The Morning Gift (38 page)

'Friendly!' But there was such comfort in her presence that he decided to be brave and managing to change the subject, he said: 'Did you get a piano?'

'Yes. A Bosendorfer!'

'A grand?'

'No, love; we've only got a very small sitting room. But it's a beauty!'

He was disappointed, but he would not reproach her. She was his lifeline; his saviour.

They were still clasped in each other's arms when the secretary returned.

'It's time for your bus, dear,' she said. 'You mustn't miss it: it's the last one.'

It was as Ruth picked up her cloak that she saw a bird, untroubled by barbed wire, sitting on a fence post outside the window.

'Oh, look Heini! It's a starling! That's an omen for us, isn't it? It must mean good luck.'

She drew him to the window. The bird cocked its head, bright-eyed, but not looking quite right at the nether end.

'He's lost some tail feathers,' said the secretary. 'Been overdoing it.'

'Yes.' Ruth could see that, but it was of no consequence. An omen was an omen. Tail feathers did not come into a thing like that.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

At the beginning of December, Leonie decided to celebrate Hanukkah, the Jewish Festival of Light.

One way or another, she felt that light would be a good idea. Kurt was still in Manchester and she missed him; the news from Europe grew increasingly grim and the weather -foggy and dank and not at all like the crisp, snowy weather she remembered in Vienna, did little to lift the spirits.

There was also the problem of Heini. Heini had been sleeping on the sofa for a month and practising for eight hours a day in her sitting room, and though Leonie accepted the need for this, she found herself wondering, as she crept round him with her duster, about the friends and relatives of earlier piano virtuosos. Was there, somewhere in an attic in Budapest, an old lady whose mother had run screaming into the street to escape yet another of Liszt's brilliant arpeggios? Did the sale of cotton ear plugs soar in some French pharmacy as the inhabitants of the rue de Rivoli adjusted to Chopin's practice hours? What did those Viennese landladies
really
feel when Beethoven left another piano for dead?

There was also the question of food. Heini had brought some money from Hungary, but he needed it to insure his hands; she saw that, and the rest went on fares as he sought out agents and impresarios who could help him.

'It's for Ruth,' Heini would say with his sweet smile. 'Everything I do is for Ruth.'

Everyone accepted this; Heini had declared his intention of marrying Ruth as soon as he was established and keeping her in comfort, so there could be no question of criticizing anything he did. If he stayed an hour in the bathroom it was because he had to look nice at interviews; if he left his clothes on the floor for Leonie to pick up it was because he was working so hard at his music that there was no time for anything else, and without complaint the inhabitants of Number 27 adapted to his presence.

Mishak was not musical. Silence was his metier; he navigated through the day by gentle sounds: a thrush outside the window, the fall of rain, the whirr of a lawnmower. Now, as Heini pounded his piano, he was cut off from all these. He got up even earlier and worked in the garden till Heini rose; then walked. But the days were drawing in, Mishak was sixty-four - and increasingly, for he was not convivial by nature, he too was driven to the Willow.

Paul Ziller, when Heini came, had hoped that they would play duets, for the repertoire for violin and piano is varied and very beautiful. But Heini, understandably, wanted to concentrate on a solo career and since the house was not sufficiently soundproof to accommodate two practice sessions, the sight of Ziller carrying his Guarneri to the cloakroom of the Day Centre once more became familiar in Belsize Park.

Hilda too altered her routine. The Keeper of the Anthropology Department now trusted her with a key. She took sandwiches and stayed in the museum till late, timing her arrival at Number 27 to coincide with the ascent of Fraulein Lutzenholler onto her bedroom chair.

That they could grow to be grateful to the gloomy psychoanalyst was something none of them could have foreseen, but it was so. For at 9.30, come rain or shine, she climbed on to her chair with a long-handled broom and pounded on the floor of the Bergers' sitting room as a sign that she was now going to bed and the music must stop.

Only, of course, that meant Leonie could not complain about the state of the cooker so all in all, a Festival of Light was badly needed and since she herself was vague as to how it was performed, she took her problem to the Willow.

'I buy you a cake?' said Mrs Weiss.

Leonie accepted and asked the old lady for instructions. 'There are candles,' said Mrs Weiss positively. 'That I

know. One lights one each day for eight days and they are put in a menorah.'

'How can that be?' asked Dr Levy. 'If there are eight days there are eight candles and a menorah only has seven branches. And there are certainly prayers. My grandmother prayed.'

'But what did she pray?' asked Leonie, tilting her blonde head in resolute pursuit of Jewishness.

Dr Levy shrugged and Ziller said that von Hofmann would know. 'He'll be here in a minute.'

'Why should he know? He has no Jewish blood at all,' said Mrs Weiss dismissively.

'But he was in that Isaac Bashevis Singer play, don't you remember?
The Nebbich.
That's a very Jewish play,' said Ziller.

But von Hofmann, when he came, was hazy. 'I wasn't on in that act,' he said, 'but it's a very beautiful ceremony. All the actors were very much moved and Steffi bought a menorah afterwards in the flea market. I could ask her - she's selling stockings in Harrods.'

