'Well…' Woe betide the man who accepts this kind of commission readily. Whatever opinion I might have of Simon's character or morals, I was hardly in a position to act the wise uncle with him.
Lady Uckfield drove full tilt at my hesitation. Her voice resumed more of its normal glib, light tone as the words gushed forth. 'She's bored. That's all there is to it. She's bored and she ought to get up to London more. She ought to see more of her friends. Or have a baby. Or get a job. That's what she needs. As for this boy…' She shrugged. 'He's handsome, he's charming and, above all, he's here. One does these things when one is settling into a new life. They mean nothing. The nuisance is that Eric saw her. He will almost certainly tell and it's our job to make sure no one can corroborate his story.'
I began to see things by her light. Of course, it was all a silly nonsense that was only horrid because it could hurt Charles if he found out. Yes, it was a pity that Eric had seen them. That was the pity. Her charming, even voice beat back the threat of anarchy and storm that had seemed to envelop us for a moment and returned us to the shore. 'I'll do my best,' I said.
'Of course you will, and the film's nearly over anyway. Too sad to be losing you,' she added hastily, remembering herself,
'but all the same…'
I nodded and she started towards the door. Her work was done. She had acted to contain the damage and that had necessitated taking me into her confidence. But I was already her ally. Things might have been worse.
'Lady Uckfield,' I said. She stopped and turned, her hand still resting on the gleaming door knob. 'Don't be too hard on Edith.'
'Of course not,' she laughed. 'You may not believe it but I was young once too, you know.' Then she was gone and I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that she hated her daughter-in-law as fiercely as she would have hated any woman who had made her only son cry.
FOURTEEN
'What on earth was going on?' said Adela as soon as we drove away from the front of the house.
'What do you mean?'
'Well, first of all you two slope off and everyone looks haunted. Then Eric vanishes. Brief calm and then suddenly we're into farce with people running in and out of doors with stricken faces. I, meanwhile, am sitting there throughout with Lord Uckfield who's trying to explain something about trout farming. What happened to you? I thought I was going to have to ring and ask for a bed.' I told her everything of course and we drove on in silence for a while. Adela broke it. 'What can you possibly say to Simon? Unhand this lady? Won't he hit you on the nose?'
'I shouldn't think so. He doesn't look the type.'
'Well?'
I didn't really have an answer for her as I also could not quite envisage how to play this most embarrassing of scenes. And by what right was I even to open my mouth on the subject?
Adela gave me my motive. 'I suppose you'll just have to do your best for poor old Edith. It'll be a shame if she buggers it up after all that effort. And for such a nothing.'
We arrived at the farmhouse to find Simon sitting at the kitchen table nursing a glass of wine. His mood and the mere fact that he had not gone to bed seemed to suggest the desire for an unburdening talk although he could not have guessed that I already knew what he had to unburden. This was a worrying sign. We had already discovered, Bella and I, that Simon liked to talk of his romances, despite an almost constant stream of doting references to his children and their mother languishing at home. I did not then realise that for him the fame abroad was quite as pleasurable as the deed itself and this is a most dangerous characteristic in a married lover of married women. Adela went straight up to her room and I took Simon's proffered drink with a heavy heart. We sat in silence for a moment or two. At last he could curb his impatience no longer.
'Good evening?' he said.
I nodded in a half-hearted fashion. 'Quite. I thought the dinner was pretty filthy. Poor old Bob. He blenched visibly at the bill.' There was another silence. I suppose neither of us was clear about how to get on to the subject that was uppermost in both our minds. This time I tried the opener. 'You didn't come in.'
Simon shook his head. 'There was a bit of an awkwardness with that frightful brother-in-law when we got back. I thought I'd better just hop it.'
So that was it. No wonder Simon wanted to talk about it. Eric had made his presence known. The chances of his keeping his secret were statistically reduced to zero. Eric had made a scene. This, in my experience, generally happens when people want to make a scene. 'I heard about that,' I said.
