Past Imperfect by Julian Fellowes

immediate execution. We know now that it was instead destined to die a lingering death, and maybe simple decapitation might have been preferable, but nobody knows the future and at that time it seemed that Peter, single-handedly, had won it an indefinite reprieve. The Monarch would play no further part in it, of course, which knocked the point and the stuffing out of it for many, but it would still have a purpose in bringing together the offspring of like-minded parents, and this was the responsibility he took on. He had no hope of reward. He did it solely for the honour of the thing, which in my book makes it praiseworthy, whatever one's opinion of the end product. Year by year he would comb the stud books, Peerage and Gentry, writing to the mothers of daughters, interviewing their sons, all to buy another few months for the whole business. Can this really have been only forty years ago? you may ask in amazement. The answer's yes.
    Peter's own gatherings were not to select or encourage the girls. That had all been done some time before. No, they were basically to audition those young men who had come to his attention as possible escorts and dancing partners for the parties to come. Having been vetted, their names would either be underscored or crossed off the lists that were distributed to the anxious waiting mothers, who would assume that the cads and seducers, the alcoholics and the gamblers and those who were NSIT (not safe in taxis) would all have been excised from the names presented. They should have been, of course, but it was not entirely plain sailing, viz. the first two young men to greet us as we pushed into the narrow hall of the squashed and ill-furnished flat, at the top of a block built in the worst traditions of the late 1950s. These were the younger sons of the Duke of Trent, Lord Richard and Lord George Tremayne, who were both already drunk. A stranger might have thought that since neither was attractive or funny in the least, Peter would not deem them ideally suited to the year ahead. But this would be to ignore human nature and it was not really his fault that there were those he could not exclude. Certainly, the Tremayne brothers would enjoy a kind of popularity, somehow acquiring the reputation for being 'live wires,' which they were not. The fact is their father was a duke and, even if he could not have held down the job of a parking attendant in the real world, that was enough to guarantee their invitations.
    We moved on into the crowded, main room, I hesitate to call it the drawing room, since it had many functions, but that was where we found Peter, his characteristic cowlick of hair falling over his crumpled, pug-like face. He pointed at Damian. 'Who he?' he said in a loud and overtly hostile voice.
    'May I introduce Damian Baxter?' I said.
    'I never invited him,' said Peter, quite unrelenting. 'What's he doing here?' Peter had, as I have said, made a decision not to pass himself off as a product of the system he so admired and in a moment like this I understood why. Since he had not posited himself as an elegant gentleman, he did not feel any need to be polite if it did not suit him. In short, he never disguised his feelings, and over the years I came both to like and to admire him for it. Of course, his words may read as if his anger was directed towards the unwelcome guest, when it was instead entirely meant for me. I was the one who had broken the rules. In the face of this attack I'm afraid I foundered. It seems odd, certainly to the man I am today, but I know I was suddenly anxious at the thought of all those treats, which I had planned for and which were in his gift, slipping away. It might have been less troublesome if they had.
    'Don't blame him,' said Damian, seeing the problem and moving quickly in beside us. 'Blame me. I very much wanted to meet you, Mr Townend, and when I heard he was coming here I forced him to bring me. It's entirely my fault.'
    Peter stared at him. 'That's my cue to