The Morning Gift

Chapter 26

He had dropped Ruth off at the corner of her street soon after it was light. Now, punctually at nine o’clock, he parked the Crossley outside the elegant premises of Cavour and Stattersley, Jewellers, since 1763, to His Majesty the King, and made his way up the steps.

It had come to him unbidden — this uncharacteristic desire to buy her a present that was sumptuous beyond reason; a useless, costly gift that would blazen his love to the skies. Uncharacteristic because there was no such tradition at Bowmont — no family tiara stowed in the bank and brought out for high days and holidays; no Somerville parure handed down through the generations. His grandmother had kept her Quaker faith and her Quaker ways; Aunt Frances possessed one cameo brooch which appeared, listing slightly, on the black chenille on New Year’s Eve.

But now for Ruth — for his newly discovered wife — he wanted to make a gesture that would resound through the coming generations, a proclamation! The times were against it, his conscience too: as he passed through the wide doors held open by a flunkey, the orphans of Abyssinia, the unemployed, stretched out imaginary hands to him, but to no avail. Later they would be sensible, he and Ruth: they would plough and sow and make rights of way; they would sponsor yet more opera-loving cowmen, but now, instantly, he would send a priceless, senseless gift to his beloved, and she would rise from her bed and know!

Thus Quin, walking lightly up the steps between the little box trees in tubs — and Mr Cavour, seeing him coming, metaphorically licked his lips.

‘What had you in mind?’ he asked when Quin had been shown to a blue velvet chair beside a rosewood desk. In the show cases, lit like treasures of the Hermitage, were Fabergé Easter eggs, earrings trembling with showers of crystal, a butterfly brooch worn by the exiled Spanish Queen. ‘What kind of gems, for example?’

Quin smiled, aware that he was cutting a slightly absurd figure: a man willing to mortgage himself for a gift with only the haziest notions of its nature. What gems did he have in mind? Diamonds? Sinbad had found a valley filled with them; they were lodged in the brains of serpents and carried aloft in eagle’s bills. The Orlov diamond had been plucked from the eye of an Indian idol… the Great Mogul, the most famous jewel in antiquity, was the favourite treasure of Shah Jahan.

Were diamonds right for Ruth, with her warmth, her snub nose and funniness? Was there too much ice there for his new-found wife?

‘Or we have a ruby parure,’ said Mr Cavour. ‘The stones are from the Mogok mines; unmatchable. The true pigeon’s blood colour. They were sold to an American by the Grand Duchess Tromatoff and they’re just back on the market.’

Quin pondered. Mogok, near Mandalay… paddy fields… temples… He had been there, making a detour after an earlier expedition and had seen the mines. Why not rubies with their inner fire?

‘And there is a pearl and sapphire necklace which you would be hard put to match anywhere in the world. Someone is interested in it, but if you wished to make a definite offer…’ He flicked at an underling. ‘Go on down to the safe, Ted, and get Number 509.’

Quin’s mind was still in free fall, pursuing he knew not what. The Profane Venus was always painted richly dressed in a fillet of pearls. It was the Celestial Venus that they painted naked, for they knew, those wise men of the Renaissance, that nakedness was pure. Either was all right with him: Ruth in her loden cape, loaded with jewels; Ruth without it at midnight, eating a peach.

The box was brought, snapped open. The necklace was superb.

‘Yes… it’s very beautiful,’ said Quin absently.

Then suddenly it came, the clue, the allusion… the thing he had been waiting for: Ruth, barefoot with windblown hair, coming towards him on Bowmont beach, cupping something in her hand. ‘Look,’ she was saying, ‘Oh, look!’

He rose, waved away the necklace. ‘It’s all right,’ he said. ‘I know now what it has to be. I know exactly!’

His next errand did not take him long.

