"May I ask you a plain question?"
"You may."
"What are you at out here when you are not copying for me?"
"Writing."
"Writing what?"
"Music."
"How much of it?"
She thought about it. "Since my father died, about four hundred pages."
Loveday sat down on the bench beside her, which he had never done before. "And who has seen it?"
"You have seen the copying."
"That was not my question."
"Then nobody."
He was sixty-four. He had been in that trade since he was twelve, and he knew the difference between a woman who plays and a woman who writes. He also knew that saying so would do her no good at all. So he said nothing to anybody for a long time.
There was a boy in the stable yard called Tom Skreen. His mother was the laundry woman. He was ten. He could not say his own name without stopping twice on the way through it. And the men in the yard had a joke about that which they thought was affectionate.