Witzler and Klasky, who had come to supervise the fittings, frowned.

‘She’s as thin as a cat, too,’ said Boris. ‘I tell you, she’ll crack up if we aren’t careful.’

‘Is she ill, do you think?’ Jacob demanded.

‘No!’ Raisa’s eyes flashed. ‘It is badder zan zat, my friends. She is in lof!’

There was a stunned silence. Then, as her listeners pieced together their own vignettes of Tessa since the company’s return from Pfaffenstein, Klasky’s black, dishevelled head, Jacob’s bald one and Boris’s yellow skull nodded agreement.

‘Mein Gott!’ Jacob was shaken. Having failed to marry the nice Jewish girl selected by his mother, Jacob, though riddled with guilt, had found plenty of rewards with his Rhinemaiden. But this was something else.

‘We must protect her,’ said Boris. Years and years ago, when he was a small boy in Sofia, he had fallen over and grazed his knee. A small blonde girl in white knee socks had come up to him and said ‘Does it hurt?’ looking at him with wide, sad eyes. It had been a devastating experience, quite shattering, and in no way connected with the life he now shared with a typist in a flat in Ottakring.

Klasky’s exopthalmic eyes bulged even more violently than usual. That his patroness should be taken in this way was deplorable. Screwing up his Magyar countenance, he remembered suddenly a girl with chestnut pigtails who had sat next to him at the Academy of Music in Budapest. Klasky had been precocious and attended the harmony class while still in shorts. The impact of the fronded end of Ildi’s pigtail on his bare thigh had been quite terrible, and he had suffered agonies of love for a whole year. Nothing so painful had ever happened to him again.

‘I vill make zo zat lazy porkling, Zia, bring to me my wrapping robe,’ said Raisa, referring to her lethargic dresser. ‘Zen Tessa must not ’ear me zink “Adio del pas-sato” — in vich I am never flat!’

‘I’ll keep her down in the laundry room in Act One of Bohème,’ said Frau Pollack. ‘One of the stage-hands can blow out Mimi’s candle.’

But even as they prepared to protect Tessa from the pangs of music, the question that Klasky now asked was in all their minds.

‘But with whom is she in love? It can’t be the Prince of Spittau. Everyone knows he spent the whole time trying to propose to her.’

The deepest of gloom had spread over Jacob’s face. He was remembering the matter of Anita’s… his own idea of putting Tessa in a ballet.

‘I think I know,’ he said ponderously. ‘But if I’m right, it’s a bad business. A very bad business indeed.’

And he told them…

15

On a particularly hot and stuffy day towards the end of July, Guy, leaving the Treasury early for once and strolling down the Schubertring, was halted by the sight of a large photograph in a house agent’s window.

He passed this way frequently and was familiar with the picture of Malk, towering dramatically over the Danube and bearing, underneath, a wholly imaginary account of its amenities prepared by Countess Waal-traut’s mother. He had noticed the yellowing portrait of the Archduchess Frederica’s leaning palace at Potzerhofen, and registered that no purchaser had yet been found for Schloss Landsberg, near Graz, which was as well since the Archduke Sava was holed up in its coachhouse with his bear.

But the castle which now had pride of place in the agent’s window was new to him: a long, low, stuccoed edifice, apparently afloat on a reedy lake, one of its towers obscured by a large and moulting swan.

FOR SALE

SCHLOSS SPITTAU

he read, and cast his eyes down the notice informing him of the salubrious situation, historical associations and excellent facilities for water sports which awaited the fortunate purchaser.

Guy stared at the window, frowning. What the devil? Surely it was to save his decaying Wasserburg that the prince had become engaged to Tessa?

He had begun to turn away, still puzzling, when a figure shot out of the agent’s door and bounced up to him.

‘Thought it was you!’ said the Prince of Spittau with satisfaction. ‘Saw you from the inside.’

Nothing had been able to erase from Maxi’s mind the conviction that Guy was deeply devoted to him. Beaming, pumping the Englishman’s hand, he said, ‘Have to come up to Vienna a lot these days on business. Pretty hopeless, though.’ He turned to survey the portrait of his ancestral home. ‘It’s been up for sale for a fortnight and they haven’t even had a nibble.’

