Past Imperfect (27 page)

'I think he must have got a bit worse,' I said. 'I'm not sure Helen Keller would have married him if he'd been as he is now.'

She laughed again, but still her laugh was sad. 'I wish we'd had a child,' she said, but then caught my look. 'I know. Everyone thinks it would have solved everything and everyone is wrong.'

'Don't ask me. I'm the sad old bachelor who could never commit.'

'I just think, with him, it would have shored him up. Allowed him that bat squeak of immortality that children bring. Or even if he'd just succeeded at something convincingly. Because he never really has.'

'He lives very well for a failure.'

She shook her head. 'It's all inherited.'

This surprised me. 'Really? I hadn't got him down for a Trustafarian.'

She knew what I was saying and she wasn't offended. 'It's not old money. All that stuff about the Montagus is bollocks. It isn't even our real name. His father arrived from Hungary after the uprising of 1956. He started as a lorry driver, built up a transport business and sold out in the mid Nineties. Tarquin's his only child. He was a lovely man, actually. I doted on him, but Tarquin used to keep him hidden, so none of our friends were allowed to meet him. Now he wants you to think the money is the remains of an ancient fortune, amplified by his own recent success. It's neither. But I expect you knew that.'

I didn't confirm this, as it seemed superior and smug. 'It's rather a romantic fantasy, in a way,'

'It can't last for much longer.' She sighed wearily at the thought of impending collapse. 'The whole thing costs far more than either of us realised and there's very little coming in, now we've tied it all up in the house. I write my books so at least we can eat and go to the theatre, but I'm not sure how long that'll keep us above the waterline. He's a hopeless architect, you know. He gets taken on for particular jobs now and then, when a practice needs some extra help, but nobody ever asks him to stay.'

'Would you?'

This time she laughed out loud. 'Perhaps that's it. Perhaps he's a fabulous architect but anathema to have in the office.'

'So what are you going to do?'

Which made her stop laughing. 'I don't know. Everyone says I should leave him, most of all my mother, which would have astonished her and me if anyone had predicted such a thing twenty years ago, but the odd thing is, in a funny way I do still rather love him. You'll say I'm mad, but I watch him boring everyone to death and trying to control and impress and make people admire him, and I know he's so puzzled and frightened and bewildered inside. He can tell it isn't working, but he just doesn't understand why not. No one comes to stay any more.'

'Except us.'

'Except fools like you. And nobody wants to know us down here. I've seen them literally roll their eyes when we walk into a room. I somehow feel I can't leave him open to attack, when it's so obvious to everyone but him that he can't protect himself.'

As often as I am reminded that love, like everything else in this world, comes in many different shapes and sizes, I can still be amazed by some of the forms it takes. 'I don't think you're mad. It's your life,' I said.

'I know. And it isn't a dress rehearsal. But even if I don't add up to much in the end, the fact is I took him on, nobody forced me, and I have to see it through. I suppose that sounds like a quote from G. A. Henty.'

'It sounds like something only a very decent woman would say.' She blushed and at that moment Bridget reappeared at the fence. 'Please come. If he doesn't stop talking about the wine we're going to drink I swear to God I'll break a bottle of it over his head.' So saying, she relieved Jennifer of her burdensome share of the cold box and guided us to our site on the top terrace where Tarquin had staked his claim. To a restful mixture of chattering crowd noise, music and Tarquin droning on, we unpacked our food and spread it forth luxuriously upon our waiting, cushioned rugs.

We had nearly finished eating when Tarquin suddenly broke off his current lecture. He had been telling us about the Ptolemaic dynasty of Egypt or some subject equally fascinating, and we had each retreated into a kind of glazed, mental cave of our own making, when his voice altered and took on a nervous edge: 'They're here.'

'Who?' Bridget was keen to support the introduction of any new topic, never mind what.

'The family. The Claremonts.'

