The Morning Gift

Mr Therm, a sort of flame on legs, would have had to work very hard to drive the chill spots from her heart . . . from her very soul. It wasn’t true that she hadn’t slept – after she’d returned the necklace, she’d gone back home and told her mother she had a migraine and got into her bed and pulled the blanket over her head and she had slept, because being dismembered made one extremely tired. It wasn’t the sleeping that was the problem, it was the waking – the whole cycle of agony repeated every hour: it cannot be true, I cannot have mistaken what went on that night. And the green stones snaking into her dreams . . .

But in the morning she had decided to go to college.

‘Ruth, you’re not fit to go,’ said Leonie, looking at her daughter’s drawn face and quenched eyes.

‘I must, Mama. It is the last day of term and Professor Somerville’s last lecture.’

She had said his name. She had been British like Lord Nelson on the column.

But in the Underground, she faced the truth. It wasn’t courage, it was the impossibility of not being where he was, and it was then, staring at Mr Therm and the Phonotas girl who would come weekly to clean and sterilize your telephone, that the abject, crawling thoughts came back again. For she had pleased him a little; she knew that. If she accepted his terms, if she kept away from Bowmont and his public life . . . if she got a job somewhere here in London and found a flat . . . a cheap flat like Janet’s where he could come sometimes? The annulment could go ahead, he could marry some girl of his own world if he wished, but she would be there. Just to see him once in a while . . . just to know that she didn’t have to be pushed forward into grey deserts of time without him.

No, it wouldn’t work. Secret love nests were for people in control, not for people who thought they would die if someone got out of bed to fetch a glass of water. She loved him far too much for that, she would make scenes and demands. There was only one thing to do – finish her degree and get right away for ever.

When she got out at the Embankment and made her way to the lift, she found that Kenneth Easton had been on the same train. Kenneth was usually unfriendly, copying Verena’s attitude, but today he seemed to want to walk with her and Ruth saw that he looked pale and wretched, so that their reflections, in the mirror of a shop, showed a pair of weary, green-faced wraiths.

‘You look a bit tired,’ said Ruth, as they made their way to the bridge.

‘Yes, I am,’ said Kenneth. ‘I am very tired. I didn’t sleep at all.’

‘It’s been a long term,’ said Ruth. ‘You’ll be able to take it easy after tomorrow. And you’ve been playing a lot of squash – that’s tiring.’

Kenneth turned to her, his long face showing signs of gratitude, for she had given him the lead he wanted.

‘Yes, I have been playing a lot of squash and it’s a very expensive occupation. And in other ways too . . . you may think it’s easy all the time to say napkin instead of serviette and that Featherstonehaugh is pronounced Fanshaw, but it can be quite a strain and my mother doesn’t always understand. In Edgware Green a toilet is a toilet and if you suddenly start saying loo people look at you. But it didn’t matter, nothing mattered because I really thought that Verena might grow to care for me.’

They had reached the river and Ruth, for a moment, lost concentration. (‘I shall buy a thousand lemonade bottles and put a note in each and every one . . .’)

When she could hear Kenneth again, he was admitting to his foolishness. ‘I sort of declared myself. It was last night after squash and we were having a drink together in the club and it was so companionable. I completely forgot that my father was a grocer. He’s dead, of course, but that only makes it worse. If he’d lived he might have gone on to other things, but now he’s a grocer for ever.’

‘And Verena turned you down?’

‘Yes, she did. And she told me about Professor Somerville and that seemed to make it worse. I knew she cared for him, of course, but I thought it might just be one-sided – only when she told me about Africa, I realized –’

Watch the water, Ruth told herself. Water heals . . . it carries away pain. ‘What about Africa?’

‘That the Professor is taking her. She knew before, but she didn’t say anything because it’s a secret – and yesterday she went to the Geophysical Society and the Professor’s assistant had just been to arrange for a special cabin. No one’s supposed to know – I shouldn’t be telling you. You won’t say anything, will you, Ruth? Promise?’

‘No, Kenneth. Of course I won’t.’

‘I should have understood. They always stick together, the upper classes. People like us are all right for them to amuse themselves with, but when it comes to the point we’re nowhere. My father’s a grocer, that’s all there is to it. I never had a chance.’