I'm 19, I think. Don't know how they managed to get it quite so wrong. Younger son of the Marquis of Marchmain yadda yadda yadda. Please don't ask me about my family. Look them up in Debrett if you really want to know.
I'm at Christ Church College, Oxford, not studying very hard at all I'm afraid. My friend
Charles and I favour a rather more epicurean lifestyle. Drinking the finest wines known to mankind is our greatest indulgence. Lately, it's something of which I've become perhaps a little too fond. I think Aloysius is a bad influence after all.
Those who know me might say I'm charming, amusing, eccentric, with an epicene beauty; but I know I'm very, very wicked. Every night I pray "Oh God, make me good, but not yet." I find being a Catholic very difficult. My one wish is to be left alone. Yet I feel that I am caught with an unseen hook and an invisible line which is long enough to let me wander to the ends of the world and still to bring me back with a twitch upon the thread.
But now... If it could only be like this always - always summer, always alone, the fruit always ripe, and Aloysius in a good temper. ...