The Morning Gift

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.

25

She tried not to run . . . tried to keep to a decorous walk, but it was impossible because she had to get there quickly. To Quin’s flat while her resolution held . . . to Quin who even now might save her.

She was beside the river, on a path between the Thames and the road with its busy end-of-the-day traffic. The lamps had just been lit, their reflections shone on the water, for the tide was high and the current raced out towards the sea.

‘Oh, God, let him be in,’ she prayed. ‘Let him be in and alone!’

But what right had she to pray? She wasn’t even a proper sinner who was entitled to the Almighty’s ear; she was a cold rejective failure. God hated the mean in spirit, she was sure of that. Or would he have understood about Krafft-Ebing and Havelock Ellis and the terrifying Eugene Feuermann? Would he think of her as simply ill and heed her after all?

It had been raining ever since she came out of the Underground; fine, slanting rain which soaked through her loden cape. Leonie had taken the hood off for relining; the cloak was dreadfully shabby, and her hair too was sodden. Not that that mattered – perhaps the rain would wash her clean once more.

A street sign opposite said Cheyne Walk, and she saw the crescent of Regency houses and the shapes of the fine trees in the gardens.

‘Henry the Eighth had a palace there,’ Quin had told her in Vienna, talking about his London home. ‘You can see a mulberry from my window that’s supposed to have been planted by Elizabeth the First. Not likely, but a nice idea.’

All the trees in the gardens of the tall houses looked as though they might have been planted by a queen. There were streaks of orange and amethyst still in the west, and turning she could see the necklace of lights on the Albert Bridge. It was a beautiful street. Well, of course. Quin was rich, he could live where he liked whereas she and Heini had had to make do with Janet’s flat. Perhaps that was why it had all gone so wrong.

But it was no good blaming anyone. The fault lay in herself. Only not entirely, perhaps. If Quin would only do what she asked it might still come right.

She was passing the wrought-iron gates of the houses now; the elegant carriage lamps, and the graceful fan windows which sent semicircles of light out onto the steps. There was no need to peer at house numbers. She had seen the Crossley at once, parked outside the door. Best to get it over then – and she walked resolutely up to the door and rang the bell.