Julian Fellowes - Past Imperfect

I hadn’t visited the Grill for a while and when I got there, it was to find it had already been much altered from the fashionable rendezvous of my adolescence that lasted well into my adulthood. In the early Sixties, I used to go regularly with a disreputable cousin of my father’s who’d taken a shine to me, and who regarded the place as a sort of private club and would bring the most recent, luckless object of his fancy there for an orgy of oysters and dishonest vows. Naturally, he was a wonderfully dashing role model to an unattractive teenager with bad skin. On leaving the army in his forties, Cousin Patrick chose to live a short-term life, that is, to enjoy himself without putting down any roots or taking on any responsibilities. He was certainly very handsome and very charming, so this was more achievable than it might have been for some. My own mother adored him despite my father’s disapproval, but in the end I suppose the latter’s strictures about reaping what you sew were proved correct since our cousin’s fun-filled years of avoiding commitment left him to face a stroke and early death alone, proving once again, as if we needed any more proof, that we generally end up with lives that are the product of our choices.

Even so, he was an inspiration to me, since he accepted no rules or boundaries and, having been brought up by my very straight and fairly strict pater, this seemed to me like an empowering paradise. I remember once being in a restaurant with him and, finding it difficult to attract the waiter’s attention, Patrick reached round and picked up a stand, one of those whatnots that hold mats and menus and salts and peppers, and flung it the entire length of the room. It landed with a crash like a nuclear explosion that silenced the full, chattering space until you could have heard a pin drop, but instead of being reprimanded or ordered out on to the street, as I fully expected, the only tangible result was that the service improved enormously. There was probably a subversive lesson tucked in here somewhere, which my father would not have wanted me to learn.

As I walked in I thought of Patrick for a moment. I remembered him standing in that same doorway, checking the room with his lazy smile, to see if there were any pretty possibilities seated at other tables. One of the strangest parts of growing older being that ever-increasing Team of the Dead, who stand behind your shoulder and take it in turns to jump in and out of your head. A picture, a shop, a street, a clock that someone gave you, an ornament that came from this dead aunt or a chair from that dead uncle, and suddenly for a second they’re alive again, whispering into your ear. There is a religion somewhere in the world that believes we all die twice; once in the normal way and the second time when the last person who really knew us dies, so one’s living memory is gone from the earth. I subscribe to that and I thought happily of my old cousin that day, if only to note that the place had changed since he was there. The murals had gone and with them much of the atmosphere, while the sleek panelling, pale and smooth, which had been installed in their place gave the sensation of sitting in a giant cigar thermidor. I suppose these things come under the heading of ‘rebranding,’ that twenty-first-century snake oil for every ailment. Kieran was already in his seat when I arrived. We waved at a distance, shook hands when I drew near and sat.

As everyone knows, the ageing process never fails to shock when it has not been witnessed on a daily basis. The Kieran I knew had been a fresh-faced oik, with fake hair and a fake tan, who bore almost no resemblance to the elderly, senior man of affairs sitting opposite me. But if his face was a great deal older, nevertheless, as he approached his seventieth year, it was also finer than it had been in his youth, less blotchy, less puffy and infinitely more secure. The too-red cheeks were gone and the glossy highlights, taking with them the true colour of his hair, whatever it may have been, but leaving him a rather distinguished grey, like a model in an advertisement for Grecian 2000. The hair itself had stayed, the lucky stiff, and his eyes were not, as I recalled, small and piggy but curiously kind for someone who had made such killings in the savage world of property.

‘This is very nice of you,’ I said, as he sent a waiter off in search of two glasses of champagne.

‘It is my pleasure.’ He studied his menu and I studied his face. He had acquired real stature, that is the only word I can think of to describe the change. He had acquired authority and the authority of the genuinely great. He was polite, relaxed and unstudied, but with that expectation of obedience that marks the powerful apart. The waiter returned with our drinks. ‘So,’ he said, when we were alone again, ‘what’s this about?’ I murmured about my charity. It was not quite fictional as I felt that if he did wish to make a donation, there might as well be profit in it for someone, but I could see at once he wasn’t really interested. ‘I might as well cut you off now,’ he interjected with a good-natured hand raised to stop the flow. ‘I only give to about three things. I’ve had to ring-fence my interests as I find I get about a hundred applications a week these days. All of them perfectly worthy causes, of course, but I cannot cure every evil in the world. I’ll give you a cheque if you like, but not for much and that will be your lot.’

I nodded. He was very compelling. I would have accepted this decision even if my request had been a truthful one. ‘Thank you,’ I said, but I was puzzled. His secretary had tried to tell me exactly this when I first rang and he could have finished the job without any rudeness when he came on the line. ‘Then why are we here having dinner?’ The words had not come out quite as I had envisaged and I hurried to qualify them. ‘Of course, I’m terribly pleased that we are and it’s the greatest treat to see you again, but I’m surprised you have the time.’

‘I have time,’ he said. ‘I have a lot of time for things I want to do.’ This was polite, but did not really answer my question, which he saw. ‘I find that I spend most of my time these days thinking about the past, and about what happened to me and the life I have led, considering, in short, how I got to where I am.’

‘So you always make a special case for people from that past?’

‘I like to see them. Particularly if, like you, I have seen very little of them in the meantime.’

‘To be honest, I’m amazed you remember me at all. I thought I was going to be greeted by a big, fat “who?”’

He gave a silent, little puff of laughter and I noticed, by contrast, how very sad his eyes were. ‘I don’t think any living human could forget that dinner.’

‘No,’ I said.

He raised his glass. His years at the top had taught him not to clink it against mine, as he would have done back then. ‘To us. Are we much altered do you think?’

I nodded. ‘Very, I’d say. I may only be a fatter, balder, sadder version of the young man that I was, but you seem to have changed into someone else completely.’

He laughed more heartily, as if pleased by the notion. ‘Kieran de Yong, Designer to the Stars.’

‘That’s the man I knew.’

‘God help you.’

‘He wasn’t so bad.’

‘Drink or depression has made you kind. He was ghastly.’

I did not bother to contradict again since I agreed with him. I could see our waiter lingering nearby, waiting for a break in the conversation to step forward and take the order. Kieran gave him a slight nod and he leaned in, pencil and pad in hand. It is comforting to know that the skill of waiting well is not entirely dead even if these days you have to search, and certainly to pay, for it. I do not in any way dislike the tidal wave of Eastern Europeans whose appointed task is apparently to ask me what I want to eat. They seem cheerful and nice on the whole, and a pleasant contrast to the surly Englishman who always looks as if he is longing to spit in your soup. But I do wish someone would tell them not to barge in when the diner is halfway through a punchline.