'Hello, Mrs Curley, how are you? Can I creep in this way? Would you mind?' Edith had mastered this particular trick of her husband's people, that of asking as a favour something that cannot be refused. 'Oh, Mrs So-and-so, could you bear to wait up until we get home? Would that be a terrible bore for you?' Of course, the wretched woman being instructed in this way (as well as her employer) knows that this really means 'You are forbidden to go to bed until I have returned' but it is of course a more self-congratulatory way to deliver a command. It is all part of the aristocracy's consciously created image. They like to pride themselves on being 'marvellous with servants', which usually means making impossible demands in the friendliest voice imaginable.
Mrs Curley was clearly uncomfortable with the request but as Edith had predicted, there was nothing she could do about it. 'Of course, mi-lady,' she said with a cheerful nod, and dialled the family's private number the minute Edith had passed by.
===OO=OOO=OO===
Charles Broughton was indeed in his study or, as Lady Uckfield liked to call it, the Little Library, just as Edith suspected. He was answering letters in a vague sort of way, pretending to be, rather than actually being, busy. The house party was of his mother's choosing and, as always, those friends she had selected for him were not congenial to his wounded soul. Diana Bohun he found cold and too self-consciously grand to be of interest while her husband was very nearly mad. Clarissa was not among them. He had at least managed to persuade his mother that she was barking up the wrong tree there but… if not Clarissa then who?
He knew about Edith's appearance at Tommy Wainwright's. Indeed Tommy had told him the following day, perhaps not wanting to have someone else deliver the news. At first Charles had been extremely angry, not with Tommy but with his mother. On the evening in question she had suddenly made him take her to visit some ancient friend in hospital, a mission that was represented to him as crucial but was of course, as he could see now, the simplest ploy to keep him from the Wainwright party. But then, after he had calmed down a little, he wondered for the thousandth time what would have been achieved by their meeting. Whatever his friends might say about the strangeness of her actions, he did understand why Edith had left him.
He was dull. He knew this was true because, alas for him, he was just clever enough to be aware of it. He knew he was no company for her once the joy of her advancement had worn off. Half the time, if he was honest, he didn't really know what his wife was talking about. When she questioned the policy of the Opposition or tried to evaluate the benefits and harm of intervening in the Middle East… Charles knew there were differing points of view on these subjects but he didn't see why he was called upon to have them. So long as he kept voting Conservative and saying how frightful he thought New Labour, wasn't that enough? It was all and more than most of his pals in White's expected of him. Well, clearly it wasn't enough for Edith. Now even he had begun to suspect that she might conceivably want him back — or at least that she wanted to talk about it — but had anything changed? Wouldn't she tire of him again within a matter of months, if not weeks? Wouldn't it be better for her and for him if they knew when they were beaten? This in short was how he had begun to think of his marriage. A defeat certainly but a defeat that should now be faced up to and walked away from. Which was of course precisely what Lady Uckfield had intended. It is customary these days to suggest that all interference in the private lives of one's children invariably leads to disappointment but this is not true. Clever parents, who do not play their game too fast, can achieve their aims. And the Marchioness of Uckfield was cleverer than most.
He looked up as the door opened and the sedate figure of the Viscountess Bohun slid into the room. 'Charles?' she said with a despairing roll of her eyes. 'Thank God you're here.'
'Why? What is it?'
'I'm in the most frightful fix. Peter's gone for a walk and we haven't got the car with us. Anyway…' Charles waited patiently. 'The thing is…' Diana moistened her lip nervously. She was really quite a talented actress. 'I've made a sort of muddle of the dates and I've come without anything…'
Charles looked at her, puzzled. This made no sense at all, like a piece translated badly from a foreign tongue. 'I'm so sorry,' he said in answer to Diana's pseudo-blushes, 'I'm not sure I…'
Diana overcame her revulsion for this sort of tactic. Desperate times breed desperate measures and as her hostess had made clear, these were desperate times. 'I wasn't expecting it but… it's that time of the month and I've got to get to a chemist…'
'Oh, Lord.' Charles leaped to his feet in a frenzy of embarrassment. 'Of course. What can I do?'
