Snobs: A Novel

by Julian Fellowes

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  I arrived at St Margaret's at about twenty past ten to be handed my white carnation, stripped of course of the fern that the florist had so painstakingly arranged with it, and my list for the front pews. It was the expected combination of duchesses and nannies, with places marked for the tenants and staff at Broughton and, behind them, the tenants and staff at Feltham. From the Reigning Family we were to get the Princess Royal and the Kents, all of them, but not the Prince of Wales (a bit of a disappointment for Lady Uckfield, a tragedy for Mrs Lavery) as he was on a goodwill junket somewhere in the South Seas.

  Nor were we to welcome the Queen. I don't know why as I believe Her Majesty and Lady Uckfield got on well. Needless to say, I was not deputed to usher any of them, this honour going to Lord Peter Broughton, who nodded to me as I came in. I had not seen him since leaving Chez Michou as we had been given a choice of return flights and, having no City deadline to meet, I was still in bed when most of the party had set off. I had written to thank him and Henry but I had obviously said nothing of the debacle.

  'I got your letter. You shouldn't have bothered.' The English always say you shouldn't have bothered to thank them when, of all races on earth, they are the most unforgiving when one does not. I smiled in reply. He pulled a face. 'God, I had a head the next day! I was in a meeting by eleven. I do not think I gave it my best.'

  I couldn't remember what he did. Something financial, I assumed, although I have noticed of late that the brain standard of the City has been rising in inverse ratio to the fall of its social status. I wonder where this is going to leave people like Peter Broughton. 'You were very kind to lay it all on,' I said.

  He nodded in turn, slightly awkwardly. 'I'm afraid Charles was a bit shirty.' I shrugged. 'The thing is, it seemed the most frightfully funny idea, d'you see? Henry and I went over with photographs and things and we'd even borrowed one of Edith's frocks… She thought it'd be terrifically funny too, d'you see? She was a great sport about it, she even told Charles not to be silly…' He tailed off rather lamely. Good for Edith, I thought, to come out of that ghastliness ahead. I hardly needed to point out that had she seen the act she would have been less sanguine. We could be sure that Charles had not told her exactly what he had found so offensive.

  'I expect the boy doing it misunderstood his brief,' I said, borrowing Tommy Wainwright's line.

  Lord Peter nodded furiously. 'That's it, exactly. I think the song was wrong, that was the trouble. That and Eric's idea of the jewel-box. I can see that wasn't too clever.'

  I nodded, unsurprised at Eric's complicity. It was interesting, though predictable I suppose, that Edith's first enemy in the Broughton household should be someone of considerably lower rank than herself, who had made an infinitely greater leap in catching at his bride. 'I should forget about it,' I said. 'I'm sure Charles has.' I was actually sure that Charles had not, although I was pretty certain he would never refer to the incident again.

  Of course, Edith made a lovely bride and the collection of familiar Royal and Society faces on the Broughton side of the aisle put a glamorous spin into the whole business, which I, for one, thoroughly enjoyed. Even the sermon seemed quite interesting. The Lavery side of the church was inevitably rather over-shadowed but Edith had managed to attract one or two of her new, media-friendly friends and her mother, desperate to keep face, had written to her third cousin, the present baronet, introducing herself and enclosing an invitation to the wedding. Consequently, this very ordinary solicitor who lived in an old vicarage near Swindon (the family's modest pile had gone two generations before), suddenly found himself in the front pew of a London wedding, staring at what seemed to be half the Royal Family a few feet away. Actually, because of St Margaret's custom of keeping an empty pew for the Speaker on the right-hand side of the aisle, this necessitated a kind of half-backwards squint but he soon got the hang of it. At any rate, he was delighted to be there and so was his ugly wife, although she, understanding these things better than her husband, retained an air of having done the Laverys a favour in agreeing to come.

  Which was, of course, quite true.

  We had all been given special stickers to park on the gravel at the edge of the Mall so it was easier than usual to get to the reception. I had never got past the tables in the lower gallery of the Palace where, in those days, you could collect your badge for Ascot, so I was curious, as we stood in a long, slowly-moving, drinkless queue, to see what the state rooms had in store.

