The trumpet-player nodded. He was beginning to feel very cold now, and he was wishing that he had never stopped. It was so incongruous and so tragic to see this family sitting in their car that it brought tears to his eyes. ‘Do you have a light?’ he asked the airman.

The airman shook his head. ‘Don’t smoke. Easier not to, you know, with all that airplane fuel around.’

‘Doctor…’ whispered Donald Abbott.

‘A doctor’s coming,’ said the airman, loudly. ‘Don’t worry, old buddy, you’re going to make it.’ Then he looked at the trumpet-player and pulled a face, as if to say, what does it matter? The poor guy’s going to die anyway.

*

Under the tepee-like roof of Shearson Jones’s hallway, the television lights had been set up, and the cameras fixed into position. The whole morning had been chaos, with television people rearranging the furniture and reeling out hundreds of feet of cable and leaving styrofoam cups of coffee wherever they went. Shearson, in his mahogany-panelled study, had stayed well out of their way, except to talk for a half-hour to the director about how he was going to present his appeal, and how the broadcast should look. ‘Quiet and simple, with folksy dignity, that’s what I want,’ he had insisted. ‘There’s no way we should look like we’re rattling a tin cup under anybody’s nose.’

Peter Kaiser had spent five harassed hours mapping out contingency plans for handling all the money the appeal was going to bring in, and he had taken up so much of Karen’s time with typing and telephoning that she hadn’t even been able to get away for a swim. The fund had now been sub-divided into geographical regions – east, central, and west – so that contributions could be handled more efficiently. It would also make the money more difficult to trace, when accounting time came. Karen had spent most of the morning calling San Francisco, Chicago, and New York, briefing Peter’s regional office staff. None of them had been particularly helpful and happy about being disturbed on a Sunday, even this Sunday.