'I know.' I followed her gaze and saw that it had shifted from the cosy scene on the sofa to a far corner where Caroline Chase was listening absorbedly to Simon, apparently, as always, in full flow. Between the groups Charles wandered rather disconsolately, offering refills. 'Poor old Charles. Who's got him at dinner?' The question was more impertinent than I had meant but I suppose I wasn't thinking. At any rate, instead of reprimanding me as she should have, Edith shrugged.
'Who knows? We've got the most ghastly evening ahead.' I looked enquiringly. 'Bob and Annette Watson are taking us all out.'
'That's very nice of them. Why on earth should they?'
Edith did not share my view of things. 'That's not all. They've booked us into Fairburn Hall. Googie's in fits. She's thrilled, of course. She's been dying to see what they've done with it since the de Marneys left and she's never dared admit it.'
Her lack of gratitude at the Watsons' invitation did not surprise me. The plan was, naturally, a frightful prospect to the Broughtons and their ilk. In England one of the saddest mistakes a social climber can make is excessive generosity. It's odd really for what could be more charming? To arrive with presents and treats, to gather up whole house-parties and take them out on the town — what could be nicer than this? And yet these courteous acts are as clear a signal to the Insiders that the would-be benefactor is a newcomer to their world as if they had worn a sign on their hat. Of all these solecisms, that of offering to take people 'out' in the country is perhaps the worst. The English upper-classes do not as a rule leave their houses in the country in the evening except to go to other people's houses. They might be tempted by a country house opera or even the occasional play with a picnic attached, but if they want to eat in a restaurant they do it in the week and in London. Nor do they ever go to 'country house hotels' unless it is on a pilgrimage of personal curiosity. They might visit one because 'I used to spend my summers here when it belonged to my Aunt Ursula', but they would never, on pain of death, book in for dinner or a weekend. One of the saddest aspects of these places is that the gentility promised in the brochures can never, by its very nature, be reflected in the guests.
The Watsons, anxious to ingratiate themselves with Lady Uckfield and to become Broughton 'regulars' had hit on the sure way to render themselves ridiculous to their hostess for ever, as well as providing her with a welcome new source of funny stories. For this privilege they would pay a great deal of money.
Fairburn Hall was a large and ugly house on the other side of Uckfield. It had belonged for several centuries to the ancient if low-achieving family of de Marney, who had finally managed a baronetcy by befriending, of all people, Lloyd George. The de Marney of a particularly unfortunate architectural period in the 1850s had encased a blameless Queen Anne manor house in a hideous, neo-gothic shell, studded with bas-reliefs of the family's triumphant, historical moments. These apparently were few and as a result rather nebulous and un-sourced scenes of 'Gerald de Marney welcoming Queen Eleanor to Fairburn', or 'Philip de Marney taking the colours at Edgehill' gave rise to great hilarity among the Broughtons. I need hardly say there was no love lost between the families and never had been. Technically the de Marneys were the older family and had consequently always tried to assume a lordly manner towards their neighbours. This was absurd of them as the Broughtons, whether the de Marneys liked it or not, were much richer and much grander as they had been for the previous three centuries. A couple of years before this, the current incumbent, Sir Robert de Marney, had given up the unequal struggle, sold Fairburn on a long lease to a large group of 'Leisure Hotels' and moved with his family into the dower house four miles away.
'Do you think we ought to be veiled?' whispered Lady Uckfield, as we climbed out of the cars. She turned to me. 'It was always the vilest house in the world. My mother-in-law used to swear they'd muddled up the plans with Lewes prison and got the wrong one.'
The entrance was through a wide semi-conservatory, with stone flags and odd, quasi-armorial grills at the window, like a rather grand bank. Through this one came into a cumbrous entrance hall. Thick, square Victorian columns stood everywhere, but the decision in the rebuilding not to raise the original ceiling height of the old house gave it the look of some central German under-vault, making one feel like a caryatid. The de Marney crest in loud colours was on every wall and an ornate family tree, framed in gilt, hung over the gas-log fire. Lady Uckfield stared at it. 'They've got the wrong branch,' she said happily.
