I’d already got my own wallet out when Lavinia took me by the hand, to the strains of ‘La ci darem la mano’, and took me outside into the chilly Viennese air. ‘All right, Francis,’ she said, ‘Let’s get this straight. This show is on a very tight budget. I’m in charge. Money’s not a game. Or if it is, I’m the one who’s playing it. Stay away from banks, leave money machines alone, \ forget about rates of exchange. That’s for the big people, I’ll see to all that. Just stick to simple art and ideas, that’s what you’re here for. Every time you want anything, ask me first. Keep all your receipts, write down your expenditure in a little book. Now where’s the bus?’ ‘With two of us it’s probably just as cheap to take a taxi,’ I said. ‘No, Francis, this is your first lesson in television economics,’ said Lavinia, ‘If I was alone I’d go in a taxi. With you I go on the bus.’

But I’d already learned one thing from the money machine: Vienna was evidently a place where one thing quickly turned into something quite different. As we rode the airport bus down the autobahn toward the centre, a great black cloud from the not-so-distant Alps suddenly swept across the clear blue skies ahead of us, and deposited over the city of dreams and deceptions a light crystalline surface of glittering snow. To one side of the road, four seedy gasometers had been transformed, by some gesture of architectural magic, into four great monuments of art nouveau. As we moved along the city boulevards, fresh flights of architectural theatre stood every­where. Grim Gothic sat side by side with sprightly Jugendstil, white and gold baroque looked benignly across the street at pink postmodernism. Gaiety confronted virtue. Over the apartment blocks, if you looked in one direction, you could see the red Ferris wheel of the Prater, suspended still for the winter’s duration; if you looked in another you could see the spires and jagged zigzag roof of the great Stephansdom. It was towards the Stephansdom we headed when the airport bus deposited us somewhere just short of the Ringstrasse, the wide boulevard that marks the edges of the central city; we crossed it with our luggage and headed towards comforts and warmth.

It was strange how the city of waltzes and Sachertorte had a look oddly like Chicago in the 1920s; almost everyone you passed on the street was carrying a violin case. Musicians toiled everywhere. Hurdy-gurdy men with monkeys stood in doorways; down pedestrianized sidestreets entire string quartets stood busking in evening dress, gaily playing the works of Ludwig and Franz and Johann Sebastian and Gustav, not to mention, of course, Wolfgang Amadeus. Jangling horsedrawn landaus passed us by; each one contained very round Japanese faces hidden by very rectangular Japanese cameras. Behind them in the street they deposited a rich smell of equine dung that added yet another scented chord to the aromatic feast that was winter Vienna. From the tempting windows of the coffee houses and delicatessens came the bitter odour of coffee, the sweet smell of baking torte. Inside, earing cakes made of cream, drinking coffee with cream, were the crème de la crème of the Viennese bourgeoisie.

‘Ah, Demel’s,’ said Lavinia, stopping outside one fine-looking cakeshop, ‘This is where you really see the crème de la crème of the crème de la crème. Let’s go in.’ ‘Why not, Lavinia,’ I said. ‘Brilliant,’ she said a few moments later, mouth full of cake, waving her fat hand at the human display, ‘I always loved Vienna. Thank God for bloody old Bazlo.’ I stared at her wiping the crumbs from her mouth, and tried her with a question that had been troubling my mind from the moment I had seen her walking towards me down the plane. ‘Tell me, Lavinia,’ I asked nonchalantly, ‘Where are you actually staying?’ ‘Scuse me,’ said Lavinia, wiping her mouth, ‘Staying? Oh, I’m at the Hotel de France on the Schottenring. It’s very famous, actually.’ I felt in my pocket, and inconspicuously checked the contents of the travel wallet she had handed me at Ros’s small house the night before. ‘Ah, I see I’m somewhere else. The Hotel Von Trapp.’ ‘Yes, I think that’s somewhere way out in the suburbs, out past the Belevedere Palace,’ said Lavinia, ‘Vienna’s bloody full at the moment. It’s the music season, you see.’ ‘Yes, of course,’ I said, deeply relieved.

