Tovey laughed. ‘You have to understand, Jelly, because not many people do these days, that that was how their intimate musical circle worked. As I said, it was full of tributes, analogies, musical ciphers, coded messages. So – and this is really the point, for you – when it came to the question of what to do with the concerto after Schumann died, long after Gisela had turned Jo down, to him the piece may have felt a little bit close to the bone. It might have brought the pain of rejection back to life. Of course, he may also have had bona fide musical reasons for putting it away. What do you find most difficult in it, Jelly?’

‘The last movement is – well, not totally impossible, but – !’

‘Exactly. It’s a transcendent, dazzling, Polish-style statement. And it makes you wonder what he’s doing. But which is more alarming? The idea that Schumann didn’t know what he was doing? Or the notion that he knew exactly what he was doing, yet nobody understood?’

*

After dinner they went to the gramophone to sample the latest recordings he wanted to play her, and listened, late and long. Jelly was too overexcited to sleep and Clara observed her enthusiasm as indulgently as a grandmother might a toddler’s. But to the strains of Artur Schnabel playing Beethoven, Tovey nodded off in his armchair.

Jelly could not enjoy the music as much without him. She watched him dozing, his thinning hair reflecting the lamplight, his chin dipping towards his chest. Once it would have been unthinkable for him to slumber through a note of music. The many years she had spent in his orbit, sitting at his feet, playing to his accompaniment or even avoiding his declaration of finer feelings, spun before her as he began to snore. Look after him, dear Lord, Jelly prayed. Such great men are even rarer than pure memories in this world.

*

On a cloudless morning, the flowers holding sunlight captive in their petals, Jelly wandered alone onto Tovey’s lawn, listening to the clarity. A breeze stirred the columbines and lilacs so that they seemed to converse, their leaves offering consonants while the birds voiced the vowels. The garden was awake and singing.

The Schumann concerto was hers. She and Tovey had brought it back to life. Today they’d play it through again, work on its details and know it better still. High above, a skylark was singing: a lark ascending. Shielding her eyes from the sun, she could glimpse the bird, a dark flickering speck against silver-blue; the sight so distant, the song so bright. This was perfection: solitude and nature, the eternal forces of growth and light.

Let me always remember this, her mind whispered. Let this garden, this extraordinary morning, be my touchstone, no matter what lies ahead.

Chapter 14