An Equal Music

Years after separating, violinist Michael Holme is reunited with his former lover, pianist Julia McNicholl, during a musical tour of Vienna, unaware that she is hiding her increasing deafness, and together they must confront their feelings for each other and the music that both unites and divides them. Reprint. 40,000 first printing.

The branches are bare, the sky tonight a milky violet. It is not quiet here, but it is peaceful. The wind ruffles the black water towards me.

There is no one about. The birds are still. The traffic slashes through Hyde Park. It comes to my ears as white noise.

I test the bench but do not sit down. As yesterday, as the day before, I stand until I have lost my thoughts. I look at the water of the Serpentine.

Yesterday as I walked back across the park I paused at a fork in the footpath. I had the sense that someone had paused behind me. I walked on. The sound of footsteps followed along the gravel. They were unhurried; they appeared to keep pace with me. Then they suddenly made up their mind, speeded up, and overtook me. They belonged to a man in a thick black overcoat, quite tall - about my height - a young man from his gait and attitude, though I did not see his face. His sense of hurry was now evident. After a while, unwilling so soon to cross the blinding Bayswater Road, I paused again, this time by the bridle path.

Now I heard the faint sound of hooves. This time, however, they were not embodied. I looked to left, to right. There was nothing.

As I approach Archangel Court I am conscious of being watched. I enter the hallway. There are flowers here, a concoction of gerberas and general foliage. A camera surveys the hall. A watched building is a secure building, a secure building a happy one.

A few days ago I was told I was happy by the young woman behind the counter at Etiennes. I ordered seven croissants. As she gave me my change she said: ＂You are a happy man.＂

I stared at her with such incredulity that she looked down.

＂Youre always humming,＂ she said in a much quieter voice, feeling perhaps that she had to explain.

＂Its my work,＂ I said, ashamed of my bitterness. Another customer entered the shop, and I left.

As I put my weeks croissants - all except one - in the freezer, I noticed I was humming the same half-tuneless tune of one of Schuberts last songs:

I see a man who stares upwards
And wrings his hands from the force of his pain.
I shudder when I see his face.
The moon reveals myself to me.

I put the water on for coffee, and look out of the window. From the eighth floor I can see as far as St Pauls, Croydon, Highgate. I can look across the brown-branched park to spires and towers and chimneys beyond. London unsettles me - even from such a height there is no clear countryside to view.

But it is not Vienna. It is not Venice. It is not, for that matter, my hometown in the North, in clear reach of the moors.