The acoustic rehearsal was over in fifteen minutes. They had done the concerto to perfection the day before in Kingsway Hall; now all they had to do was check the balances in the cavernous Royal Albert Hall. Dovidl played a short passage with the orchestra while the conductor checked the sound from the auditorium. Then the leader of the orchestra played a theme while Dovidl listened from different parts of the hall. In the turnarounds, they exchanged chippy banter.

‘Wearing your lucky socks tonight, Rappo?’

‘I’m playing barefoot – remember? I’m a penniless refugee.’

‘Well, just make sure the band gets paid.’

‘Not unless you chaps pitch in and buy me a nice bunch of flowers.’

‘Cheek-y.’

The conductor called for another test, but Dovidl was packing away his instrument and the musicians were huddled around him, alert to his promise. He was superior to any British violinist and they were keen to collar him for future concerts. ‘Come across the road for a quick one?’ said the leader. Dovidl shook his head, hungry for sunlight. But when he left the artists’ entrance at the rear of the hall, the sun had gone and a chill wind was blowing off the Hyde Park tundra.

He shivered in a light jacket, momentarily disconcerted, as red buses rumbled past and a party of black-capped private-schoolgirls clip-clopped their horses towards the park. Fishing in his pocket, he found he had come out without money for a cab. The conductor was in a sour mood after being cut short and there was no one from the office from whom he could cadge a lift. So he crossed the road and stood at the bus-stop, remembering from our boyhood explorations that the seventy-three ran to Oxford Street, from where he could catch a thirteen or fifty-nine to take him home.

A man in a flat cap stood at the stop, a plumber or suchlike by the look of his overalls and tool-kit. He struck a match on a lamp-post and lit a Woodbine. Dovidl patted his pockets and found he had left his cigarette case at home with his wallet. ‘Fancy one?’ said the plumber.

‘Don’t mind if I do.’

A cheap fag and a waft of war memories melted most barriers in those frugal times. The plumber had been a bomb-disposal man; Dovidl recalled their skill and courage with UXBs. ‘Not English, are you?’ said the man, too inquisitively for comfort.

‘Good as,’ said Dovidl.

‘What’s that in your toolbag?’

‘My whole life,’ said my friend, uncomfortable under scrunity.

Three buses growled up together in convoy. The Germans, Dovidl reckoned, would have made the London buses run on time. He let the plumber take the first bus, then mounted the second, climbing up to the smokers’ deck and claiming a front seat, the better to enjoy what he told himself, melodramatically, might be his last anonymous journey. By tomorrow, he would not be able to ride public transport unrecognised.