Snobs: A Novel

by Julian Fellowes

  Edith felt an irresistible urge to tear up her membership of the Club. 'Is this Annette you're talking about?' she said in a tone of feigned disbelief. 'How funny you are. I really like her.'

  Henry was unfazed. 'Well, you can sit next to her at dinner. I hope you're ready to discuss her film career ad nauseam.'

  Edith smiled. 'Why? What would you rather talk about? The people you all know in Shropshire?' She lay back with her smile still intact and her eyes closed, relishing the awkward silence like a naughty schoolgirl.

  'I'm not often in Shropshire, actually.' Henry rolled away from her, bloated and breathless, like a beached whale far from the water.

  'I'm going for a swim,' said Charles.

  They lunched late on paella with too much squid in it in an open-air restaurant overlooking the harbour with its bobbing flotilla of yachts and then set off in two cars for the Franks's house, which lay outside the town on the edge of the sea and appeared to be entirely surrounded, on the land-locked frontier at any rate, by a high stone wall, topped with broken glass.

  The gates were not gates but rather iron doors, which swung open automatically when they identified themselves and then clanged shut, only just missing the rear fender of the second vehicle. 'Well, they're obviously not expecting two cars,' said Annette with a laugh.

  Undaunted, Caroline, who was driving the first car with Edith, Annette and Henry, ploughed on through the enormous, empty pleasure gardens. Tantalising glimpses through the trees of Henry Moores and Giacomettis flashed past until rounding a huge clump of rhododendra they came to a fork in the road. One led apparently up to a nineteenth-century castle that was perched on the highest point of the estate, which Edith had assumed was their destination, while the other, incredibly, pointed the way to another house, as large as the first only modern, which had been built at the water's edge. It was too low, with its balconies thrusting out barely higher than the waves, to be seen from the road.

  'Which one do we go to?' said Edith.

  'The bottom one. Mrs Frank likes to be near the sea.'

  'What happens up on the hill?'

  Caroline looked suitably vague. 'I think it's mainly for the grandchildren.'

  'Blimey O'Reilly,' said Annette and Edith noted with interest that no one else would acknowledge the strangeness, the orgiastic luxury that they were witnessing. She was beginning to understand it is a point of honour in that world that one must never be overawed by any display of wealth, no matter how fabulous. To register that riches on any scale are not routine, even mundane, is to risk being 'middle-class' — a sector of society to which many of them spend most of their lives proving to no one in particular that they do not belong. There are exceptions to this rule. It is possible to exclaim, 'How simply lovely!' but it is done in such a way as to show generosity rather than awe on the part of the speaker. Better yet, 'My dear, how grand!' This in a tone to show that the decoration, menu, whatever, is excessive and verging perilously close to vulgar. Lady Uckfield was particularly adept at crushing with smiling enthusiasm. These are hard skills for the novice though and Edith did well not to attempt them.

  A white-coated footman took the party through the gleaming marble rooms out on to the terrace where Mrs Frank, a sun-beaten, robust figure, reclined in a brightly coloured cotton sarong, chunky bracelets bouncing and rattling against her sinewy, masculine arms. She waved them all over towards her.

  Caroline took charge. 'How do you do?' she said lazily. 'I'm Caroline Chase.'

  She started to indicate the other members of the party, deliberately pausing a fraction of a second before the three non-Broughton guests, Bob, Annette and Peter's girl, as if to demonstrate to Mrs Frank that they were not in the first circle and she need not therefore bother with them. Mrs Frank took the signal and welcomed the outsiders with a perceptibly cooler smiling nod than the one she reserved for the principals.

  'You must be the bride,' she said, rising and taking Edith by the arm to lead them back into the house. Edith smelled the strong musk of her scent and watched the leathery creases move around the thin, scarlet-greased mouth. 'How are you enjoying Mallorca?'

  'We only arrived last night. It seems lovely so far.' She smiled back into the glassy, bored eyes of her grinning hostess.

  'You must let us entertain you while you're here. Tell me, how is darling Googie?'

