Magic Flutes

13

On the last day of Guy’s house party, the green and glacial waters of Lake Pfaffenstein saw two momentous though disconnected events.

Not far from the southern shore of the lake lay a wooded island on which the fifth Prince of Pfaffenstein had built a classic temple, following his return from the Grand Tour. Boats to journey to this and other islands, and boatmen to row them, had been provided by Guy for his guests. At an hour when most of them still slept, Klasky, carrying a briefcase full of manuscript paper and wearing his habitual dark suit, silk socks which had belonged to Gustav Mahler and patent leather shoes, was rowed across to this peaceful spot.

Dismissing the boatman, instructing him to return at lunchtime, Klasky repaired to the bench in front of the temple. Nature, always abundant in the month of June, smiled at the Hungarian but she smiled in vain. Cuckoos called, dragonflies shimmered, marguerites, balsam and meadow-sweet scented the grass by the water’s edge, but all to no avail. Klasky’s impassioned eyes were turned on a wholly inward vision as his thin white fingers raced across the lined paper. Sometimes he hummed — a distracted sound as of a deprived and atonal bee — sometimes he whistled. Midges bit him, lavender beetles dashed across his shoe. Caught in a white heat of creative fervour, he saw nothing that did not come from within.

For it was coming! The breakthrough when he had changed the hero from a policeman to a railway porter had been followed by one even more fundamental, when he had discovered that by changing the B flat in his tone row to G the whole musical structure of the work fell into place. Since then, he had lacked only the vision for the chorus that would conclude his opera. The heroine, betrayed by the mill-owner, has hanged herself. Her husband, the railway porter, has gone mad. The mill-owner, wrongly believing that he has consumed his child in a fricassée, has jumped out of the window. The action then is over, but it is left to the plate-layers, engine-greasers and lavatory attendants who represent the simple, uncorrupted spirit of the people, devoid of capitalism and desire, to sum up the inner meaning of the tragedy.

The theme of this last chorus had continued to elude the composer. The lament of the captive Israelites in Nabucco, the paean of the prisoners in Fidelio, were to pale into insignificance beside the yea-saying life-enhancement of these signalmen and engine-greasers assembled on a railway platform somewhere between Vlodz and Kranislav.

Klasky had despaired of doing justice to this last, all-important vision. But as Witzler had hoped, the fresh air, the excellent food, above all the absence of Klasky’s latest mistress — a voracious Burg Theatre actress — had done the trick. His élan vital undisturbed, Klasky, in spite of the previous night’s excesses, had woken at dawn with the chorus in his mind. Now, discord followed meaningful discord as the voices of the oppressed came to him in an unbroken stream of sound.

The boatman returned and was waved away by the perspiring Hungarian. The shadows lengthened…

At five he stabbed a last cluster of quavers on to the paper, closed his brief-case and reeled sightlessly towards the landing stage. The opera was finished.

There was no boat, but that was of no importance. He turned to look at the little temple. Would they transport it as they had transported the summer-house where Mozart had written The Magic Flute? Would there be a Klaskeum like the Mozarteum at Salzburg, or would people merely come to Pfaffenstein in charabancs to see where he had worked? No, where he had lived. There could be no doubt but that Farne, after last night, would install them here.

His mind raced ahead to the production. He would need a much larger bass drum than any they possessed, thought the composer, wondering if even now, in some fertile alm above the castle, there grazed two outsize and expiring cows whose hides would give the necessary sound. Or simply two cows, expiring or not, since it was after all perfectly possible to shoot them.

At this point he perceived, not far away, a rowing-boat containing Tessa, the Prince of Spittau and a quantity of dogs.

Should he hail them? But no. The dogs seemed to be wet and there were a great many of them. Extracting a leberwurst sandwich from his pocket, Klasky prepared to wait.

Whether it was the uplifting effect of Mozart’s masterpiece or just a flash of arbitrary inspiration from above, Maxi had woken on the last day of the house party knowing exactly where to propose to Tessa.

For just as Mexicans prefer to eat, sleep and make love in the place they have been accustomed to from birth, namely a hammock, so Prince Maximilian was happiest performing life’s functions on the water. It was in a boat, therefore, that the prince decided to put his happiness to the test — and this time he would brook no opposition. Putzerl should, and would, hear him out.

But Tessa had in any case given up the fight. The opera was over and tomorrow she would leave Pfaffenstein for good. She could not avoid a tête à tête with Maxi for ever.

