Snobs: A Novel

by Julian Fellowes

  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 necessary 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!'

  But she hadn't risen. Maybe, subconsciously, she'd felt complimented.

  Annette kissed her and ordered glasses of champagne for them both. It was not long before they had moved from the customary greetings to the real business. 'So, when do you make your next move?'

  'Move?' said Edith.

  'Well. The divorce. Are you getting on with it?'

  Edith shifted slightly uncomfortably. 'Not really. Not yet.'

  'Why not?'

  She shrugged. 'I suppose I — we — rather feel that we might as well wait out the two years and do it with a minimum of fuss. Otherwise it means such a palaver…'

  'Two years!' Annette laughed. 'Oh, I don't think Charles is going to be happy waiting two years.'

  'Why not?'

  Annette stared at her. 'Darling, you must know the race is on.'

  Edith was surprised to find that her stomach lurched. 'What do you mean?'

  'My dear, as soon as the news was out he was absolutely pounced on. How could he not be? You haven't even had a child so there's nothing to hold them back.'

  Edith felt herself growing irritated. How dare this woman know more about her husband than she did? 'I don't think he's seeing anyone particularly.'

  'Then you think wrong.' Annette took a sip to punctuate her pause. 'You remember Clarissa Marlowe?'

  Edith laughed and breathed easily again. The Honourable Clarissa Marlowe, great-granddaughter of a courtier who had been raised to a lowly barony in the 1920s, was a second cousin of Charles's through their mothers. She was a hearty, healthy brunette, good in the saddle and helpful at sticky dinner parties. She worked as an up-market receptionist in a dubious property company, thereby lending it some respectability, and she lived in a flat with her sister just off the Old Brompton Road. A classic member of the Alice Band Brigade and, Edith thought comfortably, not at all Charles's type.

  'Don't be silly. She's his cousin. She's just chumming him.'

  Annette raised her eyebrows. 'Well, she chummed him to the West Indies for a week just before Christmas and she spent the New Year at Broughton.'

  There was no denying that this was a blow. In fact Edith was astonished at its severity. What had she thought? That Charles would stay single for ever? She had been gone for eight months now and he was only human. As she conjured up the image of Clarissa, Edith felt herself washed with a tide of rage towards this blameless, county girl. In truth she had always rather liked Clarissa, who put herself out to be useful and laughed at Edith's funny stories and had never been one of those relations who persisted in treating her as a tiresome foreigner. When she thought about it she supposed that his cousin had always had rather a soft spot for Charles. With a sinking heart she recognised Clarissa for what she was, the sort of girl men like Charles marry.

  'Oh,' she said.

  The waiter had arrived to hand them enormous, leather-bound menus in ungrammatical French. He retreated with a murmur of guttural Rs.

  'Cheer up, darling,' said Annette with a piercing look. 'Tell me about Simon. Is he well?'

  'Oh yes,' said Edith, bracing herself again. 'Very. He's got a series that goes on until June and th
en, with any luck, starts again in December.'

  'How marvellous! What is it?'

  'Oh, you know,' said Edith, trying to decide between liver and seared tuna. 'Some detective police thing. He's the nice side-kick who keeps missing the point.' She finally fixed on kidneys with a salad.

  'Well done him,' said Annette. 'Who else is in it? Do you go on the set and everything?'

  Edith appreciated Annette's efforts at enthusiasm. It was kind of her. 'Not really, no. Sometimes. So I can put a face to the stories. It puts him off a bit.'

  The truth was that, try as she might, she had found that she just could not get really involved in Simon's work. There were parts of it she quite liked, first nights and a few (very few) of the parties and meeting people one knew from television. She was quite interested in reading scripts and then comparing them to the finished product but most of it, well… At the beginning she had gone down to the location a few times but, honestly, it was so monotonous. They just seemed to say the same three lines to each other from a thousand angles until she ended up in the make-up room, gossiping to the girls. If she was really honest she couldn't understand why Simon made such a song and dance about it all. Most of it seemed to be pretty straightforward. You learned the lines, they trained the camera onto you and you said the lines. She was quite able to see that some people could do it and some couldn't, but fretting about it didn't seem to help. She never noticed that Simon was much better in the parts he had sweated over than in the ones that he did off the top of his head. One thing she had grasped since our lunch together in those early days — there wasn't really a place for her down on the set. After her initial forays she would roll up once or twice, or stay on location for a weekend, so that she could say hello to the other members of the cast and crew and leave it at that. It seemed to be the best way to play it.

  'Give him my love,' said Annette. They locked eyes for a moment and to Edith's relief the waiter reappeared at this precise moment to take their orders. That done, they shifted their ground back to more general topics.

  ===OO=OOO=OO===

  Louisa rang our basement bell promptly at a quarter to one. They had decided to lunch at home as they were going on to Fortnum's for tea after the show. Adela, at five months, had only recently stopped feeling sick and was sorely in need of a Treat. I was to give them a lift to Savile Row on my way to a wig fitting in Old Burlington Street. I liked Adela's cousin. The daughter of an Anglo-Irish landowner, she had that slightly fey, unjudgemental quality of her tribe, so unlike their English counterparts, that made her easy company for anyone, despite her tweeds and sensible shoes. She was also a natural spinster for whom, I suspected, a lifetime of Royal service was going to have to do the work of husband and children. Of course, she was thrilled by the idea of the impending baby and I could see before Adela asked me that she was classic godmother material.

  The traffic was not heavy and accordingly it was no later than a quarter to three when the two of them climbed the staircase of Hardy Amies's headquarters and entered the large, first-floor salon overlooking Savile Row itself, where the collection was to be displayed.

