Past Imperfect

FIFTEEN

As it happened, the fateful invitation to Portugal came right out of the blue. One day the telephone rang in my parents’ flat – where I was, on the principle of Hobson’s choice, still living – and when I picked it up a familiar voice asked for me by name. ‘Speaking,’ I said.

‘That was easy. I thought I was going to have to track you down through ten addresses. It’s Candida. Candida Finch.’

‘Hello.’ I could not keep the surprise out of my voice entirely, since we had never been all that friendly.

‘I know. Why am I ringing? Well, it’s an invitation, really. Is there any chance I could tempt you to join a gang of us in Estoril for a couple of weeks at the end of July? An old friend of mine has got a job in Lisbon, in some bank or other, and they’ve given him this huge villa and no one to put in it. He says if we can all just get ourselves out there, we can stay as long as we like for nothing. So I thought it might be fun to mount a sort of reunion of the Class of Sixty-eight, before we’ve all forgotten what we look like. What do you say?’ My surprise was not lessened by any of this, as I wasn’t aware that I’d ever been a favourite of hers while the Season was going on, let alone why I should be chosen for a special reunion.

I had not seen Candida Finch much after the whole thing came to an end and by the time of the call almost two years had passed since the events I have been revisiting. It was in the early summer of 1970, when my days as a dancing partner were long behind me. I had left Cambridge that June, with a perfectly respectable if not overwhelming degree, and the perilous career of a writer beckoned. Or at least it did not beckon, because I soon realised that I was trying to push through a solid, brick wall. My father was not hostile to my plan, once he had got over his disappointment that I wasn’t going to do anything sensible, but he declined to support me economically. ‘If it isn’t going to work, old boy,’ he said genially, ‘we’d better find out sooner rather than later,’ which was, of course, in its way, a direct challenge. Eventually I got a job as a kind of super office boy in a publishing group for children’s magazines, which would begin in the following September and for which I would be paid a handsome stipend that would have comfortably maintained a Yorkshire terrier. I did go on to do the job, for three years in fact, finally clambering up to some sort of junior editing post, and somehow I managed to make ends meet. My mother used to cheat, as mothers will; she would slip me notes and pay for clothes and pick up my bills for petrol and car repairs, but even she would not actually give me a regular allowance, as she would have felt disloyal to my father. Let us say that during this period of my time on earth I lived, I survived, but it was essentially a life without frills or extras. All of which harsh reality I knew would be my fate at the end of that summer and it made Candida’s suggestion seem rather inviting.

‘That’s incredibly kind of you. Who else is coming?’ Of course, I knew as I said this that I had to accept, because you can’t ask who is coming to some event and then refuse. Inevitably it sounds as if you might have accepted if the guest list had been of a higher standard.

Candida knew this. ‘I think we’ll have fun. We’ve got Dagmar and Lucy and the Tremayne brothers.’ I wasn’t mad about the Tremaynes, but I didn’t actually hate them, and I was actively fond of the other two, so the idea was growing on me. I knew there wasn’t the smallest chance I would otherwise have a proper holiday that year before I started what I liked to call my ‘career.’ ‘I’ve found a charter airline where they almost pay you, so the tickets will cost about sixpence. Can I definitely include you in?’

I am ashamed to say this settled it. I was confident I could get my dear mama to sub a cheap ticket, so all I would need was pocket money and a couple of clean shirts, and I would have ten days of luxury in the sun. I was pleased by the idea of seeing Lucy and Dagmar, and even Candida too, for that matter, all of whom I had not caught up with for a long while. ‘Yes. I’m in,’ I said.

‘Good. I’ll make the reservations and send you the bumph. There is one thing…’ She tailed off for a brief pause, as if choosing her words, and then continued, ‘We’re a bit short of men. The trouble is so many of them have already started working and it’s hard for them to get away at short notice. I have been slightly scraping the barrel.’

‘As witness the inclusion of the Tremaynes.’

‘Don’t be unkind. George is all right.’ This made me wonder briefly if Lord George was planning to take advantage of Candida in some way, but I couldn’t think how.

‘But if I come, won’t we be three of each?’

Obviously, she hadn’t done her maths and this momentarily threw her. ‘Yes. I suppose we will…’ She hesitated. I could almost hear her sucking her teeth.

I decided to help. ‘But you’d rather have extra in case someone drops out.’

‘That’s it. I hate it when the men are outnumbered.’

‘What about Sam Hoare?’

‘Working.’

‘Philip Rawnsley-Price?’

‘Ugh.’ She laughed and began again. ‘The fact is I was wondering if you might ask, you know, what’s his name, Damian Baxter. Your pal from Cambridge who used to come to all the dances.’ The studied casualness of this request told me it had been a long-term part of the scheme. I didn’t answer at once and she came in again. ‘Of course, if it’s a nuisance-’

‘No, no.’ I had, after all, nothing specific against Damian then. He had been more successful than I with Serena and I resented it. But that was all I knew at the time. The worst I could have accused him of was enjoying a flirtation with her. More to the point, neither of us had got her in the end. To our, I assume, joint horror she had married Andrew Summersby in April of the previous year and in the following March, three months before this conversation, she had given birth to a daughter. In other words she had moved far, far away from us by now. ‘All right, I’ll try,’ I said.

‘You don’t think he’ll want to.’

‘I don’t know. He dropped out of the Season so completely that there might be a principle involved.’

‘You haven’t discussed it?’

‘We haven’t discussed anything. I hardly saw him after your dance.’

‘But you didn’t quarrel?’

‘Oh, no. We just didn’t see each other.’

‘Well, you haven’t seen me either and we haven’t quarrelled.’

I didn’t know why I was putting up such resistance. ‘All right. You’re on. I’ll give it a go. I’m not sure if the numbers I’ve got still work for him but I’ll do my best.’

‘Excellent. Thanks.’ She seemed a little brighter. ‘OK. Let me know what he says and we will take steps accordingly.’

Things were more complicated in the years before mobiles. Whenever anyone moved you’d lost them, although one hoped only temporarily. Nor did we have answering machines, so if people were out they were out. Then again, we managed. However, when I looked in my old address book I found I still had Damian’s parents’ number and they were quite happy to provide me with the new number for his flat in London, which he’d apparently just moved into. ‘I’m very impressed,’ I said. And I was, actually.

‘So are we,’ I could hear that his mother was smiling as she spoke. ‘He’s on his way, is our Damian.’

I repeated this to Damian when I dialled the number and he picked up. ‘I’m sharing a rented flat at the wrong end of Vauxhall, even supposing there’s a right end. I am still some way from Businessman of the Year.’

‘It all sounds quite advanced to me. Have you found a job already?’

‘I fixed it before I left Cambridge.’ He mentioned some dizzying, American bank. ‘They were recruiting and… they recruited me.’ I was suitably awestruck. One thing I have learned in life: Those who get to the top tend to start at the top. ‘I begin at the end of August,’ he said.

‘So do I, but I suspect in less style.’ I explained about my lowly job as whipping boy in the magazine offices. We fell silent. I suspect that for both of us the exchange had only served to underline the extent to which we had lost touch while still at university. Damian had not only dropped out of the Season, but also out of my life, and I don’t believe I had fully appreciated it before that moment.

I explained the reason for my call. ‘I don’t know.’ He didn’t sound keen.

‘I told Candida I thought you might have had enough of us.’

‘I always liked Candida.’ I was quite surprised by this. I never took notice of their friendship at the time, but then, how much had I noticed? Although I couldn’t help feeling that if Candida had known how she was remembered she would have rung him directly and not bothered with me. He spoke again. ‘OK. Why not? After paying my deposit here and buying the clothes I need to work in I haven’t a penny left, so there’s no chance of any other holiday this year.’

‘My position entirely.’ I was a little surprised by his acceptance, maybe, but on the whole pleased. It seemed to offer an opportunity to take us past the slightly odd end to our friendship and to give us the chance to go our separate ways after the summer more peacefully.

‘Did you go to the wedding?’ he said.

I’d wondered how long it would take him to ask. ‘Yes.’

‘I didn’t.’

‘I know.’

‘I was asked.’ He needed me to hear that his absence had been his choice, not hers. ‘Have you seen the baby?’