  'She's fine. She and Tigger are in Scotland.' As the words came out, Edith realised that this was the first time she had spoken these ludicrous nicknames out loud. Before her marriage she had privately determined to address her inlaws as Harriet and John, but already the unspoken urgings of intimacy, of club-membership, which rippled through Mrs Frank, had made her break her vow because the truth was that whatever she might say to her friends, she did not want to be the 'foreign' daughter-in-law. She did not want people to sympathise with Lady Uckfield that Charles had not done better. She wanted her mother-in-law to be congratulated on her, Edith's, brilliance, on her taste, on her charm, on her entertaining. And so Edith learned the first lesson of why England has had no revolutions, of what has emasculated so many careers from Edward IV's queen to Ramsay MacDonald. Namely that the way to deal with a troublesome outsider is to let him in, to make him a convert with a convert's zeal and in no time he will be plus Catholique que le Pape. Learning this lesson did not reduce Edith's resentment of the forces that taught it to her but she had another heady moment of realising she was now a member of the Gang. It made her feel powerful. She turned and smiled at Charles.

  A tour of the sculptures had been planned and the party set off. As they came out of the front door they were approached by a young, rather stringy woman, a reduced, ferret-sized version of Mrs Frank. She had obviously just been playing tennis and carried a slightly oversized racket in front of her, covering her face, half shield, half fan. Their hostess introduced her as her niece, Tina. Unlike her aunt the girl was painfully shy. She fell into step with them as she was quite clearly commanded to do but mutely, only muttering miserable, whispered answers if she was directly addressed.

  They passed a swimming pool, cut into a small cliff above the sea, and Edith heard Annette asking about the terracotta vases that surrounded it, apparently continually filling it with faintly steaming water.

  'They are Roman,' said Tina almost inaudibly. 'My uncle had them brought up from a wreck off the coast near here.'

  'And now they're plumbed in?'

  'What is "plumbed in" excuse me?'

  Charles cut off Annette rather irritably. 'She means that now they're used to feed the pool.'

  'Yes. With sea water.'

  'Sea water? Warmed sea water?'

  Tina nodded. 'It's much better for you, no? We have another pool with clear water but I think this is good, no?'

  Annette was silent for a while. She was clearly beginning to agree with the others — that she was out of her depth. The group had stopped on a terrace dripping with bougainvillea where a large male torso by Rodin stood on a marble plinth. They murmured and admired. Mrs Frank turned to Caroline and started to enquire about various mutual friends. She appeared to resent the fact that she had not been asked to Charles's wedding, as many of her queries ended by an assumption that 'they must have been at the reception', and time and again Caroline was forced to admit that they had been. The names rippled out as they climbed from terrace to terrace, against the deep azure blue of the Mediterranean sky. Had they seen the Esterhazys?

  the Polignacs? the Devonshires? the Metternichs? the Frescobaldis? Names torn from history books, names that Edith knew from studies of Philip II of Spain, or the Risorgimento, or the French Revolution, or the Congress of Vienna. And yet here they were, stripped of any real significance. They had simply become court cards, rich court cards, in the game of Name Exchange. These were high stakes indeed and Edith noticed with some amusement that Jane Cumnor and Eric had dropped back with Tina, no doubt anxious to avoid the left-out feeling that it pleased them to inflict on others. Caroline and Charles were unfazed
. It was clear that whatever the extent of the Frank millions they could match name for name and top them too.

  And so the afternoon passed in a litany of duchesses intoned against a background of art enshrined by money. An hour and three quarters after setting out they were back at the modern palace-by-the-sea.

  On the terrace a tea had been set out 'English-style', that is to say 'American-hotel-style' and three white-coated footmen waited to serve it. Mrs Frank led them to their chairs. Peter's girl, Bob and Annette were thoroughly squashed by this time and secretly longing to regain the villa and turn this flattening experience into a funny story. Eric brought up the rear, red-faced with his exertions and clearly irritated that his social ignorance had excluded him from the conversation that had revolved around his wife for most of the afternoon. He dumped down onto a chaise next to Edith and seized a proffered cup.

