The Morning Gift

She tugged at the ring, turned it, tugged again. ‘It’s stuck,’ she said, bewildered.

‘It can’t be,’ he said. ‘It slipped on so easily.’

‘Well, it is,’ she said, suddenly furious.

‘Perhaps your hands are hot.’

‘How could they be? It’s freezing!’ And indeed they were well clear of the harbour now and in a biting wind.

He laid a hand lightly on hers. ‘No, they seem to be cold, but I can’t see any chilblains. Try soap.’

She didn’t answer, but turned away and he watched her stamp off, her hair flying. She was away for a considerable time and when she returned and laid her hand on the rail once more, he was startled. Her ring finger was not just reddened, it looked as though it had been put through a mangle.

‘Good God,’ he said. ‘Was it as bad as that?’

She nodded, still visibly upset, and, realizing that she had retreated into her Old Testamental world of omens and disasters, he left her alone.

When he spoke again, it was to say: ‘Look! There they are!’

And there, indeed, they were: the White Cliffs of Dover, the hymned and celebrated symbol of freedom. So much less impressive than foreigners always expected; not very high, not very white . . . yet Quin, who had made light often enough of this undistinguished piece of Cretaceous chalk, now found himself genuinely moved. After the horrors he had left behind in Europe, he was more thankful than he could have imagined to be home.

9

At the end of the Bergers’ second week in Belsize Park, Hilda was sacked. She had climbed onto a stepladder to dust an ornament on the top of Mrs Manfred’s bookcase, and the bookcase had fallen on top of her. It was the only one in the house, Mrs Manfred not being a reader, but glass-fronted, and a splinter had hit the dog.

No one was surprised, and no one blamed Mrs Manfred, but Hilda took it hard and stayed in bed, covered in zinc plaster, and wrote letters to the district officer in Bechuanaland enquiring after the Mi-Mi, which she did not post because she had no money for stamps and Leonie looked as though she would keel over if asked for anything at all.

Uncle Mishak, as the days passed and Ruth still did not come, got up at dawn and walked. He covered vast distances in his slow, countryman’s gait and he knew that this was risky, for in one month, or perhaps two, his shoes would wear out, but he had to be out of doors.

Mishak’s beloved wife was beyond hurt. He had brought a handful of earth from her grave into exile, but he needed nothing to remind him of Marianne. She was inside his soul.

But to Ruth, in the nightmare world his country had become, there could befall unthinkable harm. Mishak had not wanted to come to the Felsengasse when Marianne died. He appreciated Leonie’s kindness, but he had wanted to stay in the house he had built for his wife on the slopes of the Wienerwald. He had come to the flat to thank Leonie for her offer and to refuse it. But Leonie was out. It was the six-year-old Ruth, fresh from her bath, who had thrown her arms around him and said: ‘Oh, you’re coming to live, won’t it be wonderful! You’ll take me to the Prater, won’t you – I mean the Wurstlprater, not the healthy part with fresh air – and can we go and see the llamas at Schönbrunn? Inge says they spit and make you quite wet. And you’ll let me lean out of the window of the cable car when we go up to the Kahlenberg, won’t you? You won’t keep holding my legs?’

The blissful, self-seeking greed of a secure child who longs to gobble up the world was something he never forgot. Ruth was not sorry for him, she wanted him for her own purposes. Mishak changed his mind and came; they saw the llamas and more . . .

Now sitting in Kensington Gardens watching the children sail their boats, this quiet old man who preferred not to step on molehills in case there was someone at home, found that his knuckles had whitened on the sides of the bench, and knew that he would kill without compunction anyone who harmed his niece.

Professor Berger said little about his lost daughter. He went to Bloomsbury House each morning, he worked in the library each afternoon, but no one, now, would have taken him for a man of fifty-eight. Then one morning he took a bus to Harley Street where his sponsor, Dr Friedlander, had his dental practice.

‘I’m going back to Vienna,’ he said. ‘I’m going to find Ruth and I have to ask you to lend me the fare.’

No one knew what it cost him to ask for money. Since their arrival the Bergers had taken nothing from their sponsor in spite of frequent offers of help.

‘You can have the fare and welcome,’ said Friedlander. ‘I’ll lend it to you; I’ll give it to you. The poor Englanders are so grateful for someone who doesn’t pull out their teeth as soon as they sit down that they’re beating a path to my door. But you’re mad, Kurt. They won’t let you out again and then what’ll happen to Leonie? Is that what you imagine Ruth wants?’

‘I can’t do nothing,’ said the Professor, ‘it isn’t possible.’

‘Have you told Leonie that you mean to return?’