‘In your room?’
‘Yes.’ She nodded, scrunching up her eyes for a second at the memory. ‘He was next door, which maybe I’d forgotten, if I even knew. There was a pair of interconnecting doors, those doors that were so useful to the Edwardians, with a space between them, a couple of feet wide, which formed a completely effective sound barrier, and neither Pel nor Roo had shouted, so I wasn’t worried. The door was shut and since there was an armchair in front of it I must have assumed that it was locked, that they both were, but they weren’t. I suppose he’d been standing in the space between the two doors and now he’d opened the one into my room and come through it. The whole thing was so terrible I can hardly frame the words to describe it. I remember it now, forty years later, as one of the most horrible moments of my entire life, which, believe me, is saying something. We just stared at each other, then eventually I muttered about their not understanding his feelings, and hoping that he wouldn’t hate them and all that sort of thing. But Damian shook his head with a brisk little chuckle, and said, “Hate them? Why should I hate them? They’ve found me out.” And I didn’t understand him at first, because I’d been so convinced by Serena that he really did love her. So I couldn’t believe that he was telling me it wasn’t true, that all the time he’d been out to catch her for her money and whatnot. I didn’t want to believe him, but that’s what he said. He told Serena later on that night, so I didn’t have to. She and I talked about it, but only once. And I don’t think they saw each other again – except for that one ghastly evening in Portugal, of course. They might have run into each other at some gathering over the years, I suppose, but I never heard her mention it, if they did. He wasn’t at any more of the parties that year. He seemed to give us all up after the incident and I can’t say I’m surprised.’
‘Nor me. When did he tell her?’
‘Right at the end. I’m sure he wouldn’t have wanted to spoil the evening, but he couldn’t have borne for her to hear it from anyone else and I think he’d already decided to leave first thing the next day. I seem to remember that he got her into the Tapestry Drawing Room just before it all folded, but I may have made that up.’
‘And he told her it had all been his plan to advance himself and that he didn’t love her?’
‘I suppose so. I mean yes. Although, even now, I don’t think it was ever the whole truth. He might have seen her as a ladder in some way, but I’m sure he was genuinely fond of her.’
‘I doubt it was true at all. If he said he loved her I’m sure he did.’
She looked at me, surprised. ‘I thought you disliked him.’
‘I hated him. I hate him now, really, if marginally less than before. That doesn’t mean I think him a liar, which I don’t, except under extreme provocation.’
She grimaced. ‘As we know.’
But I didn’t want to drift away to that other, cursed evening. I wanted to stay with the night of the ball. ‘He was lying to you to save face. I wonder that you couldn’t see that. She was never going to have much money anyway. If he was after that, he’d have gone for Joanna Langley.’
She blushed. ‘You don’t think he wanted a grand wife with a title?’
‘He wouldn’t have cared about it. Not then. Maybe at the beginning, but not by that stage. He turned down Dagmar of Moravia. He could have had a princess for a wife if he’d wanted.’
She thought about this. ‘Well, I must have agreed with you at the time, or the whole Portuguese adventure would never have happened. I suppose the years have made me more cynical than I was.’
‘Poor Serena. So she’d made her decision to defy her parents and marry her true love, and then, in one short evening, it was finished and there was nothing left for her to do but to go out on to the terrace for some fresh air and to come up with a new life scheme.’
‘Did she? You know more about it than I do.’
‘Yes, she did. And then she came in again and found me waiting in the anteroom, and we danced together just before I left.’ I thought of Serena’s blank eyes and her muttered ‘these things are such milestones.’ She might have said millstones. It would have been just as true.
‘I see. Well, perhaps you’re right about Damian. I hope so. But he’s had his revenge in a way. He ended up a figure of far greater significance than any of the rest of us. I wonder if Pel and Roo ever think about that.’
‘You did have a soft spot for him, then?’
‘Damian? Oh, absolutely. I adored him. As I told you, we did have a bit of a thing, but it was earlier in the year than all this. Once Damian and Serena got together, I don’t remember him being involved with anyone else in our crowd.’
‘Until after.’
She blushed, slightly. ‘Oh, yes. After. But you know how it is during the lonely years. Before life settles.’
‘Can I ask an impertinent question?’
She smiled. ‘I think after the talk we’ve just had I can hardly prevent it.’
‘Who was Archie’s father? Did I know him? Was he one of the gang from that era? Or was it someone you met when it was over?’
‘It’s hard to say.’
Which seemed a peculiar reply. ‘Do you ever see him now?’
‘I don’t know.’ I stared at her, looking, I imagine, fairly puzzled and she laughed. ‘These days I’m an old, respectable banker’s widow, but it was not always thus. You must know that everyone has some parts of their life that are hard to reconcile with their present.’
I nodded. ‘I know it better than most.’ And I certainly already knew it about her.
‘The truth is I’m not quite sure who Archie’s father was. I bounced around a fair bit at that time. I think my excuse was that I’d lost my way or I was trying to find myself, or some other Sixties cliché that allowed me to do as I pleased without feeling guilty, and I took full advantage of the philosophy. Then, one day I woke up pregnant. Every single entry in my address book wanted me to get rid of it, of course, friends and family alike, but I wouldn’t and I am terribly grateful now.’
‘But you never tried to find out?’
‘I didn’t see the point. What would I have gained? Someone poking their nose in where it wasn’t wanted? Some emotional cripple who felt he had the right to lean on me because I’d carried his child? At one stage I thought it might be George Tremayne. I was pretty sure later that it wasn’t, but imagine what it would have been like having him getting sloshed at the kitchen table.’ I grimaced. ‘So, no. I decided to battle through it alone.’
‘How were you sure? That it wasn’t George?’
She thought for a moment. ‘I heard that he was having trouble getting his wife pregnant. That rather chubby girl whose father made cars. She’d got two children by a first husband, so it couldn’t have been her.’ She nodded, satisfied with her own conclusions. ‘Anyway, having Archie put me back on the straight and narrow. It was a bumpy road for a bit, even if it was straight, and God knows it was narrow. But it led me to Harry.’
‘So there was a happy ending.’
She smiled. ‘That’s so nice. To hear Harry described as my happy ending. These days everyone who says his name bursts into tears. But they’re wrong and you’re right. He was my happy ending. And now,’ she stood, stretching herself, ‘I really must go to bed or I’ll die.’
I was deep in a dream involving Neil Kinnock and Joan Crawford and a woman who used to work for my mother as a cleaner called Mrs Pointer. We were all trying to have a picnic on Beachy Head, but the tartan rug kept blowing up and spilling everything, and for some reason we couldn’t weight it down. Until we decided to lie on it to hold it steady, but how can that have worked and what did we do with the food? Which didn’t seem to matter much, as Joan was squeezing into my back and she slid an arm round my waist, letting her hand slide down as she did so, and… I woke up. Except I hadn’t woken up, because although it was fairly dark and I wasn’t at a picnic any more, I could still feel Joan’s body pressed into mine and a gentle hand enfolding my erect penis, and then a voice said ‘are you awake?’ very softly, and it didn’t sound at all like Joan’s. Not a bit. It wasn’t even American. I thought about this for a moment, because the voice was familiar and I felt I should know it but I didn’t recognise it until it spoke my name, and suddenly I knew beyond any doubt… it was Serena’s. It was Serena Belton’s voice and she was here beside me, with her hand on my penis. And then I still couldn’t believe I wasn’t dreaming, because this, after all, was my lifelong dream, and I began to wonder whether I was in a dream within a dream, when you think you’ve woken up but you haven’t. And I might have gone on thinking this for a bit longer if her lips had not nestled into the side of my cheek and I turned, and she was there.