'I want to see Charles.' Her voice was quite flat as she spoke but of course we were both most interested by what she said.
I did not really understand why she had felt the need to come round and communicate this to us at dawn but I was fascinated nevertheless. I was soon to understand what my part was to be. 'I want you to arrange it.'
Adela caught my eye and faintly shook her head. She had all the horror of her kind for getting involved in this kind of thing. Whatever the outcome, somehow one is always blameworthy. She also, as she told me later, had no wish to incur Lady Uckfield's enmity and she suspected that this would be an inevitable by-product of the proposed plan of action. One must remember of course that Adela, from first to last, was entirely on Lady Uckfield's side and never on Edith's.
'Why do you need me?' I said rather wanly.
'I rang Broughton last night. I asked for Charles but I got Googie. She said he wasn't there but I'm sure he was. I rang London and Feltham and they said he was at Broughton. I know he was. She doesn't want me to speak to him.'
All this would only confirm Adela's suspicions that in some vague way we were being asked to take on Lady Uckfield. 'I don't really see what I can do.'
'They'll let you speak to him. Say you want to ask him to lunch or something and then, when he comes on the line, tell him I want to meet him.'
'I don't think I can do that,' I said. 'I don't mind telephoning,' which was a lie, 'but if Lady Uckfield asks me what I'm going to say, I'll tell her. She can't imagine she can prevent you meeting for ever.'
'Not for ever, no. Just long enough.'
'I don't believe that,' I said. Although I did.
In truth, I was pretty sure that I too was on Lady Uckfield's side when it came down to it. The facts were simple enough.
Edith had married Charles without loving him in order to gain a position. She had then made a complete failure of that same position, abandoned it, broken her faith with Charles, made a great scandal and caused him a good deal of pain. Lady Uckfield now wished to be rid of her once and for all and, frankly, could anyone wonder at it?
'Do you think Charles will want to see you?' asked Adela. 'Perhaps it was he who refused to come to the telephone.'
Which was certainly a point worth considering.
'If he doesn't, I want to hear it from him.'
The three of us sat in silence for a while. Adela crunched her toast and turned to Nigel Dempster.
'Anything?' I said.
'Sarah Carter's sister's married some painter and the Langwells are getting a divorce, which we knew last October.'
'Will you do it?' said Edith.
Adela and I looked at each other but I refused the message in her eyes. Ultimately, much as I would have liked to, it would have been wrong of me to have abandoned Edith to her fate and espoused the cause of the Broughtons. Whatever I might privately think about the wrongs and rights of the matter, this would have been a dishonourable course. First, and before everything else, I had been Edith's friend, as even Lady Uckfield had acknowledged.
'I will,' I said. 'But I won't do it either at this time of the morning or with you listening. Go home and I'll telephone you.'
Edith nodded and, after finishing her coffee, left.
'Something's up,' said Adela.
I rang at half past ten and asked for Charles. Despite what Edith had said I was quite surprised when Lady Uckfield came on the line.
'Hello,' she said. 'How are you?'
'I was trying to track down Charles.'
She was very smooth and clearly four steps ahead of me. 'I'm afraid he's not here. Can I give him a message?'
I toyed with the idea of bluffing but she was obviously well aware of why I was ringing and it seemed a foolish corner to paint myself into. 'I'm on an errand, I'm afraid. And I'm not at all sure you'll approve.'
'Try me.' Her voice had gone from reserved to glacial.
'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 wretche
d 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. Running 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 n
odded 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.
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