Past Imperfect

by Julian Fellowes

  I didn’t see I could contribute much on the subject of Jeff and his trials, so I just smiled. ‘Anyway, you’re all right. That’s the main thing.’

  ‘Yeah,’ she also smiled, but hers stopped short of her eyes. ‘Donnie’s OK.’ Donnie was obviously the new husband. I wasn’t sure that ‘OK’ quite sold him with any strength of purpose, but I suppose they’d been together for a few years by then.

  ‘Does he get on with Susie?’ I was naturally much more interested in getting back to my quarry.

  ‘Yuh.’ She shrugged. ‘I mean, Susie’s a grown woman now. But yes, they get on, I guess.’

  ‘I guess’ ranked somewhere alongside ‘OK’ when it came to degrees of ecstatic joy. Try as I might, I couldn’t read this as a household drenched in sunbeams. ‘What does she do?’

  ‘She’s a producer.’

  Of course, in Los Angeles this doesn’t mean much more than ‘she’s a member of the human race.’ Later, after this visit, when Damian’s mission had resulted, perhaps ironically, in my opening up an American career for myself, I would be much more familiar with the ways of the city, but I was an innocent then. ‘How exciting,’ I said. ‘What’s she produced?’ As I have observed, if I had known more I would not have asked this question.

  Terry smiled even more brightly. ‘She’s got a lot of very interesting projects. She’s working on something for Warner’s right now.’ She nodded as if this brought the subject to a close, which of course it did.

  ‘Is she married?’

  ‘Divorced. And fucked up with it.’ The remark had slipped out, loudly, and now she regretted it. ‘To be honest, we don’t see a lot of each other. You know how it is. She’s busy.’ She shrugged. I can’t imagine that she thought she was concealing her pain, but maybe she did.

  ‘Of course.’ I know I am sounding increasingly feeble in my report of this interchange, but Terry’s volume was rising and I was becoming uncomfortably aware that the people on both sides of our table were pretending to talk and had in fact tuned into our conversation.

  Gary the Wary now returned to our table, bringing huge, Californian, mounded platefuls, draining my appetite away, and Terry ordered another bottle. ‘Do you see anyone now?’ she muttered between sips. ‘Anyone from the old crowd?’ I was not convinced that Terry had ever really been in our old ‘crowd,’ if crowd there had been, but it seemed a good moment to bring up the subject of Damian, so I did. For once, Terry was genuinely interested in what I was saying. ‘How is he?’ I explained and I could see that even her flinty heart had been mildly touched. ‘I’m sorry to hear that.’ But then her mind flew away from sticky sentiment and back to its natural climes. ‘He made a lot of money.’

  ‘He did.’

  ‘Would you have guessed he would? Then?’

  I thought for a moment. ‘I was always pretty sure he was going to do well.’

  ‘Even though you hated him?’

  So she had remembered quite a bit about the old days. ‘I didn’t hate him all the way through. Not at the beginning.’ She acknowledged this. I thought we might as well get on with the matter on hand. ‘You had a thing with him, didn’t you?’

  The question made her sit up with an amused snort at its impertinence, although I am not convinced one can be impertinent to someone like Terry. ‘I had a “thing” with a lot of people,’ she said. This was, of course, quite true, unusually true for the era we’d lived through, and came better from her than from me. She accompanied the sentence with a sideways glance, as well she might, since one of those no doubt fortunate people who had enjoyed a ‘thing’ with her was me. It had only been a one-night ‘thing’ but it happened. Sensing my moment of recall, Terry raised her glass in a toast. ‘To good times,’ she said with an unnerving, secret smile making me even more aware of that curious, semi-detached sensation, when you are talking to a person you once slept with, but the incident is so far away from your present life that it feels as if you are discussing completely different people. Still, as I say, it did happen.

