Past Imperfect (9 page)

'Which is?'

'He belongs to the present century. He will understand the rules of the Game as it will be played in the future, not as it used to be played in the days before the war. That could be very reassuring.' At this precise moment Philip leant over her with an optimistic offer but Lucy turned him down, nodding at me. 'He's already asked me and I've said yes.' She got to her feet and I escorted her obediently to the floor.

THREE

The list, which I found lying on the pillow when I went up to my bed, was not long. But it still included some surprises. There were five names and all of them, it seems, had slept with Damian before he had been sterilised
en vacances
under the hot Portuguese sun. They had also all given birth to a child within the dictated time span. Lucy Dalton was there, I was a little sad to see. I had hoped for better from her, since she had been one of the first to see through Damian's disguise. Joanna Langley's inclusion surprised me less. I had been aware of a romance between them at the time and they seemed to me well matched. I'd wondered then why nothing came of it. No doubt I was about to find out. I was not expecting HRH Princess Dagmar of Moravia to figure among the notches on Damian's bedpost, nor the red-faced, loud, man-eater of the day, Candida Finch, whom I wouldn't have thought his type at all. Heavens. There was no denying that he got about a bit. Terry Vitkov, on the other hand, was a routine entry on many lists of that year's conquests, including mine. An American adventuress from the Middle West, she had less money than she liked to suggest and only came to London after exhausting the social possibilities of Cincinnati. Her sexual mores, which would prefigure the next decade rather than, like most of the girls, harking back to a time before our own, ensured that she would be made welcome. At any rate by the boys.

Each name was neatly typed. Next to it was the woman's current, married surname and, where clarification was needed, the name of the husband. After that came the name, sex and birth date of the child in question with a brief note of any other children in the family. Finally, there was a column of addresses, in some cases two or even three, with telephone numbers and e-mail contacts, although somehow I didn't imagine much of this was going to be accomplished via the Internet. A covering note at the top, 'as far as we have been able to ascertain, the details are as follows,' meant that I could not be wholly confident about the information and some of the entries were much fuller than others, but most of it looked pretty accurate to me. I no longer ran into any of them, but the little that I did know tallied with the contents of the sheet. Behind the paper, held to it with a small clip, was an envelope. This turned out to contain, as promised, a platinum credit card made out in my name.

I breakfasted alone, with what seemed like every newspaper in the known world neatly arranged at the other end of the long table. The butler asked if he might pack, or was there some reason for him to delay this? There wasn't. He bowed, thrilled with my permission to be of use, but before he left the room to carry out his task he spoke: 'Mr Baxter wonders if you might have time to look in on him before you leave for the station.' I can recognise an order when I hear one.

Damian's bedroom was in a different part of the house from the one I had occupied. A wide gallery from the top of the staircase led towards a pair of double doors, standing half open. I heard my name called as I lifted my hand to knock and found myself in a light, high chamber, lined with panelling painted in a soft
gris Trianon
. Perhaps I had been expecting some dark, magician's lair but no, this was clearly the other place, along with the library, where Damian actually lived. A large Georgian mahogany four-poster stood against a tapestry-hung wall, facing a carved rococo chimneypiece, which was in turn surmounted by one of the many Romneys of the lovely Lady Hamilton. Three tall windows looked out across the gardens to what I saw now was a kind of mini-park, with a tidy and impressive display of, I am sure, rare trees. There were inlaid chairs dotted about, and a desk, and little tables piled with books and precious things, and a rather beautiful day bed, of the type that is called a
duchesse brisee
, with a folded rug at the end, waiting to make its master comfortable. The whole effect was charming and delicate and curiously feminine, the room of a finer spirit than I would have credited him with.

Damian was in the bed. I did not see him immediately as the shadow of the canopy blurred him for a moment, hunched and crunched up as he was against the pillows, surrounded by letters and another mass of newspapers. I could not help but feel it would be a black day for the local newsagents when Damian shuffled off his mortal coil. 'You found the list,' he said.

'I did.'

'Were you surprised?'

'I knew about Joanna. At least I suspected it.'

