We did meet again, of course, several times, but we did not meet alone for the rest of my time at university. Essentially my friendship with Damian Baxter ended on that day, the morning after Serena Gresham’s dance, and I cannot pretend I was sorry, even if my feelings for him were less savage then than they would be when we did next find ourselves under the same roof. But that was a couple of years later, when we were out in the world, and quite a different story.
FOURTEEN
The weekend passed pleasantly enough. We ate, we talked, we slept, we walked. Sophie Jamieson turned out to share my interest in French history and the Purbricks were great friends of some cousins of mine who lived near them, so it all went very smoothly in the way of these things. I must say Andrew had not improved with the years. Having inherited the earldom and the savaged remnant that the family lawyer’s depredations had left of the estate, it was as if the last vestiges of self-knowledge or self-doubt had been flung to the four winds. He was king, and a very angry king at that, raging at the gardeners and the cook and his wife about almost everything. Serena took it all in her stride but once, when I was on my way downstairs before dinner on Friday evening, I found him haranguing her in the hall about a frame that should have been mended or something. I caught her eye as I was on my way to the library door and she did not look away but raised her eyebrows slightly, which he would not have seen and which I took as more or less the greatest compliment an English toff can pay: to include you in their private, family dramas.
After lunch on Saturday, when we’d finished drinking our cups of coffee in the drawing room, Serena proposed a walk by the river and most of us stuck up our hands to join her. ‘You’ll need boots,’ she said, but there were masses of spares for people who’d forgotten them, so we were soon equipped and on our way. The gardens at Waverly were pretty and predictable, the usual Victorian layout that had been calmed down by the restriction of only having two gardeners instead of twelve, and we walked through them, admiring vocally as we went, but they weren’t the main pleasure ground event. Serena led us out of a gate and on down an avenue through a paddock and into a wood, until finally we came out on to a grassy bank, perfectly placed to allow us to walk along the edge of a wide river whose name I now forget. I admired the wonders of nature. ‘It’s totally artificial,’ she said. ‘They rerouted the riverbed in the 1850s and made the walks to go with the altered course.’ I could only reflect on the brilliance of that generation in their understanding of how to live.
We were alone in a comfortable pair by then, as the others had lagged behind. I looked around at the view as Serena slid her arm through mine. On the other side of the water a huge willow leaned over, trailing its creeper-like branches on the surface, making ripples in the flow. Suddenly there was a flurry of movement and a heron appeared above the trees, wide wings beating back and forth, slowly and rhythmically, as it sailed across the sky. ‘They’re such thieves. Andrew says we should shoot them or the river will be quite empty.’ But even as she spoke the words, her eyes followed the great, grey bird on its wondrous journey. ‘It’s such a privilege to live here,’ she said after a minute or two.
I looked at her. ‘I hope so.’
‘It is.’ She was staring me straight in the eye, so I think she was trying to be honest. ‘He’s quite a different person when we’re alone.’
Naturally, this was very flattering, as the lack of names or qualifications implied a kind of shorthand between us which I was thrilled to think might exist, and even more thrilled by the idea that she recognised it, but in another way she was registering her guilt at signalling Andrew’s preposterous behaviour in the hall the previous evening. Her statement is anyway the standard defence of all women who find themselves married to, or stuck with, men who all their friends think are awful. Often this comes as a revelation after quite a considerable period during which they thought people quite liked their mate, and it must be a disappointment to discover that the reverse is true, but I would guess this was not the case where Serena was concerned. Nobody had ever liked Andrew. Of course, it is an effective defence to claim hidden qualities for your other half, because by definition it is impossible to disprove. I suppose logic tells one that it must sometimes be true, but I found it hard to believe that Andrew Belton in private was sensitive, endearing and fun, not least because there is no cure for stupidity. Still, I prayed that it might be even partially the case. ‘If you say so, I believe it,’ I replied.
We walked on for a while before Serena spoke again. ‘I wish you’d tell me what you’re really doing for Damian.’
‘I have told you.’
‘You’re not going to all this trouble just to get some funny stories from four decades ago. Candida tells me you’ve been over to Los Angeles to see the dreaded Terry K.’
I couldn’t be bothered to be dishonest, since we were so near the end. ‘I can’t tell you now,’ I said, ‘because it isn’t my secret. But I will tell you soon, if you’re interested.’
‘I am.’ She pondered my answer for a bit. ‘I never saw him again after that ghastly night.’
‘No. Nor did most of the guests.’
‘Yet I often think of him.’
She had brought it up and so I thought I would try to satisfy something that had been niggling me. ‘When you planned that whole thing with Candida, turning up out of the blue, what were you hoping to achieve? I can remember you now, standing in that vast, sun-baked square, in those terrible black clothes you all had to borrow.’
She gave a snort of laughter. ‘That was so crazy.’
‘But what did you hope would come out of it?’
This was a big question and years before it would have been unaskable. But she did not reproach me, or even look cross to be put on the spot. ‘Nothing, once my parents were on board. I should have given up the whole idea the moment they said they were coming. I don’t know why I didn’t.’
‘But originally. When you first plotted it?’
She shook her head and her hair caught a glint of the sun. ‘To be honest, I don’t really know what I wanted to come out of it, given how I managed things later. I suppose I felt trapped. And angry. I was married and a mother and Christ knows what, all before I was twenty-one, and I felt I’d been lured into a cage and the door had slammed shut. Damian stood for everything that had been taken from me. But it was silly. We hadn’t been honest with each other and that always makes for trouble. It would all have been different if we were young today, but how does that help?’
‘Do you still feel trapped?’
She smiled. ‘Isn’t there a laboratory test where if animals are kept in a trap long enough, they come back when they’re let out, because it’s home?’ We strolled on, listening to the birds. ‘Does he ever talk about me?’ Despite a Pavlovian irritation, this question interested me. More or less every woman I had seen on my quest had asked this and Serena wasn’t even one of the contenders. It was pointless to deny that Damian clearly had qualities that I had been quite unaware of at the time.
‘Of course we talk about you. You’re the one thing we have in common.’ I said it as a joke, although it was truer than I had previously known. I could not tell you how she took it, but she smiled and we walked on.
‘Did you see the picture in your room?’
‘I did.’
‘Classic. I put it out for you. God, weren’t we young?’
‘Young and, in your case, lovely.’
She sighed. ‘I can never understand why you and I didn’t get off together at some point, during the whole thing.’
This made me stop in my tracks. ‘Can’t you? I can. You didn’t fancy me.’ There was no point in beating about the bush.