Quin entered the lecture theatre, put a single sheet of paper on the desk, moved the carafe out of the way, looked up to say ‘Good morning’ – and instantly saw Ruth, sitting as low as it was possible in the back row. She was partly obscured by a broad-shouldered man in the row in front of her, but the triangular face, the big smudged eyes, stood out perfectly clearly, as did an area of nakedness where her hair wasn’t. For an instant he thought she had cut it off and felt an irregularity in his heart beat as if his parasympathetic nerves had intended to send a message of protest and thought better of it, partly because it was none of his business, and partly because she hadn’t. Evidently she expected rain, for he could see the pigtail vanishing into her coat, and was reminded of the museum in Vienna and the water dropping from her hair the day he fetched her for their wedding.
These thoughts, if that was what they were, lasted a few seconds at the most, and were followed by another, equally brief, as he wondered why University College was sending their students to his lectures and made a note to stop them doing so. Then he picked up a piece of chalk, went to the blackboard – and began.
Ruth never forgot the next hour. If someone had told her that she would follow a lecture on ancestor descendant sequences in fossil rocks as though it was a bed-time story – as riveting, as extraordinary, at times as funny, as any fairy tale – she would not have believed them.
The subject was highly technical. Quin was reassessing the significance of Rowe’s work on Micraster in the English chalk, relating it to Darwin’s theories and the new ideas of Julian Huxley. Yet as he spoke – never raising his voice, making only an occasional gesture with those extraordinarily expressive hands, she felt a contact that was almost physical. It was as if he was behind her, nudging her forward towards the conclusion he was about to reach, letting her get there almost before him, so that she felt, yes . . . yes,
All around Ruth, the others sat equally rapt. Sam had laid down his pen; few of the students took more than an occasional note because to miss even one word was unthinkable – and anyway they knew that afterwards they would read and read and even, somehow, make the necessary journeys . . . that they would become part of the adventure that was unfolding up there on the dais. Only Verena still wrote with her gold-nibbed pen on her vellum pad – wrote and wrote and wrote.
Halfway through, pausing for a moment, raking his hair in a characteristic gesture of which he was unaware, Quin found himself looking once more directly at Ruth. She had given up her Chu Chundra attitude and was leaning forward, one finger held sideways across her mouth in what he remembered as her listening attitude. The pigtail, too, had given up anonymity: a loop had escaped over her collar like a bracelet of Scythian gold.
Then he found his word and the lecture continued.
At exactly five minutes to the hour, he began on the recapitulation, laid the unravelled controversy once more before them – and was done.
He had not taken more than a few steps before he was surrounded. Old students came to welcome him back, new ones to greet him. The red-faced colonel reminded him that they had met in Simla, shy housewives hovered.
Verena waited quietly, not wishing to be lost in the crowd. Only when the Professor finally made his way to the door did she intercept him with a few powerful strides and gave him news which she knew must please him.
‘I am,’ she said, ‘Verena Plackett!’
‘What do you mean, you’ve admitted her?’
Dr Felton sighed. He’d been so pleased to see the Professor a couple of hours ago. Somerville’s arrival lifted the spirits of everyone in the department; the breeze of cheerfulness and enterprise he brought was almost tangible, yet now Felton rose, as if in respect to Quin’s rank, and wondered what was supposed to be the matter.
‘I’ve told you . . . sir,’ he began – and Quin frowned, for the ‘sir’ meant that he had put Roger down harder than he had intended. ‘University College gave her place to someone and they rang round to see if anyone could have her. I thought we might squeeze her in and I knew you were in favour of taking refugees wherever possible.’
‘Not this one. She must go.’
‘But why? She’s an excellent student. You may think that being pretty and having all that hair and talking to the sheep –’
‘Talking to the