Diana breathed more easily. She had reached her goal and wonderfully quickly. 'Could you bear to run me into Lewes, only everything in the country shuts at one and—'
'Certainly. Right away.'
'I've just got to tell your mother something.'
Lavery fetched the food and removed the plates and made elaborately courteous remarks all evening. She had that uniquely English talent of demonstrating, through her scrupulously polite manner, just how awful she thought the company. She could leave a roomful crushed and rejected and yet congratulate herself on behaving perfectly. It is of course of all forms of rudeness the most offensive as it leaves no room for rebuttal. Even at the height of hostility the Moral High Ground is never abandoned.
Edith watched the three familiar faces and tried to question herself as to what was really taking place. Was this the cementing of a new alliance that would shape her future life? Would these three people be her companions through twenty Christmases to come? Would Simon and her mother build their bridges and talk about the children and come to share private jokes? Handsome as Simon was and strong as her desire for him remained, she was struck this evening by the dreariness of them all.
She had lived the last two years in the front rank of English life and on reflection she was surprised to discover how normal it had become for her to do so — until, that is, she had removed herself from it. While she had been at Broughton she had been oppressed by the lack of event, by the emptiness of her daily round. Now that she had left it, however, hardly a day passed when at least one of her acquaintance from her life with Charles was not in the newspaper. And when she thought about it, having at the time complained ceaselessly that they never did anything, she remembered dinner after dinner where she had sat opposite some faintly famous face from the Cabinet or the opera or simply the gossip columns. Bored to sobs as she was by Googie and Tigger, she had become used to hearing political and Royal chat days or even weeks before it hit the headlines. She was accustomed to knowing the details of the private lives of the great before they became common knowledge — if indeed they ever did. She and Charles had not spent a great deal of time staying away but now her memory reminded her of three or four shooting parties during the winter and a couple of house parties in the summer. She knew Blenheim by this time and Houghton and Arundel and Scone. She had lost the sense of these places' historicity. They had become the homes of her circle. In this she was almost being honest — as honest certainly as those born to the class to which she had so briefly belonged. Edith had learned well all the tricks of aristocratic irreverence. She would stride like the best of them into a dazzling great hall by Vanbrugh, lined with full length van Dycks, and curse the M25 as she threw her handbag into a Hepplewhite chair. By this stage, she understood how to make that statement of solidarity. 'This wonderful room is ordinary to me,' their actions say, 'because it is my natural habitat. I belong here even if you do not.'
Now, it seemed to her, looking at Kenneth and Stella with their framed flower prints from Peter Jones, their pseudo-Regency furniture, their Jane Churchill print curtains, that her membership of that club where she could curl up in an armchair in the long library at Wilton and leaf through Vogue, hugging a vodka and tonic, had been revoked without reference to her. In a rare moment of clarity she understood that in choosing this actor, far from making a wild bohemian statement, she had
in fact returned to her own country. That Simon was far more of a piece with Stella and her faraway baronet cousin or Kenneth and his business friends than Charles had ever been. This world, where, as a general rule, one laughed and cried alongside the obscure — this was her real world. The world in which she had grown up and where she would now again live. Charles and Broughton and the Name Exchange only touched her people tangentially. They were, whatever her mother might like to think, an entirely different tribe.
'Phew!' said Simon, as they pulled away from the curb and headed back towards the King's Road. Edith nodded. They had survived. That was the main thing. She had taken the first step in explaining to her mother that her dream-life was over.
Simon winked at her. 'We're alive,' he said. For a moment they rode on in silence. 'Do you want to go straight home?'
'As opposed to?'
'Well, we could go on somewhere.'
'Where?'
Simon made a slight pout. 'What about Annabel's?'
Edith was rather surprised. 'Are you a member?'
He shook his head, a little petulantly, she thought. 'No, of course I'm not. But you can get us in.'
Edith wasn't at all sure that she could get them in. Charles was the member, after all, and although they had been together fairly frequently and they certainly knew her at the club she wasn't clear as to where that left her. Nor was she convinced that it was a good idea. There were bound to be people there from Charles's set. 'I don't know,' she said.
'Come on. Charles is in Sussex and you can't run away from being seen all the time. We've got our life, too, I suppose.'