‘It’s cheaper too,’ said Lavinia, ‘But since I’m the producer I thought it was important I should be somewhere close to the main action.’ ‘What main action?’ I asked. ‘I need to be near the banks and the ministries. And the coffee houses and the opera,’ said Lavinia, ‘But you’ll just be researching. You do understand?’ ‘Oh, of course, Lavinia,’ I said, ‘Don’t worry.’ ‘You were hoping we’d be in the same hotel,’ said Lavinia, beaming chubbily at me, ‘You wanted the room next door, didn’t you, Francis?’ ‘No, no,’ I said. ‘It’s just this bloody tight budget, you see, I have to keep an eye on,’ said Lavinia, patting my hand, ‘But I thought I’d get us tickets for the opera tomorrow night. And then you could come back and have a late-night champagne with me. Because we are here to enjoy ourselves too, aren’t we, Francis?’ ‘Well, yes, I suppose so,’ I said, ‘Remember, I haven’t done this before.’ Til teach you everything I know,’ said Lavinia, giggling, ‘Now what I really need is some more Schlag. Isn’t that what it’s called, darling?’ ‘What what’s called, Lavinia?’ I asked. ‘Cream, this lovely thick cream,’ said Lavinia, waving over a black-dressed, white-pinafored waitress, ‘More Torte mit Schlag.’ ‘Schlag, meine Dame, bitte?’ asked the waitress. ‘Cream,’ said Lavinia, ‘Thick thick cream.’ ‘Ah, mit Sahne,’ said the waitress, departing. ‘I thought you spoke German,’ said Lavinia, looking at me accusingly. ‘No, I don’t actually speak it,’ I said, ‘I just find I can understand some of it when they speak it to me.’ ‘My God,’ said Lavinia, ‘What happens if old man Codicil doesn’t speak any English?’ ‘I expect we’ll get along,’ I said, ‘Between the two of us.’ ’I’m not going to see him,’ said Lavinia, ‘You do the research and I’ll recce the locations.’ ‘What locations?’ I asked, ‘We don’t have any locations.’ ‘Local colour, I think I’ll start with Schonbrunn and the Kunsthistorisches Museum,’ said Lavinia, ‘And then one of us is going to have to go and fight for tickets for the opera. But I suppose that’s what we poor producers get our salaries for. Now remember, you’re an investigative journalist. You’re looking for a really big story, love and lusts and everything. Get old Codicil to pour his heart out. Ah, lovely, Torte mit Schlag. Oh, Fraulein, can I have more chocolate on the top?’ ‘Chocolate, meine Dame?’ asked the waitress. ‘The brown stuff, darling,’ said Lavinia, ‘Oh God, this is what I love about Vienna. It’s just so bloody cultured.’

Lavinia was still spooning in the delights of Viennese culture when, a little later, I took a cream-coloured Mercedes taxi and set off for the Hotel Von Trapp. It proved to be a good way out past the Belvedere Palace, well into the suburbs and not all that far from the railway marshalling yards. It was, nonetheless, grand in its own way. Henry James – I suddenly recalled from my random literary education – had once described England as having rather too much of the superfluous and not enough of the necessary. The Old Master had clearly never seen the Hotel Von Trapp. In its vast and imperial lobby, where Japanese tourists were chittering and chattering like Papageno and Papagena over the endless line of suitcases that were pouring off their coach, it took four serious black-jacketed desk clerks to check me in, as they passed ledgers and paperwork, passports and keys back and forth amongst themselves, much as their ancestors must have done in the red-taped heyday of the Habsburg Empire. Then it took me several minutes to walk across the lobby toward the Secession ironwork elevator, and even longer to ascend upward, ever upward, to my room.