The Morning Gift

EPILOGUE

It was a day of extraordinary beauty: a day that perfectly matched the mood of Britain’s citizens as they celebrated the end of the war in Europe. The soft blue sky was cloudless, the May-green trees spread their canopy of tender leaves. Strangers embraced each other, children feasted; bonfires were lit — and in the bombed squares round St Paul’s, the people danced.

There were some, of course, who preferred to rejoice without external displays of agitation. At Bowmont, Frances and Uncle Mishak spent the day working in the garden and arguing about the asparagus bed. The need to feed the populace had enabled Mishak to plant asparagus in a place under the south wall which Frances now wanted to reclaim for her day lilies. Not that the outcome was in doubt for a moment: everyone who worked at Bowmont knew that the bandy-legged old gentleman who seldom spoke could twist Miss Somerville round his little finger.

But in the Willow Tea Rooms, everything was carnival and joy. Ruth had intended to celebrate V-E Day at Bowmont, but her son had different ideas.

‘I think I ought to go to London and see the King and Queen,’ he said.

Questioned further, the five-year-old Jamie said he thought that they had done well to stay at Buckingham Palace throughout the bombing, and to keep visiting the troops, and he wanted to tell them so.

‘But, darling, there’ll be thousands and thousands of people there waiting for them to come onto the balcony. You won’t be able to see them alone.’

James said he didn’t mind. A handsome child with dark eyes and his mother’s light, abundant hair, he had retained only one feature from his great-grandfather: the Basher’s iron and indomitable will.

So they went to London and where James went there went his little sister, Kate — and once it was clear that this was to be a grand reunion, Ruth accepted the offer of Miss Maud and Miss Violet of a party in the Willow. London was really one great party that halcyon May day — there were trestle tables out on the pavements of Belsize Square and Belsize Lane and Belsize Avenue, so why not in the Willow — and Mrs Burtt, though she was very grand now (a floor manager in the munitions factory) had offered to come with her son, Trevor, and lend a hand.

All the same Mrs Weiss, arriving in the café, was not at all pleased.

‘Mein Gott,’ she said disgustedly. ‘So many children!’

There were a lot of children. Six years of war had had a startling effect on the birth rate. Dr Felton and his twins had joined Professor Berger and Jamie in the expedition to Buckingham Palace, but Janet, up from the country, had deposited her pugilistic two-year-old so that she could go and look at the crowds. Dr Levy, now a consultant at Hampstead Hospital, was on duty, but his new young wife was rocking their infant daughter while Thisbe — back from Cumberland — trotted at Ruth’s heels. And sitting on Leonie’s lap, surveying the uproar from the safety of her grandmother’s embrace, was Katy Somerville.

‘So that is why the Lutzenholler has not come,’ said Mrs Weiss grimly, manoeuvring herself on two sticks to her usual table by the hat stand and taking out her horsehair purse, for it was only by pretending that this was an ordinary session in the café that she could endure what was going on.

But she maligned the psychoanalyst. That people could actually pay good money to bring their troubles to the soup slayer of Belsize Park continued to surprise everyone, but it was so. Established in a smart area of St John’s Wood, she was even on this historic day attending to patients who could not face the world without a session on her couch.

There were other absentees — von Hofmann had said Schweinehund to such effect that he now said it in Hollywood and the lady with the poodle nursed a shivering chihuahua for the poodle had succumbed to old age. But almost everyone else was there and Ruth, in her role of waitress, was kept busy running to and fro.

‘And Pilly?’ asked Leonie, as her daughter passed with Janet’s baby on her hip and a tray of cakes. ‘Is she coming?’

‘She said she’d try. Sam’s picking her up in Portsmouth. Only Mama, you musn’t matchmake!’

‘Why musn’t I?’ asked Leonie, who was convinced that the growing attachment of Sam and Pilly could be laid at her door. She had kept open house for all Ruth’s friends on the top floor of Number 27 which she had turned into a comfortable flat. The year when Pilly’s petty officer had been lost at sea and Huw was killed at Alamein had been a hard one, and she had seen for herself how well those two would suit.

She took a cake from Ruth’s tray and pressed it into the hand of her granddaughter. The anxieties that Ruth and Quin felt about letting their children go forth in freedom had not affected Leonie. Children, perhaps: grandchildren, no.

But at three o’clock Ruth handed the baby to Miss Maud and went upstairs to keep a tryst with the four men who all through the war had travelled, clad in the khaki of the Pioneers, to bring music to soldiers in outlying barracks, to tired office workers and housewives in the Blitz… and who today were performing in a ruined church in a ravaged city in England’s heartland to celebrate the peace.

She turned the knob of the wireless, and they were playing the Schubert Quartet which she had heard that night at Thameside when she believed a miracle had happened and Biberstein was, after all, alive.

And yet… Perhaps, it had occurred, this miracle. It was the chauffeur from Northumberland who now took the melody from Ziller, but as the ravishing, transcendent music filled the room, Ruth seemed to see a plump and curly-headed figure who leant out from heaven and lifted the bow of his Amati in salute — and smiled.

Making her way back into the café through the kitchen, she checked on the threshold and her hand went to her heart. He was coming! He hadn’t been sure if he could get away, but here he was walking across the square, and she knew that there could be no greater happiness in the wide world than seeing him come like this towards her.

But others had noted the arrival of Commander Somerville. Katy slid off Leonie’s knee and came to pluck at her mother’s skirt; even the children fell silent. Ruth had not thought it necessary to keep her husband’s exploits to herself. Everyone knew that the circles of gold braid on his sleeve denoted an ever-increasing eminence; that he had been twice torpedoed; that he had housed twelve Jewish orphans and an experimental sheep at Bowmont and been awarded the DSO.

For such a hero something was due and Mrs Weiss was against the hothouse family embrace she could see developing. Stilling Ruth with a wave of the hand, she manoeuvred herself to her feet — and as Quin entered, she pointed at him with her rubber-tipped walking stick.

‘I buy you a cake?’ said Mrs Weiss.