Julian Fellowes - Past Imperfect

I thought again of the delivery from suffering that might be coming down the drive towards us. A quick DNA test and they would all be free of this horrible despot and their miserable existence. Dagmar and her mother and the other children would escape into a new land, where they would do just as they liked, and William would sit alone at his table, grumbling and fuming and insulting his servants to the end of his days. I wondered how we were going to get Simon to agree to a test. Would he worry about William’s feelings? Did William have feelings? Dagmar had dropped back to stand by me. Her mother and her husband were a little way in front of us, waiting for the car as it drew nearer. ‘It’s been so lovely seeing you again,’ I said. ‘And your much-mellowed mama.’ I wanted her to think of me as a friend. Because I was one.

She acknowledged my words with a quick smile, but then grew serious. Clearly, she’d deliberately manoeuvred a last moment with me out of earshot of the others. ‘I hope you won’t pay too much attention to what I was saying before. I can’t think what came over me. It was just self-pity.’

‘I won’t mention it to anyone.’

‘Thank you.’ The crease of worry faded away. On the sweep before the house the shiny car had stopped and a man in his late thirties climbed out. He turned with a wave to face us.

And in that moment Dagmar’s fate was sealed, as all my fantasies of playing Superman to this lost family came crashing down. But for their ages, he could have been William’s identical twin. There wasn’t a trace of his mother in him. Eyes, nose, mouth, hair, head, figure, manner, gait, they were like two peas in a pod. Dagmar saw me looking at him and smiled. ‘As you can see, he was William’s son after all.’

‘Clearly.’ We had reached my car by this stage and I opened the door.

‘So everything worked out for the best,’ she said.

‘Of course it did. It often does, despite what they tell us on television,’ I replied, climbing into the vehicle, taking her better, happier future with me. For a moment it seemed she was going to say something more, but then she thought better of it. So I said it for her. ‘I’ll give your love to Damian when I see him.’

She smiled. I had guessed right. ‘Please do. My best love.’ She looked round. ‘Are you sure you won’t stay and say hello to Simon?’

‘Better not. I’m late and he’ll be tired. I shall just enjoy you as a loving family group while I drive past.’ Dagmar nodded, with a certain irony in her expression. I know she was glad to see the back of me that day and no wonder. I had committed the sin of reminding her of a happier time. Worse, I had made her admit to truths about her present life that she preferred to keep buried even from herself. I had my reasons, but it was cruel all the same.

At any rate, without further protest she stepped back, politely attending my departure, and a moment later I was on my way.

By the time I had got lost finding the motorway and caught in the evening traffic as I came into London, the whole excursion took longer than I’d planned and I did not arrive home much before eight. Bridget had let herself in some time earlier, and polished off half a bottle of Chablis in the interim. This made her rather sour as she banged around the kitchen making dinner. I cannot now think why I never questioned that she should always cook for me, when she spent her days in an office tussling with important decisions behind a desk, while I lolled around for most of the time, performing needless, invented tasks to fill the daylight hours as I waited for inspiration. In my defence, I don’t remember her ever objecting to the arrangement. If it was my turn we went out. If it was her turn she cooked. Sometimes you just accept things.

‘Your father rang,’ she said. ‘He wants you to call him back.’

‘What about?’

‘He didn’t say, but he tried twice and the second time he sounded rather annoyed that you weren’t here.’

There was a vague but completely unreasonable reprimand buried in this somewhere. ‘I can’t manage my day in case my father might ring.’

‘Don’t blame me.’ She shrugged and went back into the kitchen.

‘I’m just the messenger.’ I was struck, not for the first time, by the tremendous mistake that about half the human race usually finds itself making when it comes to wobbly relationships. The division is not by sex or class or nationality or race or even age, since almost every type is found on both sides of the divide. The mistake is this: When they are in a partnership that is not going well, they attempt to inject a kind of drama into it by becoming moody and critical and permanently not-quite-satisfied. ‘Why do you always do that?’ they say. ‘Now, are you listening because you never get this right?’ Or, ‘Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten again!’

Not belonging to this team, I find it hard to penetrate their thinking. Do they imagine that by being demanding and edgy and cross, they will force you to work harder to make things better? If so, they are, of course, completely wrong. This kind of talk just gives one permission to go. The more dissatisfied they are, the more their gloom will become a self-fulfilling prophecy. In fact, the first time you hear that put-upon sigh, ‘I suppose I’m expected to clean this up,’ you know it is simply a matter of time. The irony being that the ones who are truly hard to leave are those who are always happy. To desert a happy lover, to make them unhappy when they were not unhappy before, is hard and mean, and involves guilt of a major kind. To leave a miserable whinger just seems logical.

Of course, this implies it is easy to get up the nerve to end an affair that is past its sell-by date. But for many it is not. They tell themselves they are being nice, or honourable, or adult, in struggling on, but what they are being is weak. I do not mean a bad marriage or when there are children involved. But when we’re only talking childless cohabitation it is plain cowardice to settle for failure. The years spent after we have decided that we will not die and be buried next to this one, are just wasted, so why do we put it off? Is it misguided kindness or false optimism or because we’ve taken a villa for the whole of August with the Grimstons and we can’t let them down? Or even: Where on earth would I put all this stuff? It doesn’t matter. Once the inner voice has spoken and given the verdict, every day spent evading the end is unworthy of you. And when it came to Bridget FitzGerald, I was unworthy.

My father was quite grouchy when he picked up the receiver. ‘Where have you been all day?’ he said.

‘I had to go to Hampshire for lunch.’

‘Why, for God’s sake?’ As any adult child knows, when dealing with an aged parent there is no point in engaging with this stuff.

‘You could have rung me on the mobile,’ I suggested.

‘It’s illegal if you were driving.’

‘I’ve got an ear thing.’

‘Even so.’ Again, silence is the only sensible option. At last, his anger spent, he returned to his topic. ‘I want you to come down and see me. There are some things we ought to talk about.’ In fact, he lived above London on the map, on the border of Gloucestershire and Shropshire, but my father was of that generation where London was the highest point in Britain. So he went ‘up’ to London and ‘down’ to everywhere else. I rather loved him for it. I suppose he went down to Inverness, but I don’t remember trying him on this. I cannot ask him now for he has died since I lived through these events. I miss him every day.

Bridget came out of the kitchen, carrying a plate of food on to which she had already spooned a huge helping of some stew and various vegetables. ‘I’ve served it up in the kitchen. I know you don’t like me to, but we haven’t got all day.’