  I was staying at a house in Shropshire and the couple I had been billeted on were in the middle of a furious, poisonous row when I arrived. I’d been sent there for the ball of that same Minna Bunting with whom I had enjoyed my momentary and entirely virtuous walkout. Our time together was over and, since there was nothing to ‘forget,’ we had remained friends. Strange as it may seem, this was completely possible in those days. In 1968, to introduce someone as a ‘my girlfriend’ did not automatically translate as ‘my mistress’ in the way it does today. Indeed now, if she were not your mistress you would feel you were implying a lie. But not then. Anyway, I had received the usual postcard – ‘We would be so pleased if you would stay with us for Minna’s dance’ – and I found myself parking outside a large, pleasant, stone rectory, which I think I remember was somewhere near Ludlow. The card had told me my hostess was a ‘Mrs Peter Mainwaring’ and she had signed herself ‘Billie,’ so I had all the information I needed as I climbed out of the car. That said, those names that are not generally pronounced as they are written can pose a problem. Would she be posh and call herself ‘Mannering’ or not posh and say it as it was spelled? I decided that, rather as it is better to be overdressed than under, I would go for Mannering. As it transpired I needn’t have worried, since she clearly couldn’t have cared less what I called her. ‘Yes?’ she said, glaring at me, as she wrenched open the door. Her face was red with rage and the veins were standing out on her neck.

  ‘I think I’m staying with you for the Buntings’ dance,’ I muttered.

  For a moment I thought she was going to hit me. ‘Oh, for Christ’s sake!’ she snarled and turned back into the hall. I confess that even now, older and wiser as I hope I am, I always find this kind of situation pretty trying, because one is hamstrung by being a stranger who cannot respond in kind. In those days, young as I was, I found it impossible. I remember wondering whether it would be more polite and, in truth, better all round, just to get straight back into the car and drive to a local hotel and arrive at the dance from there. Or would that make matters even worse? But Mrs Peter Mainwaring, aka Billie, had not finished with me. ‘What are you waiting for? Come in!’

  I picked up my suitcase and stumbled forward into a large and light hall. It was a brilliant, sunflower yellow, which seemed at variance with the cloudy scene being played out in it. The paintwork was white and a really lovely portrait of a mother and child by Reynolds hung against the back wall. A tall man, presumably Mr Peter Mainwaring, was standing halfway up the wide staircase. ‘Who is it?’ he shouted.

  ‘It’s another one of the Buntings’ fucking guests. How many did you tell them? This isn’t a fucking hotel!’

  ‘Oh, shut up! And show him to his room.’

  ‘You show him to his fucking room!’ I was beginning to wonder if she had any other adjective at her command.

  Throughout this unloving exchange, I may say, I stood there in the centre of the pretty hall quite still, motionless in fact, frozen with nervous terror, like a cigar store Indian. Then I had the bright idea that I should try to act as a soothing agent. ‘I’m sure I can find my own way,’ I said. This might be categorised as a mistake.

  She turned on me like a ravening beast. ‘Don’t be so fucking stupid!’ I could see that Billie’s irritation at my arrival was now developing into an active dislike. ‘How can you find your own way when you don’t know the fucking house!’

  At this point, and were I older and more confident, I would probably have told her to keep her anger to herself, basically, to employ her own language, to fuck off, and left. But part of youth is somehow to assume blame, to think that every problem must be in some way down to you, and I was no different. I’m sure most of the young of the late 1930s thought the Second World War was their fault. Anyway, as I stood there, blushing and stuttering while our hosts snarled at each other, by some heavenly miracle Terry Vitkov appeared on the landing above Peter Mainwaring and waved to me. I cannot think of a time when I wa
s ever more pleased to see anybody. ‘Terry!’ I shouted, as if I had been in love with her since I was fourteen, and hurried up the stairs, past my angry hostess, past my host, to reach her. ‘I’ll show him where he’s sleeping. It’s next to mine. Right?’ And before they could do much more than nod I had been rescued.

