Snobs: A Novel

by Julian Fellowes

  'Is he working now?'

  'He's about to do a play in Bromley. A revival of Rebecca. Apparently they're hoping it might come into the West End.'

  'Edith, it'll be a cold day in hell when a revival of Rebecca comes into London from Bromley.'

  'Well, that's what they've told him.'

  'They say such things for two reasons. One is to tempt you into being in it, and two, so that you have something slightly less pathetic to tell your friends when they ask you what you're doing. This is my world, remember.'

  She nodded slightly, 'I imagine that's why Charles has chosen you to talk to me. You're to take the gilt off the gingerbread and show me the dingy lowlife that lies beneath. He's given up trying to remind me of the glories of Broughton although I dare say I've got all that to look forward to when Googie gets in on the act.' She shivered in mock dread.

  I felt rather slighted. 'I don't see why I shouldn't remind you of the glories of Broughton,' I said. She shrugged. Suddenly I was irritated by her air of insouciance. I knew, better than most, the effort that had gone into netting Charles and I was damned if I was going to witness Edith playing the part of a jaded aristocrat coming to the end of an arranged marriage.

  'Come off it,' I said, driving back the waitress who was approaching with our first courses. 'You loved it. You loved every minute of it. All those cringing shop assistants and sucking-up hairdressers. All that "yes, milady, no, milady". You'll miss it, you know.'

  She shook her head. 'No, I won't. You know better than anyone that I didn't grow up with it.'

  'It's precisely because you didn't grow up with it that you'll miss it so severely.' I sighed. 'You're in for a terrific setting down, I'm afraid.'

  'You don't sound afraid,' she said. 'You sound thrilled.' She took a sip of her Perrier as the plates were laid before us.

  'And if Simon becomes a star? What then? Aren't more people interested in meeting a star than some boring old lord?'

  It was then that I perceived that Edith, in the full flush of something akin to love, had made two tremendous miscalculations. Firstly, in weighing up the relative merits of aristocracy and stardom she had assumed that the benefits that would accrue to her, as partner, would be roughly equivalent. In fact, nothing could be further from the truth. The wife of an earl is, after all, a genuine countess. When people meet her it is not solely because they see her as a route to her husband.

  Better still, if the family she has married into still possesses its estates, as the Broughtons did, then the landed peer offers his wife a mini-kingdom where she may reign as queen. On the other hand, the wife of a star is… his wife. Nothing more. If she is cultivated by people it is usually only so that they may ingratiate themselves with her husband. He has no land where she may reign. His kingdom is the studio or the stage where she has no place and where in fact, on her rare visits, she is in the way, an unprofessional among working people. She is excluded from the shared jokes between her husband and his workmates, she holds no interest even for his agent except as a method of controlling him. At dinner her opinions only irritate the other professionals present. Finally and worst of all, while a divorced peeress faces the world and the search for a new husband with a dented but legal title, the divorced wife of a star has returned absolutely to square one. As many Hollywood wives have had to learn before now.

  Edith's second miscalculation was simpler. The comparison was false. Charles was a lord. Simon was not a star. Nor was he, in my opinion, very likely to become one. I felt myself becoming caustic. 'What makes you think so well of Simon's prospects?'

  'You're very acid this morning. Anyway,' she looked at me with a real expression of appeal and I felt myself softening a little, 'the simple fact is I love him. I don't know whether he's worth it, perhaps he isn't, but I do. And there we are. You wouldn't want me to deny the first genuine feeling I've ever had, would you?'

  Part of me wanted to scream yes into her stupid ear but I could see that was not what the moment called for. Poor Edith.

  She was probably right when she said this passion for Simon was the first real emotion she had ever felt. That was precisely why she knew so little of what she was going through. She never guessed that after a year, however lovely the sex might be, it would no longer obscure from her the life they were leading together. Besides, I knew the strength of the ambition that lurked below Edith's placid surface. Modern psychology constantly harps on the dangers of suppressing one's true sexual nature. It seems to me that it is quite as dangerous to give one's sexual nature free rein and suppress one's worldly aims. Edith was, au fond, the ambitious child of an ambitious mother. Quite unconsciously, she had begun to defend her defection by assuming Simon's eventual stardom and wealth. In her mind's eye she already saw herself at a premiere in white fox (or whatever the glamour equivalent is in these ecological days), blowing a kiss to the waiting crowds and sweeping into a stretch limo with a motorcycle escort.