Dick Proudfoot had returned from Madeira, suntanned and pleased with life. He had also produced four watercolours of which only three displeased him. Now, however, he looked down at the complicated document, with its seals and tassels — a replica of the first which his clerk had brought in when Professor Somerville appeared unexpectedly in the office — and up again at Quin.

‘What did you say?’

‘You heard me! I want you to tear the thing up. I’m stopping the annulment. I’m staying married.’

Proudfoot leaned back in his chair and folded his hands behind his head.

‘Well, well. I can’t say I’m surprised.’ He grinned. ‘Allow me to congratulate you.’

It struck him that he had not seen Quin look so relaxed and happy for a long time. The volcanic craters were missing; there was peace in those alert, enquiring eyes. Proudfoot pulled the document towards him, tore it in two, dropped it in the wastepaper basket. ‘Quite apart from anything else, it’s a great relief — we were on pretty dodgy ground all along. Will you be living at Bowmont?’

‘Yes. She fits the place like a glove — she was only there a few days, yet everyone remembers her: the shepherd, the housemaids… it’s uncanny!’ For a moment, a slight shadow fell over his face. ‘The trouble is, I’ve set up this trip to Africa.’

But even as he spoke, Quin realized what he would do. The climate on the plains was healthy; the trip was not hazardous — and in an emergency Ruth could always stay with the Commissioner and his wife at Lindi.

‘Do you want me to write to Ruth?’

‘No; I’ll tell her myself. And thanks, Dick, you’ve been splendid. If you send your account to Chelsea I’ll settle it before I go.’

He had reached the door when Proudfoot called him back. ‘Have you got a minute?’

Though he was impatient to be gone, Quin nodded. Dick went to a bureau by the wall, opened a drawer, took out a small painting: a feathery tamarisk, each brush stroke as light as gossamer, against a mass of scarlet geraniums.

‘I did it in Madeira. Do you think she’d like it? Ruth?’

‘I’m sure she would.’

‘I’ll get it framed then and send it along.’

Out in the street, Quin looked at his watch. Ruth should have received his gift by now — Cavour had promised to send it instantly. Light-headed from lack of sleep and the conviction that he would live for ever, he turned his car towards the museum. It shouldn’t be difficult to book an extra cabin on the boat, but he’d better put Milner on to it right away. And how very agreeable to know that Brille-Lamartaine, if he chose to make further enquiries, would learn nothing but the truth. For he was taking along a woman, one of his own students… and one with whom he was passionately in love!

Ruth had not expected to go to sleep after she left Quin. She had crept in and climbed into her bed only wanting to relive the whole glorious night again, but she had fallen instantly into deep oblivion.

Now, as she woke and stretched, it was to a transformed world. The bedroom she shared with her Aunt Hilda, with its swirling brown wallpaper, had never seemed to be a place in which to let the eye linger, but now she could imagine the pleasure the designer must have felt in being allowed to wiggle paint about. And Hilda herself, as she brushed her sparse hair, seemed to Ruth the personification of the academic ideal — devoted all her life to a tribe she never saw, made ecstatic by a chipped arrowhead or drinking cup. How good Aunt Hilda was, how grateful Ruth was to be her niece!

She swung her feet over the side of the bed, smiled at the shrunken head. She was walking now over the buried biscuit tin containing her wedding ring, her marriage certificate. Soon — today perhaps — she could dig it up and take it to her mother.

‘I’m married, Mama,’ she would say. ‘I’m married to Professor Somerville and I love him terribly and he loves me.’

She slipped on her dressing-gown and went to the window and here too was a beauty she had never perceived before. True, the gasometer was still there, but so was the sycamore in the next-door garden and, yes, the bark was sooty and one of the branches was dead — but oh, the glory of the brave new leaves!

On the landing she encountered Fräulein Lutzenholler, glowering, with her sponge bag.

‘He is in the bathroom,’ she said.

