The Morning Gift

Chapter 16

‘Look at him,’ said Frances Somerville bitterly, handing her binoculars to her maid. ‘Gloating. Rubbing his hands.’

Martha took the glasses and trained them on the middle-aged gentleman with the intellectual forehead, making his way along the cliff path towards the headland.

‘He’s writing in his book,’ she said, as though the taking of notes was further proof of Mr Ferguson’s iniquity.

‘Well he needn’t expect me to give him lunch,’ said Miss Somerville. ‘He can go to The Black Bull for that.’

Mr Ferguson had arrived soon after breakfast, sent by the National Trust at Quin’s request to see if the Trust might interest itself in Bowmont. A man of impeccable tact, scholarly and mild-mannered, he had been received by Miss Somerville as though he had just crawled out of some particularly repellent sewer.

‘Maybe it won’t come to anything,’ said Martha, handing back the glasses. After forty years in Miss Somerville’s service, she was allowed to speak to her as a friend. ‘Maybe he won’t fancy the place.’

‘Ha!’ said Miss Somerville.

Her scepticism was justified. Though Mr Ferguson would report officially to Quin in London, he had already indicated that three miles of superb coastline, not to mention the famous walled garden, would probably interest the Trust very much indeed.

So there it was, thought Frances wretchedly: there the men in peaked caps, the lavatory huts, the screeching trippers. Quin had made it clear that even if negotiations went forward, he would insist on a flat in the house set aside for her use, but if he thought she would cower there and watch over the defilement of the place she had guarded for twenty years, he was mistaken. The day the Trust moved in, she would move out.

Perhaps if the letter from Lady Plackett hadn’t arrived just after Mr Ferguson took his leave, Miss Somerville would have reacted to it differently. But it came when she felt as old and discouraged as she had ever felt in her life and ready to clutch at any straw.

The Vice Chancellor’s wife began by reminding Miss Somerville of their brief acquaintance in the finishing school in Paris.

You may find it difficult to remember the little shy girl so much your junior, wrote Lady Plackett, who was not famous for her tact, but I shall always recall your kindness to me when I was homesick and perplexed. Miss Somerville did not remember either the homesick junior or her own kindness, but when Lady Plackett went on to remind her that she had been Daphne Croft-Ellis and that she had been presented in the same year as Miss Somerville’s second cousin, Lydia Barchester, the heel of whose shoe had come off as she left Their Majesties walking backwards, she read on with the attention one affords letters from those in one’s own world.

Miss Somerville read the letter through twice and sat for a while, pondering. Then she rang for Turton.

‘Tell Harris I shall want the motor,’ she said. ‘I’m going to go over to Rothley.’

She was about to step into the old Buick, which she resolutely refused to let Quin replace, when a series of high-pitched yelps made her turn round and a shoe-sized puppy hurled itself at her legs, gathered itself up to leap onto the running board, missed, rolled over on to its back… and all the while its rat-like tail rotated in a frenzy and its unequal eyes gleamed with life affirmation and the prospect of togetherness.

‘Take it away,’ said Miss Somerville grimly. ‘And tell whoever let it out that if they don’t keep the door shut, I’ll have it drowned.’

The chauffeur repressed a grin, for the passion of the mongrel puppy for Bowmont’s mistress was a standing joke among the servants, but Miss Somerville, sitting stiffly in the back of the motor, could find no amusement in what had happened to her prize Labrador. The last of Comely’s thoroughbred puppies had been weaned and sold to excellent homes when, sooner than expected, she had come on heat again and spent a night away. The result of this escapade was a litter the like of which Miss Somerville, in thirty years of breeding dogs, could not have imagined in her most fevered dreams. By bullying various underlings on the estate, she had managed to find homes for the older puppies — but to get anyone to take the runt of the litter, with its arbitrary collection of whiskers, piebald stomach and vestigial legs, she would have had to put the villagers into stocks. And somehow this canine disaster seemed to go with all the other threats to her ordered world: with cowmen who sang opera and strangers with notebooks tramping over Somerville land.

The road to Rothley led past Bamburgh, once Bowmont’s rival to the north, and the causeway to Holy Island, before turning inland towards the Hall — a long, red sandstone building apparently kept aloft by fierce strands of ivy. The yapping of half a dozen Jack Russell terriers greeted her and presently she was in Lady Rothley’s small drawing room while her friend perused the letter.

