The Morning Gift

Chapter 24

‘I must say sometimes I wish the human heart really was just a thick-walled rubber bulb, don’t you?’ said Ruth to Janet, with whom she had stayed behind to draw a model of the circulatory system kindly constructed for them by Dr Fitzsimmons.

Nearly two months had passed since Christmas, and Heini’s passionate plea that they should be properly together was about to be answered at last. Ruth had not delayed so long on purpose. She wanted to be like the heroine of La Traviata who had sung about living utterly and then dying and she knew that in giving herself to Heini she was serving the cause of music. Heini, who was studying the Dante Sonata for the competition, had become very interested in the composer’s private life and Liszt (who was famous for being demonic) had already been through a number of countesses by the time he was Heini’s age, so that it was entirely understandable that Heini did not feel able to do justice to his compositions while in a state of physical frustration.

All the same, it hadn’t been easy. The opportunities for being demonic at Number 27 were nonexistent and they couldn’t afford a hotel. So she had turned to Janet, who had so completely got over being a vicar’s daughter, and Janet had come up trumps.

‘You can have my flat,’ she had said. ‘We’ll have to find out when the other two are away, but Corinne goes home most weekends and Hilary quite often works all day Saturday; I’ll let you know when it’s safe.’

And the day before, Janet had let her know. The very next Saturday, Ruth could have the whole afternoon to be with Heini. Now, looking at her friend, Janet said: ‘You don’t have to, you know. No one has to. Some people just aren’t any good unless they’re married and it seems to me you may be one of them.’

‘It’s just cowardice,’ said Ruth, rubbing out a capillary tube which was threatening to run off the page. ‘If you can do it, so can I.’

Janet’s reply was a little disconcerting. ‘Yes, I can and I do. Someone started me off when I was sixteen and I was ashamed because my father was a vicar and I wanted to show I wasn’t a prig. And once you start, you go on. But I’m twenty-one and I’m a bit tired of it already and sometimes I wonder what the point of it all is.’

It was as they were packing up their belongings that Ruth, looking sideways at Janet, said: ‘Do you think I ought to read a book about it first?’

‘Good God, Ruth, you do nothing but read books! You must know more about the physiology of the reproductive system than anyone in the world.’

‘I meant… a sort of manual. A “How to do it” one, like you have for mending motorbikes.’

‘You can if you like. If you go to Foyles and go up to the second floor you can read one free. They’ve got half a dozen of them in the Human Biology section. The assistants won’t bother you; they’re used to it.’

So on the following day, Ruth went to Charing Cross in her lunch hour and Pilly insisted on accompanying her. Ruth had not meant to burden Pilly with the ecstatic experience she was about to undergo, but Pilly had been so hurt when Ruth had secret conversations with Janet that she had let her into the secret. Pilly had been very admiring; ‘You are brave,’ she said frequently, but she had taken to bringing along cod-liver oil capsules in her lunch box and urging Ruth to swallow them, and this was not quite the image Ruth had in mind.

‘I won’t come upstairs with you,’ said Pilly. ‘I’m sure I won’t be able to understand the diagrams and there are probably going to be a lot of names. I’ll wait for you in Cookery.’

Pilly was right. There were a lot of names and the diagrams were deeply dispiriting. One would just have to rely on living utterly.

‘It’ll be all right, Ruth,’ said Janet when they got back to college. ‘Honestly. I’ll take you to the flat tomorrow and show you where everything is. There’s just one thing you want to be careful of.’

Ruth swallowed. ‘Getting pregnant, you mean?’

‘No, not that — obviously Heini will see to that. It’s about his socks.’

‘What about them?’ said Ruth, feeling her heart pound at this new threat.

Janet laid a hand on her arm. ‘Try to make sure that he takes them off early on. A man standing there with nothing on and then those dark socks… it can throw you a bit. But after all, you love him. There’s really nothing to worry about at all.’

Janet’s flat was in Bloomsbury, in one of those little streets behind the British Museum. Had she climbed down the fire escape which led from the kitchen, Ruth would have found herself a stone’s throw from the basement where Aunt Hilda worked. Hilda wouldn’t be shocked by what she was about to do. The Mi-Mi were very easy going; everyone in Bechuanaland took love lightly.

But her parents…

Ruth forced her mind away from what her parents would think. She had so hoped that the annulment would be through by now — then she could at least have got engaged to Heini. But it wasn’t and that was her fault and another reason for not keeping him waiting any longer.

