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Corporation …’ They listened to the normal litany from their normal positions: he aloft in the bed, she in the low basketwork chair, close to the gramophone in case the tuning needed adjustment. ‘Change to the programme which has been previously announced … Glinka … new work by the English composer Leonard Verity … honour of his seventieth birthday later this year…“Four English …” ’
    She howled. He had never heard such a sound emerge from her before. She fought her heavy way downstairs, ignored Marie-Thérèse, and ran out into a wet dark afternoon. Below her, the village jangled with light and flashed with noise: gigantic motors turned and thrummed. A kermesse had started in her head with traction engines and flood-lamps, the comic frippery of the roundabout organ, the tinny clatter of the shooting range, the careless blast of cornet and bugle, laughter, fake fear, flashing bulbs, and stupid songs. She ran down the track to the first of these orgiastic sites. The old boulanger turned inquisitively as the wild, wet, under-dressed woman irrupted into his son’s shop, gave him a mad stare, howled, and ran out again. She, who for years had been so practical, so swift and necessary with the village, now could not evenmake herself understood. She wanted to strike the whole countryside into silence with fire from the gods. She ran into the butcher’s, where Madame was driving her mighty turbine: a throbbing belt, a tormenting scream, blood everywhere. She ran to the nearest farm and saw feed for a hundred thousand cattle being churned and sluiced by a hundred electric pumps. She ran to the American house, but her knocking could not be heard above the antic flushing of a dozen electric water closets. The village was conspiring, just as the world always conspired against the artist, waiting until he was weakest and then seeking to destroy him. The world did it carelessly, without knowing why, without seeing why, just thumbing a switch with a casual clack. And the world didn’t even notice, didn’t listen, just as now they seemed not to hear the words in her mouth, these faces gathered round, staring at her. He was right, of course he was right, he had always been right. And she had betrayed him in the end, he was right about that, too.
    In the kitchen Marie-Thérèse was standing in awkward conspiracy with the curé. Adeline went upstairs to the bedroom and shut the door. He was dead, of course, she knew that. His eyes were closed, either by nature or by human interference. His hair looked as if it had just been combed, and his mouth was turned down in a final sulk. She eased the fire-tongs from his hand, touched his forehead in a spread chord, then lay down on the bed beside him. His body yielded no more in death than it had in life. At last, she fell quiet, and as her senses returned she became loosely aware of Schumann’s piano concerto stumbling through the static.
    She sent to Paris for a mouleur , who took a cast of the composer’s face, and one of his right hand. The British Broadcasting Corporation announced the death of Leonard Verity,but since they had so recently given the first performance of his final work, further musical tribute was judged inessential.
    Three weeks after the funeral, a square parcel marked ‘Fragile’ arrived at the house. Adeline was alone. She chipped the sealing-wax from the two fat knots, unfolded layers of corrugated cardboard, and found an obsequious letter from the recording manager. She took each of the ‘Four English Seasons’ from its stiff manila envelope and sat them on her knee. Idly, methodically, as Leonard would have approved, she ordered them. Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter. She stared at the edge of the kitchen table, hearing other melodies.
    They broke like biscuit. Her thumb bled.

J UNCTION

    S UNDAY WAS FOR hair-cutting and dog-washing. The French party who drove out from Rouen were at first disappointed. Mme Julie had heard tell of gypsies, banditti