This time, unlike her excursions with Charles, they parked in the square and walked to the entrance steps. Simon had only been once before and was grinning like a madman as they descended. Edith was less certain of herself and the moment they had entered the corridor hall she knew she had been right. This was a Mistake. The club servant in charge greeted her affably enough. 'Lady Broughton,' he paused to take in Simon, 'are you meeting someone? Can I tell them you're here?'
Edith felt herself blushing. 'Well, we're not actually. I just wondered if we could come in for a moment.'
Again the answer was scrupulously polite. 'I didn't know you were a member, milady.'
'Well, I'm not. I mean, Charles — Lord Broughton — is and I just thought…' She tailed off in the face of the regretful smile on the face of the attendant.
'I'm very sorry, milady…'
If fate had been kind that would have been it but at that precise moment the door pushed open and with a sinking heart Edith heard the shrill tones of Jane Cumnor. Turning, she smiled straight into the huge, sweating face of Henry as he lumbered in, puffing with the effort of clambering down the basement steps. For a fraction of a second Jane was silent as she took in Edith and, of course, Simon. Then her smile returned.
'Edith! How lovely!' She kissed her coldly on both cheeks. 'Aren't you going to introduce us?'
'Simon Russell. Lord and Lady Cumnor.' She didn't really know why she hadn't used their Christian names. Could it be that she felt the need to impress Simon? After the evening they had just spent?
Jane gave her a slightly old-fashioned look. 'Are you coming in?'
For a moment Edith was going to say that they were in fact leaving when Simon spoke. 'They won't let us. Apparently you have to be a full member.' He didn't really understand the enormity of his betrayal of Edith in this. He simply wanted to get inside the club and so far as he could see, here were two people who could manage it for them.
But Henry was not to be caught. Sensing what was coming he nodded briskly. 'Edith,' he said, and strode on past her down the corridor towards the bar.
Jane smiled wanly. 'What a bore for you,' she murmured. 'I'm not a member either. I, um, I suppose I could go after Henry if you want…' She tailed away to demonstrate how very much she did not wish to carry out her own suggestion and Edith let her go.
'No, no,' she said. 'It couldn't matter less. We're late anyway. I don't know why we looked in.' She kissed Jane perfunctorily with Simon twinkling away by her side, still hoping to be taken in and still missing what was going on. And then they were alone again. The attendant, ever impeccably polite, was anxious to bring about a satisfactory conclusion. 'I am sorry, Lady Broughton…'
Edith nodded. 'We're just off,' she said.
They were outside the door and at the bottom of the steps when a voice hailed them from above. 'Edith?' They looked up and there was the lanky figure of Tommy Wainwright descending towards them. 'Fancy meeting you.' He smiled affably enough and shook Simon's hand. His wife, Arabella, a cooler customer entirely than her husband, was silent. 'Are you going already?' said Tommy. 'Yes,' said Edith. But before she could stop him Simon was having another shot at completing his evening in the way he had planned.
'Edith thought she could get us in but she can't,' he said, thereby giving Arabella Wainwright a funny story and a parable of Edith's fall all in one phrase.
Tommy smiled. 'Then you must let me.'
'Really, it doesn't matter,' protested Edith.
'Come on,' said Simon.
Arabella murmured gently, 'If she doesn't want to…' It was quite clear that she was no more anxious than Jane Cumnor to be seen escorting Edith Broughton and her new lover into Annabel's but Tommy was made of stouter stuff. A few minutes later he had equipped them all with drinks and they were seated at the foot of a giant Buddha in the little red smoking room to one side of the bar. Simon saw Arabella as a challenge and they had hardly sat down before he was inviting her to dance.
Perhaps because being seen dancing with an unknown was preferable to being spotted in Edith's company, she accepted and Tommy and Edith were left alone.
'How've you been?'
Edith shrugged. 'You know.'
'I do.' He smiled at her quite kindly. 'You mustn't let the newspaper nonsense get to you. I should know, in my job.
Today's scandal really is tomorrow's budgie paper. People forget more or less everything.'
Edith nodded. She knew well enough that while this is a general truth, it is seldom a personal one. She had been touched by scandal and inasmuch as she would ever feature in the papers again once it was all over, there would always be a small paragraph referring to her separation from Charles until the end of her life. 'Have you seen Charles?' she said.
