The Morning Gift (22 page)

'I dare say, but you'll have to get her transferred.'

'I can't. There isn't anywhere. UC tried all sorts of places before they came to us. And honestly I don't understand what all this is about,' said Roger, abandoning respect. 'The whole of London is riddled with refugees you've found work for - what about the old monster you wished on the library of the Geographical Society - Professor Zinlinsky who looks up the skirts of all the girls? And your aunt called in when she was here for the Chelsea Flower Show and she says it's just as bad in Northumberland - some opera singer of yours trying to milk cows - and now you try and turn out one of the most promising students we've had. Of course it's early days, but both Elke and I think she has a chance of beating Verena Plackett in the exams. She's the only one who's got a hope.'

'Who's Verena Plackett?'

'The VC's daughter. Didn't she come and thank you for your excellent lecture?'

'Yes, she did,' said Quin briefly. 'Look, I'm sorry but I'm not prepared to argue about this. I'm sure O'Malley will take her down in Tonbridge. He owes me a favour.'

'For God's sake, that's an hour on the train. She's saving for Heini's piano and - '

'Oh she is, is she? I mean, who the devil is Heini?'

'He's her boyfriend; he's on his way from Budapest and I don't mind telling you that I think he ought to get his own piano; she doesn't have any lunch because of him, and-'

'My God, Roger, don't tell me you've fallen for the girl.'

He had seriously hurt Felton's feelings. Roger's spectacle frames darkened, he scowled. 'I have
never
in my life got mixed up with a student and I never will; you ought to know that. Even if I wasn't married, I wouldn't. I have the lowest possible opinion of people who use their position to mess about with undergraduates.'

'Yes, I do know it; I'm sorry, I shouldn't have said that. But you see I knew the Bergers pretty well when I was in Vienna; I stayed with them one summer when Ruth was a child. It's entirely unsuitable that she should be in my class.'

Felton's brow cleared. 'Oh, if that's all… Good heavens, who cares about that?'

'I do.'

'I suppose you think you might mark her up in exams, but I shouldn't have thought there was much likelihood of that,' said Felton bitterly. 'You probably won't even be
here
when it's time to do the marking.'

'All right, you have a point. However - '

'She's
good
for us,' said Felton, speaking with more emotion than Quin had heard in him. 'She's so grateful to be allowed to study, she reminds the others of what a privilege it is to be at university. You know how cynical these youngsters can get, how they grumble. We too, I suppose, and suddenly here's someone who looks down a microscope as though God had just lowered a slide of paramecium down from heaven. And she's helping that poor little aspirin girl who always fails everything.'

'Exactly how long has Miss Berger been here?' asked Quin, whose ill temper seemed to be worsening with every minute.

'A week. But what has that to do with anything? You know perfectly well that one can tell the first time someone picks up a pipette whether they're going to be any good.'

'Nevertheless, she's leaving,' said Quin, tight-lipped.

'Then you tell her,' said Dr Felton, defying his superior for the first time in his life.

'I will,' said Quin, his face like thunder. At the door, he turned, remembering something he needed. 'Can you let me have the figures for last year's admissions as soon as possible? The VC wants them.'

Felton nodded. 'I've almost done them. They'll be ready for you this evening - I swear by Mozart's head.'

Quin spun round.
''What
did you say?'

Roger blushed. 'Nothing. Just a figure of speech.'

The room occupied by the Professor of Vertebrate Zoology was on the second floor and looked out over the walnut tree to the facade of the Vice Chancellor's Lodge and the arch with its glimpse of the river. The pieces of a partly assembled plesiosaur lay jumbled in a sand tray; the skull of an infant mastodon held down a pile of reprints. By the window, wearing a printed wool scarf left behind by his Aunt Frances, stood a life-sized model of Daphne, a female hominid from Java presented to Quin by the Oriental Exploration Society. The single, long-stemmed red rose in a vase on his desk had been placed there by his secretary, Hazel, an untroubling, middle-aged and happily married lady who could have run the department perfectly well without the interference of her superiors, and frequently did.

