The Morning Gift

She went on counting off the guests and Quin looked out over the silvered sea. It might not come – the war – but if it did, there was not one of those gilded youths but would be in the thick of the slaughter.

‘I know what we’ll drink, Aunt Frances!’ he said, taking her hands. ‘The Veuve Clicquot ’29! I’ve got two cases of it and I’ve been saving it for something special.’

Frances stared at him. She was no connoisseur of wine but she knew how Quin prized his fabulous champagne. ‘Are you sure?’

‘Why not? Let’s make it a night to remember!’

Frances went to bed a happy woman, for what could this open-handed gesture mean except that he wished to honour Verena? But the next morning came the remark she had been dreading.

‘If there’s a party of young people, we must ask the students if they’d like to come along.’

Gloom descended on Aunt Frances. Jewish waitresses, girls who did things in the backs of motor cars, to mingle with the decently brought up children of her friends.

‘They’re coming to lunch on Sunday. Surely that’s enough?’

Quin, however, was adamant. ‘I can’t single Verena out to that degree, Aunt Frances, you must see that.’

But to Frances’ great surprise, Verena entirely agreed with Quin and offered herself to invite the students.

She was as good as her word. Arriving at the boat-house while everyone was still at breakfast, she said: ‘There’s going to be a dance up at Bowmont for my birthday. Anyone who wouldn’t feel uncomfortable without the proper evening clothes would be entirely welcome.’

By the time Quin appeared to begin the morning’s work, she was able to tell him with perfect truth that the students had refused to a man.

19

‘But why? Why won’t you come? Everyone is invited – all the students go to Sunday lunch at Bowmont. It’s a ritual.’

‘Well, it’ll be just as much of a ritual without me. I’m waiting for a message from Heini and –’

‘Not on a Sunday. The post office is shut.’

The other students joined in, even Dr Elke – but Ruth was adamant. She didn’t feel like a big lunch, she was going for a walk; she thought the weather might be breaking.

‘Then I’ll stay with you,’ said Pilly, but this Ruth would not hear of and Pilly was not too hard to persuade, for the thought of sitting in a well-upholstered chair and eating a substantial Sunday lunch was very attractive.

It was very quiet when the others had gone. For a while, Ruth wandered along the shore, watching the seals out in the bay. Then suddenly she turned inland, taking not the steep cliff path that led up to the terrace, but the lane that meandered between copses of hazel and alder, to join, at last, the drive behind the house.

She had been along here before on the way to the farm and now she savoured again the rich, moist smells as the earth took over from the sea. She could still hear the ocean, but here in the shelter were hedgerows tangled with rosehips and wild clematis; sloes hung from the bushes; and the crimson berries of whitebeam glinted among the trees.

After a while the lane looped back, passing between open farmland where freshly laundered sheep grazed in the meadows and she leant over the fence to speak to them, but these were not melancholy captives in basements, but free spirits who only looked up briefly before they resumed their munching.

She was close to the house now, but hidden from it by a coppice of larches. If she turned into the drive she would reach the lawns and the shrubberies on the landward side. The students had been told they could go where they wanted, and Ruth, who could not face Verena lording it over Quin’s dining table, still found that she was curious about his home.

Crossing the bridge over the ha-ha, she came to a lichen-covered wall running beside a gravel path – and in it, a faded blue door framed in the branches of a guelder-rose. For a moment, she hesitated – but the grounds were deserted, no sound came to break the Sunday silence – and boldly she pushed open the door and went inside.

‘I expect it’s the dietary laws,’ said Verena reassuringly to Aunt Frances. ‘She is a Jew, you know, from Vienna. Perhaps she expects that we shall be eating pork!’ And she laughed merrily at the oddness of foreigners.

Pilly and Sam, sipping sherry in the drawing room, looked angrily at Verena.

‘Ruth doesn’t fuss at all about what she eats, you know that – and anyway she was brought up as a Catholic.’

But this was not a very promising defence for no one knew now what excuse to make for Ruth. Aunt Frances, however, accepted the kosher version of events, remarking that it had been the same with the cowman Lady Rothley had employed in the dairy. ‘We could have given her something else, I suppose. An omelette. But there is always the problem of the utensils.’