  Mrs Frank turned her attention back to the bride. 'Tell me, was Hilary Weston at the wedding? Someone said she was stuck in Canada.'

  Eric looked up with a snort. 'No good asking Edith, is it, old girl? You'll have to wait until she's done a bit more training.'

  Edith ignored him. By some merciful providence it so happened that she had spoken to Mrs Weston for quite a time at the reception. She thanked her patron saint as she spoke chattily across Eric making no reference to him. 'No, she was there.

  Galen was in Florida and couldn't get back. I suppose that's what they were thinking of.'

  Mrs Frank nodded, casting a slightly strange look at Eric. 'She does so much! I feel like a sloth when I think of her.' She moved on. Edith had passed.

  Eric lay back and looked at her: 'Well done. Ten out of ten.'

  She stared back at him, holding every inch of gained ground. 'Do you know Hilary?'

  'I know her as well as you do,' said Eric, and stood up to join Caroline at the other end of the terrace. This interchange was oddly refreshing to Edith because it established beyond any doubt that Eric was her enemy in the family circle. There was no pretence necessary any longer and, best of all, in their first round, Edith had won.

  She was singing in the shower when Charles came in to change for dinner later that evening. He smiled. 'You seem very happy. Did you enjoy yourself today? What a collection! What a place!' Even in these circles amazement is not forbidden in private between consenting adults and Charles clearly felt he had been unimpressed for long enough.

  'I'll say. And yes, I am happy.' She turned off the tap and kissed him, standing there wet and naked.

  The next few minutes, indeed the rest of the evening, were as agreeable as any she had known with Charles and it was with a sense of victory and well-being that she climbed into bed that night.

  Charles turned to her. 'I gather the Franks want to give us a dinner before we go.'

  She pulled a slight face. 'Oh dear. I suppose we have to?'

  'Come on, darling,' said Charles. 'It's good of them and they're not that bad.'

  'The old girl's not that bad but the niece is a nightmare.'

  He laughed. 'I thought she was rather sweet. We must be kind.'

  Edith propped herself up on her elbows beside him. 'Why is it that when someone like Annette is talkative and funny you all cold-shoulder her and wrinkle your noses behind her back and yet with Tina Frank, who must be the most boring and inconsequential young woman I have ever met, you make excuses and pretend that she's a dear?'

  'I don't know what you mean.'

  'Yes, you do, Charles.' She felt oddly confident, almost breezy. For the first time since her marriage she began to sense that she really was Lady Broughton. She had managed things well and according to the ancient tradition she was 'entitled to her own opinions'. She continued, smilingly severe. 'You know very well. And I'll tell you the answer. Annette does not know the people we know and Tina does and Tina has a hundred million besides. I don't know, darling, doesn't it ever make you wonder? Just a bit?' Edith was feeling her oats. She smiled at her husband quizzically, shaking her head slightly, imagining how charming her hair must look, rippling against her neck.

  Charles stared at her. 'Who are all these people that you and Tina Frank know?' he said sourly and turned out the light.

  PART TWO

  Forte-Piano

  NINE

  I did not see a great deal of Edith in the months after she had returned from her honeymoon although they were in London from time to time. She did not apparently care for her mother-in-law's lair in Cadogan Square but they used Charles's little flat in Eaton Place and occasionally they would come up for a party or a show. I ran into them at a couple of dinners and I was asked for a drink with a few others in their tiny second-floor sitting room one day in October but there wasn't much of an opportunity for talk. Edith looked happy enough and had already begun to acquire that patina of the privileged, the faint, touch-me-not aura of luxe that marks such people apart from us mortals, and I was amused to trace the beginnings of an hauteur starting to obliterate the lucky girl from Fulham. I didn't see them at all in the build-up to Christmas and I was just beginning to feel myself drifting out of their circle when I received a letter tucked into a card, not from Edith but from Charles, asking me for a day's shooting in January. It was to be a Friday so I was asked for dinner and the night on the Thursday and, since nothing further was specified, I was presumably intended to vanish after the shoot to make way for the arrival of Saturday's guests. The lateness of the invitation meant that someone had chucked, but it was no less attractive for that and I knew (for once) that I was going to be free on the date in question. I had already been booked to be villain-of-the-week in one of those endless boy-and-girl-detective series, which was due to start five days after the date proposed so I wrote back accepting and received, almost by return, directions by road or rail. These told me which train to be on if that was how I would be travelling or alternatively to arrive at the house at about six o'clock.