‘Once. She’s the image of Andrew.’

‘Lucky girl.’ He snorted derisively, trying to make a joke out of the sorrow we shared but did not admit. ‘Right. Send me the arrangements when you’ve got them and I will see you in the sun.’ The conversation was over.

The villa, when we arrived, was on the coast, wedged between Estoril and Cascais. I dare say it is much more built up now but then, thirty-eight years ago, there were only rocks below its terrace, leading directly to a wide and glorious, sandy beach and, beyond it, the sea. It couldn’t really have been better. The house was built, along with two or three others stretching along the coast in those pre-planning days, during the 1950s and it consisted of a large, main room – one cannot call it a drawing room, full as it was of rattan furniture and the like – as well as a dining room/hall, which took up the whole of the entrance front, with a mass of kitchens behind. These we hardly penetrated, since they were full of busy, Portuguese women who always looked cross whenever we went in. The bedrooms were arranged on two floors, ground and first, in a long wing that stretched away from behind the main block at a right angle. Each room had its own bathroom and high French windows opening, upstairs on to a balcony with an outside staircase leading down, and on the ground floor directly on to a wide, balustraded terrace overlooking the sea.

Our host was a genial fellow, John Dalrymple, something of an egghead who would later play a role in Mrs Thatcher’s government, but I never knew what, exactly. Given his straightness, his girlfriend was a little unlikely, a neurotic, American blonde with snuffles, complaining constantly of a sore throat. Her name was Alicky, which I assume was a shortening of Alexandra, although that was not confirmed. I remember her better than I might have, because she was the first person I knew to be in a permanent state about the poisons being put into our food by the government and how the whole world was about to implode. At the time we thought her a five-star whacko, but looking back, I suppose in a way she was ahead of her time. It was she who had decided that for reasons of security, although few people thought like that in those days, the girls would sleep upstairs and the boys down below, giving us the advantage of the French windows that opened on to the terrace and the wonderful view of the sea. My bedroom, at the far end of the wing, had that familiar, clean, sea-smelling feeling, with the pale tiled floor, the wicker furniture, the white covers and curtains, that always tells you this is a summer place. I sometimes wonder why attempts to reproduce this room back in England are invariably a failure. Probably because it does not work in the northern light.

I had flown in on the same ’plane as Candida, Dagmar and Lucy, but in the event, Damian had not travelled with us. He was already there and in his room, changing, when we arrived so we all set off to do the same. The Tremaynes had been staying in Paris and had driven across Spain in order to continue their holiday for nothing. They too were recovering in private, which meant that it was not until we all gathered on the terrace an hour or two later, the girls in their splendid, summer colours, me in my underwhelming, Englishman’s ‘summer casual wear,’ which always makes us look as if we’re aching to get back into a suit (which most of us are), that the party finally assembled, and it was a very nice way to begin. John had arranged for us all to be given glasses of champagne, while he explained the plan for the first evening, which was for the whole party to jump into cars and head for the Moorish ruins at Cintra, a little way along the coast, and have a picnic dinner there. It seemed a very appropriate, opening adventure.

Cintra is a magical place, or it was then. I have not seen it since. At some point in the nineteenth century a presumably unbalanced Bragança king had built a huge, turreted castle on the hilltop, more suited to Count Dracula than a constitutional monarchy, while a little way beyond, making the place even more special and strange and complementing the Disneyesque splendours of the Royal palace, there was a long extended ruin of a fortified, Moorish stronghold, running from hill to hill, which had been abandoned by the retreating hordes during the Middle Ages. On that summer night this pair of monuments to two forgotten empires made richly cinematic outlines against the sky, as the sun sank in the west.

What I had gathered since our arrival was that John Dalrymple was very bored in his posting, though whether this was the bank’s fault or, more probably, because of his choice of romantic companion I could not say. Either way, he was only too delighted to have some people to entertain. He and Candida seemed to go back quite far, though as friends not lovers, and it was clear from this, our first ‘moment’ of the stay, that nothing was too much trouble. A table had been set up beneath the castle walls among some trees – Olives, perhaps? I picture them in my mind as twisted and scraggy, seemingly clinging to life in the dusty soil. Candle lanterns had been hung among the rather threadbare branches, and rugs and cushions strewn about, making the whole thing into the feast of some Arab emperor. We took our drinks and walked about among the outskirts of the ruins, where stray blocks and lumps of stone had rolled over the centuries. The Tremaynes were there, a little improved, I thought, from when I’d known them, poised as they were on the brink of City careers that had been conjured up out of nothing by some friends of their papa, and they were hovering attentively round Dagmar. Lucy was talking to Alicky and John.

A little way away, Damian walked arm in arm with Candida. When I glanced across at them, with a sinking heart I could see a trace of her terrifying, Gorgon-like, flirtatious manner beginning to surface. He made some no doubt blameless remark, which was greeted by her roar of a laugh, which made everyone look up to see her eyes rolling in her head in what I suspect she thought a beguiling and intriguing way. As usual, when it came to matters of this kind, her taste let her down. Damian began to give telltale glances to anyone who’d pick them up, seeking an escape route. Even so, it seemed very peaceful, as if we were all in the right place at the right time. Which would prove quite ironic before we were finished. At that moment a bell was rung, announcing that we were to help ourselves to the first course, so we drifted up to the table, and, laden with plates, glasses and all the rest of the paraphernalia, we found our way over to the cushions. Lucy plonked down next to me. ‘What are you up to now?’ I asked. I hadn’t heard much about many of the girls and nothing at all of her.

She made a slight mouth movement as she paused in her eating. ‘I’m helping a friend with a gallery in Fulham.’

‘What does it show?’

‘Oh, you know. Stuff.’ I wasn’t convinced this was the language of complete commitment. ‘Our next thing is to launch some Polish guy, whose pictures look to me as if he’d stuck a canvas at the end of a garage and thrown tins of paint at it, but Corinne says it’s more complicated than that and they’re all to do with his anger against Communism.’ Lucy shrugged lightly. I noticed her clothes were more hippie’ish than when I saw her last, with an Indian shirt under a worn, embroidered waistcoat and different layers of shawls or stoles or something, leaking out over her jeans, until it was quite hard to know whether she was wearing trousers or a skirt. Both, I suppose. ‘What about you?’ I explained the dismal job awaiting me. ‘I do think you’re lucky. Knowing what you want to do.’

‘I’m not sure my father would agree with you.’

‘No, I mean it. I wish I knew what I want to do. I thought I might travel for a bit, but I don’t know.’ She stretched and yawned. ‘Everything’s such a palaver.’

‘It depends what you want from life generally.’

‘That’s the thing. I’m not sure. Not some boring husband going in and out of the city, while I give dinners and drive to the country on Friday morning to open up the house.’ She spoke, as people do when they make this sort of statement, as if her low opinion of the life she outlined was an absolute donnè among right-thinking people, when the reality is that for women like Lucy to live a very different life from the one she had described is hard. They may do a hippie version of it, with bunches of herbs hanging down from the kitchen ceiling and unmade beds and artist friends turning up unannounced for the weekend, but the difference between this and the arrangements of their more formal sisters, who meet their guests off preordained trains, and make them dress for dinner and come to church, is pretty minimal when you get down to it. Apart from anything else, the guests of both types of parties are almost always closely related by blood. But Lucy hadn’t finished. ‘I just want to do something different, to live somehow differently and never to stop living differently. I suppose I’m a follower of Chairman Mao. I want to live in a state of permanent revolution.’

‘That’s not for me.’ We had been joined by Dagmar, who settled down on a nearby, paisley cushion and dragged a rug over her knees, before she got down to her food. The night was beginning to hint that it would not stay warm forever. ‘In fact, I don’t agree with Lucy’s definition of the fate to be avoided above all others. I wouldn’t mind going to the country to open up the house on Friday. But I want to do something in the world myself, as well. Something useful. I don’t just want to be a wife, I want to be a person.’ In this one may gauge that the 1960s philosophies had begun to get into their rhythm in the last years of the decade and that they had done their work on the princess from the Balkans. She’d caught the classic disease of the era, that of needing permanently to occupy the moral high ground. As a philosophy it could be exhausting, and it would be for most of us, when every soap star and newsreader would have to prove that all they cared about was the good of others, but here, on that Portuguese night, I didn’t see much harm in it.

