She was astonished by the amount of documentation they supplied, apparently all at Carroll’s request, and she read the papers avidly, even copying out sections of a history of the Shan written by the Doctor himself, a piece she had expected to be dull, but which thrilled her with its stories and gave her confidence in the man whom she felt she had entrusted to watch over her husband. She had recommended it to Edgar, but he told her he would wait, I will need things to distract me when I am alone. Otherwise, she rarely mentioned her readings to him. The stories and descriptions of the people fascinated her; she had loved tales of far-off places since she was a young girl. But while she caught herself daydreaming, she was glad she wasn’t going. It seemed, she confided to a friend, like one big silly game for boys who haven’t grown up, like stories from Boys’ Own or the penny cowboy serials imported from America. “Yet you let Edgar go,” her friend had responded. “Edgar never played those games,” she said. “Perhaps it is not too late. Besides, I have never seen him so excited, so filled with purpose. He is like a young man again.”

After several days, other packages arrived, these marked from Colonel Fitzgerald, to be delivered to Surgeon-Major Carroll. They looked as if they contained sheets of music, and Edgar started to open them, but Katherine scolded him. They were packed neatly in brown paper, and he would surely leave them disorganized. Fortunately, the names of the composers had been written on the outside of the paper, and Edgar contented himself with the knowledge that should he be stranded, he would at least have Liszt to keep him company. Such taste, he said, gave him confidence in his mission.

The departure date was set for November 26, one month to the day following Edgar’s acceptance of his commission. It approached like a cyclone, if not for the mad preparations that preceded it, then for the calm that Katherine knew would follow. While he spent his days finishing his work and tidying up the workshop, she packed his trunks, modifying the recommendations of the army with knowledge unique to the wife of a tuner of Erards. Thus to the army’s list of items such as water-repellent rot-proof clothes, dinner wear, and an assortment of pills and powders to “better enjoy the tropical climate,” she added ointment for fingers chapped from tuning and an extra pair of spectacles, as Edgar invariably sat on a pair about once every three months. She packed a dress coat with tails as well, “In case you are asked to play,” she said, but Edgar kissed her on the forehead and unpacked it, “You flatter me, dear, but I am not a pianist, please don’t encourage such ideas.”

She packed it anyway. She was used to such protestations. Since he was a boy, Edgar had noticed in himself an aptitude for sound, although not, he had also sadly learned, an aptitude for composition. His father, a carpenter, had been an avid amateur musician, collecting and constructing instruments of all shapes and sounds, scavenging the bazaars for strange folk instruments brought from the Continent. When he realized that his son was too shy to play for visiting friends, he had invested his energies in Edgar’s sister, a delicate little girl who had later married a singer with the D’Oyly Carte Company, now quite well known for his starring roles in the operettas of Mr. Gilbert and Mr. Sullivan. So while his sister sat through hours of lessons, Edgar spent the days with his father, a man whom he remembered primarily for his large hands, Too large, he would say, for finery. And so it had become Edgar’s job to tend to his father’s growing collection of instruments, most of which, to the boy’s delight, were in manifest disrepair. Later, as a young man, when he had met and fallen in love with Katherine, he had been equally delighted to hear her play, and had told her this when he proposed. You dare not be asking me to marry you simply so you may have someone to test the instruments you tune, she had said, her hand lightly resting on his arm, and he had replied, a young man flushed by the feeling of her fingers, Don’t worry, if you wish you may never play, Your voice is music enough.

Edgar packed his own tools. Because the army had still not given him details about the piano, he visited the shop where it had been purchased, and spoke at length with the owner about the instrument’s specifics, how extensively it had been rebuilt, which of the original parts remained. With limited space, he could afford only to bring tools and replacement parts specific to the piano. Even so, the tools filled half of one of his trunks.

A week before he was to leave, Katherine held a small good-bye tea party for her husband. He had few friends, and most of them were tuners as well: Mr. Wiggers, who specialized in Broadwoods; Mr. d’Argences, the Frenchman whose passion was Viennese uprights; and Mr. Poffy, who wasn’t actually a piano tuner since he mostly repaired organs—It is nice, Edgar once explained to Katherine, to have variety in one’s friends. Of course, this hardly spanned the full array of Those Associated with Pianos. The London directory alone, between Physicians and Pickle and Sauce Manufacturers, listed Pianoforte makers, Pianoforte action makers, Pianoforte fret cutters, hammer coverers, hammer and damper felt manufacturers, hammer rail makers, ivory bleachers, ivory cutters, key makers, pin makers, silkers, small work manufacturers, Pianoforte string makers, Pianoforte tuners. Notably absent from the party was Mr. Hastings, who also specialized in Erards, and who had snubbed Edgar ever since he had put up a sign on his gate reading “Gone to Burma to tune in the service of Her Majesty; please consult Mr. Claude Hastings for minor tunings that cannot await my return.”

Everyone at the party was thrilled about the Erard commission, and speculated late into the evening about what could be wrong with the piano. Eventually, bored with the discussion, Katherine left the men and retired to bed, where she read from The Burman, a wonderful ethnography by a newspaperman recently appointed to the Burma Commission. The author, one Mr. Scott, had taken the Burmese name Shway Yoe, meaning Golden Honest, as a nom de plume, a fact that Katherine dismissed as further proof that the war was but a “boys’ game.” Nevertheless, it made her uneasy, and she reminded herself before falling asleep to tell Edgar not to return with a ridiculous new name as well.

And the days passed. Katherine expected a last minute flurry of preparation, but three days before the set departure, she and Edgar awoke one morning to find nothing left to prepare. His bags were packed, his tools cleaned and ordered, his shop closed.

They walked down to the Thames, where they sat on the Embankment and watched the boat traffic. There was a distinct clarity to the sky, Edgar thought, to the feeling of her hand in his, All that is lacking to complete this moment is music. Ever since he was a boy, he had the habit of attaching not only sentiment to song but song to sentiment. Katherine learned this in a letter he wrote to her soon after visiting her home for the first time, in which he described his emotions as being “like the allegro con brio of Haydn’s Sonata no. 50 in D Major.” At the time, she had laughed and wondered whether he was serious or if this were the sort of joke that only apprentice piano tuners enjoyed. Her friends, for their part, decided that surely it was a joke, if a strange one, and she found herself agreeing, until later she bought the music for the sonata and played it, and from the piano, newly tuned, came a song of giddy anticipation that made her think of butterflies, not the kind that follow spring, but rather the pale flittering shadows that live in the stomachs of those who are young and in love.

As they sat together, fragments of melodies played in Edgar’s head, like an orchestra warming up, until one tune slowly began to dominate and the others fell in line. He hummed. “Clementi, Sonata in F-sharp Minor,” Katherine said, and he nodded. He had once told her it reminded him of a sailor lost at sea. His love awaiting him onshore. In the notes hide the sound of the waves, gulls.