Julian Fellowes - Past Imperfect

‘I suppose you’re disappointed in your old pal, Lucy.’

‘Only because I thought she disliked you as much as I did.’ This made him laugh for the first time that morning. But the effort was painful and we had to wait for a second while he recovered.

‘She was only attracted to people she disliked. All the others she turned into friends. Including you.’ This was probably true in its way, so I didn’t interrupt him. ‘Do you see any of them now?’

It was strange to hear him talk so breezily, when I considered how it had all ended. ‘Not really. One bumps into people. You know how it is. They all married, then?’ It seemed odd, suddenly, that I didn’t know.

‘Yes, for better or, in some cases, very much for worse. Candida’s a widow. Her husband was killed in 9/11. But I’m told they were happy before that.’

Moments like this, when friends from a different era of your life are suddenly forcefully connected to the modern world, can be quite shocking. ‘I’m sorry. Was he American?’

‘English. But he worked for some bank that had its New York office on one of the top floors. It was his bad luck that he was summoned to a meeting there on that day.’

‘God, how awful. Any children?’

‘Two with him. But he couldn’t be the father of the baby I’m interested in. The boy was eight when they married.’

‘I remember she was a single mother. Very courageous.’

‘For a peer’s niece in 1971? You bet. But she was courageous. She was a bit rough but she was punchy. That’s why I liked her.’ He paused, a slight smile pulling at the corners of his mouth. ‘Were there any names missing that you expected to find?’

We stared at each other. ‘Not when the list isn’t complete.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘It’s only the girls who gave birth within the time limit.’

Damian nodded. ‘Of course. That’s right. No, in any other sense it’s not complete.’ But he didn’t elaborate and I so didn’t want him to. ‘You got the card?’

‘Yes. Though I don’t think I’ll need it.’

‘Please don’t be English and silly.’ He sighed. ‘You have no money. I have so much that if I spent a million pounds a day for the rest of my life I wouldn’t dent it. Use the card. Have some fun. Do what you like with it. Take it as your payment. Or my thanks. Or my apology, if you must. But use it.’

‘I don’t have “no” money,’ I said. ‘I just don’t have as much money as you.’ He did not trouble to confirm this and I did not protest further, so I must have been convinced.

‘Do you have any preference as to where I should begin?’ I asked.

He shook his head. ‘None in the least. Start where you will.’ He paused to take a breath. ‘But please don’t delay more than you have to.’ His speech was coarser and more rasping than it had been the previous evening. Was this usual in the mornings? I wondered. Or is he getting worse? ‘Of course, I don’t want to hurry you,’ he added. What made this poignant, even to me, was his striving to achieve a kind of light courtesy, like something out of a Rattigan comedy. ‘Anyone for tennis?’ he might have said in just such a tone. Or, ‘Who needs a lift to London?’ It was brave. I don’t deny that.

‘I imagine it must take some time,’ I said.

‘Of course. But no more time, please, than it has to take.’

‘Suppose I can’t find any evidence either way?’

‘Eliminate the ones it cannot be. Then we’ll worry about who’s left.’

There was logic in this and I nodded. ‘I still don’t know why I’m doing it.’

‘Because if you refuse, you’ll feel guilty when I die.’

‘Guilty for the child, maybe. Not about you.’ I wouldn’t describe myself as a harsh person in the normal way of things, and I do not completely understand why I was so harsh with him on that morning. The crimes I held against him were old crimes by then, forgotten, or if not forgotten then irrelevant, even to me. That said, he seemed to understand.

My words had died away in the silence between us, when he looked at me quite steadily. ‘I have never had a friend in all my life I cared for more than I cared for you,’ he said.

‘Then why did you do it?’ He misjudged me if he thought these nice, saccharine sentiments would somehow cancel out the memory of his behaviour on the worst evening of my, and I would hope anyone’s, life.

‘I’m not entirely sure.’ He seemed to lose himself in thought for a while, concentrating his gaze on the view beyond the windows. ‘I think I have suffered since I was a child from a kind of claustrophobia of the heart.’ He smiled. ‘The truth is I was always uncomfortable with any kind of love. Most of all when I was the recipient.’

Which is how we left it.

It may sound as if I had been obsessed with all these people, and mainly with Damian, since I had walked off the last dance floor over forty years before, but I had not. Like anyone else, I’d spent the time between dealing with the bewildering illogicality of my life and it had been many years since I had taken the time to consider the way I was, the way we all were. The world we lived in then was a different planet, with different hopes and very different expectations and, like other planets, it had simply drifted away in its own orbit. I glimpsed a few of the girls, now lined and greying matrons, from time to time, at a wedding or a charity function, and we smiled and talked of their children and why they’d left Fulham, and whether Shropshire had proved a success, but we did not tear at the changes in the world around us. I had abandoned that world completely in the years immediately after Portugal and, even after it was all forgotten, I never really went back in. Now, when I thought about it, there were some characters from that time I regretted. Lucy Dalton, for example, had been a great ally of mine. Indeed, it was she who sealed my commitment to the Season. I didn’t like her husband, it is true, and I suppose that’s why we drifted apart, but now that seemed a feeble reason to lose a friend and I decided on the spot to begin my investigations with her. The sheet told me she had moved to Kent, not far from Tunbridge Wells, so it would not be difficult to call her and ask myself for lunch, on the pretext of being ‘in the area.’

I say my commitment had been ‘sealed’ by Lucy for the simple reason that it was at her invitation I attended Queen Charlotte’s Ball, then the official launch of the dances and the central ceremony of the whole business. Not to be there meant one was not quite a full player but I had made no plans to go since I had not originally aimed at full membership. In fact, the ball wasn’t far off when, to my surprise, I received a card from Lady Dalton asking me to join their party. I rang her daughter before I answered. ‘We were taking my cousin, Hugo Grex, but he’s chucked,’ said Lucy without any prevarication. ‘Don’t worry if you can’t come, but say now so we can find someone else. Almost everyone who wants to is already going.’ It was not the most flattering invitation known to man but I was quite curious and I had begun to feel that, when it came to the Season proper, if I was going to do it I might as well do it.

‘No. I’d like to come. Thank you.’

‘Write to Mummy or she’ll think you’re odd. Then she’ll tell you where to be and when. You know it’s white tie?’

‘Absolutely.’

‘See you then if not before.’ She had rung off.

Perhaps because I had not originally intended to be at the ball it came as something of a revelation later that day, to discover that Damian Baxter was already going. In those days students at Magdalene, and in many other colleges no doubt, were not provided with anything so simple as a bedsit. Instead, every student had a sitting room as well as a bedroom, which required a certain spread in the accommodation. That year my rooms were to be found in an old converted cottage, which had been swallowed by the new 1950s quadrangle built round it on the other side of Magdalene Street from the college itself. They were rather charming apartments and I still remember them with affection, but they were in separate parts of the building, so it was a surprise to walk back into the sitting room, having gone to my bedroom for a book, to find Damian standing by the chimneypiece, warming his legs in front of the gurgling gas fire. ‘I gather you’re going to Queen Charlotte’s with the Daltons,’ he said. ‘I don’t suppose there’s any chance you could put me up? I really don’t want to struggle back here after that one.’