‘One cannot really like the tone,’ she said presently, ‘but quite honestly, Frances, I do not see what you have to lose. At worst, Verena is a tiresome girl and you have her for a fortnight and at best…’

‘Yes, that’s what I thought. And she really does seem to be clever. She might interest him where sillier girls have failed.’

‘I’ll tell you one thing,’ said Lady Rothley ‘If she’s got Croft-Ellis blood in her, she’ll soon scotch any nonsense about giving Bowmont to the National Trust! If Quin marries Verena Plackett, they won’t get their hands on a square inch of midden. It’s not for nothing that their motto is What I have let no man covet! If there’s a meaner family in England, I’ve yet to hear of it.’ And seeing her friend’s face, ‘No, I’m joking, it’s not as bad as that — they’re good landlords and go back to the Conqueror. If the girl manages to get Quin, she’ll know how to behave.’

‘You think I should invite her then?’

‘Yes, I do. And more than that. I think we should put our shoulders to the wheel. I think we should rally round and really welcome the girl. If it’s her birthday during the time she’s here why don’t you give a party for her, or a small dance? I know you don’t care for all that, but we’ll help you. Rollo’s coming up next week with a friend from Sandhurst and Helen’s girls are home. Nothing formal, of course, but it’s years since Quin’s seen his home en fête — and with the students here he can’t run away like he sometimes does!’

Frances, quailing at the thought of so much sociability, now had another unpleasant thought. ‘You don’t think he’ll expect the students to come? The ones down at the boathouse, I mean?’

‘I shouldn’t think so. Quin may be democratic, but he knows how things are done.’ And coming over to lay her arm round Miss Somerville’s shoulder in a rare gesture of affection: ‘This may be what we’ve been waiting for, Frances. Let’s give the girl a chance.’

Miss Somerville returned to Bowmont as a woman with a mission. The letter she wrote to Lady Plackett was cordial in the extreme, and the instructions she gave to Turton were explicit.

‘We’re having house guests next week — a Miss Plackett, one of the Professor’s students. I want the Tapestry Room prepared for her, and the Blue Room for her mother. And there’ll be a small party on the 28th which is Miss Plackett’s birthday.’

Turton might be discreet, but the girls who prepared the Tapestry Room for Verena were not and nor was the cook, told to expect twenty or so young people for supper and dancing. And soon it had spread to all the servants’ halls in North Northumberland that Quinton Somerville was expecting a very special young lady and that wedding bells were in the air at last.

And as below stairs, so above. Ann Rothley was as good as her word. She telephoned Helen Stanton-Derby, still suffering from the violin-playing chauffeur that Quin had wished on her, and Christine Packham over in Hexham and Bobo Bainbridge down in Newcastle — and all of them, even those with marriageable daughters who would have done very well as mistress of Bowmont, promised to welcome Verena Plackett whose mother was a Croft-Ellis and who would, if she married dear Quin, scotch once and for all this nonsense about giving his home away. Not only that, but they unhesitatingly offered their offspring for Verena’s party, for the knowledge that Quin had seen his duty at last made everyone extremely happy.

As for Lady Plackett, receiving a reply of such unexpected cordiality, she decided to accompany Verena herself and stay for a few days at Bowmont, returning for Verena’s actual party.

‘But I think, dear,’ she said to her gratified daughter, ‘that it might be best to say nothing about the invitation till just before we go. There could be jealousy and ill-feeling among the students — and you know how concerned dear Quinton is about any apparent favouritism.’

Verena thought this was sensible. ‘We will leave Miss Somerville to acquaint him,’ she said, and returned to her books.

And Frances did, of course, write to Quin and tell him what she had done, but the week before the students were due to leave, a Yorkshire quarryman turned up a leg bone whose size and weight caused pandemonium in the local Department of Antiquities. Answering a plea to authenticate the find and halt work in the gravel pit, Quin rearranged his lectures and drove north. Delayed by the importance of the discovery — for the bone turned out to be the femur of an unusually complete mammoth skeleton — and involved in a bloodthirsty battle with a rapacious contractor, Quin decided not to return to town, but make his way straight to Bowmont.

His aunt’s letter thus remained unopened in his Chelsea flat.

It was the day after Quin left for Yorkshire that Ruth received the confirmation she had been longing for. Heini had booked his ticket, he was coming on 2 November and in an aeroplane!

