Sliding down the banisters one morning, I crashed into a polishing Florrie at the foot of the stairs and crumpled into giggles. ‘You’re very full of yourself these days, Master Martin,’ she chided, sending me into breakfast with a slap to the rear.

‘What’s that noise?’ snapped Mother, looking up from her News Chronicle.

‘What noise, Mother?’

‘That squeaky drone, like a bee in a jam-jar.’

‘I can’t hear anything.’

‘Well, stop it immediately, Martin, whatever it is. I’ve got a headache and the day has hardly begun.’

It was only then I realised that I had been singing, or perhaps humming, some tuneless expression of inner serenity. This was Dovidl’s doing: he had given me a voice, a fuzzy, grating sound of indeterminate tonality, but none the less a means of self-assertion. I was, thanks to him, no longer trapped in mute misery but able to convey my feelings to the world about me, whether it cared to listen or not. I had become a vocal Mottl to his effulgent Dovidl, a vital part of a greater organism. And he lived within me like a futuristic artificial lung, filling me with confidence and contentment when natural organs failed. That’s how I thought of him: as part of me. And that’s how I loved him – not as a brother in all but blood, but heedlessly and functionally as you love your little finger, or the curve of a cheekbone upon your palm as you drift happily off to sleep.

Chapter 5

5

The Time of our Lives

It was the excitements we were about to share – adolescence and the Blitz – that sealed our symbiotic unity. Relative merit was never an issue between us; Dovidl was the instigator of most activity, but he made me feel that I was indispensable to him. It sounds corny, but then so are many of our most cherished musical impressions. Any number of women have told me that their lives were altered by a performance of Beethoven’s fifth symphony, because a maestro had gazed into their eyes moments beforehand in a locked green room and told them that he was going to conduct it ‘just for you’. Music can be made intensely personal. Dovidl went one step deeper: he gave me to understand that nothing he did could be achieved without me.