An immensely important head waiter came towards us and mistaking Bob Watson's nervous enquiry about the reservation for the general tone of the party he attempted a very superior air as he ushered us into what he referred to as the 'withdrawing room'. He was soon disabused.
'What a horrid colour!' said Lady Uckfield, ignoring the chair he was indicating and plumping down onto a sofa instead.
'Too sad, as this was really the only room that was nice at all. It was the music room in the old days although they were tone deaf to a man!' She laughed pleasantly, as the crushed waiter tried to salvage his position by fawning over her for her choice of 'aperitif.
'I think Lady Uckfield would like some champagne,' said Bob loudly, and one or two lacquered heads in the corners of the room looked round. He, in his turn, wanted to get some mileage out of bringing such a distinguished group to this, as he imagined, smart venue and I can't say I blamed him. Heaven knows he was going to pay dearly for it. His tone further flattened the attendant who was sufficiently familiar with the area to realise by now the extent of his initial faux pas. The party was becoming uncomfortable and Charles and Caroline exchanged a quick, edgy look. I found myself longing to defend Bob and his kindness of spirit, but I knew I would be fighting insuperable odds and, coward-like, I seized one of the huge, leather-bound menus when they arrived and hid behind it until the wine was brought with a great flurry of silver and glass and linen. At this moment, to everyone's amazement except possibly Caroline's, Eric leaned forward, plucked a bottle out of its silver-plated, ice-lined nest and spoke, not to Bob but to the waiter:
'Haven't you got any of the ninety-two?'
The waiter shook his head with murmured apologies. Just as Bob's timorousness had at first made us all worthless so far as he was concerned, now Lady Uckfield's presence made us all fine folk indeed.
Eric glowed at his deference. 'Then you shouldn't say it's ninety-two, should you?' He dropped the bottle back into its holder and sat back as the waiter poured.
Across the group Edith caught my eyes and rolled hers.
Bob was fumbling. He knew he faced a bill of something in the region of seven or eight hundred pounds and already the mixture of suppressed giggles and secret smiles was telling him that, mysteriously, his treat was making him not eminent but ridiculous. This was doubly irritating to him as his wife had tried to talk him out of it and had suggested, instead, asking the Broughtons and the Uckfields to dinner at the Ivy in London (which would, of course, have been perfectly acceptable to them).
Charles came to his aid. 'This is delicious,' he said firmly, sipping his wine and looking towards the rest of us.
'Absolutely lovely,' said Adela, and I nodded away.
Actually, it was quite nice but too cold. However, Simon, on this dangerous evening, had clearly decided to go for broke.
Once and for all he was determined to shake off the concept that he was in any sense overawed by the present company.
'Would it be a great bore if I have a whisky?' he said.
'Good idea,' said Eric. 'Me, too.'
The careful cruelty of this was that Bob had already ordered three bottles opened, which the rest of us could not now possibly finish. He was foundering. His wine had been rejected, he had been insulted and yet somehow he had to go on as if everything was going swimmingly. 'Of course!' he smiled broadly. 'What about you, Edith?'
Edith sank back into the over-stuffed, chintz-covered chair and stared her pellucid stare. I could see her gaze trailing over Charles, who was giv
ing her an admonishing look, imploring her to behave. Poor man. These were his wife's friends and yet it was he who was having to work to save the evening. Behind him, Simon stood beaming at her. 'I wouldn't mind some vodka,'
she said. Simon half winked, and they both caught in their smiles before they spilled over into impropriety.
'Fine,' said Bob in a lacklustre voice. He looked around for more trouble but Caroline, with a deliberate gesture, reached across Eric to help herself to a large glass of champagne. The battle-lines were forming.