The flat was very Bohemian; the furniture was sort of tacked together and there wasn’t much of it and everything was very dusty. Still, that was a good thing. Mimi had been a Bohemian, arriving with her candle and her tiny frozen hands and not fussing any more than the heroine of La Traviata about being married. She had died too, of course, clutching her little muff, but not from sin, from consumption — one had to remember that.

Heini should be here any moment now. She had cleaned the sink and swept the kitchen floor and unwrapped the wine that Janet had brought her as a good luck present. Ruth had been worried about this — Janet was dreadfully hard up — but Janet had waved her protests away.

‘It was a special offer from the Co-op,’ she said.

The wine would be a big help, Ruth was sure of that, remembering what it had done for her on the Orient Express.

Fighting down her nervousness, she opened the door of Corinne’s room which was the one Janet suggested they use. It had a double bed — well, a double mattress — covered in some interesting coloured sacking. Corinne was an art student; there were drawings tacked round the wall which she had done in life class. All the women had breasts which soared upwards and Doric-looking thighs. Heini was going to be very disappointed — perhaps it would be best to make the room properly dark. But when she began to draw the curtains, the bamboo rail came clattering down on to the floor and she only just had time to replace it before the doorbell rang.

‘Heini! Darling!’ But though he embraced her, Heini did not look happy. ‘Is everything all right? Did you get them?’

‘Yes, I did in the end, but I’ve had an awful time. The slot machines were right up against each other and the instructions had been ripped off so the first time I put a sixpence in I got a bar of chocolate — that revolting stuff with squishy cream in the middle.’

‘Oh, Heini; how awful!’ Heini never ate chocolate in case it gave him acne.

‘Then I tried the other one and the money got stuck. I had to hit it with my shoe while some idiot came past and sniggered. I never want to go through that again!’

Guilt surged through Ruth. Heini had asked her to go to the chemist and see to ‘all that’ and it was true that her English was much better than his, but there were words one wasn’t absolutely sure about, even if one looked them up in the dictionary. Particularly if one looked them up in the dictionary. At the same time, she wondered if he had brought the chocolate. She had missed her lunch, but it was probably better not to ask.

‘Anyway, we’re here,’ she said, helping him off with his coat. And then bravely: ‘Would you like a bath?’

Heini nodded — he must have read the same book as she had; the one which said that a bath beforehand was a good idea — and followed her into the bathroom where she lit the geyser and turned on the tap.

The effect was dramatic. There was a loud bang, gusts of steam erupted, and a purple flame.

‘Good God, we can’t use that!’ said Heini. ‘It’s worse than Belsize Park.’

‘You don’t think it’ll calm down?’

‘No I don’t.’ Heini had grabbed a towel and was holding it to his nose. ‘Emile Zola was killed by a leaking stove.’

‘Well, never mind,’ said Ruth, turning it off. (Not all the books had recommended hot baths. Some believed in naturalness.) ‘Let’s go and have some wine.’

They returned to the kitchen and she poured a glass for Heini and another for herself.

‘We’d better drink a toast,’ she said.

Heini smiled: ‘To our love!’ he said.

It was at this moment that they heard a series of frantic, high-pitched squeaks outside on the fire escape. Ruth opened the door and a black cat ran into the room, carrying a bird in its mouth. The bird was a sparrow and it was not yet dead.

‘Oh, God!’

‘Shoo it out for heaven’s sake!’

‘I think it lives here. Janet said something about a cat.’

‘It doesn’t matter if it lives here or not.’

Heini rose, chased the cat out, and bolted the door.

‘We should have killed it,’ said Ruth.

‘I can’t kill cats without a gun.’

‘Not the cat. The bird.’

Feeling distinctly queasy, she lifted her glass and drank. Sour and chill, the wine crashed into her stomach. Seemingly there was wine and wine…

‘Come on, Ruth! Let’s go into the bedroom.’

‘Yes. Only Heini, I’d like to get into the mood a bit. Couldn’t we have some music?’

‘I am in the mood,’ said Heini crossly. But he followed her into the sitting room where a pile of records was heaped untidily onto a low table.

‘Oh, look!’ she said delightedly. ‘They’ve got Highlights from La Traviata.’

But, of course, musicians do not listen to highlights — it is not to be expected — and Heini was beginning to look hurt.

‘You do love me, don’t you?’

‘Heini, you know I do!’

