Julian Fellowes - Past Imperfect

Instead, she smiled. ‘Gresham,’ she whispered gently and they stepped on to the floor. I watched this in amazement and is it any wonder? Not only did Damian know her name long before that night, and where her family lived, and almost certainly the acreage. I would guess he could have listed the dates of every Earl of Claremont since the title was created and probably the maiden names of every Countess. I caught his eye across the room. He knew I had heard the exchange and I knew he knew. But he made no acknowledgement of the fact that I could have shown him up and spoiled his game. This is the kind of high-risk strategy in a career of social mountaineering that must surely almost merit admiration.

Lucy was watching me watching him, a small smile on her lips. ‘What’s so funny?’ I said.

‘I have a feeling that until tonight you thought you were Damian’s patron, when we must both suspect you will be lucky to find yourself his chronicler by the time the Season is done.’ She watched the couple on the floor and grew more serious. ‘If you want to stake your claim in that department, I shouldn’t leave it too long.’

I shook my head. ‘He’s not her type. Nor am I, no doubt. But he isn’t.’

‘You say that because you idolise her and consider him inferior in every way. But these are the views of a lover. She won’t think that herself.’

Now I studied them. The music had become slow and smoochy, and they were swaying from side to side in that stepless dance we all did then. I shook my head again. ‘You’re wrong. He has nothing that she wants.’

‘On the contrary, he has exactly what she wants. She won’t be looking for birth or money. She’s always had plenty of both. I doubt she’s very susceptible to looks. But Damian…’ as she spoke, her eyes focused again on the dark head, taller than most of the men dancing near him. ‘He’s got the one quality she lacks. That we all lack, if it comes to that.’

‘Which is?’

‘He belongs to the present century. He will understand the rules of the Game as it will be played in the future, not as it used to be played in the days before the war. That could be very reassuring.’ At this precise moment Philip leant over her with an optimistic offer but Lucy turned him down, nodding at me. ‘He’s already asked me and I’ve said yes.’ She got to her feet and I escorted her obediently to the floor.

The list, which I found lying on the pillow when I went up to my bed, was not long. But it still included some surprises. There were five names and all of them, it seems, had slept with Damian before he had been sterilised en vacances under the hot Portuguese sun. They had also all given birth to a child within the dictated time span. Lucy Dalton was there, I was a little sad to see. I had hoped for better from her, since she had been one of the first to see through Damian’s disguise. Joanna Langley’s inclusion surprised me less. I had been aware of a romance between them at the time and they seemed to me well matched. I’d wondered then why nothing came of it. No doubt I was about to find out. I was not expecting HRH Princess Dagmar of Moravia to figure among the notches on Damian’s bedpost, nor the red-faced, loud, man-eater of the day, Candida Finch, whom I wouldn’t have thought his type at all. Heavens. There was no denying that he got about a bit. Terry Vitkov, on the other hand, was a routine entry on many lists of that year’s conquests, including mine. An American adventuress from the Middle West, she had less money than she liked to suggest and only came to London after exhausting the social possibilities of Cincinnati. Her sexual mores, which would prefigure the next decade rather than, like most of the girls, harking back to a time before our own, ensured that she would be made welcome. At any rate by the boys.

Each name was neatly typed. Next to it was the woman’s current, married surname and, where clarification was needed, the name of the husband. After that came the name, sex and birth date of the child in question with a brief note of any other children in the family. Finally, there was a column of addresses, in some cases two or even three, with telephone numbers and e-mail contacts, although somehow I didn’t imagine much of this was going to be accomplished via the Internet. A covering note at the top, ‘as far as we have been able to ascertain, the details are as follows,’ meant that I could not be wholly confident about the information and some of the entries were much fuller than others, but most of it looked pretty accurate to me. I no longer ran into any of them, but the little that I did know tallied with the contents of the sheet. Behind the paper, held to it with a small clip, was an envelope. This turned out to contain, as promised, a platinum credit card made out in my name.

I breakfasted alone, with what seemed like every newspaper in the known world neatly arranged at the other end of the long table. The butler asked if he might pack, or was there some reason for him to delay this? There wasn’t. He bowed, thrilled with my permission to be of use, but before he left the room to carry out his task he spoke: ‘Mr Baxter wonders if you might have time to look in on him before you leave for the station.’ I can recognise an order when I hear one.

Damian’s bedroom was in a different part of the house from the one I had occupied. A wide gallery from the top of the staircase led towards a pair of double doors, standing half open. I heard my name called as I lifted my hand to knock and found myself in a light, high chamber, lined with panelling painted in a soft gris Trianon. Perhaps I had been expecting some dark, magician’s lair but no, this was clearly the other place, along with the library, where Damian actually lived. A large Georgian mahogany four-poster stood against a tapestry-hung wall, facing a carved rococo chimneypiece, which was in turn surmounted by one of the many Romneys of the lovely Lady Hamilton. Three tall windows looked out across the gardens to what I saw now was a kind of mini-park, with a tidy and impressive display of, I am sure, rare trees. There were inlaid chairs dotted about, and a desk, and little tables piled with books and precious things, and a rather beautiful day bed, of the type that is called a duchesse brisèe, with a folded rug at the end, waiting to make its master comfortable. The whole effect was charming and delicate and curiously feminine, the room of a finer spirit than I would have credited him with.

Damian was in the bed. I did not see him immediately as the shadow of the canopy blurred him for a moment, hunched and crunched up as he was against the pillows, surrounded by letters and another mass of newspapers. I could not help but feel it would be a black day for the local newsagents when Damian shuffled off his mortal coil. ‘You found the list,’ he said.

‘I did.’

‘Were you surprised?’

‘I knew about Joanna. At least I suspected it.’

‘Our main thing was over long before. But I slept with her one last time the night she got back from Lisbon. She came round to my flat. I suppose she wanted to see if I was all right.’

‘I’m not surprised.’

‘We went on from there.’

‘But hadn’t you already got the mumps?’

‘I didn’t develop a sore throat until a few days afterwards and, anyway, apparently you store a certain amount of whatsit, which isn’t affected.’

‘A little too much information.’

‘As you can imagine, I am by this point the world’s greatest living expert.’ He gave a wry chuckle. He was wonderfully unbowed by the whole thing. ‘What about the rest of them?’

‘Well, even I slept with Terry and I’m not exactly surprised by Candida, though I wouldn’t have thought she was your type. But I didn’t suspect the other two.’