Past Imperfect (50 page)

At this precise moment, the door opened that on ordinary days led to the servery and, further below, to the kitchens. Tonight it revealed a group of young men who came bouncing through on to the stage, and started to play and sing. With a kind of group sigh we suddenly all realised that this, incredibly, was Steve Winwood, lead singer of the group formed and named for the man who ran up on to the stage after him, Spencer Davis. This was the real live Spencer Davis. No sooner had this information penetrated our skulls, than they started to play their song of a couple of years previously,
Keep on Running
. It is hard to explain now what this felt like then. We are a jaded people, these days. We see film stars and singers and every other permutation of fame wherever we go, indeed sometimes, judging by the magazines, it seems that more people are famous than not. But this wasn't true in 1968 and to be in the same room as a real-live band playing and singing its own hit number, which most of us had bought anyway two years before and played ever since, was to be inside a fantasy. It was astonishing, mind-searing, completely impossible to take in. Even Lucy was silenced, if not for long. 'Can you believe it?' she said. I couldn't. We were so sweet, really.

It was then that I saw Damian. He was standing inside one of the window embrasures and so half in shadow, looking at the world-shaking sight but without any outward sign of excitement or even pleasure. He just stood there, listening, watching, but watching without interest. My own attention was taken back by the band and, to be honest, I forgot all about him until much later on, but I still have that image, a melancholic at the carnival, lodged in my brain. After that, I was back in the party, dancing and talking and drinking for hours, and finally, at about half past two, going off in search of breakfast, which I found in the conservatory. This was a huge glass-and-cast-iron affair, what was once called a winter garden, built for one of the countesses in the 1880s, and on this night it had been cleared and filled with little round tables and chairs, each one decorated with a pyramid of flowers. A long buffet stood against one end, and the exotic climbing flowers on the stone wall behind it formed a kind of living wallpaper. What made it even more unusual was that the whole space had been carpeted for the occasion in bright red, cut close round the stone fountain at its centre, and the route of access, normally a short walk along a terrace from one of the drawing rooms, had been covered in with a passage, fashioned in wood for that one night only, but as an absolute facsimile, in every way, of the room it connected to, with dado, panels and cornice, and the very handles on the windows made as exact reproductions of the originals. In short, there is a level, perhaps in all things, where the object or activity is of so exquisite a standard that it becomes an art form in itself, and for me that little, constructed passage achieved it. Like everything else that evening, it was extraordinary.

I walked down the table, helping myself to the delights, then sauntered around, chatting with assorted clutches of guests. Joanna was there and I talked to her for a bit, and Dagmar, finally alighting at a table with Candida, which was in itself a bit unusual as normally by this stage of the evening she would be laughing like someone with terminal whooping cough and I would give her a wide berth, but on this evening, at her own dance which made it odd, she was curiously piano, so I sat down. I seemed to have shed Lucy by that time and I know I didn't fix myself up with a partner for the evening, as one usually did at these things, although I cannot tell you why. Certainly it did not in any way lessen my enjoyment. I think, looking back, that maybe it would have felt awkward and dishonest to have had to flirt and concentrate and pretend that some other girl was the centre of my attention for the evening when I was in Serena's house and at Serena's party. 'Have you seen anything of your friend Damian?' said Candida. Again, she seemed quite unlike her normal self and positively thoughtful, not an adjective she would generally attract at half past two in the morning.

I had to concentrate for a moment. The question had come out of nowhere. 'Not recently. I saw him in the dining room when we were listening to the band earlier. Why?'

'No reason.' She turned to one of the Tremayne boys who had arrived at the table with some pals and a plate of sausages.

I'd finished eating and Carla Wakefield wanted my seat, so I left the conservatory and wandered back through the emptying house. For no reason, I turned into the little oval anteroom, outside the dining room, where the music was still echoing through the rafters. There was a little group of paintings depicting the five senses that I found intriguing and I leaned in to see more of the detail, when an icy blast hit me and I stood to see that a door leading out to the terrace was open and Serena was coming in from the night. She was alone, and while she was, for me, as lovely as anyone can imagine a woman could be, she looked as if she were shivering with cold. 'What were you doing out there?' I said. 'You must be freezing.'