‘So no one will be able to take him off!’ said Ruth with shining eyes.

‘I can’t believe I’m really going to see him,’ said Pilly.

‘Well you are — and you’re going to hear him too!’

For now, of course, what mattered more than anything was to secure the piano. Ruth was only five shillings short of the sum she needed, and as though the gods knew there was no more time to waste, they sent, that very night, a young man named Martin Hoyle in to the Willow Tea Rooms.

Hoyle lived in a villa on Hampstead Hill with his mother and had independent means, but it was his ambition to be a journalist and he had already submitted a number of articles to newspapers and magazines, not all of which had been refused. Now he had had an idea which he was sure would further his career. He would extract from the refugees who had colonized the Willow, their recollections of Vienna; poignant anecdotes of the pomp and splendour of the Imperial City, or more recent ones of the Vienna of Wittgenstein and Freud. Not only that, but Mr Hoyle had an angle. He was going to contrast the rich stock of memories which they carried in their heads with the meagre contents of the actual luggage they had been allowed to bring. ‘Suitcases of the Mind’ was to be the title of the piece which he was sure he could sell to the News Chronicle or even to The Times.

He had come early. Though Ziller, Dr Levy and von Hofmann — all Viennese born and bred — were talking together by the window, it was Mrs Weiss, sitting alone by the hat stand, who accosted him.

‘I buy you a cake?’ she suggested.

To her surprise, the young man nodded.

‘Thank you,’ he said, ‘but let me buy you one.’

Mrs Weiss did not object to this so long as he sat down and let her talk to him. Two slices of guggle were brought, and Mr Hoyle introduced himself.

‘I was wondering if you would mind if we talked a little about your past? Your memories?’ said Mr Hoyle. ‘You see, I was once in Vienna; it was a city I loved so much.’

Mrs Weiss’s eyes flickered. She had never actually been in Vienna, which was a long way from East Prussia and her native city of Prez, but if she admitted this, Mr Hoyle would go away and talk to the men by the window, whereas if she played her cards right, she could keep him at her table and when her daughter-in-law came to fetch her, she would see her in conversation with a good-looking young man.

‘Vat is it you vant me to remember?’ she enquired.

‘Well, for example, did you ever see the Kaiser? Driving out of the gates of the Hofburg, perhaps?’

A somewhat frustrating quarter of an hour followed. In lieu of the Kaiser, Mr Hoyle received the old lady’s low opinion of mutton chop whiskers; instead of famous premieres at the opera, he learnt of the laryngeal problems which had prevented her nephew, Zolly Federmann, from taking to the stage.

‘But the Prater?’ asked Mr Hoyle, growing a little desperate. ‘Surely you must have bowled your hoop along the famous chestnut alley?’

Mrs Weiss had not, but described a rubber crocodile on a string, of which she had been very fond till some rough boys from an orphanage had punctured it.

‘Well, what about the Giant Wheel, then?’ Mr Hoyle wiped his brow. ‘Surely you remember riding on that? Or the paddle boats on the Danube?’

It was at this point that Ruth entered, ready to begin the evening’s work, and smiled at the old lady. To the men, Mrs Weiss would not have ceded the young journalist, but Ruth was different. Ruth was her friend. She became suddenly exasperated.

‘I haf not been on the wheel in the Prater. I haf not been on the Danube in the paddling boat. I haf not seen Franz Josef coming from gates, and I do not remember Vienna because I haf never been in Vienna. I have been only in Prez and once to the fur sales in Berlin, but was cheated. So now please go away for I am only a poor old woman and my daughter-in-law makes me sleep in wet air and it should be better for everybody that I am dead.’

Needless to say, this outburst, clearly audible throughout the café, brought help from all sides. While Ziller and Dr Levy consoled the shaken Mr Hoyle, Ruth comforted the old lady — and Miss Maud and Miss Violet agreed that under the circumstances (and because Mr Hoyle’s article, if published, might be good for trade) two tables could be pushed together.

And soon Mr Hoyle’s notebook began to fill up with useful anecdotes. Dr Levy told how he had assisted with the removal of an anchovy from the back of the Archduke Otto’s throat; Paul Ziller described being hit by a tomato during the premiere of Schönberg’s Verklärte Nacht and von Hofmann recounted the classic story of Tosca bouncing back from a too tightly stretched trampoline after her suicidal leap from the ramparts.

