The Morning Gift

‘It was a muddle,’ she said, holding out the letter. ‘When I wasn’t on the student transport, the Quakers got in touch with them and they had so many people begging to come that they accepted someone else. They’re going to see if they can get me into another college, but they’re not very hopeful as it’s so late.’

After the first shock, however, she made the best of it. ‘It doesn’t matter,’ she said. ‘I want to go on working anyway, to help you and to help Heini when he comes.’

‘It matters a great deal,’ said the Professor sternly.

For him and his wife, Ruth’s rejection was a bitter blow. Like parents the world over, they would accept any tribulation if their child could go forward into a better future. Ruth must not live in the twilit world of the refugees, the world of menial jobs, of anxiety about permits and poverty and fear.

‘I wonder if I should get in touch with Quinton Somerville,’ said the Professor that night when Ruth had gone to bed. ‘I feel sure he would help.’

‘No, I wouldn’t do that.’

The Professor looked at her in surprise. ‘Why not?’

But Leonie, who seldom found a use for logical thought and was pursuing a hunch so nebulous that it could not possibly be uttered, just said that she thought it was a bad idea – and in the days that followed nobody had time to think of their personal lives.

All the clichés written later about the Munich crisis were true. The world did hold its breath, the storm clouds did gather over Europe, strangers did stop each other in the street and ask for news. Then Neville Chamberlain, that obstinate old man who had never been in an aeroplane before, flew to meet Hitler, flew home again, and back once more . . . to return at last with a piece of paper in which he believed wholly and which he held up to his people with the words ‘Peace in our time.’

There were many who cried appeasement and many – and the refugees, of course, among them – who knew what Hitler’s promises were worth, and that the Czechs had been betrayed, yet who could want war? As the crowds cheered in front of Buckingham Palace, Ruth waltzed with Mrs Burtt among the pots and pans in the Willow Tea Rooms kitchen because Heini could come now and Mrs Burtt’s Trevor sleep safe in his bed.

It was in this time of renewed hope, when the chrysanthemums glowed gold and russet in the flower seller’s basket and little boys called at Number 27 for the conkers Uncle Mishak collected in his wanderings, that Professor Berger came home to find Ruth reading a letter – and was startled by the radiance in her face.

‘From Heini?’ he asked. ‘He is coming?’

She shook her head. ‘It’s from the University of Thameside. They’ve offered me a place, straight away. I start next week.’

He took the letter she held out to him. It was signed by the Admissions Tutor, but no one was deceived by that.

‘This is Somerville’s doing,’ said the Professor, and felt a weight lift from his heart because it had hurt, the belief that his young protégé had forgotten them. ‘He’s Professor of Zoology there. And sternly to Ruth: “You will be worthy of his kindness, I know.”

She had retired into her hair, trying to still the confusion in her mind and remained in it, figuratively speaking, till late that night when her Aunt Hilda’s snuffling proclaimed her to be asleep, and she could lean out of the window, breathing in the sooty air, and try to think things out.

Why had he done it? Why had Quin, who had made it so clear that they should never meet again, accepted her as a student? What had made him override his decision and ignore the warnings of his solicitor about collusion and consent and heaven knew what else, to give her this chance?

But what did it matter why? He had done it, and the future lay bright and shining before her. She would be the most studious student they had ever seen at Thameside. She would work till she burst, she would get a First – she would get the best First they had ever had – and she would do it without ever making him speak to her, without even once looking his way.

That her acceptance had nothing to do with Quin, that he did not even know of it, was something which could not have occurred to Ruth or to her family, accustomed as they were to the formal working of Austrian academic life, yet it was so. Quin always left the admissions, indeed most of the administration, to his second in command, Dr Felton, and was himself not only not in London, but not even in his Northumbrian home.

Believing in the inevitability of war, he had taken himself off to a naval base in Scotland to evoke the revered name of his appalling grandfather, Rear Admiral ‘Basher’ Somerville, and get himself into the navy. To talk himself into the corridors of power had been relatively easy; to talk himself out of them, as the threat of war receded, was taking longer.

Professor Somerville was going to be late for the beginning of term.

12

‘What do you mean, he isn’t back? Term begins next week. Do you intend to allow this kind of behaviour from your staff?’