The Morning Gift

In mocking at the people you saw here, you commit more than ill manners; you commit an injustice over which you will burn with shame – and very soon. For it is these braying boys who the moment war comes will flock to fight. It is they who will confront the evil that is Hitler even though they do it for a jape and a lark.

Mrs Weiss disagreed. ‘So she finds out who she is?’ she said, spearing a piece of guggle with her fork. ‘What has she from that? Myself, it is bad enough that I am it, but to find out, no!’

‘And there is a pearl and sapphire necklace which you would be hard put to match anywhere in the world. Someone is interested in it, but if you wished to make a definite offer . . .’ He flicked at an underling. ‘Go on down to the safe, Ted, and get Number 509.’

The truth was that everything which had drawn him to her: her expertise, her detachment, the knowledge that she took love lightly, now failed in its charm.

‘It’s going to be a lovely bonfire; the best ever,’ said Pilly, and Ruth nodded, wrinkling her nose with delight at the smell of wood smoke and tar and seaweed, and that other smell . . . the tangy, mysterious smell that might be ozone but might just be the sea itself.

‘Did you get a piano?’ ‘Yes. A Bösendorfer!’ ‘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.

‘I can’t,’ said Ruth and (inevitably) quoted Mozart who had said he went on working because it fatigued him less than it did to rest.

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 lawn-mower. Now, as Heini pounded his piano, he was cut off from all these.

He had, however, a suggestion to make. ‘There’s an important piano competition here at the end of May. It’s sponsored by Boothebys – the music publishers. They’re big in the States and here too. No, don’t look like that; it may be commercially sponsored, but the judges are absolutely first class.