anyway, to make their exit and not to take too long about it. I managed to find our hosts in the throng to thank them and say goodbye.
Lady Claremont was still smiling, with that glint in her eye. ‘We must get you down here. If you could ever spare the time.’
‘I’m down this weekend, so I must have some time to spare.’
‘Of course you are. With those funny people who’ve got Malton Towers.’ The phrase ‘those funny people’ told me everything I needed to know about Tarquin’s chances of ever getting in with the County. ‘One of Henry’s great- grandmothers grew up at Malton. He used to stay there quite often before the war. But you thought it was ghastly, didn’t you?’ She looked at her aged husband.
He nodded. ‘Coldest bloody house I ever entered. Cold food, cold baths, cold everything. I never had a wink of sleep in all the years I went there.’ It was easy to see that his lordship had had about enough of this interminable evening and was more than ready for bed, but he hadn’t quite finished. ‘They’re crackers to have taken it on. Ruined my cousins, ruined every organisation that came after them. And at least my relations had the land, much good did it do them. Your friends have just bought a bottomless pit.’ Actually, to me this sounded not only like fairly accurate reporting but also curiously reassuring. It is easy to forget, watching the Tarquins fling every last penny they possess into supporting some pseudo-aristocratic, gimcrack fantasy, that there are still people for whom these are normal houses in which normal lives should be led. If they’re uncomfortable then they’re uncomfortable and that’s that. Never mind the plasterwork or the Grinling Gibbons carving, or the ghost of Mary Stuart in the East Wing. There was a kind of no-nonsense quality to his dismissal of Malton Towers that seemed to earth my own experience of it, releasing me from reverence. At any rate Lord Claremont had said his piece and there didn’t seem much point in getting him to elaborate, so I nodded and moved on.
I caught sight of Serena in the hall. She was with her family and talking to Helena, who was looking a good deal older than her older sister. But she was friendly when we met again, kissing me and wishing me well, as I grinned across her at the object of my ancient and unrequited passions. Looking back I cannot quite explain why the sight of Serena that evening, far from making me sad as it might so easily have done, had in fact given me a terrific lift. I felt marvellous, giddy, tight, high, whatever Seventies word is most appropriate, at being reminded of how much I once could love. Still loved, really. A whole set of muscles that had atrophied through lack of use sprang to life again within my bosom. Rather as you are empowered by discovering an ace has been dealt you when you pick up the cards from the baize. Even if you never get a chance to play it, you know that you are the better and stronger for having an ace in your hand.
‘It’s been so lovely to see you,’ Serena said, sounding wonderfully as if she meant it.
‘I have enjoyed it.’ As I answered her I knew that my tone was strangely steady, almost cold, in fact, when I did not feel cold towards her in the least, very much the opposite. I cannot explain why, except to say that an Englishman of my generation will always protect himself against the risk of revealing his true feelings. It is his nature and he cannot fight it.
Again, she smiled her smile of the blessed. ‘We’re all fans, you know. We must try and get you down to Waverly.’
‘I’d love it. In the meantime, good luck with everything.’
We touched cheeks and I turned away. Stepping out of the front door, I had not gone more than a few paces when I heard Andrew’s indignant enquiry. ‘Good luck with what? What did he mean by that?’ I confess the temptation was too great and I sneaked back, staying out of sight from the front door.
‘He didn’t mean anything. Good luck. That’s all.’ Serena’s patient and modulated tones dealt with him as one might soothe a frisky horse or dog. ‘Good luck with life.’
‘What an extraordinary thing to say.’ He seemed to clear his throat to draw her attention to him. ‘I’m rather surprised to find him so effulgent and you so welcoming, after everything that happened.’
‘Oh, for heaven’s sake.’ They were alone now, or thought they were, and Serena’s tone was less careful. ‘Since the evening you speak of we’ve seen the fall of Communism, the Balkans in flames and the collapse of the British way of life. If we can survive all that, we can surely forget one drunken dinner that got out of hand, forty years ago-’ But by then, Bridget was pulling at my sleeve with a funny look, and I had to come away and out of earshot. If Andrew had more to contribute on the subject after Serena’s outburst it was lost to me. Not for the first time I wondered at how, among the upper classes particularly but perhaps in every section of society, extremely clever women live with very, very stupid men without the husbands’ ever apparently becoming aware of the sacrifice their wives are making daily.
‘That was the greatest treat,’ said Jennifer, as we nudged our way out of the gates and back on to the main road. ‘What luck we had you with us. Wasn’t it, darling?’
I didn’t expect an answer, as I realised that it was almost physically painful for Tarquin to acknowledge another’s superior power at any time. Most of all in his own would-be kingdom. But Jennifer remained looking fixedly at him, driving through the side of her right eye, until he managed a sort of grudging response. ‘Good show,’ he muttered, or something along those lines. I couldn’t really hear.
His envy and Bridget’s misery combined to fill the car with a green mist of resentful, hurt rage, but Jennifer wouldn’t give up. ‘I thought they were so nice. And they’re obviously very fond of you.’
‘Well, he’s very fond of them. Or some of them. Aren’t you? Darling?’ Bridget’s contribution at moments like this was the vocal equivalent of throwing acid. Of course, as I was forced to realise, the downside of remembering what love is came in the form of a clear realisation of what it is not and whatever it was that I was sharing with Bridget was not love. I’d seen this coming. I had hinted as much to my dear old Daddy when I went to have lunch with him. But I don’t think, before that evening at Gresham, I’d appreciated that the buffers were not only in sight but nearly upon us. In fairness, I cannot blame Bridget for feeling cheesed off. She was an intelligent, attractive woman, and she was obliged to accept that, once again, she had wasted several, long years on a dry well, on a bagless hunt, on a dead end. As I have mentioned, she’d made this mistake before, more than once, which I knew well, and until this very evening I’d always taken her line that the men in question were beasts and cads for not releasing her when they must have known it was going nowhere. Instead, they had, as I thought, strung her along until they had stolen her future and her children, who would never now know life. It was at this point, in that darkened car pushing through the Yorkshire lanes, that I suddenly realised that they had not been cads exactly, simply selfish, insensitive, unthinking fools. As I was. And from tomorrow morning I would be sharing their guilt, in the Sad Story of Bridget FitzGerald.
She didn’t speak again until we were in our freezing, damp bedroom. She had started to undress in that angular, vengeful way that I knew so well, talking over her shoulder at me, or through the back of her furious head. ‘The whole thing is so ridiculous.’
‘What thing? There isn’t a “thing”.’
