Past Imperfect

by Julian Fellowes

  ‘It would make her female.’

  ‘There we are, then.’ I smiled. ‘I like the way she cannot curse you. It’s quite Keatsian. Like a verse from ‘Isabella, or The Pot of Basil’: “She weeps alone for pleasures not to be.”’

  ‘What do you think it means?’

  I wasn’t clear how there could be any doubt. ‘It’s not very mysterious,’ I said. But he waited, so I put it into words. ‘It sounds as if you have made somebody pregnant.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I assume the deceit she refers to must be some avowal of a forever kind of love, which you made in order to get her to remove her clothing.’

  ‘You sound very harsh.’

  ‘Do I? I don’t mean to. Like all of us boys in those days, I tried it often enough myself. Her “weakness” implies you were, in this instance, successful.’ But I thought over Damian’s original question about the letter’s meaning. Did it indicate that he thought things were not quite so straightforward? ‘Why? Is there another interpretation? I suppose this woman could have been in love with you and her life since then has been a lie because she married someone else when she’d rather have been with you. Is that what you think it is?’

  ‘No. Not really. If that’s all she meant, would she be writing about it twenty years later?’

  ‘Some people take longer than others to get over these things.’

  ‘“I stare at my living lie each day.” “No one will ever know.” No one will ever know what?’ He asked the question as if there could be no doubt as to the answer. Which I agreed with.

  I nodded. ‘As I said, you made her pregnant.’

  He seemed almost reassured that there was no other possible meaning, as if he had been testing me. He nodded. ‘And she had the baby.’

  ‘Sounds like it. Though that in itself makes the whole affair something of a period piece. I wonder why she didn’t get rid of it.’

  At this, Damian gave his unique blend of haughty look and dismissive snort. How well I remembered it. ‘I imagine abortion was against her principles. Some people do have principles.’

  Now it was my turn to snort. ‘I’m not prepared to take instruction from you on that score,’ I said, which he let pass, as well he might. The whole thing was beginning to irritate me. Why were we making such a meal of it? ‘Very well, then. She had the baby. And nobody knows that you are the father. End of story.’ I stared at the envelope, so carefully preserved. ‘At least, was it the end? Or was there some more? After this?’

  He nodded. ‘That’s exactly what I thought at the time. That it was the start of some kind of… I don’t know… extortion.’

  ‘Extortion?’

  ‘My lawyer’s word. I went to see him. He took a copy and told me to wait for the next approach. He said that clearly she was building up to a demand for money and we should be ready with a plan. I was in the papers a bit in those days and I’d already had some luck. It seemed likely that she’d suddenly understood her baby’s father was rich, and so now might be the moment for a killing. My offspring would have been about twenty then-’

  ‘Nineteen,’ I said. ‘Her life was a living lie for nineteen years.’

  He looked puzzled for a moment, then he nodded. ‘Nineteen and just starting out. Cash would have come in very useful.’ He looked at me. I didn’t have anything to add since, like the lawyer, I thought this all made sense. ‘I would have given her something.’ He was quite defensive. ‘I was perfectly prepared to.’

  ‘But she didn’t write again.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Perhaps she died.’

  ‘Perhaps. Although it seems rather melodramatic. Perhaps, as you say, the letter got posted by accident. Anyway, we heard nothing more and gradually the thing drifted away.’

  ‘So why are we discussing it now?’

  He did not answer me immediately. Instead, he stood up and crossed to the chimneypiece. A log had rolled forward on to the hearth and he took up the tools to rectify it, doing so with a kind of deadly intensity. ‘The thing is,’ he said at last, speaking into the flames but presumably addressing me, ‘I want to find the child.’

  There didn’t seem to be any logic in this. If he’d wanted to ‘do the right thing,’ why hadn’t he done it eighteen years before, when there might have been some point? ‘Isn’t it a bit late?’ I asked. ‘It wouldn’t have been easy to play dad when she wrote the letter; but by now the “child” is a man or woman in their late thirties. They are what they are, and it’s far too late to help shape them now.’

