having been billeted with them for a couple of northern dances and staying once on my own on the way down from Scotland, and I was in danger of succumbing to that awful smugness of trying to demonstrate that one is a welcome guest somewhere enviable, but I did not suspect at the time, what I know now, that the welcome I always received was a reflection of Serena’s enjoyment of my being in love with her. I do not mean she was interested in me romantically, not in the least, only that she wanted me to go on being in love with her until it wasn’t fun any more. The young are like that. I can now remember when the photograph was taken. I was still reeling in bliss from her comment and I was unable to make myself move out of the room where she stood, even though I knew I had to give place, so I stepped behind them, where I could linger a little longer; then a flash went off and I was caught forever, like a fly in amber. Lucy Dalton rescued me, taking my arm and walking me away. ‘What’s your house party like?’
‘Dull but respectable.’
‘Sounds like paradise compared to mine. There doesn’t seem to be any running water. Literally. Nothing comes out of the taps except a dirty trickle of what looks like prune juice. Doesn’t Serena look marvellous? But of course you’re not the man to disagree with that. I hear the discotheque is fabulous. It was done by someone’s boyfriend, but I forget who. Come on.’ All this was delivered in one spurt without pause or breath, so I couldn’t hope to come in with a comment.
The discotheque was fabulous. It occupied a large section of what must normally have been a basement servants’ hall or even a section of the no doubt extensive wine cellars. A doorway under the main staircase was surrounded by synthetic flames and a sign read ‘Welcome to Hell!’ While on the other side of the door the entire space, including the walls of the staircase leading down, was covered in foil and flames made of tinsel and satin, blown with fans and lit by a spinning wheel, making them flicker and leap, so they really did feel quite real. At the bottom the hell theme embraced the entire area, with huge copies of the grimmer paintings by Hieronymus Bosch lining the walks with images of suffering, while the fire and flames played over the heads of the dancers. As a final detail the DJ and two of the waitresses had been put into scarlet devils’ outfits, so they could attend to the guests while maintaining the illusion. The only discordant note came from the music, some of which seemed very out of place in Hades. When we came down the steps a popular ballad by the Turtles, Elenore, was playing. Somehow the lyrics, ‘I really think you’re groovy, let’s go out to a movie,’ didn’t quite chime with the Tortures of the Damned.
We danced and gossiped and said hello to other people for a bit until, round about half past eleven or maybe midnight, a sudden rush for the staircase told us that something was happening we wouldn’t want to miss.
Lucy and I struggled up to the hall in our turn and found we were carried along in the crush towards the State Dining Room, which had been designated the main ballroom of the evening. The space had been cleared of furniture and somehow, unlike most of the other houses I had penetrated, the stage erected at one end for the band and, more unusually, the lighting looked entirely professional. This put a spin on the proceedings from the start, even before we knew what was happening. I don’t quite know why, but there was always something satisfactory in dancing inside a great house and not in a marquee with wobbly coconut matting and a portable dance floor, and Gresham Abbey was the very acme of a great house. Stern, full-lengths of earlier, male Greshams lined the walls of the enormous room, in armour and brocade and Victorian fustian, in lovelocks and perukes and periwigs, extending their white, stockinged legs to display the garters that encased them. Above the marble chimneypiece a vast, equestrian portrait of the first Earl of Claremont by Kneller dominated the chamber, a loud, impressive statement of self-congratulation, and the contrast between the rigid splendour of this symbol of high birth and high achievement and the crowd of teenage young writhing away below it was almost startling.
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 reallive 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
