Magic Flutes

Nerine was in half-mourning, her raven hair piled high under a plumed velvet hat. She had filled out, there were now a few lines round her lovely eyes, but Guy, as he gazed at her, was gazing at his youth.

She was pleased to see him, pleased and surprised, she made that clear, having no idea what had become of him. Her own story was sad: marriage to the son of a baronet who should have inherited a title and a comfortable life as a landowner – and had instead died by slow degrees of a wound received in Flanders.

‘So I’m back home,’ said Nerine, lifting a face full of courage and resignation to his. ‘And you, Guy? How are you?’

‘I’m just off to Vienna, as a matter of fact,’ said Guy, when he could trust his voice again.

‘Ah, Vienna! I was so happy there! Do you remember . . . ?’ Guy remembered.

Nerine’s father was dead. Her brother had speculated unwisely. In the villa at Twickenham, Guy, though he kept his wealth a secret, was now a welcome guest. When he left for Austria, it was with Nerine’s promise to join him, with her brother, as soon as she was out of mourning. Though nothing could be settled until then, he had returned to Vienna as a man who, against all expectations, was to achieve his heart’s desire.

3

Though she was both emancipated and in a hurry, Tessa began the day by brushing, with three hundred regular strokes, her almost knee-length, toffee-coloured hair. Her country upbringing had been strict and even though her glorious new life in Vienna was now devoted to the service of art in general and opera in particular, she found it hard to break the habits of her childhood. Moreover, it was true that lacking the height, the Rubenesque and potentially heaving bosom and the Roman nose she so desperately craved, she could find a certain consolation in the rich, fawn tresses which she could most comfortably have sat on had her employer, Jacob Witzler, ever given her the time.

Whether Tessa would have appeared on the payroll of the International Opera Company as under wardrobe mistress, assistant lighting engineer, deputy wigmaker, A.S.M., prompter or errand girl, remained a theoretical question since she did not, in fact, get any pay. That it was an inestimable privilege to be allowed to work in the opera house and learn her craft, Tessa, her auburn eyes burning with artistic fervour, had assured Herr Witzler – a view which he entirely shared and had in fact suggested to her in the first place. And though she did not actually have any money to speak of, it had all worked out marvellously because Frau Witzler, a former Rhinemaiden and spear-carrying soprano of distinction, had found a family in the Wipplingerstrasse who, in exchange for a little help with their three young children, had offered Tessa one of the old servants’ attics. A beautiful room, she thought it, with its views over the roofs of the Inner City and the soaring spire of the Stefansdom.

Now she quickly braided and pinned her hair, washed her hands and face, dressed in her working smock of unbleached linen, and ran downstairs to where the three infant Kugelheimers in their cots greeted her with cries of satisfaction.

During the next half-hour she changed the baby, lugged the three-year-old Klara on to the gigantic, rose-adorned chamber-pot, ran into the kitchen to heat some milk, dressed the four-year-old Franzerl, made coffee for Frau Kugelheimer – and, finally, grabbing a letter from the postman which she thrust unread into her pocket, was safely out into the street.

It was just growing light, the city lifting itself out of sleep. A row of tiny choristers walked across the cobbles to sing Mass in the Peterskirche; the pigeons on the Plague Memorial, safe again after years of being potted at by hungry citizens, began to preen themselves for the day. A baker, pulling up his shutters, called ‘Grüss Gott!’ and Tessa gave him a smile of such radiance that he stood watching her like a man warming himself in a sudden shaft of sun until she turned into the Kärntner-strasse. It never failed her, this sense of awe and wonder at belonging . . . at working here in this city which had been Schubert’s and Mozart’s, and now was hers.