Past Imperfect

by Julian Fellowes

  She didn’t speak again until we were in our freezing, damp bedroom. She had started to undress in that angular, vengeful way that I knew so well, talking over her shoulder at me, or through the back of her furious head. ‘The whole thing is so ridiculous.’

  ‘What thing? There isn’t a “thing”.’

  ‘Darn right, there isn’t. She’s not at all interested in you. Not in the least.’ She spoke the words crisply with a vivid, sparky relish, as if Serena’s lack of love for me was somehow all her own work, a real achievement to be proud of.

  ‘No. I don’t suppose she is.’

  ‘Not in the least.’ The repeat was heightened in volume and acerbity. ‘Anyone can see that. She could hardly remember who you were.’ This was, I thought, a punch below the belt but I decided not to argue. Instead, I settled for looking wounded. I was wasting my time. Bridget, in full flow by now, was unfazed by any perceived sense of injustice. ‘She’d never leave him. You can’t imagine that she would.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘And if she did? What makes you think she’d ever want to live with a sad, little depressive like you?’

  ‘I don’t.’

  ‘Because she wouldn’t, you know. You can’t believe that would happen in a million light years.’

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘Give up all the privileges? All the profile? Go from Countess of Belton to Mrs You? Never.’

  For a moment I was going to protest facetiously that she would have been more correctly styled as ‘Lady Serena You’ but thought better of it. I was rather interested by her suggestion that Serena and Andrew had a ‘profile.’ What did that mean? What is a ‘profile’ in this context? I suppose Bridget’s rage had now taken on a life of its own and her editing faculties were impeded. ‘I dare say it is unlikely,’ I said.

  ‘I’ll say. That type never do.’

  ‘She’s a “type,” is she? Well, that’s encouraging. I must look out for some more of them.’

  ‘Oh, fuck off.’ I cannot complain at this since I deserved it.

  But by the time I too had undressed and we were both shivering beneath our inadequate coverings in our ugly carved bed, she had calmed down. Up until now her anger had protected me against feeling guilt, but I was not to get off scot-free. Just before I turned out the light she lowered her book and looked over at me. ‘What did I do wrong?’ Her voice was quite gentle again and the soft Irish burr that I always found so beguiling gave it a poignancy that reminded me painfully how much I hate to hurt.

  I shook my head and gave what I hoped was a warm smile, which in that temperature was quite a challenge. ‘It’s not your fault,’ I answered her in what I felt was a suitably genuine tone. ‘You’ve done nothing wrong. It isn’t you, it’s me.’ As one mouths these oh so familiar sentiments, and this last, hackneyed sentence in particular, one likes to feel that one is expressing a noble and generous sentiment. That you are ‘taking the blame’ for the failure, ‘shouldering the responsibility’ and so on. In fact, of course, this is dishonest, as any serial love-rat, to lift a title from the tabloids, could tell you, and we are almost all love-rats at some stage. The phrases are a kind of lazy shorthand, designed to deflect the brickbats hurtling at your head and bring all discussion of the topic to a close as quickly as possible.

  Bridget, quite rightly, felt she deserved more than this craven and mendacious reply. ‘Please,’ she said. ‘I mean it.’ And her tone was now pulling at my heart strings to an uncomfortable degree. ‘Is there anything I could have done that would have made it better?’

  I looked at her and decided on honesty. ‘You could have been happier.’

  She bridled. ‘You could have made me happier.’

  I nodded with almost military precision. ‘Precisely,’ I said. And with both of us feeling that her words had put us each inalienably in the right, I turned out the light and we pretended to sleep.

  Joanna

  NINE

  It was the day after we returned from Yorkshire that I received another call from Damian. I say ‘from Damian’ but in fact Bassett’s modest, unassuming voice greeted me down the receiver. ‘Mr Baxter was wondering…’ He paused nervously and I began to wonder what Damian could be wondering that would give me such offence, but the answer, when it came, was mild, ‘if you might possibly be able to get down to see him at all soon.’

  I felt I should confess my lack of progress straight away, not that it was very likely I was concealing a major find. ‘I haven’t much to report yet, I’m afraid,’ I said.

