The Morning Gift

‘Proper, awful, medical frigidity, like in a book. Like I was reading about on the Grundlsee. Like in Havelock Ellis and Krafft-Ebing and Eugene Feuermann. I must have had a premonition because why would I read about it when I could have been reading Heidi or What Katy Did?’

‘One does wonder,’ murmured Quin.

‘I think I’ve always dreaded it most of all. Being cold. Not responding. Lying there like a log.’

‘Is that what you did?’

Now his expression had changed; the nails bit into his palm, but Ruth was looking at the floor.

‘Not exactly, because I didn’t lie. But effectively.’

‘This is Heini, I suppose? That is what we are talking about?’

Ruth nodded. ‘I told you Heini had changed his mind about Chopin and the études and he is preparing for this very important competition and he is going to play Lizst’s Dante Sonata which is all about the Eternal Feminine and he wanted . . . love. He said so on Christmas Eve and it was very moving. And when I left the annulment papers on the bus, it didn’t seem any good waiting till we could be married, so I arranged everything and Janet was very helpful and lent us her flat. She even gave me a bottle of wine – it was a Liebfraumilch from the Co-op, but it didn’t taste like the wine we had on the Orient Express.’

‘No,’ said Quin gravely. ‘It wouldn’t do. I have to say that Liebfraumilch from the Co-op might make anyone frigid.’

But to speak lightly was an effort. He wanted to strangle Heini slowly and with his bare hands.

‘Oh, please, it isn’t funny! It’s a frightful condition. Krafft-Ebing says the causes are often psychological, but how could I ever afford to find out what awful thing I saw my parents do – and Fräulein Lutzenholler is a dreadful woman. She’s supposed to be a professional and all she can do is drink cocoa with the skin on and babble about love. And if it’s physical that’s worse because you know how complicated the nervous system is and I don’t want to have operations.’

Quin had mastered himself. ‘Look, Ruth, the first time people make love is often a disaster. It’s a thing that has to be learnt and –’

‘Yes but how can it be? How can it be learnt if people are so frigid that there never is a first time? If they take their sweater off and then put it on again and run away down the fire escape? How can they ever get it right when they don’t even do it?’

Quin rose and went to the window. It struck him that the view was the most beautiful, possibly, in the world, and that he must be careful not to smile. ‘You mean you never got as far as making love at all?’

‘No. And it’s so awful because Heini took such trouble getting the contraception things from the machine and getting cream chocolate instead and then I rushed out into the night like a frightened hen. He’s scarcely spoken to me since and you can’t blame him.’

Quin came back and sat down beside her on the sofa. ‘And why do you think me saying “I divorce you” three times would make it better?’

Ruth looked at her empty glass, then down at the carpet. ‘You see, I want to be liberated and giving and, of course, I love Heini very much. But my family . . . it’s difficult to get away from one’s upbringing and they are old-fashioned and marriage has always been . . . marriage. Even ones like ours that aren’t proper ones. And I thought, maybe it isn’t just my nervous system being deformed or having seen something horrible in a haystack on the Grundlsee. Maybe some part of me is going to go on running down fire escapes till I’m unmarried. Which is why I want you please to do this thing now. It’s perfectly valid, I promise you.’ She looked about her and her eyes rested on two silver candlesticks on the mantelpiece. ‘We could light some candles,’ she said. ‘That would make it more solemn.’

‘So we could,’ he said. He got up, carried the fluted candlesticks to the low table, lit a match.

‘Now,’ he said.

She turned to him. ‘Now you’re going to do it?’ she asked breathlessly.

‘Well, no,’ he said apologetically. ‘What I’m going to do now is not exactly that. What I’m going to do now, is kiss you.’

‘Oh, God – you mustn’t go away! I shall die at once if you leave me.’

He turned to where she lay beside him on the pillow. The window framed the night sky and the constellations named for the heroines of legend: Andromeda, the Pleiades . . . She belonged in their company now, this gallant girl who had taken her first journey into love.

‘I was going to get us something to eat,’ he said. ‘It’s nearly midnight. You must be starving.’ He ran his fingers down the curve of her cheek, her throat; gathered a handful of her tresses. ‘I am looped in the loops of her hair,’ he murmured, his face in the hollow of her shoulder.

‘Miss Kenmore didn’t teach me that,’ said Ruth, not pleased with this gap in her education.

‘No. We have rather moved out of Kenmore country.’