He held out both hands, boyish, appealing. She put hers into them. They made their way into the bedroom. And he was taking off his socks — someone must have warned him! It was going to be all right!’

‘Oh, damnation! This place is a tip! I’ve got a drawing pin in my foot.’

He had subsided on to the bed, clutching his left foot from which, sure enough, a drop of blood now oozed.

‘It’s not the part you pedal with,’ said Ruth who could always read his thoughts. ‘It’s right on the side. But I’ll get a bit of plaster.’

‘And some iodine,’ called Heini as she made for the door. ‘The floor must be knee-deep in germs.’

She found some iodine in the bathroom and a roll of zinc plaster, but no scissors. Carrying the plaster into the kitchen, she searched the drawers but without success. Eventually she took a kitchen knife and started to hack off a strip.

‘It’s stopped bleeding,’ called Heini. ‘If you just disinfect it, it’ll be all right.’

Carrying the iodine into the bedroom, she anointed the sole of Heini’s foot. Heini was being brave, not wincing.

‘We’ll have to wait for it to dry.’

‘It won’t take long,’ he said. ‘Why don’t you get undressed?’

‘I’ll just take the iodine back. It would be awful if we spilled it.’

She went past the life class pictures, past a small grey feather dropped from the breast of the little bird, and restored the iodine bottle. Returning, she found that Heini was in bed.

It could be postponed no longer, then — the living utterly. Ruth crossed her arms and pulled her sweater over her head.

On the same afternoon as Heini was learning to be demonic in Bloomsbury, Quin made his way to the Natural History Museum to confer with his assistant about the coming journey.

‘I’m afraid I have bad news for you,’ said Milner, climbing down from the scaffolding on which he was attending to the neck bones of a brontosaurus.

But he was smiling. Since Quin had told him they were off in June, he had been in an excellent mood.

‘What kind of bad news?’ asked Quin.

‘I’ll tell you in private,’ said Milner mysteriously, and together they made their way through the echoing dinosaur hall to Milner’s cubbyhole in the basement. ‘It’s Brille-Lamartaine,’ he went on. ‘He’s got wind of your trip and he wants to come! He’s been lurking and hinting and making a thorough nuisance of himself. I haven’t said a word, but something must have leaked out.’

‘Good God! I thought he was in Brussels.’

Brille-Lamartaine was the Belgian geologist whose spectacles had been stepped on by a yak. It isn’t often that a member of an expedition is a disaster without a single redeeming feature, but Brille-Lamartaine had achieved this distinction without even trying.

‘I wonder how he heard?’

‘He’s been spending a lot of time at the Geographical Society. Hillborough’s totally discreet but something may have leaked out.’

‘I’ll tell you what,’ said Quin, ‘if he brings up the subject again, tell him I’m bringing a woman. One of my students. A young life-enhancing woman greedy for experience with the opposite sex.’

Milner was appreciative. Brille-Lamartaine was terrified of women and convinced that every one had designs both on his portly frame and his inheritance from a maiden aunt in Ghent.

‘I shall like to do that,’ he said.

But as he left the museum, Quin knew that he could no longer postpone telling his staff that he was leaving. The Placketts could wait till the statutory term’s notice at Easter, but to let Roger and Elke and Humphrey hear the news from others would be unpardonable.

As it happened, Roger was in the lab, using the weekend to catch up with his research, and the look on his face when Quin spoke was hard to bear.

‘It’ll be a desert without you,’ he said and turned away to hide his distress. ‘Elke thought this might happen, but I hoped… Oh, hell!’

‘If it’s any consolation to you, I think next year may see us all scattered,’ said Quin. ‘This war, if it comes, won’t be like the last one. I’ve seen some pretty weird contingency plans, but few of them involve leaving scientists in peace in their universities.’ And as Roger still stood in silence, trying to deal with his sense of loss, Quin put a hand on his arm and said: ‘I’ll take you to Africa, Roger, if you can get away. I’d be glad to. It’s not strictly your line of country, but I think you’d enjoy it.’

‘Thanks — you know how I’d love it, but I can’t leave Lillian. We’re supposed to be taking delivery of an infant at the end of May, sight unseen. A Canadian dancer who’s got into trouble. Lillian thinks it’ll do entrechats as soon as we get it; she’s really thrilled.’

‘I’m glad!’ said Quin warmly. ‘And if you’ve got a vacancy for a godfather, perhaps you’d consider me?’

Roger’s face lit up. ‘The job is yours, Professor.’