  But Bassett did not seem to be expecting anything different. ‘Mr Baxter knows that, Sir. He assumed that he would have heard from you before now if there was anything to hear. But he would like to catch up with you all the same.’

  Despite Bassett’s dulcet tones, there was an absolute expectation of my agreeing to this suggestion that triggered an alarm bell in my vitals. I had the uncomfortable feeling that I had somehow put myself in Damian’s power by agreeing to his request, that, in short, far from doing him a favour I had in fact been bought. I was not being paid, of course, but against my better judgement I had accepted the insulting credit card and in a way it made me an employee, which I should have spotted at the outset. I had broken my own rule, viz. that if one is bought, let it be for a high price. This is why no one should ever accept a charity lecture or brief local appearance where a fee is involved, at least in England. The sum is invariably tiny, but the organisers will most definitely feel, once they have pressed a few coins into your hand, that they own you body and soul. If you must do these things, and sometimes one must, then please do them for nothing. Do them out of the goodness of your heart. The money will make no difference to your life, but you will never have to endure the sense of being a purchased hireling, since you retain the whip hand of your generosity. Better yet, donate the fee you might have had to their cause, or to something equally worthy, and add a halo to your head for good measure. But in this instance somehow, by sleight of hand, Damian had tricked me and retained the moral high ground. I was no longer doing a good turn, I was carrying out a commission. It is quite a different matter.

  Eventually the plan was settled. I had rather a heavy week coming up, so the decision was made that I would return to Surrey after lunch on the following Sunday. Accordingly, I took the train and was met once more at the station by the flawlessly uniformed chauffeur, but as we arrived at Planet Damian it came as a surprise to see what looked like a village fête going on in the gardens. The cars were parked in a field further down the road, and the booths and general activity were apparently cordoned off from the upper lawn, so the event did not really impinge on the actual house, but even so it was not very compatible with my cherished image of Mr Baxter, being altogether too philanthropic for his tastes. However, in answer to my question as I got out of the car, Bassett confirmed the situation. ‘Yes. It’s held over two days in the summer, Sir. It’s in aid of the local Catholic church, St Teresa’s. In Guildford.’

  ‘Is Mr Baxter a Catholic?’ The thought had never occurred to me. Not that I mind Catholics. It was just strange to think of Damian subscribing to any religion.

  ‘I believe so, Sir.’

  ‘And does he do this every year?’

  ‘He does, Sir. Since he first came here.’ I attempted to conceal my cynical amazement as I was shown directly to the library. When I walked into the room I realised at once why I had been sent for. Damian was dying. He had of course been dying before, when I was last there on the visit that started it all, but one may be dying without having death written all over one’s face. This time it was not so much that he had a fatal illness. Rather, at first appearance, he looked as if he were already dead.

  He lay back, stretched out, on his daybed, eyes shut. Were it not for the faintest movement of his emaciated chest I would have assumed I had come too late. I suppose I must have appeared shocked, as just at this moment he opened his eyes and let out a rasping, little laugh at my expression. ‘Cheer up,’ he snorted.
‘I’m not quite as bad as I look.’

  ‘That’s a relief,’ I said. ‘Since you couldn’t look worse.’

  Naturally this bucked him up. He rang the bell by his chair and when the ever vigilant Bassett put his head round the door suggested, in that diffident way of his, that we might have some tea. ‘Are you staying the night?’ he asked when Bassett had gone off on his commission.

  ‘I don’t think so. I was planning to continue the search tomorrow, and I don’t believe I should put it off.’

  ‘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?’

  ‘Pretty well. Andrew as awful as ever.’

  ‘Was he there?’ I nodded with a grimace, which Damian echoed. ‘I always used to wonder how he would keep up through a family dinner in that house. All of them sparking away like firecrackers and Andrew sitting there like a lump of mud.’

  ‘I think he keeps up by being unaware that he is not keeping up.’

  ‘And her ladyship?’

  ‘More or less unchanged. I’m sad to say jolly old Lord C. has been replaced by a carving, stolen from a tomb in the Capuchin Church in Vienna, but she’s much the same as she was.’ I told him about Lady Claremont’s joke at my expense. It was a risky admission, given what came after my love had been revealed all those years ago, but I was in too deep by now to be careful.