There was no need for Ruth to ask who. It was always Heini who was in the bathroom. But this morning she did not rush to Heini’s defence, she was too busy loving Fräulein Lutzenholler who had been so right about everything: who had said that we lose what we want to lose, forget what we want to forget… who had said that frigidity was about whether you loved someone or not. Ruth, in her dramatic nonfrigidity, beamed at the psychoanalyst and would have kissed her but for the moustache and the knowledge that, so early in the morning, she could not yet have cleaned her teeth.

‘Hurry up, Heini,’ called Ruth.

The thought of Heini did halt her. Heini was going to be badly hurt and for a moment her joy was clouded by apprehension. But only for a moment. Heini would find another starling — a whole flock of them in years to come. It was music he loved, and rightly — and what had happened last night was beyond anything one could be sorry for. It was a kind of metallurgical process, a welding of body and soul; you couldn’t argue about it.

Oh, Quin, she thought, and hugged herself, and Fräulein Lutzenholler, furiously waiting, looked at her, startled, remembering the existence of something she seldom came across in her profession: joy.

Giving up hope of the bathroom, Ruth went into the kitchen where all of them, since Heini’s arrival, kept a spare toothbrush. Her mother was laying the breakfast and Ruth stood for a moment in the doorway watching her. Leonie looked tired these days, there were lines on her face that had not been there when they left Vienna, and strands of grey in her hair, but to her daughter she looked beautiful. And with the love that enveloped Ruth, with the ecstasy of her remembered night, there came an overwhelming gratitude, for now she would be able to help her parents, help Uncle Mishak… pay back at last.

Her mother would not want to live at Bowmont — Ruth smiled, thinking of the surging sea, the cold wind, the draughts. Her parents would visit, but they would want to stay in town and now they should do so in comfort. She would be an undemanding wife — no grand clothes, certainly no jewels or trinkets which she did not care for anyway. She would learn to be frugal and sensible, but there were things she would ask Quin for and that he would grant in their shared life, she knew that. A cottage for Uncle Mishak — Elsie had shown her an empty one in the village — sanctuary for her friends when they needed a place to rest or work… and she might just mention the problem of the sheep! And she, in exchange, would not whine to be taken on his journeys. It was not easy to see how she was supposed to live away from him for months on end, but she would — somehow she would.

Now she embraced her mother who said: ‘You look very happy. Did you have a good time with Pilly?’

‘Yes, I did. A lovely time.’

Ruth blushed, but it was her last lie. They had not made plans in the night — it was a night outside time — but when they did she would announce her marriage and then she would never need to lie again!

It was as she was cutting herself a slice of bread that she came out of her dream of happiness to notice that Leonie was clattering the crockery in a way which had boded ill in Vienna.

‘Is anything the matter, Mama?’

Leonie shrugged. ‘I’m silly to be surprised — I should have expected it from the stupid, pop-eyed Aryan cow! But even so one couldn’t quite imagine that she would treat him like that after all he did for her and that loutish family of hers. When you think how she chased him in the hospital — a junior nurse as thick as a plank — and the way she showed off about being a Frau Doktor.’

‘Is this Hennie? Dr Levy’s wife?’

Leonie nodded. ‘She’s written to say she wants a divorce on racial grounds. You should have seen him yesterday; he looks ten years older — and even so he won’t hear a word against her. The man’s a saint.’

Ruth was silent, cupping her hands round her mug, in sudden need of warmth. How could anyone hurt this modest, gentle man — a brilliant doctor, a generous friend. She had seemed to love him, the foolish Hennie, echoing his words, basking in his status. Was it so strong, the pull of her family with their pernicious views?

‘Aren’t you going to college?’

‘Not till later.’

Quin had told her to be lazy, to have the morning off. It had surprised her, but she would heed him. When she did go, she would have to be careful not to levitate in the lecture room and float over the carafe of water into his arms. Levitating during lectures was almost certainly bad manners and she could only repay the gods now by being very, very good.