For a second she had to concentrate to work out both who I was and what I was saying, but having regained control of her brain, she nodded. 'It is a bit chilly,' she said.

'But what were you doing?'

She shrugged lightly. 'Just thinking,' she said.

'I don't suppose you want to dance,' I spoke cheerfully, but without any expectations.

I quite understand that, in this account of my relations with Serena Gresham I must seem pessimistic and negative to a tedious degree, but you have to understand that at this time in my life I was young and ugly. To be ugly when young is something that no one who has not experienced it should ever claim to understand. It is all very well to talk about superficial values and 'beauty of character,' and the rest of the guff that ugly teenagers have to listen to from their mothers, the 'marvellous thing about being different' and so on, but the plain truth is you are bankrupt in the only currency with value. You may have friends without number, but when it comes to romance you have nothing to bargain with, nothing to sell. You are not to be shown off and flaunted, you are the last resort when there's no one left worth dancing with. When you are kissed, you do not turn into a prince. You are just a kissed toad and usually the kisser regrets it in the morning. The best reputation you can acquire is that you never talk. If you are good company and you can hold your tongue, you will see some action, but woe betide the ugly suitor who grows overconfident and brags. Of course, things change. In time, at last, some people will start to see through your face to your other qualities and eventually, in the thirties and forties, other factors come into play. Success will mend your features and so will money, and this is not, actually, because the women concerned are necessarily mercenary. It is because you have begun to smell differently. Success makes you a different person. But you never forget those few, those very few, Grade A women who loved you when no one else did. In the words of a thriller, I know who you are and you will always have a place in my heart. But even the least of these did not come along before my middle twenties. When I was eighteen, ugly and in love, I knew I was in love alone.

'Yes. Let's dance,' said Serena, and I can still remember that strange mixture of butterflies and feeling sick that her answer gave me.

Spencer Davis had left by then. Presumably they were already racing down the motorway, or the equivalent in those days, having more than earned their wedge and made the evening legendary. God bless them all. I hope they know what happiness they gave us. It was three o'clock by this stage and nearly the end of the ball. A disc jockey had taken over again, but you could hear in his voice that he was winding down. He put on a slow record I rather liked,
A Single Girl
, which had been a hit a year or two earlier, and we moved closer. There is something so peculiar about dancing. You are entitled to slide your arm round the waist of a woman, to hold her closely, to feel her breasts against your chest through your shirt and the thin silk of an evening dress; her hair brushes against your cheek, her very scent excites you, yet there is no intimacy in it, no assumption of anything but politeness and sociability. Needless to say I was in paradise as we shifted our weight from foot to foot, and talked of the band and the party, and what a complete success the evening had been. But although she was obviously pleased to hear it, still Serena seemed thoughtful and not as elated as I had expected her to be. As she was entitled to feel. 'Have you seen Damian?' she said. 'He was looking for you.'

'Why?'

'I think he wants to ask you for a lift tomorrow.'

'I'm going rather early.'

'He knows. He has to get away first thing, too.' I was so absorbed in the wonder of dancing with her that I didn't register this much, although I remember it did occur to me that I should find any excuse to linger, were I lucky enough to be staying at Gresham.

'Have you enjoyed yourself?' I asked.

She thought for a moment. 'These things are such milestones,' she said, which was an odd answer really, even if it was true. These events
were
rites of passage to my generation and we did not much question their validity. It may seem strange in our aggressively anti-formal age but then we saw the point of ritual. The girls came out, the men came of age. The former happened when the girl was eighteen, the latter when the man was twenty-one. This was because the upper classes entirely ignored the government's altering the age of seniority to eighteen for many years, if indeed they recognise it now. These events were a marking of adulthood. After they had been observed you were a fully fledged member of the club, and your membership would continue to be parsed by ceremony: Weddings and christenings, parties for our offspring, more weddings and finally funerals. These were the Big Moments by which we steered our course through life. That's gone now. There are seemingly no obligatory events. The only thing that really marks an aristocratic upbringing apart from a middle-class one today is that the upper classes still marry before giving birth. Or, when they don't, it is exceptional. Apart from that many of the traditions that once distinguished them as a tribe seem largely to have melted into the sand.

