It took a minute for the cab containing Ulli, Tovey and the Harvey-Webb sisters to turn in to Netherton Grove, because another car was backing out of it. The street was a cul-de-sac, but easy to mistake for a thoroughfare between the Fulham Road and the King’s Road. When they pulled up outside No. 10, Ulli could see this was the ideal house for these extraordinary beings. It was an outlandish terracotta colour, and it sported a fake Renaissance citadel effect, a bit like a bell tower. Hungarians trying to be Italian in Chelsea!

Inside, the party gobbled him up into a stew of languages and accents, together with the dog barking and a gramophone working its way through a stack of dance-band records. ‘It has its place,’ Adila told him. Her bluebell eyes clear and direct, she was as striking as her sister, in a wholly different way: fairy godmother rather than elfin pixie. And a nurturing fairy godmother, at that: she was holding out towards him a huge silver bowl of sausages. Ulli tasted one; it was surprisingly good. ‘Germanic food in honour of you and Mozart,’ Tovey joked, behind him. Ulli couldn’t work out whether or not he meant it. English irony sometimes eluded him.

The table was heaped with delights: the best potato salad he had tasted since his mother’s, a big pot of Hungarian goulash rippled with dark red paprika; rice to go with it; a cold ham for those who preferred to avoid such exotic flavours.

‘I don’t know where in the world she manages to get that Hungarian paprika,’ remarked Myra Hess, smiling politely at Ulli over her plate.

‘It really is amazing,’ Ulli agreed. ‘Madame Hess, I am a great admirer of yours. I’m Ulrich Schultheiss from Schott’s in Mainz… ’

‘So I gathered.’ Myra paused, munching goulash. ‘Well, there it is, there it is,’ she said eventually. ‘I understand I can no longer go to Germany. Isn’t that strange, when here people often assume I am German myself? It seems such a shame that music and musicians must be caught up in political matters. But shall we simply hope the situation over there comes to a swift close?’

‘I hope so.’ Ulli cringed with embarrassment about his home country, especially since its evils could be met with such elegance; the pianist’s manner was as polished as the British royal family’s. ‘Madame Hess, I can’t tell you how… how much I love your playing.’ He wanted to say, ‘How sorry I am about what’s happening in Germany,’ yet did not dare to. At home, in a party like this – not that there were many parties exactly like this – you wouldn’t know who might overhear, or how dangerous it would be if they did. With distance, understanding struck him of how deeply this state of affairs had seeped into him.