He went slowly through the clavier part of the Roughead sonata, not looking at the quality of the music for now, only at its difficulty. After half an hour or so he relaxed, smiling, and lit a cigarette. There were a few turns and some shakes in the bass that not many amateurs could be expected to play well, but that was a detail. Within twenty miles there must be a dozen people capable of making that part sound quite good. A glance at the violin part had suggested that it would not tax his own technical abilities. He was virtually two-thirds of the way to realizing the project he had conceived in Lucy's library within five seconds of knowing what it was he had found. He would give the piece a public performance, almost certainly its first in the original form for more than a century and a half, and in so doing would have made a tiny but real contribution to the understanding of English music of the later eighteenth century. And Roughead himself would have moved a fraction nearer receiving his eventual due as one of the most attractive minor composers of his era, a man whose naivety and professionalism blended uncommonly well. Ayscue suppressed the ungrateful wish that he had discovered instead some of Roughead's church music. One or two of his extant anthems showed a depth of religious feeling not very easy to parallel outside the choral works of Mozart and Beethoven. The choir at the village church could probably be drilled into rendering one of these adequately, and the organist there was pretty competent and might be cajoled into tackling one of the Roughead sonatas or fantasias. An ecclesiastical venue for the concert would have the advantage of stressing the essential connection between music and religion, but might rule out the idea of including a couple of the secular songs that were such an immediately accessible part of Roughead's work. That vicar was a stuffy old horror. Still, if…
Ayscue pulled himself up. Before drafting the entire supporting program he had better face the question of somehow getting hold of a flutist for the trio sonata. He could count on persuading any one of three or four to come down from London, but this would diminish the local, home-made flavor he wanted to give the enterprise. Was there a brass band in the district? Any other kind of band?
Suddenly excited, he got to his feet. He was nearly sure he remembered someone saying that young Pearce played the flute in the camp jazz group. And he seemed a pleasant, obliging lad. And an interest like this would be just the thing to take his mind off Fawkes's tragic death, which, it was understood, he had not yet recovered from.
Well, no time like the present. Ayscue went to the telephone and lifted it.
'Exchange here, sir.'
'Oh, is Signalman Pearce on duty?'
'No, he went off at oh-eight-hundred, sir, after the all-night shift. He'll be pounding his pillow now.'
'Never mind, then.'
'I could call the guard room if you like, sir, and get someone to go over to his billet.'
'No, I don't want to disturb him if he's got his head down. I'll see him later. Thanks all the same.'
He put the telephone down and thought for a moment. Then he took his violin out of its case and was just about to try the violin part of the sonata when Evans knocked and came in with a pair of shoes back from the camp cobbler.
'Oh, and these are for you, sir.'
Both the letters Evans handed him were internal to the unit. Ayscue opened the first one, but before he had started to read Evans spoke.
'Will you be taking Nancy for her walk as usual, sir?'
'Yes, about ten-thirty, I expect.'
'I thought I might give the room a real proper brush-up, like.'
'Good idea.'
Evans left. Ayscue looked at the letter he was holding. Clipped to it was a covering note with a rubber-stamped heading that read, From O. I/c Adm. Underneath was written in pencil, Willie: Can you cope? M.H.
The letter itself was a sheet hastily torn from a pad. On it were a few ill-written lines in green ink. Without formality the writer announced that he had recently returned to England after some years in the United States and South America, would like to address the unit on the public image of the armed forces in the countries in question and hoped to have a lecture on the subject ready 'in due course.' He would be writing again 'before very long' and signed himself 'L. S. Caton.'
Ayscue smiled to himself. It was Hunter's custom to pass to him any unit correspondence received that smacked even faintly of culture. The previous week he had found himself put on the distribution list of a new Army Council Instruction on the internal painting of sleeping-huts and asked for his comments. Today's letter was less easily dealt with. As things stood, almost any diversion was to be welcomed, but this Caton's suggestion, and the manner of it, sounded peculiar. Well, nothing could be lost by trying to find out more.
He sat down at his work table and wrote briefly to the effect that the proposed lecture did not quite fall within the unit's recreational program, but that as and when further details were forthcoming an effort would be made to find a place for it. He added a covering note to Hunter reading simply, Okay? W.A. and that was that. Then he opened his second letter. It consisted of a sheet of single-spaced typescript that read,
