I couldn’t break free of the subject quite yet. Once reopened, the wound felt as if it were freshly cut. ‘Why did she marry him? What was she? Nineteen? And she wasn’t even pregnant. The daughter came along ten months later and was the spitting image of Andrew, so there was nothing untoward. I just don’t get it.’
He nodded. ‘It was a different world then. We did things differently.’
‘How involved were you? With Serena?’ As I spoke, each word was like a lash, leaving a red stripe on my back.
He chuckled. ‘What a wonderfully quaint expression. You sound like Woman’s Hour thirty years ago. In what way “involved”?’
‘You know in what way.’
He was silent for a moment. Then he shrugged. ‘I was mad about her.’
Had I known this or not? It was so hard to decide, after everything that had happened. To hear him say it was still a kind of shock. Rather like the death of a great friend after a long terminal illness. I drank deeper of the poison. ‘Who broke it off?’
I could see I was beginning to annoy him. Once again, we had used up our false friendliness and were getting back to our true feelings for one another. ‘I didn’t want to spend my life being patronised.’ I could see he was back there for a moment, in the place that I had never left. ‘I remember once,’ he said after a moment, ‘when I went to Gresham-’
‘You used to go to Gresham?’ I couldn’t believe it. Where was I all this time? Sleeping in a box in the cellar? Why had I known none of this?
‘You know I did. For the dance.’ He was right. I did know it. ‘She was giving me a lift. So I got myself to their flat. Where was it? Somewhere in Belgravia?’
‘Chester Square. And it was a house, not a flat.’
He looked at me, understanding fully the significance of my exact recollection of the detail. ‘Anyway, we’d loaded up the cases and then, as we set off, Serena said-’ he paused, with a deep sigh, back in that smart little red two-seater that I once knew so well. ‘She said, “Now this is going to have to be very carefully stage-managed” and she started to list what I was to do when I got there, how I was to behave, what I should and should not say to her mother when she greeted me, how I should manage her father’s questions, what I should mention to her brother and her sisters. On and on she went, and as I listened I thought this isn’t for me. I don’t want to go somewhere where I’m a liability, where things have to be monitored so my hosts don’t regret asking me, where I need to take a course before I can get out of the car, where I’m not a welcome member of the party.’ He stopped, out of breath, and waited until he had caught up with himself.
‘I can see that,’ I said. Which I could.
He looked at me as if he suspected me of triumphing in his confession. ‘I didn’t face it at the time but, if I’m honest, I think that was when I knew it wouldn’t work. Not in the long term.’
‘Did you say anything to her?’
The question made him slightly uncomfortable. ‘Not then.’ He had recovered. ‘Later.’
‘But it was the end from that moment?’ What did I want from him?
‘I don’t know. I can’t remember. The point is I realised that if I ever did marry, I wanted it to be into a family that would hang bunting off the balconies, send up fireworks, take out ads in The Times, not roll their eyes in unforgiving silence at my unsuitability. You saw what that guy who married the youngest sister had to go through. He was an unperson by the time they’d finished with him.’
‘Did Suzanne’s family put out the flags?’ This sounds rather unkind and I suppose it was, but I was so filled with jealousy that I felt I could have killed him. I’d say he got off pretty lightly.
His smile became rather wry. ‘The trouble was you lot had spoiled me. I didn’t like you or your world, and I didn’t want what you had, but when I tried to go back to my old crowd I’d lost the taste for their tastes. I had become like mad old Lady Belton, too snobbish, too aware of unimportant differences and needing to be stage- managed, myself.’
‘So we repelled you from our world and spoiled you for your own.’
‘In a nutshell.’
‘Serena must have got married almost straight away? When you and she were finished.’
‘Not long afterwards.’ He thought about this. ‘I hope she’s happy.’
I sipped my tea in a vague, and vain, attempt to soothe my troubled spirits. ‘Not very, I would guess. But with her kind it’s hard to tell.’
Once more he was watching me, with all the care of an anthropologist making a study of a rare and unpredictable beast. ‘Are you enjoying it at all? This Proustian return? It’s your past as much as mine.’
‘Not much.’
‘What does your…’ He hesitated. ‘I hate the word “partner.” What does she make of it all?’
‘Bridget? I don’t think she’s interested. It’s not her scene.’ This last was true, but the statement before it wasn’t completely. Still, I couldn’t be bothered to get into all that. ‘It doesn’t matter either way,’ I continued. ‘We’ve broken up.’
‘Oh dear. I hope it’s coincidental.’
‘Not completely. But it was coming anyway.’
He nodded, insufficiently curious to pursue it. ‘So, who’s next?’
‘Candida Finch or Joanna Langley. Joanna, probably.’
‘Why?’