But it was at the Willow’s waitress, as she too shared her memories, that Mr Hoyle looked most eagerly, for he knew now what was missing from his story. Love was what was missing. Love and youth and a central theme. A young girl waiting for her man, working for him. Who wanted suitcases when all was said and done? Love was what they wanted. Love in the Willow Tea Rooms… Love in Vienna and Belsize Park. If only she would talk to him, he would sell his story, he was sure of that.

And Ruth did talk to him; talking about Heini was her pleasure and delight. As she whisked between the tables with her tray, she told him of Heini’s triumphs at the Conservatoire and how he had been inspired, in the meadow above the Grundlsee, to write an Alpine étude. He learnt of Heini’s passion for Maroni, the sweet chestnuts roasted everywhere on street corners in the Inner City — and that at the age of twelve he had played a Mozart concerto based on the song of a starling which surprised Mr Hoyle who had thought of starlings as raucous despoilers on the roofs of railway stations.

‘But you’ll see, he’ll play it here,’ said Ruth, ‘and you must absolutely promise to come!’

An hour later, Mr Hoyle closed his notebook and took his leave. Nor was he slow to show his gratitude. Coming to clear the tables at closing time, Ruth found, under his plate, a crisply folded note which she carried joyfully into the kitchen.

‘Look!’ she said. ‘Just look! Can you believe it? A whole ten-shilling note!’

‘You’ve got enough, then?’ asked Mrs Burtt.

‘I’ve got enough!’

The piano was expected in the middle of the morning, but Leonie had been up since six o’clock, cleaning the rooms, reblocking the mouseholes, polishing and dusting. By seven o’clock, she had begun to bake and here she was destined to run into trouble.

Leonie was relatively indifferent to the arrival of Heini’s piano, but Ruth was bringing her friends to celebrate and that was important. Not Verena Plackett, who did not figure large in Ruth’s accounts of her days, but Priscilla Yarrowby and Sam and Janet, and the Welshman who had discovered the piano in an obscure shop on the way back from the rugby field.

If her husband had been with her, Leonie would have found it difficult to provide suitable refreshment, for the food budget was desperately tight, but the absence of the professor — much as she missed him — meant they had been able to eat potatoes and apple purée made from the windfalls Mishak collected on his rambles and save.

Leonie accordingly had saved, and bought two kilos of fine flour… had bought freshly ground almonds and icing sugar and unsalted butter and the very finest vanilla pods — and by nine o’clock was removing from the oven batch after batch of perfectly baked vanilla Kipferl.

At which point her plans for the morning began to go wrong. Leonie wanted Mishak to stay and meet Ruth’s friends — she always wanted Mishak — but what she wanted Hilda to do was go to the British Museum and what she wanted Fräulein Lutzenholler to do was go up the hill and look at Freud.

She had reckoned without the power of the human nose to unlock emotion and recall the past. Hilda came first, stumbling out of the bedroom in her dressing-gown.

‘It is true, then,’ she said. ‘I smelled them, but I thought it was a dream.’ And she decided that as it was a Saturday, she would not go to the museum, but work at home.

Fräulein Lutzenholler, her fierce face tilted in disbelief, came next, carrying her sponge bag. ‘Ah, yes: the piano,’ she said and added the dreaded words, ‘I will stay here and help.’

By the time the scent of freshly ground coffee came to blend with the warm, familiar scent of the thumb-sized crescents, it was clear that not only would no one voluntarily leave Number 27 that morning, but a great many others would come. Ziller, of course, had been invited, but presently Mrs Weiss arrived in a taxi and Mrs Burtt, whose day off it was, and then a lady from next door murmuring something ecstatic in Polish.

Thus Ruth, arriving with her friends, came to a house redolent of all the well-remembered smells and the sound of eager voices, and stopped for a moment, caught by the past, before she ran upstairs and threw her arms round Leonie.

‘Oh, you shouldn’t have baked, but how marvellous,’ she said and rubbed her cheek against her mother’s.

Anyone Ruth was fond of would have been welcomed with warmth by Leonie, but in Pilly she detected, beneath the expensive clothes and Harrods handbag, just the kind of poor little scrap she had protected in Vienna. As for Sam, he was so overawed at being in the same room as Paul Ziller, all of whose records he had collected, that he could hardly speak. Even without the arrival of the piano, the gathering had all the makings of a splendid party.

