‘I am the only person who has ever had my name. I am the only person who will ever live my life. And live it I have, and I do, and I shall. My name is Jelly d’Arányi and I know that love shall live for ever.’

She blew the Queen’s Hall a kiss and took a step towards the car.

‘Jelly, wait! It’s me… ’

She turned. Outlined in the night, a dark figure with hat and overcoat was moving round the curve of the hall towards her, arms outstretched.

1

Coda

On 1 September 1939, Hitler invaded Poland.

Also in 1939, another previously unknown work by Robert Schumann was finally released to the public. It was a set of solo piano variations on the theme that Brahms had adopted for his own Op. 23 Variations (as played to Jelly by Myra in Chapter 5). It became known as the Geistervariationen – Ghost Variations – because Schumann believed the melody had been dictated to him in his sleep by spirits. What Schumann, in his disturbed state of mind, seemed to have forgotten is that he had already written the germ of this melody himself, in the slow movement of his Violin Concerto. He was writing the variations when he made his suicide attempt in February 1854. The day after his rescue from the Rhine, he gave the manuscript to Clara. She preferred to leave it unpublished.

Alexander Fachiri died of pneumonia on 27 March 1939. Devastated, Adila sold the house in Netherton Grove. She and Jelly lived together in a succession of London flats, then moved to Ewelme, Oxfordshire, to escape the Blitz.

Jelly apparently suffered a nervous breakdown in 1939, following Alec’s death and some negative reviews of her concerts. Her career flickered on through the 1940s, but her glory days were over. Later the two sisters emigrated to Italy and lived in Bellosguardo, Florence, for the rest of their lives. Adila died in 1962 and Jelly in 1966. Adrienne married an Italian and, like Adila, had one daughter.

Baron Erik Palmstierna went to live with Adila and Jelly. Among other books, he published two further volumes based on spirit messages received with Adila’s help. He became chairman of the action committee of the World Congress of Faiths. He died in Adila and Jelly’s Italian house in 1959. His daughter Margareta died in 1942, aged 37. Her granddaughter became a celebrated supermodel.

Sir Donald Francis Tovey died of a stroke on 10 July 1940. His editions of Brahms’s symphonies and Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier, among others, are still used widely today.

Myra Hess founded a series of daily lunchtime concerts in the National Gallery during World War II, which became legendary for boosting the spirits of Londoners in the Blitz. Jelly performed in several of them, but their duo appears to have foundered. Hess was made a DBE in 1941. She died at her Hampstead home in 1965.