‘Isn’t it possible,’ said Laura, ‘that the people thought if they behaved otherwise they might go the way of Jewish citizens?’

A sardonic smile curled Kurt’s lips. ‘That has always been the excuse and it has suited Jews who returned there, my parents included, to accept it. But I ask you now, did the French toss flowers at those who occupied France, as the tanks rumbled by on the Champs-Elysées?

‘France is but one example. And those who did would have been labelled collaborators and made to pay for it after the war. Austria, on the other hand, was by some means recorded as a victim despite the joyful acquiescence we are discussing. And for the people now to say they will not have Waldheim besmirched—’

‘They’re not all taking that attitude,’ Janis corrected Kurt.

‘But should they elect him president, it would be for me an admission of their own guilt as a nation.’

‘That was quite an impassioned speech, Kurt,’ said Jake.

‘Perhaps because it is a matter about which I, other young Austrians also, and not all of them Jewish, am greatly concerned.’

‘Can you spare some of Kurt’s passion, Janis?’ Jeremy said with a grin.

She hurled a cushion at him. ‘It will be heaven help the girl you fall in love with!’

‘Janis and I,’ said Kurt, ‘shall warn her not to fall in love with you.’

They were seated contentedly hand in hand on the sofa and exchanged a radiant glance.

But when, thought Laura, would romance not be enough for them and sex become an urgency? Jake would not countenance Janis’s marrying while still a student, fond though he had grown of Kurt. If and when they decided to live together – well, Jake’s reaction to that was something Laura preferred not to contemplate.

There was too the uneasy prospect of Janis’s living in Vienna if she married Kurt. Among people like those who had told the TV interviewer that they supported Waldheim.

Laura would not let herself envisage there ever again being a Hitlerite manifestation of anti-Semitism. But if I were Austrian, I might now think it wise to up and run. If for no other reason than I wouldn’t want to live my life uncertain if my next-door-neighbours were privately Jew-haters.

Laura was then forcibly reminded of what was manifesting itself in her own country.

‘Kurt and I haven’t told you yet,’ said Janis, ‘about something utterly disgusting we learned at the meeting we were at last night. A boy at one of the northern polytechnics had dog dirt put through his letter-box – as if the swastika painted on his flat door wasn’t enough!’

‘I’m glad you didn’t tell us while we were eating dinner,’ said Jeremy.

Then the telephone shrilled in the hall and he went to answer it.

‘If it’s for me, I’m not in,’ Jake called to him.