“Yes, the Upper Sixth are doing The Merchant of Venice this term.”

“Roy scored in the last seven minutes. At the end, I simply couldn’t talk above a whisper.”

“Oh, but you missed something if you didn’t see the private rooms upstairs.”

And now they were mostly inside. The chatter had died down. Clapping. Beginning of a Bach partita. Eric pushed open the door and came quietly into the concert-room. Mary made room for him in her corner, at the back. The concert-room was the Gallery. Bright canary-coloured nudes in stockings on striped sofas hung round the walls, alternating with rather scratchy still life, a plate of gritty-looking bananas or a knife, a folded copy of Le Matin, one kid glove. The rigged-up stage was backed by sackcloth curtains. Georges’ huge body dwarfed the little violin, like an enormous mechanical appliance required to perform a very delicate and minute task. He held it with grotesque tenderness, like a baby, his double chin doubled against it. Earle, when he came on to play the Debussy Preludes, was very nervous. He sat down in a rapid, preoccupied manner and started without waiting for any applause, as though he’d just hurried back from answering the telephone to resume work. What a noise he could make! “I didn’t know he had it in him,” Mary whispered to Eric, at the end of the second piece. “The only question is: will the platform stand it? We ought to have lashed the piano down with ropes.”

*   *   *

Yes, he really is my idea of a saint, Anne thought, her eyes resting on Eric’s tall bony figure, there in the corner, by her mother. You could have put him straight into the Bible, just as he was, in his plain, but obviously rather expensive dark suit, with his metal-rimmed glasses and the odd pauses in his speech, relics of his stammer. He wouldn’t be out of place. There was something ancient and sombre about him. And when he looked at you, you felt that he was absolutely honest and fearless and good. He had beautiful eyes.

Perhaps they were all just a little bit afraid of Eric—yes, even Mary. They showed it when they chattered to him and made jokes in their own language, trying to pretend that he was one of themselves and nothing to be alarmed at. They knew quite well that he wasn’t.