  I enjoy shooting. This I know is as difficult for one's kind-hearted London theatrical friends to understand as it is easy for the country-bred fraternity but I do not propose to launch into a defence of blood sports since I have never encountered anyone of either opinion who could be swayed. While I must say that there does not seem much logic in people gaily eating battery-processed food and objecting to conservation-conscious game-keepers, still I accept that there is not necessarily a logical basis for all or even any of one's feelings. At all events, at that time in my life, most of my sport had been of the country shoot variety and so it was with a sense of pleasurable anticipation that I set off for what promised to be a real, Edwardian Grand Battu.

  I knew the way well enough, as I had often been down for weekends with the Eastons, but getting out of London to the South can be a nightmare and so I was in the habit of leaving time for hold-ups. On this occasion, I had not allowed for the fact that I was making the journey on Thursday instead of Friday and so, after a comparatively free run, I arrived at Broughton not much after half past five. The butler who went by the unlikely name of Jago told me that Lady Uckfield and Lady Broughton were in the yellow drawing room finishing a committee meeting of some sort.

  Having no desire to join in — the committees one is forced to attend are bad enough — I settled into a surprisingly comfortable velvet-and-gilt William Kent armchair in the Marble Hall. I didn't have very long to wait before the door opened to release some of the members, muttering fawning farewells to Edith who was in the process of showing them out. She broke away.

  'Hello,' she said. 'I didn't know you were here.'

  'I'm rather early so I thought I'd wait instead of coming in to spoil your fun.'

  She sagged her shoulders with a comic sigh. 'Some fun!' she said. 'Come and have a cup of stewed tea.' Ignoring the nods and smiles of the departing ones, she led the way back into the room. They did not object to this treatment. Far from it. The net result of her cutting them in order to greet me was simply to make them include me in their deferential smiles as they sidled towards the stair
case. I imagine they thought that I too had been touched by the golden wand.

  The remaining members of the committee, the usual collection of provincial intellectuals, tightly permed councillors and farmers mad with boredom, were in the final stages of leaving. Some of them had that dilatory manner of collecting their things together, which betrays a resolve to 'catch' somebody before they go. The prey that most of the lingerers were after was, of course, Lady Uckfield, who was ensconced in a pretty, buttoned chair by the chimney-piece, surrounded by admirers. A few of the aspirants, disconcerted by the competition, made do with five minutes of Edith and left. I approached my hostess, who rose to greet me with a kiss, which was a kind of signal to the entourage that the audience was over.

  'Goodbye, Lady Uckfield,' said a black councillor in a baggy artist's smock, 'and thank you.'

  'No, thank you.' Lady Uckfield spoke with her usual intimate urgency. 'I gather you're doing the most marvellous things down in Cramney. I hear it's simply buzzing. I can't wait to come and see for myself.'

  Her companion beamed, shedding his Socialism on the spot. 'We will be most glad to see you there.' He retreated, wreathed in smiles.

  'Where's Cramney?' I said.

  Lady Uckfield shrugged. 'Some ghastly little place in Kent. Do you want some tea?'

  By the time I made it to my room, my things had been unpacked and my evening shirt, tie, socks and cummerbund lay waiting for me. There was, however, no sign of my clean underpants. I hunted around through various drawers and was just in the process of searching under the bed when I heard a voice behind me. 'What can you be looking for?' I turned and saw Tommy Wainwright standing in the doorway that connected my room, aka the Garden Room, with its larger neighbour, the Rose Velvet Room, where Tommy was billeted. Actually, despite these impressive titles, the chambers themselves were rather small, having been squeezed into a sort of mezzanine floor at one side of the house. They had been created by the architect as part of an arrangement to provide a score of secondary bedrooms while only messing up one end facade of the house.