As he said their name, I was amazed to find that, like a lyric in a wartime love song, my heart actually skipped a beat. Dear Lord, does there never come a time when we are too old for such foolishness? But when I looked there was no sign of Serena, only an elderly group, all in evening dress; presumably they had enjoyed a smarter, better dinner inside. They glanced benevolently at the crowds enjoying their policies in so pleasant and decorous a manner, and in their midst were two ancient pensioners who seemed to be impersonating the Earl and Countess of Claremont, darling Roo and Pel, as I had never known them well enough to call them, who had once been such a vivid part of my life. I looked at them now, these icons of my youth, confident that they could not see me. Was I avoiding them because the sight of me would make them start and stretch their eyes in horror, or because I could not bear to see that they did not recognise me and I was forgotten? Probably the latter. I was sneakily afraid that if someone had mentioned that one of the hundreds of picnickers was an acquaintance of theirs from four decades before and had thought of them many, many times in the interim, they would have been none the wiser. Not even had I been paraded before them in person.

This deflating suspicion was reinforced by the sad but apparent truth that my Lord Claremont had been more or less exchanged for another man. The handsome, corpulent, sexy, flirty hedonist, with his thick, wavy hair and his wavier smile, had completely vanished and been replaced by a bony, stooped individual. His nose, stripped of its flesh and unsupported by the plump cheeks on either side, had become prominent, hooked like the Duke of Wellington's to whom he was no doubt related in some wise, while his generous lips had been shaved down, as if by a razor, and he had almost no hair left. I would not say he appeared less distinguished. Not at all. This fellow looked like someone who read poetry and philosophy and pondered the great issues of life, while the Lord Claremont of my memories knew how to get a good table at the last minute and where you could find an excellent Chateau d'Yquem, but not much else. For a moment he glanced my way but of course registered nothing, which was not surprising since, while I knew him in those distant days, he did not know me. Not really. Certainly, he gave little sign of being aware of that awkward, plain young man whose only use was to make up a table for bridge. Even so, looking at this stick-like figure, with a Baron Munchausen outline, I missed the man he had been and it was hard not to feel a pang at the pitiless work of the passing years.

Lady Claremont was less altered. It seems odd to think of it, but I must have known her first when some of the bloom of youth was still upon her. Serena was the eldest child and her mother had married young so she cannot have been much more than forty-two or -three, when we met. It is always odd for the young grown old to realise how youthful the dominating creatures of their early years must in many cases have been. In those days her haughty, witty confidence was further empowered by her cold beauty and as a result, to me she had seemed formidable. It is true that her looks had largely, though not entirely, disappeared. But I could see, even from a distance, that she had replaced whatever she had lost with other qualities, some more sterling than the earlier version. She glanced our way and for a moment, forgetting everything that had kept me huddled out of her eyeline, I was tempted to signal my presence in some way, but the thought of her ignoring my wave and the fun it would give Tarquin when she did kept me still. Then came the broadcast announcement that told us the concert was about to begin. She looked at her husband, muttering some suggestion, I would assume about returning to their seats and a moment later, with a final, general acknowledgement, the group from the house climbed the stone steps towards the top terrace.

The concert was cheerful rather than profound, a Hungry Hundreds medley of Puccini, Rossini and Verdi, with a bit of Chopin thrown in to make you cry. The lead-up to the interval was the Drinking Song from
Traviata
, which was adequately sung by quite a good tenor from some northern company, and a fat soprano over from Italy, who was supposed to be much better than him but wasn't. It was an appropriate choice as the throats of the watching hoards were dry as dust by this time, and you could hear the champagne corks starting to pop as the couple trilled the final soaring note. Tarquin, naturally, had provided some rare sustenance, Cristal, or the like, and was lecturing us on how to savour it, when we were interrupted by a man in the neolivery of the modern butler, striped trousers and a short black jacket. There was no mistaking Tarquin as our leader and he went over to him, murmuring in his ear. Tarquin's surprise deepened to astonishment as he pointed me out. 'That's him,' he said, and the man scuttled over towards me.

'Her Ladyship wonders if you and your party would like to join the family after the concert, Sir, to watch the fireworks from the terrace.'

I cannot deny I felt a warm sense of self-justification at his words, as anyone must when they find what they had supposed was a one-way relationship, is in fact reciprocal. I had been forgiven, or at any rate I had not been forgotten. I turned to the others. 'Lady Claremont has asked us up to the house for the fireworks.' Silence greeted this extraordinary development. 'After the music's finished.'

Jennifer was the first to gather her wits. 'How tremendously kind. We should love it. Please thank her.'

