Past Imperfect

I was quite late arriving, as it happens, so the hubbub of chatter was what guided me through the fair and past the stalls, until I came to a temporary white-painted wicket fence, where two officials guarded the entrance and a large card on a blackboard stand a

Some of the girls were already in the cars, shrieking and laughing and spilling their wine, as their boyfriends-for-the-night posed and preened, banging and whacking into the cars of others. Nowadays there would be signs requesting that glasses should not be taken on to the track, or there would only have been plastic cups anyway, but I do not recall anyone concerning themselves with such things as slippery surfaces or broken glass. There must have been plenty of both. A marquee with an open side had been erected to accommodate the other guests who were already well away. I looked round for Georgina, hoping to find her at the centre of a grateful crowd, but as usual she was standing alone and silent near the champagne table, so I saw the chance to fetch a drink and simultaneously greet my hostess, killing two birds with one stone.

‘Hello,’ I said. ‘This all seems to be satisfactorily rowdy.’

She smiled wanly. ‘Are you going to have a go?’

‘Oh, I think so.’ I smiled gamely. ‘What about you?’ But she did not seem to hear my question, her eyes fixed on the track itself, and I could now make out a car with the distinctive figure of Damian crouched over the controls. His co-pilot appeared, from a distance anyway, to be rather an unlikely one. Her face was almost concealed by a curtain of curls, but I could see how calm she was, and unattached. She did not shout like the others, but merely sat there, like some stately princess forced to endure the indignity of a peasant’s ferry in order to get to the other side.

Georgina turned. ‘What’s your di

I was nonplussed. ‘What di

‘Tonight. Damian said he couldn’t come to the Ritz with us because he’d pledged himself to you.’

I realised at once the significance of this, that poor Georgina had already fulfilled her function in Damian’s life by getting him started and could now be dispensed with. The doomed girl had yielded to his flattery and friendly charm, and opened the door for him into this world, but now, having gained entry, he had no compunction in leaving her to her own devices. So Georgina’s dream of having this new and glamorous companion sitting next to her at the dull, staid di

She shook her head. ‘No, no. I don’t want to mess things up. Daddy was a

‘Who’s coming?’

‘I wish you were,’ she muttered obediently. ‘But as I say, it’s not a big party.’ I nodded. Having paid lip service to form, she listed half a dozen names. ‘Princess Dagmar. And the Tremayne brothers, I think, but there may be a problem.’ I bet there will be, I thought. ‘Andrew Summersby and his sister.’ She ticked off these people in her head, although the list carried her mother’s fingerprints, not her own. ‘That’s about it.’

I glanced over to where the lumpen, red-faced Viscount Summersby stood glumly nursing his drink. He had apparently abandoned any efforts at conversation with his neighbours. Their state was no doubt the more blessed. Meanwhile, in front of him, his sister, A

The dodgem cars had stopped and the drivers and passengers were being forced from their vehicles by the waiting crowd of guests surrounding the track, anxious for their turn. They had a distinctive look, those girls of long ago, racing across the metal, bolted floor to squeeze into the dirty and dented cars awaiting them, part 1950s Dior, part 1960s Carnaby Street, acknowledging the modern world but not yet quite capitulating to it. In the forty years that followed, that decade has been hijacked by the voice of the Liberal Tyra

One part of the culture was indeed about pop and drugs and happenings, and Maria

A great fashion then was for adding false hair, in ringlets and falls, to dramatise a hairstyle. They were intended to look real but only with the reality of a costume in a play, that could be discarded the following day with no loss of face. So a girl might appear on Monday night with curls to her shoulders and at Tuesday lunch with an Eton crop. The idea was really to use hair like a series of hats. In this one disguise, perhaps alone among their habits and unlike the wig wearers of today, there was no intention to deceive. The vogue was further enhanced by the practice of depositing these ‘pieces’ at the hairdresser’s a day or two in advance, where they would be rollered and treated and even sewn with flowers or beads, before the whole elaborate coiffure would be pi