Four o’clock, therefore, saw Maxi rowing strongly towards the centre of the lake, the Princess of Pfaffenstein captive in the stern. Not only did he have Tessa, and in a most romantic setting — for the castle rearing up behind him looked, in the slanting, golden light, more like something out of a fairy tale than ever — but he had the dogs. To get five dogs into a small rowing-boat is not easy, but he had managed it and though the animals were a little bit on edge owing to the unfortunate proximity of a brace of mallard and a swan, they were behaving well. The red setter had her head in Tessa’s lap and was dribbling affectionately on her dress, while the water spaniel lay across her feet. To emphasize even more that his business was love and not sport, Maxi had left behind not only his gun but also his rod, and this despite the fact that the lake, cruelly underfished since the decline of the Pfaffenstein fortunes, was teeming with trout.

If Maxi supposed, however, that by taking to the water he would be unobserved, he was mistaken. The news that the prince was about to put his fortunes to the test had spread like wildfire round the castle. In the West Tower his mother, the Swan Princess, was stationed behind the late Prince of Pfaffenstein’s telescope, which she had securely trained on her son. Putzerl’s aunts, though they would not have stooped to such tactics, stood on either side of her, more than ready to receive details at second hand. The Archduke Sava, aware of the importance of the occasion, had abandoned his watch on the sunbathing soprano and carried his telescope into Monteforelli’s bedroom which faced the lake. Maxi’s valet, exceptionally keen-sighted, had climbed on to the balustrade outside the servants’ attics and was relaying information back to the castle maids.

And down on the terrace overhanging the lake, Nerine picked up the field-glasses Guy had left when he went for his interview with Witzler. This was better than looking at some red-legged hawk as Guy had wanted her to do!

‘He’s doing it!’ cried the Swan Princess. ‘He’s proposing, I’m sure! He’s stopped rowing!’

And indeed the Prince of Spittau had, at that moment, shipped his oars.

‘Putzerl,’ he began. ‘Tessa…’

The Princess of Pfaffenstein, who had been sitting quietly in the stern with her hands on the tiller lines, raised her head. Maxi’s eyes were deeply poached, his duelling scar throbbed like a wound. It was coming, then. Steeling herself, feeling the familiar guilt creep over her, Tessa said, ‘Yes, Maxi?’

‘Putzerl, you know how fond of you I’ve always been,’ said Maxi, and indeed he spoke the truth. No one had played ‘Cowboys and Indians’ as willingly and as often as she had done.

‘I’m very fond of you, too,’ said Tessa, repressing a sigh.

A trout, a five-pounder by the sound of it, rose very close to them. Maxi resolutely ignored it, as did the older dogs who were perfectly trained. Not so the young setter, who raised her head from Tessa’s lap and moaned with agitation, setting off the swan who approached hissing in fury, causing the labrador who was of a heroic turn of mind to rush to the stern and emit a fusillade of barks. A period of considerable confusion followed as they beat off the swan, restrained the wolfhound who had scrambled over the oars to aid his friend, and shipped a considerable amount of water.

For a moment Maxi wondered whether, after all, it had been such a good idea to bring the dogs. Tessa now seemed more worried about the wolfhound, who had scratched his nose on a rowlock, than she was about him. She was also, as he was himself, extremely wet.

‘So don’t you think… Tessa… please? I know I’ve asked you before, but now Pfaffenstein’s sold… I mean, you can’t go on working for the opera company for ever, and—’ He broke off. ‘Sit!’ he ordered furiously.

The pointer, who had leapt to her feet and was gazing with an air of quivering attention at the wooded island, turned a reproachful head. She had, she wished to make this clear, heard something.

‘So Tessa, do please marry me. I would be so happy. Everyone would be so pleased. And we get on so well.’

Tessa had picked up the bailer and was trying to reduce the pool of water in which they sat and Maxi, determined to pursue his advantage — for she had not yet said ‘No’ — plunged into the delights of Spittau. ‘We would have such great times together. You could breed water spaniels, you know how you love them. Of course, I know Mother’s a bit difficult but… And I mean it isn’t as though you’re liable to rheumatism. You’re healthy, Putzerl, although you’re so little. That’s one of the things I like about you.’

The mallards now returned and foolishly approached the boat, quacking and fussing, while the dogs turned with desperate appeal to their master. Was nothing going to happen? How long were they expected to endure it?

Not for ever, it seemed. A long, high-pitched whistle sounded from the wooded island and without a second’s hesitation the pointer, the labrador and the spaniel leapt into the water.

