The Morning Gift

‘Ah, but that is because you think she is too tall, but she could wear low heels or go barefoot which is healthy – and even if you don’t marry her there are all the ladies who jump at you from behind pyramids and the ones who leave scarves in your rooms – and I want to help.’

‘Well, you’re not going to help by getting mixed up in that sort of rubbish,’ said Quin. ‘Now tell me about your parents – how are they getting on and how is life in Belsize Park?’

Though she was clearly offended by Quin’s rejection of her plan, Ruth accepted the change of subject, nor did her hurt feelings prevent her from eating a second jam tart and a chocolate eclair, and by the time they left the restaurant, she was able to turn to Quin and make him a promise with her customary panache.

‘I know you don’t like to be thanked, but for tea everybody gets thanked and I want to tell you that from now on I will never again try to be alone with you, I will be completely anonymous; I will,’ said Ruth with fervour, ‘be nonexistent.’

Quin stood looking down at her, an odd expression on his face. Ruth’s eyes glowed with the ardour of those who swear mighty oaths, her tumbled hair glowed in the light of the chandeliers. A young man, passing with a friend, had turned to stare at her and bumped into the doorman.

‘That would interest me,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘Yes, your nonexistence would interest me very much.’

Ruth was as good as her word. She sat at the back of the lecture theatre (though no longer in a raincoat); she flattened herself against the wall when the Professor passed; her voice was never heard in his seminars.

This did not mean that she failed to ask questions. As Quin’s lectures opened more and more doors in her mind, she trained her friends to ask questions on her behalf, and to hear Pilly stumbling through sentences which had Ruth’s hallmark in every phrase, gave Quin an exquisite pleasure.

Nevertheless, Nature had not shaped Ruth for nonexistence, a point made by Sam and Janet who said they thought she was overdoing it. ‘Just because you knew him in Vienna, you don’t have to fall over backwards to keep out of his way,’ said Sam. ‘Anyway it’s a complete waste of time – one can see your hair halfway across the quad – I bet he knows exactly where you are.’

This, unfortunately, was true. Ruth leaning over the parapet to feed the ducks was not nonexistent, nor encountered in the library behind a pile of books, a piece of grass between her teeth. She was not nonexistent as she sat under the walnut tree coaching Pilly, nor emerging, drunk with music, from rehearsals of the choir. In general, Quin, without conceit, would have said he was a man with excellent nerves, but a week of Ruth’s anonymity was definitely taking its toll.

If Ruth was trying to keep out of the Professor’s way, Verena Plackett was not. She emerged each morning from the Lodge, punctual as an alderman, bearing her crocodile skin briefcase and carrying over her arm a spotless white lab coat, one of three, which her mother’s maids removed, laundered, starched and replaced each day. Verena continued to thank the staff on her parents’ behalf at the end of every lecture; she accepted only the sycophantic Kenneth Easton as her partner in practical; the liver fluke, seeing her coming, flattened itself obediently between glass slides. But it was in Professor Somerville’s seminars that Verena shone particularly. She sat in the chair next to the Professor’s, her legs neatly crossed at the ankle, and asked intelligent questions using complete sentences and making it clear that she had read not only the books he had recommended, but a great many others.

‘I wonder what you think about Ashley-Cunningham’s views on bone atrophy as expressed in chapter five of his Palaeohistology?’ was the kind of thing the other students had to endure from Verena. ‘It wasn’t on our reading list, I know, but I happened to find it in the London Library.’

That Ruth might be a serious rival academically had not, at the beginning, occurred to Verena. A fey girl who conversed with sheep was hardly to be taken seriously. It was something of a shock, therefore, when the first essays were returned and she found that Ruth, like herself, was getting alphas and spoken of as someone likely to get a First. Verena set her jaw and decided to work even harder – and so did Ruth. Ruth, however, blamed herself, she felt besmirched, and at night when Hilda slept, she sat up in bed and spoke seriously to God.

‘Please, God,’ Ruth would pray, ‘don’t let me be competitive. Let me realize what a privilege it is to study. Let me remember that knowledge must be pursued for its own sake and please, please stop me wanting to beat Verena Plackett in the exams.’