Snobs: A Novel

by Julian Fellowes

  'It's Edith. She wants to see Charles.'

  'Why?'

  'I don't know why.' This was true.

  'What's the point?'

  'I don't know that there is any point but I do know that you won't get a straight answer out of her concerning your proposals re the divorce unless she sees him.'

  'You've asked her then?'

  'I've asked her and she says she wants to think about it. Part of that thinking, I take it, has to go on in Charles's presence.'

  There was a pause for a moment and I could hear down the line that eerie echo of other conversations, other, strange anonymous bits of lives being lived, a thousand miles away. 'Are you free this afternoon? Can you meet me for tea?'

  'There's nothing I would enjoy more but in this instance I don't know that I'll be able to add anything to what I've already told you.'

  'I'll be at the Ritz. At four.'

  I was interested that she did not want me to come to their flat in Cadogan Square.

  'Perhaps Tigger's coming up with her. Perhaps Charles is there,' said Adela and for a moment I was tempted to walk round and ring the bell. I thought better of it, having decided that it might behove me to hear what Lady Uckfield had to say first.

  I did, however, telephone Edith.

  'What are you going to say to her?'

  'I don't know. That she is wasting her time trying to keep you two apart, I suppose. If that's what she's doing.'

  'Of course it's what she's doing.'

  'I mean without Charles's knowledge.' Edith was silent. 'At any rate, I'll call you this evening.' I rang off.

  I asked tentatively whether or not Lady Uckfield had arrived but the manager was not one to let such an opportunity slip by.

  'Gentleman for the Marchioness of Uckfield,' he observed loudly to a passing waiter, who escorted me courteously past the turning heads to where she waited. She was sitting trimly at a table in the Marble Hall to the right of the great, gilded fountain.

  She smiled and waved a little hand as I approached, and stood to greet me with her neat, bird-like movements. The man brought the tea with a lot of milady'ing, all of it gently and serenely acknowledged. She laughed gaily. 'Isn't this a treat?'

  'It is for me,' I said.

  Her manner became not exactly more serious but at any rate more direct. She was a little less breathlessly urgent and remembering that scene in her sitting room at Broughton I understood that she was going to impart some real, as opposed to faked, intimacy. 'I want to be quite honest because I think you may be able to help.'

  'I'm simultaneously flattered and dubious,' I said.

  'I don't want Charles to have to see Edith.'

  'So I gathered.'

  'It's not that I'm being unkind. Truly. It's just that I think he's in the most tremendous muddle and I don't want him any more confused.'

  'Lady Uckfield,' I said, 'I know very well why you think it a bad idea. So do I. You believe the marriage was a mistake and you had rather not prolong it. I quite agree. The fact remains that, at this moment, Edith is Charles's wife and if she wants to see him and if he, as I suspect, also wants to see her, then hadn't we better get out of the way?'

  A momentary flicker of irritation shadowed her face. 'Why do you think he wants to see her?'

  'Because he's still in love with her.'

  She said nothing for a moment but poked among the sandwiches to find an egg one, which she nibbled with exaggerated delight. 'Aren't these good!' she whispered covertly, as if we must prevent anyone else hearing at all costs. She looked at me with her darting, cat-like eyes. 'You think I've been unfair to Edith.'

  I shook my head. 'No. I think you don't like her but I don't think you've been particularly unfair to her.'

  She nodded in acknowledgement of this. 'I don't like her. Much. However, that's not the point.'

  'What is the point?'

  'The point is that she cannot make Charles happy. Whether I like her or not is neither here nor there. I detested my mother-in-law and yet I was fully aware of what a success she had made of Broughton and of Tigger's wretched father. It took me twenty years to bury her memory. Do you think it would matter to me if I simply didn't like her? I'm not a schoolgirl.'

  'No.' I sipped my tea. This was flattering indeed. For some reason Lady Uckfield had decided to draw aside the curtain that habitually clothed all her private thoughts and actually talk to me. She had not finished.

