Ulli nodded, experiencing shuddery relief. He did not remark that as far as ‘playing by the rules’ went, he was not the person who had thought of approaching Yehudi Menuhin with the Schumann concerto. He downed his schnapps. Even if he did nothing else heroic, he had stood up to Goebbels and lived to tell the tale. Now, though, he had to find a way to explain to Jelly the hard-won yet unexpected outcome of this desperate adventure – and for that he was going to need courage of another kind altogether.

*

A letter from Mainz found its way to Netherton Grove for Jelly. First, the good news, Ulli wrote. Schott’s had won the right to publish the concerto, and Jelly to play it. He would send a photostat to her as soon it was available. It was to be prepared and, in places, altered editorially, by a fine composer and string player whose music she would know and admire, although the finished edition would not bear his name. For a few blessed seconds Jelly offered up prayers of thanks to her benign spirits as if they had sent gold cascading down from the heavens.

Then she read on. The liquid gold began to evaporate. Her performance would be the UK premiere. Kulenkampff must give the modern world premiere first, in Germany, on a directive from the highest echelons of the Third Reich. Nothing Ulli or the Streckers could say would change this. He hoped Jelly would understand. Had it been up to him…

‘Kulenkampff? That ghastly Nazi?’ The thought sliced through Jelly like cheesewire.

‘I’m sure that under any other circumstances, it would have been yours,’ Tovey said to her on the phone; she knew he meant to mollify her. ‘This situation is unprecedented. And remember, a UK premiere is not so bad, is it? Besides, I know for a fact that it will be broadcast on the BBC Home Service – I spoke to Adrian Boult about it the other day.’ Boult was now the BBC’s head of music. ‘He wishes to conduct it himself.’

How strange to think she had been playing unexpectedly with Boult the day before all this began. Bizarre, too, that one mysterious violin concerto could become such an emblem of territory and ownership; to her, Kulenkampff’s newly awarded supremacy felt like an invasion, a violation of her ground, though Alec would no doubt advise her to be less hypersensitive. On a more practical level, she hoped that Schott’s unnamed composer–editor would finish his work quickly so that she could learn the piece – though it was far from clear why anybody should have to interfere with Schumann’s score. The edition would take most of the year, Ulli wrote, possibly longer, depending. On exactly what, he didn’t say.

Chapter 12