I knew that in fact the Tapestry Drawing Room opened directly on to the gardens above us, but some trace of late-teen diffidence told me that to push in through the French windows with a crowd of strangers was overplaying my hand, so I devised the plan that at the end of the performance we would deposit our debris in the car, to obviate the need to collect it later, and make our way to the front of the house. The programme of events stated clearly that there was a fifty-minute break between concert and fireworks to allow the night to get properly dark, so I knew we had time. In that way we could come into the house via the front door, like normal people, and not be suspected of springing an ambush on our hosts.

I was glad of the decision when we got there, as quite a crowd was arriving and it was clear that the Claremonts had cunningly devised this plan to placate those locals who felt they had a right to be acknowledged by the family without the bore of giving them all dinner. The hall at Gresham was vast and high, stone-floored and with a screen of columns completing the square, behind which a graceful cantilevered staircase rose up to the next floor, its steps so shallow that a woman descending in a long skirt, which for our generation meant evening dress, seemed to float down as if her feet barely skimmed the steps beneath. It was a more awkward progress for men, who had to adjust quickly to the fact that each step taken only brought them about an inch nearer their destination, but for women the effect was like gliding, flying, and quite magical to watch, as I remembered so very well.

The portraits displayed here had been selected by Lady Claremont in a massive re-hang when she and her husband took over the house in 1967, just before my first visit, and which I could see at once had not been altered. They were chosen, as she freely confessed, unashamedly and entirely for their looks, and despite the anguished protests of Lord Claremonts’ surviving aunts, those distinguished Victorian statesmen in undertakers’ frock coats, those fearsome Georgian soldiers, all red faces and stubborn chins, those wily Tudor statesmen with their shifty eyes and avaricious mouths and generally the uglier members of the family, had been banished to anterooms and passages and bedrooms, except the ones by really famous painters, who had wound up either in the library or hung in fearsome double tiers against the crimson, damask walls of the great dining room. Both these chambers, Lady Claremont had explained to me at the time, were masculine rooms and so needed to be impressive but not pretty. Here, in the hall, charming children from every period were interlarded with handsome, nervous, young men in their Eton leaving portraits, trembling with anticipation at the welcoming life ahead, and lovely Gresham girls, painted on their betrothal to other lordly magnates or as part of some series of Court beauties for King Charles II or the Prince Regent, smiled down on their worshippers beneath. Their shining, gilded frames were set off by the apricot walls and the intricate plasterwork, picked out in varying shades of grey and white, while in the centre of the ceiling hung a huge chandelier, like a shower of glistening raindrops, frozen in their fall by a glance from the Snow Queen.

‘How perfectly lovely,’ said Jennifer, looking around, provoking a severe look from her husband, which I understood. Anything giving away that they were not regular visitors was to be suppressed. Jennifer grasped this too, of course, but had obviously made the interesting decision not to play along with his self-importance. Bridget, needless to say, was retreating into one of her silent-but-ironic moods, but I couldn’t spare the time to administer to it. I was back at Gresham, which I never thought to be again, and I was determined to enjoy it.

The Tapestry Drawing Room was on the corner of the garden front, and the easiest way to reach it was through an oval anteroom at the back of the hall, where facing doors led left, to the dining room, and right, to our destination. It was a lovely place. The walls were lined in a kind of dusty blue moiré, with cream panelling edged in gilt up to the dado, and high panelled doorcases with over-door paintings set into them, taking the cream and gilt on up to the ceiling. Against the huge spaces of blue hung a set of Gobelin tapestries, celebrating a series of victories, achieved, I am pretty sure, by Marlborough. I forget precisely why they were here. Maybe an earlier Claremont had been in part responsible for the great duke’s glory; in fact, now I am writing it I think that was why they were upped to an earldom in the 1710s. Beneath our feet was a ravishing Aubusson carpet, with its slight, distinctive wrinkling, and on it sat various magnificent pieces of furniture, most spectacularly a pedestal clock, seven foot high on its plinth, its inlaid case embellished with gilding, which had been presented to the third Earl by the Empress Catherine of Russia in return for some unspecified personal service, which no one had ever convincingly explained. The butler we had spoken to during the interval held a tray of glasses and a couple of maids were wandering about with more wine and bits of food. Lady Claremont, with that amazing eye for detail that had clearly not deserted her, had provided mini-savouries in the form of angels on horseback and tiny, pick-up bits of Welsh Rabbit or mushrooms on itsy bits of toast, all of which would be welcome, even after eating dinner.

‘There you are. We couldn’t believe our eyes when we saw you.’ Lady Claremont kissed me swiftly and efficiently on one cheek, not for her the double-kiss import of the 1970s. ‘You should have let us know you were coming.’ I presented my party, who all shook hands. Jennifer alone thanked her for inviting us and Tarquin tried to start a conversation about the famous clock on which, needless to say, he had a great deal of information at his fingertips. But she had spent a life avoiding just such overtures, and soon gave a nod and a smile to indicate she had heard enough. Then she turned to her ancient neighbour, introducing me. ‘Do you remember Mrs Davenport?’ Since the woman did look a bit familiar I nodded as I shook her wizened hand. ‘He was here all the time at the end of the Sixties,’ Lady Claremont explained with a gay laugh. ‘We used to feel terribly sorry for him.’ She looked at me indulgently and I could sense my throat tightening at the prospect of what was coming next, but nothing could stop her as she looked about to gain the maximum audience. ‘He was so in love with Serena!’

And she and the said Mrs Davenport laughed happily together at the memory of my roiling misery, which could still keep me awake at nights, and which I had thought private and brilliantly concealed from all but me. I smiled by way of response, to show I too thought it a terrific joke that I had wandered through these same charming rooms with my heart actually hurting in my chest. But her steady, even voice served to calm my remembered pain, as she chatted on about this and that, Serena and the other children, the lovely weather, the ghastly government, all standard stuff for a drinks party at a country house. I was interested that she had not mentioned the event we shared, that made an effective end to those dreams of long ago. Of course, it is a relatively modern American import, the notion that we must ‘have these things out,’ while the old, English traditions of letting sleeping dogs lie, and brushing things under the carpet, have been spurned. But who gains from this constant picking at the scabs of life? ‘We have to talk,’ says at least one character in almost every television drama these days, until one longs to scream at the screen, ‘Why? Just let it go!’ But I was not surprised Lady Claremont had avoided the culture of revisiting old wounds. In a way, her asking me up for a drink was her way of saying, ‘It’s all right. Like you, we’ve moved on. After so many years, surely we can have a chat again like normal people without even mentioning it.’ And if she had made fun of my love pangs, still I appreciated her courtesy in this.