A lot of conversation to which I listened while the men drank their port was over my head, but as I had a photographic memory for dialogue, fragments of many objects gradually fitted together and formed a wide if somewhat chaotic pattern. The square root of minus one, the prospects of splitting the atom, sociology, developments in physics, in medical technique, to all these I listened absorbedly, for as they were of interest to Father they were of enormous importance to me, a source of knowledge which, if I could only acquire it, would make him as proud of me as though I had been his son.

Sir Richard Gregory, F.R.S., the editor of Nature, a lifelong friend of H.G. Wells; Sir Theodore Cook, editor of The Field, with one blind eye and a rich fund of good stories; C.G. Lamb, Professor of Engineering at Cambridge, whom I loved more than all the others; Tommy Horder, later to become Lord Horder, the Royal Physician, who said to me, 'Never believe blindly in doctors, Joan, but use your critical faculty. I am the greatest diagnostician in England, and hundreds of my diagnoses are wrong.' To them all, and to many others among my father's friends I shall always be grateful that they talked, and let me listen, and never seemed to mind my being there.

The only one with whom I did not have to pretend to be a boy or an embryo scientist was Mr. Lamb. He had never seen a ghost, but Psychical Research was a hobby nearly as dear to him as collecting rare beetles. He had been a friend of Jennie's and told me that if my grandfather had let her become a concert pianist she would have been world-famous.

'Jennie gives me music lessons,' I said, suddenly no longer shy to talk about it. 'Father knows I would never be a first-class pianist so there is no point in my having lessons, but Jennie knows I need music and she teaches me. Sometimes she plays the piano with me--music that is quite different to the ordinary tunes I have learned.'

As I was speaking I knew that Jennie was in the room with us, so I went to her piano. Music, strong, passionate music, flowed out of my hands.

With the last crashing chord she left me. Mr. Lamb looked pale and mopped his forehead. 'Extraordinary,' he said. 'Quite extraordinary but completely evidential. Do you know... No, of course you don't, how could you? That what you have just played was often played to me by your grandmother... I have not heard it since she died.'

'Perhaps I heard it at one of Mrs. Workman's concerts. She often has pianists staying at Gothic Lodge.'

'That you most certainly did not do. Only one copy of that music ever existed. It was given in manuscript to the Czar of Russia, who sent it to your grandmother. I have a very accurate ear, although I play the piano not as a musician but as a mathematician operating a pianola.'

'Then I must have heard Jennie play it when I was a baby, and remembered it. Babies remember far more than grown-ups give them credit for.'

He took out his tobacco pouch and carefully rolled a cigarette before answering. His hands were shaking and he spilled shreds of tobacco on his black alpaca jacket.

'Infantile memory would be the logical explanation, if in this instance it were possible to take refuge in logic. However, I happen to know that the manuscript of that music, together with several other manuscripts of similar value, was burned two years before you were born. I did my best to dissuade your grandmother from taking such drastic action, but she said, "My dear Mr. Lamb, no one else shall play my music now that I know that I shall never be able to play the piano again."'

There were tears in his eyes and he blew his nose loudly to hide his emotion. 'Until after you were born I was the only person except her doctor who knew she was suffering inoperable cancer... it had already spread from her breast to her right arm. Jennie Marshall was not only a great musician, she was a very heroic woman. Thank you for convincing me that she is still alive.'