Past Imperfect

After leaving, a girl might spend a year at a finishing school where she could polish her languages and her skiing, then another year would pass in coming out, after which she would get a job arranging flowers in the boardroom or cooking lunches for directors or working for her father, until she had discovered Mr Right who, with any luck, would be the heir to Lord Right. And that would be that. Hopefully, the Hon. John Right would be right for Mummy and Daddy, too, since they, like their own parents, would expect to approve the choice. Our mothers may not have been pushed into their marriages in the Thirties and Forties, but they had certainly been kept out of any marriages their parents disapproved of. We all had stories of aunts and great-aunts who had been sent to study painting in Florence, or to live with a grandmother in Scotland, or to improve their French at some mountainous chateau in the Swiss Alps, to break them of a bad love habit and, lest those Barbara Cartland addicts think differently, usually it worked.

I do not mean to imply that all who followed this path were wretched. Lots of them were as happy as clams. They spent the early years of marriage in some part of London their mothers found unlikely, then, if they’d chosen well, they might move into the big house on their father-in-law’s estate (‘Fizzy and I were just rattling around and we thought it was time to let the kids have a go’). For some the father proved stubborn and wouldn’t move out, and for most there wasn’t a house to inherit, so the young couple would generally buy a cottage or a farmhouse or, if things were going really well in the City, a Queen A

But where did it leave someone like Candida Finch? She was obviously clever but her appearance and her ma

Again, she rolled her eyes in exasperation. ‘What can I do?’

‘I asked what would you like to do.’

This was enough to soften her a little. It was, after all, a genuine enquiry. ‘I think I might have liked to work in publishing, but I have no degree. And before you suggest I take one now, we both know that won’t happen. It’s too late and I’ve missed it. I thought I might squeeze a few quid out of a godparent and push into a vanity publishing firm, but they’d have to accept they’d lose every pe

‘Be careful you’re not determined to fail in order to a

‘Well, that’s true anyway.’ Her voice was warmer than it had been. ‘You know, you really are quite good at this.’

When di

Down they came, the lights playing on the white flowers among their gleaming curls, on their long white gloves, on the white lace and silk of their dresses, on their shining, haughty, hopeful faces. Once they had reached the bottom, each pair advanced to where the Patroness stood, dropped into a deep Court curtsey, and moved on. They were not all presented to absolute advantage. Georgina looked like Godzilla in a shroud as she lumbered down towards terra firma. But for most of them there was something almost ethereal in their uniformity. Sixty versions of the Angel of Mons coming down to ease the pain of those beneath.

It may, of course, be with the wisdom of hindsight, but I am fairly sure it was at that precise moment that I first became aware that what we were witnessing did not have long to live. That there would not be many more generations taking part in this performance or, indeed, anything like it. That our parents’ dream of somehow rescuing enough of the old, pre-war world for their children to live in, was a chimera, that I was, in short, witnessing the start of the finish. Fu

The display was done. The girls were blooded, their status as this year’s debutantes confirmed and it was time for the dancing to begin. To counter their former solemnity, the band now played a tune at the top of the hit parade of the day, Simple Simon Says, one of those rather exhausting songs, which is full of uninvited instructions for the listener, ‘Put your hands on your head, shake them all about,’ and so on, but, although almost definitively naff, it was quite a good icebreaker. Lucy was already dancing with one of the other men in the party, so I made the offer to Candida and we walked together on to the floor. ‘Who’s that man you were talking to, before di

‘Damian Baxter,’ I said. ‘He’s up at Cambridge with me.’

‘You must introduce us.’ It was at this moment that I first encountered a particularly terrifying part of Candida’s repertoire. Whenever she spotted someone she thought attractive there would ensue a kind of manic, as she thought flirtatious, ritual rather like a Maori dance of welcome, where she would roll her eyes and snicker and rock back and forth with a kind of shouted laugh more suited to a thirsty bricklayer than a young girl coming out. In fairness, I suppose it must have achieved her immediate ends reasonably often, since there could be no doubt as to what was on offer and we were not spoiled for choice in those days, but I do not think, as a routine, it was ever very conducive to long-term commitment, and in fact earned Candida a reputation, by the end of the Season, of being something of a bicycle. I was never treated to this display head on, as she was not at all interested in me, but even for a witness from the stalls it was pretty u