Colonel Sir Mark Sykes, 6th Baronet, serves as Parliamentary Secretary to the Chief Secretary for Ireland, George Wyndham, 1904 to 1905.

Still life by Didier.  [See also: Archive, Didier].

Those of you who remember him will be, I am sure, delighted to learn that our friend Didier has returned!  Or rather, not so much that he has returned as, after having survived various adventures (involving an international cast of characters and a couple celebrities and a complicated legal misunderstanding), he has re-emerged, one might say, not only older (having attained the age of consent and therefore now free to vote and drink and interact with other consenting adults) but also (equally important) wiser. 

For the time being he is staying with new acquaintances here in sunny California while -- as he describes it --"between careers," although "between" does tend to suggest pre-existing employment which, unless being exceedingly pleasant and good-looking (certainly true in Didier's case) counts, might verge on an overstatement of his prior work history.  However, the question as to what he intends to do for future gainful employ weighs heavily only on other minds, not Didier's, whose countenance remains unmarked by worry or unbecoming shadows of doubt.  He radiates a youthful joie-de-vivre which is an inspiration whenever he comes by to relax and take a break from his career search, and watch TV and peruse my library (and refrigerator) and keep up with the world on his I-Phone -- in short doing what most people his age do with their free time, which they seem to have in abundance.

"I wanna be like Beckham," he said aloud the other day, lying on the sofa and leafing through a copy of Vogue.

"You mean play soccer?" I inquired, having eliminated the possibility (Posh being taken) that he was suddenly interested in an available Spice.

"Dude," he replied -- and I should mention that his English has improved (and at the same time degenerated) significantly since last we heard from him, his conversation now liberally sprinkled with words like "Dude," and "totally" and "right on."  "I could totally do this," he announced, holding up and displaying the fold-out advertisement for Armani, and mimicking the athlete's self-examining pose.
 
"It's harder than it looks," I answered in a foolish attempt to throw cold water on his plans.  I instantly regretted saying so as he slumped back in a pout.  He pouts in an adorable way, of course, but then he gets hungry, and his appetite has begun to be rather expensive.  With this in mind I cast about quickly for something shiny to distract him.

"You know," I began, "there's an interesting article in that issue by a writer named Plum Sykes whose ancestor it just so happens was Sir Mark Sykes, 6th Baronet, who wrote a travel book about Turkey in, believe-it-or-not, 1904, which..." I trailed off as I saw his eyes glaze over.  I never cease to amaze myself at the unshiny quality of my vain attempts to distract. 

"My friend went to rehab," Didier said then, in something of a non sequitur.  Such a non-sequitur in fact I thought perhaps I'd succeeded in redirecting his attention.

"Ah," I said knowingly without knowing why.  Except that friends in rehab is something with which I am more than familiar.  "Betty Ford?" I asked, being acquainted with more than a fair share of its alumni. ("In and out of Betty more times than Gerald" as we used to quip).

He shook his head.  "Here," he said and nudged a book on the coffee table with a bare (flip-flop-less) foot.

"Clouds," I said with something akin to awe in that moment when pieces fall together and worlds do not so much collide as they seem gently to converge.  "Clouds" -- the country house of the Wyndham family, of the beautiful Wyndham Sisters whose portrait by Sargent now hangs in the Met, of George Wyndham for whom Sir Mark Sykes was Secretary, of that group of artistically inclined artistocrats called the "Souls"... and now?  A rehab for alcoholics and addicts.  "Oh Didier," I began, wondering how to explain the complicated and rich history of the rise and fall of a great family and a country house -- how to convey to someone so clearly, so deeply uninterested and too young to care.  To him Clouds was just some old once stately pile in the English countryside they'd gone to drop off a buddy who needed some time to get his act together and clean up.  Stripped of its art, refurnished in institutional taste, bereft of its noble trappings but not, perchance, its ghosts...

But when were you in England, I wanted to ask, and how good a friend, a chum, a buddy was he or she and aren't you even a little bit interested in the history of it all -- but I resisted.  I held back.  Didier stood, and yawned, and arched his back, stretching like a cat when it's finished a nap.  "I'm bored," he said.  And I knew what was coming next.     

He stood there and idly reached a hand up inside the front of his t-shirt to scratch his collar bone -- a seductive but curiously circuitous approach to take for an itch, it seemed to me, needlessly exposing, since the more direct route would clearly be... but never mind.  "I'm hungry," he explained.  

"Grub first, then ethics," as Bertholt Brecht once said.  To which I suppose you could add, after ethics: career counseling, the history of the English country house, and the meaning and the magical synchronicity of Life. 

"Right on," I replied.

To be continued.