They start to inch their way into the County. They are just beginning to make a little headway with the Sir William Fartleys of this world when, bang, a scandal erupts. Suddenly Edith, their friend, the woman they first invited down to these parts (for one may be sure they had made no secret of the role they had played), runs off with an actor, disgraces the family, lets down poor, darling Charles. Exeunt David and Isabel Easton.
I think one would have to be very hard-hearted indeed not to feel some sympathy for them, poor things, even if their goal was a worthless one. It is easy to laugh at the pretensions of others — particularly when their ambitions are trivial — but most of us have a thorny path of it in some area of our lives, which is not worth the importance we give it. I suppose it is hard to live in a small society and to be obliged to accept that one is excluded from the first rank of that little group. This is what drives so many socially minded people back to the towns where the game is more fluid and up for grabs. On top of which the Eastons had come, at least in their own minds, so near the prize…
David continued. 'I'm afraid the simple truth is that our dear Edith has behaved most fearfully badly.'
We all, including Isabel, greeted this with a slight silence. Even Adela (who, I knew, most thoroughly agreed with this assessment) seemed reluctant to weigh in with David in Edith's absence. 'I don't know,' I said.
'Really!' David was quite indignant. 'I'm surprised to hear you defending her.'
'I'm not defending her exactly,' I said. 'I'm just saying that one doesn't "know". One never knows anything about other people's lives. Not really.'
This is a truism but it isn't completely true. One does know about other people's lives. And I, in fact, knew quite a lot about Edith's and Charles's lives but, even if I was guilty of a certain dishonesty, there was some truth in what I said. I am not convinced that one ever knows quite enough to come down with a full condemnation.
Isabel entered with her peace-making hat. 'I think all David means is that we felt so sorry for poor Charles. He didn't seem to deserve any of it. Not from where we were sitting anyway.'
We all agreed with this but it was nevertheless perfectly obvious that David hoped to be able to ditch Edith and by demonstrating his indignation to someone who would report it to the Broughton household, he believed he would earn points and end up back on their list. Or on their list, full stop, since he wrongly thought he had penetrated the citadel during Edith's reign. In this I think he was mistaken for two reasons. The first was that he was simply not Charles's cup of tea. The English upper classes are, as a rule, not amused by upper-middle-class facsimiles of themselves. This brand of arriviste has all the dreariness of the familiar with none of the cosiness of the intimate. On the whole, if they are to fraternise outside their set they choose artists or singers or people who will make them laugh. But the second reason was more personal to Charles. I had a feeling that he would not admire David for attempting to abandon Edith and her cause, however he, Charles, had been treated.
At any rate, following both David's urgings and Adela's original suggestion, I did indeed telephone Broughton that night.
Jago, the butler, answered and told me that Charles was in London but when I was about to sign off there was the sound of an extension being lifted and Lady Uckfield came on the line.
'How are you?' she said. 'I ran into your pretty wife the other day.' I said I knew. 'Is there any chance of seeing you down here in the future? I do hope so.' She spoke with the intimate urgency, with that voice of a Girl With A Secret, that I had come to associate with, and enjoy about, her social manner.
'In actual fact we are here. Staying with the Eastons. I just rang to see if Charles was down.'
'Well, he should be back tomorrow night. What are you doing for dinner? I don't suppose you can get away?' She made the heartless request without the glimmer of a qualm. Did she know that David would give his life's blood to be included among her intimates? Probably.
'Not really,' I said.
Her tone became even more conspiratorial. 'Can't you talk?'
'Not really,' I said again, glancing over to where David stood by the fireplace watching me like a sparrow hawk.
'What about tea? Surely you can manage that?'
'I should think so,' I answered, still rather non-committally.
'And bring your nice wife.' She rang off.
David was bitterly disappointed that the call had not resulted in the general invitation that had been his unspoken plan. He suggested rather grumpily ringing back and asking the Uckfields to dinner instead but Isabel, always more reasonable, prevented him. 'I expect they want to have a bit of a chat about Edith and everything. Who can blame them?' In conclusion, deciding perhaps that since he had asked us down to re-establish relations with the Great House there wasn't much point in preventing us from doing so, he agreed that we should go for tea but carry with us an invitation for a drink on the Sunday morning.
