It was warm, almost summer, and he was singing Grainger’s transcription of a Bach overture as he sat sweating in the black tails his mother had bought him in anticipation of Germany. As the audience climbed the steps to the hall, looking at him and wondering, he tried to steady his hands by looking at them and willing them to stay still, eventually playing the Bach in air that smelt of jasmine and freshly cut lawn. He could feel his heart pounding and he breathed deeply, but this just made his mouth even drier. He turned and pulled a sprig of jasmine growing across the big sandstone blocks of the hall. For a moment he forgot where he was but then there were more shoes, more legs, more bodies – more heads and ears and minds ready to judge his playing. He tried to play the Bach again and this time his fingers felt stiff. No, stop, he thought. Get your mind onto something else. ‘You’re Erwin?’ a middle-aged lady stopped to ask.
