The group shifted a little and I was surprised to see the familiar figure of Damian Baxter standing next to her. As I watched, he leaned in and whispered into her ear. She laughed, nodding a hello to me as she did so and thereby drawing me to Damian’s attention. I walked over. ‘You never said you were coming to this,’ I said.
‘I wasn’t sure I would, until this afternoon. Then I suddenly thought “what the hell,” got on a train and here I am.’
‘You never said you’d been invited.’
He fixed me with a look, the corners of his mouth twitching. ‘I wasn’t.’
I stared at him. Did I feel a slight trace of Baron Frankenstein’s terror, when his monster first moved of its own volition? ‘You mean you’ve gatecrashed,’ I said. He smiled covertly by way of an answer.
Lucy had been listening to this. ‘How did you get your costume at such short notice?’ And what a costume. In contrast to mine, with its wrong trousers and slightly rubbed sleeves, Damian looked as if the outfit had been made for him by a master tailor. He was not an officer, as most of the men in the room had chosen to be, but a dandy, Beau Brummell or Byron or someone similar, with a tightly fitting tailcoat hugging his torso, and buckskin breeches and high, polished boots to show off his legs. A dazzling cravat of white silk was wound round his neck and tucked into the brocade waistcoat beneath. Lucy nodded at me. ‘He had to go out to Windsor Rep and that was what they came up with.’
Damian looked at me. ‘Poor you. Never mind.’ Any notion I’d cherished of looking rather good withered and died, as Damian chattered on in his light, unconcerned way. ‘I got a friend to sort one out at the Arts Theatre, in case I wanted to come. She managed to get it ready in time and that’s what decided me.’ I’ll bet she did, I thought. Some wretched girl, pricking her fingers to the bone, standing over the washing machine at midnight, burning her hand on the iron. I’ll bet she did. And what would be her reward? Not to be loved by Damian. Of that I was quite sure.
Today, pushing into such a function would be a good deal harder than it was forty years ago. The endless security consciousness of the present generation, to say nothing of their self-importance, ensures guards and lists and ticking and ‘please bring this invitation with you’ to every gathering more exclusive than a sale at Tesco. But it was different then. There was a general supposition that people who hadn’t been invited to something did not, as a rule, try to attend it. In other words, what the gatecrasher of those days relied on, what he or she required, was only nerve, nothing more, which, naturally, Damian had in plentiful supply. But I had less than he and I did not want to be seen chatting to someone who might be thrown out at any moment. I despise myself now when I think of it, but I took Lucy’s arm and steered her on to the floor.
‘You can’t keep a good man down,’ said Lucy cheerily. But I wasn’t inclined to see the funny side. Drowning in my youthful egotism, I could only fear that Damian’s appearance might in some way damage me.
He, needless to say, was enjoying himself enormously. I could see at once that, like a child who will be naughty until it is smacked or a gambler who must play until he loses, Damian had to promote his uninvited appearance until somehow the law enforcers registered it. He danced first with Joanna, as if to announce his arrival. He was the best-looking man in the room and she was the best-looking woman in Europe, so they made quite a pair. Other couples turned to watch them and admire, parents glanced over and asked each other about the glorious duo. A little while later, the ball now well and truly under way, the band announced an eightsome reel. It may seem curious to a modern reader that we should have danced a Scottish reel in the middle of a perfectly normal party, not at some Caledonian festival or even a Burns Night in Kircaldy, but we did. In fact, we danced it at most of the parties that year and, with the steps demanding a less cluttered and less crowded floor, it was a sure way to be noticed, so it came as no surprise to see Damian walking forward to take his place in one of the sets with Terry Vitkov on his arm. She gleamed and beamed, this way and that, clearly enjoying her newly found status as troublemaker, as she leaned proudly on the arm of the rebel. I wondered later whether it was at this particular party that Damian’s own position began to shift from social observer (or climber, depending on your generosity of vision) to subversive. From admiring student to hostile agent. Am I jumping the gun and did it remain in the balance that night? Or had he already decided he hated us all?
Watching them take their places, waiting for the chord that would start us off, it struck me then that he and Terry were rather a good pair. Both outsiders in their different ways, both with everything to gain from the future and nothing to lose with the vanishing past. I assumed she had money – she did, but less than I thought at the time – just as I assumed that Damian would make money – again, I was right. He did. And much more than I thought at the time. Might they not combine and conquer the world? They were both adventurers. Why should they not join forces?
I was partnering a rather dull girl from somewhere near Newbury and now we set off, marching round in our hand-held circles. Glancing across, I was momentarily impressed by the skills Damian had already acquired in this, so recently foreign, territory. He knew the steps and performed them well; he took his turn in the centre of the ring without a trace of self-consciousness, holding himself erect, executing the different parts of the reel with a degree of grace and dignity I could not have claimed for myself. He chatted to the girls around him and to the other men, part of their crowd now, part of their world, after only a few cocktail parties and dances. We had almost forgotten that we did not know him.
After that the pop group resumed, but Damian showed no sign of flagging. He danced with plenty of the girls, Lucy Dalton and a raucous, ruddy-faced Candida Finch among them. He was about to dance with Georgina Waddilove, who would certainly have betrayed her country to make him stay by her side, but in that instant, just as the music started he seemed to get a stitch and beg her, instead, to join him in a drink. I lost sight of him as they drifted away together into the room serving as a bar. It is hard, looking back, to state with any accuracy my precise feelings at that stage towards this cuckoo I had brought into the nest. As I have said, I’d begun to suspect he had an agenda more complicated than I had first understood, but I still admired his chutzpah, and never more so than when he returned to the ballroom that evening. Somehow, while he was away, a happy conjunction had allowed him to achieve what he came for. To my amazement and the admiration of all those present who knew he was there illegitimately, he reappeared in the open doorway leading the hostess, at least the girl who but for her indomitable mother should have been the centre of the evening, Princess Dagmar herself, onto the dance floor. It was a slow number. The lights were lowered, the band strummed away and, in full view of her guests, Dagmar slipped her arms round the interloper and pressed her tiny face into his chest. Lightly caressing her lank hair as they smooched, Damian noticed me watching him from across the floor. He caught my eye. And winked.
The trouble, which I suppose we all knew would come in the end, happened at the breakfast and in a way it was a miracle it was delayed until then. The custom, at every private dance, was to provide breakfast towards the finish, starting usually at about half past one or so. These repasts varied in quality and were sometimes, frankly, not worth waiting for but the Grand Duchess had clearly invoked the old proverb of ‘in for a penny, in for a pound’ and laid on the best the hotel was capable of, which was very good indeed. We waited in a group, rather than a queue, ready to help ourselves to eggs and bacon and sausages and mushrooms, all laid out before us in silver chafing dishes.