'Our main thing was over long before. But I slept with her one last time the night she got back from Lisbon. She came round to my flat. I suppose she wanted to see if I was all right.'

'I'm not surprised.'

'We went on from there.'

'But hadn't you already got the mumps?'

'I didn't develop a sore throat until a few days afterwards and, anyway, apparently you store a certain amount of whatsit, which isn't affected.'

'A little too much information.'

'As you can imagine, I am by this point the world's greatest living expert.' He gave a wry chuckle. He was wonderfully unbowed by the whole thing. 'What about the rest of them?'

'Well, even I slept with Terry and I'm not exactly surprised by Candida, though I wouldn't have thought she was your type. But I didn't suspect the other two.'

'I suppose you're disappointed in your old pal, Lucy.'

'Only because I thought she disliked you as much as I did.' This made him laugh for the first time that morning. But the effort was painful and we had to wait for a second while he recovered.

'She was only attracted to people she disliked. All the others she turned into friends. Including you.' This was probably true in its way, so I didn't interrupt him. 'Do you see any of them now?'

It was strange to hear him talk so breezily, when I considered how it had all ended. 'Not really. One bumps into people. You know how it is. They all married, then?' It seemed odd, suddenly, that I didn't know.

'Yes, for better or, in some cases, very much for worse. Candida's a widow. Her husband was killed in 9/11. But I'm told they were happy before that.'

Moments like this, when friends from a different era of your life are suddenly forcefully connected to the modern world, can be quite shocking. 'I'm sorry. Was he American?'

'English. But he worked for some bank that had its New York office on one of the top floors. It was his bad luck that he was summoned to a meeting there on that day.'

'God, how awful. Any children?'

'Two with him. But he couldn't be the father of the baby I'm interested in. The boy was eight when they married.'

'I remember she was a single mother. Very courageous.'

'For a peer's niece in 1971? You bet. But she
was
courageous. She was a bit rough but she was punchy. That's why I liked her.' He paused, a slight smile pulling at the corners of his mouth. 'Were there any names missing that you expected to find?'

We stared at each other. 'Not when the list isn't complete.'

'What do you mean?'

'It's only the girls who gave birth within the time limit.'

Damian nodded. 'Of course. That's right. No, in any other sense it's not complete.' But he didn't elaborate and I so didn't want him to. 'You got the card?'

'Yes. Though I don't think I'll need it.'

'Please don't be English and silly.' He sighed. 'You have no money. I have so much that if I spent a million pounds a day for the rest of my life I wouldn't dent it. Use the card. Have some fun. Do what you like with it. Take it as your payment. Or my thanks. Or my apology, if you must. But use it.'

'I don't have "no" money,' I said. 'I just don't have as much money as you.' He did not trouble to confirm this and I did not protest further, so I must have been convinced.

'Do you have any preference as to where I should begin?' I asked.

He shook his head. 'None in the least. Start where you will.' He paused to take a breath. 'But please don't delay more than you have to.' His speech was coarser and more rasping than it had been the previous evening. Was this usual in the mornings? I wondered. Or is he getting worse? 'Of course, I don't want to hurry you,' he added. What made this poignant, even to me, was his striving to achieve a kind of light courtesy, like something out of a Rattigan comedy. 'Anyone for tennis?' he might have said in just such a tone. Or, 'Who needs a lift to London?' It was brave. I don't deny that.

'I imagine it must take some time,' I said.

'Of course. But no more time, please, than it has to take.'

'Suppose I can't find any evidence either way?'

'Eliminate the ones it cannot be. Then we'll worry about who's left.'

There was logic in this and I nodded. 'I still don't know why I'm doing it.'

'Because if you refuse, you'll feel guilty when I die.'

'Guilty for the child, maybe. Not about you.' I wouldn't describe myself as a harsh person in the normal way of things, and I do not completely understand why I was so harsh with him on that morning. The crimes I held against him were old crimes by then, forgotten, or if not forgotten then irrelevant, even to me. That said, he seemed to understand.

My words had died away in the silence between us, when he looked at me quite steadily. 'I have never had a friend in all my life I cared for more than I cared for you,' he said.

