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  ‘I want a concert grand,’ Mr Botibol said. The salesman looked at him again.

  Mr Botibol chose his piano and got out of the shop as quickly as possible. He went on to the store that sold gramophone records and there he ordered a quantity of albums containing recordings of all Chopin’s Nocturnes, Études and Waltzes, played by Arthur Rubinstein.

  ‘My goodness, you are going to have a lovely time!’

  Mr Botibol turned and saw standing beside him at the counter a squat, short-legged girl with a face as plain as a pudding.

  ‘Yes,’ he answered. ‘Oh yes, I am.’ Normally he was strict about not speaking to females in public places, but this one had taken him by surprise.

  ‘I love Chopin,’ the girl said. She was holding a slim brown paper bag with string handles containing a single record she had just bought. ‘I like him better than any of the others.’

  It was comforting to hear the voice of this girl after the way the piano salesman had laughed. Mr Botibol wanted to talk to her but he didn’t know what to say.

  The girl said, ‘I like the Nocturnes best, they’re so soothing. Which are your favourites?’

  Mr Botibol said, ‘Well…’ The girl looked up at him and she smiled pleasantly, trying to assist him with his embarrassment. It was the smile that did it. He suddenly found himself saying, ‘Well now, perhaps, would you, I wonder… I mean I was wondering…’ She smiled again; she couldn’t help it this time. ‘What I mean is I would be glad if you would care to come along some time and listen to these records.’

  ‘Why how nice of you.’ She paused, wondering whether it was all right. ‘You really mean it?’

  ‘Yes, I should be glad.’

  She had lived long enough in the city to discover that old men, if they are dirty old men, do not bother about trying to pick up a girl as unattractive as herself. Only twice in her life had she been accosted in public and each time the man had been drunk. But this one wasn’t drunk. He was nervous and he was peculiar-looking, but he wasn’t drunk. Come to think of it, it was she who had started the conversation in the first place. ‘It would be lovely,’ she said. ‘It really would. When could I come?’

  Oh dear, Mr Botibol thought. Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear, oh dear.

  ‘I could come tomorrow,’ she went on. ‘It’s my afternoon off.’

  ‘Well, yes, certainly,’ he answered slowly. ‘Yes, of course. I’ll give you my card. Here it is.’

  ‘A. W. Botibol,’ she read aloud. ‘What a funny name. Mine’s Darlington. Miss L. Darlington. How d’you do, Mr Botibol.’ She put out her hand for him to shake. ‘Oh I am looking forward to this! What time shall I come?’

  ‘Any time,’ he said. ‘Please come any time.’

  ‘Three o’clock?’

  ‘Yes. Three o’clock.’

  ‘Lovely! I’ll be there.’

  He watched her walk out of the shop, a squat, stumpy, thick-legged little person and my word, he thought, what have I done! He was amazed at himself. But he was not displeased. Then at once he started to worry about whether or not he should let her see his concert-hall. He worried still more when he realized that it was the only place in the house where there was a gramophone.

  That evening he had no concert. Instead he sat in his chair brooding about Miss Darlington and what he should do when she arrived. The next morning they brought the piano, a fine Bechstein in dark mahogany which was carried in minus its legs and later assembled on the platform in the concert hall. It was an imposing instrument and when Mr Botibol opened it and pressed a note with his finger, it made no sound at all. He had originally intended to astonish the world with a recital of his first piano compositions – a set of Études – as soon as the piano arrived, but it was no good now. He was too worried about Miss Darlington and three o’clock. At lunch-time his trepidation had increased and he couldn’t eat. ‘Mason,’ he said, ‘I’m, I’m expecting a young lady to call at three o’clock.’

  ‘A what, sir?’ the butler said.

  ‘A young lady, Mason.’

  ‘Very good, sir.’

  ‘Show her into the sitting-room.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  Precisely at three he heard the bell ring. A few moments later Mason was showing her into the room. She came in, smiling, and Mr Botibol stood up and shook her hand. ‘My!’ she exclaimed. ‘What a lovely house! I didn’t know I was calling on a millionaire!’

  She settled her small plump body into a large armchair and Mr Botibol sat opposite. He didn’t know what to say. He felt terrible. But almost at once she began to talk and she chattered away gaily about this and that for a long time without stopping. Mostly it was about his house and the furniture and the carpets and about how nice it was of him to invite her because she didn’t have such an awful lot of excitement in her life. She worked hard all day and she shared a room with two other girls in a boarding-house and he could have no idea how thrilling it was for her to be here. Gradually Mr Botibol began to feel better. He sat there listening to the girl, rather liking her, nodding his bald head slowly up and down, and the more she talked, the more he liked her. She was gay and chatty, but underneath all that any fool could see that she was a lonely tired little thing. Even Mr Botibol could see that. He could see it very clearly indeed. It was at this point that he began to play with a daring and risky idea.

  ‘Miss Darlington,’ he said. ‘I’d like to show you something.’ He led her out of the room straight to the little concert-hall. ‘Look,’ he said.

  She stopped just inside the door. ‘My goodness! Just look at that! A theatre! A real little theatre!’ Then she saw the piano on the platform and the conductor’s dais with the brass rail running round it. ‘It’s for concerts!’ she cried. ‘Do you really have concerts here! Oh, Mr Botibol, how exciting!’

  ‘Do you like it?’

  ‘Oh yes!’

  ‘Come back into the other room and I’ll tell you about it.’ Her enthusiasm had given him confidence and he wanted to get going. ‘Come back and listen while I tell you something funny.’ And when they were seated in the sitting-room again, he began at once to tell her his story. He told the whole thing, right from the beginning, how one day, listening to a symphony, he had imagined himself to be the composer, how he had stood up and started to conduct, how he had got an immense pleasure out of it, how he had done it again with similar results and how finally he had built himself the concert-hall where already he had conducted nine symphonies. But he cheated a little bit in the telling. He said that the only real reason he did it was in order to obtain the maximum appreciation from the music. There was only one way to listen to music, he told her, only one way to make yourself listen to every single note and chord. You had to do two things at once. You had to imagine that you had composed it, and at the same time you had to imagine that the public were hearing it for the first time. ‘Do you think,’ he said, ‘do you really think that any outsider has ever got half as great a thrill from a symphony as the composer himself when he first heard his work played by a full orchestra?’

  ‘No,’ she answered timidly. ‘Of course not.’

  ‘Then become the composer! Steal his music! Take it away from him and give it to yourself!’ He leaned back in his chair and for the first time she saw him smile. He had only just thought of this new complex explanation of his conduct, but to him it seemed a very good one and he smiled. ‘Well, what do you think, Miss Darlington?’

  ‘I must say it’s very very interesting.’ She was polite and puzzled but she was a long way away from him now.

  ‘Would you like to try?’

  ‘Oh no. Please.’

  ‘I wish you would.’

  ‘I’m afraid I don’t think I should be able to feel the same way as you do about it, Mr Botibol. I don’t think I have a strong enough imagination.’

  She could see from his eyes he was disappointed. ‘But I’d love to sit in the audience and listen while you do it,’ she added.

  Then he leapt up from his chair. ‘