She led him off round the crater site towards Nelson’s Column, but he still didn’t know their destination. The last time they’d met here Jago had been the one in charge, taking her for a bus ride all the way to Tower Hill, but now as they entered the square again he could only ask where she was taking him.
‘To lunch, of course,’ she replied. ‘But we’re going to have a cultural experience too, to repay you for the ones you’ve organised for me – only this time it won’t be the best fish and chips in West Ham. It’ll be the finest music in the world. In there.’
She pointed to the National Gallery, ranged along the northern side of the square, and at once he understood. The gallery was no longer the place to go to see art: all the treasures had been evacuated, like the children, to places of refuge around the country where they’d be safe from bombing. The cultural experience she must have had in mind was the lunchtime music concerts.
‘I see,’ he said. ‘You mean Myra Hess, the pianist – those concerts she’s been organising.’
‘That’s right. Have you been to any?’
‘No – it’s not the kind of thing I do, and I don’t know enough about music to appreciate it.’ He felt wary of admitting that he’d never been to a classical music concert. ‘I’ve heard about them, though,’ he added. ‘I should think everyone has. It’s certainly a great idea for brightening people’s lives up. But chamber music’s probably more your cup of tea than mine, isn’t it?’
‘If you mean I like it, then yes, I do. But this’ll be the first of these lunchtime concerts I’ve been to. I’m writing a piece about them, because people’ve heard about them even in America. I interviewed Sir Kenneth Clark the other day – you know, the director of the National Gallery – and he told me all about it.’
‘You move in more exalted circles than I do. So he gave you a couple of free tickets, I suppose.’
‘Certainly not. We’ll be paying our shilling to get in, just like everyone else, only I’ll be treating you. That’s one of the interesting things about the whole idea – they only cost a shilling because they’re for ordinary people, and the money goes to help the musicians who lost their jobs when the government closed down all the concert halls. But we’ll need to be quick – it starts at one o’clock.’
Dorothy steered him towards the classical portico which marked the entrance to the gallery, scattering pigeons in all directions. They hurried past the square’s elegant fountains, now turned off for the war and surmounted by brutally functional loudspeakers, and up the steps to the road between the square and the National Gallery, where the traffic was light enough for them to weave through the cars and buses to the other side. Jago pulled a handful of change from his trouser pocket and picked out a florin.
‘Put that away,’ said Dorothy. ‘I told you this is my treat.’
Jago obeyed. ‘Very well,’ he said. ‘But what about lunch?’
‘Lunch is on me too. You may have heard they do food here now – a bunch of women volunteers run a sandwich bar for people who go to the concerts, and I’ve heard it said that the sandwiches are the best in London. They say the honey and raisin ones are the most popular.’
‘Sounds good to me,’ said Jago, although he still felt a little uneasy at not paying.
They joined the queue at the entrance and were soon inside. They made their way towards the eastern end of the building, through rooms which had once been adorned with some of the world’s finest paintings but were now empty, their precious contents scattered to secret hiding places far from London.
‘They’ve had to move the concerts too,’ said Dorothy. ‘The room where they used to be held has a glass dome over it, so when the big air raids began the gallery moved them to a safer room in the basement.’
The room was already crowded when they reached it, and uncomfortably airless. Every seat was taken, but people were standing round the edges or sitting on the floor. It seemed to Jago there must be three or four hundred of them, of all ages, and their appearance suggested that they came from all walks of life.
‘Obviously very popular events,’ he said as they found a place where they could lean against the wall.
‘Yes,’ said Dorothy. ‘When I interviewed Sir Kenneth, he said there’s too much music around that’s supposed to be cheering us up but actually drives any intelligent person into an even worse despair. What he called “patriotic imbecilities”.’
‘Very well put, I’d say.’
‘He said he thought people were crying out for something to take them away from all the muddle and uncertainty of war, and that’s what he and Myra Hess wanted to give them.’
‘I see. So is Myra Hess playing for us today?’
‘Yes. That’s why I suggested we come today. She doesn’t play every week, because I think she wants to provide work for other musicians, but today she’s playing a couple of Brahms sonatas.’
‘German, then. We didn’t hear much German music in the last war.’
‘I guess that’s not surprising, but apparently these concerts include lots of German classics, and the audiences like it.’
‘Perhaps we’ve become more civilised,’ said Jago. ‘Though I doubt it.’
A man and a woman appeared on the makeshift platform and were greeted with a burst of applause from the audience. The woman cut a diminutive, stout figure in a black ankle-length dress, with a single string of pearls at her neck. She looked about fifty, with a strong, confident face, and her dark, centre-parted hair was swept back over her ears. Jago recognised her immediately from newspaper photos