‘Idiot! Half-wit! Moron!’ yelled Maxi, shaking his fist in the direction of the island, with its little temple, from which the sound had come.

Yet no one was to blame. That the noise, a piercing A flat, emitted by one of Klasky’s characters (the engine-greaser who has a fit in the second act) was the same as the whistle to which Maxi had trained his dogs, was a coincidence no one could have foreseen.

‘They’re having a little bit of trouble,’ reported the Swan Princess as the puzzled faces of the dogs, hauled back into the boat by an irate Maxi, swam into focus, followed by a dangerous rocking as the animals shook themselves. ‘But it’s all right now. Tessa’s got hold of the dogs and Maxi’s rowing again.’

And indeed Maxi was now in a state of desperation when nothing could stop him. Bracing his feet against the wolfhound and rowing strongly away from the island, he said, ‘And after all, we’re both descended from—’ But here he veered off again, because it was no good talking to Putzerl about lineage and breeding and all that. The fact that he could trace his descent straight back to Barbarossa cut absolutely no ice with Tessa, who was apt to go off at half-cock when he mentioned anything like that. He returned to the subject of Spittau. ‘Maybe we could put in some central heating…’

He flushed, on delicate ground, and Tessa, on whose lap the soaking and frustrated water spaniel had settled, felt the familiar guilt intensify.

Guy had paid generously for Pfaffenstein. The cheque she had been handed, signed by the Associated Investment Company, in these inflationary times ran into millions of kroner. Half of this would go in trust for the aunts, and there were debts to be paid, but even so it left her with enough money to shore up Maxi’s imperilled Wasserburg and put heating into the mouldering rooms.

‘Maxi, I haven’t got quite as much money as your mother thinks, perhaps. My father left a lot of debts and they have to be paid. But I’ve enough all the same to—’ She tried again. ‘Would you let me help a little with Spittau? Do the roof at least, so that it can be preserved? I mean, we’re almost relatives, aren’t we?’

Maxi’s eyes became vibrantly convex; his duelling scar turned livid. His manhood had been outraged, his honour impugned. ‘How can you suggest such a thing, Putzerl?’

‘I’m sorry, Maxi. I didn’t mean any harm. Only, I don’t know any other way to marry except for love. A particular kind of love. And that isn’t… how I love you,’ said Tessa, her voice very low.

‘But Tessa, we aren’t like that. Like ordinary people. I mean, being in love.’

‘I’m an ordinary person.’

He sighed. Her republicanism again.

‘I don’t think I am going to marry at all, Maxi. I think I’m going to live for art and bring music and theatre into people’s lives.’

A slight tightening of the jaw — the beginning of a yawn, which always attacked him at the mention of art — now troubled the prince. Bending to conceal it, he incited the wolfhound who caught Maxi rather painfully under the chin as he reared up in hope of land.

‘Are you sure, Putzerl? Are you absolutely sure?’ said Maxi when he had quietened the animal. ‘Couldn’t you please, please say yes?’

Tessa’s heart smote her. She knew only too well what Maxi would have to endure if his suit did not prosper. ‘I’m so sorry, Maxi.’ She put down the tiller lines, pushed the spaniel gently from her lap and, overwhelmed by pity, leaned forward to kiss him on the forehead. She too could perform life’s most varied actions in a boat.

The kiss was seen by Nerine on the terrace, by the Swan Princess and thus the aunts in the West Tower, by Monteforelli and Maxi’s valet and many others in the castle — and misinterpreted by all of them.

Witzler sat in the small room in the East Tower, adjoining the theatre, which he had used as an office since he came to Pfaffenstein. Out in the courtyard the men were loading scenery. The stage crew would leave at dawn for Vienna, with the principals and orchestra following by train.

But only for a while, Jacob was sure of that. His eyes closed in a moment of blissful remembrance. If he lived to be a hundred, nothing could dim the triumph of the previous night: old Monteforelli, that reprobate who knew every Mozart score by heart, hobbling backstage to throw his arms round him… the Comte d’Antibes throwing his diamond tie-pin on to the stage… But it was not only that, or the half-hour of applause, or the quick emotional handshake of Mendelov before that acid-penned critic went back to Vienna. It was the justification of a life spent in pursuit of an ideal. The journey that had begun with the visit of that tatty touring company playing Carmen had been justified last night.

What a week it had been altogether! Bubi was sunburnt and well, the Rhinemaiden’s nerves were such that she could probably sustain an entire performance of The Ring. And this morning Klasky had stolen off with his brief-case and a look in his eyes that Jacob, who had nursed many talents, had recognized with excitement. If this glorious week should also see the completion of Klasky’s opera!