The food was predictably pretentious, with bonfires going at practically every table. Inadequate portions arranged like cocktail hats followed each other in blank, tasteless succession, fussed over by suspiciously French waiters. The maître d'
would not, by this time, leave us alone and kept dashing up for a review of the current course until Simon finally suggested he might like to take a seat to save himself the bother. Of course we all laughed and of course he was never seen again. In truth the dinner itself was the least awful part of the evening because of Simon. He certainly was on very funny form that night. He could match Annette's stories without challenging her and the pair of them did keep things going. Even Lady Uckfield gave in to the prevailing mood and chuckled away as she toyed with her unsatisfactory and costly dishes.
Charles, on the other hand, was more or less in hell the entire time. He was not quick enough to get the point of most of the anecdotes, let alone tell his own. These were not his kind of people and unusually for him (for he seldom risked the possibility) he was outnumbered. Unlike his father he was not a flirt, unlike his mother he had very little sense of humour.
Caroline tried to rescue him once or twice but she was in a dark mood of her own and in the end it was Adela who got him onto the business of improving the shoot at Feltham. He had apparently only restarted it three years before after a long gap and the topic released some of the pent-up flow within him, but even this had a limited success for when Simon was telling a story about some production he'd been in where the stage manager had filled the bath with boiling instead of cold water, he paused for the punch line and into the silence came Charles's voice: 'The great thing is to leave a wide enough headland of kale, which of course some of the farmers are reluctant to do…'
Simon laughed. 'Well, obviously Charles is fascinated,' he said. He meant it pleasantly enough, I think, and all would probably have passed on if Edith had not spoken up at that moment: 'Oh, Charles for God's sake, shut up about your bloody shoot.'
I imagine she thought that in some way this would be a joke too and we would all smile but it came out wrong. Her voice was harsh and I suppose unloving in a way that, particularly in the presence of Charles's parents as we were, made a strange and embarrassing tremor at the table. I saw Annette catch Bob's eye as I felt Adela nudge my foot.
Charles looked up, hurt rather than angry, like a puppy who has been smacked for some other dog's pee. 'Am I being very boring?' he said.
There was a faint pause and then Eric, either misguidedly thinking to be amusing or, more probably in his case, just in order to be unkind, said, 'Yes, you are. Better have some more to drink.' He started to pour wine into Charles's glass but Charles shook his head.
'Actually, I don't know why but I'm terribly tired.' He turned his harassed eyes to Bob. 'Would you forgive me if I skipped the coffee and headed on home?'
Bob knew by now, long before he had reached for his plastic, that the evening had been the most crashing flop and so he shook his head merrily. 'Of course not! You go. We'll be fine.'
Charles smiled wanly and stood up. 'Well then, I think I will be off if I may. We've lots of cars, haven't we? Will you be all right, darling?'
Now it was perfectly plain to everyone present that Edith ought to have jumped to her feet, said that she, too, was tired and left with her husband. Normally this is exactly what she would have done but this evening some kind of devilry had got into her. Or maybe it was simple lust. At any rate, she neither moved nor spoke and it was Simon's voice that broke the silence:
'Don't worry about Edith. I'll bring her home.'
Charles looked at him and for a second they were what the Americans call 'eyeballing' each other. It might seem that Charles, rich and titled as he was, and really not that bad-looking in his 1930s-ish way, held all the aces, which of course in the long view he did, but Simon Russell, feeling successful and busy and as handsome as a man can be, bristled or rather shone with charismatic confidence that night. To all the onlookers at the table Charles paled before him and I at least felt a pang of real pity for this man who had everything. Obviously, looking back, I know that Simon had the confidence of a man in love whose love is returned and Charles conversely had the fear of a man facing ruin but even without that knowledge the figure of Russell, clad in his waisted blue velvet coat, eyes and hair aglow, looked like the embodiment of some unconquerable force in a mythological painting. I say this that one may perhaps be less hard and more forgiving of Edith. Having taken in the tableau for a moment, it was Lady Uckfield who spoke.
'That's very kind of you, Mr Russell. Are you sure?' She broke the mood further by rising and forcing the company to their feet. 'Am I leading the ladies out? Or do we all go through together, here?'
