‘Puncturing holes in the paper? That was just a stunt.’ Charlotte turned her glass round in circles then drank her beer. The thing about Charlotte was that she could match you pint for pint. It was always fun to drink with her. ‘You want everything to be beautiful. It means you can’t fail.’

‘Yes, yes, I’ve heard that before.’

‘Doesn’t mean you actually listen,’ she said, tugging at one of my earlobes. ‘How is it,’ she said, trying to read my gaze, ‘you’re eighteen and yet such a tired old dog?’

Outside the trees were thrashing about in the February wind that whistled against the door. A flag of newspaper flew against the mullioned window, then flew off again. Weeks ago, the fountain had iced over, and the wishing coins had been frozen in disorder.

‘Can I blame the war?’

‘You certainly cannot,’ she said.

‘Excuse me.’ The man’s voice made me turn. ‘Sorry. I don’t want to interrupt.’ Sitting behind me at the bar was a bald man, quite fat. The fingers around his glass were so blunt they looked sawn off at the knuckle. He wore a long jacket which came over the seat of his chair, just like the one my father wore at work.

‘Yes?’

When he stood his height came as something of a surprise; his frame made me think he’d be a squat man. ‘I’m interested in your dilemma. Though I didn’t mean to overhear. I run a studio of painters. Up at the beech forest, in an old cabinet studio.’

‘That’s nice,’ I said, because I didn’t know what else to say.

‘We make big oil paintings on commission. Rural landscapes. Allegorical scenes, and mythological, too. The theme is chosen by the client, then we put them together. Meadows, farmhouses, sheep, girls, that kind of thing.’

‘Ah yes. Blut und Boden, and all that?’ said Charlotte.

‘No,’ he said, and he gave her a look that said he did not need to solicit the opinion of women. ‘It’s whatever the client wants. The sacking of Troy, for example, but also the Prussian plains at sunset.’ He gave me his card. ‘You said there’s no chance to paint at the Bauhaus. Well, if you want to paint, and want to be paid to paint, come to the studio. You’d be welcome.’ The man assessed me from head to toe, as if sizing me up for a uniform. ‘I pay a good wage to a decent painter.’

‘What’s a good wage?’

‘Thousands. Tens of thousands. Whatever the day decides to do with money, I keep up. You could try a night shift; fit it in around school.’

The address on the card showed his studio was in the part of the beech forest nearest the city, on the road west.