‘As we all know.’
Damian laughed. ‘As we all know.’
‘And when she did, it was clear you weren’t going in the same direction.’
He nodded in acceptance of this, although I could see, each time I interrupted, that it troubled him not to set his own pace. Actually, I fully understand how annoying this can be, those tiresome, unfunny men at dinners who heckle a speaker, destroying the jokes, but not replacing them with anything amusing of their own. Even so, I wasn’t prepared to listen to Damian’s cleaned-up and sanitised account of these events, without the odd comment. He continued, ‘When you do see her and you’ve finished your snooping, I’m interested to learn what she feels about all that time now. I look forward to hearing when you’ve tracked her down.’
This was the question that was troubling me. Of all the women on the list she was the one with the least information. ‘You haven’t given me a lot to go on. To find her.’
Damian accepted this. ‘Her name doesn’t bring up much on the Internet. The Ascot story, of course, and some other early stuff, but nothing after the divorce.’
‘Divorce?’
‘In 1983.’ I must have looked solemn for a moment. He shook his head, clucking his tongue as he did so. ‘Please don’t let’s pretend it’s a shock. The wonder is that they got fourteen years out of it.’
‘I suppose so. What was the husband called again? I forget.’
‘Kieran de Yong. You’ll find there’s plenty about him.’
‘Kieran de Yong.’ I hadn’t thought of that name in so long, but it still had the power to make me smile.
Ditto Damian. ‘I used to get a glimpse of him at the odd city feste, but he always studiously ignored me. And I haven’t seen anything of Joanna, in print or person, since they split.’ He spoke musingly. ‘What do you think his real name was?’
‘Not Kieran de Yong.’
He laughed. ‘It might be Kieran. But I doubt it was de Yong.’
Now I too was trying to remember those headlines and that curious young man. ‘What was he? A hairdresser? A modelling agent? A dress designer? Something that chimed with the zeitgeist of the day.’
‘I think you’ll be surprised. Most people get less from the future than they expected but some people get more. We’ve got an address for him. They should have given it to you.’
I nodded. ‘If they’ve split up, will he know where to find her?’
‘Of course he will. They’ve got a son.’ He paused. ‘Or I have. Anyway, even if he doesn’t he may provide a lead. In any case I should start with him because we haven’t come up with an alternative.’
I was leaving when I had to ask one last question. ‘Are you really a Catholic?’
He laughed. I suppose the wording was rather funny. ‘I’m not sure what you mean. I was born a Catholic. Didn’t you know?’
I shook my head. ‘So you “lapsed”?’
‘I’m afraid so.’
His answer interested me. ‘Why “afraid”? Would you like to believe?’
Damian glanced at me patronisingly, as if I were a child. ‘Of course I would,’ he said. ‘I’m dying.’
The car was waiting patiently outside, but I knew there was a train every twenty minutes and so, with the immaculate chauffeur’s permission, I allowed myself a little wander among the stalls of the fête below. I thought about Damian’s unexpected words as I looked at these tables of old, unreadable books, at the piles of lamps from all the worst periods, at the cakes and jams, painstakingly made and all soon doubtless to be outlawed by the Health and Safety Stasi, at the dolls without their voice boxes and the jigsaws ‘missing one piece,’ and I, too, felt a kind of comfort and balm in the decency they represented. Naturally, it was very old-fashioned, and I am sure that if a New Labour minister could be offended by the Last Night of the Proms, she would be rendered suicidal by the sight of this comic, uniquely English event, but there was goodness here. These people had worked hard at what I would once have judged as such a little thing, yet their efforts were not wasted on me; in fact, they almost made me cry.
It is hard to be certain from this distance, but I think I’m right in saying that Ascot came after Queen Charlotte’s Ball. I had anyway, as I have said, met Joanna Langley several times before the race meeting, but it was on that day that I suppose we became friends, which even now I like to think we were. It was then that I understood she was a creature of her own era, that she was not, like the rest of us, engaged in some kind of action replay of our parents’ youth.
Ascot as a fashionable event is almost finished now. No doubt sensibly, Her Majesty’s Representative has decided the meeting would better earn its keep as a day for racing enthusiasts and corporate entertaining. To this end the Household Stand (their sole remaining perk, poor dears, in exchange for all that unpaid smiling and standing) and various other, arcane sanctums were eliminated from the wonderful, new grandstand, and the famous Royal Enclosure is no longer workable in the altered layout. Once the Court felt unwelcome, many of its members found other things to do and after this retreat it followed as the night the day that first the smart set and next the social aspirants, those who do not live and breathe horses anyway, would start to drop away. Soon, most of them will abandon it, I would guess forever, since once British toffs are given permission to avoid a social obligation it is hard to make them take it up again. Some will say it was high time and the racing crowd will be glad that horses have once again become the business of the day. But whether or not we would agree with this now, in the 1960s we enjoyed it like billy-o.
For some reason, that year I had gone with the family of a girl called Minna Bunting. Her father held some position at Buckingham Palace which I cannot now recall, Keeper of the Privy Purse maybe, or at any rate one of those ancient-sounding titles that brought, among other privileges, a place in the Ascot car park reserved for the use of members of the Royal Household. This was, and is, located across the road from the main entrance to the course and has always been considered very smart, despite consisting of a large but unremarkable ashphalt yard, overlooked by the unfragrant main stables and boasting a single loo more properly reserved for the grooms. A sort of disintegrating Dutch barn provided a bit of shelter on one side and a couple of abandoned pony stalls offered some shade on the other. Otherwise it was lines of cars. But the whole arrangement was supervised every year by the nicest group of men you could hope to encounter, which always gave the place rather a lift, and I do know it was considered quite a feather in my cap to be having my picnic lunch there, even if there were moments when the aroma made swallowing hard.
I think Minna and I were fairly keen on each other, in a moderate way, for a brief while back then. I know we went out to dinner a few times and I could not now tell you why this ended. I am often struck by how hard it is to unravel your own motives when you look back on certain incidents or relationships in the dim and distant past. Why this girl failed but that one broke your heart. Why this man made you smile and that one made your spirits sink. They all seem to have been quite nice, friends and enemies and lovers alike, young and pleasant and, to be honest, all much of a muchness from the vantage point of hindsight. What was it about them as individuals that intrigued or bored me forty years ago?
We had finished our lunch and it was time to make our way over the road and on to the course, so we strolled together down the high, laurel-lined path to the entrance. The police were managing the traffic, as they did even then in those comparatively traffic-free days and we were obliged to pause. ‘What on earth is going on?’ said Minna.