'Then why did you do it?' He misjudged me if he thought these nice, saccharine sentiments would somehow cancel out the memory of his behaviour on the worst evening of my, and I would hope anyone's, life.

'I'm not entirely sure.' He seemed to lose himself in thought for a while, concentrating his gaze on the view beyond the windows. 'I think I have suffered since I was a child from a kind of claustrophobia of the heart.' He smiled. 'The truth is I was always uncomfortable with any kind of love. Most of all when I was the recipient.'

Which is how we left it.

It may sound as if I had been obsessed with all these people, and mainly with Damian, since I had walked off the last dance floor over forty years before, but I had not. Like anyone else, I'd spent the time between dealing with the bewildering illogicality of my life and it had been many years since I had taken the time to consider the way I was, the way we all were. The world we lived in then was a different planet, with different hopes and very different expectations and, like other planets, it had simply drifted away in its own orbit. I glimpsed a few of the girls, now lined and greying matrons, from time to time, at a wedding or a charity function, and we smiled and talked of their children and why they'd left Fulham, and whether Shropshire had proved a success, but we did not tear at the changes in the world around us. I had abandoned that world completely in the years immediately after Portugal and, even after it was all forgotten, I never really went back in. Now, when I thought about it, there were some characters from that time I regretted. Lucy Dalton, for example, had been a great ally of mine. Indeed, it was she who sealed my commitment to the Season. I didn't like her husband, it is true, and I suppose that's why we drifted apart, but now that seemed a feeble reason to lose a friend and I decided on the spot to begin my investigations with her. The sheet told me she had moved to Kent, not far from Tunbridge Wells, so it would not be difficult to call her and ask myself for lunch, on the pretext of being 'in the area.'

I say my commitment had been 'sealed' by Lucy for the simple reason that it was at her invitation I attended Queen Charlotte's Ball, then the official launch of the dances and the central ceremony of the whole business. Not to be there meant one was not quite a full player but I had made no plans to go since I had not originally aimed at full membership. In fact, the ball wasn't far off when, to my surprise, I received a card from Lady Dalton asking me to join their party. I rang her daughter before I answered. 'We were taking my cousin, Hugo Grex, but he's chucked,' said Lucy without any prevarication. 'Don't worry if you can't come, but say now so we can find someone else. Almost everyone who wants to is already going.' It was not the most flattering invitation known to man but I was quite curious and I had begun to feel that, when it came to the Season proper, if I was going to do it I might as well
do it.

'No. I'd like to come. Thank you.'

'Write to Mummy or she'll think you're odd. Then she'll tell you where to be and when. You know it's white tie?'

'Absolutely.'

'See you then if not before.' She had rung off.

Perhaps because I had not originally intended to be at the ball it came as something of a revelation later that day, to discover that Damian Baxter was already going. In those days students at Magdalene, and in many other colleges no doubt, were not provided with anything so simple as a bedsit. Instead, every student had a sitting room as well as a bedroom, which required a certain spread in the accommodation. That year my rooms were to be found in an old converted cottage, which had been swallowed by the new 1950s quadrangle built round it on the other side of Magdalene Street from the college itself. They were rather charming apartments and I still remember them with affection, but they were in separate parts of the building, so it was a surprise to walk back into the sitting room, having gone to my bedroom for a book, to find Damian standing by the chimneypiece, warming his legs in front of the gurgling gas fire. 'I gather you're going to Queen Charlotte's with the Daltons,' he said. 'I don't suppose there's any chance you could put me up? I really don't want to struggle back here after that one.'

'How do you know?'

'Lucy told me. I said I was in the Waddilove party, so she told me she was going to ring you. I'm rather jealous.' Now, there was a good deal of information in this statement. More, possibly, than he knew. But then again, perhaps not. Clearly, he had been determined to go to the ball and knowing and I am sure nursing the captive Georgina's crush on him, he had seen that as a route. But what he was also telling me was that he had been Lucy's first choice as a replacement when her cousin had dropped out. I was only the fallback, and he wanted me to know it.