‘What?’ I said with fake astonishment. ‘A princess of the House of Ludinghausen-Anhalt-Zerbst with a proper job?’

She sighed. ‘That’s the point. My mother doesn’t want me to work, but I’ve started doing things for various charities, which even she can’t object to, and I’m hoping to build from there. And when Mr Right comes along, always assuming that he does, I know he won’t fight my having an identity of my own because I won’t marry him if he does. I don’t want to be a silent wife.’ She had been a pretty silent debutante, so I was quite touched listening to her. ‘I want to feel… well, I’ll say it again: Useful.’ Then I noticed, to my amazement, that as she was outlining this scenario of modern certainties her eyes were following Damian. I saw that he had managed to unload Candida on to our hosts, John and Alicky, where she was trapped by her own good manners, while he helped himself to some more food at the table under the trees. He finished heaping his plate and turned, surveying the company, and at that moment both Dagmar and Lucy raised their hands and waved. He saw us and came over, making our group into a foursome.

‘We’re discussing our futures,’ I said. ‘Lucy wants to be a wild child and Dagmar a missionary. What about you?’

‘I just want my life to be perfect,’ he replied with complete sincerity.

‘And what would make it perfect?’ asked Dagmar, timidly.

Damian thought for a minute. ‘Well. Let me see. First, money. So I mean to make plenty of that.’

‘Very good.’ This was a chorus from all of us and we meant it.

‘Then a perfect woman, who loves me as I love her, and together we will make a perfect child, and we will live in high state and be the envy of everyone who sets eyes on us.’

‘You don’t want much,’ I said.

‘I want what is due to me.’ I remember this sentence quite distinctly because, while there are many people who say such things in jest, there are very few who seem really to believe them. In this case time would bear out his pretensions.

‘What constitutes a perfect woman?’ This again from Dagmar.

Damian thought. ‘Beauty and brains, of course.’

‘And birth?’ I was surprised to hear Lucy ask that.

He considered this. ‘Birth, inasmuch as she will have style and grace and sophistication and knowledge of the world. But she will not be hemmed in by her birth. She will not be oppressed by it. She will not allow her parents or her dead ancestors to dictate what she says or does. She will be free and, if necessary, she will break with every human being she has ever loved before me and cleave to my side.’

‘I never know what “cleave” means in that context,’ I mused. But nobody was interested in my query.

The two girls, both of whom I could now see were vying for the vacant position in Damian’s mind, at least as far as this conversation went, pondered his words. ‘She certainly should, if she’s got anything to her,’ said Lucy, which gave her an immediate advantage.

‘It’s hard to throw off everything of value,’ countered Dagmar, but then she faltered. ‘I mean, if you think it has value.’ Damian seemed to nod, as if giving her permission to continue. ‘And it’s hard to throw off people you love, people who may deserve your love. Would your perfect woman be true to herself if she broke away from her roots, entirely?’

‘I am asking a lot,’ he said thoughtfully. By considering his answer, Damian was treating Dagmar with respect and Lucy thereby lost the initiative. ‘Nor am I defending my demands, which may be thoroughly unreasonable. But I am telling you what I would need to know she could do if it came to it.’

Then Dagmar said, ‘I think she could if she had to, but I’m just pointing out it would be hard.’

‘I never said it wouldn’t.’

Obviously, I missed the significance of all this at the time because, as we all now know, I was almost completely ignorant of much of what had gone on over the Season two years before, but I have since learned that this interchange was the preamble to Dagmar’s last night of fantasy that she could be Damian’s dream woman. I hope she enjoyed it.

Over the next couple of days we drifted, getting up late, swimming, eating at long tables set out on the terrace under a line of umbrellas, and going for walks in the village – doing, in fact, what people like us do best: Taking advantage of other people’s money. But then, the following Monday, 27th July to be precise, we awoke to hear the startling news that Antonio de Oliveira Salazar, ex-Prime Minister of Portugal, founder of the Estado Novo – which, with Spain, had been the last Fascist state of Western Europe – had died in the night at the age of eighty-one.

‘This is incredible,’ I said as the party began to gather for breakfast on the terrace, pulling fruit from great piles set out for our delight, pouring coffee, buttering toast. I had thought the announcement would have stilled the table. Not so.

‘Why?’ asked George Tremayne.

‘Because the last of the dictators, who shaped the middle of the century, who fought the war, who changed the world, is dead. Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini, Primo de Rivera…’

‘Franco’s still alive,’ said Richard Tremayne. ‘So now he’ll be the last of them to die.’

Which was, of course, a point. ‘Nevertheless, it is extraordinary that we should be in Portugal, just outside Lisbon, when he went.’ I was not going to give up easily. ‘The newspapers say he’s going to lie in state in Lisbon Cathedral for a few days. Obviously, we must all queue up and go.’

‘To do what?’ said George.

‘To walk past his body. This is a historic moment.’

I turned to Damian for support, but he just helped himself to some more milk for his cornflakes.

I am not sure quite what it tells us about the battle of the sexes but in the event all the girls came and none of the other men. Naturally, they didn’t have anything suitable to wear, and they borrowed black skirts and shawls and mantillas from the furious women in the kitchen, but they all came, including Alicky, despite her continuing complaints throughout the pilgrimage about her swelling and painful throat, of which we had heard more than enough by this point.

That said, the advantage of having Alicky with us was that she was able to be very stern with the driver, one of John’s perks from the bank, who deposited us on the edge of the huge piazza in front of the cathedral, telling him exactly where he was to wait and, no, she couldn’t give him an idea of how long we were going to be. In the lengthening shadows of the late afternoon we took up our positions in the endless line of shuffling, morose men and weeping women. Apart from anything else, I was impressed, or intrigued, or something, by the sorrow on display. I had been accustomed to think of Salazar as the last of the wicked old buffers who had plunged Europe into bloody turmoil, and here was a wide cross section of the Portuguese, from nobles to peasants (the last constituting the people who might have had the greatest right to complain against his rule), all openly sobbing at his departure. I suppose it’s always hard to give up what you’re used to.

‘Candida?’ The voice cut through me like a bacon slicer. I knew it as well as I knew my own without turning round, and I could not believe I was hearing it, in this ancient sea capital so far from home. ‘Candida, what on earth are you doing here?’ At this we all turned to greet Serena as she walked across the square, dragging a rather hot-looking Lady Claremont and the dreaded Lady Belton in her wake. In their party too the men were not interested in politics. Seeing all our faces, Serena let out a short scream. ‘My God! What is this? I don’t believe it! Why on earth are you all here?’ We then embarked on an explanation and it turned out that, by an unbelievable coincidence, her own parents had taken one of the other villas in the development where ours lay, that they had invited Andrew’s parents, that they’d arrived the day before and they would be staying for the coming week, and… wasn’t it amazing?

I need hardly tell you that, as it turned out, it was not amazing. It was not in the least amazing. It was not even a coincidence. The scheme, which I did not uncover for some time after this and then only because I ran into George Tremayne at a race meeting three or four summers later, had originated with Serena, who wanted to see Damian again. Even when I heard the truth from George I didn’t understand quite why (although I do now), but it was anyway important to her. John had been asking Candida to bring out a group of friends for some time, that bit was true, and they decided that if Candida could get Damian into the group, Serena and Andrew would, by coincidence, take a villa nearby. Obviously, Damian would not come if Serena were to be in the party, nor would Andrew if Damian was, so the subterfuge was necessary, once you accepted the intention. Where the plan might be said to have gone awry was that Serena’s parents, perhaps suspicious in some way, had announced they would bear the cost of the trip and join them. This Andrew would not allow Serena to refuse, since it was such a saving. The final button came when Lady Belton suggested that she and her benighted husband also come along, as she would ‘welcome the chance to know the Claremonts better.’ I never found out what would have happened if Damian had refused when I asked him. I imagine the whole thing would just have been cancelled. However, at the time, I suspected nothing. I thought the chance meeting was genuine chance, a heavensent miracle that Serena Gresham – correction, Serena Summersby – should be standing in a sun-drenched, southern square, also wearing ill-fitting, borrowed black and waiting to pay homage to a dead tyrant alongside me. I allowed myself to wonder at her properly. ‘How are you?’ I asked.

