‘You were young; the world was before you, it still is. Heaven forbid that you should cling to the past as we do. But what I wanted to say was that you need have no fears on that score . . . however fond Ruth is of you, however she might look up to you as . . .’
‘An older man,’ said Quin, raising his eyebrows.
Berger shrugged. ‘She is totally committed to her young cousin, to Heini Radek. Everything she does in the end is for him. So you see you would be quite safe. She will marry Radek and turn his music for him and choose the camellias for his buttonhole. It has been like that ever since he came to Vienna.’
‘In that case does it matter so much where she gets a degree? Or even whether?’
‘Perhaps I attach too much importance to learning: it is a characteristic of my race. Perhaps, too, I am one of those fathers who thinks no one is good enough for his daughter. Heini is a gifted boy, but I would have liked her to have a choice.’ He changed tack. ‘One thing is certain, Ruth won’t go to Tonbridge. She spent the morning at the Employment Exchange and now she is writing letters of application and trying not to cry.’
‘I’m sure she’ll see reason.’
‘Allow me to know my own daughter,’ said Berger with dignity. He unhooked his walking stick, ready to leave. ‘Well, you must do what you think right. I wouldn’t have been pleased if someone had told me how to run my department. I’m going to Manchester for a few weeks and I’d hoped –’
‘Ah yes!’ Quin seized the change of subject with alacrity. ‘You’ll enjoy the Institute. Feldberg’s a splendid fellow – but don’t let that skinflint of an accountant do you out of the proper fee. There’s a perfectly adequate endowment for classification work.’
‘I was not aware that I had mentioned my appointment at the Institute,’ said Professor Berger, looking at him sternly. ‘Nor that I had been asked to classify the Howard Collection.’
Taken, so to speak, from the rear while defending his flank, Quin shuffled some papers on his desk.
‘Things get about,’ he murmured.
‘So you arranged the job in Manchester? You asked them to get in touch with me? I should have guessed that.’
‘Well, for heaven’s sake, you’ve done nothing to help yourself since you came. A man of your eminence sitting in the public library next to a tramp! Why didn’t you contact the people you’ve helped in your time? I only mentioned your name – Feldberg didn’t even know you were in England!’
Berger had put on his hat, taken up his walking stick. When he spoke again, he was smiling. ‘It is strange, I have so many degrees – so very many – and my wife failed even her diploma in flower arranging because she always put too many flowers in the vase, and yet you see she was right. People don’t change.’
Only at the door did he turn, his voice grave once more, his face showing its utter fatigue. ‘Let the child stay, Quinton,’ he said, using the name he had used all those years ago. ‘It’s less than a year after all, and who knows what is in store for us.’ And very quietly: ‘She will not trouble you.’
But in the end it was not Berger’s plea which secured a reprieve for Ruth, nor the intervention of the students. It was not even the obvious pleasure which Lady Plackett had shown in getting rid of a girl who did not fit into the general mould. It was a poster by the newspaper kiosk Quin passed on the way home, announcing:
The pictures, when Quin bought the paper, showed the Führer grinning and garlanded with flowers, the swastika banners hanging from the buildings as they had done in Vienna. Austria in March, Czechoslovakia in October . . . could anyone believe it would stop there?
The average life of an infantry officer in 1918 had been six weeks. In the navy he might expect to last longer, but not much. When war came, as it surely must, would anyone mind who was married to whom and for how long?
‘O’Malley says he’s got no room,’ was Quin’s way of making his decision known to Dr Felton. ‘Tell Miss Berger she can stay.’
And Roger nodded, and neither then nor later revealed what he had just read in the
15
In the second week of October, Leonie’s prayers on behalf of the nursery school teacher were answered. Miss Bates became engaged to be married – a triumph of camiknickers over personality – and went home to Kettering to prepare her trousseau. Her room on the ground floor back thus became vacant and Paul Ziller moved into it which made everybody happy. Ziller no longer had to practise in the cloakroom of the Day Centre but could stay at home; Leonie could get hold of his shirts to wash whenever it suited her and Uncle Mishak had direct access to the garden.
