Snobs: A Novel

by Julian Fellowes

  I too found this slightly unlikely. Particularly as the young couple were still living in the big house with Charles's parents.

  There had been plans to renovate one of the farm houses when they were first married and I asked Tommy if he knew how it was coming along.

  'I'm not sure they're going on with that,' he said. 'I gather they've gone off the idea.'

  'Really?'

  'I know. It's funny, isn't it? She wants to stay here and her in-laws are delighted, so Brook Farm will probably be finished quickly and let.'

  'Do they have a flat in the house, then?'

  'Not as such. Some sort of upstairs sitting room for Edith and Charles has his study, of course. But that's it. Rather like one of those American soap-operas, when they're all worth a hundred million and they still cram together in one house with a big staircase.'

  I shook my head. 'I suppose Charles likes the set-up here but it seems rather tiresome for a bride.'

  Just as Charles, like all his breed, was not immune to the sense of getting 'special' treatment wherever he went — in fact, as Edith had already observed, he resented its being withheld from him — so I could understand that, after a lifetime of pretending he was unaware of the extraordinary baroque surroundings of his life, it would be hard actually to give them up.

  The English upper-classes have a deep, subconscious need to read their difference in the artefacts about them. Nothing is more depressing (or less convincing) to them than the attempt to claim some rank or position, some family background, some genealogical distinction, without the requisite acquaintance and props. They would not dream of decorating a bed sitting room in Putney without the odd watercolour of a grandmother in a crinoline, two or three decent antiques and preferably a relic of a privileged childhood. These things are a kind of sign language that tell the visitor where in the class system the owner places him or herself. But, above all things, the real marker for them, the absolute litmus test, is whether or not a family has retained its house and its estates. Or a respectable proportion of them. You may overhear a nobleman explaining to some American visitor that money is not important in England, that people can stay in Society without a bean, that land is 'more of a liability, these days', but in his heart, he does not believe any of these things. He knows that the family that has lost everything but its coronet, those duchesses in small houses near Cheyne Walk, those viscounts with little flats in Ebury Street, lined as they may be with portraits and pictures of the old place ('It's some sort of farmers' training college, nowadays'), these people are all déclassé to their own kind. It goes without saying that this consciousness of the need for the materialisation of rank is as unspoken as the Masonic ritual.

  Of course, the Broughton position was an unusually solid one. Few were the families in the 1990s that held their sway and the day would dawn when Charles would enter Broughton Hall as its owner. Still, listening to Tommy, I suspected he might have dreaded the possibility that people, awe-struck as they shook his hand in the Marble Hall, could make the mistake, on finding him at home in a chintz-decorated farmhouse sitting room, of thinking that he was an Ordinary Person. In this, however, I was wrong.

  Tommy shook his head. 'No, Charles wouldn't mind. Not now he's used to the idea.' He paused for thought and then decided against it. 'Oh, well. I must get changed.'

  We assembled for dinner in the drawing room that the family generally used, a pretty apartment on the garden front, much less cumbrous than the adjacent Red Saloon where we had gathered for the engagement dinner. There were a few vaguely familiar faces besides Tommy. Peter Broughton was there, though apparently without his dreary blonde. Old Lady Tenby's eldest daughter, Daphne, now married to the rather dim second son of a Midlands earl, was talking to Caroline Chase in the corner. They looked up and smiled carefully across the room. Filled with trepidation, I looked around for Eric and saw him scoffing whisky as he lectured some poor old boy on the present state of the City. The listener stood looking into Eric's red face with all the pleasure of a rabbit caught in the headlights of an oncoming car.

  'What would you like to drink?' Lady Uckfield stood by my elbow and sent Jago off to fetch a glass of Scotch and water.

  She followed my glance. 'Heavens! Eric seems to be making very large small talk.'

  I smiled. 'Who is the lucky recipient of his confidences?'

  'Poor dear Henri de Montalambert.'

