Left alone again, Heini was filled with disquiet. For his father to leave his home and the prestige he enjoyed in Hungary meant there was danger indeed. Heini did not like the idea of England: The Land Without Music, the country of fogs and men in bowler hats who had done unmentionable things to each other at boarding school, but it looked as though he had better get himself there quickly. And he was going to Ruth, his starling, his page turner, his love. Humbly, Heini, staring down at the lights of a barge as it slipped beneath the Elisabeth Bridge, admitted that he had taken Ruth too much for granted. Well, all this was going to change. Not only would he make Ruth wholly his, physically as well as mentally, but he was ready – yes, he was almost ready now – to marry her. At twenty-one he was very young to be taking such a step and his agent in Vienna had advised against it. So much patronage at the start of a musician’s career came from wealthy matrons and they were apt to look with a particular kindness on unmarried youths. But this did not matter. He was prepared to make the sacrifice.
On an impulse, he fetched a piece of paper and, lighting the lamp in the corner of the verandah, sat down to write a letter. He told Ruth of the concert and the disaster Mali had been, and wrote movingly and without hesitation of his love. Knowing, though, how practical Ruth was, how she needed to help, he wrote also of what he wanted her to do.
I shall have to have a piano as soon as I arrive, darling, wrote Heini. I don’t of course expect you to buy one – I know money may be a little tight till your family gets settled – only to rent one. A baby grand would be ideal, but if your parents’ drawing room won’t accommodate that, I’ll make do with an upright for the time being. A Bösendorfer would be best, you know how I prefer them, but I’ll be quite happy with a Stein-way or a Bechstein, but if it’s a Bechstein it must be a Model 8, not any of the smaller ones. Perhaps you’d better leave the tuning till the day before I come – and not an English piano, Ruth, not even a Broadwood. I’m sure I can leave it allto you, my love; you’ve never failed me yet and you never will.
When he had signed the letter, Heini still lingered for a while, inhaling the scent of mignonette from the garden. ‘I love you, Ruth,’ he said aloud, and felt uplifted and purged and good as people do when they have committed themselves to another. He would have stayed longer, but for the whine of a mosquito somewhere above him. Once, on the Grundlsee, a midge had bitten him on the pad of his index finger and it had turned septic. Hurrying indoors, Heini closed the window and then went to bed.
8
It was not until she stood on the platform and looked up at the royal-blue coaches with their crests and the words Compagnie Internationale des Wagons-Lits painted over the windows, that Ruth realized they were travelling on the Orient Express.
Now, sitting opposite Quin in the dining car as the train streamed through the twilit Austrian countryside, she looked about her in amazement. She had expected luxury, but the Lalique panels, the rosewood marquetry of the partitions, the gilded metal flowers on the ceiling were sumptuous beyond belief. On the damask-covered table lay napkins folded into butterflies; a row of crystal glasses stood beside each plate; sprays of poinsettias, like crimson shields, glowed in the light of the lamp.
‘Oh, I can’t believe this,’ said Ruth, trying to feel guilty and not succeeding. ‘It’s like a real and proper honeymoon. You shouldn’t have done it.’
‘It was no trouble,’ said Quin, handing her the menu sheet.
But in fact the bribing and manoeuvring to get a compartment at such notice had been considerable. He’d done it, wanting to give her an interval of comfort between the days of hiding in the museum and the poverty which awaited her in London, and now, as she bent over the gold-lettered menu, he summoned the waiter and instructed him to pull down the blinds, for they were approaching the familiar country round her beloved Grundlsee.