The song came to an end and Serena was claimed by her departing guests, while I wandered off through the house, reluctant, even now, to call it a day. I left the dancing and crossed the anteroom, where a girl in pink was asleep on a rather pretty sofa, before poking through the half-open door into the Tapestry Drawing Room which lay beyond. At first I thought it was empty. There were only a few lamps lit and the room was engulfed in gloom. The Empress Catherine's clock caught the eye as one lamp was so placed to make the glass on the face shine, but otherwise it was clearly a room that had done its work for the day. Then I saw that it was not in fact empty, but that one chair beneath a vast tapestry reaching to the cornice was occupied and the sitter was none other than Damian Baxter. 'Hello,' I said. 'Serena told me you wanted to ask me something.'

He looked up. 'Yes. I wondered whether you could give me a lift home tomorrow, if you're driving straight down. I know you're leaving early.'

I was interested by this, because I had never heard Damian speak of his home before. 'Where is home?' I said.

'Northampton. I imagine you'll drive straight past it. Unless you're not going back to London at all.'

'Of course I'll take you. I'll pick you up at about nine.'

That seemed to be the end of it. Mission accomplished. He stood. 'I think I'll go to bed,' he said. There was something curiously unembroidered about his manner, which I had come to see as endlessly calculated. But not tonight.

'What did you think of the party?'

'Amazing.'

'And did you have a good time?'

'So-so,' he said.

As promised, I arrived back at the abbey at approximately nine the following morning. The door was standing open so I just went in. As I had expected, the house party might still have been in their rooms, but the place was a whirl of activity. A great house on the day after a party is always rather evocative. Servants were wandering about, collecting missed glasses and things, and carrying furniture back to their proper places. The table was being assembled at one end of the dining room, while the huge carpet was unrolled in front of me, and when I asked after the house party's breakfast I was nodded through to the little dining room beyond it, a simple room, if not as little as all that, enlivened by some paintings of racehorses, with their riders in the Gresham colours. Lady Claremont had broken her usual rule and there were three tables, a bit jammed in, set for about twenty-four. Damian was alone, finishing off a piece of toast. He stood as I entered. 'My case is already in the hall.'

'Don't you want to say goodbye to anyone?'

'They're all asleep and I said goodbye last night.' So, without further ado, we loaded up his bag and left. He didn't say anything much as we drove along, beyond a few directions, until we were back on the Al heading south. Then, at last, he did speak. 'I'm not going to do that again,' he said.

'We're none of us going to do much more of it. I think I've only got another two dances and a few charity things, then it's over.'

'I'm not even going to them. I've had enough. I should do some work, anyway, before I forget what it is I'm supposed to be studying.'

I looked at him. There was something resolute and glum about him, which was new. 'Did anything happen last night?' I asked.

'What do you mean?'

'You seem rather disenchanted.'

'If I am disenchanted, it has nothing to do with last night. It's the whole bloody, self-indulgent, boring thing. I've had enough of it.'

'Which of course is your privilege.'

After that, we drove more or less in silence until at last we reached Northampton. It is not a town I know, but Damian took me safely to a row of perfectly respectable semi-detached 1930s villas, all built of brick with tiles hung above the waistline, and each with a name on the gate. The one we stopped outside was called 'Sunnyside.' As we were unloading, the door opened and a middle-aged couple came out, the man in a rather loud jersey and worsted slacks, and the women in a grey skirt with a cardigan over her shoulders, held in place by a shiny chain. The man came forward to take the case. 'This is my father,' said Damian and he introduced me. I shook hands and said hello.