‘No. For pity’s sake don’t put it off, whatever you do.’ But he raised his eyebrows to make this reference to his coming demise, into a sort of joke. ‘So, how have you been getting on?’
I told him about Lucy and Dagmar. ‘They seem very fond of you.’
‘Don’t sound so surprised.’
Of course, that was the point. I was surprised. But I didn’t feel I could word this acceptably so I didn’t try. Instead, I repeated their separate messages of goodwill and felt glad I had delivered them faithfully. ‘I don’t think I was aware how well you knew them.’
‘You weren’t aware of a lot of things about me.’ He waited, perhaps for me to contradict, but I was silent. ‘Poor little Dagmar.’ He gave a semi-comic sigh, inviting me to join in his contemplation of her hopelessness, but after my recent visit I would have felt disloyal so I resisted. He continued, undeterred. ‘She should probably have been born in 1850, been married by proxy to some German grand duke, and just lived out her life observing the rituals. She would have done it very well and no doubt been much loved by all those loyal subjects who would never get near enough to find out how boring she was.’
‘She’s less boring now,’ I said. ‘Less boring, less diffident and less happy.’
He nodded, absorbing my report. ‘I was surprised when she married him. I thought she’d go for dull and respectable, and end up in a farmhouse in Devon, with a lot of huge, Royal portraits looking out of place and filling the half-timbered walls from floor to ceiling. I never expected her to go for nasty and successful, and end up back in a palace and miserable.’
‘Well, she’s got the portraits, anyway.’
‘Did she tell you she wanted to marry me?’ He must have caught my expression on hearing this, as he read it very accurately. ‘I’m past being ungallant. I’m nearly dead. At that point you truly can say what you like.’ Which, on reflection, I feel is probably true.
‘She did, actually.’
‘Really?’ I could see he was surprised.
‘She said she longed for it, but you weren’t interested. She said she had nothing to offer that you wanted or needed.’
‘That sounds rather peevish.’
‘Well, it wasn’t. She was very touching.’
He nodded at this, somehow acknowledging Dagmar’s generosity with a kinder tone than he had used before. ‘I never said she wasn’t a nice woman. I thought she was one of the nicest of all of you.’ He considered for a minute. ‘It was hard for ex-Royals.’
‘I agree.’
‘It was all right for the ones still on thrones,’ he added, thinking more on the topic. ‘After all the nonsense of the Sixties and Seventies was over, they were in an enviable position. But for the others it was hard.’
‘I suppose you didn’t want to take all that on. Not once you knew more about what it would entail.’
‘There were lots of things I didn’t want to take on, once I knew a bit more about them.’ He looked at me. ‘If it comes to that, I didn’t want to take on your whole world, once I knew more about it.’ He returned to the matter in hand. ‘But you’re quite sure she wasn’t my pen pal?’
‘I am.’
‘And it wasn’t Lucy either?’ I explained further about the hereditary condition of the daughter. Thoughtfully, he absorbed the detail that ruled him out. ‘So, how was she?’
‘All right.’ I tipped my head from side to side, in that gesture that is intended to signify so-so.
He was quite curious at this. ‘You don’t seem to be waxing lyrical. I always thought of you two as very thick.’
‘Her life is more her own fault than Dagmar’s.’ The truth is I did feel more tepid about the Rawnsley-Prices. The phrase about people ‘making their own bed’ is not very meaningful, since we all to some extent make our own beds and have to lie on them. We have no choice. Even so, it does have some meaning. Unlike many people, Lucy had enjoyed real options when young and she seemed, to me anyway, to have chosen none of the more creative or interesting ones.
He spoke my thought. ‘Lucy is another Sixties casualty.’
I felt it behoved me to stick up for my old friend a bit. ‘She’s not as bad as some. At least she’s not one of those sad sixty-year-old television executives, wandering around in a leather jacket and talking about the Arctic Monkeys.’
‘Maybe. But she assumed that her act as a madcap baronet’s daughter, embracing the new values, with a zany, whacky sense of fun would run and run. She was mistaken.’ He was right in this so I didn’t defend her further. ‘Besides, that particular routine is only convincing when the player is young. Zany and whacky at fifty-eight is just tragic.’
‘She has our best wishes, though.’
‘If you want. She’ll survive.’ He looked at me as I stared out of the window on to the gathering below.
‘Your fête is very well attended, I must say.’
‘I can see you’re taken aback to find me doing something for charity.’
‘I am a bit.’
‘You’re right. I am not very nice. Not really.’ He spoke quite sharply, unwilling to lie, even by being silent. ‘But I do approve of these people. I admire their ordinariness. When I was young I couldn’t deal with anyone who lacked ambition. I couldn’t see the point of a life that just accepted and had no wish to change. I was at ease with people who wanted to be millionaires and cabinet ministers and movie stars. I sympathised with any vaulting goal, no matter how ludicrous. But those with no desire beyond a decent life, a nice house, a pleasant holiday were quite alien to me. They made me uncomfortable.’
‘But not now.’
He nodded, endorsing my comment. ‘Now, I see the ability simply to embrace life and live it as noble. Not always to drive yourself like an ox through a ploughed field, which is what I used to admire. I suppose, hundreds of years ago, it was the same when people entered convents and monasteries to give their lives to God. I feel these men and women, in just getting on with it, are also in their way giving their lives to God. Even though I don’t believe in him.’ He stopped to enjoy my amazement. ‘I bet you never thought I’d say that.’
I agreed without hesitation. ‘Or anything remotely like it.’ He laughed and I continued, ‘Presumably, this is all reflected in the benefiting Saint, young, innocent and surrounded with pastel-shaded flowers.’
‘No. That’s the other Saint Teresa. Our one is Teresa of Avila. She spent most of her life empathising with Christ’s suffering and having visions of everyone drenched in blood. Then she started a new order and was locked up by the Pope, but she fought like a tigress and won through in the end.’
‘You should have told me that straight away. I would have understood her appeal at once.’
This time he laughed out loud and we had to wait for his fit of coughing to subside. By then his mirth had been replaced by something gentler. ‘I want you to understand that I have changed. It’s important to me.’ He was watching my face all the time for the effect of his words, which was quite disconcerting. ‘At least, one says that. But one never knows if it is really change that one is experiencing, or simply qualities always present finally making their way to the surface. I do think I’m kinder than I was.’
‘That wouldn’t be difficult.’
‘And less angry.’ His words chimed with the dining room conversation in Yorkshire, and I must have somehow acknowledged this in my reception of his comments.
Which somehow he picked up. ‘What?’
‘Only that I ran into Serena Gresham, or Serena Belton as she is now, last weekend, and she said something similar. That you were very angry when she knew you, and that angry people tend either to explode or to achieve great things.’
‘Or both.’ We were interrupted by the arrival of a tray of tea, all laid out like a prop in a Hollywood film, with thin, cucumber sandwiches and a little silver dish of sliced lemon. But I could tell it was all for me. Damian was past eating or drinking anything for pleasure. When Bassett had gone he spoke again. ‘You have been combing through the attics. How is she?’