  We shuffled up the great staircase, past a suitably dissolute full-length of Charles II, through a small ante-room, sumptuously lined with dark tapestry, where we were at last given a glass of the inevitable champagne, and then into the first of the three huge, red, white and gold apartments. In the receiving line it was not Mrs Lavery, whom I had met many times, but Lady Uckfield who greeted me by name and to my surprise offered me a cheek to kiss.

  'I saw you beavering away in church,' she said, using her habitual tone of sharing a naughty secret that only I would understand. 'What a happy day.'

  'We've been jolly lucky with the weather.'

  'I think we're jolly lucky all round.' With that she dismissed me by angling me towards her husband, who, needless to say, hadn't a clue who I was, and having shaken his hand, I wandered off into the throng. It was clear that Lady Uckfield was making an effort to be agreeable to me but it wasn't all that obvious as to why. Probably she wanted to make sure that the only friend of Edith's that Charles liked at all would be her ally. She meant to subvert any attempts of Edith's to set up a 'rival court'

  right from the start. This would ensure that if anyone had to do any adjusting it would be Edith, not her. I would not hazard a guess as to how conscious this was but I am fairly sure it was so. Just as I am sure that she was successful and that we all played our parts. From the start I was very taken by Lady Uckfield's ability to combine the kittenish with the autocratic and I do not think that where she was concerned I was ever a very useful friend for Edith.

  I had hardly spoken to the bride in the line and I didn't really expect to get much of a chance to talk to her as I murmured and nodded my way through various chattering and kissing groups. David and Isabel were there of course, but I could see that they had not come to St James's Palace in order to spend their time talking to me so I let them get on with it and wandered into another huge, scarlet and gilded chamber, at right angles to the first. Large, full-length portraits, mostly of Stuarts, hung on chains against the stretched damask. I stopped beneath one, which, from the half-shut eyes and luscious décolletage I had taken for Nell Gwyn (who may not have been a Stuart but certainly served under them), so I was surprised to see from the plaque on the frame that the melting beauty was Mary of Modena, Queen of James VII and II.

  Edith's voice behind me made me jump. 'What do you think of the show so far?'

  'There's nothing like starting at the top,' I said.

  'It seems rather fitting that my wedding should be celebrated in a Royal palace, traditional seat of the arranged marriage.'

  I looked up at the heaving, painted bosom of the queen. 'I shouldn't think this one was very hard to arrange.'

  Edith laughed. We were almost alone in the room for a minute and I had time to marvel at her beauty, now reaching the years of its zenith. She had chosen a dress in the style of the 1870s, with wide flounces and a bustle behind. It was of ivory silk with a tiny self-patterned sprig of flowers. What I assume was someone's mother's lace fell from her thick blonde hair, held there by a light, dazzling tiara, fashioned for a young girl, like a glistening diamond-studded cobweb, not one of those heavy metal plates made for dowagers to sport at the opera, which always look as if they belong in a Marx Brothers comedy.

  I imagine it was part of the Broughton trove.

  'You'll come and visit us?' she said.

  'If I'm asked.'

  We stared at each other for a moment. 'We're going to Rome for a week, then on to Caroline and Eric in Mallorca.'

/>   'That sounds nice.'

  'Yes, it does, doesn't it? I'm not supposed to know but I do. I like Rome. I don't really know Mallorca. I gather Caroline takes a villa every year there so obviously they enjoy it.' She laughed again rather mirthlessly.

  There didn't seem to be anything more to say as I wasn't prepared to comment on her melancholy outburst. The last thing I believe in is the deathbed confession. In this case she'd made her bed and was already lying on it. All that was left was to shut her eyes. Anyway, I can't say I was worried. Presumably, many brides, or grooms too for that matter, have a slight what-have-I-done? feeling at the reception.

  I kissed her. 'Good luck,' I said. 'Telephone me when you get back.'

  'I'm not going yet.'

  'No, but I won't have another chance to talk to you.'

