The harpist was setting herself up between the first and second violins and squidging the horns over a bit. She was extremely glamorous, and wore her jet-black hair scraped tightly into a bun on the very top of her head, into which she had pushed her orchestral pencil. Even though it was an ordinary Saturday afternoon in a rundown school in south London, she wore full and professional-level flawless make-up and radiated a perfume that made her nearest neighbours' throats itch. Her name was Bozenka.
David introduced the conductor to Bozenka before they started playing. 'Lovely to meet you,' said eliot, shaking a hand which clasped his in an icy ratchet grip. 'Thank you for coming along for your few bars of Mussorgsky. We very much appreciate it.'
'It is the way of the harp, to deliver perfection in tiny pockets,' said Bozenka in a heavily accented low voice. 'But what else can we do before death?'
Walking back to his podium, he tried to shake the feeling that death could be summoned by a harpist.
~Isabel Rogers, in Bold as Brass p.231