  None of this seemed to carry any weight whatever. I’m not sure he even heard. ‘I want to find them,’ he repeated. ‘I want you to find them.’

  It would be foolish to pretend that I had not by this stage worked out that this was where we were headed. But it was not a task I relished. Nor was I in the least sure I would undertake it. ‘Why me?’

  ‘When I met you I had only slept with four girls.’ He paused. I raised my eyebrows faintly. Any man of my generation will understand that this was impressive in itself. At nineteen, which is what we were when we first came across each other, I do not believe I had done much more than kiss on the dance floor. He hadn’t finished. ‘I knew all four until well into the early 1970s and it definitely wasn’t one of them. Then you and I ran around for a while, and I kept myself fairly busy. A couple of years later, when that period had come to an end, we went to Portugal. And after that I was sterile. Besides, look at the writing, look at the paper, read the phrases. This woman is educated-’

  ‘And histrionic. And drunk.’

  ‘Which does not prevent her being posh.’

  ‘I’ll say.’ I considered his theory some more. ‘What about the years between the end of the Season and Portugal?’

  He shook his head. ‘A few, mainly scrubbers, and a couple left over from our times together. Not one who had a baby before that summer.’ He sighed wearily. ‘Anyway, nobody lives a lie who hasn’t got something to lose. Something worth holding on to, something that would be endangered by the truth. She wrote to me in 1990 when the upper and upper middle classes occupied the last remaining bastion of legitimate birth. Anyone normal would have let the secret out of the bag long ago.’ The effort of saying all this, plus the log work, had depleted what remained of his energy and he sank back into his chair with a groan.

  I did not pity him. Quite the contrary. Suddenly the unreasonableness of his request struck me forcibly. ‘But I’m not in your life. I am nothing to do with you. We are completely different people.’ I wasn’t insulting him. I simply could not see why any of this was my responsibility. ‘We may have known each other once, but we don’t now. We went to some dances together forty years ago. And quarrelled. There must be others who are far closer to you than I ever was. I can’t be the only person who could take this on.’

  ‘But you are. These women came from your people, not mine. I have no other friends who would know them, or even know of them. And in fact, if we are having this conversation, I have no other friends.’

  This was too self-serving for my taste. ‘Then you have no friends at all, because you certainly can’t count me.’ Naturally, once the words were out I rather regretted them. I did believe that he was dying and there was no point in punishing him now for things that could never be undone, whatever he or I might wish.

  But he smiled. ‘You’re right. I have no friends. As you know better than most, it’s not a relationship I could ever either understand or manage. If you will not do this for me I have no one else to ask. I cannot even hire a detective. The information I need would not be available to anyone but an insider.’ I was about to suggest he undertake the search himself, but looking at his shaking, hollow frame, the words died on my lips. ‘Will you do it?’ he asked after a brief pause.

  At this point, I was quite sure that I really didn’t want to. Not just because of the prickly, time-wasting and awkward nature of the quest, but because the more I thought about it, the more I knew I didn’t want to poke a
round in my own past, any more than his. The time he spoke of was over. For both of us. I had hardly kept up with anyone from those days, for reasons which involved him, as he knew, and what was there to gain by rootling around in it all? I decided to make a last attempt to appeal to his better nature. Even people like Damian Baxter must have a little. ‘Damian, think. Do you really want to turn their life upside down? This man, this woman, they know who they are and they’re living their life as best they can. Will it help to find they’re someone different and unknown? To make them question, or even break with, their parents? Would you want that on your conscience?’

  He looked at me quite steadily. ‘My fortune, after death duties, will be far in excess of five hundred million pounds. My intention is to make my child sole heir. Are you prepared to take the responsibility for denying them their inheritance? Would you want that on your conscience?’

  Naturally, it would have been jejune to pretend that this did not make all the difference in the world. ‘How would I set about it?’ I said.

