The Morning Gift

‘I can’t believe it. I can’t believe you could have been so stupid. I just wanted to give you something lovely and priceless.’

‘I know . . . I was an idiot. I think I didn’t believe I should be happy when there was so much suffering in the world. And there was Verena. She told everyone that you were taking her to Africa.’

‘Ah, yes. An unpleasant woman. She’s going to marry Kenneth Easton and teach him how to pronounce Cholmondely, did you know?’

Ruth liked that. She liked it a lot. But Quin was still shaken by the risk he had taken when she came to him that night. ‘When I think that you went through all that alone.’

‘Well, actually I didn’t,’ said Ruth a trifle bitterly. ‘Not at the end. All I can say is that your aunt may have left you alone but she certainly didn’t leave me!’

And she described the moment when Aunt Frances had appeared in the doorway at Bowmont, apparently barring the way. ‘She said I couldn’t stay and I was desperate, but she meant I couldn’t stay in case we were cut off by the snow and the ambulance couldn’t get through. She just bundled me into the car and took me down to Mrs Bainbridge’s house in Newcastle and even when my parents came, she didn’t let me out of her sight. I think she was worried because of what happened to your mother.’

Quin took one of her hands, laced her fingers with his.

‘Thank God for Aunt Frances,’ he said lightly – but he was still troubled by his carelessness that night in Chelsea. Or was it carelessness? Would he have believed any other woman as he had believed Ruth? Hadn’t he wanted, at one level, to be committed as irrevocably as now he was?

But Ruth was asking a question, holding on to him rather hard in case it was unjustified.

‘Quin, when you give Bowmont to the Trust, do you think it might be possible to keep just one very small –’

‘When I do what?’ said Quin, thunderstruck.

‘Give Bowmont to the Trust. You see –’

‘Give it to the Trust? Are you mad? Ruth, you have seen that baby – you have seen the fists on him. Do you seriously think I’d dare to give away his home?’

Ruth seemed to find this funny. She found it very funny, and her remarks about the British upper classes were so uncomplimentary that Quin, slightly offended, prepared to seal her lips with a kiss. But when he’d cleared away her hair to obtain a better access, he found that her brow was furrowed by a new anxiety.

‘Quin,’ she said into his ear, ‘I seem to have become a mother rather quickly, but I want so much to be . . . you know . . . a proper loveress. The kind that wiggles a gentleman’s cigars to see that the tobacco is all right and knows about claret.’

He was entirely shaken, not least by the way that her adopted language had suddenly deserted her.

‘Oh God, you shall be, my darling. You shall be a loveress to knock Cleopatra into a cocked hat. You are already! We shall love each other on beds and barges, in bowers of lilies and on the Orient Express. It owes us, that train!’

He drew her closer, feeling that never again would he have enough of her, and at that moment the child began to cry. At once he loosed his hold, schooled himself. He must relinquish her though soon he would leave her, perhaps for ever. He must take second place for that was the law of life.

But it was not her law. He felt her responding to the thin, high wail . . . felt the cord that bound her to the child – and would bind her till she died – draw tighter. But when she stretched out her hand, it was to press the bell beside the bed.

‘Would you take him to the nursery just for a little while?’ she asked the nurse who came. ‘He can’t be hungry yet and my husband doesn’t have . . . very long.’

It seemed to him then that she had given him a pledge of which he must be worthy as long as they both lived – and as he laid his head against her cheek, he felt her tears.

‘Quin . . . about swimming . . .’

‘Yes?’

‘I mean, you’re good at it, aren’t you? Very good? So whatever happens, even if . . . I mean, it’s only the Atlantic or the Pacific. It’s only an ocean. You’ll just keep on swimming, won’t you? Because wherever you land, on whatever shore or island or coral reef, I’ll be there waiting. I swear it, Quin. I swear by Mozart’s head.’

It was a moment before he could trust his voice to do his bidding. Then he said: ‘Of course. You can absolutely rely on it. After all, it isn’t as though I’ll be wearing a rucksack.’

And then they held each other quietly until it was time for him to go.

EPILOGUE

It was a day of extraordinary beauty: a day that perfectly matched the mood of Britain’s citizens as they celebrated the end of the war in Europe. The soft blue sky was cloudless, the May-green trees spread their canopy of tender leaves. Strangers embraced each other, children feasted; bonfires were lit – and in the bombed squares round St Paul’s, the people danced.