The Morning Gift

Now, dialling the university, he was put through at once to Felton in his laboratory. His deputy taught the Marine Biology course, as well as dealing with admissions: a friendly man, deeply concerned about the students, whose spectacle frames seemed to lighten or darken according to his mood.

‘Oh, you’re back, are you?’ said Felton.

Since Quin himself had abolished the protocol and rank-pulling which still existed in so many university departments, he now had to endure some strong remarks about professors who left their underlings to mark their exam papers while they gallivanted about in foreign cities.

‘It wasn’t quite like that – but I’m sorry about the extra load. How have they done?’

‘Oh, brilliantly on your questions, of course. I dare say you could teach Palaeontology to a chimpanzee and get him a First. The new intake looks promising too – numbers are up again.’

‘You haven’t had any applications from refugee organizations, have you? University College is taking foreign students, I know.’

‘Not so far.’

‘Well, if you get any, accept them – it’s hell over there, I can tell you. Even if it means putting them to work in a broom cupboard, say yes.’

‘All right, I will. Though I don’t know what the new VC will say; he doesn’t seem to be much of a one for the huddled masses yearning to breathe free.’

‘Plackett’s a dud, is he?’

‘He’s one of those faceless men – adores committees. The paperwork’s trebled since he came, but there’s no harm in him; it’s his wife that’s the bother. Wants to improve the moral tone of the university and makes the college servants run her errands. She’s a Croft-Ellis by birth – one of the Rutland Croft-Ellises. Mean anything to you?’

‘Nothing earth shattering.’

‘But that’s not all,’ said Felton ghoulishly. ‘There’s a daughter!’

‘There usually is, I’ve found,’ said Quin resignedly.

‘Ah, but it’s worse than that! She’s coming to us to do a Zoology degree and she’s going straight into the third year because she’s covered most of the ground in India. I interviewed her last week and she was kind enough to tell me that she thought our course would be acceptable.’

‘Good God,’ said Quin.

‘Exactly so.’

Quin spent the next two days in the Natural History Museum, supervising the disposal of the specimens which Milner had steered safely through the customs. Thameside he avoided, deciding to go up to Bowmont first and come back to prepare for the autumn term when the man who was filling in as visiting Professor had gone back to the States. Professor Robinson was prone to anxiety: he had worried because Quin’s name was still on the door of his room, and about the length of his gown, and it seemed tactful to let him complete his tenure without interference.

But there was one chore which he intended to tackle before he went north: the undoing of his marriage.

The affairs of Bowmont were in the hands of a long-established and dozy firm of solicitors in Berwick-upon-Tweed, but for quick action in this highly personal matter, Quin had selected Dick Proud-foot, of Proudfoot, Buckley and Snaith, whom he had known in Cambridge.

Proudfoot was in his early thirties, a chubby, balding man whose amiable expression became considerably less amiable as Quin began to speak.

‘You have done what?’

‘I have married an Austrian girl to get her over here. She’s partly Jewish and she was in danger – there was nothing else to do. Now I want you to get me a divorce as quickly as you can. I’ll provide the evidence, of course. I imagine that business still works about being caught in bed in a hotel by the chambermaid?’

‘Funny, I thought you were intelligent,’ said Mr Proudfoot nastily. ‘I remember people saying it in Cambridge. What sort of quixotic idiocy is this? Even if it were possible for you to convince the judge that this kind of caper represents a genuine adultery – and they’re getting very suspicious these days – it would hardly secure you a speedy divorce. You can’t even begin to petition till three years after the marriage.’

Quin frowned. ‘I thought the Herbert Act had changed all that? The poor man worked hard enough to get it through.’

‘It has increased the grounds on which a divorce may be granted, but in this case the three-year clause still stands.’

‘Well, it’ll have to be an annulment then,’ said Quin cheerfully. ‘That was my first idea, but it sounded a bit ecclesiastical.’

Mr Proudfoot sighed and wrote something on a piece of paper. The laws on nullity were archaic and complex, and his subject was company law. ‘What do you suggest? Nullity can be declared if one or both parties are under sixteen at the time of the ceremony, if there is a pre-existing marriage, if the parties are related by prohibited degrees of consanguinity, if there is insanity in one partner unknown to the other at the time of the marriage, or if the bride is a nun.’