As far as anything can be in this mortal setting, the ball at Gresham Abbey for Serena Gresham and Candida Finch was more or less perfection. For some reason it was held quite late, after the summer break, at a time of the year leading up to Christmas that used then to be labelled ‘The Little Season.’ We were fairly jaded by that stage, having been doing the rounds since the end of the spring and there was not much that a hostess could produce to surprise us, but Lady Claremont had decided, perhaps because she was aware of this, that she would not surprise, she would merely perfect. For some strange reason I kept all my invitations for quite a long time but I have lost them now, so I forget whether it was held in late October or early November. It was definitely a winter ball and we all knew it would be the last really big, private one before the charity balls took over and the whole rigmarole wound up, which in a way gave the evening a kind of built-in romance.

I had stayed at Gresham a few times by that stage and of course I had hoped to be included in the abbey house party, but the competition was predictably stiff and I was not. As it turned out, my host was a fairly dreary one but not insultingly so, a retired general, with his nice, typical army wife, who lived in a small manor house entirely decorated in that sort of non-taste that such people can go in for. Nothing was actually ugly or common, but nothing was charming or pretty either, except for the odd painting or piece of furniture they had inherited through no merit of their own. A couple of the ones who were staying qualified as friends, Minna Bunting and that same Sam Hoare who had featured as another witness to the Battle of the Mainwarings before Minna’s dance, and the others were all quite familiar as well, since we had been performing this ritual together for six months by then. As usual, some local couples came for the dinner, a blameless concoction of salmon mousse (comme toujours), chicken à la king and crème brulée, a menu more suited perhaps to an aged invalid with no teeth than a bunch of ravenous teenagers, but we made the best of it and chatted away quite sociably. There was nothing wrong with any of this, but nor was there anything of much interest in it and it was certainly no distraction from the main purpose of the evening: To get to the dance. Sometimes the dinners and house parties could be so entertaining that one lingered and arrived at the dance a little too late to enjoy it. But there was certainly no chance of that on this occasion. After a polite interval had passed we drank up our coffee, slid away to the loo and clambered into the cars.

There was a kind of general excitement in the air when we entered the hall, though I did not then know why. Serena and Candida and the Claremonts were standing there receiving. ‘I’m so glad you could come,’ said Serena and kissed me, which nearly winded me, as usual. ‘I wish you were staying here,’ she added in a whisper, as a compliment rather than because she meant it. I had become a bit of a Gresham regular by the end of that year, having been billeted with them for a couple of northern dances and staying once on my own on the way down from Scotland, and I was in danger of succumbing to that awful smugness of trying to demonstrate that one is a welcome guest somewhere enviable, but I did not suspect at the time, what I know now, that the welcome I always received was a reflection of Serena’s enjoyment of my being in love with her. I do not mean she was interested in me romantically, not in the least, only that she wanted me to go on being in love with her until it wasn’t fun any more. The young are like that. I can now remember when the photograph was taken. I was still reeling in bliss from her comment and I was unable to make myself move out of the room where she stood, even though I knew I had to give place, so I stepped behind them, where I could linger a little longer; then a flash went off and I was caught forever, like a fly in amber. Lucy Dalton rescued me, taking my arm and walking me away. ‘What’s your house party like?’

‘Dull but respectable.’

‘Sounds like paradise compared to mine. There doesn’t seem to be any running water. Literally. Nothing comes out of the taps except a dirty trickle of what looks like prune juice. Doesn’t Serena look marvellous? But of course you’re not the man to disagree with that. I hear the discothèque is fabulous. It was done by someone’s boyfriend, but I forget who. Come on.’ All this was delivered in one spurt without pause or breath, so I couldn’t hope to come in with a comment.

The discothèque was fabulous. It occupied a large section of what must normally have been a basement servants’ hall or even a section of the no doubt extensive wine cellars. A doorway under the main staircase was surrounded by synthetic flames and a sign read ‘Welcome to Hell!’ While on the other side of the door the entire space, including the walls of the staircase leading down, was covered in foil and flames made of tinsel and satin, blown with fans and lit by a spinning wheel, making them flicker and leap, so they really did feel quite real. At the bottom the hell theme embraced the entire area, with huge copies of the grimmer paintings by Hieronymus Bosch lining the walks with images of suffering, while the fire and flames played over the heads of the dancers. As a final detail the DJ and two of the waitresses had been put into scarlet devils’ outfits, so they could attend to the guests while maintaining the illusion. The only discordant note came from the music, some of which seemed very out of place in Hades. When we came down the steps a popular ballad by the Turtles, Elenore, was playing. Somehow the lyrics, ‘I really think you’re groovy, let’s go out to a movie,’ didn’t quite chime with the Tortures of the Damned.

We danced and gossiped and said hello to other people for a bit until, round about half past eleven or maybe midnight, a sudden rush for the staircase told us that something was happening we wouldn’t want to miss.

Lucy and I struggled up to the hall in our turn and found we were carried along in the crush towards the State Dining Room, which had been designated the main ballroom of the evening. The space had been cleared of furniture and somehow, unlike most of the other houses I had penetrated, the stage erected at one end for the band and, more unusually, the lighting looked entirely professional. This put a spin on the proceedings from the start, even before we knew what was happening. I don’t quite know why, but there was always something satisfactory in dancing inside a great house and not in a marquee with wobbly coconut matting and a portable dance floor, and Gresham Abbey was the very acme of a great house. Stern, full-lengths of earlier, male Greshams lined the walls of the enormous room, in armour and brocade and Victorian fustian, in lovelocks and perukes and periwigs, extending their white, stockinged legs to display the garters that encased them. Above the marble chimneypiece a vast, equestrian portrait of the first Earl of Claremont by Kneller dominated the chamber, a loud, impressive statement of self-congratulation, and the contrast between the rigid splendour of this symbol of high birth and high achievement and the crowd of teenage young writhing away below it was almost startling.

At this precise moment, the door opened that on ordinary days led to the servery and, further below, to the kitchens. Tonight it revealed a group of young men who came bouncing through on to the stage, and started to play and sing. With a kind of group sigh we suddenly all realised that this, incredibly, was Steve Winwood, lead singer of the group formed and named for the man who ran up on to the stage after him, Spencer Davis. This was the real live Spencer Davis. No sooner had this information penetrated our skulls, than they started to play their song of a couple of years previously, Keep on Running. It is hard to explain now what this felt like then. We are a jaded people, these days. We see film stars and singers and every other permutation of fame wherever we go, indeed sometimes, judging by the magazines, it seems that more people are famous than not. But this wasn’t true in 1968 and to be in the same room as a real-live band playing and singing its own hit number, which most of us had bought anyway two years before and played ever since, was to be inside a fantasy. It was astonishing, mind-searing, completely impossible to take in. Even Lucy was silenced, if not for long. ‘Can you believe it?’ she said. I couldn’t. We were so sweet, really.