Crossing the courtyard after his talk with Roger, Quin encountered Verena accompanied by Kenneth Easton, carrying a squash racket and clearly in the best of spirits.

‘You look very fit,’ said Quin when it was evident that she would not let him pass.

‘Oh I am, Professor!’ said Verena archly. She did not actually invite him to feel her biceps, but this was not necessary. Bare-armed and in shorts, the state of her musculature was evident to anyone with eyes to see. And then: ‘I was wondering what you thought of the Army and Navy Stores? Would you recommend them as the best outfitters before an expedition?’

‘Yes, indeed. They’re excellent — I always use them; you’ll find everything you want there. If you mention my name to Mr Collins, you’ll find him very helpful.’

‘Thank you, I’ll do that. And flea powder? Do you recommend Coopers or Smythsons?’

Quin, who had vaguely gathered that Verena was off on some kind of journey with her Croft-Ellis cousins, came down in favour of Coopers and made his way to his room, leaving Kenneth in a state of deep depression. The sacrifices he had made for Verena were considerable. He travelled fourteen stations on the Underground to partner her in squash; he had stopped saying ‘mirror’ and ‘serviette’ both of which, it seemed, were common, and been corrected when he mispronounced Featherstonehaugh. And yet every time she saw the Professor, Verena bridled and simpered like a schoolgirl. There were times, thought Kenneth, when one wondered if it was all worthwhile.

‘I am leaving,’ announced Heini. ‘I’m going to look for another room.’

Leonie stared at the wild-haired youth who had come back in a towering rage after spending Saturday in town.

‘But why, Heini? What has happened?’

‘I can’t discuss it, but I have to leave. I’m too upset to stay here. I can’t even play.’

This was not strictly true. Heini had been home for half an hour and had considerably decreased the life expectancy of the hired piano by crashing through the Busoni Variations so as to send the dishes rattling on the sideboard.

‘Does Ruth know?’ asked Leonie nervously.

‘Not yet. But she will not be surprised,’ said Heini darkly.

‘Oh, dear. If you’ve quarrelled… I mean, that does happen.’

‘Not this,’ said Heini obscurely. ‘This does not happen. I’ll leave as soon as I’ve found somewhere to go.’

Warring emotions clashed in Leonie’s breast. Ruth would be upset and Leonie would do anything to spare her daughter pain. Yet the thought of Heini being elsewhere rose like an image of Paradise in her mind. To be able to wander in and out of her sitting room at will, to be able to put her feet up in the afternoon… To be able to get into the bathroom!

Not knowing what to say, she retreated into the kitchen where Mishak was looking at the pages of a gardening catalogue lent to him by the lady two houses down.

‘Heini says he is leaving. I think he and Ruth have had some dreadful quarrel.’

Mishak looked up. ‘Where will he go?’

‘I don’t know. He says he’s going to look for another room.’

‘And how will he pay for it?’

Heini had, of course, been living rent-free; the money he had brought from Budapest having been used up long ago.

‘I don’t know. But he’s very determined.’

In Mishak’s mind, as in Leonie’s, there rose a vision of Number 27 without Heini. He imagined hearing the blackbirds in the morning, the rustle of wind in the trees.

‘Do you think he’ll want any supper?’ asked Leonie, preparing to mix the pancakes which, when filled with scraps of various sorts, could fill up large numbers of people at very little expense. ‘He was very upset.’

‘He will want supper,’ said Mishak, and was proved right.

It was Ruth who did not want supper. Ruth who phoned to say she would be late… and who was walking the streets wringing her hands like a Victorian heroine. Ruth who felt disgraced and shamed and wished the earth would open up and swallow her…

For after all, it had happened, the thing she had dreaded that night on the Orient Express. It was prophetic, all the reading she had done there on the Grundlsee. They had not minced their words, those behavioural experts with their three-volumed tomes: Havelock Ellis and Krafft-Ebing and a particularly alarming man called Eugene Feuermann. It was not for nothing that they had devoted chapter after chapter to one of the great scourges of those who seek fulfilment in the act of love.

Anything would have been better than what had happened. There were chapters on nymphomania too, but Ruth would have settled for that. Nymphomania might end badly, but it sounded generous and giving. Someone with nymphomania might expect to live utterly and die whereas…

Why me? thought Ruth, when I was so much looking forward to being with him. And what would Janet say? Could one even mention it to Janet who was so bountiful in the backs of motor cars?

