When they were downstairs, she described driving to Aldeburgh to hear Benjamin Britten give a talk about string quartets. Roland said that the name meant nothing to him. She drew him closer to her and kissed his nose and said, ‘We’ve got a lot of work to do on you.’ That was it, and that was how it was going to be. This was what the far-off belligerent gods, Khrushchev and Kennedy, had arranged for him.