  'Darling Edith,' I tried a softer tone, 'I'm not here to lecture you on your morals. I just want to be sure you understand that the likelihood of Simon being able to give you anything approximate to the life you have tasted since your marriage is more or less nil.'

  'Well, hurrah for that,' said Edith.

  We were done. For the rest of lunch we gossiped about various topics. Moving into the stage world she had of course crossed paths with a few people I knew so we had a new field for our malice. As we were leaving she asked after Adela. I said she was well. 'And madly disapproving, I suppose?'

  'Well, she'd hardly be madly approving. Who is?'

  'She should have married Charles. She'd have stuck to him through thick and thin.'

  'Am I supposed to think badly of her for that?'

  She smiled and ruffled my hair. 'You've earned your living in chaos and married into the system. I've been imprisoned in the system. Can you blame me if I yearn for a bit of chaos?'

  We parted amicably enough. I telephoned Charles who was grateful and sounded more resigned, I thought. At any rate about a week later it hit the papers so the chance of sorting everything quietly was gone. Adela laid Nigel Dempster's column before my breakfast eyes and I studied the laughing, bosomy picture of Edith that had been selected. There was a more sombre one of Charles and a perfectly terrible 'cad' shot of Simon, which was presumably a still from some television show.

  It was clear from the illustrations and the headline — 'the Countess and the Showboy' that Dempster had already chosen his side. In fairness to him, both pragmatism and decency seemed (for once) to favour the same team and I couldn't see Edith picking up many supporters.

  The story itself was a moderately accurate account of the meeting at Broughton with a dignified quote from Simon's wife that did her credit.

  'Really!' Adela was always curiously unforgiving about this sort of mess. 'Stupid fools!'

  I don't know why she was so offended when people appeared to let their hearts rule their heads. After all, she had chosen to marry me, which her mother, for one, had thought a choice reckless to the point of lunacy.

  'Why are you so cross?' I said. 'I think it's all jolly sad.'

  'Sad for Charles and for that wretched woman with her children. Not sad for them. They're just wreckers.'

  Once Dempster had opened the floodgates, Edith was predictably savaged by those very journalists who had taken such pains to ingratiate themselves with her as a bride only months earlier. The timing didn't help. It was during the period of disenchantment with John Major's government, when New Labour was performing the Dance of the Seven Veils before an increasingly bewitched electorate, and this tale of high corruption suited the public mood exactly. So there were critical columns from Lynda Lee-Potter on the right and snide disparagement from Private Eye on the left. Edith the self-made success story had been replaced by Edith the Social Climber to end all, her greedy, grasping ways apparently a reflection of the heartless society Mrs Thatcher had created. Like the Hamilton scandal or the Spencer divorce, it was soon clear
that the actual events and personalities had ceased to have much significance and instead it was simply what the papers decided they stood for that counted. Predictably, it was a nightmare for the Uckfields, who were completely of that school where a respectable woman's name only appears in print three times: hatch, match and despatch — that is to say, when she is born, when she marries and when she dies. Finding their daughter-in-law criticised in column headlines was like being stripped naked and whipped in a public square and if it was ghastly for them it was really horrible for Charles. Slightly illogically, since the press was already limbering up for the Blairocracy that was then in training, they decided that Charles, despite being a worthless aristocrat, was the innocent party (probably because there was no other way of telling the story) but even so, to see his wife's adultery gloated over in newsprint and magazines was a kind of martyrdom for him. The more they telephoned Broughton, urging him to tell 'his side', the more invaded and violated Charles felt. The truth was his horror of scandal was not an affectation but a deeply held belief and here he was in the middle of one. He was being punished and he hadn't done anything wrong. This at least was Charles's view of the whole hideous episode and I do not think it was unjust.