  And so it proved. Charles came to fetch her to parade her past yet more of his unknown relations and I was left alone again. I wandered into the throne room, which opened out of the end of the first room we had entered. More red, more gilt, this time as a background for a splendid canopied and embroidered throne, and more paintings in chains, these ones Hanoverians. I was admiring the chimneypiece when a fat, red-faced man in his sixties nodded to me. We talked for a while about a painting of George IV by Lawrence that hung in the room, whether it was the original or a copy and so on, when he suddenly leaned towards me conspiratorially. 'Tell me,' he whispered hoarsely, 'are you a friend of the girl or are you one of us?'

  I must confess I was momentarily stumped for words.

  'Both, I hope,' said Lady Uckfield, approaching at a brisk pace.

  I nodded to her for getting me off the hook and she introduced me to my companion, who turned out to be called Sir William Fartley, which nearly made me laugh out loud. He sauntered away as Lady Uckfield took my arm and strolled us both across to the windows.

  'I hope you'll come down and see us again soon,' she said. 'I know Charles would like it.'

  This was to tell me that Charles was prepared to have me as a friend and also to let me know that they, the family, saw no threat in my friendship with Edith. I thanked her and said I should be delighted. 'I don't suppose you shoot?'

  'As a matter of fact I do.'

  She was quite surprised. 'Do you? I thought theatre people never shot. I thought they were always terrific antis.'

  I shrugged. 'Better death on the wing than in an abattoir is my feeling.'

  'What a relief! I was thinking we were going to have to scratch around for some writers and talkers to amuse you. I know Edith thinks you're terribly bright.'

  'That's nice.'

  'But if you shoot you won't mind normal people.'

  'Like Sir William Fartley. Can't wait.'

  She laughed and pulled a face. 'Silly old fool but he only lives three miles away so there's nothing I can do.'

  I commented inwardly that he was further away than the Eastons, that there were probably two or three hundred people a similar distance from Broughton who would cry out for an invitation and would never receive one, but naturally I said nothing.

  Lady Uckfield patted my hand. 'Seriously. You must come. I'll see to it.'

  'I'd love to, but only if you promise not to ask any writers or talkers. I don't want to lose face in front of Edith.'

  She smiled her conspiratorial smile and was gone about her duties.

  It was all over quite soon after that. The lucky pair went off to change and we followed them out as a shining barouche landau carried them away. This rather mawkish detail had been specially arranged by Edith's father with the mistaken idea that it would lend glamour to the occasion. At any rate, when we all turned back we found that the Palace had been locked against us. The authorities had decreed that the day was over and there was nothing more to do but go home.

  SEVEN

  To Edith, as much as to anyone else who knew it, one of the oddest aspects of her marriage, at least in the context of the 1990s, was that she had never slept with Charles before their wedding night. It sounds quite remarkable but the fact remains that it was so. At first she had resisted his advances as she knew that he was definitely the type who did not respect in the morning the easy conquest of the night before and several dates had to have taken place before it was sufficiently established that she was a 'nice girl'. This went on for two or three months but when she had decided that it was just about safe to yield she found to her puzzlement that Charles seemed to have accepted the pattern of their relationship and that he did not apparently want more. He would kiss her, of course, and embrace her but without the deadly urgency that she had come to expect in these moments. Once when they were lying on the sofa in her parents' flat (Kenneth and Stella were in Brighton for the weekend) she had casually allowed her hand to slide across the front of his trousers but although she could feel a perfectly satisfactory erection beneath the fabric, the gesture made him jump so sharply that she did not repeat it. And after he had asked her to marry him there didn't seem much point. After all, she wanted him whether or not they 'suited' between the sheets but, if they did not, might he be put off? So when, a few weeks before the wedding, he had suggested that they 'get away together' for a weekend she had murmured that she thought it better to wait, now it was so near, and not 'spoil it'. Charles had accepted this because although, being a man of his generation he had acquired a certain amount of sexual experience, deep in his subconscious he still believed that bride-material should enter the wedding-chamber chaste. Of course, Edith was not chaste in this sense but she decided that, if questioned, she would refer to 'an incident' when she had been very young which she didn't want to talk about. In actual fact she never had to as Charles seemed to be satisfied with the fact that this was their first time together and sensibly refused to enter into a competition with her past.