  'Let me tell you about my son. Charles is a good, kind, uncomplicated man. He's much nicer than I am, you know. But he is less…' She faltered, searching for a loyal adjective that would fit the need.

  'Intelligent?' I ventured.

  Since I had said it, she let it pass. 'He needs a wife who values not just him but who he is, what he does. What their life is.

  He is not one to be able to give weight to a different philosophy in his own home. He could not be married to a socialist opera singer and respect her for her different views. It is not in him.'

  'I don't think it's in Edith either,' I said.

  'Edith married an idea of a life that she had gleaned from novels and magazines. She thought it meant travel and fashion shows and meeting Mick Jagger. She saw herself throwing parties for Princess Michael in Mauritius…' She shrugged. I was quite impressed that she'd heard of Mick Jagger. 'I don't know if some people live like that. Maybe. What I do know is that will never be Charles's life. His whole existence is the farming calendar. For the next fifty years he will shoot and farm and farm and shoot and go abroad for three weeks in July. He will worry about the tenants and have fights with the vicar and try to get the government to contribute to rewiring the east wing. And his friends, with very few exceptions, will be other people reroofing their houses and farming and shooting and trying to get government grants and exemptions. That is his future.'

  'And you're sure it could never be Edith's?'

  'Aren't you?'

  I could remember Edith sobbing with boredom on the shoot at Broughton and sulking through evening after evening of Tigger's stories and Googie's charm. But of course, what Lady Uckfield did not know and I suspected, was how bored and depressed Edith was with her new life. I thought of her at Fiona Grey's party being led around like a prize heifer. Lady Uckfield interpreted my silence as agreement and her manner warmed. 'It's not entirely her fault. Even I can see that. That terrible mother has stuffed her head with a lot of Barbara Cartland nonsense. What chance had she?'

  'Poor old Mrs Lavery,' I said. Lady Uckfield shuddered with a tiny grimace. This was the woman Mrs Lavery had planned to share scrumptious lunches with and trips to the milliner.

  'I'm not a snob,' started Lady Uckfield but this was really too much and I could not prevent at least one eyebrow rising.

  She attempted to rebuke me. 'I'm not! I know people can marry up and bring it off. I have lots of different sorts of friends. I do!' She was quite indignant. I suppose she believed she was telling the truth.

  'Who?' I said.

  She thought for a moment. 'Susan Curragh and Anne Melton. I like them both very much. I defy you to say that I don't.'

  She had named an immensely rich American heiress who was now the wife of a rather dull junior minister and the daughter of a clothing millionaire who had married an impoverished Irish earl thereby putting him on the social map. I knew neither woman but I trembled for Edith if Lady Uckfield thought them good examples of 'marrying up'. 'You don't believe me, I know, but I was brought up not to think in terms of "class".'

  What interested me in this was that Lady Uckfield could have made that statement quite safely on a lie detector while the truth was, of course, that she had been brought up to think in terms of nothing else and she had largely (if not entirely) been true to her teaching. She continued. 'The important thing is not Edith's class, whatever that means, but that she simply doesn't enjoy the job. She and her frightful mother are "London Ladies". They want to lunch in Italian restaurants and go to charity balls and fly to the sun for the winter. Runn
ing a house like Broughton, or Feltham for that matter, is just slog once the gilt's worn off. It's paperwork and committees. It's arguing with English Heritage inspectors who all hate you for living there and want to make everything as difficult for you as they possibly can. It's pleading with government departments and economising on the heating. Those houses are fun to stay in. Even "London Ladies" like that. But they're hard, hard work to own. She could never take either pleasure or satisfaction in that life. I don't even blame her but she couldn't. And to be quite frank,' she paused, almost hesitating in case she was giving away too much ammunition, 'I'm not sure how much she likes Charles.'

  I thought of that far away engagement dinner with Caroline Chase on my left. It's frightfully dreary down here… flower shows all summer, freezing pipes all winter. I could hear the echo of her cold, hard voice. I suppose Edith's ready for all that? And how triumphant Edith had seemed. How she had swept the pool and gained the prize.

  'If what you say is true then where's the danger of letting them meet?'

