Free The Morning Gift by Eva Ibbotson Page B

decades later, the Basher, who had fought her all the way, came there to die.
    Miss Somerville knelt down by the Long Border, feeling the now familiar twinge of arthritis in her knee, and the robin flew down from the branches of the little almond tree to watch. But presently she dropped the trowel and made her way to the seat beside the sundial and closed her eyes.
    What would happen to this garden if Quin really gave his house away? Hordes of people tramping through it, frightening away the robin, shrieking and swatting at the bees. There would be signposts everywhere - the lower classes never seemed to be able to find their way. And built against the far wall, where now the peaches ripened in the sun, two huts. No - one hut divided into two; she had seen it at Frampton. The lettering at one end would read Ladies, but the other end wouldn't even spell Gentlemen. Made over entirely to vulgarity, the second notice would read Gents.
    'Oh, God,' prayed Frances Somerville, addressing her Maker with unaccustomed humility, 'please find her for me. She must be somewhere - the girl who can save this place!'

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CHAPTER SIX

     
    It had rained since daybreak: slanting, cold-looking sheets of rain. Down in the square, the bedraggled pigeons huddled against Maria Theresia's verdigris skirts. Vienna, the occupied city, had turned its back on the spring.
    Ruth had scarcely slept. Now she folded the blanket on the camp bed, washed as best she could under the cloakroom tap, brewed a cup of coffee.
    'This is my wedding day,' she thought. 'This is the day I shall remember when I lie dying -' and felt panic seize her.
    She had put her loden skirt and woollen sweater under newspaper, weighed down by a tray of fossil-bearing rocks, but this attempt at home-ironing had not been successful. Should she after all wear the dress she had bought for Heini's debut with the Philharmonic? She'd taken it from the flat and it hung now behind the door: brown velvet with a Puritan collar of heavy cream lace. It came from her grandfather's department store: the attendants had all come to help her choose; to share her pleasure in Heini's debut. Now the store had its windows smashed; notices warned customers not to shop there. Thank heaven her grandfather was dead.
    No, that was Heini's dress - her page-turning dress, for it mattered what one wore to turn over music. One had to look nice, but unobtrusive. The dress was the colour of the Bechstein in the Musikverein - it had nothing to do with an Englishman who ran away from Strauss.
    She wandered through the galleries and, in the grey light of dawn, her old friends, one by one, became visible. The polar bear, the elephant seal… the ichthyosaurus with the fake vertebrae. And the infant aye-aye which she had restored to its case.
    'Wish me luck,' she said to the ugly little beast, leaning her head against the glass.
    She closed her eyes and the primates of Madagascar vanished as she saw the wedding she had planned so often with her mother. Not here, but on the Grundlsee, rowing across to the little onion-domed church in a boat - in a whole flotilla of boats, because everyone she loved would be there. Uncle Mishak would grumble a little because he had to dress up; Aunt Hilda would get stuck in her zip… and the Zillers would play. 'On the landing stage,' Ruth had suggested, but Biberstein said no, he was too fat to play on a landing stage. She would wear white organdie and carry a posy of mountain flowers, and as she walked down the aisle on her father's arm, there would be Heini with his mop of curls and his sweet smile.
    (Oh, Heini, forgive me. I'm doing this for us.)
    Back in the cloakroom, she looked at her reflection once again. She had never seemed to herself so plain and unprepossessing. Suddenly she loosened her hair, filled the basin with cold water, seized the cake of green soap that the museum thought adequate for its research workers…
    Quin, letting himself in silently, found her ready, her