  He had booked a room in the Hyde Park Hotel in Knightsbridge. The world knows that this establishment now forms part of the Mandarin chain and so, technically, the old name is defunct but the upper classes are slow to alter accepted nomenclature. To them it will be the Hyde Park Hotel at least until their children are in late middle age. The plan was to spend the wedding night there and then fly to Rome at noon the following day. Accordingly the barouche swept them up St James's, down Piccadilly past the Ritz, over Hyde Park Corner, and turned round in front of the Bowater House entrance to the park, to deposit them on the steps of the hotel. As they bowled along, passers-by, tourists and Anglo-Saxons alike, turned to smile and even wave. Probably the connection between carriages and Royal occasions is fixed in the public Pavlovian consciousness. So that she might be undisappointing and because the brilliance of her new state filled her brain with a cloud of sparkling lights, Edith waved tentatively back. Charles, on the other hand, looked straight ahead as if somehow his candidacy for officer material was in question. She understood why. Charles was saddled with that most tedious of all English aristocratic affectations, the need to create the illusion that you are completely unaware of any of your privileges. That cool insouciance, so chic in theory, so crashingly boring in practice, was to ruin many occasions in the future for the pair as Edith suspected, looking at the frozen profile beside her. But this time at least the drive did not last long, certainly not long enough for Edith. Barely fifteen minutes after they had left the reception they were in the foyer of the hotel. It was still only about half past five and Edith wasn't absolutely clear what happened next.

  She thought of suggesting that they stay downstairs and have some tea but since this would betray a total lack of urgency to be alone with Charles (that she was afraid she was feeling), she rejected the idea. They were shown into the Bridal Suite, which they had not requested but was theirs anyway — the difference in price being compliments of the management, following the age-old principle 'To them that hath shall be given' — and there they found their luggage as well as flowers and fruit and more of the bottomless supply of champagne. Then the door shut and they were alone. Married. They stared at each other in silence. Edith fe
lt a slight tremor of panic as the reality of seeing this man more or less every day for the remainder of her life hit her. What on earth were they going to talk about?

  Charles pointed at the bottle. 'Shall I open this?' he said.

  'Honestly I don't think I could. I'm swimming in it already.' She paused. 'I think I'll have a bath.'

  She started to undress as casually as she could with Charles lying on the bed watching her but at the last moment her nerve failed and, still with her bra and pants on, she snatched her dressing gown out of her suitcase and dashed into the bathroom.

  When she came out, half an hour later, Charles was still lying on the bed, reading a newspaper. He had taken off his coat, waistcoat and tie as well as his shoes and socks, and something about the slightly studied relaxation of his pose told Edith that her hour had come. She strolled over to the bed and lay down next to him, naked beneath the gown, and pretended to read the paper over his shoulder.

  'Happy?' he said, without raising his eyes.

  'Mmm,' she replied, wondering how long it was going to take him to get to it. Now that the moment was here, she was suddenly rather anxious. She felt the need to reassure herself about the physical attraction between them. This, after all, was the side of their relationship that had nothing to do with ambition or even shared interest. It was the sexual conjunction that, at this point at least, she was determined was going to be the only one she would know for the rest of her natural life.

  After what seemed an eternity, Charles folded the paper and turned to her. With a deadly earnestness and in absolute silence (which lasted throughout), he started to kiss her as he inexpertly unfastened her dressing gown. She responded as well as she could, trying not to lead. This time when she touched his penis, although he still started like a frightened colt, he didn't actually pull away. And so they lay there, fondling each other through their garments until Charles deemed a suitable period had passed and then he sat up, still in absolute silence, and removed his shirt, trousers and underpants. Edith shrugged off the gown and waited. Charles had quite a good figure, in that he was muscled and covered without being fat, but he had one of those English bodies, white, faintly freckled skin, with a little ginger pubic hair around his groin and none on his chest. His beaky nose and crinkly, public-school hair looked somehow odd on top of an undressed body, as if he had been born in a double-breasted suit and being nude was too raw to be natural. In truth, he seemed more skinned than naked.