The Morning Gift

Chapter 6

It had rained since daybreak: slanting, cold-looking sheets of rain. Down in the square, the bedraggled pigeons huddled against Maria Theresia’s verdigris skirts. Vienna, the occupied city, had turned its back on the spring.

Ruth had scarcely slept. Now she folded the blanket on the camp bed, washed as best she could under the cloakroom tap, brewed a cup of coffee.

‘This is my wedding day,’ she thought. ‘This is the day I shall remember when I lie dying —’ and felt panic seize her.

She had put her loden skirt and woollen sweater under newspaper, weighed down by a tray of fossil-bearing rocks, but this attempt at home-ironing had not been successful. Should she after all wear the dress she had bought for Heini’s debut with the Philharmonic? She’d taken it from the flat and it hung now behind the door: brown velvet with a Puritan collar of heavy cream lace. It came from her grandfather’s department store: the attendants had all come to help her choose; to share her pleasure in Heini’s debut. Now the store had its windows smashed; notices warned customers not to shop there. Thank heaven her grandfather was dead.

No, that was Heini’s dress — her page-turning dress, for it mattered what one wore to turn over music. One had to look nice, but unobtrusive. The dress was the colour of the Bechstein in the Musikverein — it had nothing to do with an Englishman who ran away from Strauss.

She wandered through the galleries and, in the grey light of dawn, her old friends, one by one, became visible. The polar bear, the elephant seal… the ichthyosaurus with the fake vertebrae. And the infant aye-aye which she had restored to its case.

‘Wish me luck,’ she said to the ugly little beast, leaning her head against the glass.

She closed her eyes and the primates of Madagascar vanished as she saw the wedding she had planned so often with her mother. Not here, but on the Grundlsee, rowing across to the little onion-domed church in a boat — in a whole flotilla of boats, because everyone she loved would be there. Uncle Mishak would grumble a little because he had to dress up; Aunt Hilda would get stuck in her zip… and the Zillers would play. ‘On the landing stage,’ Ruth had suggested, but Biberstein said no, he was too fat to play on a landing stage. She would wear white organdie and carry a posy of mountain flowers, and as she walked down the aisle on her father’s arm, there would be Heini with his mop of curls and his sweet smile.

(Oh, Heini, forgive me. I’m doing this for us.)

Back in the cloakroom, she looked at her reflection once again. She had never seemed to herself so plain and unprepossessing. Suddenly she loosened her hair, filled the basin with cold water, seized the cake of green soap that the museum thought adequate for its research workers…

Quin, letting himself in silently, found her ready, her suitcase strapped.

‘Does the roof leak?’ he asked, surprised, for from the curving strands of her long hair, drops of water were running onto the floor.

She shook her head. ‘I washed my hair, but the electric fire doesn’t work.’

He saw the shadows under her eyes, the resolute set of her shoulders.

‘Come; it’ll be over soon — and it isn’t as bad as going to the dentist.’

At the bottom of the staircase, as they prepared to leave by the side door, a small group of people waited to wish her luck. The cleaning lady, the porter, the old taxidermist on the floor below. They had all known she was there and kept their counsel. She must remember that when she felt despair about her countrymen.

She had expected something grand from the British Consulate, but the Anschluss had forced a reorganization of the Diplomatic Service, and the taxi delivered them in front of a row of temporary huts, on the tin roof of which the rain was still beating down. A disconsolate plumber in oilskins was poking at an overflowing gutter with an iron tool. Inside, in the Consul’s makeshift office, the picture of George the Sixth hung slightly askew; out in the corridor someone was hoovering.

The Consul’s deputy was there, but not in the best of tempers. He had pinkeye, an unpleasant inflammation of the conjunctiva, and held a handkerchief to his face. Though he had found Professor Somerville personally courteous, he could not approve of the way the Consul, presumably on the instruction of the Ambassador, was rushing this ceremony through. Procedures which should have taken days had been telescoped into hours: the issuing of visas, the amendment of passports. Someone, thought the deputy, whose origins were working class, had almost certainly been at school with someone else. Professor Somerville’s father with the Ambassador’s cousin, perhaps… There would have been those exchanges by which upper-class Englishmen, like dogs round a lamppost, sniff out each other’s schooling — faggings at Eton, beatings at Harrow — and realize that they are brothers beneath the skin.

‘Can I have your documents, please?’

Quin laid the papers down on the desk, and saw Ruth’s knuckles tighten on the back of her chair. Scarcely twenty years old, and a child of the new Europe Hitler had made.

‘We shall need two witnesses. Have you brought any?’

‘No.’