EIGHTEEN
There were about six or seven people staying the weekend, which was par for the course with the Broughtons. I recognised Lady Tenby, who nodded at me quite pleasantly and a cousin of the family whom I had met with Charles and Edith in London a couple of times. I did not then know that there was any special significance in Clarissa Marlowe's presence but we did both notice that she was very proprietary in her manner, worrying about whether we were comfortable or had a sandwich or whatever and I suppose in retrospect that marked her out from an ordinary guest. The others, men in corduroys and sweaters, girls in skirts and walking shoes, barely looked up from their respective tasks, reading, gossiping, stroking the dogs, making toast at the glowing fire, as we came in. The Uckfields, by contrast, could not have been more solicitous. They asked our news, chatted about the dress show, discussed some film they had seen me in, fetched crumpets, topped up tea-cups until it must have been as plain to the other occupants of the room as it was to us that we were about to figure in some Master Plan.
The normal manner one has come to expect from hosts and fellow guests alike in an English country house is a state of moderately amiable lack of interest. The guests loaf about, reading magazines, going for walks, having baths, writing letters, without making any great social demands on each other. Only when eating — and even then only really at dinner — are they expected to 'perform'. This lack of effort, this business of people barely raising their heads from their books to acknowledge one's entry into a room, may seem rude to the foreigner (indeed it is rude), but I must confess it brings with it a certain relaxation. They make no effort to be polite to you and you therefore are not required to make any effort to be polite to them.
In fact, when a great fuss is made of someone in a house party it is almost invariably because they have been recognised as an
'outsider' or at the very least someone with a terminal illness on whom extra energy must be expended. For everyone to jump to their feet and gush is therefore more or less an insult to the recipient.
Adela and I, however, did not read any kind of social 'set-down' in the lathering we were receiving. We simply understood that a favour was about to be asked. Consequently, when Lady Uckfield wondered if I would like to see her sitting room, which had just been decorated and which, apparently, we had discussed at some time in the past, I got to my feet at once. My wife was included in the invitation but something in Lady Uckfield's manner told her that what was wanted was me on my own and since we were both dying to know what was going on, she opted to stay with Lord Uckfield and have some more tea to precipitate the expected intimacy.
The sitting room in question was quite far from the rooms I knew and was situated in one of the wings, separated from the main block by a curving corridor from which the windows looked across the park. Once reached it was revealed as a charming and elegant nest, displaying Lady Uckfield's sure touch for gemüchtlich, fussy grandeur. It was quite a large room, with walls upholstered in rose damask and pretty chairs covered in delightful chintzes. Little japanned bureaux, pain
ted bookcases and delicate inlaid tables stood about, all littered with the debris of the aristocratic rich, flowers, bits of Meissen, pretty lamps, miniatures, bowls of dried lavender, enamelled candlesticks, small paintings on carved stands, and, of course, on her main desk (a handsome, ormolu-mounted bureau plat, which sat sideways to the wall), a mass of papers and invitations and official requests. A day bed upholstered in buttoned moiré was placed at right angles to the little fire, which twinkled and crackled in the leaded and polished grate. Above the mantelshelf, where china figures and snuff-boxes jostled with chewed dog toys, a knitted rabbit and postcards from friends in Barbados and San Francisco, was a pastel by Greuze of an earlier Lady Broughton. It was, in other words, the definitive HQ of a Great Lady.
'How nicely you've done it,' I said.
But Lady Uckfield had forgotten on what excuse she had brought me here and just waved me to the armchair on the other side of the fire from the day bed as she sat down with a grave expression.
'Have you seen Edith lately?'
'Not lately, no. Not since Adela saw her at the dress show.'
'I see,' she said. She was silent for a moment. In truth I had never before seen her uncomfortable but that is certainly what she was at this moment.