Ruth, summoned to the Professor's room, had come in still filled with the happiness his lecture had given her. Now she stood before him with bent head, trying to hold back her tears.

'But
why}
Why must I go? I don't understand.'

'Ruth, I've told you. In my old college in Cambridge members of staff weren't even allowed to
have
wives, let alone bring them into college. It's quite out of the question that I should teach someone I'm married to.'

'But you aren't married to me!' she said passionately. 'Not properly. You do nothing except send me pieces of paper about not being married. There is epilepsy and being your sister and a nun. And the thing about not consuming… or consummating or whatever it is.'

'It won't do, my dear, believe me. With the old VC we might have got away with it, but not with the Placketts. The scandal would be appalling. I'd have to resign which actually I don't mind in the least, but you'd be dragged into it and start your life under a cloud. Not to mention the delay to our freedom if we were known to have met daily.'

'All those things with C in them, you mean,' said Ruth. Fluent though her English was, the legal language was taking its toll. 'Collusion and… what is it… ? Connivance? Consent?'

'Yes, all those things. Look, leave this to me. I'm pretty sure I can get you on to the course down in Kent. They don't do Honours but -'

'I don't want to go away.' Her voice was low, intense. She had moved over to the window and one hand went out to rest on Daphne's arm as though seeking a sister in distress. 'I don't
want
to! Everyone is so kind here. There's Pilly who has to be a scientist because her father saw you striding about on a newsreel with yaks and that's
not
her fault, and I've promised Sam that I'd bring Paul Ziller to the Music Club and Dr Felton's classes are so interesting and he has such trouble with his wife wanting to have a baby and taking her temperature -'

'He told you that!' said Quin, unable to believe his ears.

'No, not exactly - but Mrs Felton came to fetch him and he was delayed and we began to talk. I'm not
reserved,
you know, like the British. Of course, when we said our marriage should be a secret, that was different. A secret is a secret, but otherwise… Even my goat-herding grandmother used to tell people things. She would roll down her stockings and say 'Look!' and you had to examine her varicose veins. She didn't ask if you wanted to see her veins; she needed to show them. And, of course, the Jewish side of me doesn't like distance at all, but it's different with you because you are British and upper class and Verena Plackett is studying Palaeontology so that she can marry you when we have been put asunder.'

Quin made a gesture of impatience. 'Don't talk rubbish, Ruth. Now let's think how - '

'It isn't rubbish! She's bought a new dress for the dinner party tonight because you're coming. It's electric-blue taffeta with puffed sleeves. I know because the maid at the Lodge is the porter's niece and he told me. Of course she is very tall but you could wear your hair
en brosse
and - '

Quin took out his handkerchief and wiped his brow. 'Ruth, I'm sorry; I know you've settled in but - '

'Yes, I have!' she cried. 'There's so much here! Dr Elke showed me her bed bug eggs and they are absolutely beautiful with a little cap on one end and you can see the eyes of the young ones through the shell. And there's the river and the walnut tree - '

'And the sheep/ said Quin bitterly.

'Yes, that too. But most of all your lecture this morning. It opened such doors. Though I don't agree with you absolutely about Hackenstreicher. I think he might have been perfectly sincere when he said that -'

'Oh, you do,' said Quin, not at all pleased. 'You think that a man who deliberately falsifies the evidence to fit a preconceived hypothesis is to be taken seriously.'

'If it
mas
deliberate. But my father had a paper which said that the skull they showed Hackenstreicher could have been from much lower down in the sequence so that it wouldn't be unreasonable for him
to
have come to the conclusions he did.'

'Yes, I've read that paper, but don't you see - '

Tempted to pursue the argument, Quin forced himself back to the task that faced him. That Ruth would have been an interesting student was not in question.

'Look, there's no sense in postponing this. I shall ring O'Malley and get you transferred to Tonbridge and until then you'd better stay away.'

She had turned her back and was absently retying the scarf, with its motif of riding crops and bridles, round Daphne's neck. In the continuing silence, Quin's disquiet grew. He remembered suddenly the child on the Grundlsee reciting Keats… the way she had tried to make a home even in the museum. Now he was banishing her again.

