Ibbotson, Eva - Magic Flutes

‘Jolly good show, this,’ said a captain of the Uhlans who was stranded, on account of a wooden leg, beside the Bath chair of Waaltraut’s mother. ‘Everything being done just as it should be. And the fellow seems to know how to behave too.’

The gouty old countess nodded. ‘If he hadn’t been engaged,’ she said, ‘I might almost have let Waaltraut demean herself.’

‘Oh, I say, no!’ said the Uhlan, shocked.

David Tremayne, standing unobtrusively by the great double doors, keeping an eye on everything, was satisfied. There had been numerous problems, and even this afternoon the director of the opera company had pursued him with some complaint about a missing wardrobe mistress – a complaint which David found hard to take seriously. Surely massive Viennese sewing ladies did not vanish into thin air? But now everything felt right. Farne’s guests were clearly having the time of their lives and Farne himself, waltzing with the lovely widow, must surely tonight be the happiest of men? How beautiful she was – staggeringly so, thought David – and turned to look yet again at the Princess of Pfaffenstein.

Already it seemed incredible to him that when she had first appeared in the aunts’ Tower Room just before the reception, sleepy and bewildered, he had been disappointed. From the talk which had preceded her, he had imagined someone sweetly pretty with curls and dimples, and the grave, narrow little face and shorn head had come as a shock. Then she had hugged the aunts and smiled at them and it was as though a flame had been lit inside her. Long before her old nurse had come and led her away, protesting, to dress, he had not imagined how she could look otherwise.

Since then he had admired, increasingly, her determination to stay out of the limelight. She had refused to let the band serenade her for her birthday, and had left the ballroom on some pretext before the first dance so that Mrs Hurlingham and Guy could open the ball alone. Not that it helped, thought David. Those dotty aristocrats, one and all, seemed to adore her.

Now he watched as she deposited her ancient, creaking kinsman in a gold-backed chair beside her aunts – and was immediately claimed by the man everyone said she was going to marry, the Prince of Spittau.

‘Nice tune, isn’t it?’ said Maxi happily, as the band broke into yet another waltz.

‘Yes,’ said Tessa. ‘Though I must say, Maxi, I would simply love to Charleston.’

‘To Charleston! Can you?’ Maxi was shocked. No wonder his mother worried about Putzerl!

‘A bit. Some friends took me to a jazz club and they taught me.’

But Maxi was bent on business. The music was heady and he would have been foolish not to know that in his sky-blue tunic and white trousers piped in red, he was looking his best. If he could propose and be accepted now, even without the dogs, he could really settle down and enjoy the house party.

‘They should make a very suitable couple, shouldn’t they?’ said Nerine as Maxi and Tessa drew level. Her rage at Tessa’s entry had been soothed by Arthur, who had informed her that the Princess was soon to be removed, and permanently, to the Prince of Spittau’s Wasserburg. ‘The prince so handsome and she – thanks to you – so rich.’

‘She won’t have all that much,’ said Guy. ‘Her father left a pile of debts.’ Though not naturally an ostentatious dancer, he now performed a chain of double reverse-turns which took them rapidly to the other end of the ballroom.

‘Putzerl, you know how fond I’ve always been of you,’ Maxi began.

‘And I of you, Maxi.’

Oh, please, not tonight, thought Tessa. My head aches so much and I just can’t face hurting him again. It seemed to her that the ball had been going on for ever and Guy had not spoken a single word to her all evening, had not once glanced her way.

But it looked as though there was no way of avoiding it. Maxi had tightened his arm and his duelling scar was pulsating, always a sign of deep emotion. There was no doubt about it, he was going to propose.

‘Putzerl, don’t you think you could—’

The prince was halted by a scuffle and the sound of laughter. Then, eluding two flunkeys in crimson and green, a tiny boy in awesomely striped pyjamas tottered barefoot into the ballroom and stopped, blinking in the light of the chandeliers.

Bubi, having gained his objective, now took stock. The people were there, and the music, but where were the men with the hammers, where the rows of seats? And where was she?

A lady in a red dress tried to seize him but Bubi, used to nipping between scene-shifters, easily wriggled free. The laughter was growing now; more and more dancers had stopped and now the music, too, came to an end.

Had he made a mistake? Bubi’s lower lip jutted out, began to tremble . . .

‘Bubi!’

In an instant the little boy’s face was transformed. Joy and relief shone in the coal-black eyes. It was her voice. She was here! And then she was bending over him and as she picked him up and he put his arms round her, he heard the words he longed above all others to hear.

‘You’ve got pyjamas, Bubi,’ said Tessa, her voice full of awe. ‘Real, proper, grown-up, striped pyjamas!’

Thus the Rhinemaiden, alerted by some sixth sense to her son’s disappearance and making a Wagnerian entrance, a shawl over her nightdress, put aside the images of Bubi impaled on iron spikes or drowned in a dark well, and saw him safe in the arms of a slim girl in white satin, light dancing from the tiara on her lovingly bent head . . .

And saw, too, that the search for their under wardrobe mistress had ended.

Tessa slept badly the night after the ball and not because Bubi, refusing to be parted from her, shared her bed in the turret in the West Tower.

Shortly before daybreak she rose, carried the still-sleeping child to her nurse next door and extracted the working smock which the old woman, clucking with disapproval, had washed, dried and ironed the previous day. Then slipping it on, she crept downstairs.

In the castle no one was stirring yet, but carrying up from the village she heard the familiar sounds of a country dawn: a cockerel crowing, the clank of a bucket, the creak of bolts pulled back on a stable door.

She passed the chapel, hesitated and went on. God, she felt, would not be very pleased with her this morning, and crossing the main courtyard she passed through the gatehouse arch, crossed the drawbridge and climbed the worn, stone steps which led to the eastern ramparts. The sunrise place, she had always called it, as she now stood looking out to where, from the rim of the plain whose inhabitants had once brought devastation and sorrow to her house, a silver disc of brightness had begun to lift itself above the haze.

It was not sensible, after all, thought Tessa, feeling the first rays of warmth touch her face, to feel so hurt, so finished, because a man had been rude to her. It was natural, after all, that he did not want to dance with her, that he had no use for her in the presence of a woman so beautiful that he could only resent anyone who seemed to intrude.

Only, I didn’t want to intrude, thought Tessa bleakly; I just wanted to be friends. Surely he could have spared me a few words when he has everything: Pfaffenstein, the woman he loves, untold wealth and this power that makes everyone, even poor silly Waaltraut in a single evening, want to be where he is? Could he not be generous, having so much?

She leaned her cheek against the cool stone. This was the oldest part of the castle, the part she loved as she could not love the baroque grandeur of the south facade. Yes, after all, it would be hard to leave: harder than she had dreamed it could be.

She was turning to go when she heard footsteps and saw a solitary man seeking the eastern ramparts as she had done, for the glory of the sunrise.