Past Imperfect (15 page)

Looking at Philip, framed in the doorway, it was hard not to feel at that moment, that the fate which had engulfed him was almost as bad. He wore ancient, stained cords, scuffed loafers and an open-necked check shirt with a worn, frayed collar. Old clothes were obviously a family uniform. Like me, he had put on weight and his hair was thinning. Unlike me, he had developed the mottled red face of a drinker. More than anything it was the sagging, tired look about those poached-egg eyes, so characteristic of the born privileged who fail, that gave him away. He held out his hand with what he imagined to be a roguish grin. 'Good to see you, old chap. What brings you to this part of the forest?' He took hold of my fingers and gave them the ruthless, wince-making squeeze that such men use in a vain attempt to persuade you they are still in charge. Lucy, having waxed so lyrical about him, now seemed put out to be interrupted.

'What are you doing here? We were coming over as soon as we'd finished lunch. Who's in the shop?'

'Gwen.'

'
On her own?'
Her voice was sharp and admonitory. And it was directed to include me. It was obviously her deliberate intention to show me that her husband was an incompetent fool. One minute earlier we had been swept up in the moving pathos of the tear-drenched daddy, but now it was apparently necessary for Lucy to point out that things had not gone wrong in their lives because of
her
. On the face of it this behaviour was of course illogical and contradictory, but among these people it is not uncommon. Their marriage had clearly reached that stage where she, and probably he, could be generous and gallant about the other when they were apart, but the actual physical presence of their partner would set their teeth on edge. This emotional conundrum often occurs in a culture where divorce is still seen as essentially giving in. Even today, the upper and upper middle classes find personal unhappiness, at any rate the admission of it, tedious and ill-bred, and they must always talk in public, or to close friends for that matter, as if everything to do with their family situation were going tremendously well. Maintaining the legend is the preferred option for most of them, as long as nobody is in the room whose presence undermines the performance. They generally adhere to this, right up to the moment of blow-up. It can be quite odd for members of this social group, as their circle will often contain many couples who appear to be perfectly content, until a call out of the blue, or a scribbled line in a Christmas card, will suddenly announce the divorce.

Philip nodded in answer to her harsh interrogation. 'She can manage. Nobody's been in for more than an hour.' There was a kind of resigned hopelessness in this simple account of the state of his business. In the area of his professional activity Philip had lost the energy required by pretence. He could just about stand behind the counter, but to talk up his drudgery would have been too exhausting. He picked a spoon off the counter and started to feed himself out of the pasta pot. 'Lucy tells me you're a writer now? What have you written that I might have read?'

Naturally, this was a defensive attempt to diminish me and my activities, but I do not believe it was malicious. He suspected, rightly, that I was judging him, so he was showing that he reserved the right to judge me. Anyone of my kind and my generation who has chosen to make their living in the Arts will be familiar with this treatment. In our youth the careers we had decided on were considered completely mad, by our parents and by our friends, but as long as we were struggling our more sober contemporaries were happy to encourage and sympathise and even to feed us. The trouble came when we arty folk achieved any kind of success. Then the idea that we should be making money or, worse, making more money than our adult and sensible acquaintance, was akin to impertinence. They had chosen the boring route in order to be secure. To have achieved security but to have enjoyed jokes and larks along the way was nothing short of irresponsible and deserved to be punished. I smiled. 'Nothing, I should think. Since if you had read anything by me I have no doubt you would have made the connection.'

He raised his eyebrows at Lucy, comically signifying, presumably, that I was a touchy artist who must be humoured. 'Lucy's read some of your stuff. I gather she thinks very highly of it.'

