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authority. Slack in her pillows, with closed eyes, she recorded her testimony; and in the pauses, which were frequent but brief, long enough for thought but not for concealment, he watched her marble stillness, even her breath held, and thought, what would happen if one kissed this Sleeping Beauty? Would she wake up? On the contrary, she would withdraw into the hundred-year-long death-sleep at the first touch. You’d be lucky if you didn’t impale yourself on the thorns before you ever reached her mouth.
    ‘Dr. Fredericks used to pick out a small group of his pupils every spring and autumn, and take them on a tour of the Continent. He had good connections everywhere there, and it was his way of giving us proper concert experience before we tackled the big things. Freddy’s Circus, we all called it. We used to attend some of the smaller festivals, and fill in with concerts all through Switzerland and Austria, and part of Germany too. There’d be two or three solo singers, and maybe a couple of instrumentalists, usually a pianist—one of the accompanists was always good for a concerto or two—and maybe a violinist, and a small orchestra. It cost him the earth to keep it all up, but now and again he even made a profit. I went three times. Once in 1954, in the autumn. I was eighteen. And then both the tours in 1955. After that I had my first big break, I was asked to sing Cherubini. He let me take it, so I knew I was ready. I never went abroad with him again, there were concerts, engagements, recordings… things began to go very fast. Two years later, Freddy died. In Bregenz, at the festival. There weren’t any more Circuses.’
    ‘And who was with you on those tours? Can you remember?’
    She mentioned several names. Two of them had followed her aloft, though less rapidly. One had died in a plane crash. Some were still, and presumably for ever, lost in obscurity.
    ‘I don’t remember any others. Oh, yes, the last time there was a change, because Freddy’s sister, who always used to tour with us and act as chaperone for the girls, had to go into hospital just before we left, and one of his old pupils came along with us instead. Bernarda Elliot was her concert name. I think it was her maiden name. She was a contralto… a good one, but she’d been married for quite a time then, to somebody named Felse. She was living somewhere in the West Midlands, I remember. She came along with us just to oblige Freddy, and only that once. It was the only tour Miss Fredericks missed. She died, too, only a few months after Freddy. Voluntarily, I think. You know what I mean? They’d always worked together, without him the world wasn’t worth hanging on to.’
    ‘I know,’ said Francis. ‘This Cherubini… that was at Covent Garden, wasn’t it?’
    ‘Yes, I was lucky. We recorded with the same cast, afterwards. It wasn’t the best “Figaro” ever, but it got a lot of notice.’
    From then on it had been simply a climb from one eminence to another, steadily extending her range, always waiting for a few additional years to bring new works and maturer parts within her grasp. She told him about it just as she had experienced it, without either arrogance or modesty, and it dawned on him suddenly that she was not quite the gifted child he had begun to believe her, that this headlong simplicity and directness of hers was not a property of innocence, but the deliberate choice of an adult mind, the weapon of a woman with a great deal to do and only one lifetime in which to do it. Maggie Tressider had no time to waste on circumlocutions. There was it seemed, at least one quality in her which might well destroy either her or anyone who got in her way. Generous, scrupulous, loyal, all these she might be, but ambitious she certainly was. Not for herself so much as for the voice of which she was the high priestess. If ever there was a clash of interests, she would sacrifice everything and everybody to that deity, including Maggie