Should he suggest to Farne that he install the company permanently at Pfaffenstein, or would it be best to keep a base in Vienna? Suppose he bought a little house in the village? They could keep a cow; Bubi would go to bed in time and wear lederhosen, mused Jacob, as the sound of Boris practising his yodelling floated in at the window. Everyone was out there waiting for the result of his interview. He glanced at his watch, but punctual to the minute Farne knocked and entered.

Guy, too, was sunburnt and fit. Since the previous night’s conversation with Nerine, he had taken a satisfactory amount of exercise: a pre-breakfast game of squash, tennis with one of his guests, then a ride in a neighbouring valley. Nevertheless, it was not the picture of a sporting gentleman relaxing on his estate that Guy suggested to Jacob, who felt rather that he was about to be interviewed by some beast of prey.

He rallied, however, and said, ‘Well, Herr Farne, you are satisfied, I think, eh?’

‘Yes. The performance was outstanding! I told you so last night. The interpretation was right, the balance, the detail too. I’ve never seen a better Magic Flute and I never will.’

He had got out his cheque book but even this object, so beautiful in Jacob’s eyes, did not deflect the impresario into hasty or impatient greed.

‘Of course, in this theatre, Figaro would be perfect. The Marriage of Figaro for your marriage.’ He waxed eloquent on the scoring, the ensemble writing of this most human and moving of operas. ‘Though of course it would be unwise to concentrate too much on Mozart because of competition with Salzburg. And in any case you may prefer something very light. Rossini, say… The Barber…

Once again he elaborated and only noticed after a while that Guy was silent. He had unscrewed his fountain-pen and was writing a cheque. ‘This is the balance of what I owe you. Will you see that it is correct?’

‘Yes,’ said Jacob, looking down. ‘It’s perfectly correct. Thank you.’

But for once money, so deeply a part of Jacob’s life, was not what he wanted to discuss. Indeed, Farne’s pragmatic and almost mercenary attitude shocked him a little. Genuinely, vociferously, Jacob was gripped by the vision of the music he and the Englishman would make here at Pfaffenstein.

‘Of course it would be possible, for the actual wedding, to stage a performance out of doors. On the lake, even, on a raft as in Boden. I don’t usually care for this because of standards and it will be difficult to persuade Klasky: the acoustics… the mosquitos… and he cannot swim. But if you wished—’

Guy had screwed up his pen, returned it to his pocket and straightened up. His voice when it came was harsh, his appearance more Mephistophelean than ever.

‘Let me make myself clear, Witzler. There will be no more opera staged here at Pfaffenstein… And no more music. Not for my wedding. Not ever.’

Jacob stared at him, sweat breaking out on his forehead. His ulcer, which he had hardly noticed during the last few days, bit agonizingly into his gut.

‘There was something wrong?’ he stammered. ‘Was it because Sarastro did not sing the E below stave? You see, I think what Mozart wanted there was not a trick but—’

‘I have told you,’ interrupted Guy, ‘the opera was perfect. That has nothing to do with it. My contract with your company is now terminated and it will not be renewed.’

The round little Jew sat down. He seemed suddenly to have shrunk, and one pudgy hand rubbed at his forehead as though to erase a pain.

‘Could one ask why?’ he said after a while.

‘That is my business, surely?’

Jacob nodded. ‘Yes…’ he said. ‘I’m sorry… Yes…’

Guy had walked to the turret window. He had dismissed hundreds of people in his time, blasted them and forgotten them. But he knew what he had bought when he bought the International Opera Company: the dedication, the ceaseless, gruelling work, the hopes…

He turned. ‘My fiancée doesn’t care for music,’ he said, his voice expressionless.

Jacob looked up in surprise. ‘But I thought… I thought it was because…’ He saw Guy’s face and fell silent.

‘Then you thought wrongly,’ said Guy silkily.

It was then that, seeking escape from Jacob’s arche-typally tortured-looking face, Guy turned back to stare out of the turret window. More keen-sighted even than Maxi’s valet, he saw the boat on the lake, saw the occupants surrounded by a gaggle of multi-coloured dogs… saw Tessa drop the tiller lines and lean over to kiss — with a tenderness undiminished by distance — the Prince of Spittau on the brow.