I did not point out that this remark meant his earlier question had been entirely redundant. 'I'm glad.' My words fell into a silence and we sat for a moment. There was an inertia in the room and we all three felt it. This often happens when old friends get together after an interval of many years. Prior to the meeting they imagine that something explosive and fun will come out of it, but then they are usually faced by a lacklustre group, in late middle age, who have nothing much in common any more. For better or worse, the Rawnsley-Prices had negotiated their journey, I had travelled mine and now we were just three people in a very dirty kitchen who didn't know each other. Besides, I needed further information before my pilgrimage could be considered complete and I wasn't going to get it while Philip was with us. It was time to break up the group. 'Can I see the shop?' I said. There was a pause, with a sense of the unspoken in the air. I assume this was simply Philip's male need to present himself as my equal in terms of worldly success which, modest as mine has been, might prove hard when I had actually seen the business. Or maybe it was Lucy's sudden realisation that for the same reason I was not going to take away from our day spent together the idea that everything was going swimmingly. It is an unspoken ambition for most of us that our contemporaries should see us as successful, but in Lucy's case she was about to be denied it.

After a pause, Philip nodded. 'Of course.'

It will come as no surprise that the farm shop was a hopeless place. Fittingly, I suppose, it was housed in a former cattle shed, which had been converted quickly and with insufficient money. There was a cheery, if forced, optimism in the inevitable pine counters and shelves. Above them, brightly coloured cards in
faux
, red, giant handwriting proclaimed the scintillating array of produce on offer: '
Fresh
vegetables!' they shouted. '
Home made
Jams and Jellies!' But in that yawning, unpeopled space they took on a dismal, pathetic quality, like someone eating alone in a paper hat. The floor was cheap and the ceiling had not been properly finished and, as I could have predicted, the whole place was full of items no one in their right mind would ever want to buy. Not just tinned pate made from wild boar or goose wings, but gadgets to prevent wine losing its flavour in the fridge and woolly things to wear inside your boots while fishing. Christmas stocking presents to be bought and given by someone who knows nothing about it. The meat counter looked particularly unattractive, even to a carnivore like me, and seemed actively to repel further investigation. A single customer was paying for a cauliflower. Other than that the place was deserted. We looked around in silence. 'The trouble is all these shopping malls -' Philip drawled the word in a bad, American accent, trying to convert his pain into a joke. 'They're building them everywhere. It's impossible to match the prices without going broke.' I hesitated to mention that they seemed to be going broke anyway. 'We keep being told that everyone's environmentally conscious nowadays, that they care about where their food comes from, but . . .' He sighed. What might have been intended as an ironic shrug just turned into a sad sag of his shoulders. I freely confess I felt tremendously sorry for him in that moment. Whether or not I used to dislike him, I had after all known him for a very long time and I did not wish him ill.

It is a fact that in the brutal periods of history, what changes is not the cutting edge of every new market, or the ambition that drives a new factory owner or a new hostess, or a new conquest from the performing stage, or a new triumph in a political drawing room. All that is constant. It is the level of coasting that goes on behind the bright and harsh facade that is different. In a gentle era - and my youth was passed in a fairly gentle era - people of little ability could drift by in every class, at every level of society. Jobs were found for them. Homes were arranged. Someone's uncle sorted it out. Someone's mother put in a word. But when things get tough, when, as now, the prizes are bigger but the going is rougher, the weaklings are elbowed aside until they fall back and slip over the cliff. Unskilled workers or stupid landowners alike, they are crushed by a system they cannot master and find themselves ejected on to the roadside. Just such a one was Philip Rawnsley-Price. Subconsciously, he thought his
braggadocio
would carry him through, that he had the charm and the connections to make it work, however he might choose to live his life. Alas, his connections were the wrong connections and his charm was non-existent, and now he was in his late fifties there was no one left alive who cared much whether he swam or sank.

I had never taken to Philip when we were young, but I pitied him now. He had been defeated by our 'interesting times' and he would not rise again. A hand-to-mouth existence lay ahead, of inheriting a cottage from a cousin and trying to rent it out, of hoping he would be remembered when the last aunt bit the dust, of wondering if his children might manage a little something for him on a regular basis. That was what he had to look forward to and it was anyone's guess whether Lucy would hang around to share it. It rather depended on what alternatives presented themselves. All this we both knew as we shook hands awkwardly outside. 'Come back and see us again,' he said, knowing that I never would.