‘Frazzled and worn out. Take my advice. Don’t travel with your parents, your in-laws and your two-month-old baby, in the same party.’

‘I’ll remember that.’ I looked at her. She was quite unchanged. That my golden girl was now a wife and mother seemed more or less impossible to believe. ‘How are you getting on?’

She glanced swiftly across at Lady Belton, but the old trout was busily snubbing some tourist who’d attempted to strike up a conversation and enjoying it too much to notice us. ‘All right.’ Then, sensing that her answer had not sounded like the voice of love’s young dream, she smiled. ‘My life’s terribly grown up now. You wouldn’t believe it was me. I spend the whole time talking to plumbers and having things covered, and asking Andrew whether he’s done the sales tax.’

‘But you’re happy?’

We did not need to exchange a glance to know that, with this question, I was pushing my luck. ‘Of course I am,’ she said.

‘Where is Andrew?’

She shrugged. ‘Back at the villa. He says he’s not interested in history.’ ‘This isn’t history, it’s history in the making.’

‘What can I tell you? He’s not interested.’

To the fury of the people behind us, we stuffed Serena, her mother and her motherin-law into our group, and together we all staggered up the cathedral steps. From there we passed into the cool, shadowed interior of the great church, where the sounds of crying were more audible and, as they echoed through the aisles and cloisters, curiously haunting. Grief is always grief, whether or not the deceased deserves it. At last we walked past the coffin. The head was covered in some sort of scarf, but the hands, waxy and still, were pressed together as if in prayer, raised and resting on the chest of the corpse. ‘I wonder how they do that,’ said Serena. ‘Do you think they’ve got a special thing?’

I stared at the body. It was dressed, as are all dictators in death apparently, in a rather nasty, lightweight suit that looked as if it had come from Burton Tailoring. ‘What I can never get over,’ I whispered, ‘is the way the moment people are dead, they look as if they’ve been dead for a thousand years. As if they were never alive.’

Serena nodded. ‘It’s enough to make you believe in God,’ she said. Once outside again the plan was made. The Claremonts, the Beltons and the Summersbys would go home now to change, and they would all join us for dinner in a couple of hours back at the villa. Full of this pleasant scenario, we climbed into the waiting vehicles.

I now think I must share a little of the blame for what happened later as, for some reason which in retrospect seems completely inexplicable, I never mentioned to Damian that we had run into Serena. In my defence, I knew very little, if anything, of what I have since learned had gone on between them. I knew they’d kissed once and I genuinely thought that was about it, but even so it does seem odd. I did not consciously conceal it, because when we got back Damian was nowhere to be seen. He had not, we heard from Lucy, slept well the previous night and he’d retired to catch up so as to be on form for dinner. ‘Don’t let’s wake him,’ said Dagmar firmly and we didn’t. Clearly, I should have gone to his room, propped his eyes open and told him what I knew, but I was not aware of the urgency and I suppose I imagined I would catch him before the others arrived. Then, a little later, Lucy volunteered to go and tell him, and before we could discuss it she’d vanished, leaving Dagmar biting her lip. At the time I did suspect Lucy’s ultimate purpose in going to Damian’s bedroom, but not that she would make no mention of the meeting at the cathedral, the dinner that was planned for that evening, or Serena. Which proved to be the case.

There was one more surprise in store, on this most surprising of all days – before the Big Surprise later that is – which John greeted us with when we got back. ‘There was a call from a friend of yours,’ he said as we walked out on to the terrace. Naturally I, and presumably the rest, thought this would be from Serena, making some change to the evening’s schedule. John disabused us: ‘Joanna de Yong? Is that the name?’

Candida was astonished. ‘Joanna de Yong?’ she said. ‘Where was she ringing from?’

‘She’s here. She’s staying with her husband and her parents quite nearby. They arrived today.’ He was smiling as if he were bringing us glad tidings, but the response was not what he’d anticipated.

We all looked at each other in silence. Wasn’t this too mad? Was Estoril the only holiday destination of choice? It was developing into a Russian play. I do vividly remember the oddness of all this, which later got buried beneath the horror. Dagmar commented at the time that it seemed as if we had arranged a modest reunion, and Fate had decided to get in on the act and bring everyone of significance from that period on to the stage at once. In other words she was as innocent as I was about what was taking place behind the scenes. At last Lucy spoke. ‘What did she want?’ She was always less a fan of Joanna than some, as I remembered well.

John was clearly a little undermined by the response to his news. ‘Only to see you all. I’ve invited her and her husband over for dinner. I hope that’s all right. She asked who was staying and she seemed to know every name, so I thought you’d be pleased.’ He stopped, hesitant, afraid he’d made a boo-boo.

‘Of course we’re pleased,’ said Candida. But she wasn’t very, and now I know why. The planned, and morally dubious, dinner for Serena to re-meet Damian already had to absorb Serena’s parents and in-laws, which was less than ideal. Now it was beginning to expand into a state banquet.

‘She’s bringing her parents,’ said John.

Which put the tin lid on it. ‘Jesus,’ said Lucy and she spoke for most of the company.

Naturally, as you will have surmised, the de Yong arrival had nothing to do with chance either, and I learned about this strange turn of events much sooner than I did the other. I was still changing when there was a knock on the door and without waiting for permission from me Joanna came in. Without a hello, in fact without a word, she lay down on the bed with a loud sigh. ‘I don’t know what we’re all doing here,’ she said.

‘Having a lovely time?’ I had not seen her since the end of 1968’s festivities but she was still a miracle to look at.

‘You wish.’ She stared up at me, rolling her eyes, as I waited for her to explain herself. ‘My mother fixed the whole thing without any reference to me, you know.’

‘Obviously, I don’t know. What are you talking about?’

‘I’d rung Serena-’

‘Do you keep up with her?’

She caught my surprise and smiled. ‘Not everyone’s dropped me.’

‘I’m sure not.’

She received this with a quizzical expression, suited to humouring the slow witted. ‘Anyway, she told me she was going to Portugal with her parents. And that Candida would be here at the same time with some friends, including you and Damian.’

‘Really?’ This didn’t quite square with the scene we had just enacted in Lisbon outside the cathedral, but before I had time to investigate it Joanna ran on. The silly thing is I recall her remark now, clearly, but I forgot it at the time, so I still failed to add two and two and get to four.

‘For some unexplained and foolish reason I relayed all this to my mother and, lo and behold, a week ago she informed me that she’d planned a surprise for me and she’d taken a villa in Estoril. Obviously, I told her it was quite impossible.’

‘But?’

‘But she blubbed and blubbed, and sighed and fell about, and asked why I hated her, and hadn’t she tried to help me since the marriage, and now they’d paid a fortune for the villa because they’d jumped the queue and all the rest of it, and I gave in.’ She was holding a bottle of Coca-Cola, the old, rather pretty, glass type, and she took a long, lazy swig.

‘I’m glad you did. It’s nice to see you.’

She shrugged. ‘She thinks I’m bored with Kieran. She thinks she can wean me off him with all of you as bait. You’re here to remind me of the fun I’m missing. That’s why she’s brought us. She even asked if I would be glad to see Damian again.’ She threw back her head and laughed out loud. ‘Damian. Two years ago she wanted to commit suicide when she thought I was serious about him.’

And still I didn’t put the information together: Serena knew Damian was coming all along. What was the matter with me? ‘Poor Kieran,’ I said. I had in fact met Kieran de Yong by that stage, as some weeks after the sensational elopement there was a cocktail party at the Dorchester for the newly-weds in an attempt by Valerie Langley to normalise the situation. I admit I didn’t quite get the point of him then. But I was young and anyway I don’t remember thinking any the worse of Joanna for her choice. There is, after all, no accounting for taste. ‘How is marriage?’

‘It’s OK,’ she said. But then, after a pause, ‘It does go on a bit.’ Which sounded uncomfortably eloquent. I said nothing.