But when she turned to face him, it was not the sad handmaiden of his musings that he saw, not Ruth in tears amid the alien corn. Her chin was up, her expression obstinate and for a moment she resembled the primitive, pugnacious hominid beside whom she stood.

'I can't stop you sending me away because you are like God here; I saw that even before you came. But you can't make me go to Tonbridge. I didn't intend to go to university, I thought I should stay and work for my family. It-was you who said I should go and when I thought you wanted me to come here I was so - ' She broke off and blew her nose. 'But I won't start again somewhere else. I won't go to Tonbridge.'

'You will do exactly as you are told,' he said furiously. 'You will go to Tonbridge and get a decent degree and - '

'No, I won't. I shall go and get a job, the best paid one I can find. If you had let me stay I would have done everything you asked me; I would have been obedient and worked as hard as I knew how and I would have been
invisible
because you would have been my Professor and that would have been right. But now you can't bully me. Now I am free.'

Quin rose from his chair. 'Let me tell you that even if I am not your Professor I am still legally your husband and I can
order
you to go and - '

The sentence remained unfinished as Quin, aghast, heard the words of Basher Somerville come out of his own mouth.

Ruth put a last flourish to the bow round Daphne's neck.

'You have read Nietzsche, I see,' she said.
'When I go to a woman I take my whip.
How suitable that even the scarves your girlfriends leave behind have things on them for beating horses.'

But Quin had had enough. He went to the door, held it open.

'Now go,' he said. 'And quickly.'

The guest list for Lady Plackett's first dinner party was one of which any hostess could be proud. A renowned ichthyologist just back from an investigation of the bony fish in Lake Titicaca, an art historian who was the world expert on Russian icons, a philologist from the British Museum who spoke seven Chinese dialects and Simeon LeClerque who had won a literary prize for his biography of Bishop Berkeley. But, of course, the guest of honour, the person she had placed next to Verena, was Professor Somerville whom she had welcomed back to Thameside earlier in the day.

By six o'clock Lady Plackett had finished supervising the work of the maids and the cook, and went upstairs to speak to her daughter.

Verena had bathed earlier and now sat in her dressing-gown at her desk piled high with books.

'How are you getting on, dear?' asked Lady Plackett solicitously, for it always touched her, the way Verena prepared for her guests.

'I'm nearly ready, Mummy. I managed to get hold of Professor Somerville's first paper - the one on the dinosaur pits of Tendaguru, and I've read all his books, of course. But I feel I should just freshen up on ichthyology if I'm next to Sir Harold. He's just back from South America, I understand.'

'Yes… Lake Titicaca. Only remember, it's the
bony
fishes, dear.'

Sir Harold was married but really very eminent and it was quite right for Verena to prepare herself for him. 'I think we'll manage the Russian icons without trouble - Professor Frank is said to be very talkative. If you have the key names…'

'Oh, I have those,' said Verena calmly. 'Andrei Rublev… egg tempera… ' She glanced briefly at the notes she had taken earlier. 'The effect of Mannerism becoming apparent in the seventeenth century…'

Lady Plackett, not a demonstrative woman, kissed her daughter on the cheek. 'I can always rely on you.' At the doorway she paused. 'With Professor Somerville it would be in order to ask a little about Bowmont… the new forestry act, perhaps: I shall, of course, mention that I was acquainted with his aunt. And don't trouble about Chinese phonetics, dear. Mr Fellowes was only a stop gap - he's that old man from the British Museum and he's right at the other end of the table.'

Left alone, Verena applied herself to the bony fishes before once again checking off Professor Somerville's published works. He would not find her wanting intellectually, that was for certain. Now it was time to attend to the other side of her personality: not the scholar but the woman. Removing her dressing-gown, she slipped on the blue taffeta dress which Ruth had described with perfect accuracy and began to unwind the curlers from her hair.

'I found it fascinating,' said Verena, turning her powerful gaze on Professor Somerville. 'Your views on the value of lumbar curve measurements in recognizing hominids seem to me entirely convincing. In the footnote to chapter thirteen you put that so well.'