The Morning Gift

‘No, I didn’t,’ said Martha shortly, and watched her employer’s hands relax on the handle of the trug. ‘Drowning the things at birth before their eyes are open is one thing, but shooting them in cold blood is another. If you want it shot, you can give the instructions yourself.’

‘Where is it, then?’

‘One of the students took it. I met her coming up for the milk. She says she’ll keep it; they’re off to Howcroft Point, I thought she might as well with Lady Plackett not being too fond of it and company coming.’

Miss Somerville nodded. The Rothleys were coming for drinks and the Stanton-Derbys, to welcome Verena and talk about the dance, and she didn’t really want any more jokes about the little dog. She was setting off across the lawn when Martha said: ‘Who’s this Richard Wagner, then? Some kind of musician fellow?’

‘He was a composer. An extremely noisy one, with a reprehensible private life. Why?’

‘This girl . . . the one who’s taken the puppy . . . she said he had a step-daughter with eyes like that – Wagner did. One blue and one brown, same as the puppy. Daniella she was called.’

‘The student?’

‘No, the stepdaughter.’

Deciding not to pursue the matter, Miss Somerville made her way to the garden. She thought she would postpone talking to Lady Plackett about the extraordinary behaviour of the carpenter. After all, it was none of her business.

Ruth, meanwhile, had reached the boathouse.

‘What is it?’ enquired Dr Elke, looking at Comely’s love child which was climbing with passionate enthusiasm over her feet.

‘It’s a mixture,’ admitted Ruth.

Dr Elke said she could see that and removed her shoe from the puppy’s grasp.

‘But full of personality?’ suggested Ruth. ‘Though not perhaps strictly beautiful.’

‘No, not strictly.’

‘Voltaire wasn’t beautiful either,’ said Ruth, ‘but he used to say that if he had half an hour to explain away his face, he could seduce the Queen of France.’

‘More than half an hour would be necessary in this case,’ said Dr Elke, and told Ruth to pass the hammers, for she was checking supplies for the day’s fossil hunting on the cliffs off Howcroft Point.

Ruth did so. There was a pause. Then: ‘I thought he might come with us on the bus? Martha said he was very fond of transportation and he’s never sick.’

‘Ask the Professor,’ said Elke and went into the lab.

Since Quin at that moment came down the path, Ruth repeated her request.

‘I thought he might be useful,’ she said.

‘Really?’ Quin’s eyebrows were raised in enquiry. ‘What sort of usefulness had you in mind?’

‘Well, dogs are always digging up bones. Suppose he found something interesting? The femur of a torosaurus, perhaps?’

‘That would certainly be interesting on the coal measures,’ said Quin drily. But seeing Ruth’s face, he relented. ‘Keep him out of the way; I suppose he can’t do much harm on the moors.’

By the time the bus deposited them at Howcroft Point, the puppy had acquired the kind of following that Voltaire himself would have envied. Pilly had held him on her knees throughout the journey, Janet spoke to him in a voice which made Ruth understand what happened in the backs of motor cars, and Huw was on hand to lift him over boulders which defeated even his intrepid scramblings.

It was another perfect day. The cliffs here were topped by heather and gorse, the curlews called – but the work now was hard. For here, in the carboniferous outcrop which ran from the moors out onto the shore, were embedded those creatures that determined all subsequent life on earth. Fragments of ancient corals, whorled molluscs, each characteristic of the layered zones, had to be prised from the rock, labelled, wrapped and carried back to the laboratory. And since no day is complete without the chance for self-improvement, Ruth was fortunate, for the opportunities for loving Verena Plackett on Howcroft Point were endless. Always at the Professor’s heels, she tapped unerringly with her brand-new hammer, finding not only an undoubted specimen of caninia, but also a crinoid complete with tentacles – and laughed merrily whenever Pilly mispronounced a word.

Since the tide was high, they had lunch above the strand on a patch of heather while the puppy consumed sandwiches, fell in and out of rabbit holes and fell suddenly and utterly asleep on Huw’s collecting bag. Most of the students too were glad to be lazy, but Ruth, accustomed to the ascent of high places from which to say ‘Wunderbar!’ scrambled to the top of the hill which commanded a view of the coast for miles, and the moors inland, still showing glimmers of purple. It was not till she caught the whiff of tobacco from behind a boulder that she realized she was not alone.

‘It’s quite something, isn’t it?’ said Quin, gesturing with his pipe at the low line of Holy Island to the south, and the dramatic pinnacle of Howcroft Rock. ‘I’m glad you’ve seen it like this – autumn and winter are best for the colours.’