  For some reason or other, I knew that the Duc de Montalambert was a relation of the Broughtons by marriage. His was not a particularly smart dukedom by French standards (they, having so many more than we do, can afford to grade them) since it had only been given by Louis XVIII in 1820, but a marriage in the 1890s to the heiress of a Cincinnati steel king, had placed the family up there alongside the Trémouilles and the Uzès. Lady Uckfield had referred to him in the manner in which one speaks of an old family friend, but since she always disguised her true feelings about anyone, even from herself, I was, as usual, unable to gauge the true degree of intimacy. 'He looks a bit dazed,' I said.

  She nodded with a suppressed giggle. 'I can't imagine what he's making of it all. He hardly speaks a word of English.

  Never mind. Eric won't notice.' She accepted my laugh as tribute and then rebuked me for it. 'Now, you're not to make me unkind.'

  'How long is Monsieur de Montalambert staying?'

  Lady Uckfield pulled a face. 'All three days. What are we to do? I'm still at où est la plume de ma tante, and Tigger can hardly manage encore. Henri married a cousin of ours thirty years ago and I doubt if we've exchanged as many words since.'

  'Is there an English-speaking duchesse, then?'

  'There was. But since she was deaf and is dead, she cannot help us now. I don't suppose you speak French?'

  'I do a bit,' I said with a sinking heart. In my mind's eye, I could see the re-shuffling of place cards and the endless, sticky translated conversation that lay ahead.

  She caught my look. 'Cheer up, you'll have Edith between you.' She darted one of her flirtatious, birdlike glances at me.

  'How do you find our bride?'

  'She's looking very well,' I said. 'In fact, I've never seen her prettier.'

  'Yes, she does look well.' Lady Uckfield hesitated for a fraction of a second. 'I only hope she finds it amusing down here.

  She's been the most marvellous success, you know. The trouble is they all love her so much that it's frightfully hard not to rope her into sharing all the wretched duties. I'm afraid I've been rather selfish in unloading the cares of state.'

  'Knowing Edith, I bet she enjoys all that. It's a step up on answering a telephone in Milner Street.'

  Lady Uckfield smiled. 'Well, as long as it is.'

  'She seems to have given up London so you must be doing something right.'

  'Yes,' she said briskly. 'If they're happy, that's the main thing, isn't it?'

  She drifted away to greet some new arrivals. It struck me that I had missed some nuance in the coiled recesses of Lady Uckfield's perfectly ordered mind.

  The dinner, as predicted, was rather leaden. I had Daphne Bolingbroke, Lady Tenby's coolly pleasant daughter, on my right, so I was all right for the first course but behind me I could hear Edith struggling gamely with M. de Montalambert on her other side and, in truth, I found it quite hard to concentrate on my own conversation. The trouble was that Edith's French and her neighbour's English were more or less on a par. That is, terrible but not so non-existent as to preclude all effort. It would have been simpler if neither had commanded a word of the other's language but they had, alas, just enough vocabulary to be utterly confusing. Edith kept maundering on about bits of Paris being so 'bon' and London being 'épouvantable' with M. de Montalambert alternately looking completely blank or, worse, when he thought he had understood her observation, answering with a swirling torrent of French of which Edith could barely catch more than the first word or two.

  The courses changed and I turned to rescue Edith from her travails but M. de Montalam
bert declined to obey the English regulations and refused to give her up. Instead, grasping at the slight improvement in communication that my moderate French offered him, he launched into a passionate denunciation of the French government, which had reference, in some mystifying way that was quite lost on me, to Louis XVIII's minister, the Duc Decazes.

  'What are we talking about?' said Edith softly under the apparently unstoppable Gallic flow.

  'God knows. The French Restoration, I think.'

  'Crikey.'

  In truth, we were both completely worn out by this time and longing for a reprieve but the Duc resolutely ignored Lady Uckfield on his left and she, needless to say, could not have been more delighted to set aside the conventions this once.

  The Duc paused and smiled. I sensed a change of topic. Perversely, having discovered that my French was better than Edith's, he decided it was time to demonstrate his grasp of English. 'You like sex?' he said pleasantly. 'You find you come often?'

