The Morning Gift полностью

The room occupied by the Professor of Vertebrate Zoology was on the second floor and looked out over the walnut tree to the façade of the Vice Chancellor’s Lodge and the arch with its glimpse of the river. The pieces of a partly assembled plesiosaur lay jumbled in a sand tray; the skull of an infant mastodon held down a pile of reprints. By the window, wearing a printed wool scarf left behind by his Aunt Frances, stood a life-sized model of Daphne, a female hominid from Java presented to Quin by the Oriental Exploration Society. The single, long-stemmed red rose in a vase on his desk had been placed there by his secretary, Hazel, an untroubling, middle-aged and happily married lady who could have run the department perfectly well without the interference of her superiors, and frequently did.

Ruth, summoned to the Professor’s room, had come in still filled with the happiness his lecture had given her. Now she stood before him with bent head, trying to hold back her tears.

‘But why? Why must I go? I don’t understand.’

‘Ruth, I’ve told you. In my old college in Cambridge members of staff weren’t even allowed to have wives, let alone bring them into college. It’s quite out of the question that I should teach someone I’m married to.’

‘But you aren’t married to me!’ she said passionately. ‘Not properly. You do nothing except send me pieces of paper about not being married. There is epilepsy and being your sister and a nun. And the thing about not consuming . . . or consummating or whatever it is.’

‘It won’t do, my dear, believe me. With the old VC we might have got away with it, but not with the Placketts. The scandal would be appalling. I’d have to resign which actually I don’t mind in the least, but you’d be dragged into it and start your life under a cloud. Not to mention the delay to our freedom if we were known to have met daily.’

‘All those things with C in them, you mean,’ said Ruth. Fluent though her English was, the legal language was taking its toll. ‘Collusion and . . . what is it . . . ? Connivance? Consent?’

‘Yes, all those things. Look, leave this to me. I’m pretty sure I can get you on to the course down in Kent. They don’t do Honours but –’

‘I don’t want to go away.’ Her voice was low, intense. She had moved over to the window and one hand went out to rest on Daphne’s arm as though seeking a sister in distress. ‘I don’t want to! Everyone is so kind here. There’s Pilly who has to be a scientist because her father saw you striding about on a newsreel with yaks and that’s not her fault, and I’ve promised Sam that I’d bring Paul Ziller to the Music Club and Dr Felton’s classes are so interesting and he has such trouble with his wife wanting to have a baby and taking her temperature –’

‘He told you that!’ said Quin, unable to believe his ears.

‘No, not exactly – but Mrs Felton came to fetch him and he was delayed and we began to talk. I’m not reserved, you know, like the British. Of course, when we said our marriage should be a secret, that was different. A secret is a secret, but otherwise . . . Even my goat-herding grandmother used to tell people things. She would roll down her stockings and say “Look!” and you had to examine her varicose veins. She didn’t ask if you wanted to see her veins; she needed to show them. And, of course, the Jewish side of me doesn’t like distance at all, but it’s different with you because you are British and upper class and Verena Plackett is studying Palaeontology so that she can marry you when we have been put asunder.’

Quin made a gesture of impatience. ‘Don’t talk rubbish, Ruth. Now let’s think how –’

‘It isn’t rubbish! She’s bought a new dress for the dinner party tonight because you’re coming. It’s electric-blue taffeta with puffed sleeves. I know because the maid at the Lodge is the porter’s niece and he told me. Of course she is very tall but you could wear your hair en brosse and –’

Quin took out his handkerchief and wiped his brow. ‘Ruth, I’m sorry; I know you’ve settled in but –’

‘Yes, I have!’ she cried. ‘There’s so much here! Dr Elke showed me her bed bug eggs and they are absolutely beautiful with a little cap on one end and you can see the eyes of the young ones through the shell. And there’s the river and the walnut tree –’

‘And the sheep,’ said Quin bitterly.

‘Yes, that too. But most of all your lecture this morning. It opened such doors. Though I don’t agree with you absolutely about Hackenstreicher. I think he might have been perfectly sincere when he said that –’

‘Oh, you do,’ said Quin, not at all pleased. ‘You think that a man who deliberately falsifies the evidence to fit a preconceived hypothesis is to be taken seriously.’

‘If it was deliberate. But my father had a paper which said that the skull they showed Hackenstreicher could have been from much lower down in the sequence so that it wouldn’t be unreasonable for him to have come to the conclusions he did.’

‘Yes, I’ve read that paper, but don’t you see –’