‘Hush, hush – it’s all right, really it is. I trust you. I just want you to be aware of the wider implications. Come along, let’s go back now and forget about it over the very nice dinner that Clara is making us, then get some sleep in this fresh country air. We can talk about your messages tomorrow. Sometimes things are clearer in the morning.’

They were rounding a corner of a barley field; Jelly spotted the slope of the house’s russet roof and tiles, dappled with lichen. ‘We’ll smell dinner soon.’ Tovey rubbed his hands, smiling, Jelly sensed, a little too hard.

They walked on, amid silence but for birdsong in the nearby oaks; Jelly, breathing the scent of damp fields, counted a blackbird, a lapwing and, far away, a lark.

Tovey stopped abruptly in his tracks. ‘I forgot entirely why it was that I wanted to tell you about Bettina von Arnim! The concerto. The last movement.’

‘The Polonaise?’

‘Exactly. That Polonaise possibly signals the intervention of Bettina.’ He picked a strand of barley and turned it into a baton, conducting as if the crop were orchestral players spread across the field before him, while he sang the theme. ‘A polonaise, dignified, celebratory… ’

‘What’s that got to do with Bettina?’ Jelly pleaded.

Tovey broke off in mid hum. ‘You know Chopin was exiled from Poland. He left just in time, shortly before the uprising of 1830, and missed his homeland for the rest of his life. He and Schumann were friendly and I’m sure he must have met Bettina, one way or another. She contrived to meet everyone, and he’d have been no exception. Poland was occupied, you see, by Russia, which won the war after the uprising, and freedom for Poland became a great cause célèbre in certain strata of mid-19th-century intellectual society. Demonstrations, pamphlets, marches, you name it. Bettina was very involved with freedom for Poland; you might call her an activist. She’d have discussed it with Schumann and with Jo. She bent everyone’s ear on the topic at length, whether they were interested or not. The polonaise was a national dance, a symbol of Polish pride and resistance. You remember how Schumann called Chopin’s mazurkas “cannons buried in flowers”?’

‘And – you think this Schumann polonaise is perhaps… a rifle in a rosebush?’