every ailment. Kieran was already in his seat when I arrived. We waved at a distance, shook hands when I drew near and sat.
As everyone knows, the ageing process never fails to shock when it has not been witnessed on a daily basis. The Kieran I knew had been a fresh-faced oik, with fake hair and a fake tan, who bore almost no resemblance to the elderly, senior man of affairs sitting opposite me. But if his face was a great deal older, nevertheless, as he approached his seventieth year, it was also finer than it had been in his youth, less blotchy, less puffy and infinitely more secure. The too-red cheeks were gone and the glossy highlights, taking with them the true colour of his hair, whatever it may have been, but leaving him a rather distinguished grey, like a model in an advertisement for Grecian 2000. The hair itself had stayed, the lucky stiff, and his eyes were not, as I recalled, small and piggy but curiously kind for someone who had made such killings in the savage world of property.
‘This is very nice of you,’ I said, as he sent a waiter off in search of two glasses of champagne.
‘It is my pleasure.’ He studied his menu and I studied his face. He had acquired real stature, that is the only word I can think of to describe the change. He had acquired authority and the authority of the genuinely great. He was polite, relaxed and unstudied, but with that expectation of obedience that marks the powerful apart. The waiter returned with our drinks. ‘So,’ he said, when we were alone again, ‘what’s this about?’ I murmured about my charity. It was not quite fictional as I felt that if he did wish to make a donation, there might as well be profit in it for someone, but I could see at once he wasn’t really interested. ‘I might as well cut you off now,’ he interjected with a good-natured hand raised to stop the flow. ‘I only give to about three things. I’ve had to ring-fence my interests as I find I get about a hundred applications a week these days. All of them perfectly worthy causes, of course, but I cannot cure every evil in the world. I’ll give you a cheque if you like, but not for much and that will be your lot.’
I nodded. He was very compelling. I would have accepted this decision even if my request had been a truthful one. ‘Thank you,’ I said, but I was puzzled. His secretary had tried to tell me exactly this when I first rang and he could have finished the job without any rudeness when he came on the line. ‘Then why are we here having dinner?’ The words had not come out quite as I had envisaged and I hurried to qualify them. ‘Of course, I’m terribly pleased that we are and it’s the greatest treat to see you again, but I’m surprised you have the time.’
‘I have time,’ he said. ‘I have a lot of time for things I want to do.’ This was polite, but did not really answer my question, which he saw. ‘I find that I spend most of my time these days thinking about the past, and about what happened to me and the life I have led, considering, in short, how I got to where I am.’
‘So you always make a special case for people from that past?’
‘I like to see them. Particularly if, like you, I have seen very little of them in the meantime.’
‘To be honest, I’m amazed you remember me at all. I thought I was going to be greeted by a big, fat “who?”’
He gave a silent, little puff of laughter and I noticed, by contrast, how very sad his eyes were. ‘I don’t think any living human could forget that dinner.’
‘No,’ I said.
He raised his glass. His years at the top had taught him not to clink it against mine, as he would have done back then. ‘To us. Are we much altered do you think?’
I nodded. ‘Very, I’d say. I may only be a fatter, balder, sadder version of the young man that I was, but you seem to have changed into someone else completely.’
He laughed more heartily, as if pleased by the notion. ‘Kieran de Yong, Designer to the Stars.’
‘That’s the man I knew.’
‘God help you.’
‘He wasn’t so bad.’
‘Drink or depression has made you kind. He was ghastly.’
I did not bother to contradict again since I agreed with him. I could see our waiter lingering nearby, waiting for a break in the conversation to step forward and take the order. Kieran gave him a slight nod and he leaned in, pencil and pad in hand. It is comforting to know that the skill of waiting well is not entirely dead even if these days you have to search, and certainly to pay, for it. I do not in any way dislike the tidal wave of Eastern Europeans whose appointed task is apparently to ask me what I want to eat. They seem cheerful and nice on the whole, and a pleasant contrast to the surly Englishman who always looks as if he is longing to spit in your soup. But I do wish someone would tell them not to barge in when the diner is halfway through a punchline.
The man had garnered all the necessary information and made off to put it into practice. ‘What changed you?’ I asked and he did not need to be reminded of the meaning of the question.
He thought for a moment. ‘Education. Experience. Or are they the same thing? In those days I felt I’d come from nothing, which was obviously not true, as everyone comes from something. I also felt I knew nothing, which was truer but not completely true either, and consequently I felt I had to present myself as the man who knows everything, who is in touch with the universe, embodying the zeitgeist. I imagined that I looked like a giant controlling his destiny and not a saddo with a dye job.’ He smiled at the memory and shook his head. ‘Those jackets, alone. What was that?’ I couldn’t help laughing with him. ‘And there you have the reason for why I hated all of you lot.’ Which was an unexpected change of direction.
‘What do you mean?’
‘I felt you were so much more in charge than I was.’
‘We weren’t.’
‘No, I can see that now. But your contempt for me, and everything about me, made me think you were.’
This made me sorrowful. Why do we spend so much of our lives making blameless people unhappy? ‘I hope we weren’t as bad as that. I hate the word contempt.’
He nodded. ‘Of course, you’re much nicer these days. I knew you would be. Anyone with any brains, gets nicer as they get older. But we were all angry then.’
‘You seem to have harnessed your anger to great effect.’
‘Someone once said to me that when young and clever men are angry, they either explode or achieve great