'I will,' I lied.

'Don't leave it so long the next time.' And he was gone, back to his vacant counters and his empty till.

Lucy followed me to the car. I stopped. 'Did you ever get to the bottom of Margaret's condition?' She looked at me, puzzled, for a moment. 'You said it was hereditary but there was no trace of it on either your side or Philip's.'

'That was the thing. Of course I had the most nerve-racking suspicions. I kept thinking I ought to be poring through Damian's medical records . . .'

'But you didn't.'

'No. I was about to confess and suggest it, with a sinking heart as you can imagine, when we found out that Philip's aunt, his mother's eldest sister, had died of it, the very same thing, in childhood. And his mother never knew. Nor did either of her siblings. You can imagine how it was in those days.' She gave a little grimace. 'They were all just told that our Father in heaven had taken their sister because he loved her. Basta.'

'How did you find out?'

'Total luck. My ma-in-law was talking to
her
mother, who must have been about a million by then, and for some strange reason she told her all about Margaret. We'd never explained to Granny what was wrong, because we didn't want to worry her. At any rate this time she finally learned the truth, and right away she started weeping like a fire hydrant and it all came pouring out.'

'Poor woman.'

'Yes. Poor old thing. Of course she blamed herself and it more or less finished her off. We all told her that it wasn't her fault, that it wasn't a killer any more and so on, but I don't think it made much difference.' She smiled sadly. 'So the mystery was solved. The tragic thing was that the aunt could so easily have been saved with the right drugs but it happened in the twenties, when it was a question of hot drinks and cold compresses and having your tonsils out on the kitchen table. Anyway, as I say, Margaret's been fine ever since.'

'Were you at all sorry?'

This time she was genuinely bewildered. 'About what?'

'That she was definitely Philip's and not Damian's.' This was unkind of me, since it would hardly help her to dwell on heaven, trapped, as she was, in an outer circle of hell.

But Lucy only smiled and, just for a second, the minxish child-woman she had once been, looked out from behind her wrinkles. 'I'm not sure. Not at the time, because the whole drama had been explained and that was
such
a relief. Later, maybe. A little. But please don't give me away.'

We'd kissed and I was back in the car, when she tapped on the window. 'If you see him . . .'

I waited. 'Yes?'

'Tell him I remember him. Wish him luck for the future.'

'That's the point. I don't think he's got a future. Not a very long one, anyway.'

This made her silent and, to my amazement, I thought for a second she was going to cry. At last she spoke again, with a softer and more gentle voice than I had heard from her since my arrival. Or indeed, ever. 'All the more so, then. Give him my best love. And say that I wish him nothing but good things. Nothing but good, good things.' She stepped back from the vehicle and I nodded. Her simple encomium spoke more for Damian's treatment of her than I would have credited him with.

The interview was over. I put my foot on the accelerator and started on the road back to London.

Dagmar

FIVE

Her Royal Highness Princess Dagmar of Moravia, despite her name, was a mousy, timid, little character. She had an apologetic, poignant manner, as if she were aware of always being disappointing, which I am sorry to say was usually true where we were concerned, because we all wanted to like her more than we did. You will probably not believe me, or put it down to excessive snobbery on my part, but the tiny Princess and her enormous mother, the Grand Duchess, were immensely impressive to us all in those dim and distant days. Nobody could believe more firmly than I in the miracle of constitutional monarchy, but the years of constant exposure in every branch of the media has inevitably resulted in a certain devaluation of Royal blood, as the public came to realise that for the most part these men and women, often pleasant, sometimes intelligent, occasionally physically attractive, are no more remarkable than any other person one might stand behind at the grocer's or the bank. Only Her Majesty, by never being interviewed, by never revealing an opinion, has retained a genuine mystery. Of course, we the public love to conjecture what her response to something might be. 'She must hate this,' we say. Or 'How pleased she will be about that.' But we do not know and it is our own ignorance that fascinates us.