  There is no real benefit in getting to these things early as all the seats are clearly and unarguably allocated but they had enough to gossip about to pass the time and so, once they had been ushered to two seats labelled, in a flowing hand; 'Lady Louisa Shaw & Friend', they were soon so engrossed in their own soap-opera that they were oblivious to the rest of the fast-filling room. They were seated well, at the foot of the catwalk on the short side of the room near the door from the staircase and therefore had a full view not only of the length of the catwalk but also of most of the rest of the seating. So Adela was quite surprised, on looking up as the lights were turned on to signify that the show was about to begin, to see Edith Broughton tucked into the far corner, in the back row, opposite the door where the models make their entrance. It seemed odd that Edith had not said hello, since she must have brushed past them to get to her seat and even now, while looking at Adela, she made no real sign of recognition. I am afraid that one could have read in this the treatment that Edith had had to endure over the previous months but at any rate Adela, for whom even the vestige of any kind of feud is anathema, immediately smiled and waved, and Edith, relieved perhaps, waved back.

  The conversation was beginning to die away in anticipation when there was a slight confusion at the door. Adela turned in time to see one of the princesses enter the room, followed by Lady Uckfield. Smiling their apologies, they made their way to two seats reserved for them near the foot of the catwalk beyond my wife and Louisa, in the front row. They were in their places before Adela looked back to where Edith sat, her eyes fixed on her mother-in-law. The contrast between the state of the two women was not lost on Adela and it must have seemed vividly clear to Edith. She sat in the back row, with her over-made-up friend, about to look at clothes she could not seriously entertain a thought of buying. Two rows before her sat the woman she might herself have been, with a member of the Royal Family, envied by more or less every other woman present.

  The music started, a selection of Copacabana rock, which seemed a surprising choice given the age of the majority of the clients. Adela glanced down at her programme for the description of the first presentation. Three models appeared, the numbers of their dresses displayed on plastic discs in their elegant hands, and the show had begun.

  It was a lively hour with the audience chatting relentlessly as each ensemble was paraded before them. 'Lovely for Spain',

  'What an odd colour, I wonder if they do it in cream', 'Pretty dress, wrong model', and other similar phrases would ring out, quite audibly, as the girls sailed imperviously by. From time to time a little fun was added by a model dropping her number disc (I gather these have since been abandoned, perhaps for this reason) or one might stumble in a graceful spin but these were rare breaks in the super-smooth operation. Still, Adela was distracted. Every time she glanced over to where Edith sat, she could see that her gaze was not on the catwalk but on the back of her mother-in-law's head, still blithely unaware of Edith's presence, as she scribbled on her programme and exchanged whispers with her august companion.

  The collection was presented and the company, notes jotted and images fixed, rose to go. A way was made for the Royal Highness to pass, with Lady Uckfield following on. With proper diffidence Adela did not draw attention to herself but it so happened that the princess recognised Louisa at the same moment that Lady Uckfield saw my wife. Accordingly she was presented, made her curtsey, and for a few moments the crowd fell deferentially back to leave them in a foursome. They were chatting quite amiably about which frocks they had preferred when Adela caught sight of Edith edging towards them through the thinning crush. These situations are hard. Though I say it myself, Adela is not one to shirk a difficult task, but what was the point of spoiling Lady Uckfield's afternoon or placing her in an invidious position as regards her companion? Her daughter-in-law was a figure of scandal and this was a public place stuffed with journalists. Judas-like, Adela opted for Damage Containment, and catching Lady Uckfield's eye nodded slightly in the direction of Edith's advancing figure. Lady Uckfield, demonstrating the skill that ran the Empire, became aware of her daughter-in-law's presence without so much as a flicker of recognition. Even Adela would have been hard put to it to deny that her immediate departure was simply fortuitous, had it not been for the conspiratorial squeeze of her arm by the older woman. In a moment princess and attendant were gone, leaving Adela to introduce Edith as she drew alongside a slightly bemused Louisa.

  They talked for a while with Edith asking about me and Adela rather pointedly not asking about Simon and then they parted. Though not before Edith had observed brightly, 'My dear mother-in-law looks well.'

  'Very well, I gather,' said Adela.

  Edith laughed. 'How funny to think one has turned into an awkward relation! Oh well. She can't avoid me entirely. She might as well get used to the idea that I do still live in London, whe
ther she likes it or not.'

  'I don't think she was avoiding you. She just didn't see you,' said Adela, adding lamely, 'I never thought to say anything…'

  'No,' said Edith. 'Why would you?'

  And so they parted, Adela and Louisa to Fortnum's and then back to the flat to tell me every detail, Edith to Ebury Street and Simon, who was in a rage because one of his speeches had been cut from tomorrow's scene. He suspected his co-star, whom he was already beginning actively to dislike, and his brain was so full of this particular injustice that he had very little time for Edith's narrative. I doubt she told him much anyway. Only that she'd seen Googie but Googie hadn't seen her. In truth, beyond lesser horrors like the evening at Annabel's, this had been the starkest illustration so far of the extent of her fall and she could not yet talk about it without beginning to feel slightly ill.

  I knew enough from Adela's account to understand that Edith must be going through a pretty rough time however happy she was with Simon and I resolved to telephone her and buy her a decent lunch. But before I got around to it, I was surprised to receive an invitation from Isabel Easton to go down to Sussex for the weekend. The envelope was in fact addressed to Adela.

  Isabel had apparently learned her lessons well and grasped that the upper classes only ever address an envelope to the female part of a couple. Why? Who knows? At any rate it was Adela who read it first and she who suggested we accept. Adela was only mildly fond of Isabel and she didn't like David much so I suspected at once that she had an ulterior motive.