The money here was not comparable to Damian’s Croesus-like hoards. The Holmans were very rich, that was all, not super-duper-Bill-Gates-unbelievably rich. Just rich. But they were rich enough, by heaven. The hall was large, stone-flagged, and off-white, with a dark, carved screen at one end and some wonderful furniture. These items had been selected as contemporary with the house, which I later discovered was not the theme in the other downstairs rooms, the designer having decided that Tudor artefacts are easy to admire but hard to live with. The style had therefore been confined to the hall, with a few pieces in the library. There was in this a kind of premeditation, a sort of thought-out pattern that, just as in Damian’s Surrey palace, was oddly undermining to any sense of country living. Proper country houses have a kind of randomness, objects and furniture are deliberately thrown together, survivals of many other houses, which have somehow all ended up there in a kind of chic higgledy-piggledy. Nor is this a skill unknown to many designers who, given ample time and money, can rustle up a house that looks as if the family have owned it since 1650, when in fact they moved in the summer of the previous year. But here, at Bellingham, this casual, comfortable elegance had not been achieved. In fact, there was a slightly disconcerting quality to the whole house that I cannot exactly describe, as if it had been prepared for an elaborate party to which I had not been invited. Had I been told it had been dressed for a photo shoot and I wasn’t to touch anything, it would not have surprised me. The pictures were almost all large, full, or three-quarter- length portraits, over-cleaned and a little too shiny. They had a foreign feel to them and I squinted at some of the name plaques on the most important ones, as I passed. ‘Frederick Francis, 1st Grand Duke of Mecklenburg-Shwerin, 1756-1837’ said one, while another announced ‘Count Felix Beningbauer gennant Lupitz, 1812-1871, and his son, Maximilian.’
‘You see we are very pro-Europe in this house.’ The voice startled me and I looked up to see a tiny figure standing at the far end of the hall, looking more like a boy scout on bob-a-job week than a princess in late middle age. Of course, I knew it was Dagmar because her stature meant it had to be, but I could not at first find her in the face I was presented with. Her hair was grey, though as flat and lank as it had always been, and at last I recognised her wobbling, tremulous, anxious lips, but not much else of her youthful appearance had survived. Her eyes were still huge, but sadder now and, despite our luxurious setting, it seemed to me that for her, life had been a bumpy ride. We kissed, a little gauchely, two strangers pecking at each other’s cheeks, before she led me into the main drawing room, a fine, light chamber, but again with a synthetic air. It was the perfect mixture of Colefax chintz and antiques, Georgian this time, beautifully chosen as individual items but with no coherence as a whole. There was more of the splendid, European parade on the walls.
I indicated a couple of them. ‘I don’t remember you having all these in Trevor Square. Or were they in storage?’ We knew, without saying, that they formed no part of the provenance of Squire William de Holman.
She shook her head. ‘Neither.’ Now, at last, she was beginning to come back to me. The moist half-open mouth had firmed up a bit, but she still had that odd, discordant, tearful note in her voice, a faint, sad scrape of the vocal cords grinding together, that reminded me of the girl she had once been. ‘William has scouts in all the auction houses, and whenever there is a picture coming up with the faintest connection to me he bids for it.’ She did not elaborate on quite what this told us about her husband. No more did I.
‘Where is he?’
‘Choosing some wine for lunch. He won’t be long.’
She poured me a drink from a supply concealed in a large, carved, rococo cupboard in the corner which I saw, to my amusement, contained a small sink, and we talked. Dagmar was more aware of what I had been doing with my life than I anticipated and she must have noticed how flattered I was when she spoke of one particular novel that had barely broken the surface of the water. I thanked her. She gave a little smile. ‘I like to keep up with the news of the people I knew then.’
‘More than with the people themselves?’
She shrugged lightly. ‘Friendships are based on shared experience. I don’t know what we would all have in common now. William isn’t very… nostalgic for that time in his life. He prefers what happened later.’ Which did not surprise me. If I were him, so would I. ‘Do you see anyone from those days?’ I told her I’d visited Lucy. ‘Heavens, you are having a time of it. How is she?’
‘All right. Her husband’s got another business. I’m not sure how well it’s doing.’
She nodded. ‘Philip Rawnsley-Price. The one man we were all on the run from and Lucy Dalton ends up marrying him. How peculiar time is. I imagine he’s quite different now?’
‘Not different enough,’ I said ungenerously and we laughed. ‘I’ve seen Damian Baxter, too. Quite recently. Do you remember him?’
This time she let out a kind of giggling gasp that brought the old Dagmar I had known completely back into the room. ‘Do I remember him?’ she said. ‘How could I forget him when our names have been linked ever since?’ My mind running, as it was, on another track, this remark amazed me. Had I entirely missed a romance that everyone else knew about?
‘Really?’
She did a double take. Clearly she was puzzled by my slowness. ‘You remember my party? When he flattened Andrew Summersby? And added about two thousand pounds to the bill? Which was quite a lot of money then, I can tell you.’ But she was not made angry at the recollection. Quite the reverse. I could see that.
‘Of course I remember. I also remember your attempts to pretend he’d been invited. I rather loved you for that.’
She nodded. ‘It was hopeless, of course.’ She smiled like a naughty, little elf at the thought of her long-ago gallantry. ‘My mother was still living in some fantasy kingdom in her own head. She thought if she allowed one young man, who had behaved perfectly all evening, to stay on without an invitation, somehow Rome would fall. Needless to say, her intransigence made us ridiculous.’
‘You weren’t ridiculous.’
She flushed with pleasure. ‘No? I hope not.’
‘How is your mother? I was always so terrified of her.’
‘You wouldn’t be now.’
‘She’s alive, then?’
‘Yes. She’s alive. We might see her if you’ve time for a walk after lunch.’
I nodded. ‘I’d like that.’ There was a lull and I could hear the sound of a bee trapped somewhere against a window, that familiar buzzing thump. Not for the first time I was struck by the strangeness of this kind of talk, with people you once knew well and now do not know at all. ‘She must be pleased with the way things turned out for you.’ In saying this I was perfectly sincere. The Grand Duchess had been so determined on a sensational marriage for her daughter that William Holman must have been a crushing disappointment, however necessary he was at the time. Little did either she, or we, know that he would deliver a way of life that would far outshine the promises of the eldest sons on offer in 1968.
She looked at me pensively. ‘Yes and no,’ she muttered.
Before I could comment further, William strode into the room, right hand extended towards me. He was better-looking than I remembered him, tall and thin, and his greying hair giving him a sort of blond, youthful appearance. ‘How nice to see you,’ he said and I noticed that, unusually after such a time, his voice was more changed than his face. It had become important, as if he were addressing the boardroom of a corporation, or a village hall full of grateful tenants. ‘How are you?’ We shook hands and exchanged the usual platitudes about Long Time No See, while Dagmar fetched him a drink. He looked down as he took it. ‘Isn’t there any lemon?’