  After this circus had been played out for some weeks, it transpired that I had accepted an invitation for both of us to a supper party at the home of an actress I knew who had recently played Simon's mother in a television thriller. I thought there was every likelihood that the lovers might be there.

  Adela was very cool when I told her. 'Well, I'm not going to flounce out of the room or cut her dead if that's what you're worried about.'

  'I'm not worried. I'm just telling you they might have been invited. I think it's desirable to avoid publicly taking sides.'

  'You need have no fear on that score,' she said witheringly. 'However,' she added, giving an unusually searching look in the glass and picking up her lipstick in real earnest, 'I'm not going to kiss her and wish her every happiness either.'

  As it happened, I was right and Edith and Simon were on the guest list for that evening. Edith told me later she hadn't really wanted to go as they had been out every night since the scandal broke but Simon was insistent. He suffered from that common illusion among disappointed actors that it is good to be 'seen' at things. The truth is that it is good to be employed.

  Whether one is seen at parties is immaterial. However, he had acquired a newsworthy mistress and he probably wanted to get some mileage out of her. If I'm honest and at this distance, I suspect Simon was sorry it had not all been managed without her leaving Charles. That said, since the breach had happened, he would have wanted to profit from the publicity.

  Simon Russell was one of those actors whose initial progress had seemed to point inexorably toward a stardom that, somehow, the years had never quite delivered. In the early days he had been given the lead in a series opposite a popular female star but the show had failed. Then he had landed a good part in a Hollywood sequel, which had died at the box office.

  And gradually the spotlight had shifted and slid away to those newer, younger, blonder men who seemed to arrive in such limitless supply. He was good — or good enough — and, as I have said, wonderful looking, especially when well photographed, and it could all still have happened for him but, by the point of our story, there was no time to lose. And now, most unexpectedly, his private life had put him into print. Edith had made him a topic.

  As for his wife and children, I think it would be wrong to say he didn't worry about them. He did. As much as he was able.

  She, Deirdre, had done her best for him and he really loved the kids, but I suppose it had all become a bit dreary over the last few years and so terribly the same. Besides, it was obvious when you saw them together (which we did a couple of times during the early days of the filming at Broughton) that Deirdre had ceased to think of him as a romantic figure and had begun to treat him more and more as a kind of overgrown, recalcitrant boy. He wanted worship and what he got was someone telling him to eat his greens. Of course, I wasn't sure how much unmixed adoration he would be able to count on from Edith. Or for how long.

  ===OO=OOO=OO===

  'Darling, please… we must go…' It was quite unconscious but Simon had fallen into the habit of dealing with Edith in a wheedling tone, a cross between a lounge lizard and a travelling salesman. 'I hate to be naff but you have to get used to the idea that I earn my living. I'm not Charles swanning around giving orders at the Home Farm. I have to be out there. I have to remind people that I exist.'

  She sat before the little dressing table in their dreary bedroom, frowning with concentration as she studied her reflection. It did seem rather naff really. Edith was hating her black celebrity. Every time some 'friend' rang her with the news that yet another journalist had taken a swipe at her ('I thought I ought to tell you, darling, before you read it unawares,' the voice would gloat), her heart would sink anew. She wanted fame in a way but fame that brought status and conferred glamour, not this awful washing of dirty linen. She even caught herself feeling sorry for her parents-in-law when she thought of the papers that were probably being edited by Charles or the servants before the Uckfields could set eyes on them. Poor Charles… how was he coping with it all, poor dear? And these frightful parties that Simon kept wanting to take her to. Could it be so necessary to keep chatting up these weird representatives from another planet? She had been too long a Broughton to be able to throw off (easily anyway) the notion that Simon's crowd was a sort of joke — useful to enliven a party but not quite right for every day.

  'Why?' she said.

  He watched her painting her face with care and artistry. He knew what she was thinking but he didn't much care. If she wanted to go back among her old world rather than spend all their time in his, well, that was fine so far as he was concerned.

