Snobs: A Novel

by Julian Fellowes

  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she could curl up in an armchair in the long library at Wilton and leaf through Vogue, hugging a vodka and tonic, had been revoked without reference to her.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.

  We had not been back in London long when Adela received an invitation from a cousin to attend Hardy Amies's spring dress show. The relation in question, Louisa Shaw, was in the household of a junior member of the Royal Family and either for this reason or (more probably) because she was an occasional purchaser she had got onto the various lists to be invited to these glittering events, always with jolly good seats. She and Adela had been friends from childhood and consequently she allowed my wife to share her good fortune on a regular basis.

  Unbeknownst to us as Adela and Louisa made their plans, it so happened that our old familiar, Annette Watson, was also a Hardy Amies customer. She had been, as I have said, something of a screen beauty of the Lesley-Ann Down vintage and she had always provided willing fodder to the photographers at bashes where there was a scarcity of celebrities but now she figured on the pages of the glossy magazines wearing couture, which naturally made her a welcome guest at these galas.

  Annette, in fact, was doing quite well by this stage, largely because, against all predictions, the dreary Bob had gone from well-off to extremely rich during the heady nineties. I seem to recall that his success was somehow connected to the 'dot.com'

  revolution although I cannot remember exactly what he did, if I ever knew. Anyway, whatever it was he obviously did it profitably. In the two or three years since the Watsons had been Eric's embarrassing guests in Mallorca they had consolidated their social position and, in London at any rate, they had gathered up quite a satisfactory address book. They had not penetrated Lady Uckfield's charmed circle on any level but they were on good terms with a couple of the more disreputable young marchionesses and the 'It' girls who were busy on the London scene at this time. Annette had even been pictured in Hello shopping with the Duchess of York. On the whole, she was satisfied.

  A good part of that satisfaction was because she was now in a position to refuse the Chases' invitations, which had become more pressing of late. Caroline Chase, of course, cared little one way or the other, but Eric's shadowy dealings on the outer fringes of what he optimistically described as 'Business Skills and Public Relations' had been badly hit by the recession.

  These skills, it seems, were among the first economies in the newly hard-pressed companies that had bloomed so fast and were now looking as if they would wither as quickly. Eric felt that a helping hand from Bob Watson might make all the difference. Indeed it might have, I suppose, but perhaps because of that terrible dinner at Fairburn, the hand was withheld.

  The Chases, or Eric anyway, had ceased to be nec
essary to the social game-plan of the Watsons. Apart from anything else Eric was not expected to be around all that much longer. It was known that they were living on Caroline's money and questions were beginning to be asked among her circle as to how long this would go on. Particularly as there were no children to confuse the issue. To Caroline's set, there did not seem to be much logic in being married to someone who was common and poor. Although I reject these people's values in many areas, when dealing with someone as abrasive as Chase I must confess to understanding them. It is pleasant to record that one friend who had not dropped Edith and automatically taken Charles's side in order to keep in with the Broughtons was this same Annette Watson. For Edith had paid a severe penalty for her chosen path. Actually I didn't much blame most of their crowd. They had been Charles's friends to begin with and Edith certainly had behaved badly. But this was not the real reason that they flocked to the Broughton banner. To a man they would have remained on Charles's team if he'd beaten Edith while keeping a string of chorus girls in the attic. However, I suppose one must concede that in this particular instance it was hard to argue with them. At any rate, Annette, partly because she knew she held few charms for Charles or his mother and partly because she really did like Edith, had stuck by her pal and one of the invitations she'd proffered was to accompany her to the Hardy Amies afternoon show and have some lunch beforehand.

  ===OO=OOO=OO===

  Edith had never been to the first-floor restaurant of the Meridien in Piccadilly, which had recently been subjected to an exhaustive 'renovation'. The dining room was formed out of the old terrace, which had been glazed and palmed and marble-floored and generally made into a home from home for all those natives of Los Angeles who were now, hopefully, going to flock through the newly re-opened doors. Edith picked her way among the tables, following Annette's waving hand. She was smartly dressed in a snappy winter suit, complete with pearls and a brooch. She had surprised herself by being tempted to wear a hat. She didn't, but the costume, as it stood, was perhaps an expression of a part of her life that had been suppressed for a time beneath the T-shirts and sequins, apparently the only two options of Simon's crowd. Even he had commented on her outfit as he lay on a sofa happily reading the next day's scenes: 'Heavens, very smart! You look like your mother-in-law!'