'How's Charles?'
She answered with a shrug of the mouth. 'I want to ask you something. I know that Edith is still with what's-his-name.
Does she intend to marry him?'
I was rather taken aback. 'I don't know. He isn't divorced yet — I'm not even sure he's started the whole process.'
She nodded to herself. 'Charles has told me she's planning to wait the two years and go for a non-contested separation.'
She paused and I sort of nodded back. This was news to me but it didn't seem such a bad idea, if only because it would hardly be headlines by that time. 'The thing is, Tigger and I are not behind this plan…'
She hesitated, more awkward than I had ever seen her. 'We feel that the sooner Charles can draw a line under the whole thing and start his life afresh, the better for him. We hate the idea of everything dragging on and on and his never really feeling that anything's over.' She looked at me quizzically. 'You do see what we mean?'
'I suppose I do.'
'You may not know it but it has cut him up most dreadfully. He's not a great one for showing his feelings but he was in the most frightful state, I can tell you.'
I nodded. I had only to think of that scene in his study when he had cried in front of me to believe this implicitly. Charles was one of those men, much less rare than modern women's magazines would have us believe, who make their choice in marriage and then never question it. They do not ration the commitment they give their wives because it never occurs to them that they will have to regroup their emotions before death separates them — and even then they tend to assume that it will be the husband who will go first. I do not necessarily think that he would have been incapable of infidelity. On some farming convention in America, during some shooting party in Scotland, who knows what could happen? But I would say that he would have been incapable of instigating the end of his own marriage. Having chosen Edith, he had given her all the love of which he was capable and, as a natural sequitur, all the trust. Neither of these would have been very interesting in their quality but they would have been given in great quantity. Of that I am sure. No, I was not surprised to hear that he had been in 'a frightful state'.
Lady Uckfield had not finished. 'We are so desperately hoping he can rebuild his life and we really feel that he has a chance of that now.'
'Has he met someone else?'
She inclined her head to one side without answering and I knew he had. Or that they hoped he had. Minutes later I had worked out it was probably Clarissa.
'The point is if he was free he could plan in those terms. Now he can't. The past is pulling and pulling at him until I don't believe he can think straight.'
Now this was an intriguing choice of phrase. In what way was Charles not 'thinking straight'? She watched me, waiting for some acknowledgement.
'How can I help?' I said. I wanted to find out what Lady Uckfield had in store for me. I knew it would be something big because it is an absolute truth that for a woman of her type to discuss any aspect of the intimate life of her family with anyone other than a life-long, contemporary friend of similar rank (and that only rarely) was a kind of torture. Whether she liked me or not was irrelevant. This interview was agony for her.
'Can you talk to Edith? Can you ask her if she'll let Charles divorce her now? Of course, in the past that would have been an uncomfortable way round but do people think like that these days? I don't believe they do — and you must assure her that it would make no difference to the settlement. None at all.' She was gushing to cover her own embarrassment. And no wonder. This was a vulgar request if ever I heard one. Perhaps the only vulgar thing I ever knew to issue from her lips. My surprise must have shown on my face. 'You must think this a very tiresome commission.'
'I don't know that tiresome is the word I'd have chosen.' My tone was a little severe but Lady Uckfield was enough of a lady to know that she had transgressed her own code. She took the reprimand gracefully as one who deserved it.
'Of course, it's an awful thing to ask.'
'You do Edith an injustice,' I said. 'She wouldn't think about the money.' This was true. I do not think it ever occurred to Edith to take anything off Charles beyond a few thousand to give her a breathing space. It was enough that he had paid the rent in Ebury Street and left her able to cash cheques in this interim. What Lady Uckfield did not understand was that Edith was fully conscious of having behaved badly. People like the Uckfields can be slow, indeed unable, to realise that 'honour' is not a perquisite of their own class. They have heard so often about the materialism of the middle classes and the grace and self-sacrifice of their own kind that they have come to believe these two fictions equally.
She raised her eyebrows slightly. 'I suppose that might be true.'