  In fact, he was becoming the teeniest bit impatient to get started on some of her gang. She had introduced him to a few Fulham Sloanes, but that wasn't what he had in mind as her contribution at all. Where she dreamed of shepherding him past the Press into his trailer on the Universal lot, he saw himself in tweeds, a gun on his arm, a welcome guest at other houses in the Broughton mould where he would flirt with other great ladies and be taken up by other great families. All of this his alliance with Edith would bring about. He did not grasp, perhaps because she did not yet either, that the great world was preparing to shut its doors on little Edith. From now on she would be condemned to the company of a few divorced wives of younger sons, eking out their alimony selling ugly jewellery or writing gossip columns for unread giveaway magazines.

  She put down her mascara. 'Who is this woman tonight, anyway?'

  'Fiona Grey.'

  'Never heard of her. Have I met her?'

  'No, I don't think so but you do know her. She was the girl in the film about the confidence trickster. When he fell off the train. On television last week. Michael Redgrave was the policeman.'

  'Never heard of him, either.' Simon winced. 'She must be a thousand.'

  'She's about seventy.' Actually Simon was very flattered to have been invited by Miss Grey. For this was the other side of his schizophrenic ambition. While part of him wanted Edith to get him into the world of the 'nobs', the rest of him, in almost direct contradiction, longed to be taken seriously as an actor, by the kind of actors that other actors take seriously, and just such a one was Fiona Grey. She had played Juliet opposite Gielgud in her youth and Lady Teazle opposite Olivier. Now, when she appeared on television it was usually some sort of an event — a series directed by Peter Hall or written by Melvyn Bragg — and she was invariably mentioned lovingly in English stars' autobiographies.

  Theatre folk are much given to making claims for the classlessness of their world but the truth is that there is a rigidly structured class system within the business. It is only classless in the sense that this system is based on different values to that of the outside world. Birth may mean nothing but success is all. And not just su
ccess but the right kind of success. Simon Russell was acutely aware that, even when he had tasted his little helping of fame, he had never come close to doing work that was 'rated' by his fellow members of Equity and, secretly, it pained him.

  When actors tell television interviewers that they don't mind what the critics say so long as the public enjoys what they do, they are lying. Few actors care anything for the public's opinion when set against the verdict of the critics and their peers. To be valued and given status behind the proscenium arch is their goal. If it can be accompanied by public adulation, fame and money — so much the better. At the core of the business is a clique whose pre-eminence in 'correct' work is unassailable, and Simon had ever longed to be included in it. The stars and directors, the writers and designers who count among this number patronise all but the most tumultuous public stardom. Their names may be linked to many causes, their interview manner and (certainly) their clothes may seem like a rejection of distinction, but the fact remains they form an elite whose exclusivity rivals that of the noblesse d'épée at the court of Versailles. Simon ached to be a member of this golden group who always get good reviews from Time Out and are never off the list at BAFTA.

  His dreams were not realistic. On this particular evening, for example, he'd only been invited because he was in the papers.

  Despite their high-sounding principles, these players share one characteristic with their Hollywood brethren: they love to be with famous people. If they lunch with Labour politicians, they like them to be front bench Labour politicians, if they march in a cause, they like to march next to Ian McKellen or Anita Roddick, not some obscure enthusiast from Harlow. But if Miss Grey had taken Simon up because he was In The News, she was incurious about his talent.

  ===OO=OOO=OO===

  The party was in a house in Hampstead, which seemed to Edith to have taken about a year to get to and which, from the street anyway, did not appear to be worth the effort. Inside, every trace of the labourer, whose domestic arrangements it was designed to house in the 1890s, had been swept away in a sea of gleaming wooden floors and concealed lighting. There were knots of earnest discussion in the large living room, which opened off the hall, but the loudest noise was, inevitably, coming from the kitchen downstairs. Adela and I were standing by the stove, surrounded by bowls of pulses and pasta interlarded with strange creatures from the deep, when they came in. I felt Adela nudge me with her elbow as she went on talking animatedly to the unemployed designer we had got stuck with.