The Morning Gift

All the way down from Northumberland, in terror and despair, she had prayed, dedicating her life afresh to Heini, offering everything that she held dear if only he was safe. And then the thing had happened that never happened: the second chance. Leonie explaining that Heini was here, that she had misheard, that the camp was in England and she could go to him.

Then Heini entered and she could not speak for this was not the Wunderkind she had known, this was a frightened, shabby boy with stubble on his chin and a beaten look in his eyes – and overwhelmed by love and pity, she opened her arms and made the gesture that had always spelled sanctuary for him, shaking forward her hair so that it sheltered them both.

‘Thank God, Ruth! I thought you’d never come.’

‘Oh, darling; you’re really here. It’s you.’ Her voice broke ‘I thought you were in a proper camp, you see. I thought they’d got you.’

‘This is a proper camp. It’s awful, Ruth.’

‘Yes . . . yes . . . but you see I thought you were in Dachau or Oranienburg. My mother phoned and I couldn’t hear her properly. Then when I learnt you were safe . . . I’ll never forget it as long as I live.’

And she would never forget what she had vowed: to serve Heini for all her days and expiate for ever that time of betrayal she had spent Lotus-eating by the sea.

‘You’re going to take me home, aren’t you, darling? Now?’

‘Heini, I can’t this minute. I have to get hold of Dr Friedlander – I’m sure he’ll sponsor you, but he’s away for the weekend. I’ll be on his doorstep first thing tomorrow and then it’ll just be a very few days.’

‘A few days!’ Heini lifted his head. ‘Ruth, I can’t stay here that long. I can’t!’

‘Oh, please, darling! We’ll all be working for you – and they’re friendly here, aren’t they? I spoke to the secretary.’

‘Friendly!’ But there was such comfort in her presence that he decided to be brave and managing to change the subject, he said: ‘Did you get a piano?’

‘Yes. A Bösendorfer!’

‘A grand?’

‘No, love; we’ve only got a very small sitting room. But it’s a beauty!’

He was disappointed, but he would not reproach her. She was his lifeline; his saviour.

They were still clasped in each other’s arms when the secretary returned.

‘It’s time for your bus, dear,’ she said. ‘You mustn’t miss it: it’s the last one.’

It was as Ruth picked up her cloak that she saw a bird, untroubled by barbed wire, sitting on a fence post outside the window.

‘Oh, look Heini! It’s a starling! That’s an omen for us, isn’t it? It must mean good luck.’

She drew him to the window. The bird cocked its head, bright-eyed, but not looking quite right at the nether end.

‘He’s lost some tail feathers,’ said the secretary. ‘Been overdoing it.’

‘Yes.’ Ruth could see that, but it was of no consequence. An omen was an omen. Tail feathers did not come into a thing like that.

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.