Past Imperfect by Julian Fellowes Read Free Book Online Page A

bonded together from birth, a tiny, tight club, hostile to newcomers, loyal to the point of reckless dishonesty when defending their own. There was some truth in this, of course, a good deal of truth in terms of attitude, but we were no longer living under a Whig oligarchy of a few thousand families. By the 1960s the catchment area, certainly for what remained of London Society, was far wider than he seemed aware of and the variety of types within it was much greater. Anyway, people are people, whoever they may be, and no world is as neat as he would have it.
    'No. I haven't known her long at all, not properly. I might have met her a few times over the years, at this and that, but we only really talked for the first time at a tea party in Eaton Square a month or two ago.'
    He seemed amused. 'A tea party?' It did sound rather quaint.
    The tea party had, in fact, been given by a girl called Miranda Houghton at her parents' flat on the north side of Eaton Square. Miranda was the god-daughter of my aunt or of some friend of my mother's, I forget which. Like Serena, I'd seen her from time to time but without either of us making much of an impact; still, it qualified me for her guest list when the whole business began. These parties were one of the early rituals of the Season, even if, when recording it, one feels like an obscure archivist preserving for posterity the lost traditions of the Inuits. The girls would be encouraged to invite other would-be debutantes to tea, usually at their parents' London homes, thereby forging useful friendships and associations for the larks to come. Their mothers would obtain lists of who else was doing the whole thing from the unofficial but widely recognised leader, Peter Townend, who would supply them free of charge and gladly, to those he considered worthy, in his gallant but doomed attempt to stave off the modern world for as long as might conceivably be possible. Later these same mothers would require of him other lists of supposedly eligible men and he would produce these too, although they were required more for drinks parties and dances than the teas, where men were few and normally, as in the case of me and Miranda, actually knew the hostess. Very little, if any, tea was provided or drunk at these gatherings and in my experience the atmosphere was always slightly strange, as each new arrival hesitantly picked their way across the floor. But all the same we went to them, me included. So I suppose we were committed to the coming experience from comparatively early on, whatever we might afterwards pretend.
    I was sitting in the corner, talking about hunting to a rather dull girl with freckles, when Serena Gresham came in and I could tell at once, from the faintest frisson that went through the assembled company, that she had already earned a reputation as a star. This was all the better managed as no one could have been less presumptuous or more softly spoken than she. Happily for me, I was near the last remaining empty chair. I waved to her and, after taking a second to remember who I was, she crossed the room and joined me. It is interesting to me now that Serena should have conformed to all this. Twenty years later, when the Season had become the preserve of exhibitionists and the daughters of parvenu mothers on the make, she would not have dreamed of it. I suppose it is a tribute to the fact that even someone as seemingly untrammelled as Serena would still, in those dead days, do as she was told.
    'How do you know Miranda?' I asked.
    'I don't, really,' was her answer. 'We met when we were both staying with some cousins of mine in Rutland.' One of Serena's gifts was always to answer every question quickly and easily, without a trace of mystery, but without imparting any information.
    I nodded. 'So, will you be doing the whole deb thing?'
    I do not wish to exaggerate my own importance, but I'm not convinced that before this she had fully faced the extent of the undertaking. She thought for