Past Imperfect Read Free Page A

nice to see you,' I said.
    'Is it?' We stared at each other's faces, marvelling simultaneously at the extent, and at the lack, of change that we found there.
    As I looked at him more closely I could see that when he had talked in his letter of being 'a dying man,' he had been speaking the literal truth. He was not just old before his time but ill, very ill, and seemingly past the point of no return. 'Well, it's interesting. I suppose I can say that.'
    'Yes, you can say that.' He nodded to the butler who hovered near the door. 'I wonder if we might have some of that champagne?' It didn't surprise me that even forty years later he still liked to wrap his orders in diffident questions. I was a veteran witness of this trick. Like many who try it, Damian imagined, I think, that it suggested a charming lack of confidence, a faltering but honourable desire to get it right, which I knew for a fact he had not felt since some time around 1967 and I doubt he knew much of it then. The man addressed did not seem to feel any answer was required of him and I'm sure it wasn't. He just went to get the wine.
    Dinner was a formal, muted affair in a dining room that unsuccessfully crossed William Morris and Liberty's with a dash of the Hollywood hills. High, mullioned windows, a heavy, carved, stone chimneypiece and more of the bouncy carpet added up to a curiously flat and unevocative result, as if a table and chairs had unaccountably been set up in an empty, but expensive, lawyer's office. But the food was delicious, if quite wasted on Damian, and we both got some fun out of the Margaux he'd selected. The silent butler, whom I now knew as Bassett, hardly left us for a minute and, inevitably, the conversation played out before him was desultory. I remember an aunt once telling me that when she looked back to the days before the war, she was astonished at some of the table talk she'd witnessed, where the presence of servants seemed to act as no restraining force at all. Political secrets, family gossip, personal indiscretions, all came bubbling forth before the listening footmen and must presumably have enlivened many an evening in the local pub, if not, as in our more greedy and salacious times, their published memoirs. But we have lost that generation's sublime confidence in their own way of life. Whether we like it or not - and I do like it really - time has made us conscious of the human spirit in those who serve us. For anyone born since the 1940s all walls have ears.
    So we nattered on about this and that. He asked after my parents and I asked after his. In actual fact my father had been quite fond of him but my mother, whose jungle instincts were generally more reliable, sensed trouble from the start. She, at any rate, had died in the interim since we last met and so had both of his, so there wasn't much to be said. From there, we discussed various others of that mutual acquaintance of long ago, and by the time we were ready to move on we had covered an impressive list of career disappointments, divorces and premature death.
    At last he stood, addressing Bassett as he did so. 'Do you think we could have our coffee in the library?' Again he asked softly, as a favour that might be denied. What would happen, I wonder, if someone so instructed should take the hesitant question at face value? 'No, Sir. I'm afraid I'm a bit busy at the moment. I'll try to bring some coffee later on.' I should like to see it once. But this butler knew what he was about and went to carry out the veiled command, while Damian led the way into the nicest of the rooms that I had seen. It looked as if an earlier owner, or possibly Damian himself, had purchased a complete library from a much older house, with dark, richly shining shelves and a screen of beautifully carved columns. There was a delicate chimneypiece of pinkish marble and in a polished steel basket a fire had been lit for our arrival. The combination of flickering flames and gleaming leather bindings, as