She was still sitting dreamily over a second cup of coffee when the doorbell rang, insistent and shrill. For a moment she thought it might be Quin and in an unconscious gesture of coquetry, she shook out her hair, making it into an offering. But that was silly; Quin had left her saying he had something important to do. He had sounded mysterious, almost preoccupied. He wouldn’t, in any case, have followed her to Belsize Park — not till they had decided what to do.

‘Go down, darling,’ said Leonie. ‘Ziller’s out — he’s gone to the Day Centre.’ She brightened. ‘Perhaps it’s the rodent officer!’

But it was not the rodent officer. A messenger stood there in a dark blue pageboy’s suit and a peaked cap. He must have come in the van that stood parked near by, also dark blue, with scrolled writing saying Cavour and Stattersley and surmounted by a crown.

‘I’ve a package for Miss Ruth Berger. It’s got to be delivered to her personally.’

‘I’m Ruth Berger.’

‘Can you give evidence of identity?’

Ruth, in her dressing-gown, sighed. ‘I can go up and get a letter or something. But I’m not expecting anything. Are you sure it’s for me?’

‘Yes, I’m sure. It’s a special delivery. Got to be handed over personally and had to get here first thing — and came in an armoured car, and that only happens when we’re delivering stuff that’s worth a fortune!’

‘I think you must have got it wrong,’ said Ruth, puzzled.

But the driver now leant out of the van and said: ‘It’s okay, I’ve got a description. You can hand it over — just get her to sign.’

Ruth took the parcel and signed her name. The delivery boy looked at her, impressed. ‘We haven’t had to hustle like that since we delivered a tiara to the Duchess of Rockingham before the state visit of some bigwig. I wish it was me going to open the box.’

Ruth, still bewildered, said: ‘I’m sorry, I don’t have anything to give you — but thank you all the same. Only if there’s a mistake…?’

‘If there is, just get in touch with Cavour and Stattersley. They can change it for you maybe… shorten it or something. But you won’t want to mess about with what you’ve got in there!’

The van drove away. Left alone, Ruth opened the box.

She didn’t, at first, take in what she saw: a necklace of green stones, each ringed by diamonds and linked by a golden chain. Emeralds, green as the sea, as the eyes of the Buddha and perfectly matched.

Then suddenly she understood.

This was a gift… a gift hurried to her through the London streets so that it should reach her the morning after the bridal night. Obscenely valuable, because Quin was generous and would not buy her off with anything cheap, but unmistakable in what it signified.

‘The word comes from the Latin matrimonium ad morganaticum,’ Quin had told her in the Stadtpark, explaining the concept of a morganatic marriage. ‘It’s a marriage based on the morning gift with which the husband frees himself from any liability to his wife. A morganatic wife doesn’t share any of her husband’s duties or responsibilities, and their children don’t inherit.’

That was why he had urged her to stay home this morning; so that she would be certain to receive it. So that she should understand at once that she was not wanted at Bowmont. A girl with tainted blood might be fit to share his bed, but not his home. A refugee, a foreigner, part Jewish… of course, it was unthinkable. If it could happen to Dr Levy, that saintly man, then why not to her?

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.

No, it wouldn’t work. Secret love nests were for people in control, not for people who thought they would die if someone got out of bed to fetch a glass of water. She loved him far too much for that, she would make scenes and demands. There was only one thing to do — finish her degree and get right away for ever.

When she got out at the Embankment and made her way to the lift, she found that Kenneth Easton had been on the same train. Kenneth was usually unfriendly, copying Verena’s attitude, but today he seemed to want to walk with her and Ruth saw that he looked pale and wretched, so that their reflections, in the mirror of a shop, showed a pair of weary, green-faced wraiths.

‘You look a bit tired,’ said Ruth, as they made their way to the bridge.

‘Yes, I am,’ said Kenneth. ‘I am very tired. I didn’t sleep at all.’

‘It’s been a long term,’ said Ruth. ‘You’ll be able to take it easy after tomorrow. And you’ve been playing a lot of squash — that’s tiring.’

