The Morning Gift

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.