‘Have you seen Damian yet?’

She shook her head. ‘He’s still in his room. We were far too early. My mother’s impatience wouldn’t let us wait. This is the world she always wanted for me and she thinks Kieran is the reason I’ve dropped out of it. According to her I’m drowning. Socially. She wants to pull me back to the shore. She wants a divorce as soon as it can be arranged.’

‘You can’t be serious.’ It’s hard to explain how outlandish this seemed in 1970. Even ten years later it would have been perfectly believable.

‘Oh, but I am. She thinks if I dump Kieran now, everyone will forget about him. We’ve had no kids, despite going at it like rabbits.’ She paused to register that I was a little shocked. It’s odd to think one could be by such references when they came from a woman, but lots of us were. Having registered my blushes with a blush of her own, she continued, ‘The point is, if she can prise me free now, there’ll be no baggage that can’t be safely hidden inside the identity of my second husband, whoever he may be.’

‘And she’d be happy with Damian?’

‘After Kieran, she’d be happy with a passing Chinese laundryman.’

I smiled. Although, to be honest, in a way I was rather impressed with Valerie Langley’s commitment. I knew that in similar circumstances my own parents would just have shrugged and sighed, and occasionally allowed only very old friends to commiserate, but it would never have occurred to either of them actually to do anything about it. It wasn’t that I approved of the plan. Joanna had, after all, taken her vows and in those days that meant rather more than it does in these. But still, it certainly didn’t make me dislike her parents. ‘What does your father feel about it?’

‘He quite likes Kieran, but he wasn’t consulted.’

‘And Kieran is here?’

She nodded. ‘And he knows exactly what she’s trying to do.’

‘Yikes.’ Of course, we hadn’t touched on the nub of the matter. ‘Are you going to allow yourself to give him up?’

She thought about my question, but I don’t think there was any real doubt in her mind. ‘No,’ she said. ‘I wouldn’t give her the satisfaction.’

Kieran de Yong was the first person I spotted when I finally emerged to join the thrash. It would have been hard to miss him. His hair was dyed a particularly virulent shade of pinkish blond and he was wearing tight jeans under a kind of military jacket, which looked as if it had once graced an officer in the Guards, but the cuffs were now turned back to reveal a pink satin lining. His densely patterned shirt was wide open at the neck, to reveal two or three thick chains. The overall effect was not so much hideous as pathetic and, given what I had just heard, I felt very sorry for him. ‘Do you know Portugal at all?’ I asked, trying to make it sound as if I were interested in the answer.

He shook his head. ‘No.’

Lucy had joined us and she tried next: ‘Where are you and Joanna living now?’

‘Pimlico.’

We were both rather flummoxed, since obviously we could not simply stand and ask him questions, receiving one-word answers, until the end of the evening. But then he said something that indicated he was a little less dense than we had all assumed: ‘I know what this is all about. She thinks I don’t, but I do. And I’m not leaving.’

Naturally, Lucy hadn’t a clue as to the meaning of this, but I did and I rather handed it to him for agreeing to come at all. It was the decision of a brave man. I couldn’t very well comment without getting myself into a mess, but I smiled and filled his glass and attempted to establish that I was not an enemy.

There was still no sign of Damian. I registered that his windows remained tightly shut, just as I heard a flurry of arriving cars, followed by voices and doors opening and shutting, and out on to the terrace issued the whole Claremont/Belton party. Serena had brought the baby girl and there was a certain amount of fussing attendant on her arrival. I suggested they put the cot in my room, since it opened directly on to the terrace where we would be eating, and this was generally reckoned a good idea. It saddened me to see that the infant, Mary, was still the living image of Andrew. Not only did this seem like thoroughly bad luck for her, but it also gave rise to painful images in my semi-conscious mind.

To mark his distance from all this ‘women’s business,’ Lord Claremont hailed me in his vague and cheerful way. I think he was relieved to find a familiar face and also to have escaped from the exclusive company of his daughter’s in-laws, since I could tell at once they weren’t at all his type, however he may have urged the marriage. He started to walk towards me, but the temptations of Joanna and Lucy soon drew him in that direction for a little flirtation over his Sangria, or whatever the Portuguese equivalent is called. The Beltons clung together, staring out to sea, she too difficult and he too tired to talk to anyone else. Lady Claremont walked across. ‘How are you?’ She smiled. I told her. ‘So you’re forging off into an artistic life. How exciting.’

‘My parents don’t approve either.’

This made her laugh. ‘It’s not that. I rather like the idea. It just seems so terribly unpredictable. But if you don’t mind a few years starving in a garret, I’m sure it’s the right thing to do. One must always try to follow one’s heart.’

‘I quite agree. And there are worse things than starving in a garret.’ By chance, as I said this my eyes were resting on Serena, who was talking to Candida by the balustrade. Now this was purely because I couldn’t find anywhere more satisfactory to rest my eyes than on her, but I could see at once that Lady Claremont had taken my comment as a criticism of Serena’s life choices, for which she no doubt felt extra responsible, as well she might. Her face hardened a little as she looked back at me and her smile became fractionally taut.

‘You must go down and see Serena and Andrew. They’ve got the most marvellous set-up, a simply lovely farmhouse on the edge of the estate. Serena is all geared up to decorate it, which she loves, and the village is within walking distance. It’s ideal. Do you know Dorset?’

‘Not really. I used to go to Lulworth when I was a child.’

‘It’s such a beautiful place, really enchanting, and still almost a secret from the outside world. She’s too lucky for any words.’

‘I’m glad,’ I said. It was somehow important for me that Lady Claremont should know I didn’t want to make trouble. ‘I’m very fond of Serena.’

She laughed again, more easily, relieved to have passed the sticky corner. ‘Oh, my dear boy,’ she said, ‘we all know that.’

It was then that I heard the doors open behind me and I looked round to find Damian standing there, the darkened room behind him throwing him into a kind of high relief. He was completely motionless, but I did not need to be told where his gaze had fastened. Some of the others had registered him too. Not least Lord Claremont, whose brow visibly darkened. If he’d had any suspicions as to what this was all about, his worst ones were in this instant confirmed. He shot a glance at his wife and I noticed her give a tiny, almost indiscernible shake of her head. Damian’s silent stillness was becoming a little embarrassing, so I walked over. ‘Isn’t it extraordinary?’ I said. ‘Serena’s parents have taken more or less the next-door villa. We all ran into each other this afternoon outside the cathedral. Wasn’t it weird? You should have come.’

‘Obviously,’ said Damian, remaining completely stationary.

I pointed out Joanna and briskly explained the second not-coincidence. He smiled. ‘Oh, brave new world, that has such wonders in it,’ he said. But still he did not step forward into the party, or indeed alter his position at all. During this, Serena had been watching, waiting, I can only suppose, for him to make the first move, but if so, she was obviously going to be disappointed, so she decided it was time for her officially to register his presence. I admired her manner in doing it. A lifetime of emotional concealment can sometimes have its uses. She walked up briskly with a wide smile. ‘Damian,’ she said, ‘what a treat. How are you?’ Andrew had followed her across the terrace, and now stood, almost threateningly, as he locked eyes with the man who had after all knocked him down in front of us all at Dagmar’s ball. She, Dagmar, perhaps recalling the same incident with shame, left her own conversation and drew near. ‘You remember Andrew,’ said Serena, as if this whole thing might be happening on any street in any city.

‘Yes,’ said Damian. ‘I remember him.’

‘And I remember you,’ said Andrew.

I think the idea crossed several minds in that second that we might be about to witness a rematch, but Candida, sensing danger, came over, clapping her hands. ‘Let’s all have a walk before dinner. There’s a path down through the rocks, directly onto the beach. Don’t you agree?’ And before Serena could mention it: ‘Your motherin-law says she’ll stay here and watch out for the baby.’ Behind her Lady Belton had parked herself in a chair, with the expression of one of the accused at Nuremberg hearing his sentence read out.