  He relaxed. ‘I will present you with a list of the girls I slept with during those years, who had a child before April 1971.’ This was again impressive. The list of girls I had slept with during the same period, with or without children, could have been contained on the blank side of a visiting card. It was also very precise and oddly businesslike. I had thought we were engaged in some sort of philosophical exchange but I saw now we were approaching what used to be called ‘brass tacks.’ He obviously sensed my surprise. ‘My secretary has made a start. There didn’t seem much point in your getting in touch if they hadn’t had a baby.’ Which was of course true. ‘I believe the list is comprehensive.’

  ‘What about the girls you slept with who did not bear children at that time?’

  ‘Don’t let’s worry about them. No point in making work.’ He smiled. ‘We’ve done a lot of weeding. There were a couple of others I slept with who did have an early child but, in the words of the Empress Eugénie’s mother when challenged over her Imperial daughter’s paternity, les dates ne correspondent pas.’ He laughed, easier now that he saw his plan would come to fruition. ‘I want you to know that I have taken this seriously and there is a real possibility that it could be any one of the listed names.’

  ‘So how do I go about it?’

  ‘Just get in touch. With one exception, I’ve got the present addresses.’

  ‘Why don’t you ask them to have a DNA test?’

  ‘That sort of woman would never agree.’

  ‘You romanticise them in your dislike. I suspect they would. And their children certainly would when they found out why.’

  ‘No.’ He was suddenly quite firm again. I could see my comment had annoyed him. ‘I don’t want this to be a story. Only the true child must know I’m looking for them. When they have the money it will be their choice to reveal how or why they got it. Until then, this is for my private satisfaction, not public consumption. Test one who isn’t my child and we will read the story in the Daily Mail the following week.’ He shook his head. ‘Maybe we should test them at the last, but only when you have elected which of the said progeny is probably mine.’

  ‘But suppose one of the women had a baby without anyone knowing and put it up for adoption?’

  ‘They haven’t done that. At least, the mother of my baby hasn’t.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Because then she wouldn’t have stared at her lie every day.’

  I had nothing further to say, at least until I’d thought about it all some more, which Damian seemed to understand and did not wish to challenge. He pulled himself unsteadily to his feet. ‘I’m going to bed now. I haven’t been up as late as this for months. You will find the list in an envelope in your room. If you wish, we can discuss it some more tomorrow morning before you go. At the risk of sounding vulgar, as you would say, you’ll also find a credit card, which will cover any expenses you care to charge on it during your enquiries. I will not question whatever you choose to use it for.’

  This last detail actively annoyed me as it was deliberately phrased in a manner designed to make me think him generous. But nothing about this commission was generous. It was a hideous imposition. ‘I haven’t agreed yet,’ I said.

  ‘I hope you will.’ He was at the door when he stopped. ‘Do you ever see her now?’ he asked, confident that I would require no prompting as to the object of his enquiry. Which was correct.

  ‘No. Not really.’ I thought for a painful moment. ‘Very occasionally, at a party or a wedding or something. But not really.’

  ‘You aren’t enemies?’

  ‘Oh, no. We smile. And even talk. We’re certainly not enemies. We’re not anything.’

  He hesitated, as if he were pondering whether to go down this path. ‘You know I was mad.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But I want you to understand that I know it, too. I went completely mad.’ He paused, as if I might come in with some suitable response. But there wasn’t one. ‘Would it help if I said I was sorry?’ he asked.

  ‘Not terribly.’

  He nodded, absorbing the information. We both knew there was nothing further to add. ‘Stay down here as long as you like. Have some more whisky and look at the books. Some of them will interest you.’

  But I wasn’t quite finished. ‘Why have you left it until now?’ I said. ‘Why didn’t you make enquiries when you first got the letter?’

