to tour that unrivalled gem of the baroque, the Schloss Hohenbattenburg, sometimes affectionately known, after a disastrous dinner party of legendary fame, as the Schwarzkartoffelnhof. Who should be his guide but the youngest daughter of the house herself? He could never remember afterwards whether he fell in love in the Festsaal, with its famous musical chandeliers, or in the Crystal Grotto, but he was certain that they became engaged in the Huntsman’s Lodge. He gave her a 20 pfennig tip. That night she played all ten Beethoven symphonies exquisitely. Beethoven had bequeathed his Tenth Symphony to her family on condition that its existence was never revealed to the world. Robert was the first foreigner ever to be entrusted with the secret. They were married four days later in the family’s summer chapel high in the mountains, the tiny Battenburger Maria-Kapelle, to the tinkling of mountain streams and cow-bells, and the thundering of a massive organ.
Did she really renounce all that without hesitation, and come back to Kentish Town, and so charm Mr Mendel that he gave them the whole top two floors of Number 38? Could it all be true? Yes, it’s true, says her smile. Yes, echo her sweet lips. Yes indeed, whispers her slight but infinitely appealing Adam’s Apple.
‘I’ve missed you too,’ he said.
‘See what Kate has done,’ she said, handing him a beautifully simple and wonderfully flattering portrait of himself.
‘Bless her, the lamb,’ he said, lighting the rough but effective pipe that Tim had made for him in woodwork.
‘I’ve done you some Trout Battenburger Art and Emmentaler partridge with grapes,’ she said. ‘But first you must go upstairs and tell them a bed-time story.’
‘I don’t want to leave you.’
‘I don’t want you to go,’ she said, handing him a large sherry in the rude but serviceable goblet that Michael had made for him in pottery.
‘But on the other hand I want to see them,’ he said.
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