In a way it did seem a solution and nobody raised any objection, so we broke away in groups and followed Candida, who had collared her uncle, Lord Claremont, as her personal guide. He didn’t put up much resistance and set off by her side, after refilling his drink and carrying it with him. We all pottered down on to the sand and I must say it was a marvellous sight, the wide, blue sea, shining and glinting in that pellucid, evening light. We loitered, listening to the waves for a while, but when we set off for our walk down the beach I realised with a faintly sinking heart – although why? When she was a married woman, and so no concern of mine – that Serena and Damian had slipped to the back of the group. With her marvellous instinct for avoiding trouble Lady Claremont had also taken this in and made a beeline for her son-in-law, sliding her arm through his, and involving him in some apparently intense flow of talk, heaven knows what about – what would one talk about when trying to interest Andrew Summersby? – as she dragged him down the beach with her. But I could see her husband watching his daughter and Damian at the end of the trailing line, and it was not hard to tell that the sight was becoming more and more disturbing to him.

Joanna had joined me, and now she whispered: ‘Do you think we’re going to see some fireworks?’

‘I bloody well hope not.’

‘My mother’s furious. She thought I’d have Damian all to myself, but it’s quite clear he couldn’t care less whether I live or die. Not when Serena’s around.’ Of course, at the time I thought she was exaggerating. That’s how slow I was.

At this stage Andrew drifted away from his motherin-law. He cast an angry look at the pair who were now quite a long way behind us on the sand, but Lucy came to his aid. I think that by this stage we were all, by unspoken agreement, working together trying to avoid a collision. Andrew had left Lady Claremont walking on her own and I could hear Pel Claremont as he drew alongside his wife. ‘Do you see who that is?’

‘Of course I do.’

‘Did you know he was here?’

‘Obviously not.’

‘What’s he talking to her about?’

‘How should I know?’

‘By Christ, if he’s trying something…’

‘If you say one single word you will only make things worse. I want your promise. You will say nothing contentious, not one word, before you close your eyes on your pillow.’

Lady Claremont hissed the phrase ‘not one word’ like a giant, angry snake and it was easy to tell she meant business, but whether she got the answer she required I couldn’t say, since I had to crane forward to catch the last of these muttered exchanges and her husband’s reply was lost beneath the sounds of the surf. Not knowing most of the facts, I couldn’t understand their hostility to Damian. I turned back to Joanna, on my left. ‘Did you hear any of that? If so, what’s it about?’

But she shook her head. ‘I wasn’t listening,’ she said.

I noticed we had been joined by Dagmar on the other side. ‘What about you?’ I asked, but she’d also missed it. In fact, she seemed rather quiet that night and uncharacteristically thoughtful. I looked at her, raising my eyebrows to signify a question, but she shook her head and gave a sad smile. ‘Nothing. I’m just pondering the rest of my life.’

‘Heavens.’

She waited until Joanna had dropped back to walk with George Tremayne. ‘You started it, last night,’ she said. ‘You and Damian.’ With her moist mouth twitching she was at her most poignant. ‘All I want is a nice man who loves me. It sounds so tragic but that’s it. I don’t care how I live, really, as long as it’s not in a complete hutch. I just want a nice man who loves me and treats me with respect.’

‘He’ll turn up,’ I said. How baselessly optimistic one is when young, although I did not then guess how completely her request for even a tolerable future would be denied.

Dagmar nodded, sighing softly. I did not understand why this melancholy had gripped her, but of course now I know. The previous night, after their final tryst, Damian had told her she would never have him, she would never have the one above all others whom she loved and wanted. Any of us who have lived through a similar dismissal will feel for her. At last she gave a wistful smile. ‘Maybe. Que sera sera.’

‘Well, no doubt everything will work out for the best.’

‘But I do doubt it,’ she said.

At last Candida, sensing or praying that the danger had passed, turned us around, and slowly we made our way back to the villa. The light was failing, now, and the maids had arranged lit candles down the table and turned on the lamps that threw their beams against the house, so we seemed to be climbing up the path through the rocks, towards a fairy palace made of jewels.

We started peaceably enough. The first course was a sort of Portuguese version of Insalata Tricolore with olives added for good measure. I forget what the proper name was but it was delicious and we ate of it freely, which was just as well since it was destined to get us all through until the following morning. The trouble began when the main course arrived, some sort of fish stew, which looked and smelled delicious although I never got to swallow any, brought by the angry women in the kitchen. They did not hold it for us, but instead put three large, white, china bowls, filled with the steaming mixture, onto the table at intervals, leaving it to us to help ourselves and others. Meanwhile, and perhaps inevitably, Lord Claremont had been tucking into the drink since he arrived. In fairness to him, and again I did not know it then, he was simply livid to have found Damian at this house where, as he saw it, he and his wife had been lured by artifice. Once there, and presented with this bounder, which was bad enough, he found himself sitting next to a very common woman whom he did not know and who kept trying to engage him in a conversation about things and people of whom he had never heard. On the other hand, Valerie Langley was only too thrilled by her placement, since one of her main goals in coming out of England had been to catch the Claremont family for herself and for her daughter, and was quite unaware that it was not working well.

To get things straight, to trace the source of the explosion, one must bear in mind that Pel Claremont thought Damian Baxter a liar and a cad, who’d attempted to seduce Serena into a marriage that would have ruined her life, all in an attempt to promote his own slimy and ill-bred interests. This was not my reading of the matter at all, but it was his and he did not understand why he had to sit at dinner with the author of his misfortunes. The plain truth is that neither Serena nor Candida had thought this through. The whole thing was as doomed as their original plan that exposure to Damian, at Gresham, would bring her parents round. Clearly, once the Claremonts had invited themselves on this expedition, Candida should have cancelled, or at the very least made a totally different plan as to how Serena and Damian would meet, because, given my new and greater understanding of the situation I now think Serena was incapable of turning down the chance to see him when it was offered. Unfortunately.

Damian was silent as we returned from the walk, and he had been fairly monosyllabic all evening since then. I saw Serena make an attempt to sit next to him, but he deliberately placed himself in a different, empty, chair, where the seats on either side were already taken by Candida and Lady Claremont, who may have been a little surprised when he chose her as his neighbour, but who contained it. After that, Damian talked to Candida exclusively and of course it would have been to everyone’s benefit if he had continued to do so, but Lady Claremont lived by certain rules and one of them was that at dinner, when the course changed and the next one was brought, it was time to turn to your other neighbour. Accordingly, she resigned George Tremayne to the claims of Dagmar and turned to Damian on her other side. ‘So, what are you doing now?’ she asked pleasantly. ‘Have you made any plans for the future?’

Damian stared at her for a moment, long enough for most of us to register his deliberate insolence. ‘Do you really want to know?’ he said. Now, as I am happy to testify, this was very unfair. At the time it was completely bewildering to the rest of the party as we could not imagine what on earth Lady Claremont had done to deserve it, but even if I now accept that she had been an accomplice in wrecking his life, I still don’t think it was fair. In this context she was just trying to get through dinner. Just trying to allow Candida or John or Alicky to feel that the evening was a success. What’s wrong with that?

With something like a deep breath she nodded. ‘Yes, I do,’ she said, as steadily as she could manage. ‘I’m very interested to know what lies ahead for all Serena’s old friends.’ Honestly, I would swear she meant this in a friendly way. She did not want Damian to marry her daughter it is true, but I don’t believe she wished him ill beyond that. This may not have been true of her husband, but it was true of her. For a second Damian looked slightly ashamed. He seemed to gather himself and he opened his mouth to speak, presumably to talk about the bank or something.

But before he could utter a word, Lord Claremont cut in. ‘Well,’ he said as he reached for a bottle of red that required him to stretch right across the table, ‘we are interested in a way. But only really to be sure that if you do have any plans they won’t involve us.’ The effect of this was electric. In an instant every conversation was dead. Lady Claremont slowly shut her eyes and held them closed against the tidal wave that she probably guessed was coming. John and Alicky were just puzzled as to why their guests had suddenly chosen to be so rude to each other. The Langleys looked shocked, as did the younger group including me, while Lady Belton assumed her usual expression of indignant disdain. In the silence, Lord Belton took a huge slug of wine.

‘They won’t,’ said Damian easily. ‘What makes you think I’d make a mistake of that magnitude twice.’

