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Chapters (35)
  1. Cover
  2. 1
  3. 2
  4. 3
  5. 4
  6. 5
  7. 6
  8. Prologue
  9. 16 February 1938
  10. Part I
  11. Chapter 1
  12. Chapter 2
  13. Chapter 3
  14. Chapter 4
  15. Chapter 5
  16. Chapter 6
  17. Chapter 7
  18. Chapter 8
  19. Chapter 9
  20. Part II
  21. Chapter 10
  22. Chapter 11
  23. Chapter 12
  24. Chapter 13
  25. Chapter 14
  26. Chapter 15
  27. Chapter 16
  28. Chapter 17
  29. Chapter 18
  30. Chapter 19
  31. Chapter 20
  32. 1
  33. 2
  34. 3
  35. 4

But – only one concert in one venue? Why not several? And why wait? Why not do it now?

Chapter 4

Not that arranging anything at all would be easy without the best-organised person Jelly knew.

‘I can’t come back.’ Anna’s voice on the telephone was tearful. ‘They say I have to get away from London and out to the country, because of the air. I don’t know how I’ll live without you all.’

Anna elected to go back to Scotland, to a sanatorium close to her family. The levels of irritability rose in Netherton Grove as the sisters tried to take charge of their own affairs. ‘It’s not the same without poor little darling Anni,’ Jelly lamented. Whenever she opened the bottom drawer, there was that piece of paper, reminding her. R-o-b-e-r-t-S-c-h-u-…

*

Putting together at short notice a major tour involving some of the country’s greatest cathedrals was not technically impossible. But Jelly had not anticipated how much work it would take, often requiring quick responses and a good memory.

‘We ought to have a manager,’ Adila grunted, hunting for a lost note on the back of a receipt.

‘They’d take over and make us do things we don’t want to do,’ Jelly protested.

But she enlisted the help of a well-connected friend: Katharine Tennant, Margot Asquith’s half-sister, who was fundraising for ‘alternative employment options’. Now, whenever Katharine called her, she needed answers. How much time did she want between concerts? Would she work with the resident organist? Which pieces would they perform? Jelly muddled up her programmes and confused her dates. Her fingers itched for her violin while other concerts loomed – she ought to be practising, not spending so much time on administration.

She took a train, alone – dismal without Anna for company – to Devon and back, to give a recital; then a train and boat to Belfast and back for a concerto. She lay awake at night, still feeling the motion of wheels and waves beneath her, exhausted beyond the point of sleep. Myra Hess always used to say that the reason there were not more female musicians was that most women are too sensible to want to spend their lives on trains. Jelly agreed, but it would have been much more fun if Myra were there too. Next, she had to play, of all places for an apolitical Hungarian, at 10 Downing Street, for Ramsay MacDonald – even though Alec had told her, in careful terms, that foreigners were starting to be excluded from British concert platforms. ‘I can’t bear it,’ she said. ‘It’s like 1913 all over again.’