‘You’re spoiling me,’ she said.

‘You deserve it,’ he replied. ‘You’ve been working so hard.’

Have I? she asked herself. Hardly. Not hard compared with others, with people on convoys, in the mines, in factories. The cousin’s husband himself was a doctor. He worked in a hospital nearby, and had done so through the war.

‘And your orchestra, La?’ said her cousin. ‘Tell us about your orchestra.’

‘It does its best,’ she said. ‘Some of the players are very good. Others are, well, enthusiastic.’ She paused. ‘I think that we probably won’t continue. People are leaving. Giving up. I suppose they’ve had enough.’

The cousin looked sympathetic. ‘Understandable.’

On the way back, on the train, she found herself thinking of him, of Feliks, and looking forward to seeing him again. She had brought some cheese for him from Cornwall because she knew that he had a weakness for cheese.

She let herself into the house. There was a pile of mail on the floor, and she saw his handwriting on one of the envelopes. She knew immediately what it would say; that it was his goodbye note. She opened it quickly, tearing the top of the cheap notepaper inside. ‘I have had to go immediately,’ he wrote. ‘There are not many jobs for us now, but I have been given one up in Glasgow. There is a Pole there who has a senior position in a fertiliser firm. He has offered me a job. It’s too good a chance to miss, and I have to take it up immediately. So I have left without saying goodbye, in person, without thanking you for everything – for your friendship to a stranger, for the flute, for your orchestra. Yes, thank you for your orchestra. Maybe people don’t say thank you for orchestras, but I do. Thank you.’

She put the note down on a table and walked through to her sitting room. The air was stale, the air of a house that had been closed up. She went to the French windows and opened them. She remembered the evening that she had opened the doors to him, and how the air had flowed into the room at that moment, so warm.

12

La was right about the orchestra. The conductor called off the next rehearsal – he wanted a break, and she understood. Perhaps they would start again in the autumn, or even the winter, he said, but she knew that this would not happen.

She missed Feliks to begin with; she missed the war, in an odd sort of way. It had given her purpose, something to do. Now there was no ambulance to drive and no call for volunteers. Nor was there much work for her. She began to help out at a riding stable nearby, although she did not really like horses very much. It gave her something to do, and she became involved in the affairs of the stable.

The years passed. She went to concerts, in Cambridge and sometimes in London. But she did not like the grime of the city, the secondhand feel of the air, and so the trips to London became fewer and fewer. She looked in the mirror. She was now in her fifties, although she looked younger. I could still get married, she thought, but there were no men, and she was not prepared to look for one. I am destined to live my life here, in this quiet corner, not doing anything in particular. If we each have a moment in our lives, a time when we count for something, mine was when I had my orchestra. La’s Orchestra. How many people can claim to have an orchestra named after them? That was an achievement – that was something.