Tommy nodded. 'I saw him in White's last week. We had a drink together.'
'How is he?'
'Not very chipper but I suppose he'll manage.' Edith felt a sudden pang of nostalgia for Tommy and White's and even Jane Cumnor, whom she had nodded to across the bar but had not attempted to join. Six months ago she would have sat with Tommy and ranged over the up-to-date stories of their mutual acquaintance and whatever she might say about all that now, it would have made her feel rather cosy. But on this evening there didn't seem to be any point. It wasn't her world any more and they both knew it. As for Charles. Poor old Charles. What had he done to deserve this? He'd just been dull company. That's all. Nothing worse than that. And then Simon returned and, much to Arabella's relief, led Edith away to the dance floor.
She was silent in the car although she smiled at Simon to allay his fears that she might be angry about something when she really wasn't. As she put the key into the lock of the Ebury Street front door Simon allowed the arm that had enclosed her waist to slip down to her buttocks, which he caressed gently as they walked through the little hall and stopped outside the door to the flat. Edith could feel a tingling sensation start to warm her at the base of her stomach. Simon leaned forward and kissed the back of her neck, his tongue licking her softly between his parted lips. They were hardly inside the door before she was kissing him in a strong, fierce way, and running her hands over his body and down to his crotch. She felt his large, hard penis pushing against her. 'Darling,' he said with the anticipatory smile of a man who understands and enjoys his work.
They made love three times that night at Edith's insistence. Simon
had never known her throw herself into it with quite such abandon before. She mounted him and pushed herself down, forcing as much of him into her as she could. Because it was suddenly quite clear to her that this was the decision she had made. When she came home with Charles the evening was over as they shut the door. When she went out with Simon the evening was something that had to be endured until they could be alone together again. Fate had given her the choice between her private and her public life. Neither man, it seemed, could provide her with both. Well, she thought as she lay back watching the dawn and listening to Simon snoring gently beside her, she had chosen private fulfilment over public splendour and she was glad of her choice. Glad, that is, in the night, when she lay naked and satisfied and far from the world. It was in the morning that she had to make up her mind all over again.
PART THREE
Dolente-Energico
SEVENTEEN
I did not see Edith for some months after this. In the autumn I was given the part of a villain in one of those series that are optimistically described as 'family viewing' because no one can decide into which category they really fall. At any rate, it was shot on location in Hampshire and I was consequently a good deal out of London for some time. I took a cottage in Itchen Abbas and Adela joined me when she could. Some time in November we discovered she was pregnant and the thought that my life was about to take yet another quantum leap rather drove all other considerations from my mind. We purchased books by the dozen to learn more about our new condition and spent the evenings looking up why Adela kept tasting metal filings or feeling back pains. Actually this was pretty fruitless as the answer to more or less everything we asked was 'the cause of this is not yet known'. However, we were kept quite merrily occupied.
Of Edith, Simon and Charles we had little news. The papers had dropped them as there did not appear to be any signs of divorce and presumably they were all saving the second half of the story for when it came to court. Once I wrote to Charles because I had seen, in some obscure art magazine, that a Broughton portrait was up for sale and I thought he, or some relation, might be interested. Naturally I also imparted our news and I received, almost by return, quite a touching letter wishing us well. 'How right you are not to wait too long,' he wrote. 'Being married is all very well but it's having a child that makes a real family. I envy you that.' I do not necessarily agree with this view but I took it, correctly I think, as a comment on his own marital disappointments. He concluded by asking us to get in touch when we were back in circulation and I thought I would. I felt that by this time Charles and I had gone through enough together to qualify as friends even by English standards and the potential awkwardness of attempting to prosecute friendships with the Mighty no longer seemed to apply. I was interested that he had not mentioned Edith and indeed we had no news of her from any quarter. Gossip confirmed that she and Simon were still together and that, either because his notoriety had paid off or just conceivably because of his talent, he had landed a running part in some police series. I had made up my mind that I would also contact her when I returned to London, as I was determined not to be cast in the role of someone who drops their friends when their status diminishes, but in actual fact it was not I but my spouse who renewed our links.
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