Kenneth turned to her, his long face showing signs of gratitude, for she had given him the lead he wanted.

‘Yes, I have been playing a lot of squash and it’s a very expensive occupation. And in other ways too… you may think it’s easy all the time to say napkin instead of serviette and that Featherstonehaugh is pronounced Fanshaw, but it can be quite a strain and my mother doesn’t always understand. In Edgware Green a toilet is a toilet and if you suddenly start saying loo people look at you. But it didn’t matter, nothing mattered because I really thought that Verena might grow to care for me.’

They had reached the river and Ruth, for a moment, lost concentration. (‘I shall buy a thousand lemonade bottles and put a note in each and every one…’)

When she could hear Kenneth again, he was admitting to his foolishness. ‘I sort of declared myself. It was last night after squash and we were having a drink together in the club and it was so companionable. I completely forgot that my father was a grocer. He’s dead, of course, but that only makes it worse. If he’d lived he might have gone on to other things, but now he’s a grocer for ever.’

‘And Verena turned you down?’

‘Yes, she did. And she told me about Professor Somerville and that seemed to make it worse. I knew she cared for him, of course, but I thought it might just be one-sided — only when she told me about Africa, I realized —’

Watch the water, Ruth told herself. Water heals… it carries away pain. ‘What about Africa?’

‘That the Professor is taking her. She knew before, but she didn’t say anything because it’s a secret — and yesterday she went to the Geophysical Society and the Professor’s assistant had just been to arrange for a special cabin. No one’s supposed to know — I shouldn’t be telling you. You won’t say anything, will you, Ruth? Promise?’

‘No, Kenneth. Of course I won’t.’

‘I should have understood. They always stick together, the upper classes. People like us are all right for them to amuse themselves with, but when it comes to the point we’re nowhere. My father’s a grocer, that’s all there is to it. I never had a chance.’

No. I never had a chance either. My father is something worse than a grocer. Well, at least she was spared the humiliation of offering herself to Quin as a kind of concubine. The African journey was bound to be a long one and it was unthinkable that he wouldn’t marry Verena at some point. Kenneth had done her a good turn by severing the last shreds of hope.

She managed a few words of comfort, and together they made their way through the arch and into Thameside’s courtyard. Facing them, a confirmation of everything that Kenneth had told her, stood Quin and Verena in animated conversation beneath the walnut tree.

Quin lifted his head; he looked directly at her, and though she had thought in the night that nothing could get worse, she had been wrong: for what she had to do now was not to run towards him, not to throw herself into his arms and beg him to release her from this nightmare, and that was worse. It was impossible, but she had done it; she had plucked at Kenneth’s arm, she was pronouncing words.

‘Kenneth, I’ve decided not to go to the lecture — Heini wanted me to come to the practice rooms and I feel I ought to go. Will you tell Professor Somerville and make my excuses? Tell him I have to be with my fiancé — be sure to tell him that — and ask Sam to let me borrow his notes.’

Kenneth, suffering also, managed a magnanimous gesture. ‘I’ll let you have my notes, Ruth. My handwriting is far more legible than Sam’s.’

Quin had seen her come; had seen her bright head, her gallant figure in its worn cape, and his heart had leapt for now, in the morning, he knew it was impossible, what he had thought in the night — and he waited for her to walk towards him, relieved and grateful for the return of sanity. And then she checked and turned and went away, and even before Kenneth gave — verbatim — Ruth’s message, pronouncing the word fiancé in a way which was displeasing to Verena, the pain struck and clawed, and incredulity became belief. He had been used and betrayed.

But Quin, as he went to his room, had an escape which men have perfected and Ruth had yet to learn. Anger. An all-enveloping fury, a rage which consumed him: rage against Heini, against Ruth, against himself for having been duped. Tearing his gown from its hook, marching blindly to his lecture, he let it have its way — this torrent of fury which was so much less agonizing than the pain.