiles,’ said Sam.

Ruth nodded. The thin face was pale, the forehead exceedingly volcanic, and someone seemed to have sat on his gown.

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.’