The word drummed in her ear — the dreaded word which branded her as ice cold, as having splinters in her heart as if the Snow Queen herself had put them there. It had begun to drizzle and she pulled up the hood of her loden cape, but the bad weather suited her. Why should the sun shine ever again on someone who was the subject of two whole chapters and a set of tables in Feuermann’s Sexual Psychopathology?

Ruth walked for one hour, and two… and then, tainted or not, she made her way to the Underground. Sooner or later she would have to face Heini and to add cowardice to coldness would solve nothing.

‘Come in.’

Fräulein Lutzenholler sat in her dressing-gown drinking a cup of cocoa with a wrinkled skin, which she had made earlier, spilling the milk. Above her hung the portrait of the couch she had used to see patients in Breslau, a small blue flame hissed in the gas fire, and she was not at all pleased to see Ruth.

‘I am going to bed,’ she announced.

Ruth entered, her hair in disarray, her eyelids swollen. ‘I know; I’m sorry. And I know you can’t help me because I can’t pay you and psychoanalysis only works if you pay the person who’s doing it.’

‘And in any case I am not permitted to practise in England,’ said Fräulein Lutzenholler firmly.

‘But I thought you might know if there’s anything I can do.’ It had been difficult to come into the analyst’s uninviting room and after her remarks about the lost papers on the bus, Ruth had sworn never to consult her again, but it seemed one couldn’t escape one’s fate. ‘I am so unhappy, you see, and I thought there might be something I haven’t understood about my childhood. Something I have repressed.’

Fräulein Lutzenholler sighed and put down her cup. ‘Is it true that Heini is moving away?’ she asked.

Ruth nodded, and something that was almost a smile passed over the analyst’s features, lightening the moustache on her upper lip.

‘It is not so simple, repression,’ she said.

‘No. But I know that if you see something awful when you are small… if your parents… you know if you find them making love. But I never did. When Papa had his afternoon rest everyone crept about and my mother sat in the drawing room with her embroidery like a Grenadier Guard shushing everybody. And anyway our flat had double doors, you couldn’t hear anything. And on the Grundlsee I always fell asleep very quickly because of all that fresh air and though the maids told me about Frau Pollack always wanting gherkins before she let her husband come to her, I don’t think it was a trauma and anyway I haven’t repressed it. And I can’t think —’

Fräulein Lutzenholler frowned. The good humour caused by the news that Heini was leaving had evaporated and she was worried about her hot-water bottle. She had filled it half an hour before and liked to get into bed while it was still in peak condition.

‘What are you talking about?’ she said, spooning the cocoa skin into her mouth. ‘I don’t understand you.’

Ruth, who had shied away from the word all day, now pronounced it.

There was a pause. Fräulein Lutzenholler looked at the clock. ‘Ruth, it is a quarter to eleven. I cannot discuss this with you now. It is a technical problem and there can be very many causes; physiological, psychological…’

‘Oh, please… please help me!’

Fräulein Lutzenholler stifled a yawn.

‘Very well, tell me what happened.’

Ruth began to speak. Her words tumbled over each other, tears sprang to her eyes, her hair fell over her face and was roughly pushed away.

To these outpourings of a tortured soul, Fräulein Lutzenholler listened with increasing and evident displeasure. She put her soiled cup back in its saucer. She frowned.

‘Please understand, Ruth, that technical terms are not there as playthings for amateurs. There is nothing I can do to help you and I now wish to go to bed.’

‘Yes… I’m sorry.’

Ruth wiped her eyes and rose to go. She had reached the door when Fräulein Lutzenholler uttered — and in English — a single sentence.

‘Per’aps,’ she said, ‘you do not lof ’im.’

A few days later, Heini announced that after all he would stay. His stint of room hunting had shaken him: rents were exorbitant, there were absurd restrictions on practising and, of course, no one provided food. With the first round of the competition only six weeks away, he owed it to everyone to provide himself with the best conditions for his work. There was also Mantella. Heini’s agent had planned an interview with the press at which Ruth was to be present. If Heini could not altogether forgive her, he was determined not to harbour a grudge and as the spring term moved towards Easter, a kind of truce was established in Belsize Park.

Among Verena’s many excellent qualities could be numbered a thirst for learned gatherings, especially those with receptions afterwards at which, as the daughter of Thameside’s Vice Chancellor, she was invariably introduced to the participants.