But punctually at 11.30, the piano did arrive.

‘Easy does it,’ said the removal man, as removal men have said throughout the ages, trundling the upright down the ramp and into the house — and ‘steady there’, as they fastened ropes and pulleys to raise it to the top floor.

Steadiness was difficult. Fräulein Lutzenholler had escaped from the sitting room and was giving advice; Hilda hovered… But at last the job was done and the keys handed, with a courtly bow, to Ruth.

‘No, you unlock it, Huw,’ she said — and everyone felt the rightness of the gesture, for it was the huge, monosyllabic Welshman, doggedly searching the music shops of London, who had found, in a distant suburb near the college rugby field, exactly the piano Heini wanted: A Bösendorfer, one of the last to come out of the old workshops and famous for its sweetness of tone.

‘It makes it real now,’ Ruth said softly, touching the keys. ‘I can believe now that Heini is coming.’

‘Come on, try it,’ said Leonie, filling plates for the removal men, who thought they could leave now but found themselves mistaken.

Though one of the world’s best violinists was in the room, Ruth sat down without embarrassment and played a Schubert waltz — and Ziller smiled for it always touched him, this passion for music which had been hers since infancy and transcended all limitations of technique.

‘I suppose you wouldn’t, sir… I mean… you wouldn’t play?’ Sam, nervous but entreating, had come to stand beside him.

‘Of course.’

Ziller went to fetch his violin and played a Kreisler piece and a Beethoven bagatelle — and then he and Ruth began fooling about, giving imitations of the customers in the Hungarian restaurant trying not to tip the gypsies who came to their table — and presently a quite extraordinary sound was heard: a rusty, wheezing noise which no one had heard before: Fräulein Lutzenholler’s laughter.

It was Pilly who spoiled it all, poor Pilly who always got everything wrong.

‘Oh, Mrs Berger,’ she said impetuously, ‘please, please won’t you persuade Ruth to come on the field course with us? We want her to come so much!’

Leonie put down her coffee cup. ‘What course is this?’

Silence fell as Ruth looked with deep reproach at her friend and Pilly blushed scarlet.

‘It’s at Professor Somerville’s place,’ she stammered. ‘We’re all going. In three days’ time.’

‘I have heard nothing about this,’ said Leonie sternly.

‘It doesn’t matter, Mama,’ said Ruth quickly. ‘It’s just some practical work that happens in the autumn term, but I don’t need it.’

Leonie ignored her.

‘Everyone is going except Ruth?’

Pilly nodded. Desolate at having upset her friend she moved towards Uncle Mishak, as those in trouble go to lean against the trunks of trees and her eyes filled with tears.

Sam now entered the lists. ‘If Ruth hasn’t mentioned it, it’s because of the money. It costs quite a bit to go, but Pilly’s father has offered to pay for Ruth — he’s got more money than he knows what to do with and everyone knows how Ruth helps Pilly, but Ruth won’t hear of it. She’s as obstinate as a mule.’

‘It is Professor Somerville who is giving this course?’ Leonie asked.

‘Yes. And it’s the best in the country. We go to Bowmont and —’

Ruth now interrupted. ‘Mama, I don’t want to talk about it any more. I’m not taking money from Pilly and I’m not going and that’s the end of it.’

Leonie nodded. ‘You are quite right,’ she said. ‘To take money from friends is not good.’ She smiled warmly at Pilly. ‘Come, you will help me to make more coffee.’

Only when the students were leaving, did she take Sam aside.

‘It is Dr Felton who makes the arrangements for this course?’

‘That’s right. He’s a really nice man and he’s very keen for Ruth to go.’

‘And Professor Somerville? Is he also keen that she goes?’

Sam frowned. ‘He must be, she’s one of his best students. But he’s odd — they both are. I’ve hardly heard him and Ruth exchange a word since she came.’

Leonie now had the information she wanted. On a practical level, her course was clear — but how to deal with her obstinate daughter?

‘Mishak, you must help me,’ she said that evening, as the two of them sat alone in the sitting room which was in no way improved by the presence of the piano.

Mishak removed his long-stemmed pipe and examined the bowl to see if a few shreds of tobacco still adhered to it, but they did not.

‘You are going to sell your brooch,’ he stated.

‘Yes. Only how to make her go?’

‘Leave it to me,’ said Mishak. And Leonie, who had intended to do just that, hugged him and went to bed.