The Morning Gift полностью

Yet if her happiness was real, it could be fractured in an instant by a reminder of the past. One afternoon she was crossing the courtyard on the way back from a seminar when she heard, coming from a window of the Arts Block the sound of the Schubert Quartet in E flat. She stood still for a moment, making sure that she was right, that it was the Zillers who were playing, and it was: they always took the Adagio with that heavenly slowness which had nothing to do with solemnity. And now the second violin lifted itself above the others to repeat the motif and she could see Biberstein’s dark curls standing on end and his chin pressed against his fiddle as he looked into the eye of Schubert, or of God.

Then she ran across the grass, through the archway, up the stairs . . . She knew, of course, before she opened the door of the Common Room, she knew it was impossible. Time had not run backward, she was not crossing the Johannesgasse towards the windows of the Conservatoire where the Zillers practised. But there were a few seconds while her body believed what her brain knew to be impossible – and then she saw the horn of the gramophone and the members of the Music Club sitting in a circle – and knew that the past was past, and Biberstein was dead.

It was on the following day that Verena was gracious enough to inform her fellow students that Professor Somerville would be back to give his Palaeontology lecture on Monday.

‘Are you sure?’ asked Sam.

‘Certainly I’m sure,’ said Verena. ‘He is to dine with us that night.’

14

‘My God, Ruth, what is the matter with your hair?’ said Leonie as her daughter appeared for breakfast on the morning that Professor Somerville was due to give his first lecture.

‘I have plaited it,’ said Ruth with dignity.

‘Plaited it? You have tortured it; you will be skinned, pulling it back like that.’

But Ruth, in pursuit of a total unobtrusiveness, said that she felt quite comfortable and asked if she could borrow Hilda’s raincoat which was black, mannish and in its dotage. With the collar turned up and a beret jammed on her head, she felt certain she could escape Professor Somerville’s notice until he wished to acknowledge her, and ignoring her mother, who said that she looked like a streetwalker in an experimental film by Pabst, she made her way to college. There she came under attack again. Janet pointed out that it wasn’t raining, and Sam asked sadly if her hairstyle was permanent. But if Ruth’s appearance was odd, her behaviour was odder.

‘Are you all right?’ asked Pilly as Ruth edged into the lecture theatre like the musk rat Chu Chundra in Kipling’s The Jungle Book, who never ventured into the middle of a room.

‘Yes, I am. Well, I feel a bit sick actually, so I think I’ll sit in the back row today in case I have to go out. But you go on down and get a good seat.’

This was a stupid remark. Where Ruth went, there Pilly went too, and presently Janet, Sam and Huw came to join them.

‘It doesn’t matter,’ said Sam, resigning himself to being a long way from his idol. ‘You can always hear what he says.’

The lecture theatre was packed. Not only students from other years but from other disciplines had come to listen, and the external students Pilly had described: housewives, old ladies, and a red-faced colonel with a handlebar moustache.

‘Ah, here comes Verena,’ said Janet. ‘Could those curvaceous sausages on her forehead be in honour of the Prof?’

Verena did indeed have a new hairstyle, though the suit she wore was tailor-made as always, and the high-necked blouse severe. Descending the tiered lecture theatre with her crocodile skin briefcase, she found herself faced with an unexpected hitch. Her seat in the centre of the front row was filled.

There had been some unpleasantness about the college porter who was supposed to place the Reserved notice for Verena before lectures. He had complained to the bursar, saying that this was not part of his duties, and the bursar, who was probably in the pay of the unions, had supported him. So far this had not mattered since everyone now understood what was due to her, but today, with the place full of outsiders, the entire row was packed.

Anyone else might be deterred, but not Lady Plackett’s daughter.

‘Excuse me,’ she said – and holding the briefcase aloft, she passed along the row, stopping at the point where she was directly under the rostrum and facing the carafe of water. This was where she always sat and where she intended most particularly to sit today.

With her behind poised expectantly, Verena waited, ready to sink into her appointed place – and did not wait in vain. Such was the authority, the breeding exerted even by her posterior, that the woman on the right edged closer to her neighbour, the student on the left, with only a mutter or two, pushed himself against his friend – and with a polite ‘Thank you’, Verena sat down, opened her briefcase, took out the vellum notepad and the gold-nibbed fountain pen, and was ready to begin.