‘I was thinking about Schubert.’

He was hearing her now.

‘You know the way you get something stuck in your head? The same old tune, on and on, sometimes for days and days. Well, at this moment it’s “Shepherd on the Rock”. An echoing song. It’s very appropriate. I stand on that cliff and sing, and in my head the echo comes back from the hills, Little Sugarloaf and all that. All those hills, over there.’ She jerked her thumb back over her shoulder. ‘You may not have noticed them,’ she went on. ‘You don’t really look around you much, do you? I love Schubert. I feel so connected into Lieder, or three or four instruments working in together. I prefer that to huge symphonic works. Grand operas make me want to go and bury myself in a hole. You know, I don’t think they’ll let Pansy into a caff. People have got very strange about things like dogs and so on. We’d better go back to my house. Or your hotel. I suppose we could go there? What do you think?’

He opened his mouth to say he didn’t really care, but no sound came out.

‘I expect my coffee will be better than theirs and you won’t have to put poor old Pansy in the car.’

Her steps faltered for a moment and she leant briefly on his arm. ‘He died young, you know. Thirty-two. At least, I consider that to be young. Just think of all that achievement. I bet you’re more than thirty-two. I am anyway. And what have you done? Excuse me, maybe you’ve done a lot of achieving. I haven’t. I’ve done a lot of travelling and taught quite a number of people about Elizabeth Bowen and Kate O’Brien. A lot of travelling, but no achieving. I keep thinking about Schubert, Keats, Mozart, J.C. Look what they achieved. They all died young.’

‘J.C.?’ he asked and then realised his foolishness. ‘Oh, yes. J.C.’

‘In terms of achievement, not of course Godishness. I’m not talking about that sort of thing.’

‘I’m not really sure what you’re talking about.’ His voice was peevish. He liked people to make sense; he always had. Even Caitlin had annoyed him from time to time by talking what he felt to be whimsical nonsense, or perhaps as she had sometimes suggested, he hadn’t been listening to her in the right way. Perhaps his ears had sometimes been too full of common sense. His mother and father had been keen on common sense. I must ring them up again. I must. I must.

Clara was blathering on by his side, her face wet with rain turned up towards him. He had let the umbrella slip to one side and while he was dry, the rain toppled onto her face and shoulders.

‘… And of course there was Chatterton, the marvellous boy – he was even younger. A child. Oh, synge unto me roundelaie, O droppe the brynie tears with me …’