August 1979
Bob and I leave for a concert at Blythburgh: Gemigniani, Locatelli, J.S. Bach, Kodaly, Telemann. A harpsichord and cello. Never gave much thought to it before we got there. Arrived when the church was empty, and the low, warm, evening light coming in suffusions into the dryness of brick and stone. The spotlit angel just visibly haloed. In some way you can be sure it will be beautiful. I feel like sitting at the back, so that the distilled air over the floor, the grey slabs, the clay and straw colours, the squads of bricks marching against each other at angles, the big shed, silver and blue standstill, will all be in front of us. But Bob chooses the second row. It fills with people. Millais blue dresses and black socks, precocious little girls with widely spaced eyes, interesting mothers, a blonde with escaping hair, a man with a rubber mouth all across his face, another man, this one with the blonde woman, in sandals, with half his moustache white. The jowled, stuttering clergyman, in black, seeking two unobtrusive Dutch people, who will need a lift back to Walberswick because they are counting on buses, which don't exist in this part of the world. Then the cellist, and within moments we find that he gasps, repeatedly, out of the side of his mouth. Yes. And looks a little shy and flushed. A fluff of newly washed, light hair, and going bald in a hidden coin, as ...