  Terry and I became a unit of mutual support through the hours that followed. Apparently the husband, Peter, had bought a house, or a villa, somewhere in France without telling his wife, and Billie had heard the news for the first time about twenty minutes before Terry had got there. She’d come by train, I can’t remember now why I didn’t give her a lift. Maybe I was driving from somewhere else. The point was she arrived about an hour before me. In that time the fight had apparently escalated from quite a slow-burning start, until Billie was standing in the hall, screaming names that would be shocking even today and threatening a divorce that would cost him ‘every fucking [naturally] penny he owned.’ I never completely got to the bottom of quite why his crime was so terrible. I wonder now if there wasn’t someone else involved. Either that, or Billie had made plans for the money that had been subverted by the very act of purchase.

  My room was pleasant enough and much as I had come to expect during these sojourns with unknown hosts in the lesser houses of England: The pretty paper, with a faint, pseudo-Victorian pattern, the interlined curtains in not-quite-Colefax, and some flower prints framed in gilt with eau de Nil mounts. I had my own bathroom, which was by no means standard in those days; better still it did not boast too many earwigs and woodlice, and there was a perfectly decent bed. But no amount of comfort could offset the surreal quality of the shouting that continued below, amplified no doubt by the fact that they were once more alone and free to tear out each other’s throats without interruption.

  There were two more arrivals. The first was a boy called Sam Hoare, whom I recall better than I might normally have done because he was going to be an actor, a really extraordinary ambition at the time. In my social group, at least, wanting to go on the stage seemed not so much doomed to failure as requiring treatment. He was a tall, good-looking fellow and ended up, I think I’m right in saying, as quite a big wheel in television production, so in a way he was right to persevere, however annoying it was for his parents. The last guest, who was staying in the house and not just coming for dinner, was a nice girl called Carina Fox, whom I always liked without ever knowing especially well. We heard the dogs barking and some talk in the hall and, as Terry had done earlier with me, we sneaked along the gallery to the top of the staircase and rescued them. The Mainwarings transferred the pair into our custody without a backward look. Not for Peter and Billie any worry about whether their guests were tired after the journey and needed some tea. As we know, these incidents are very bonding. The four of us sat in my bedroom, comparing notes and wondering how we were going to get through the evening ahead, until in some way we felt we were all friends, and not at all the semi-strangers we might have been in more normal circumstances.

  Dinner started moderately well. They had, after all, had some time to simmer down, and there were two outside, local couples, nearer our hosts in age, who had been invited to join the party, so, after an uneventful glass of champagne in the garden, the ten of us sat down at about a quarter to nine that night and at first made small talk as if none of the earlier episode had taken place. Indeed, I’m sure the newcomers, an army general with a nice wife and a nearby landowning couple, had no idea that their dear friends, Peter and Billie, had been playing out a touring version of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf until just before they broke up to have their baths. The dining room was quite handsome, with excellent china and glass on the table and again, surprisingly good pictures. I would guess that Peter came from a family that had lost its estates but held on to a lot of the kit, which was quite common then. Or now, really. But I’m not sure there was limitless money left and I imagine Billie had cooked the food. In ungrand, rectory-type houses, even where the owners belonged to what used to be called the Gentry, there wasn’t nearly as much pulling in of temporary catering staff in the Sixties as there is today and most hostesses felt compelled, perhaps by some lingering war ethic, to do the work themselves. I have said before that the food was seldom much good and would often depend on ghastly magazine-printed receipts, as women then would cut these out and paste them into kitchen scrapbooks, printed especially for the purpose. The cooking done, it was quite normal to ask a couple of local women to come in and help serve it and wash up and so on, which was exactly what had been arranged on this particular night. We’d got through the first course easily enough, the obligatory salmon mousse that appeared in those days on almost every dinner table with taste-numbing regularity. It was followed by some sort of escalope in a glutinous sauce, covered in sprinklings of this and that, and with carrots cut into terrifying rosettes, which again we survived. But before the pudding made its appearance came the first rumblings of trouble. I was about halfway down the table, in my usual, junior position, when I saw the soldier’s wife, Lady Gregson, turn to Sam Hoare who was sitting on her right, as the maid removed her empty plate. ‘Wasn’t that delicious?’ she said, which could hardly be considered contentious.

  Sam opened his mouth to agree, but before he could do so his host, on Lady Gregson’s other side, cut in, ‘It was more delicious than it was original, but that’s not saying much.’