  At exactly this moment Edith was drinking some of her water and so of course did a massive nose trick. Seizing her napkin, she tried vainly to pass it off as a fit of coughing. To my right I could feel Daphne shaking with silent laughter. A desperate schoolroom hysteria was enveloping the table.

  'I think,' said Lady Uckfield, who sensed the whiff of civic unrest, 'that Henri is asking if you are familiar with Sussex.' She spoke firmly, like a schoolmistress with a rowdy troop of children, but inevitably her statement gave rise to another terrible wave of giggles among us all. Edith was literally red in the face and almost weeping in her attempts to control her mirth.

  At this point Charles looked up. He had naturally missed everything. 'Darling,' he said, 'do you know what I've done with my other gun sleeve? Richard wants to borrow it tomorrow and I cannot think where it is.'

  His words achieved what his mother's had failed to do. They fell like a heavy fire-blanket on the burgeoning hilarity and effectively stifled it. There was a flat pause before Edith spoke. 'You lent it to Billy Westbrook,' she said. And as she turned back to her tiresome neighbour, she caught my eye. It was at that moment, hearing Edith's patient answer and sensing her weariness, that I began to realise her bargain had perhaps not been an easy one.

  I was up early the next day, but when I arrived in the dining room, most of the house-party was already there, munching away at the splendid, fin de siècle breakfast that was spread out in silver chafing dishes along the sideboard. I helped myself to various cholesterol-rich preparations and took my plate over to an empty chair next to Tommy.

  'Do we draw numbers, or do they just tell us where to stand?' I asked.

  'Numbers. Charles has got a frightfully swanky silver thing with numbered spills in it. We do it when we assemble in the hall. The great thing is not to draw the place next to Eric.'

  I could think of any number of reasons to follow this advice but from Tommy's expression, I gathered that simple self-preservation was the main one. As it happened, I was only one away from Chase, with the hapless M. de Montalambert between us. I could see his face fall when he pulled his number, although it might have been simply because he dreaded another Pound-versus-Euro lecture. I had Peter Broughton on my right. There were eight guns in all and of these four had loaders, so what with wives, dogs etcetera, we made quite a party as we stepped out to be stowed into the team of Range Rovers that waited on the gravel. Edith, I noticed, was not among us. The reason for this I discovered after the third drive when she appeared with thermoses of delicious bouillon laced with vodka (or plain for the virtuous). 'Can I come and stand by you, or will I put you off?' she asked.

  'Come, by all means. I can't be put off. I miss alone or accompanied. Won't Charles mind?'

  'No. He's much happier with George. He says I talk too much.'

  They were driving a high wood, quite a way from the house and the guns were placed in a semi-circle around the base. I had originally drawn the number two, so now, on the fourth drive of the morning, I was in position eight and at the end of the line. Edith and I pottered across the field to the numbered stick that beckoned me, and there we waited.

  'Do you really enjoy this?' she said, moving over and leaning against the post-and-rail fence.

  'Certainly I do. I wouldn't be here if I didn't.'

  'I thought you might have accepted to study me in my splendour.'

  'You're right. I might have done. But, as it happens, I do enjoy it. It was kind of you to get Charles to ask me.'

  'Oh, it wasn't my idea.' She paused. 'I mean, of course, I'm perfectly thrilled you accepted, but it was Googie who proposed you.' She had long ceased to notice that she used her in-laws' tiresome nicknames.

  'Then it was kind of her.'

  'Googie is seldom kind for no reason.'

  'Well, I can't imagine what her reason could be.' The whistle sounded so I loaded my gun and stared at the tops of the trees. If anything, my turning away from Edith seemed to relax her.

  'She's worried about me. She thinks I'm bored and you'll cheer me up. She imagines that you're a good influence.'

  'I can't think why.'

  'She thinks you'll remind me how lucky I am.'

  'And aren't you?' Edith made a wry face and stretched along the fence. 'Oh dear,' I said. 'Don't tell me you're bored already.'

  'Yes.'