No one, however, wanted to trouble Steffi who was an exceedingly tiresome woman though a good actress, and Miss Violet and Miss Maud, who had been listening to this exchange, now said that they'd soon have to start thinking about getting their Christmas decorations up.

Leonie brightened, approaching familiar ground.

'What do you do for Christmas?' she asked the ladies.

'Well, we go to evensong,' said Miss Maud. 'And we decorate the tea rooms with paper chains and put a sprig of holly on each of the tables.'

'And the advent rings?' asked Leonie.

'We don't have those,' said Miss Maud firmly,
^;
scenting a whiff of popery.

'But a little tree with red apples and a sliver star?'

The ladies shook their heads and said they didn't believe in making a fuss.

'But this is not a fuss,' said Leonie. 'It's beautiful.' And shyly. 'I could make some
Lebkuchen…
gingerbread, you know… hearts with icing and red ribbon?' '

'Georg has a big fir tree in his garden,' said Mrs Weiss. 'I can cut pieces from it in the night when Moira sleeps.'

'My wife brought her little glockenspiel,' said the banker unexpectedly. 'I said to her she is stupid, but she had it from a child.'

Back in the kitchen, Miss Maud and Miss Violet looked at each other.

'I suppose it won't hurt,' said Miss Maud, 'though I don't want pine needles all over the place.'

'Still it's better than that Hanukkah thing of theirs. I mean, they won't get very far if they can't remember how to do it,' said Miss Violet.

Mrs Burtt wrung out her cloth and hung it over the sink, above which Ruth had pinned a diagram showing
The Life History of the Pololo Worm.

'And it'll cheer Ruth up to see the place look pretty,' she said.

Miss Maud frowned, wondering why their waitress should need cheering. 'She's very happy since Heini came. She's always saying so.'

'But tired,' said Mrs Burtt.

Three days after Leonie's failure over the Festival of Light, Ruth called at the post office on her way to college and drew out of her private box a small packet with a red seal which she opened with a fast-beating heart.

Minutes later, she stood in the middle of a crowd of hurrying people, staring down at the dark blue passport with its golden lion, its prancing unicorn and the careless motto:
Dieu et Mon Droit.

'I am a British subject,' said Ruth aloud, standing on the pavement opposite a greengrocer's shop and seeing the Secretary of State in a top hat wafting her through foreign lands.

If only she could have shown it to everyone: the naturalization certificate which confirmed her status; the passport she held in her own right! If only she could have marched into the Willow holding it aloft and danced with Mrs Burtt and hugged her parents. People in Europe would have killed for what she held in her hand - yet no one would have grudged her her luck, she knew that.

But, of course, she could show it to no one. It was Ruth Somerville, not Ruth Berger, that His Britannic Majesty wished to pass without let or hindrance anywhere in the world, and the passport would have to go with the rest of her documents to be scuttled over by the recalcitrant mice.

She was early for college. Since Heini came, Ruth had slept with the alarm under her pillow set for 5.30 so that she could do two hours of work while it was still quiet, Now, as she sat in the Underground, she wanted to mark this day; pay some kind of tribute - and on an impulse she left-the train three stops before her destination and climbed the steps of the National Gallery to look down at Trafalgar Square.

She was right, this
was
the heart of her adopted city. The fountains sparkled, the lions smiled… Through the Admiralty Arch opposite she could see the end of The Mall leading to Buckingham Palace where the shy King lived who was being so good about his stammer, and the soft-voiced Queen looked after the princesses on her biscuit tin.

She tilted her head up at Nelson on his column; the little man who was the favourite hero of the British and who had said, 'Kiss me, Hardy,' or perhaps, 'Kismet, Hardy,' - talking about fate - and then died. He had been so brave… but then they were brave, the British. Their girls felled each other with hockey sticks and never cried; their women, in earlier times, had stridden through jungles in woollen skirts to turn the heathen to the word of God.

And she too would be strong and brave. She would do well in the Christmas exams
and
stay awake for Heini when he needed to talk late at night. It was ridiculous to think that anyone needed more than four hours' sleep. She could do it all: her essays, her revision, her work at the Willow and still help Heini with his interpretations.

The Will Has Only To Be Born In Order To Triumph
quoted Ruth who had read this motto on a calendar and been much impressed.

It was only now that she gave her mind to the letter which

Mr Proudfoot had enclosed and saw that she was bidden to attend his office on the following afternoon.

Proudfoot had thought it simplest to see Ruth personally and had said so to Quin. 'It would make sense if you came together, but I suppose we can't be too careful.'

For after naturalization came the next stage - annulment. To facilitate this, a massive document had been prepared, requiring to be signed by both parties in the presence of a Commissioner for Oaths - and involving Dick Proudfoot's articled clerk in several hours of work. This affidavit was to be submitted to the courts in the hope that it would come before a judge who would accept it as evidence of nullity without demanding further proof. Whether this would in fact happen was anyone's guess since the procedure involving annulment in foreign-born nationals was under review and things that were under review never, in Mr Proudfoot's experience, became simpler.