No!’ Nerine was definite about that. ‘Guy thinks it’s the biggest treat in the world to sit next to Martha Hodge at dinner. He put the Austrian Foreign Minister there, specially, when he came last week.’

‘Really?’ Aunt Dorothy was increasingly disturbed by this turn of events. ‘You see, dear, it’s all right for foreigners — they probably wouldn’t notice her accent, though how one could fail to… Or her lapse with the finger bowls. But, after all, Pfaffenstein is only a stage, isn’t it? In the end, to take your place in real society, you’ll have to return to England. And if this Hodge person has become accustomed to living as one of the family you will find acceptance very hard to come by, especially in view of—’

Here she paused, unable to put into words the matter of the Fish Quay, the piece of sacking, and what she referred to as ‘All that’.

‘Yes, I see what you mean. I’ve worried about it myself, Aunt Dorothy. But if one dares to criticize her, Guy just flies off the handle.’

‘My dear, there’s no need to criticize her, that would be quite wrong. We must just make her see, without any rancour, that it would be best for everyone if—’

She broke off as a plump, homely figure appeared in the doorway. Arthur, who had instinctively risen at the sight of a woman, was frowned down by Uncle Victor and sank shamefacedly back on to the couch.

Watched in silence by everyone in the room, Martha said good evening, moved over to a low chair by the window and took out the sock she was proudly knitting with the wool hooked over the left finger as demonstrated by Frau Keller.

‘It’s a grand evening an’ all,’ she said pleasantly. ‘I never seen stars like the ones ’ere. Not that you can see much doon our way, what with all the muck blowin’ off the chimneys.’

No one answered and Martha lifted her head. For a moment her kind face puckered and a look of grief, as unalloyed as it was unmistakable, appeared in her soft, grey eyes. Then she bent again to her task.

An hour later she rolled up her wool, said good night and went to her room. Not a single word had been addressed to her all evening. The education of Martha Hodge, which was to have such far-reaching consequences, had begun.

In the days that followed the Crofts, led by Aunt Dorothy, avoided no opportunity of snubbing Martha. They stopped talking the moment she entered the room, raised their eyebrows when she joined them at table and greeted with pitying smiles her cheerful reports of events in the village.

Nerine joined dutifully in this policy of humiliation, but she found herself in a quandary, for she had discovered in this plainly dressed, working-class woman, an unexpected talent. Three days earlier, crossing the courtyard fresh from her afternoon rest, she had come upon Martha who had spent a most satisfactory afternoon teaching the innkeeper’s wife how to bake a ‘Singin’ Hinny’, and greeted her future daughter-in-law with a quick, involuntary shake of the head.

‘What is it?’ said Nerine sharply.

‘Well, love,’ said Martha, facing it out, ‘it’s the way that scarf’s knotted. The suit’s grand — that soft grey sets you off a treat — but the neckline’s too fussy with that knot right in the middle. Maybe if you was to wear it open, sort of casual like, with the scarf just folded in a bit…’

‘Yes,’ said Nerine quickly. ‘I’ve been worried myself. Come upstairs.’

There followed many absorbing sessions in Nerine’s bedroom, for Pooley, usually so jealous, took to Martha Hodge at once. Together they pored over fashion magazines, selected braids and trimmings, pondered the precise tilt of a hat. Martha’s taste was unerring, her attention inexhaustible, but she was not afraid to speak her mind and Nerine, parading up and down in her trousseau, listened to her suggestions with eager interest. If only she had been a servant, thought Nerine, how easy it would be.

As for Martha, who endured with gentle dignity the snubs and pinpricks she had to face downstairs, she found these sessions hard to bear. In her own way she understood that Nerine’s greed and self-absorption were akin to those of an artist or composer who will sacrifice everything and everyone in the service of his own gift, only Nerine’s gift was her own beauty. She also realized that since there was nothing evil or vicious in this girl which would sicken Guy and thus release him, he was doomed.

‘I go to Schalk!’ pronounced Raisa, sitting on the bed shaped like a mouth in which she would never, now, be ravished by the capitalist mill-owner. But her voice was forlorn and a tear forced itself out of her greedy almond eye and rolled down her cheek.

Disaster had struck the International Opera Company. Two weeks earlier, the owners of the theatre had given Jacob an ultimatum. In view of Herr Witzler’s unsatisfactory record in the past, they were only willing to renew the lease — at a considerably increased rent, of course — if Herr Witzler could pay them six months’ rent in advance. Failing this, they intended to offer the tenancy to Herr Kitzbuhler who, for a long time, had been looking for a theatre in which to play farce.

