Perhaps , I think , as I listen to Serafin telling Summerchild about her father and his death , the question is not what people see in each other , but what they come to see in themselves .sx After all the years of silence , suddenly you're face to face with someone who had to be told about your life , and , as you tell it , as your listener listens , as he smiles and nods and exclaims upon the similarities and differences in his own life , you begin to hear the story yourself , you begin to glimpse your own shape and nature .sx Saturday afternoon is visiting-time , of course .sx I resort to Serafin's solution and borrow my son's tape-recorder .sx I put it in the boot of the car with the tin of tapes .sx I have some confused idea that I will slip out of the ward at some point , leaving Joyce and Timmy with Lynn , and pursue my researches undisturbed for half an hour in the car park .sx It occurs to me when we get there that the car might be stolen while we are away , and all hope of my investigations with it , so I take the biscuit tin with me .sx This means that I have to hold it all the time I'm talking to Lynn , because I realize that if I put it down on the dayroom table she will think I have brought it for her .sx As I tell her brightly about what Timmy has said and done during the week , and about the amusing problems with the hot water , and the heartwarming progress of summer through the garden , so far as I have noticed it , I find the tin moving bulkily about in the air between us , rattling with each move .sx Her eyes follow it with that dull fixity she sometimes devotes to inanimate objects in the room while some animate subject is trying to communicate with her .sx And when my budget of domestic news is exhausted and the tin has sunk back on to the arm of my chair , I find I'm gazing at it as well .sx I suppose Lynn is thinking about the biscuits inside and their forbidden sweetness ( the staff are now making great efforts to control her weight problem , even if they can't control anything else) .sx I suppose I'm thinking about the same .sx As I sit there , in the depressing cheerfulness of the dayroom , with nothing left to say to Lynn , and nothing much of Lynn left to say it to , I am suddenly overwhelmed , as Timmy is , by the sheer unfairness of things .sx I might have been forgiven , I think , if I'd found someone else - someone I could talk to from time to time about some subject apart from Timmy and the boiler and the aubrietia by the front gate .sx Someone who would give signs of hearing what I said .sx Someone who might look at me as I spoke , perhaps nod from time to time , even smile - even on occasion venture some reply .sx I should not have occasioned too much disapprobation in the department , I think , if I had furnished each coming day , each coming week , with some tender friend whom I could look forward to seeing without this sick dread , this leaden hopelessness .sx If I had set up a temporary home in some small unconsidered corner of my life .sx But I hadn't done it - hadn't even imagined doing it .sx It was Summerchild who'd hidden those sweet biscuits in the tin .sx The man whose life was complete already .sx The man with the innocent red hair and the tactfully manifested mania to vary his tactfully manifested depression .sx I'd known from the first what was going to happen .sx From the moment I'd set their two faces opposite each other and seen the way she gazed and smiled , the way he smiled and half turned .sx I could have written most of my report then .sx I'd refused to admit it to myself , that's all .sx I hadn't wanted to believe that someone in the same , yes , priesthood as myself had behaved with such dull dishonour .sx Walking slowly up the lane in the evening , with his violin case in his hand - and all the time he was shutting his inmost self away in an old tin at the back of a cupboard in some forgotten garret .sx In this tin , that I am balancing on the flaking bentwood arm of the dayroom chair , that Lynn's gaze and mine are resting on with such absent intentness .sx I stand up and say I'll send her mother and Timmy in for a bit .sx Her eyes follow the tin as it moves tantalizingly away towards the door , with all the sweetness of the world still shut away inside it .sx " What ?sx " I say , smiling disingenuously , " This ?sx this is just an old tin .sx Just work .sx " She turns her face away and looks at the wall .sx We have achieved some communication , after all .sx I have held the sweetness of the world in front of her , then taken it away again , and she has understood .sx As soon as Joyce and Timmy have gone in I hurry back towards the car with my tin of sickly poison .sx But I'm stopped in the corridor by an old woman in her nightgown .sx She puts her hand on my arm and gazes blindly into my eyes , shaking and stinking and saying nothing .sx I back away and she follows me , clinging on to my arm , mute and blind and I think lost .sx I have to edge her towards a ward and find some member of the staff to take responsibility for her .sx So that by the time I'm back in the car park I'm hurrying and fumbling and I put the tape into the machine with the wrong side playing .sx A most extraordinary sound comes out .sx A voice - but not a man's voice , not a woman's voice .sx A high unearthly voice .sx Speaking , but not speaking words .sx Not talking about happiness or its childhood or the state of its front steps .sx Keening .sx Howling .sx Jumping thirds and octaves .sx Music .sx Of course .sx Horsehair on catgut , speaking with piercing and slightly wavering poignancy about everything and nothing .sx A solo violin , to be precise , being played well but not quite well enough , struggling with something just a little too difficult .sx There is a lot of scrapy double-stopping which is not quite on either note .sx One of the Bach partitas , I think .sx So this is the kind of contribution Summerchild is making to the debate by - I look at the label - May 13th .sx This is the department's view of the quality of life .sx The playing gets worse and teeters to a stop .sx There is a hollow knock as the instrument is put down on a hard surface , followed by what sounds like a sigh .sx What view will Serafin take of this submission ?sx Will she accept it ?sx Reject it ?sx Redraft it , for piano and woodwind ?sx The sigh is followed by various tiny indistinct sounds .sx I turn up the volume on Timmy's machine and hold it close to my ear .sx Inaudibly , beyond the windscreen , in the car parked in front of mine , a woman with a hopeful hairstyle and a disappointed face is explaining something infinitely long and painful to a man sitting with bowed head .sx Invisibly , beyond the plastic cover of the loudspeaker next to my ear , Summerchild is putting the violin back in its case .sx .. closing the lid .sx .. sitting down .sx .. while Serafin says nothing .sx The back door of the car is flung open and Timmy clambers in , shouting rudely at his grandmother and indignantly snatching back his tape-recorder , which I have put down on the seat beside me with obscurely guilty haste .sx My mother-in-law gets in beside him , apologizing to me for his behaviour .sx I rebuke Timmy .sx Timmy shouts rudely back at me .sx My mother-in-law apologizes to both of us .sx There is another sound , too , as if someone in the car is sawing wood .sx Sawing once - in/out - then resting .sx In/out .sx Rest .sx .. " What ?sx " says Timmy , suddenly uneasy , as the other sounds in the car die away .sx We all listen .sx In/out .sx Rest .sx .. There is something horribly disturbing about it and I suddenly realize what we are listening to .sx It is the sound of breath being convulsively drawn and then at once convulsively released ; the sound of a woman sobbing .sx I take the tape-recorder out of Timmy's uneasy hands and remove the tape .sx " Someone at work , " I say .sx By the time evening comes and Timmy is out of the way at last , I find myself moving restlessly through the house with the biscuit tin in my hands , full of twitching irritations and buzzing anxieties .sx How am I going to be able to write my report by Monday morning if I can't listen to the tapes ?sx I am looking madly for somewhere to play them in peace .sx I keep opening cupboards and pulling down the suitcases on top of wardrobes , difficult though it is to imagine that I shall find a place for myself in a cupboard or a suitcase - until at last , under the bed in the spare room , I find a battered black leather box with a round bulge at one end , and I realize that this is what I was looking for all the time .sx I open it up and there , in its fusty-smelling blue velvet bed , is the dulled but still eloquent brass gleam .sx My trombone .sx I haven't played it since I left the local schools orchestra .sx I assemble the pieces , and bend my lips into their old established pout at the mouthpiece .sx A little shakily at first , the great grunting brass voice speaks out , mine but not mine , me but not me , awakening the dead , and strange awkward brass vibrations in my lips and fingers and brain .sx I stop and put the mute on , but before I have played a full scale the door has opened a crack and Timmy has squeezed through in his pyjamas , gazing unsmilingly at this strangely transfigured father .sx I play 'Silent Night' to him , inappropriately enough , gazing at him no less solemnly over my unsmiling embouchure , then 'Almighty , Invisible , God Only Wise' , and 'O Worship the King' .sx Nothing but hymn-tunes comes to mind , for some reason .sx I play flat , I miss notes altogether , but the dark tide of sound rises around us both with increasing strangeness , until I suddenly realize that Timmy is crying .sx He is afraid of if , and afraid of me .sx I'm in a slightly strange state myself , and after I have calmed Timmy and coaxed him back to bed I don't know where to put myself .sx I fetch metal polish and start to clean the trombone .sx At once the acreage of dull brass seems to stretch out in front of me for ever and I abandon the cleaning and start to put the instrument away .sx But even the fiddle of taking it to pieces is suddenly more than I can bear .sx I leave it in bits on the bed in the spare room and go back to the living-room with the box of tapes .sx But of course my mother-in-law is in there already , jumping up guiltily from in front of the guiltily whispering television .sx I apologize - I don't know what for .sx She apologizes - neither of us knows what for .sx I run out of the house .sx What's going on ?sx How can I be walking about the streets in the warm summer twilight like this , full of strange electric unease , as if I were seventeen again , poised on the edge of some great abyss ?sx I should have taken the car and Timmy's tape-recorder , and found myself a quiet car park to work in .sx .. I turn left .sx .. right .sx .. right again .sx .. Every garden I pass is overflowing with the sweet reek of summer .sx Where are my legs walking me to ?sx The streets fall away behind me .sx I am emerging on to the great common that crowns the South London hills here .sx In the dry warmth of the evening the vast tableland of mown grass , criss-crossed by sparkling streams of distant car-lights , seems like a kind of urban high veld .sx