Guy commiserated but said, ‘Why on earth are you selling? I thought Tessa was bringing you enough to do it up. Doesn’t she care for the place?’

‘Oh, she cares for it all right. Tessa’s very fond of Spittau, always was. Likes the frogs and all those things. Fond of the people, too. And the dogs, of course. She offered me some money to do the roof, but of course I couldn’t take it. If she’d been going to marry me it would have been different, but a man’s got his pride.’

Guy stared at him. ‘What on earth do you mean? Surely you and Tessa are engaged to be married?’

‘No, we aren’t.’

‘But everybody—’

‘Everybody,’ said Maxi, with unaccustomed asperity, ‘seems to have been watching out of some telescope or other and saw Tessa give me a kiss. But it was just her way of saying she was sorry. I’m absolutely sick of people coming up and congratulating me.’

‘Yes, I can see that.’ An image of Tessa leaning against the lorry, white and silent, while he upbraided her, rose up before him. He dismissed it and said, ‘What’s she doing, then?’

‘Well, that’s just it. She’s financing that blasted Hungarian, and if I’d known—’

‘You mean she’s living with Klasky?’ said Guy, and at his voice Maxi looked up, his forehead wrinkled. What was the matter with the chap? He was supposed to be so cool and clever.

The prince shook his head. ‘She’s back with Witzler’s company and she’s supporting this opera about…’ But at the thought of what Fricassée was about, he gave up. ‘You’ve never heard such stuff. Railway porters and engine-greasers with fits, and music like a lot of cats with a throat disease. Got poor Little Heidi in a boiler suit—’ But here the prince broke off, for as a matter of fact Heidi in dungarees with a spanner had looked quite peculiarly ravishing. ‘And Tessa’s paying for it all. Does nothing but sign cheques all day long and looks as peaked as a starved rat, and if you tell her she’s a fool, she just bites off your head and says it’s a privilege to serve art and people like us ought to do it.’

‘Oh, my God!’ said Guy.

‘That’s exactly it,’ agreed Maxi. ‘My uncle ruined himself with a ballet company, and opera’s a damn sight worse. They say Witzler’s in all sorts of trouble. Borrowed like mad because he thought you were going to set him up at Pfaffenstein and now they’re closing in on him. Shouldn’t be surprised if they don’t all end up in jail, and Tessa along with them, and what Mother will say then…’

Guy was standing perfectly still, staring down at the contours of the paving stones.

‘Fortunately, she’s left half her money in trust for her aunts,’ Maxi continued, ‘so she’ll get that when they die. But if I’d known what she was going to do, I’ll be damned if I wouldn’t have let her repair the roof. At least she would have had somewhere to come to if she was in trouble.’

Guy lifted his head. ‘Would you still marry her, even now? Even if she loses all her share of the money?’

Maxi flushed. ‘Certainly I would. I’d marry Putzerl any time. I’m dashed fond of her. If you’ve got Putzerl in a boat you don’t need a—’

But Guy, unequal to hearing about Putzerl’s ability to imitate a call duck, now interrupted him to say, ‘You owned a number of other properties, didn’t you? Places that were confiscated by the Allies. Where were they?’

‘Well, there was one at Hammerfelden, that’s near Kiel; and there was Pstattin, on the Oder, in Pomerania. The palace here in the Himmelgasse was sold by my father before the war, unfortunately.’

Guy shook his head. ‘We won’t get any change out of Berlin. Wasn’t there anything in the Affiliated Zones? Alsace-Lorraine? Trieste? Somewhere outside the direct military areas?’

‘There was a chateau in Alsace,’ Maxi admitted. The Chateau d’Arboras. Quite a small place — not more than eighty rooms, I’d say, but the land was good. About twenty thousand hectares, mostly vineyards. We used to make a very decent sort of wine.’

‘And you’ve never claimed compensation from the Land Redistribution Trust in Strasbourg?’

Maxi shook his head. ‘I asked our lawyers if anything could be done, but they said it was hopeless.’

‘Who are they?’