Even in this supreme moment of face-saving she could not resist pointing up the fact that she thought this place quite extraordinary and so, presumably, not governed by the normal rules of her existence. I have said before that I came to admire Lady Uckfield a good deal and this was one of the moments that underpinned my view of her. She had witnessed her son made a fool of, she had seen him dismissed by his wife, she was well aware of the danger in the air from Simon's offer and yet she would not have revealed any of these things for worlds. She would have cut out her tongue rather than give anyone the impression that she thought it a bad idea for Edith to travel home alone in the dark with Simon. And yet she would have given one hundred thousand pounds then and there to have Russell removed from her sight for ever. If Edith had only had her mother-in-law's control, there would have been no scandal of any kind, then or later.
Back in the horrible 'withdrawing room' Lady Uckfield beckoned to me to sit beside her. If she felt uneasy, she did not betray it with the slightest flicker. 'You must let me congratulate you on your choice.'
'You're pleased for me, then.'
'Well, as your friend I'm pleased but as a hostess I'm furious.' I smiled because she spoke the truth. She would forgive me the inconvenience of ceasing to be a single man but only because of the 'rightness' of the thing. 'When will you be married?' I explained that while I had every reason to believe I would be successful, it was not all quite settled yet. I imagined it would be five or six months. 'And what about children? Have you thought about that? I'm an old woman so I can ask.'
I shrugged. 'I don't know really. We both want them but I can't help feeling that the timing is rather up to the wife, isn't it?
After all, my bit's rather easy.'
Lady Uckfield laughed. 'It certainly is. But don't wait too long. I hope Charles and Edith don't.' She looked me in the eye as she said this because of course we both knew that they had already waited too long. If Edith was now fretting over some golden head in the nursery or indeed if she was simply big with child, none of the threatened nightmare would be happening. 'I quite agree,' I said.
THIRTEEN
I had wondered, when Simon made his offer to escort Edith home, whether his plot would be foiled by finding that he had to take various others with them, but as soon as I emerged from the house with Adela I saw that this would not be the case: the whole back seat of his car was stuffed with a pair of chairs and what looked like an assortment of gardening tools. By my side I could feel Lady Uckfield taking in the same fact. My guess is that she had intended to join her daughter-in-law in the shabby Cortina, but, if so, it was not to be. I offered her and Lord Uckfield a place in Adela's Mini and, with a glance at Eric, who had brought some sort of Tonka Toy/
Range Rover, they accepted. Lady Uckfield and I squeezed into the back seat, leaving Lord Uckfield and Adela in front. Eric gestured to them impatiently but in her sublime way Lady Uckfield affected not to notice. We drove off, leaving Bob and Annette to the tender mercies of Eric's red-faced driving.
'I hope he isn't stopped,' said Lord Uckfield.
Lady Uckfield made a slight moue with her mouth. 'Oh well,' she said.
We travelled in silence for a bit, all, I imagine, thinking of Simon and Edith whose car was nowhere in sight.
Lady Uckfield spoke again. 'Aren't those places too extraordinary? Who do you think goes to them?'
'Isn't it these whad'y'a call "yuppies"?' Lord Uckfield spoke in inverted commas, pleased to be so up to the minute.
'Well, it can't only be yuppies. Are there enough of them? There can't be that many round here. Americans too, I suppose.
So sad, really.'
'Oh, I don't know,' said Adela. 'I'd rather see them as hotels than council offices or pulled down altogether.'
'I suppose so.' Lady Uckfield nodded doubtfully. In truth, she'd rather have seen them filled with the same well-mannered, rich people who'd lived in all these houses a hundred years ago. Even the ones whom, like the de Marneys, she disliked. For her there was no merit in the changes the twentieth century had wrought. Time had blurred her memory so that like the old recalling only the sunny days of childhood, she could think of nothing harsh or mean in the England of her beginnings. I found her views interesting. Even if her vision of the past was not quite as inaccurate or outlandish as Jeremy Paxman would have it, still Lady Uckfield's beliefs were rare by the closing years of the twentieth century. She had that absolute faith in the judgement of her own kind, seldom seen since 1914. No doubt it was common enough before then, which must have made Edwardian society such a philosophically relaxing place to be. If one were an aristocrat.
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