  ‘What?’ Billie Mainwaring’s voice sliced through the atmosphere, silencing most of the rest of us, even those who didn’t know what was going on.

  Lady Gregson, who was a nice woman but not an exceptionally clever one, now took the measure of the situation and spoke before Peter could answer. ‘We were just saying how much we enjoyed the last course.’

  But Peter had been tucking into his excellent claret for quite a while by this time and clearly some sort of dam within him had at last given way. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I always enjoy it. Every time you produce it. Which is more or less every time anyone is unlucky enough to dine in this house.’ At which moment, with slightly unfortunate timing, one of the maids arrived at Lady Gregson’s left, which placed her next to Peter’s chair. She was holding a platter of what looked like white cheesecake. ‘Oh God, darling.’ He rolled his eyes. ‘Not this again.’

  ‘I love cheesecake.’ Lady Gregson’s tone was now becoming harder, as if she, sensing a whiff of rebellion, were determined to impose order on the gathering whether we liked it or not. She was the kind of woman who would have been very useful at Lucknow.

  ‘What about the strawberries?’ Peter was now staring straight at his wife.

  ‘We’re having cheesecake.’ Billie’s voice had all the animation of the Speaking Clock. ‘I didn’t think we’d want the strawberries.’

  ‘But I bought them for tonight.’

  ‘Very well.’ There was a quality of tension in the air that reminded me of one of those films, so popular in that era, about the threat of nuclear war, a universal obsession of the time. The Big Scene was always centred on whether or not the President of Somewhere was going to press the button and start it. Having let the moment resonate, Billie spoke again: ‘Mrs Carter, please fetch the strawberries.’

  The poor woman didn’t know what to make of this. She looked at her employer as if she couldn’t be serious. ‘But they’re-’

  Billie cut her off with a raised palm, nodding her head like a fatal signal from a Roman emperor. ‘Just bring the strawberries, please, Mrs Carter.’

  Of course, there are times when this sort of thing comes as a relief. As most of us know, there is nothing that will cheer a dreary dinner party more than a quarrel between a husband and wife. But this incident seemed to have acquired an intensity that made it slightly inappropriate as guest-pleasing fare. It was all too raw and real. At least we did not have long to wait for the next act. In the interim the rest of the company had taken the disputed cheesecake, but nobody had begun to eat. I saw Sam give a quick wink to Carina and, on my left, Terry’s chair w
as beginning to shake with smothered giggles. Apart from these slight diversions we just sat there, divining that, in the words of the comic routine, we ain’t seen nothing yet. Mrs Carter reentered the room and went to Lady Gregson’s side with a bowl of strawberries, but as she began to help herself it was absolutely clear to everyone present that the fruit was completely frozen, like steel bullets, and had just been removed from the freezer. The wretched woman dug in the spoon and put them on to her plate, where they fell with a metallic noise like large ball bearings. Mrs Carter moved to Peter, who carefully spooned out a big, rattling helping. Clatter, clatter, clatter, they sounded as he heaped them on to his plate. On went Mrs Carter to the next guest and the next, no one was passed by, no one dared refuse, so the hard, little marbles fell noisily on to every plate in the room. Even mine, although I cannot now think why we didn’t just refuse them, as one might refuse anything in the normal way of things. With a puzzled look Mrs Carter retired to the kitchen and then began the business of eating these granite chips. By this time you may be sure there was no conversation in the room, nor anything remotely approaching it. Just ten people trying to eat small round pieces of stone. At one stage the General seemed to get one lodged in his windpipe and threw his head up sharply, like a tethered beast, and no sooner were we past this hazard than the landowner’s wife, Mrs Towneley, bit down with a fearsome crack and reached for her mouth with a cry that she’d broken a tooth. Even this did not elicit a Governor’s Pardon from our hosts. Still we crunched on, particularly Peter who bit and chewed and sucked and smiled, as if it were the most delicious confection imaginable. ‘You seem to be enjoying them,’ said Lady Gregson, whose destiny that night was to make everything worse, just when she sought to do the opposite.