‘I was a Gypsy.’ Adila gleamed like Gypsy fire itself. ‘Titi was a shepherdess.’

‘And Jelly?’

‘A savage.’

‘Wearing… what, exactly?’

Adila’s laugh rang out like a trombone. ‘Wearing not very much at all!’

‘Herr Doktor Professor Schultheiss, darling.’ Jelly herself was at his elbow, beaming high voltage up into his face. ‘What is this about my savage costume?’

Ulli hoped she couldn’t sense him picturing her in what little there was of it. ‘I’ve been hearing the story of how your sisters met their husbands.’

Jelly’s skin glowed in the lamplight; he could see crow’s feet beside her eyes, and shadows beneath them, but that added complexity to her face rather than dimming its radiance. ‘Please, my dear.’ She pressed his arm with slender yet powerful fingers, like a tropical bird’s talons. ‘Let me get you something more to drink, and we must sit and talk.’

‘I would love something more to drink – thank you, Miss d’Arányi.’

‘Jelly, darling, Jelly as in yelling.’ She darted to the table and poured him the biggest glass of red wine he had seen since the stock-market crash. ‘Come with me to the Green Room? It’s quiet there.’

Ulli followed this luminous avian creature away from the crowded dining room, up some stairs and round some corners; here the sound of the party faded to quiet. The Green Room, he saw, was a type of library; on one side its shelves spilled over with classic literature, including several volumes that sat face forward, ready to be dipped into – Yeats, Tagore, Huxley. On the other side dwelt books on law, Italian art and architecture, and a number of faded, cloth-bound tomes that turned out to be Hungarian, mainly from the last century. A sizeable Chinese antique picture, with muted gold background and black brushwork, loomed out of one book-free space. The wall coverings were grass-green silk, the curtains too, and Jelly, arraying herself and her scarlet dress on a green chaise longue, seemed to him a flame that hovered over a lawn lightly enough to leave it unscorched. She patted the velvet beside her, smiling up at him. Ulli hesitated, for the merest quarter of a second wondering exactly what sort of invitation this was.

The answer struck him at the same moment: perhaps Jelly d’Arányi had no idea that her gesture could possibly be misconstrued by a healthy young man from a culture other than her innocent world of openness and warmth. It seemed to throw his reactions back into his face, where they demanded analysis, and told him that they’d been inspired by his own absolute, sinful, wishful thinking.

He sat down beside her and said, ‘Tell me about the Schumann.’