I was leaving when I had to ask one last question. ‘Are you really a Catholic?’

He laughed. I suppose the wording was rather funny. ‘I’m not sure what you mean. I was born a Catholic. Didn’t you know?’

I shook my head. ‘So you “lapsed”?’

‘I’m afraid so.’

His answer interested me. ‘Why “afraid”? Would you like to believe?’

Damian glanced at me patronisingly, as if I were a child. ‘Of course I would,’ he said. ‘I’m dying.’

The car was waiting patiently outside, but I knew there was a train every twenty minutes and so, with the immaculate chauffeur’s permission, I allowed myself a little wander among the stalls of the fête below. I thought about Damian’s unexpected words as I looked at these tables of old, unreadable books, at the piles of lamps from all the worst periods, at the cakes and jams, painstakingly made and all soon doubtless to be outlawed by the Health and Safety Stasi, at the dolls without their voice boxes and the jigsaws ‘missing one piece,’ and I, too, felt a kind of comfort and balm in the decency they represented. Naturally, it was very old-fashioned, and I am sure that if a New Labour minister could be offended by the Last Night of the Proms, she would be rendered suicidal by the sight of this comic, uniquely English event, but there was goodness here. These people had worked hard at what I would once have judged as such a little thing, yet their efforts were not wasted on me; in fact, they almost made me cry.

It is hard to be certain from this distance, but I think I’m right in saying that Ascot came after Queen Charlotte’s Ball. I had anyway, as I have said, met Joanna Langley several times before the race meeting, but it was on that day that I suppose we became friends, which even now I like to think we were. It was then that I understood she was a creature of her own era, that she was not, like the rest of us, engaged in some kind of action replay of our parents’ youth.

Ascot as a fashionable event is almost finished now. No doubt sensibly, Her Majesty’s Representative has decided the meeting would better earn its keep as a day for racing enthusiasts and corporate entertaining. To this end the Household Stand (their sole remaining perk, poor dears, in exchange for all that unpaid smiling and standing) and various other, arcane sanctums were eliminated from the wonderful, new grandstand, and the famous Royal Enclosure is no longer workable in the altered layout. Once the Court felt unwelcome, many of its members found other things to do and after this retreat it followed as the night the day that first the smart set and next the social aspirants, those who do not live and breathe horses anyway, would start to drop away. Soon, most of them will abandon it, I would guess forever, since once British toffs are given permission to avoid a social obligation it is hard to make them take it up again. Some will say it was high time and the racing crowd will be glad that horses have once again become the business of the day. But whether or not we would agree with this now, in the 1960s we enjoyed it like billy-o.

For some reason, that year I had gone with the family of a girl called Minna Bunting. Her father held some position at Buckingham Palace which I cannot now recall, Keeper of the Privy Purse maybe, or at any rate one of those ancient-sounding titles that brought, among other privileges, a place in the Ascot car park reserved for the use of members of the Royal Household. This was, and is, located across the road from the main entrance to the course and has always been considered very smart, despite consisting of a large but unremarkable ashphalt yard, overlooked by the unfragrant main stables and boasting a single loo more properly reserved for the grooms. A sort of disintegrating Dutch barn provided a bit of shelter on one side and a couple of abandoned pony stalls offered some shade on the other. Otherwise it was lines of cars. But the whole arrangement was supervised every year by the nicest group of men you could hope to encounter, which always gave the place rather a lift, and I do know it was considered quite a feather in my cap to be having my picnic lunch there, even if there were moments when the aroma made swallowing hard.

I think Minna and I were fairly keen on each other, in a moderate way, for a brief while back then. I know we went out to dinner a few times and I could not now tell you why this ended. I am often struck by how hard it is to unravel your own motives when you look back on certain incidents or relationships in the dim and distant past. Why this girl failed but that one broke your heart. Why this man made you smile and that one made your spirits sink. They all seem to have been quite nice, friends and enemies and lovers alike, young and pleasant and, to be honest, all much of a muchness from the vantage point of hindsight. What was it about them as individuals that intrigued or bored me forty years ago?

We had finished our lunch and it was time to make our way over the road and on to the course, so we strolled together down the high, laurel-lined path to the entrance. The police were managing the traffic, as they did even then in those comparatively traffic-free days and we were obliged to pause. ‘What on earth is going on?’ said Minna.

She was right. On the other side of the road, by the main entrance, the gathering of what later came to be called Paparazzi, was going mad. As a rule there were far fewer of them then, not much more than a handful from the fashion magazines and the odd red top, but the public’s taste for what celebrities were wearing was easily assuaged in 1968. On this day, however, you would have thought there was an item of international news being played out before us all. We crossed to the other pavement, passed through the gates and walked into the little courtyard where the disorganised could buy their badges on the day itself, and moved on to the gate into the Royal Enclosure. Something happening at the barrier was what was apparently fascinating the photographers most. Some were resorting to that trick, familiar now but novel in those days, of just holding their cameras above their heads and snapping away blindly, on the off chance that something worth printing might come out.

Armed with our badged lapels and a sense of entitlement, we pushed through the crowd and there was the cause of the riot. Joanna Langley, in an exquisite trouser suit of white lace, a pale hat trimmed with more lace and white flowers setting off her gleaming curls, white gloves on her hands, white bag by her side, was attempting to reason with the bluff ex-soldier in a bowler who sat guard. ‘Sorry, Miss,’ he said, without malice but without hesitation either, ‘no trousers is the rule. And I can’t change it. Even if I wanted to. Skirts only. That’s what it says.’

‘But this is almost a skirt,’ replied Joanna.

‘ “Almost” isn’t good enough, I’m afraid, Miss. Now if you’d like to stand aside.’ He beckoned to us and we started forward.

‘Hello,’ I smiled at Joanna, as we drew near. I may not have known her well by that stage, but all our previous encounters had been friendly ones. ‘You seem to be making news, today.’

She laughed. ‘It’s my mother’s idea. She’s put me up to it. I thought she was wrong, and they were bound to let me in. But it seems not.’

‘Come on.’ Minna pulled at my arm, anxious to dissociate herself from the media throng. As with all these people, then or now, this is not an affectation. They really hate it.

But I was too intrigued. I couldn’t understand what Joanna was saying. If her mother was the one who thought she would be refused entry, how could she have put her up to it? ‘Why did your mother want you to be stopped? Is she here?’

Joanna nodded towards a small group beyond the railings. I recognised the anxious, little woman from Queen Charlotte’s Ball. She was wearing a tailored, fuchsia suit with a socking great brooch on her bosom. She seemed to be quivering with excitement watching her daughter, nudging her companions, sucking at her lower lip, but oddly she made no attempt to come nearer. ‘What’s she waiting for?’ I asked.