'It is true,' I said. 'You do not like Edith and because you don't like her you underestimate her.'
At this she unbent slightly. She did not deny what I had said and when she answered me she spoke with a slight smile.
'You are right to defend her. You first came to this house as her friend — and you are right to defend her.'
'I will tell Edith what you've said but I really cannot do much more than that.'
'You see, we can't have Charles bringing a case and her contesting it or challenging it in any way. We must know that won't happen. You see that?'
'Of course I do.' Which I did. 'But I can't advise her. She wouldn't listen to me if I tried.'
'You'll tell me what she says?'
I nodded. Our interview was over. We stood and had almost left the room when Lady Uckfield clearly felt impelled to convince me further of the urgency of her request.
'You see, Charles is so dreadfully unhappy. It can't go on, can it? It's so terrible for us. Seeing him like this.'
In answer I put my arm round her shoulders and gave her a squeeze. It was considerably more intimate an action than anything I had attempted before. Perhaps it was a sign that we were somehow bonded by this awful mess of tears and waste.
At any rate, she didn't object. Nor did she assume that faintly perceptible stiffness that her kind of English women use at such a moment to demonstrate that some unwarranted liberty has been taken.
We went back to the drawing room where Adela, in an effort to escape from Tigger's meticulously outlined plans for the South Wood, was attempting to teach one of the dogs to balance a biscuit on its nose. She looked up when we came in and, since she was burning to hear what had happened (as I was to tell it), we made our excuses fairly soon after that. We still had the awful burden of David's invitation to impart but, since it was the price by which we had bought our tea, we knew it had to be done. Lady Uckfield followed us down to the Under Hall so it was easier than it might have been.
'David and
Isabel,' I started. She looked quizzical so I clarified, 'Easton. Our hosts.' She nodded. This interchange alone would have been enough to have depressed David for months. 'They wondered if you'd like to bring your party over for a drink tomorrow morning?' It was done.
Lady Uckfield smiled briskly. 'But how very kind. I'm afraid we're too many for that. But do thank them.' Her customary urgent intimacy was back as she rejected an invitation I knew well enough would never be accepted. But she surprised me by continuing. 'Why don't you come back here instead — and bring them?'
This was kindness above and beyond the call of duty. Feeling guilty at the thought of David's delight had he but known, I shook my head. 'I think that's rather a bore for you, isn't it? Let's leave it for another time.'
But Lady Uckfield, to my further bewilderment, was insistent. 'No, please. Do come.' She smiled. 'Charles will be back. I know he'd love to see you.'
At the time, I didn't understand what she hoped to achieve by bringing us together with Charles. It seemed if anything a risk to her plans, for if I had confided her mission to her son, I am certain he would have been furious. But later I realised that she wanted me to see Charles in his misery for this would be her justification and might motivate me more than ever to carry out her wishes. It is possible too that she believed that by allowing us to bring our friends to Broughton we would be even more tightly strapped to the family carriage. 'Don't feel you have to,' said Adela, but we could protest no more and so, bidding her goodbye until the morrow, we set off to deliver our happy message to a delighted David and a less enthralled but pleasantly surprised Isabel.
Charles was waiting for us in the drawing room when we reappeared the next day or so it seemed. He bounded out of his chair, kissed Adela on both cheeks and almost wrung my hand. He wasn't able to say much more than how pleased he was to see us, as his mother approached to normalise the situation and lead us over to the drinks cupboard, cunningly inserted behind a dummy door that had originally been constructed to balance the door that led, through an ante-room, to the dining room. Tigger stood there in his role as Mine Host, dispensing Bloody Marys. He presented one to his wife. She wrinkled her nose fractionally. 'Not enough Tabasco, the wrong vodka — and you've forgotten the lime juice.' I was waiting for a bowl of fresh limes to be rung for when to my surprise Lord Uckfield took down a plastic bottle of lime juice cordial and sloshed a great measure into the jug. I was about to request one without this ingredient then thought better of it and took what I was given. Naturally enough, it was delicious.
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