Her reason for attending a lecture at the Geophysical Society was, however, rather more personal. The subject — Cretaceous Volcanism — was one which she was certain would interest Quin, and seeing the Professor out of hours was now her main objective.

But when she took her seat in the society’s lecture theatre, Quin was nowhere to be seen. Instead, on her left, was a small, dapper man with a carefully combed moustache and slightly vulgar two-coloured shoes who introduced himself as Dr Brille-Lamartaine, and showed a tendency to remain by her side even when she moved through into the room where drinks and canapés awaited them.

‘An excellent lecture, I think?’ said the little man, who turned out to be a Belgian geologist of some distinction. ‘I expected to see Professor Somerville here, but he is not.’

Verena agreed that he was not, and asked where he had met the Professor.

‘I was with ’im in India. On his last expedition,’ said Brille-Lamartaine, taking a glass of wine from the passing tray but rejecting the canapés, for prawns, in this country, were always a risk. ‘I was instrumental in leading ’im to the caves where we ’ave made our most important finds.’

He sighed, for Milner, that morning, had told him something that distressed him deeply.

‘How interesting,’ said Verena, who was indeed anxious to hear more. ‘Did you enjoy the trip?’

‘Yes, yes. Very much. There were accidents, of course… my spectacles were destroyed… and the provisions were not what I would have expected. But Professor Somerville is a great man… obstinate… he would not listen to many things I told him, but a great man. Because I have been on his expedition, they have made me a Fellow of the Belgian Academy of Sciences. But now he is finished.’

‘Finished? What on earth do you mean?’

‘He takes a woman on his next expedition! A woman to the Kulamali Gorge… one of his students with whom he has fallen in love. I tell you, this is the end. I will not go with him… I know what will happen.’ He took a second glass of wine and mopped his brow, pursued by hideous images. A naked woman with loose, lewd hair crawling into the safari tent… hanging her underwear on the line strung between thorn trees… She would soon hear of his private fortune and make suggestions: Somerville was known to be someone who did not wish to marry. ‘I have great respect for the Professor,’ he said, draining his glass and drawing closer to Verena who was not at all like the Lillith of his imagination… who was in fact very like his maiden aunt in Ghent, ‘but this is the end!’

‘Wait a minute, Dr Brille-Lamartaine, are you sure he is taking one of his students? And a woman?’

The Belgian nodded. ‘I am sure. His assistant told me yesterday — he is completely in the Professor’s confidence. The Professor has fallen in love with a girl in his class who is very high-born and very brilliant. It is a secret because she must not be favoured, but in June he will declare ’imself. I tell you, women must not go on these journeys, it is always a disaster, I hav’ seen it. There is jealousy, there is intrigue… and they wear nothing underneath.’ He drained his glass and wiped his brow once more. ‘You will say nothing, I know,’ he said. ‘Oh, there is Sir Neville Willington — you will excuse me?’

‘Yes,’ said Verena. ‘Yes, indeed.’

She could not wait, now, to be alone. If any confirmation was needed, this was it! Not that she had really doubted Quin, but his continuing silence sometimes confused her. But how could he speak while she was still his student? Only last week a Cambridge professor had been dismissed because of his involvement with an undergraduate: she had been foolish all along imagining that Quin could declare himself at this stage. And she wasn’t even going to demand marriage before they sailed. Marriage would come, of course, when he saw how perfectly they were matched, but she would not make it a condition.

So now for her First and for being even fitter — if that was possible — than she had been before!

Frances usually came down to London only twice a year; in November for her Christmas shopping and in May for the Chelsea Flower Show.

This year, however, the wedding of her goddaughter — the niece of Lydia Barchester who had come to grief when retreating backwards from Their Majesties — brought her to London at the end of March. She came under protest, as the result of fierce bullying by Martha who had decreed that she needed a new dress and, in particular, new shoes.

‘Nonsense,’ said Frances. ‘I bought some shoes for the Godchester christening.’

‘That was twelve years ago,’ said Martha.

Frances detested buying anything for her personal adornment, but if it had to be done then it had to be done at Fortnum’s in Piccadilly. Displeased, she took Martha’s shopping list and headed south with Harris in the Buick. Beside her on the seat was a cardboard box padded with wood shavings and containing a dozen dark brown bulbs which, after some hesitation, she had dug out of her garden on the previous day.

When in London, Frances did not stay with Quin, whose flat she regarded as faintly disreputable and liable to yield French actresses or dancing girls. She dined with him, but she stayed at Brown’s Hotel where nothing ever changed, and sent Harris to his married sister in Peckham.