The news of Maxi’s engagement spread, like the good news from Aix to Ghent, with amazing speed. In the West Tower the arthritic Swan Princess, abandoning her telescope, managed to caper round the room and to embrace the aunts whose faces shone with relief and joy. They were presently joined by Monteforelli, the Archduke Sava and the Archduchess Frederica, and since the prince happened to have a bottle of champagne with him, a happy party was soon assembled and to the agitated barks of the pug, dynasties were cemented and wedding plans laid.

The Countess Waaltraut, pushing her mother across the courtyard, heard of Maxi’s successful courtship from the Uhlan captain with the wooden leg, who had heard it from Raisa Romola who had been sunbathing on the battlements and seen the kiss. The Comte d’An-tibes heard it from his valet, who heard it from the gardener who had been clipping the yew hedge on the terrace overhanging the lake.

The Littlest Heidi heard the news as it spread through the opera company, and managed to be glad for she was a girl with a good heart; David Tremayne, who heard it from Thisbe Purse, who heard it from the Archduchess Frederica’s maid, managed to be glad too for it appalled him to think that when she left here, Tessa would no longer have a home.

Guy Farne heard it from Nerine.

‘They’re engaged, Guy! Tessa and the Prince of Spittau! Isn’t it splendid news!’ And indeed, Nerine’s lovely face glowed with happiness. Not only was the princess leaving the castle for good but she was marrying someone else! No more dramatic entrances, no more of those friendly, intimate looks at Guy, those boring conversations about music from which Nerine had felt herself excluded.

‘Yes,’ said Guy. ‘I’d heard. Or rather seen. I’m sure they will suit each other excellently.’

He then excused himself to go to the gymnasium. His morning’s squash and tennis, the long ride, having naturally left him short of exercise, Guy now indulged in a ferocious bout of fencing with a young cavalry officer who, having taken on the Englishman out of politeness, found himself two hours later thoroughly trounced. It was as Guy was returning to his room, showered and sleek and unpleasantly vulpine looking, that he found the double doors of the theatre open and Witzler’s under wardrobe mistress carrying a wicker skip out to the waiting lorry.

The sight of her small figure in the same smock, packing up as though nothing had happened, as though she was still the unassuming child he had befriended in Vienna, made him suddenly choke with an almost blinding rage.

‘I have to congratulate you, then,’ he said, blocking her path. ‘And indeed you are most heartily to be congratulated. You certainly took me in, in a most impressive way. You know, I actually believed what you said.’

‘What I said?’ repeated Tessa, completely bewildered. She put down the basket and stared at him.

‘Your remarks about being a republican. About art making everybody equal. Doesn’t your own hypocrisy ever sicken you? All that rubbish about Schönbrunn: how constrained you were, how unhappy.’

‘I didn’t…’ But it seemed impossible to speak. The lump in her throat was too obtrusive — and anyway Guy was far too angry to hear a word she said.

‘No doubt you will find it amusing, but I actually believed you for a while. I thought you truly wanted to escape from the limitations of your upbringing. I thought you wanted to be free — that all this clap-trap of rank and ceremony meant nothing to you.’ He laughed, and it was an amazingly unattractive sound. ‘Yes, I believed you. I was quite touched. I even believed what you told me at Sachers.’

She flushed, staggered at his bad manners in referring to her confidence. ‘What… have I done?’ she managed to falter. ‘Why are you like this?’

‘Oh, you’ve done nothing. All is as it should be,’ he jeered. ‘Sixteen quarterings — or is it thirty-two? An impeccable lineage, rejoicing all round.’

‘I cannot help… my lineage.’

‘It doesn’t happen to be your lineage that I am referring to.’

But it was necessary now to curtail this interview before his mind registered what his eyes were already seeing: a weary child leaning her head against the side of the lorry as though the weight of it was suddenly too much for her to bear. Did it matter, after all, that she had succumbed to the pressure of her relatives? Maximilian was a fool but he was neither venal nor cruel.

He shrugged. ‘Well, I hope you’ll be happy,’ he said.

Boris, coming out a few minutes later, found Tessa still leaning against the lorry. Not crying, just standing there with the wicker basket lying at her feet.

‘Jesus!’ said Boris, looking at her face, and led her away.

Installed in Boris’s cubby-hole behind the stage, Tessa dutifully swallowed the scalding tea he brewed for her on his samovar, but when he handed her a saucer of yoghurt she managed a ghost of a smile and shook her head.

‘Thank you, you are very kind,’ she said carefully. ‘But I don’t think… I really want to live to be very old. You eat it, Boris.’