‘Stop this!’ Suddenly Serena was as angry as I had ever seen her. ‘Stop this right now!’ Her eyes were blazing, but of course it was too late.

Lord Claremont quietened her with a sharp gesture of his hand, then looked his opponent in the eye and took another sip. Next, slowly and with some style, he lowered his glass and smiled before he spoke. In truth, his languor was not enough to conceal that he was very drunk. ‘Now, you look here, you little shit-’ This actually made half the people at the table jump, like mice they all jigged up and down in a row. Lady Claremont gave a sort of low groan, which sounded like ‘Oh, no,’ but might have just been a sound of mourning, as she leaned forward with one hand raised, and Valerie Langley let out a kind of wailing ‘What?’ to no one in particular.

But, by now, Damian was standing. ‘No,’ he said. ‘You look here, you pompous, ridiculous, boring, idiotic, unfunny, pretentious, ludicrous joke.’ There were seven adjectives employed in this sentence and I was fascinated by them, because I cannot imagine that seven words could do more to change a life. When Damian had first got to his feet, he was part of a minor incident, which a few apologies and a ‘have a drink, old boy’ would soon have fixed. By the time he’d finished his speech, less than a minute later, he was out of this world for good and there was no possibility of return. The gates of the drawing rooms of 1970s England had clanged shut against him and the air was thick with the smoke of burning bridges.

Lord Claremont himself appeared stunned, as if he had been hit by a car and was not quite sure as to the extent of his wounds. ‘How dare you-’ he started to say.

But Damian was having none of it. We were way past that stage, by now. ‘How dare I? How dare I? Who on earth do you think you are? What insanity gives you the right to talk to me in that manner, you stupid old man?’ Now this was a curious moment, because to most of us present these words could easily have been said in their entirety except for the final insult by Lord Claremont to Damian, so the reversal of their direction created an odd sensation. We may be absolutely sure that never in Lord Claremont’s fifty-eight years had he been addressed in anything even approaching this manner. Like all rich aristocrats the world over, he had no real understanding of his own abilities, because he had been praised for gifts he did not possess since childhood and it is hardly to be wondered at if he did not question the conclusions that every suck-up had fed him for half a century. He wasn’t clever enough to know they had been talking bunkum and that he had nothing to offer in any normal market. It was a shock, a horrid shock, for him suddenly to feel that, rather than a universal figure of dignity and poise and admiration, he was in fact a fool.

At this point, most ill-advisedly, Lady Belton decided the time had come to intervene. ‘You disgraceful boy.’ She spoke loudly, addressing the company as well as Damian to make her point, but unfortunately in an imperious, fluting manner more suited to a farce than a real argument. I imagine she thought it lent her majesty, when in reality she sounded like Marie Dressler in Dinner at Eight. ‘Stop it this minute,’ she trilled, ‘and apologise to Lord Claremont!’

Damian spun round and in the blink of an eye, to our universal horror, he suddenly snatched up a knife from the breadboard on the table. It was a large, wide kitchen knife that might be used in a butcher’s and certainly lethal. The whole episode was now turning into a full-blown nightmare, which none of us felt able to control. Please don’t misunderstand me. I was perfectly sure at the time that he would not use it to harm anyone, that wasn’t in him. We weren’t in any danger. But he knew how to play with it, flicking it about to punctuate his movements and speech, to make the moment tingle. In this he judged correctly. If we were still before, we were paralysed now.

Slowly and sedately Damian stalked Lady Belton down the table. Seeing him approach, she gripped the side arms of her chair and forced herself hard against its back. For this one and only time I felt a bit sorry for her. ‘You pathetic, old harridan, you scarecrow, you freak, what possible business is it of yours?’ He waited for an answer, as if this were a reasonable question. She looked at the blade and said nothing. ‘You insane piece of wrinkled baggage with your demented snobbery and your ugly dresses and your even uglier pseudo-morality.’ He was level with her by now and he stopped, leaning in slightly as if to get a better look at this sad object of his curiosity. ‘What is it about you? Wait a minute. It’s coming back to me.’ He touched his bottom lip with the tip of the knife as if tussling with a knotty problem. ‘Wasn’t your father a bit dodgy? Or was it your mother?’ Again, he stopped as if she might answer and confirm his diagnosis one way or the other. Instead, she stared at him, a bright glimmer of fear twitching beneath her hauteur. I must concede that this was a brilliant stroke, a real rapier thrust, that would have gone right up under the ribs. The truth was Lady Belton’s mother had not been tellement grande chose, but she thought no one knew. Like many people in her position, she believed that because nobody ever gave her their true opinion, they literally had no knowledge of the things she wished concealed. But we did know it. We all knew it, that her mother had married up and then been left with a baby girl when she was abandoned by her noble spouse, who took off for green fields and pastures new, and never came, or looked, back. Doubtless this went some way to explaining Lady Belton’s unhinged snobbishness. ‘Don’t worry,’ said Damian. ‘Nobody would know you’re a mongrel. Just a laughable and imbecilic bully.’ She listened to him, but still she said nothing. She seemed to be breathing heavily, as if after a long run; her cheeks were palpitating and appeared to be more red and blotchy than when he started. I wondered if she might be about to have a stroke.

I could not let it continue. However inflated Lord Claremont might be, however insane Lady Belton, this just wasn’t cricket. I stood. ‘Come on, Damian, that’s enough,’ I said. I could feel a slight sigh of relief among the group, as if I had marked the limits and we would now return to sanity. It was not to be.

Damian turned. Facing him, I at last understood that his anger had made him mad. Temporarily mad maybe, but mad. It cannot be much different for a traveller to find himself in a forest glade and suddenly to spy a wolf walking slowly towards him. I saw his grip on the handle of his weapon and I was frightened. I admit it. I was afraid. ‘What? Is it your turn to tell me off?’ he sneered. ‘You sad, little, grubbing nonentity. You piece of dirt. You filth. You coward.’

‘Damian, for pity’s sake, he’s your friend-’ This came from Dagmar. I was touched that out of all of them she alone should try to defend me in the face of this onslaught. Perhaps Serena might have, but one glance told me she was in her own private hell.

Damian looked first at Dagmar, then at all of them. ‘What? You think he’s my friend? You think he’s your friend? He’s not your friend.’ He shook his head, continuing to walk up and down the table like an armed panther. I could see two of the maids hovering in the shadows, watching, but no one at the table moved. They had seen the treatment of Lady Belton and they had no wish to be next before the guns. ‘He despises you. Do you think he finds you funny?’ He directed this at Lord Claremont. ‘Or stylish?’ He waited in vain for a response from Lady Claremont. ‘Or interesting in any way?’ That was aimed at the whole table. ‘He thinks you’re stupid and dull, but he likes your life. He likes your houses. He likes your titles. He likes the pitiful sense of self-importance he derives from knowing that people know he knows you.’ He hit all the ‘knows’ in this with equal strength, so it sounded more like a song than a sentence. ‘He likes to creep around after you and kiss your arses and brag about you when he gets home. But don’t ever think that he likes you.’

Through all this Serena had sat completely still, her head bowed, and I could see now that she was crying. A steady stream of tears ran down from both eyes, leaving dark marks of mascara across her cheeks as it travelled south. ‘And you think he’s in love with you, don’t you?’ He was standing by her now and she did look up, but she did not answer. ‘Your little swain, who sticks by you through thick and thin, and you laugh at him-’ She had made the beginnings of a protest at this, but he silenced her with a raised palm, ‘You laugh at him, you’ve laughed at him with me, but you tolerate him because he loves you and you think that’s sweet.’ Serena now looked across at me. I think she was shaking her head to distance herself from what he was saying, but I had gone into another place, a numb place, a hollow, lonely place, where I tried but failed to hide. ‘He doesn’t love you. He loves what you are, he loves what he can boast about, your name, your money.’ He paused to take a breath, to be fresh again for the final strike. ‘You should hear what he says about you, all of you, when we’re alone. He’s just a regular little toady, a Johnny-on-the-make, creeping and crawling like a bumboy round you, to worm and lick and slide his way into your lives.’

Lord Claremont probably spoke for the rest of them, when he let out a loud and disgusted ‘Good God!’ Damian had chosen well the right mud to throw at me if he wanted it to stick.