‘Schweinhofer and Brillerman, in the Kohlmarkt. They’re a very old firm.’

‘Old, idle and useless,’ said Guy tersely. He had taken out his notebook and begun to write. ‘You’ve got a chance, I’d say quite a good one. You’ll have to plead loss of livelihood but the vineyards will come in handy there. Take this to Hermann Rattinger at Number 12, Borseplatz, and tell him to look particularly at paragraph 8 in section 15. Don’t let anyone except Rattinger touch it.’ He looked up and saw Maxi’s face contorted by the effort of taking in so much information. ‘I’ll give him a ring myself, tomorrow. You won’t get much, but if you can do the necessary repairs you ought to get by and when your mother dies I dare say you’ll find something to do with the place — run it as a hotel or something. None of us can look too far ahead with the hens’ breakfast they’ve made of the Peace Treaty.’

He tore the leaf out of his notebook, handed it to Maxi and ruthlessly cutting down the prince’s fulsome expressions of gratitude, strode away down the Ring.

Maxi, left behind on the pavement, was a happy man. The possibility of a little bit of cash, coupled with Guy’s casual assumption that the Swan Princess would not live for ever, produced a feeling of light-headedness in the prince. First thing tomorrow, he would present himself at the address that Guy had written down for him. Now, however, he strolled at a leisurely pace to a quiet street near the Danube canal, where presently he knocked at the door of a modest Biedemayer house and was taken through into a courtyard and up some wooden steps to a little apartment which, in the past few weeks, had become home to him.

And there, among the plump cushions and teddy-bears and ornamental feathers in shell-encrusted jars which Heidi Schlumberger had lovingly collected, lulled by the hooting of the tugboats which came to them through the closed green shutters, the prince and his little dancer gave way to their unquenchable compatibility.

The heat of August defeated even Nerine’s passion for shopping. She returned to Pfaffenstein and Guy, though he kept his suite at Sachers, came with her.

They found the West Tower empty except for Tessa’s old nurse, for the Duchess and the Margravine, leaving a letter of gratitude for Guy, had moved to Vienna to make a home for their niece. Nerine was delighted at their departure and Guy, though he missed the old ladies, shared her relief, for he wanted Tessa back at Pfaffenstein no more than his fiancée did.

He was, in any case, still fiendishly busy. Though the Austrian Parliament was in recess, officials continued to come from the Treasury, some remaining as house guests, and there were long sessions in the library preparing the final drafts of the immensely complicated documents they would present in Geneva. When Guy did emerge from the interminable, stuffy meetings, he took exercise, a point on which Morgan happened to comment when he met David Tremayne returning from the squash court before dinner.

‘Been playin’ ’im again, ’ave you?’ Morgan enquired, anointing the Hispano-Suiza with a polish he mixed to a secret recipe of his own.

David nodded. ‘Got thoroughly beaten, of course. He’s doing a work-out in the gym now.’

Morgan, still polishing, nodded. ‘Taking a lot of exercise, is Mr Farne. Yes, a lot of exercise. Mind you, he’s a man who’s always kept himself fit.’

‘But not as fit as this?’ prompted David. Morgan had been Guy’s batman in the war and knew him as well as any man.

‘Oh, I dunno. ’e ’as patches. I remember after Passchendaele… Young Whittaker got ’is chips then and Mr Farne thought ’e should ’ave got ’im out. Well, ’e did; ’e went over the line and brought ’im back but there wasn’t much to bring back. We went on leave after that and Mr Farne took a lot of exercise then. Squash, tennis, work with the dumb-bells oh, yes, he was very fit that summer. And, of course, when we went up to Newcastle because Mrs Hodge was in ’ospital. Peritonitis, it was, and they got to ’er late because she was looking after a neighbour’s little girl and didn’t like to say she felt poorly. Touch and go it was, for a week, and Mr Farne got ’imself very fit then. Oh, yes. Five ’undred lengths in the swimming baths and beat ’is old fencing master with the sabres. And went up those bloomin’ Cheviots like a bat in hell — covered in snow they were, too. It’s nothing unusual for Mr Farne to take a lot of exercise.’