It was the cheque for this sum — which Tessa had insisted on writing — that had been returned three days earlier, with the information that Her Highness’s credit with the Bank of Austria was now officially exhausted.

The incident led to a spate of calamities. Two black-clad gentlemen arrived in Witzler’s office, claiming to represent the Princess of Pfaffenstein, and informed him that if there were any more attempts to obtain money from Her Highness an action would be brought against him for exerting pressure on a minor. Jacob’s creditors closed ranks and the owners of the theatre wrote and ordered him to vacate the premises on the twenty-first of October, the date scheduled for the première of Fricassée.

Now the company was assembled on the stage of the theatre in a tableau vivant of despair. Outside, the newspapermen waited like piranhas, but inside it was silent and dark. The phone, with its endless, doom-filled shrilling, had been cut off earlier in the day; the great arc lamps, lined up for a lighting rehearsal of Fricassée, were extinguished.

‘Cheer up, ’ighness,’ said one of the stage-hands, giving Tessa’s shoulder a squeeze. ‘It aint your fault. You’ve bin a bloomin’ marvel!’

‘Yes, truly,’ said the Littlest Heidi, forgetting her own troubles in order to comfort her friend. ‘You’re a heroine.’

But Tessa, perched like a disconsolate fledgling on a luggage trolley, was beyond comfort. Outwardly silent, inwardly she seethed with rage and frustration. If only she had been of age… if she had been just one year older, she could have defeated the beastly lawyers. There were still a few securities she could have sold. She could have kept going somehow till Fricassée redeemed their fortunes. As it was, she had failed art, her friends, everything…

Jacob, white with dyspepsia and guilt, paced between the scaffolding, occasionally coming to stand before his under wardrobe mistress like a whipped spaniel. Even now, the bailiffs were probably stripping his villa in Hitzing; prison was a distinct possibility, but he was used to it whereas Tessa…

The blow was shattering for everyone. Raisa knew perfectly well that she could not go to Schalk, who had his own stable of dazzling sopranos; nor would Pino be welcome at La Scala as he had frequently boasted. The stage-hands and technicians, close enough to the breadline at the best of times, faced almost certain unemployment. Yet everyone now set themselves to comfort Tessa.

‘Never will we forget your sacrifice!’ declared the Rhinemaiden. She spoke with authority on the subject, for her own pearls lay unredeemed in the pawn shop in the Dorotheagasse.

‘Here, have a piece of this,’ said Boris, handing her half his gherkin sandwich. ‘I’ve told you, you don’t eat enough.’

Bubi, who had been sitting at Tessa’s feet, now raised his head. He had commandeered Pino’s peaked porter’s cap and was engaged in an engrossing game of tram conductors with Tessa’s cheque stubs for tickets, but it had become clear to him that he had a contribution to make.

‘Bubi loves Tessa,’ he announced. ‘Bubi loves Tessa an awful lot.’ He pondered. ‘More than vanilla kipferl, Bubi loves Tessa.’

But as Tessa, managing to smile, replied in kind, there came a clarion call from Raisa.

‘Ver is beink Zoltan?’ she enquired, in a voice throbbing with portent.

‘Yes, where is Klasky?’

The conductor had stridden purposefully from the theatre at midday, promising to return quickly, but that had been many hours ago.

‘I zink per’aps ’e ’as shooted into ’imself,’ said Raisa, not without a certain satisfaction.

‘Oh, my God!’ Jacob rushed towards the phone, then remembered that it had been cut off. That Klasky had done himself some kind of injury was not impossible. To see the masterpiece he had created with such anguish brought to naught was quite enough to unhinge this sensitive genius with his wild Magyar blood.

‘Go on! Klasky couldn’t shoot a barn door from ten centimetres away,’ said the first flautist whose vendetta against the Hungarian, originating in a dispute about tempi in Meistersinger, was now in its fifth year.

‘Shall I go round to his house?’ said Tessa anxiously, slipping down from the trolley. ‘It wouldn’t take long.’

But at that moment, entering dramatically from stage left, Klasky himself appeared.

One glance at his wild hair, his burning countenance, made it clear that the composer of Fricassée had been through some ultimate and purging experience, some dark night of the soul, from which he had now emerged to pursue a high and noble task.