Mr Bullen looks over at her and half smiles.

“Sit down,” he says. “Sit over there in the sofa corner, little lady.”

How funny he is. He doesn’t exactly laugh at you… but there is just something… Oh, how peaceful it is here. She likes this room. The wind cannot reach her in here. It smells of art serge and stale smoke and chrysanthemums. There is a big vase of the bushy flowers on the mantel-piece behind the pale photograph of Rubinstein. Over the black glittering piano hangs “Solitude”—a dark tragic woman draped in white, sitting on a rock, looking out over the stormy sea.

“No, no!” says Mr Bullen, and he leans over the other girl, puts his arms over her shoulders and plays the passage for her. The stupid—she’s blushing! How ridiculous!

Now the-girl-before-her has gone; the front door slams. Mr Bullen comes back and walks up and down, very softly, waiting for her. What an extraordinary thing. Her fingers tremble so that she can’t undo the knot in the music satchel. The webbing between her fingers is swollen, stretched. It’s the wind… It’s howling outside. And her heart beats so hard she feels it must lift her blouse up and down. Mr Bullen does not say a word. The shabby red piano seat is long enough for two people to sit side by side. Mr Bullen sits down by her.

“Shall I begin with scales?” she asks, squeezing her hands together, wincing at the word.

But he does not answer. She doesn’t believe he even hears and then suddenly his fresh hand with the ring on it reaches over and opens Beethoven.

“Let’s have a little of the old master,” he says.

But why does he speak so kindly, so awfully kindly, and as though they had known each other for years and years and knew everything about each other.

He turns the page slowly. She watches his hand—so human, so delicate. It is a very nice hand and always looks as though it had just been washed.

“Here we are,” says Mr Bullen.

Oh, that kind voice. Oh, that minor movement. Here come the little drums…

“Shall I take the repeat?”

“Yes, dear child.”

His voice is far, far too kind. The crotchets and quavers are dancing up and down the stave like the prickling goosebumps along her arms. Why is he so…? She will not cry. Here she has nothing to cry about. Not now, not when she is safe in this room where the wind can’t touch her.

“What is it, dear child?”

Mr Bullen reaches for her hands, but she folds them in her lap. His shoulder is there, just by her head. She leans on it ever so little, her cheek against the springy tweed.

“Life is so dreadful,” she murmurs, but she does not feel it’s dreadful here at all. He says something about ‘waiting’ and ‘marking time’ but she does not hear.