Past Imperfect

I picked up my suitcase and stumbled forward into a large and light hall. It was a brilliant, sunflower yellow, which seemed at variance with the cloudy scene being played out in it. The paintwork was white and a really lovely portrait of a mother and child by Reynolds hung against the back wall. A tall man, presumably Mr Peter Mainwaring, was standing halfway up the wide staircase. ‘Who is it?’ he shouted.

‘It’s another one of the Buntings’ fucking guests. How many did you tell them? This isn’t a fucking hotel!’

‘Oh, shut up! And show him to his room.’

‘You show him to his fucking room!’ I was begi

Throughout this unloving exchange, I may say, I stood there in the centre of the pretty hall quite still, motionless in fact, frozen with nervous terror, like a cigar store Indian. Then I had the bright idea that I should try to act as a soothing agent. ‘I’m sure I can find my own way,’ I said. This might be categorised as a mistake.

She turned on me like a ravening beast. ‘Don’t be so fucking stupid!’ I could see that Billie’s irritation at my arrival was now developing into an active dislike. ‘How can you find your own way when you don’t know the fucking house!’

At this point, and were I older and more confident, I would probably have told her to keep her anger to herself, basically, to employ her own language, to fuck off, and left. But part of youth is somehow to assume blame, to think that every problem must be in some way down to you, and I was no different. I’m sure most of the young of the late 1930s thought the Second World War was their fault. Anyway, as I stood there, blushing and stuttering while our hosts snarled at each other, by some heavenly miracle Terry Vitkov appeared on the landing above Peter Mainwaring and waved to me. I ca

Terry and I became a unit of mutual support through the hours that followed. Apparently the husband, Peter, had bought a house, or a villa, somewhere in France without telling his wife, and Billie had heard the news for the first time about twenty minutes before Terry had got there. She’d come by train, I can’t remember now why I didn’t give her a lift. Maybe I was driving from somewhere else. The point was she arrived about an hour before me. In that time the fight had apparently escalated from quite a slow-burning start, until Billie was standing in the hall, screaming names that would be shocking even today and threatening a divorce that would cost him ‘every fucking [naturally] pe

My room was pleasant enough and much as I had come to expect during these sojourns with unknown hosts in the lesser houses of England: The pretty paper, with a faint, pseudo-Victorian pattern, the interlined curtains in not-quite-Colefax, and some flower prints framed in gilt with eau de Nil mounts. I had my own bathroom, which was by no means standard in those days; better still it did not boast too many earwigs and woodlice, and there was a perfectly decent bed. But no amount of comfort could offset the surreal quality of the shouting that continued below, amplified no doubt by the fact that they were once more alone and free to tear out each other’s throats without interruption.

There were two more arrivals. The first was a boy called Sam Hoare, whom I recall better than I might normally have done because he was going to be an actor, a really extraordinary ambition at the time. In my social group, at least, wanting to go on the stage seemed not so much doomed to failure as requiring treatment. He was a tall, good-looking fellow and ended up, I think I’m right in saying, as quite a big wheel in television production, so in a way he was right to persevere, however a

Di

Sam opened his mouth to agree, but before he could do so his host, on Lady Gregson’s other side, cut in, ‘It was more delicious than it was original, but that’s not saying much.’

‘What?’ Billie Mainwaring’s voice sliced through the atmosphere, silencing most of the rest of us, even those who didn’t know what was going on.

Lady Gregson, who was a nice woman but not an exceptionally clever one, now took the measure of the situation and spoke before Peter could answer. ‘We were just saying how much we enjoyed the last course.’