The slow movement of the Tchaikovsky had not been ruined at all, of course, and he had certainly been aware of every other person there. His performance had been greeted with deafening applause and cheering, and he had responded to the shouts of ‘Encore’ by promptly sitting down again to play something that Alice had not recognized, but that was exciting and intense and full of rippling cascades of beautiful sound. ‘The Appassionata,’ he said, lying next to her on the silken-sheeted bed. ‘Beethoven. And I play it entirely for you, because although you are a small English sparrow, also you are passionate and beautiful.’
Even then, dizzy with delight and love, caught in the sheer sexual glamour that he seemed almost to wear like a cloak, Alice had known perfectly well that he had not played the Beethoven piece entirely for her; he had played it because the audience had wanted him to, and because he loved all his audiences with an intensity that transcended everything else. She suspected he had planned beforehand what he would play for the encore; a long time afterwards she found that she had been right. Conrad unfailingly planned his encores and spent hours practising them.
When he said, ‘I think I am in love with you,’ Alice had regarded him thoughtfully, and said, ‘What about Nina?’
‘Oh, pouf, Nina.’ He made a gesture as if to sweep aside some small inconvenience. ‘It was a matter of business. An arrangement her father wanted to make, and that I agreed to in a moment of absent-mindedness. Also,’ said Conrad with one of his disconcerting bursts of candour, ‘I had not, then, met you.’
He was entranced by what he called Alice’s masquerade, and wove dozens of stories about the fictional baroness. Most of his stories were wildly improbable and quite a lot of them were scandalous, and one or two were just about credible.
The Baroness von Wolff should be Hungarian, said Conrad, weighing the possibilities with serious eyes. Or perhaps Russian would be better. Yes – Russian. Revolutions and russalkas and hypnotic Siberian monks. And she should be mysterious and exotic, just as Alice had already made her, but also there could be a hint of something shocking in her ancestry – that was a good idea, yes? An idea to develop, although it would be necessary to be subtle over the details. Subtlety was a fine thing, declared Conrad, who was flamboyant and extravagant and adored grand gestures, and who had never been subtle in his life.
Vienna in the twenties and thirties might have been created solely as a frame for a beautiful baroness with an intriguingly mysterious past. Alice sometimes thought that Lucretia could not have existed in any other time or in any other city. It was the time of la belle époque, the beautiful era, and life had been filled with excitement and beckoning promise, and with gaiety and music.
Music. Until now it had been something for other people. In London you might occasionally have an outing to a music-hall, and in the servants’ hall some of the other maids might sing the songs of the day while polishing the silver. The war songs were still much enjoyed – ‘Tipperary’ and ‘The Only Girl in the World’, but American jazz and what was called blues were starting to be popular. ‘Bye Bye Blackbird’ and ‘Tea for Two’, which everyone agreed was wonderful for learning the cha-cha, although the housekeeper had been very shocked to catch Alice and one of the parlourmaids trying out the steps in the scullery one night.