Her day had been carefully planned, yet when she found Harris waiting the next morning with the car, the instructions she gave him surprised even herself.

‘Take me to Number 27 Belsize Close,’ she said.

Harris raised his eyebrows. ‘That’s Hampstead, isn’t it?’

‘Nearly. It’s off Haverstock Hill.’

Now why? thought Frances, already regretting her impulse. She was seeing Quin that evening — why not give the bulbs to him to pass on to Ruth?

The streets as they drove north became meaner, shabbier, and as Harris stopped to ask the way, they were given instructions by a gesticulating, scarcely comprehensible foreigner in a large black hat.

Number 27 was all that she had feared; a dilapidated lodging house, the door unpainted, the wood sagging in the window frames. A cat foraged in the dustbins; the paving stones were cracked.

‘I won’t be long,’ she told Harris, and made her way up the steps.

Leonie, enjoying the calm of her sitting room, for Heini had gone to see his agent, heard the bell, went downstairs and saw an unknown, gaunt lady in dark purple tweeds, and behind her an unmistakably expensive, though ancient, motor car with a uniformed chauffeur.

‘I can help you?’ said Leonie — and then: ‘Are you perhaps the aunt of Professor Somerville?’

‘Good heavens, woman, how did you know?’

‘There is a look… and Ruth has spoken of you. Please come in.’ Then, with the sudden panic which assails women the world over at an unexpected apparition: ‘There is nothing wrong at the university? All is well with the Professor… and with Ruth?’

‘Yes, yes,’ said Miss Somerville impatiently, wondering again why she had come. The house was appalling: the worn lino, the smell of cheap disinfectant… ‘I brought some bulbs for your uncle. You are Mrs Berger, I take it? Ruth mentioned that he liked autumn crocus and I have more than I know what to do with. Would you please give them to him?’

‘For Mishak?’ Leonie’s face lit up. ‘Oh, he will be so pleased! He is in the garden now, you must of course take them yourself — he will want to thank you. And I will make us a cup of coffee. No; tea, of course… I forget!’

‘No, thank you. I won’t stay.’

‘But you must! First I will show you the garden… it is best to go through the house because the side door is stuck.’

Frances followed her reluctantly. Now it was going to be impossible to get out of an invitation to drink tea. Foreigners could never make it properly and she would probably be expected to eat something sickly with a spoon.

Mishak was digging his potato patch — and as he straightened and turned towards them, Frances was gripped by a fierce, an overwhelming disappointment.

I have come to fetch you, he had said to Marianne, opening his briefcase, lifting his hat, and she had imagined a dapper little man in an expensive overcoat, a man of the world. But this was an old refugee, a foreigner in a crumpled jacket and cloth cap, shabby and poor and strange. It was all she could do to force herself to approach him.

Leonie explained their errand and Mishak leant his spade against the fence.

‘Autumn crocus?’ he said. ‘Ruth told me how they grow under the cherry tree.’

He took the box, pushed aside the shavings. His hands, as he searched for the bulbs, were earth-stained, square and stumpy-fingered. Hands that planted and mended, that hammered and turned screws. Not really foreign; not really strange…

‘Yes,’ said Mishak, touching a bulb. ‘How I remember them!’ He didn’t even thank her; he only smiled.

The tea was excellent, but Frances could not stay.

‘I have to shop,’ she said wearily.

Leonie’s eyes lit up. ‘Where do you go?’

‘Fortnum’s in Piccadilly.’

‘Ah, that is a wonderful place,’ said Leonie wistfully. ‘You buy a dress?’

Frances nodded. ‘And shoes.’

‘What kind of shoes?’ It was Mishak who spoke, and Frances glared at him as shocked as if it was a tree which had dared to interest itself in her concerns.

‘The same as I always buy,’ she said testily. ‘Brown strap shoes with a side button and low heel.’

‘No,’ said Mishak.

‘I beg your pardon?’ Frances was unable to believe her ears.

‘Not strap shoes. Not low heels. Not buttons,’ said Mishak. ‘Fortunati pumps with a Cuban heel, in kid. From the Milan workshops; they use a different last.’

Leonie nodded. ‘He knows. He worked for many years in my father’s department store.’

Frances was in no way appeased. ‘Certainly not! I wouldn’t dream of it. I’ve had the same shoes for years and I haven’t the slightest intention of changing now.’

