“Mr. Linley. I’m sorry to intrude on your thoughts,” the man said, drawing his hand away.

Clive assumed he was a musician, or someone come to collect his autograph, and shrank his face into its mask of patience. “That’s all right.”

“I was wondering if you’d have time to come across and talk to the foreign secretary. He’s keen to meet you.”

Clive pursed his lips. He didn’t want to be introduced to Julian Garmony, but neither did he want to go to the bother of snubbing him. No escape. “You show the way,” he said, and was led past standing clumps of his friends, some of whom guessed where he was going and tried to lure him from his guide.

“Hey, Linley. No talking to the enemy!”

The enemy indeed. What had attracted her? Garmony was a strange-looking fellow: large head, with wavy black hair that was all his own, a terrible pallor, thin unsensual lips. He had made a life in the political marketplace with an unexceptional stall of xenophobic and punitive opinions. Vernon’s explanation had always been simple: high-ranking bastard, hot in the sack. But she could have found that anywhere. There must also have been the hidden talent that had got him to where he was and even now was driving him to challenge the PM for his job.

The aide delivered Clive into a horseshoe grouped around Garmony, who appeared to be making a speech or telling a story. He broke off to slip his hand into Clive’s and murmur intensely, as though they were alone, “Fve been wanting to meet you for years.”

“How do you do.”

Garmony spoke up for the benefit of the company, two of whom were young men with the pleasant, openly dishonest look of gossip columnists. The minister was performing and Clive was a kind of prop. “My wife knows a few of your piano pieces by heart.”

Again. Clive wondered. Was he as domesticated and tame a talent as some of his younger critics claimed—the thinking man’s Gorecki?

“She must be good,” he said.

It had been a while since he had met a politician close up, and what he had forgotten was the eye movements, the restless patrol for new listeners or defectors, or the proximity of some figure of higher status, or some other main chance that might slip by.

Garmony was looking around now, securing his audience. “She was brilliant. Goldsmiths, then the Guildhall. A fabulous career ahead of her…” He paused for comic effect. “Then she met me and chose medicine.”

Only the aide and another staffer, a woman, tittered. The journalists were unmoved. Perhaps they had heard it all before.

The foreign secretary’s eyes had settled back on Clive. “There was another thing. I wanted to congratulate you on your commission. The Millennial Symphony. D’you know, that decision went right up to cabinet level?”

“So I heard. And you voted for me.”

Clive had allowed himself a note of weariness, but Garmony reacted as though he had been effusively thanked. “Well, it was the least I could do. Some of my colleagues wanted this pop star chap, the ex-Beatle. Anyway, how is it coming along? Almost done?”

“Almost.”

His extremities had been numb for half an hour but it was only now that Clive felt the chill finally envelop his core. In the warmth of his studio he would be in shirtsleeves, working on the final pages of this symphony, whose premiere was only weeks away. He had already missed two deadlines and he longed to be home.

He put out his hand to Garmony. “It was very nice to meet you. I have to be getting along.”

But the minister did not take his hand and was speaking over him, for there was still a little more to be wrung from the famous composer’s presence.

“Do you know, I’ve often thought that it’s the freedom of artists like yourself to pursue your work that makes my own job worthwhile…”

More followed in similar style as Clive gazed on, no sign of his growing distaste showing in his expression. Garmony, too, was his generation. High office had eroded his ability to talk levelly with a stranger. Perhaps that was what he offered her in bed, the thrill of the impersonal. A man twitching in front of mirrors. But surely she preferred emotional warmth. Lie still, look at me, really look at me. Perhaps it was nothing more than a mistake, Molly and Garmony. Either way, Clive now found it unbearable.

The foreign secretary reached his conclusion. “These are the traditions that make us what we are.”

“I was wondering,” Clive said to Molly’s ex-lover, “whether you’re still in favor of hanging.”

Garmony was well able to deal with this sudden shift, but his eyes hardened.

“I think most people are aware of my position on that. Meanwhile, I’m happy to accept the view of Parliament and the collective responsibility of the cabinet.” He had squared up, and he was also turning on the charm. The two journalists edged a little closer with their notebooks.

“I see you once said in a speech that Nelson Mandela deserved to be hanged.”

Garmony, who was due to visit South Africa the following month, smiled calmly. The speech had recently been dug up, rather scurrilously, by Vernon’s paper. “I don’t think you can reasonably nail people to things they said as hot-head undergraduates.” He paused to chuckle. “Almost thirty years ago. I bet you said or thought some pretty shocking things yourself.”

“I certainly did,” Clive said. “Which is my point. If you’d had your way then, there wouldn’t be much chance for second thoughts now.”

Garmony inclined his head briefly in acknowledgment. “Fair enough point. But in the real world, Mr. Linley, no justice system can ever be free of human error.”

Then the foreign secretary did an extraordinary thing that quite destroyed dive’s theory about the effects of public office and that in retrospect he was forced to admire. Garmony reached out and, with his forefinger and thumb, caught hold of the lapel of Clive’s overcoat and, drawing him close, spoke in a voice that no one else could hear.

“The very last time I saw Molly she told me you were impotent and always had been.”

“Complete nonsense. She never said that.”

“Of course you’re bound to deny it. Thing is, we could discuss it out loud in front of the gentlemen over there, or you could get off my case and make a pleasant farewell. That is to say, fuck off.”

The delivery was rapid and urgent, and as soon as it was over Garmony leaned back, beaming as he pumped the composer’s hand, and called out to the aide, “Mr. Linley has kindly accepted an invitation to dinner.” This last may have been an agreed code, for the young man stepped across promptly to usher Clive away while Garmony turned his back on him to say to the journalists, “A great man, Clive Linley. To air differences and remain friends, the essence of civilized existence, don’t you think?”

2

An hour later Vernon’s car, which was absurdly small to have a chauffeur, dropped Clive in South Kensington. Vernon got out to say goodbye.

“Terrible funeral.”

“Not even a drink.”

“Poor Molly.”

Clive let himself into the house and stood in the hallway, absorbing the warmth of the radiators and the silence. A note from his housekeeper told him there was a flask of coffee in the studio. Still in his coat, he walked up there, took a pencil and a sheet of manuscript paper, and, leaning against the grand piano, scribbled down the ten descending notes. He stood by the window, staring at the page, imagining the contrapuntal cellos. There were many days when the commission to write a symphony for the millennium was a ridiculous affliction: a bureaucratic intrusion on his creative independence; the confusion about where exactly Giulio Bo, the great Italian conductor, would be able to rehearse the British Symphony Orchestra; the mild but constant irritation of overexcited or hostile press scrutiny; the fact that he had failed to meet two deadlines—the millennium itself was still years away. There were also days like this one, when he thought of nothing but the music and could not stay away. Keeping his left hand, which was still numb from cold, in the pocket of his coat, he sat at the piano and played the passage as he had written it, slow, chromatic, and rhythmically tricky. There were two time signatures, in fact. Then, still with his right hand and at half speed, he improvised the cellos’ rising line and played it again several times, with variations, until he was satisfied. He scribbled out the new part, which was at the very top of the cellos’ range and would sound like some furious energy restrained. Releasing it later, in this final section of the symphony, would be a joy.