My affair with Tony Canning lasted a few months. At first I was also seeing Jeremy, but in late June, straight after finals, he moved to Edinburgh, to work on a Ph.D. My life became less fraught, though it still troubled me that I hadn’t cracked his secret by the time he left and couldn’t give him satisfaction. Some weeks later, he wrote a tender, regretful letter to say that he had fallen in love with a violinist he’d heard playing a Bruch concerto one evening at the Usher Hall, a young German from Düsseldorf with an exquisite tone, especially in the slow movement. His name was Manfred. Of course. If I’d been a little more old-fashioned in my thinking, I would have guessed it, for there had been a time when every man’s sexual problem had only one cause.
Ian McEwan - "Hand on the Shoulder".
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