  'Because I suspect that eight months with an out-of-work actor in Ebury Street has reminded her of why she found Charles attractive, or should I say an attractive proposition, in the first place. I think she may want him back.'

  'And you're against that?' I felt a bit sorry for Simon to be described as an 'out-of-work actor' when he, poor soul, thought he was dazzling in his success. Still, it didn't seem the moment to cavil.

  She spoke with statesmanlike clarity. 'I am against it with every fibre of my being.' I suppose in some part of me I was surprised at her honesty. I was used to the token revulsion for divorce that is one of the obligatory attitudes in Society.

  Although in truth they care little whether people are divorced or not, simply whom they are married to at the time. Even so, she was of the old school and I was fairly sure there was no such thing as a divorce in either her, or Tigger's, genealogy. She nodded. 'You're surprised I'd prefer the scandal to run its course. I admit it. I would rather have what little of this story is left than patch things up and risk a bigger smash in five years when Edith has either rediscovered how bored she is, or found someone as rich as Charles who bores her less. There may be children involved by that time and I prefer to see my grandchildren brought up at Broughton by both parents.'

  'I do see,' I said. It was fruitless to deny that there was a good deal of logic in her reasoning.

  'So can you help me?' She tucked busily into another sandwich and filled both our cups. She had been honest with me and I could not be less than honest with her.

  'No, Lady Uckfield, I cannot help you.' She stopped pouring in her surprise. I suppose she felt that she had extended such an enormous privilege to me by revealing so much of her hand that I could not fail to be firmly attached to her interest. Seeing her disappointment, I clarified. 'It is not because I do not agree with you. As a matter of fact I do. It is because I do not believe any argument will turn Edith from her meeting. And I do not believe I have the smallest right to interfere.'

  She nodded slightly, a sharp, jerky movement, which betrayed her terrible pain. 'I imagine you mean I have no right either.'

  I shook my head. 'You're Charles's mother. You have the right to interfere. I am not sure you have any hope of success but you have the right to try.' I felt the interview had come to an end and I stood. As it was, I doubted that Lady Uckfield and I would be so easy in each other's company again. She'd abandoned too many of her customary defences to be able to forgive me quickly for witnessing her in this state. To make matters worse I could see that her eyes were beginning to moisten and before my horrified gaze a single tear, amazed to be released from a duct that must have held it prisoner for twenty years, started to make its tentative way down her carefully powdered cheek.

  She stood and put her hand on my arm. 'Just don't help her.' Her voice was urgent, it is true, but not with that girlish, don't-tell-Father, pseudo-urgency that I had grown used to. This was a cry of desperation. 'Just don't encourage her. That's all I beg. For her sake as much as for his. They'll both be wretched.'

  I nodded and gave what assurances I felt I could, thanked her for my tea and watched her pull herself together before my eyes so that, by the time I turned at the arch taking me towards the Arlington Street entrance, she could wave at me as composed as if she were in the Royal Box at Ascot. All I knew was that I could not have been less clear as to quite what I was going to say to Edith.

  'You're right, of course. She doesn't want you to meet.'

  'I told you.'

  'Even so, I don't really see how she can prevent it'

  'She'll send him away again. To America. For horse sales or something. She'll fix it up with her friends. They're everywhere.'

  'Sounds like Watergate.'

  She gave a harsh little laugh. 'You think you're joking.'

  'At any rate,' I said, 'he can't stay in America for ever. You'll just have to keep trying. I don't think he'll avoid you when you do run him to earth. Really I don't. You must just bide your time.'

  'I haven't got time,' said Edith.

  Something in the tone of her voice prevented my asking for clarification and, indeed, I confess that I deliberately put the remark out of my mind. I did not want to address it, I suppose, and I certainly did not want to share it with Adela, sensing perhaps that it could mean everything or nothing. If everything, why risk the release of that knowledge into the ether? If nothing, why not forget it?

  We were silent a moment with Edith perhaps aware that she had said more than she'd intended. She may have been pondering how to contain the remark without referring to it again.

