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