Simon looked up. 'Oh? Who from? Not from Edith?'
I shook my head. 'From Charles's mother.'
I could see that this was a bit of a facer — as well it might be — but at the same time, while the flushed embarrassment of discovery was spreading over Simon's features, it brought in its wake, in the shy smile that he threw at me, a certain ominous delight in being the central figure in what I soon perceived he saw as a romantic drama. My heart sank even further at the realisation that with his actor's perverse pleasure in crisis, Simon would soon be all set to enjoy this chance of notoriety. 'Does Charles know?'
'Not when I left. Should he? Is there anything to know?'
Simon was not to be had so easily. He laughed gently and shrugged as he helped himself to another tot. I looked as paternal as I could. 'Don't start making a mess, Simon.' But still he only smiled and winked at me with that infuriating sexual confidence of the never-refused who think moral laws are designed for lesser mortals. My only recourse seemed to be some sort of appeal to his better nature. 'Edith is an old friend of mine.'
'I know.'
'And I don't want to see her made unhappy.'
'She's unhappy now.'
There was some truth in this, though much less than either he or Edith knew. 'She's not half as unhappy as she's going to be if you start making some silly little scandal for no better reason than that she's here and you're bored.' Again he smiled and shrugged. Of course I was on a hiding to nothing as few things could have given Simon more pleasure than to be begged to avert the arc-light of his fatal charm from some tender victim. Here was I, pleading with the Great Lord to have pity on a poor damsel. He was thrilled. I tried a new and faintly dishonourable tack. 'What about your wife?'
'What about her?'
'Won't she be upset?'
This, to my delight, did at last make him slightly uncomfortable — or at least irritated. 'Who's going to tell her? You won't.'
This was obviously true as far as it went and for a moment I did wonder if I wasn't over-reacting when I heard a knock on the glass behind me. I turned and to my complete amazement I saw Edith, in an Hermes scarf loosely knotted on her chin, rapping at the window and begging, like Cathy Earnshaw, to be let in from the night. Simon, however, was no Heathcliff and it was I, not he, who jumped up to open the back door.
'What the hell are you doing here?' I said, but she pushed past me and sauntered over to the Aga to warm her hands.
'Don't you scold me as well. I've had enough for one night I can assure you.'
'Does Charles know?'
'Of course. Eric told him.'
'But does he know you're here? And why are you here, for God's sake? Don't make everything worse than it is.'
All this time Simon had neither moved nor spoken. Now, very deliberately he rose from his chair, put down his glass, walked over to Edith and slowly, for my benefit I assume, enfolded her in his arms and bent his head to kiss her with the slow, moist, hungry motion of a modern film star in close-up. He looked as if he were eating her tongue. For a moment I watched their two blond heads rocking against each other and behind them, like the ghosts in Richard Ill's tent, I saw Charles and his mother and the wretched Mrs Lavery whose dreams were being incinerated in a farmhouse kitchen in Sussex as I stood there.
And behind them, the more distant figures of the Cumnors, and old Lady Tenby and her daughters, and all those others who would be enthralled and secretly (or not so secretly) delighted at the ruin that was being enco
mpassed by these two silly people.
'Well?' said Adela, whom I had promised I would report to before turning in. She rolled over in bed, blinking herself into concentration.
'Hopeless,' I said.
'Wouldn't he listen?'
'He's loving it, I'm afraid. Anyway, I didn't say that much. I was just getting started when Edith turned up. She's down there now.'
Adela was quiet for a second. 'Oh,' she said. And then: 'So it is hopeless. Poor Charles.' And she rolled back into her pillow, pulling the covers up around her face.
Some time after this I proposed and was accepted. It was rather a tense period for me, I must confess, as I was inspected by an endless series of my intended's disapproving relations, most of whom were seriously unnerved by the thought of their beloved Adela relying on a stage career in future. 'Well, all I can say is good luck with that artistic temperament,' was the advice she received from a particularly unpleasant aunt. After a couple of months of this sort of thing, I was anxious to end the waiting. We decided to be married in April and, since it is a notoriously unpredictable month, to have a London ceremony.
