‘Leave it out, Poppa, of course we don’t have it, I don’t have it. In my position it’s just . . .’

‘We’ll never agree on that, old girl. You don’t have an eight-hour day, because you haven’t fought for it. And you don’t fight for it – oh, what the hell, I’m on holiday.’

‘Are you agitators allowed holidays too?’ asked Karlchen.

‘Anyway,’ the Princess continued, ‘exposé. When it’s done, he stops in the middle of the room – you know, Karlchen, my boss is terribly fat – stops in the middle of the room, looks at me with this strange expression and asks, Have you got a boyfriend? Yes, I say. Oh, he says, well there you are – and I thought you didn’t have one. Why not? I say. You don’t look as though, well, I mean . . . And gradually he comes out with it. He’s so alone, I can see . . . at that moment he has no one at all, and he’s had this girlfriend for years, but she’s gone off with someone else.’

Karlchen shook his head unhappily, was such a thing possible.

‘Well, and what did you say?’

‘You great twit – I said no.’

‘Oh?’

‘Oh! Should I have said yes?’

‘Well, who’s to say! A good job . . . Oh by the way, I saw a film . . .’

‘That’s where he gets all his culture from, Karlchen. Now would you get into an affair with your boss?’

Karlchen said he would never get into an affair with his boss.

‘It’s no good,’ the Princess said. ‘Men never understand. What would be the point? I’d have to share his worries like a wife, work like his secretary, and then, when he feels he’s safe, he’ll stop in the middle of somebody else’s room and ask her if she’s got a boyfriend . . . No thanks!’

‘And didn’t you think of me at all?’ I asked.

‘No,’ said the Princess, ‘I only start thinking of you if the man’s a possibility.’ We got up and walked down to the lake.

The castle slept, quiet and satisfied. Everywhere, there was a smell of water and of wood that had been lying too long in the sun, and of fish and ducks. We walked along the shore of the lake.

I enjoyed the other two; one was a friend. No, they were both friends – and I didn’t betray the woman for the man, as I had almost always done in the past; for when a man appeared, someone to talk to, then I dumped the woman, as though I hadn’t just slept with her; I gave her up, didn’t bother about her, and shamefully betrayed her to the first man who came along. Then she dropped me, and I wondered why.