The man nodded with a slight inclination of his head, rather than a bow, and pointed towards the steps. 'If you go up to the top there - ' He stopped, looking back at me. 'Of course, you'll know the way, Sir.'

'Yes.'

'They'll be in the Tapestry Drawing Room.'

'Thank you.' He hurried back to his normal duties. There was silence as the other three stared at me.

'
You'll know the way, Sir?'
For once, Tarquin's determination never to be impressed had deserted him.

'I used to come here when I was younger.'

Tarquin was silent. I knew him well enough by now to understand that he was considering the facts with a view to reimposing his mastery of the situation. So far, the solution had eluded him.

'Why didn't you say?' Jennifer's enquiry was, under the circumstances, a reasonable one.

'I didn't know where we were coming until we got here. We asked but Tarquin wouldn't tell us.' Jennifer threw a swift, admonitory glance at her pensive spouse. 'And I wasn't sure they'd be interested in seeing me again after such a long time. It's true that I used to stay here at one period of my misspent youth, but it was forty years ago.'

'Then she must have very sharp eyes, this "Lady Claremont" of yours.' Bridget spoke in derisive, inverted commas, as she always did when dealing with any part of my past that threatened her. I knew already, without being told, that of all the aspects of this uncomfortable weekend, the present episode would prove the
most
uncomfortable for her. But before we could discuss it further, the orchestra struck up and we were being sprayed with a deeply accessible version of 'Quando M'en Vo' from
La Boheme
, which may be played for laughs in context but is generally more lachrymose in concert and soon had all those MFHs and lifetime presidents of the village flower show committee reaching for their handkerchiefs.

I knew that in fact the Tapestry Drawing Room opened directly on to the gardens above us, but some trace of late-teen diffidence told me that to push in through the French windows with a crowd of strangers was overplaying my hand, so I devised the plan that at the end of the performance we would deposit our debris in the car, to obviate the need to collect it later, and make our way to the front of the house. The programme of events stated clearly that there was a fifty-minute break between concert and fireworks to allow the night to get properly dark, so I knew we had time. In that way we could come into the house via the front door, like normal people, and not be suspected of springing an ambush on our hosts.

I was glad of the decision when we got there, as quite a crowd was arriving and it was clear that the Claremonts had cunningly devised this plan to placate those locals who felt they had a right to be acknowledged by the family without the bore of giving them all dinner. The hall at Gresham was vast and high, stone-floored and with a screen of columns completing the square, behind which a graceful cantilevered staircase rose up to the next floor, its steps so shallow that a woman descending in a long skirt, which for our generation meant evening dress, seemed to float down as if her feet barely skimmed the steps beneath. It was a more awkward progress for men, who had to adjust quickly to the fact that each step taken only brought them about an inch nearer their destination, but for women the effect was like gliding, flying, and quite magical to watch, as I remembered so very well.

The portraits displayed here had been selected by Lady Claremont in a massive re-hang when she and her husband took over the house in 1967, just before my first visit, and which I could see at once had not been altered. They were chosen, as she freely confessed, unashamedly and entirely for their looks, and despite the anguished protests of Lord Claremonts' surviving aunts, those distinguished Victorian statesmen in undertakers' frock coats, those fearsome Georgian soldiers, all red faces and stubborn chins, those wily Tudor statesmen with their shifty eyes and avaricious mouths and generally the uglier members of the family, had been banished to anterooms and passages and bedrooms, except the ones by really famous painters, who had wound up either in the library or hung in fearsome double tiers against the crimson, damask walls of the great dining room. Both these chambers, Lady Claremont had explained to me at the time, were masculine rooms and so needed to be impressive but not pretty. Here, in the hall, charming children from every period were interlarded with handsome, nervous, young men in their Eton leaving portraits, trembling with anticipation at the welcoming life ahead, and lovely Gresham girls, painted on their betrothal to other lordly magnates or as part of some series of Court beauties for King Charles II or the Prince Regent, smiled down on their worshippers beneath. Their shining, gilded frames were set off by the apricot walls and the intricate plasterwork, picked out in varying shades of grey and white, while in the centre of the ceiling hung a huge chandelier, like a shower of glistening raindrops, frozen in their fall by a glance from the Snow Queen.