As Adela remarked, 'Country weddings can be such muddy affairs.' It was a 'Society Event', I suppose, though not quite on the scale of the Broughtons, but even so, anyone who has ever played a central part in a large wedding, let alone a large London wedding with all the paraphernalia it involves, will understand that I had very little time to worry about Edith and her ménage in the months that led up to it. I had asked the Uckfields and the Broughtons and, to my mother-in-law's delight, they had all four accepted. I was comforted by this, in the thick of the chaos of my nuptials, as I assumed it meant that the trouble had passed and the nonsense of an autumn night had been forgotten. Then, about two weeks before the wedding itself, I had a telephone call from Edith. 'Have you invited Simon?' she said.
I understood at once that she was anxious lest there might be an awkwardness and I was able to reassure her. 'No, I haven't. You're all right.' I laughed mildly, so that that hideous evening might be turned the sooner into a shared joke between us.
'Could you?' she said.
The smile left my face, the straw my clutch. 'No, I could not,' I said tersely.
'Why not?'
'You know very well why not.'
There was a pause at the other end of the line. 'Can I ask you a favour?' I didn't answer this as I dreaded to hear it. I was not spared. 'Could we possibly borrow your flat while you're away?'
'No.'
Edith's voice was cold and definite. 'No. Well, I'm sorry to have bothered you.'
'Edith, darling,' I said. This is the kind of thing that always happens just when one is entirely engrossed in some other large event. The night before crucial exams is invariably the moment that the parents of one's friends choose to die or go to prison.
'Of course you can't see Simon here. How could I possibly do that to Charles? Or to Simon's wretched wife for that matter?
Don't be insane, darling, please. I beg you.'
But she was not to be won. With some perfunctory formula words she slid away and the line went dead.
I told Adela and she was not surprised. 'He thinks she can get him into things. That she can open doors. He's Johnny-on-the-make.'
'I don't know how interested he is in all that.'
'He's interested. He wants to be at the Head Table, that one. You'll see.'
'Well, I don't know how much poor old Edith can fix it for him.'
Adela smiled, a trifle coldly I thought. 'She can't. She'll be lucky to get a table in the St James's Club when all this is finished. Stupid fool.'
It was Adela who nudged me to look towards the door when, as we were standing to receive the line of our guests, the footman announced in ringing tones: 'The Marquess and Marchioness of Uckfield and the Earl Broughton,' rolling the words lovingly around his tongue like delicious sweets. The three of them entered.
'Where's Edith?' I said.
Charles shrugged faintly and we let it go. I was, in truth, rather touched that the Uckfields had made the effort to come. As a general rule, such people are long on friendship on their own terms but short on doing anything on yours. I don't actually think Lord Uckfield had any idea why he had been forced to dress up and sacrifice a perfectly good afternoon when he might have been watching racing on the box, but Lady Uckfield, I believe, liked me by this time and also, I suspect, wished to establish a beachhead on Edith's only pre-marriage friend that had made the transition into her new life. They were ushered on through into the reception and we turned back to the unending line of old nannies and relations from the shires.
It is not possible to speak to anyone properly at your own wedding — certainly not at a smart wedding where it is out of the question that the company should do anything as middle class or sensible as sit down to eat. The bride and groom are passed round, like one of those endless trays of nibbling things, for a few words here or there, justifying those overnight journeys down from Scotland or those flights from Paris and New York. Still, Charles did manage to seize me for a moment.
'Can we have lunch when you get back?' he said. I nodded and smiled but avoided discussing the matter since the beginning of one marriage seems a poor place to ruminate over the probable end of another. I must confess I was flattered that by this time Charles obviously thought of me as his friend as well as Edith's, flattered but also vindicated for I certainly was on Charles's side, if sides there must be. Of course, I knew well enough that I was not one of Charles's close pals, but I had the merit of being able to discuss his wife with some real experience of her, which most of his friends, since they had never met her before the engagement, could not.