The deputy sighed and went out into the corridor. The sound of hoovering ceased and a lady with a large wart on her chin, wearing a black overall, entered and stood silently by the door. She had cut a piece out of the sides of her felt slippers to give her bunions breathing space and this was sensible, Ruth appreciated this, and that someone whose feet were giving such trouble could not be expected to smile or say good morning. Then the plumber came, divested of his oilskins, and smelling strongly — and again this was entirely natural — of the drains he had been trying to clean and it was clear that he too was not pleased to be interrupted in his work — why should he be?

The Consul himself now entered, distinguished-looking, formally suited, with his finger in the Book of Common Prayer, and the ceremony began.

Quin had not expected what came next. ‘It’ll just be a formality,’ he’d promised Ruth. ‘A few minutes and then it’ll be done.’ But though the Consul was using a truncated version of the marriage service, he was still pronouncing the words that had joined men and women for four hundred years — and Quin, foreseeing trouble, frowned and stared at the floor.

‘Dearly beloved, we are gathered together here in the sight of God to join this Man and this Woman in holy Matrimony…’

Beside him, Ruth moved uneasily. The lady with the cut-out bedroom slippers sniffed.

‘… and therefore is not by any to be enterprised, nor taken in hand unadvisedly, lightly or wantonly… but reverently, discreetly, advisedly, soberly…’

It was as he had expected. Ruth made a sudden, panicky movement of her head and a last drop of water fell from her wet hair onto the bare linoleum.

The Consul listed the causes for which matrimony was ordained. The procreation of children brought an anxious frown to her brow; the remedy against sin worried her less.

It was only briefly that the plumber and the cleaning lady, neither of whom understood a word, were required to disclose any impediment to the marriage or for ever hold their peace and the Consul came to the point.

‘Quinton Alexander St John, wilt thou have this Woman to thy wedded Wife…? Wilt thou love her, comfort her, honour, and keep her in sickness and in health; and, forsaking all other, keep thee only unto her, so long as ye both shall live?’

‘I will.’

‘Ruth Sidonie, wilt thou have this Man to thy wedded Husband…’

Her ‘I will’ came clearly, but with the faint, forgotten accent of Aberdeen. A stress symptom, it would appear.

The Consul cleared his throat. ‘Do you have a ring?’

Ruth shook her head in the same instant as Quin took from his pocket a plain gold band.

He too was pale as he promised to take Ruth for his wedded wife from this day forward, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health. The ring, when he slipped it on her finger, was a perfect fit. Her hands were as cold as ice.

‘With this Ring I thee wed, with my Body I thee worship, and with all my worldly Goods I thee endow.’ His voice was steady now. The thing was almost done.

‘We will omit the prayer,’ said the Consul and allowed the final injunction to roll off his tongue with a suitable and sombre emphasis. ‘Those whom God hath joined together let no man put asunder.’

It was over. The register was signed, Quin paid his dues, tipped the witnesses, put a note into the collecting box for orphans of the Spanish Civil War.

‘If you come back at four o’clock your passport will be ready with your wife’s name on it, and her visa.’

Ruth managed to reach the gravelled driveway before she burst into tears.

‘For God’s sake, Ruth, what’s the matter? It’s all over now. Tomorrow evening you’ll be with your family.’

She blew her nose, shook out her hair.

‘You see, we shall be cursed!’

‘Cursed! What on earth are you talking about? Could we have less of the Old Testament, please?’

‘Ha! You see… Now you are also anti-Semitic.’

‘Well, I do think this might be the moment to take after the goat-herding grandmother rather than some gloomy old rabbi. What do you mean, we shall be cursed?’

‘Because of the words. Because we said those words before witnesses. I didn’t think the words would be so strong. And you shouldn’t have said that about with my worldly goods I thee endow because even if we were going to do the worshipping with the body, there would still be Morgan.’

‘Ah, Morgan. I thought we hadn’t heard the last of him. Look, Ruth, it doesn’t become you, this kind of fuss. You know what Hitler is like, you know what had to be done.’

‘I should have escaped over the border; I should not have let you swear things that are lies.’

Quin too was very weary. It was with difficulty that he repressed his views on her ascent of the Kanderspitze. ‘Come, we’ll go to the Imperial and have two whopping schnitzels. Because one thing you’ll find it hard to come by in London is a decent piece of frying veal.’

‘I can’t go in these old clothes. And if I’m seen…’

Quin’s arrogance was quite unconscious. ‘Nothing can happen to you now. You are a British subject — and in my care.’

The schnitzels were a success. When they left the restaurant, her hair was dry and enveloped her in a manner that was disorganized, but cheerful. He had already gathered that it was a kind of barometer, like seaweed.

‘We’ve still got three hours left. Where would you like to go on your last afternoon in Vienna?’

To his surprise, she suggested they take a tram to the Danube. He knew how little the wide, grey river, looping round the industrial suburbs of the city, actually concerned the Viennese. Gloomy Johann Strauss, with his dyed moustaches and inability to smile, might have written the world’s most famous waltz in tribute to the river, but the Danube’s vicious flooding had compelled the inhabitants, centuries ago, to turn their backs on it.

