The Morning Gift полностью

Quin turned to her with relief. ‘Yes, he was. He put it all in a novel called Werther where the hero is so in love with a Charlotte that he kills himself. Thackeray wrote a poem about it.’

‘Was it a good poem?’

‘Very good,’ said Quin firmly. ‘It starts:

Werther had a love for Charlotte

Such as words could never utter;

Would you know how first he met her?

She was cutting bread and butter.

And it ends with him being carried away on a shutter.’

Verena, watching this descent into frivolity with a puckered brow, now made a last attempt to bring Professor Somerville back to a subject dear to her heart.

‘When is Miss Berger actually due to leave?’ she asked.

‘It isn’t decided yet.’

He then turned resolutely back to Mrs LeClerque who began to tell him about a friend of hers who had become engaged to no fewer than three men called Henry, all of them unsuitable, and Verena decided to do her duty by her other neighbour.

‘Tell me, do you intend to pursue your researches into the bony fishes here in England?’ she enquired.

But for once her mother had let her down. The last minute arrival of the musicologist had necessitated a change in the seating arrangements. Blank-faced and astonished, the icon expert gazed at her.

It was Quin’s habit to drive to Thameside in a large, midnight-blue Crossley tourer with brass lamps and a deep horn which recalled, faintly, the motoring activities of the redoubtable Mr Toad.

The day after the Placketts’ dinner party, parking the car under the archway, he was confronted not by the usual throng shouting their ‘Good mornings’ but by two cold-looking students holding up a ragged banner inscribed with the words: RUTH BERGER’S DISMISSAL IS UNFAIR.

Safe in his room, he picked up the phone. ‘Get me O’Malley down in Tonbridge, will you please, Hazel?’

‘Yes, Professor Somerville. And Sir Lawrence Dempster phoned – he said would you ring him back as soon as possible.’

‘All right; I’ll deal with that first.’

By the time Quin had spoken to the director of the Geophysical Society, it was too late to phone O’Malley, who would be lecturing, and Quin applied himself to his correspondence till it was time to go to the Common Room where Elke, crunching a custard cream between her splendid teeth, brought up a subject he had declared to be closed.

‘She wrote a first-class essay for me after less than a week. And in what is, of course, not her native language.’

‘I’m not aware that Miss Berger has any trouble with English,’ said Quin. ‘She has after all been to an English school most of her life.’

His next attempt to phone Tonbridge was cut short by Hazel who announced that a deputation of students was waiting to see him.

‘I can give them ten minutes, but no more,’ he said curtly. ‘I’m lecturing at eleven.’

The students filed in. He recognized Sam and the little frightened girl whose father made aspirins, and the huge Welshman with cauliflower ears – all third years whom he didn’t know as well as he should have done because of his absence in India – but there were other students not in his department at all. It was Sam, wrapped in his muffler, who seemed to be their spokesman.

‘We’ve come about Miss Berger, sir. We don’t think she should be sent away.’ It cost him to speak as he did, for Professor Somerville, hitherto, had been his god. ‘We think it’s victimization.’ And as the Professor continued to look at him stonily: ‘We think it’s unfair in view of what the Jewish people –’

‘Thank you; it is not necessary to remind me of the fate of Jewish people.’

‘No.’ Sam swallowed. ‘But we can’t see why she should go just because of a few technicalities.’

‘Miss Berger is not being victimized. She is being transferred.’

‘Yes. But so are the Jews and the gypsies and the Freemasons in Germany,’ said Sam, scoring an unexpected point. ‘And the Socialists. They’re being transferred to camps in the East.’

‘And she doesn’t want to go,’ said Pilly, stammering with nerves at addressing the man on whose account she was being put through so much. ‘She likes it here and she helps. She can make you see things.’

‘It’s true, sir.’ A tall, fair man whom Quin did not recognize spoke from the back. ‘I’m from the German Department and . . . well, I don’t mind telling you I got pretty discouraged studying the language when all you hear is Hitler braying on the radio. But I met her in the library and . . . well, if she can forget the Nazis . . .’

Quin was silent, his eyes travelling over the deputation.

‘You seem to have forgotten one of Miss Berger’s most fervent admirers,’ he said. ‘Why has nobody brought the sheep?’

It was as he was returning from lunch that Quin found a visitor in his room.

‘You must forgive me for troubling you,’ said Professor Berger, rising from his chair.

‘It’s no trouble – it’s a pleasure to see you, sir.’