Adela and I spent a delightful fortnight in Venice and when we got back to the flat we found, along with further piles of wedding presents from Peter Jones and the General Trading Company, a letter from Charles suggesting that I meet him at his club the following Thursday. I accepted. Charles's club was inevitably White's and I accordingly found myself outside its familiar Adamesque entrance at one o'clock on the appointed day.
Of the three smart clubs whose charming eighteenth-century facades dominate St James's, White's is, I would guess most people are agreed, the smartest. It boasts few sleek City arrivistes even among its younger members, perhaps because there is still enough of the gratin left to supply its needs, perhaps because the air is too thin for lesser mortals to breathe and after one or two visits they decide to try for something a little less rich. Having said that, I have always enjoyed White's. I would no more wish to be a member than I would apply to sponsor a polo team but one of the virtues of the English upper-class (and it is only fair to give some credit, alert as I am to their vices) is that when they are gathered together in familiar, congenial surroundings, they are a most relaxed and pleasant bunch. They've all known each other since they could first breathe and, when there is no one near to criticize them for it, they revel in this familiarity of the extended family. At their best, alone together and in a 'safe house', they are polite and unafraid, a charming combination.
I gave my name and asked for Charles at the mahogany booth in the entrance hall but 'his Lordship' had not yet arrived and I was invited to sit and wait for him. Not here the nodding through of strangers into the inner sanctums. But I had hardly had time to read the latest bulletins from the tickertape machine (alas now gone) before Charles clapped me on the shoulder.
'My dear fellow, forgive me. I got stuck.' We went on through the staircase hall to the little bar, where Charles ordered dry sherry for us both. He was looking a good deal more like his old self, I was happy to see, smartly dressed and neatly coiffed.
His crinkly, blond hair in smooth Marcel waves, a tie of some educational or military significance at his throat. 'So, how are you? Busy, I hope.'
I wasn't frightfully, as it happens, but there was a chance of one or two things coming up so I hadn't yet reached the desperate stage that is the occupational hazard of Equity membership.
I muttered away about Adela, the flat, Venice and so on but of course Charles was aching to get started. 'How are things with you?' I asked.
As if in answer he put down his drink. 'Let's go up and get a table,' he muttered, and we started up the staircase.
The dining room of the club is a grand, undisappointing chamber with a high gilded ceiling and long windows overlooking St James's. Against its damask-covered walls hang full-length portraits of erstwhile grandee members, the whole emanating that characteristic of aristocratic solidity that Charles correctly, if subconsciously, believed the mainstay both of his personality and his way of life. We gave our orders as we came in and found ourselves a table for two on the wall away from the windows.
'I think Edith's left me.' The statement was so bald that for a moment I suspected I'd misheard.
'What do you mean "you think"?' I didn't quite see how one could be mistaken about such things.
He cleared his throat. 'Well, perhaps I should say she thinks she's left me.' He raised his eyebrows. I suppose the only way that he felt he could have this conversation at all was by distancing the whole business. As if we were exchanging a piece of gossip about someone else. 'She telephoned this morning. She's rented a flat in Ebury Street. Apparently the idea is for them to set up there together.'
I think the phrase is 'the universe reeled'. My first response, rather unworthily, was that I couldn't believe Edith would be this stupid before the scandal had forced her hand. 'What did she say?'
'Just that they're in love. She's been very unhappy. Nobody's fault, blah, blah, blah… You know. What you'd expect.'
At that moment my potted shrimps arrived, closely followed by Charles's avocado, I tried to use the silence to collect my thoughts but for the life of me I couldn't think of anything sensible to say. I chose badly. 'Who else knows?'
'You sound like my mother.'
At the mention of her name I yearned for Lady Uckfield to take the helm and steer everyone out of this ghastly mess. Not for her, be she never so young, a rented flat in Ebury Street shared with a married actor. 'Does your mother know?'
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