  I sighed slightly. I cannot pretend the idea of Edith's discovering that kind hearts mean more than coronets and simple faith than Norman blood was exactly surprising. I suppose I'd thought it was bound to happen sooner or later but even bearing the previous evening in mind, this really did seem unreasonably early. Like most of her friends, I hoped that by the time she had made the time-honoured discovery that you can only sleep in one bed or eat one meal at a time she would have children to give her a genuine and unfeigned interest in her new life. And after all, whatever one might say of Charles, he did have a kind heart and, I would have thought, a pretty simple faith. I could feel an admonishing spirit rising in me as I spoke.

  'What exactly are you bored with? Charles? Or the life? Or just the country? What?'

  She didn't answer and my attention was taken by an extremely high bird heading my way. I vainly lifted my gun and blasted away. The pheasant flew merrily on.

  'I must say,' I continued, becoming slightly more conciliatory, 'it seems a bit rough to be starting your married life under the same roof as your parents-in-law — capacious as that roof may be.'

  'It isn't that. They offered us Brook Farm.'

  'Why didn't you take it?'

  Edith shrugged. 'I don't know. It seemed rather — poky.'

  Of course, it was suddenly quite clear that the real problem was she was bored to sobs with her husband. Her life was just about acceptable in the magnificent surroundings of Broughton Hall where there were people to talk to and where there was always the heady wine of envy in others' eyes to drink but to be alone with Charles in a farmhouse… That was out of the question.

  'If you're so bored, why don't you spend more time in London? We never see you there, now.'

  Edith stared at her green Wellington boots. 'I don't know. The flat's tiny and Charles hates it so. And it's always such a bloody production.'

  'Couldn't you sneak up on your own?'

  Edith stared at me. 'No, I don't think so. I don't think I should, do you?'

  I stared back for a moment. 'No,' I said.

  So that was it. She had barely been married eight months and already her husband bored her to death. On top of that she was afraid of starting up a life in London because she knew that, without a shadow of a doubt, it would engulf her entirely and at once. She was at least sufficiently honourable about the Faustian pact she had made to wish to keep it.

  I smiled. 'Well, to quote Nanny: you would do it,' I said. She nodded rather grimly. 'Whom do you see down here? Not much of Isabel, I'll be bound.'

  She pulled a face. 'No. Not too much, I'm afraid. I've been made to feel that I've failed David. He keeps dropping hints about shooting fo
r one thing and I simply haven't dared tell them you were coming today.'

  'Won't Charles have him?'

  'Oh, it's not that. I mean he would if I asked him but, you know, it's just a different crowd whether they like it or not. And David can be a bit…' she paused, 'naff.'

  Poor David! That it should come to this! All those years of Ascot and Brooks's and drinks at the Turf! And the end of it was that Edith was embarrassed by him. Harsh world. I was not completely complicit, although of course I knew what she meant.

  'You'll have to tell him I was here. I'm not having Isabel finding out and thinking we're in league against her.' Edith nodded.

  'What about this "different crowd"? Are they fun?'

  She sighed, idly scratching a bit of dried mud from her Barbour. 'Terrific. I know almost everything there is to know about estate planning. I could list the parts of a horse in my sleep. And what I haven't learned about running a charity is, believe me, not worth knowing.'

  'You must get about a bit, though. Isn't that quite interesting?'

  'Oh, it is! Did you know that in Italy the bowl of water in front of your place is to dip your fruit in, not your fingers? Or that in America you must never discuss acreage? Or that in Spain it is the crudest social solecism to use a knife when eating an egg however it may be cooked?' She paused for breath.

  'I didn't know about the egg,' I said. She was silent for a while and I had another go at a bird passing overhead. 'There must be some of them you like.'

  'I suppose so.'

  'What about the family? Do they know how bored you are?'

  'Googie, yes. Not darling old Tigger, of course. He's much too dense to notice anything that doesn't hit him over the head.

  Caroline, I think.'

  'And Charles?'

  Edith looked up at the woods above us for a moment. 'The thing is, he finds it all so riveting that he is quite sure that, as I get into it, I will too. He sees it as a "period of adjustment".'