But when they stood on the Reich Bridge, it was clear that Ruth was on a pilgrimage.

‘Do you see that little bay over there, just by the warehouse?’

He nodded…

‘Well, my Uncle Mishak used to fish there — only he’s my great-uncle really. That was years and years ago. Imagine it, the Kaiser was still on his throne and Austria and Hungary were joined up. One could take a barge down to Budapest — no passport, no restrictions. Anyway, Uncle Mishak had joined my grandfather in his department store, but he loved the open air and every Sunday he went fishing. Only on this particular Sunday, instead of a fish, he caught a bottle!’ She turned to Quin, full of narrative self-importance. ‘It was a lemonade bottle and inside it was a message!’

Quin was impressed, knowing how rarely messages in bottles are ever read.

‘It said: My name is Marianne Stichter, I am twenty-four years old and I am very sad. If you are a kind and good man, please come and fetch me. And she’d put the address of the school where she taught. It was in a village on the river near Dürnstein — you know, where Richard the Lionheart was imprisoned.’

‘Go on.’

‘The school was run by her father and he was a sadist and a bully. There was an elder sister who’d married and escaped, but Marianne was quiet and plain and shy, and she had a stammer, and he’d made her teach the junior class. Of course, the children all imitated her — every time she entered the classroom, she just wanted to die.’

Ruth paused and looked at Quin, savouring, on his behalf, what was to follow.

‘Then one day she was giving a Geography lesson on the rivers of South America when the door opened and a small man in a dark suit and homburg hat came in, carrying a briefcase.

‘The children started tittering but she didn’t even hear them, she just stood and looked at the little man. Then my Uncle Mishak took off his hat — he was pretty bald by then, and he wore gold pince-nez, and he said: “Are you Fräulein Stichter?” He wasn’t really asking, he knew, but he waited till she nodded and then he said: “I have come to fetch you.” Just like that. “I have come to fetch you.” And he opened his briefcase and took out the note from the bottle.’

‘And she came?’

Ruth smiled and parted her hair with her fingers so that she could narrate unimpeded. ‘She didn’t say anything. Not a word. She picked up the duster and very carefully she wiped off the rivers of South America — the Negro and the Madeira and the Amazon. Then she put the chalk back into the box and opened a cupboard and took out her hat and put it on. The children had stopped tittering and started gawping, but she walked down between the desks and she didn’t even see them; they didn’t exist. At the door, Uncle Mishak gave her his arm — he didn’t come much above her shoulder — and they walked across the play yard and down the road and got on the paddle boat for Vienna — and no one there ever saw them again!’

‘And they were happy?’

Ruth put a hand up to her eyes. ‘Ridiculously so. People laughed at them — plumping each other’s cushions, pulling out footstools. When she died he tried to die too, but he couldn’t manage it. That’s when my mother made him come to us.’

Back in the Inner City, Ruth pointed out the balcony on which she had stood stark naked at midnight, at the age of nine, hoping that pneumonia would release her from disgrace and ruin.

‘It was my great-aunt’s flat and I’d just heard that I only got Commended instead of Highly Commended in my music exam. Oh, and look, here’s the actual bench where my mother was overcome by pigeons and my father rescued her.’

‘There seem to have been a lot of happy marriages in your family,’ said Quin.

‘I don’t know… Uncle Mishak was happy, and my parents… but in general I don’t think they thought of it as something that made you happy.’

‘What then?’

Ruth was frowning. One ear turned colour slightly as she strangled it in a loop of hair. ‘It was what you did… because you had set out to do it. It was… work; it was like ploughing a field or painting a picture — you kept on adding colours or trying to get the perspective right. The women in particular. My Aunt Miriam’s husband was unfaithful and she kept ringing my mother and saying she was going to kill him, but when people suggested divorce she was terribly shocked.’ She looked up, her hand flew to her mouth. ‘I’m terribly sorry… I don’t mean us, of course. These were proper marriages, not ones with Morgan.’

Their last visit was to St Stephan’s Cathedral, the city’s symbol and its heart.

‘I’d like to light a candle,’ said Ruth, and he let her go alone up the sombre, incense-scented nave.

Waiting at the door, he saw across the square two terrified fair-haired boys with broad peasant faces being dragged towards an army truck by a group of soldiers.

‘They’re rounding up all the Social Democrats,’ said a plump, middle-aged woman with a feather in her hat. There was no censure in her voice; no emotion in the round, pale eyes.

Making his way to where Ruth knelt, determined to take her out by a side door, Quin found that she had lit not one candle but two. No need to ask for whom — all roads led to Heini for this girl.

‘Shall I ever come back, do you think?’

Quin made no answer. Whether Ruth would return to this doomed city, he did not know, but he and his like would surely do so, for he did not see how this evil could be halted by anything but war.