Boris, as he took the spoon from her, continued to stare at her in consternation. What was all this? Like everyone else he had heard about the events in the rowing-boat, but when she had come up from the lake Tessa had said nothing, just begun in her usual way to throw herself into her work, and no one in the company had ventured to congratulate her, waiting for the news to be official. Then Witzler had come with his bombshell: the news of Farne’s rejection and instructions that they were to pack and leave at once. Even then, in the misery and disappointment that had followed, the tears of the Rhinemaiden, the hurt and shock on the artists’ faces, Boris had held on to the idea that Tessa, at least, would be all right. But if being engaged to the Prince of Spittau was going to make her look like that…

‘You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to,’ he said now. ‘No one can force you.’

But Tessa had not really heard him, caught as she was in the toils of her private nightmare. A nightmare out of which she now visibly tried to lift herself, putting a hand on his arm to say, ‘It will be all right about the company, Boris, I’m sure. Herr Witzler’s so clever. He’ll work something out, you’ll see.’

‘Yes,’ said Boris to reassure her. But he knew rather more about the company’s finances than she did and his view of the future was bleak indeed. ‘I’ll never learn to yodel now,’ thought Boris, and began to eat.

An hour later, the farewell banquet was in full swing. A mood of particular elation and jollity was evident among the guests. The news of Putzerl’s engagement, along with the desire to eat and drink as much as possible before they had to depart and take up the burden of their lives again, kept them happily absorbed. Never had uniforms glittered so brightly, jokes been so deliciously risqué, flirtations so skilfully pursued.

Herr Farne, beside his lovely widow, seemed as everyone noted to be in particularly high spirits. Presently he rose to make a speech: witty, brilliant, of exactly the right length. He announced the date of his own wedding, at the end of October, thanked all those present for the pleasure of their company and with a gallant bow raised his glass to the health and happiness of ‘Absent Friends’.

‘Absent Friends!’ cried the guests, following suit, raising their glasses with meaningful glances and nudges at the two empty places on the long centre table with its priceless epergne, fluted napery and bowls of roses. For both the Prince of Spittau and the Princess of Pfaffenstein were absent from their usual places, a circumstance which the guests found both delightful and amusing.

‘Do you remember,’ whispered the Count of Winterthur to his portly wife, ‘how we crept away after we were engaged? Your Papa tried to find us but we were hiding away in the orangery?’

‘They’ll be in the woods somewhere, hand in hand,’ cooed the Archduchess Frederica, in a good mood for once.

Here she was partly correct. Maxi was in the woods, but not with Tessa. It was the Littlest Heidi who was cradled in his arms, the Littlest Heidi who soothed his hurt and promised to keep secret the news of his rejection until the guests had left and everyone was home again.

‘It’s the fuss,’ said the weary prince. ‘I just can’t face the fuss.’

‘I understand, Your Highness,’ said Heidi and did indeed keep her promise. And when she had comforted him in the only way she knew (and there is certainly no better) they spoke not of the future but of Tom Mix and Buck Jones and the incomparable Pearl White in The Perils of Pauline and Maxi, stroking the golden curls, was comforted and soothed.

For Tessa the way was harder. She had waited until everybody was at dinner before slipping into the deserted chapel, and now knelt at the altar rail with her head in her hands. In the light of the candles, the church sang with gold: gold on the haloes of the saints, gold on the ceiling, on the chalices and goblets on the altar. Gold soaring and swirling on the pillars, on the family crests decorating the pew ends, on the Virgin’s mantle, as though in the darkness someone was giving a great party for God.

‘Help me to bear it,’ prayed Tessa. With her shorn head, her smock, she might have been a lone shepherd boy come down from the hills. ‘Help me not to make a fuss. Help me not to let anyone see how I feel. Help me just to work hard — to work and to work and not to ask anything else. And please, God, keep them safe here, all of them.’

She rose and fetched three votive candles from the box. Carefully, she lit them and placed them in their holders. One for the aunts she was leaving and whom she loved. One for the people she had cared for here. And one other, the tallest, which she did not offer up even in her mind, knowing that God would understand.

There was nothing left to do now except pack a small bag, leave a note in her room and make her way to the station. There was a last train which stopped at Pfaffenstein Halt before crawling on to Neustadt. She would catch that and wait there for the milk train to Vienna. Nothing mattered now except to get away.

Thus Guy, waking next morning with a heavy head, looked out of the window at the gatehouse tower and frowned. What was it that was different? Of course — the bright flag, with its griffin, its lily, its crimson glove, was gone.