Some people don’t know what they’re capable of until they put on the right mask. Some people need to hide a part of themselves to perform. On stage, before the applause died down, Lucky began the show with a wrong note: C instead of B sharp. The tune he played was a stitched-together ‘Don’t Be That Way’, and it was opened and shut like a box. The next song he rushed through with a similar spirit (get it over with). Third down the list was ‘Stompin’ at the Savoy’ (he could play that dead). As the tune ended and the performance continued, Lucky drew more and more on bites of exhilaration whenever he felt in his stomach the magic of heavy, honest applause. He played for much longer than expected. Each composition was stretched and nervously disentangled and bumped to an end. No one in the audience knew Lucky wasn’t Benny Goodman; they would never know. When these people applauded or turned and spoke with excitement to the person next to them, they were saying what Lucky wished he’d heard, before the war, when he played in those unfriendly bands. His performance, as Lucky would remember it, possessed the glory of a lie that was nearly as meaningful as the truth.

Coming off stage he returned to the back room, where he was unable to stand at rest. He swallowed air in hungry gulps, his eyes moving like two gnats.

‘The people here are nice folk,’ he told Gregor.

Gregor, who missed the show, was bleeding from the blade of his nose. He said: ‘I’m busted up at the moment.’

Lucky said: ‘For sure you are.’

‘Frank walloped me. He got angry when I brought him the money. He said I pocketed some.’

‘Did you?’

‘Damn right I did. This whole thing was my idea. Why should they be the only guys to profit?’

‘Where are they now?’

‘I don’t know. I think something popped inside my nose.’

‘How about we stick around, meet some people?’

‘But what about my face? Am I presentable?’

‘Clean up first,’ said Lucky. ‘Then come find me.’

A young Englishman, perhaps in his twenties, waited in the hallway outside the room. His black hair was wet-hard with coif cream, slicked back in the airman’s style (though he was no airman). This fellow wore a Glen plaid blazer and an adoring expression. Lucky looked forward to more praise from the audience; the wish was more than equal to his fear of being found out.

‘Mr Goodman, that was utterly superb,’ the man said. ‘I thank you.’

‘You think so … even performing without a band?’

‘This was the most fun I’ve had the whole war. You were—’ and the man paused here ‘—brilliant. Unique. Indeed, I liked you very much.’

‘No one’s ever been that nice about my work.’

‘I doubt that. You had the whole audience licked to a custard.’