‘You have a high arch; it is a gift,’ said Mishak. He felt in his pocket for his pipe, remembered that it was filled with the stumps of cigars which Ziller brought from the Hungarian restaurant, and abandoned it.

‘Anyway, no one sees what I wear up there,’ said Frances, still glowering.

‘God sees,’ said Mishak.

Ruth, coming in late from the university, heard about Miss Somerville’s visit and was instantly transformed.

‘Oh, what did she say? Tell me, Mishak — tell me everything she said! Did she talk about the garden?’

‘Yes, she did. They’ve had a hard winter, but the alpine gentians are almost out, and the magnolias.’

‘What about glassing in that bit of the south wall by the sundial? Is she going to do it? She wanted to see if she could grow a lapageria so far north — everyone said she couldn’t and you can imagine the effect that had on her!’

‘I believe she means to; yes.’

He exchanged a glance with Leonie. They had not seen Ruth look like this for weeks.

‘Oh, Mishak, it was so beautiful up there, you can’t believe it! It’s so clean and everything has its own smell, completely distinct, and the air keeps moving and moving. There must be more air there than anywhere in the world! Did she tell you whether Elsie has got on to the WEA course in Botany?’

‘No, she didn’t. Who is Elsie?’

‘She’s the housemaid. She’s really interested in plants and so nice! And what about Mrs Ridley’s grandmother — I told you about her — she was going to be a hundred in February.’ She looked up, suddenly afraid. ‘She’s still alive, isn’t she? She must be — she was so looking forward to her telegram from the King.’

‘We didn’t speak of her either,’ said Mishak.

‘I suppose the lambs will just be being born — John Ridley said the end of March. They’re like sheep in the bible up there, so clean, and you can hear them cropping the turf… And it’s full of rock roses; and the birds…’ She shook her head, but it wouldn’t go away; sometimes she thought it would never go away, the vision of blond grass and blue sky and the white horses of the sea.

‘But she told me about the little dog,’ said Mishak. ‘She’s keeping it and they’re calling it Daniel. She said I should tell you and you would understand.’

‘Daniel? Oh, yes — of course.’ So Miss Somerville had not betrayed her foolishness on the journey to the Farnes. ‘After Wagner’s stepdaughter — you know, Cosima von Bülow’s daughter, Daniella, only it’s a male, of course. Yes, that’s good! He looks like a Daniel — God help any lions if he gets into their den; he’s really fierce!’

Leonie, who had been listening to this conversation with increasing puzzlement now said: ‘But, Ruth, you see Professor Somerville every day. Why don’t you ask him about these things yourself? Whether the old grandmother is dead or the lambs are born? He must know.’

Ruth flushed. ‘I wouldn’t talk to him about Bowmont; it’s none of my business — and anyway he’s always working; he’s incredibly busy this term.’

Busy and abstracted and not at all friendly… And there were rumours that he was leaving.

She took out her lecture notes, but before she could settle down to work, the door opened and Heini came in. It was a quarter to ten, too late to practise without incurring the wrath of Fräulein Lutzenholler and he now went to sit disconsolately on the sofa, avoiding Ruth’s eyes. It was a fortnight since the meeting in Janet’s flat and he had still not forgiven her properly, but as she pushed back her notes and went to make him a cup of cocoa, Ruth understood what she had to do. For it was not only Mishak and Leonie who had learnt something from Miss Somerville’s visit. Ruth herself had obtained rather more insight into her own mind than she cared for — and now it was necessary to act.

And this meant changing the way she had been thinking. It meant repudiating her goat-herding grandmother and the consolations of her mother’s Catholic faith. It meant saying goodbye to the Baby Jesus in his crib and the consoling angels with their feathered wings, and calling on her other heritage: the stern, ancient and mysterious Jewish faith where the word of the rabbis was law and it was the God of the Ten Commandments and not of the Sermon on the Mount who reigned supreme. It was there that she would be cured of her disability and find her way back to Heini. She had not quite wanted to admit kinship with those black-bearded, shut-off figures in their skull caps… the Hassidim wandering poverty-stricken through Polish forests, the thirteen-year-old boys who studied and chanted like old men, ruining their eyes. Yet it was in the traditions of just those people that she would find deliverance.

The laws of England had failed her — or she, with her carelessness had failed them. Mr Proudfoot could not give Heini what he needed, but there were other and older laws she could evoke.

It would take courage — a great deal of courage — but she knew now what she had to do.