I had only ten days in London if I was to be back in New York in time for my mother’s birthday. There were a thousand things to do, people to see, phone calls to make, bills to pay. I had some details of my contract to settle with my agent and with the recording studio where I would be working—which was not far from Bernard’s flat—and we had to try to set up schedules of some kind, though I had apprised my agent of the situation with my mother and he was trying to make things as flexible as possible. “You should be performing more,” he said. “You should have a dense schedule this autumn.” But I insisted on a broken schedule with little clumps of engagements and larger clumps of free time.

Bernard had taken several days off during my absence to meet the plumber at my house to try to deal with the problem about the washing machine, but it was not really settled in any very satisfactory way, and I knew that in the end I was going to have to spend an afternoon with the plumber and the electrician if anything was to function again. I also had to decide whether what the plumber had said to Bernard about the basement wall made sense, and I had to decide what to do about that wall, which was not looking terrific. I had to get my favorite umbrella repaired so I could take it back to New York, and to get my hair cut, and to buy my mother a birthday present. Between all these other things, I had to practice the music I was to play for the concert. I had spent too little time at the piano in New York, even less time than I had thought.