He hadn’t finished with Serena. ‘You idiot. You fool.’ He spoke with an undiluted contempt that made the company shudder. ‘You could have escaped. You could have lived a life. And instead, you chose to spend your days with this… oaf!’ He clipped Andrew’s shoulder as he passed. ‘This twerp! This blob! And for what? To live in a big house, and have people you don’t like pull their forelocks and grovel.’ Dagmar was crying out loud by now and Damian stopped when he got to her. Oddly, when he spoke next his voice was momentarily quite kind. ‘You’re not a bad sort. You deserve better than anything that will come to you.’ But by then he had moved on and now he was standing almost next to Joanna, who was watching him with the fascination of a rabbit faced by a stoat. ‘You might have escaped, without your vixen bitch of a mother. Keep trying.’ What made all this so surreal was that everyone was here, all the objects of his attack were sitting in front of him. Mrs Langley let out a yelp, but her husband held her arm to keep her silent.

Damian was starting to run down and you could tell it, because Richard Tremayne rose from his chair and even Andrew looked ready to move. His grip was loosening. ‘I hate you all. I loathe your false values. I wish you ill in everything you say or do. And yet, even now, I pity you.’ The others, sensing from this that the tirade was coming to an end, began fractionally to relax. Maybe he saw this, or maybe he had always planned it, but the fact is that Damian was not quite finished. ‘I’m going now but I must give you a moment to remember me by.’ He smiled.

‘I think we’ve already had it,’ Candida reentered the fray.

‘No. Something more colourful,’ he said, and in one sharp, astonishing movement he threw down the knife and grabbed the first bowl of fish stew, smashing it over the end of the table where the steaming mass of boiling sea life was sprayed over Lady Claremont and Lucy and Kieran and Richard Tremayne. At this there was anguish and cries of anger and pain as the burning liquid covered them, but there was no real physical reaction beyond shock, and before anyone could move, Damian had snatched up the middle bowl. Crash! Down it went, this time catching Candida, Lord Claremont, Dagmar, George and Joanna. But as he lunged for the third and final bowl the others snapped awake and made a dive for it themselves. Alfred Langley stood with both hands on the rim. Unfortunately for him, Damian had the strength of a tiger and with one wrench it was out of his hands. Seizing it, Damian raised it high above his head, like a pagan priest with an offering for a savage and unforgiving deity, and for a moment everything and everyone was motionless. Then he brought it down hard against an edge, ensuring that the mass of the bowl’s contents covered Lady Belton, who received her anointing with a sickening scream. There was a thick tomato sauce involved in whatever the receipt had been and by now the table looked like the end of the battle of Borodino, with everyone at it covered in a sticky, smelly, steaming mess of fishy gore. The shards of china had shot about, too, and Lucy was nursing a cut on her forehead, while George was bleeding quite heavily from his right cheek. It’s a miracle that nobody was blinded. ‘I’ll say goodnight, then,’ said Damian, and without another word he walked across the terrace, through the open doors into his bedroom and closed them behind him. Once and forever, he was out of their lives.

After he’d gone we sat, all of us, not moving, in total shock. Like victims who have survived an air crash but are not yet sure of it. Then Serena and Dagmar started to cry quite loudly, and Lady Belton, who resembled nothing so much as a red-nosed clown in the Cirque du Soleil, with tendrils of lobster and crab stuck in her hair, began to scream out orders to her dazed and equally fish-festooned husband. ‘Take me away from here! At once! Take me away!’

At this point Valerie Langley cried out that we should call the police, but Alfred did not need the quick, startled looks from the others to know this would never happen. They were not going to finish the evening by providing the press with the best gossip story they had printed in years. With silent understanding and a nod, Alfred steered his wife away from the very idea.

To say the party broke up soon after that would be a significant and major understatement. The party shattered, splintered, exploded, fell into ruins, with the Claremonts and the Langleys running to their different cars as if a gunman were on the loose and training his weapon from a window. Those of us who remained sat, stinking of fish, waiting to see what would happen next. George Tremayne poured himself a drink and brought one over to me, which I thought was decent of him, even if it confirmed the horrid sense that they were all pitying me, pitying and despising me, which they obviously were. They may have varied in the degree to which they believed Damian’s words, but they all believed some of them and I understood what the consequence must be. Others back at home would hear the story, endlessly embellished, and I would thenceforth be tarred in London as a creeping toady, a social climbing greaser, a speck of smarmy, contemptible dirt. I felt my reward for taking up Damian and forcing him upon them had finally arrived. I was finished in the world of my growing-up years. I was an outcast. I was a pariah.

Candida approached, perhaps to offer sympathy, but before she could speak, I took her to one side. ‘I’ll leave tomorrow.’ I spoke in a low voice, because I didn’t want to become a cause cèlèbre, and, worst of all, have others feel obliged to take my side. ‘First thing.’

‘Don’t be silly.’

‘No. I must. I introduced him to everyone. He’s my fault. I can’t stay. Not after that.’ I was grateful for her attempt at support, but it was true. I couldn’t stay among these people for a minute longer than I had to. Andrew Summersby came alongside and Candida appealed to him to persuade me not to go. He shook his head. ‘I should think it’s the only course open to him,’ he said in his most ferociously pompous manner. It was lucky the maids had removed the knife.

Candida did not argue any more that night. ‘Well, sleep on it,’ she said. ‘See how you feel in the morning. We all know he was talking rubbish.’ I smiled and kissed her, and slipped away to my room.

Knowing Candida better now, I think it’s possible she had genuinely dismissed the charges against me but I did not believe it then. And later that night, when I was bathed and smelling a bit less like a welk stall in Bermondsey Market, I asked myself was Damian truly talking rubbish? In some ways I think he was. Most of all in what he said about Serena. Certainly every word was deliberately chosen to damage me irretrievably among those people. To finish me with them. As he was going to vanish from their sight, so, he vowed, would I. It was a cruel attack, and I am sure the best part of it for him was that it would ruin and diminish me in front of her. He wanted to make my love seem a petty and paltry affectation, a device to get invited to dinner, instead of the engine that turned my life.

Even so, it was not quite all rubbish. The funny thing was that there were times when I had envied Damian. I envied his power among these men and women. I had known many of them all my life but within a matter of weeks of their meeting him he had more power over them than I had ever achieved. He was handsome, of course, and charismatic and I was neither, but finally it wasn’t that. Newcomer as he was, he did not allow them to dictate the rules of the game, but I… maybe I did. Had I not given more leeway to the jokes of Lord Claremont and his ilk than I would have done to those of a social inferior? Did I not pretend, by never arguing, that the fatuities I’d listened to after dinner in a series of great and splendid dining rooms were interesting comments? I had sat up late with fools and laughed and nodded and flattered their fathomless self-importance without revealing a trace of my real feelings. Would I have bothered with Dagmar were she not a princess? Did I not maintain civilities with someone like Andrew, a man I despised and would have actively disliked even if Serena had never been born? Would I have given him the little respect that I did if there weren’t a faint impulse within me to bow down before his position? I’m not sure. Were my mother alive and able to read this, she would say it was all nonsense, that I was brought up to be polite and why should I be criticised for that. One part of me thinks she would be right, but another…

At all events the evening finished me in that world for many years. Damian was gone from their sight, but so, to a large extent, was I. With a few, a very few, exceptions, I dropped out of their round, at first because of embarrassment, but later in disgust with my own self. Even Serena seemed to back away from me or so I thought. For a time I would still drop by occasionally, once or twice in a year, to see her or to see the children or, I suppose, because I could not stay away but I felt that the shadow of that evening was always with us, that something had died, and at last I accepted it and severed all connection.

Of course, today I am older and kinder and, looking back, I judge that I treated myself harshly. I do not think Serena was responsible for my exile. Nor do I blame any of the others because I think I did it to punish myself and I was wrong. The truth is that Damian spoke that night out of anger and a desire for revenge, although I am still not quite sure why I was the target for such heavy, apparently unprovoked blows. It may simply be that he blamed me for pulling him into the unholy mess in the first place. If so, with the wisdom of hindsight, I’m inclined to think he had a point.