  This did make him pause and ponder, as the light from the hall came through the now open door and deepened the lines of his ravaged face. Presumably he asked himself the same question a thousand times a day. ‘I don’t know. Not completely. Maybe I couldn’t bear the thought of anyone feeling they had a claim against me. I didn’t see how I could find and identify them without giving them some power. And I’d never really wanted a child. Which is probably why I wouldn’t listen to my wife’s pleadings. It wasn’t one of my ambitions. I don’t think I was ever naturally paternal.’

  ‘Yet now you are prepared to give this unknown stranger enough money to build a small industrial town. Why? What’s changed?’

  Damian thought for a moment and a tiny sigh made his thin shoulders rise and fall. The jacket, which must once have fitted flawlessly, flapped loosely around his shrivelled frame. ‘I’m dying and I have no beliefs,’ he said simply. ‘This is my only chance of immortality.’

  Then he was gone and I was left to enjoy his library alone.

  TWO

  I have never been a good judge of character. My impressions at first meeting are almost invariably wrong. Although, human nature being what it is, many years had to pass before I could bring myself to admit it. When I was young I thought I had a marvellous instinct to tell good from bad, fine from shoddy, sacred from profane. Damian Baxter, by contrast, was an expert at assessment. He knew at once I was a patsy.

  As it happens, we had both gone up to Cambridge in September 1967, but we were in different colleges and we moved in different crowds, so it was not until the beginning of the summer term of 1968, in early May I think, that our paths first crossed, at a party in the Fellows’ Quadrangle of my college, where I was no doubt showing off. I was nineteen and in that heady stage of life for someone like me, at least for someone like me then, when you suddenly realise that the world is more complicated than you had supposed, that there is in fact a vast assortment of people and opportunities on offer, and you will not be obliged to continue forever in the narrow channel of boarding school and county, which was all that that my so-called ‘privileged’ upbringing had yielded thus far. I would not say that I was ever antisocial but nor would I claim much social success before that time. I had been rather overshadowed by handsome and witty cousins, and since I possessed neither looks nor a trace of charisma to offset this, there wasn’t much I could do to make my presence felt.

  My dear mother understood my predicament, which she was obliged to witness silently and painfully for years, but found there was little she could do to rem
edy it. Until, seeing the burgeoning confidence that admission to university had brought, she decided to take advantage of it to promote a spirit of adventure within me, providing introductions to London friends with suitably aged daughters. Surprisingly perhaps, I had followed her lead and begun to construct a new social group for myself, where I would have no more depressing comparisons to contend with and where I could, to an extent anyway, reinvent myself.

  It would seem odd to today’s young that I should have allowed myself to be so parentally steered, but things were different forty years ago. To start with, people were not then afraid of getting older. Our strange, patronising culture, where middle-aged television presenters dishonestly pretend to share the tastes and prejudices of their teenage audience in order to gain their trust, had not arrived. In short, in this as in so many areas, we did not think in the way that people think today. Of course, we were divided by political opinions and class and, to a lesser extent than now, religion, but the key difference, from today’s viewpoint, is not between the Right and the Left, or the aristocratic and the ordinary, but between the generation of 1968 and the people of four decades later.

  In my world, parents in the early Sixties still arranged their children’s lives to an extraordinary extent, settling between themselves when parties would be given and at which houses during the school holidays, what subjects their offspring would study at school; what careers they should pursue after university; above all, what friends they would spend time with. It wasn’t, on the whole, tyrannical but we did not much challenge our parents’ veto when it was exercised. I remember a local baronet’s heir, frequently drunk and invariably rude, and for these reasons beguiling to me and my sister and repulsive to our parents, who was actually forbidden entry to our house by my father, ‘except where his absence would cause comment.’ Can such a phrase really have been spoken within living memory? I know we laughed about this rule even then. But we did not break it. In short, we were a product of our backgrounds in a way that would be rare today. One hears people wonder about the collapse of parental authority. Was it deliberately engineered as the right-wing press would have us believe? Or did it just happen because it was right for the time, like the internal combustion engine or penicillin? Either way, it has vanished from whole chunks of our society, gone, like the snows of yesteryear.