  'What do you plan to do then?' I asked.

  'I don't know,' she said.

  TWENTY-ONE

  She didn't know. It seemed crazy but she literally did not know how she could contact her own husband. It may surprise some people but for a time, Edith had assumed that either Sotheby's or Christie's would rescue her from this dilemma. The public is not aware of it but over the last decade the summer parties of those two great auction houses have become in many ways the high points of the London social calendar, a chance for the genuine gratin, as opposed to the ubiquitous Cafe Society, to meet and mingle before they disperse for the summer. Edith knew that Charles would attend both, as would Googie. Even Tigger was prepared to struggle up from the country in order to renew his acquaintance with most of his class.

  It was an annual, pleasurable duty cheerfully undertaken by a large proportion of the high aristocracy much as the opening day of the Summer Exhibition used to be. There Charles would be found and there Edith would buttonhole him. The only trouble was that the days went by and every morning the envelopes flopped down onto the mat but the requisite, white, pasteboard cards with their embossed, italic script were not among them. Whether to spare Charles from embarrassment or perhaps to shield Lady Uckfield from discomfort (nobody can have thought that Lord Uckfield would even notice Edith's presence), for whatever reason, the Countess Broughton's name had clearly been excised from the list. She was not invited to either gathering.

  At last it became impossible for her not to accept that she had been passed over. It was time for an alternative plan. She sat hunched over her address book, leafing through the neatly pencilled names. This was a habit she had unconsciously adopted from her hated mother-in-law. It meant the entries could be more easily rubbed out when their owners moved or when their use was finished and done with. This morning she stared at page after page, trying to find one who would help. At last, faute de mieux, she dialled Tommy Wainwright's number. Arabella answered and Edith asked for Tommy, a request that was greeted with a cool silence at the other end before Arabella spoke.

  'He's at the House, I'm afraid.'

  'When will he be back?'

  'The thing is, he's most frightfully busy at the moment. Can I help?'

  No, thought Edith. You cannot and you would not. 'Not really,' she said lightly. 'I don't want to be a bother. Just say I telephoned.'
>
  'Of course I will.' It was obvious from her flat tone of voice that Arabella intended to say nothing but, in the event, she felt discomfort at the thought of being discovered in a lie so she did pass on the message while predictably urging her husband to ignore it. Edith had already played out this scenario or something like it in her brain so it was quite a surprise that evening when she picked up the receiver to hear Tommy speaking.

  'I want to see Charles and everyone's stopping me,' she said after the usual pleasantries.

  'Why?'

  'Because they're frightened of Googie, because they want to stay in with the family. I don't know why.'

  There was a short silence. The request may not have been articulated but it had nevertheless been made. 'I don't want to land him in it.'

  'Nor do I,' said Edith firmly. 'I just want to see him.'

  Another silence. Then with something like a sigh, Tommy spoke. 'He's coming here for a drink on Wednesday at about seven. You could always drop in then.'

  'I will never forget this.' Edith's voice was sonorous with significance and from it Tommy could easily gauge the treatment she had been receiving elsewhere from her erstwhile world.

  'Don't get your hopes up too much,' he said. He was after all fully aware of the powers she was ranging herself against.

  ===OO=OOO=OO===

  I was already in the Wainwright drawing room when Edith arrived. It wasn't a large party, roughly twenty or thirty souls who had nothing better to do. They had dutifully assembled in the cramped mews house near Queen Anne Street to start their evening with a few smoked salmon whirls from Marks & Spencer and some bottles of Majestic champagne. The gathering was already past its zenith and the guests had begun to peel away, heeding the call of dinner reservations and theatres and baby-sitters, when Edith came through the door. She was smiling with anticipation but I could see her face shrink with disappointment as she surveyed the room. I went up to her.

  'Don't tell me Charles has gone. I got stuck in traffic and I left too late anyway.'

  It was easy to see why. She had taken immense trouble with her appearance and I could not remember seeing her in better fettle, her lovely face flawless, her hair shining and an alluring evening outfit encasing her already desirable form.