The Morning Gift

A long way out of it. He had evidently decided against killing her by getting out of bed and as she folded herself against him, she realized that she must be careful not actually to become him, which would be impractical. Then suddenly she drew away.

‘Quin, something terrible has happened! I haven’t had my tristesse!’ She gazed at him, her eyes huge. ‘You know, the thing you have afterwards. Total despair. Postcoital tristesse, it’s called. It’s in all the books! It’s when you realize that in spite of everything, every human soul is tragically and hopelessly alone, and I don’t feel it at all; I feel absolutely marvellous. I told you I wasn’t like other people.’

‘No,’ he said rather shakily. ‘You’re not in the least like other people. If you were, all the gods would come down from Olympus and proclaim Paradise on Earth.’ And presently: ‘We’ll eat later.’

But later, quite suddenly, he fell asleep and she followed him into his imagined dreams as he twitched, chased into a Utrillo landscape of rich green trees and hounds and huntsmen in scarlet – and she vowed to keep awake because she must miss nothing of this night, not one instant . . . but she did sleep in the end, briefly, and woke up in wonderment because she understood now what people meant when they said: ‘She slept with him.’ That it was part of the act of love, this sharing of oblivion.

When he too woke it was suddenly and with contrition. ‘Now you shall eat, my poor love,’ he said, and they went into the kitchen hand in hand because she wasn’t prepared to be separated from him even for as long as it took to cross the hallway, and had a picnic of bread and cheese and a wine that was not very much like the Liebfraumilch that she had drunk in Janet’s flat.

‘Oh, I’m so hungry,’ said Ruth, and she seemed to be tasting food for the first time. And pausing with a hunk of Emmentaler in her hand: ‘Do you think it will come later, the tristesse? The terrible, tragic hopelessness – the feeling that everyone is really alone?’

‘I am not alone,’ said Quin, coming round behind her, holding her. ‘And nor are you. We shall never be alone again.’

When they had eaten, they opened the French windows and stood looking out at the sleeping city and the river which never slept. Wrapped in Quin’s dressing-gown, feeling his warmth beside her, she took great breaths of the night air.

‘Sweet Thames run softly till I end my song,’ she quoted. ‘I may not know improper poems about people’s hair, but Miss Kenmore taught me a lot of Spenser. I love it so much, this river.’

‘I too,’ said Quin. ‘As a matter of fact I think I might go in for some bottle-throwing on my own account. I shall go out tomorrow and buy a thousand lemonade bottles and put a note in each and every one and drop them from the bridge.’

‘What will they say, the notes? What will you put in them?’

He turned his head, surprised at her obtuseness. ‘Your name, of course. What else?’

Hand in hand, still, they wandered back to bed. ‘It’s strange,’ said Ruth. ‘I thought love would be like the slow movement of the Mozart Sinfonia Concertante . . . or like one of those uplifting paintings my mother used to take me to look at with putti and clouds and golden rays . . . or even like the sea. But it isn’t, is it?’

‘No. Love is like itself.’

‘Yes.’ She sighed . . . curled herself, warm and relaxed and pliant against his side.

But when presently she indicated that in spite of her deep frigidity and the tristesse which she expected at any moment, she was, so to speak, there, and he gathered her into his arms, he did not use any of the endearments in either of the languages which they spoke.

Clearly and quietly in the darkness, Quin said: ‘My wife.’

26

He had dropped Ruth off at the corner of her street soon after it was light. Now, punctually at nine o’clock, he parked the Crossley outside the elegant premises of Cavour and Stattersley, Jewellers, since 1763, to His Majesty the King, and made his way up the steps.

It had come to him unbidden – this uncharacteristic desire to buy her a present that was sumptuous beyond reason; a useless, costly gift that would blazen his love to the skies. Uncharacteristic because there was no such tradition at Bowmont – no family tiara stowed in the bank and brought out for high days and holidays; no Somerville parure handed down through the generations. His grandmother had kept her Quaker faith and her Quaker ways; Aunt Frances possessed one cameo brooch which appeared, listing slightly, on the black chenille on New Year’s Eve.