intriguing and I leaned in to see more of the detail, when an icy blast hit me and I stood to see that a door leading out to the terrace was open and Serena was coming in from the night. She was alone, and while she was, for me, as lovely as anyone can imagine a woman could be, she looked as if she were shivering with cold. ‘What were you doing out there?’ I said. ‘You must be freezing.’
For a second she had to concentrate to work out both who I was and what I was saying, but having regained control of her brain, she nodded. ‘It is a bit chilly,’ she said.
‘But what were you doing?’
She shrugged lightly. ‘Just thinking,’ she said.
‘I don’t suppose you want to dance,’ I spoke cheerfully, but without any expectations.
I quite understand that, in this account of my relations with Serena Gresham I must seem pessimistic and negative to a tedious degree, but you have to understand that at this time in my life I was young and ugly. To be ugly when young is something that no one who has not experienced it should ever claim to understand. It is all very well to talk about superficial values and ‘beauty of character,’ and the rest of the guff that ugly teenagers have to listen to from their mothers, the ‘marvellous thing about being different’ and so on, but the plain truth is you are bankrupt in the only currency with value. You may have friends without number, but when it comes to romance you have nothing to bargain with, nothing to sell. You are not to be shown off and flaunted, you are the last resort when there’s no one left worth dancing with. When you are kissed, you do not turn into a prince. You are just a kissed toad and usually the kisser regrets it in the morning. The best reputation you can acquire is that you never talk. If you are good company and you can hold your tongue, you will see some action, but woe betide the ugly suitor who grows overconfident and brags. Of course, things change. In time, at last, some people will start to see through your face to your other qualities and eventually, in the thirties and forties, other factors come into play. Success will mend your features and so will money, and this is not, actually, because the women concerned are necessarily mercenary. It is because you have begun to smell differently. Success makes you a different person. But you never forget those few, those very few, Grade A women who loved you when no one else did. In the words of a thriller, I know who you are and you will always have a place in my heart. But even the least of these did not come along before my middle twenties. When I was eighteen, ugly and in love, I knew I was in love alone.
‘Yes. Let’s dance,’ said Serena, and I can still remember that strange mixture of butterflies and feeling sick that her answer gave me.
Spencer Davis had left by then. Presumably they were already racing down the motorway, or the equivalent in those days, having more than earned their wedge and made the evening legendary. God bless them all. I hope they know what happiness they gave us. It was three o’clock by this stage and nearly the end of the ball. A disc jockey had taken over again, but you could hear in his voice that he was winding down. He put on a slow record I rather liked, A Single Girl, which had been a hit a year or two earlier, and we moved closer. There is something so peculiar about dancing. You are entitled to slide your arm round the waist of a woman, to hold her closely, to feel her breasts against your chest through your shirt and the thin silk of an evening dress; her hair brushes against your cheek, her very scent excites you, yet there is no intimacy in it, no assumption of anything but politeness and sociability. Needless to say I was in paradise as we shifted our weight from foot to foot, and talked of the band and the party, and what a complete success the evening had been. But although she was obviously pleased to hear it, still Serena seemed thoughtful and not as elated as I had expected her to be. As she was entitled to feel. ‘Have you seen Damian?’ she said. ‘He was looking for you.’
‘Why?’
‘I think he wants to ask you for a lift tomorrow.’
‘I’m going rather early.’
‘He knows. He has to get away first thing, too.’ I was so absorbed in the wonder of dancing with her that I didn’t register this much, although I remember it did occur to me that I should find any excuse to linger, were I lucky enough to be staying at Gresham.
‘Have you enjoyed yourself?’ I asked.
She thought for a moment. ‘These things are such milestones,’ she said, which was an odd answer really, even if it was true. These events were rites of passage to my generation and we did not much question their validity. It may seem strange in our aggressively anti-formal age but then we saw the point of ritual. The girls came out, the men came of age. The former happened when the girl was eighteen, the latter when the man was twenty-one. This was because the upper classes entirely ignored the government’s altering the age of seniority to eighteen for many years, if indeed they recognise it now. These events were a marking of adulthood. After they had been observed you were a fully fledged member of the club, and your membership would continue to be parsed by ceremony: Weddings and christenings, parties for our offspring, more weddings and finally funerals. These were the Big Moments by which we steered our course through life. That’s gone now. There are seemingly no obligatory events. The only thing that really marks an aristocratic upbringing apart from a middle-class one today is that the upper classes still marry before giving birth. Or, when they don’t, it is exceptional. Apart from that many of the traditions that once distinguished them as a tribe seem largely to have melted into the sand.
The song came to an end and Serena was claimed by her departing guests, while I wandered off through the house, reluctant, even now, to call it a day. I left the dancing and crossed the anteroom, where a girl in pink was asleep on a rather pretty sofa, before poking through the half-open door into the Tapestry Drawing Room which lay beyond. At first I thought it was empty. There were only a few lamps lit and the room was engulfed in gloom. The Empress Catherine’s clock caught the eye as one lamp was so placed to make the glass on the face shine, but otherwise it was clearly a room that had done its work for the day. Then I saw that it was not in fact empty, but that one chair beneath a vast tapestry reaching to the cornice was occupied and the sitter was none other than Damian Baxter. ‘Hello,’ I said. ‘Serena told me you wanted to ask me something.’
He looked up. ‘Yes. I wondered whether you could give me a lift home tomorrow, if you’re driving straight down. I know you’re leaving early.’
I was interested by this, because I had never heard Damian speak of his home before. ‘Where is home?’ I said.
‘Northampton. I imagine you’ll drive straight past it. Unless you’re not going back to London at all.’
‘Of course I’ll take you. I’ll pick you up at about nine.’
That seemed to be the end of it. Mission accomplished. He stood. ‘I think I’ll go to bed,’ he said. There was something curiously unembroidered about his manner, which I had come to see as endlessly calculated. But not tonight.
‘What did you think of the party?’
‘Amazing.’
