Snobs: A Novel

by Julian Fellowes

  'Are you all right?' he asked superfluously.

  'I think it must have been those prawns,' she said, knowing full well that he had chosen the soup.

  'Poor you. Better out than in.' He smiled, holding up the receiver, and mimed, 'It's your mother,' with a comic grimace.

  Edith nodded and reached out her hand for the telephone. 'I'll make some coffee,' said Simon, and wandered off to the kitchen.

  Edith wiped her mouth and settled her thoughts. 'Mummy? No, I was in the bathroom.'

  'Was that you being sick?' said Mrs Lavery at the other end.

  'Well, I don't know who else.'

  'Are you all right?'

  'Of course I'm all right. We went to a ghastly place in Earl's Court last night that's been opened by some failed actor Simon knows. I had shellfish. I must have been mad.'

  'Only I thought you were looking rather green around the gills when I saw you.' Edith had accompanied her mother on a fruitless search for a hat the previous week. That was enough in itself to make most people fairly green but she said nothing.

  'So you're not ill?'

  'Certainly not.'

  'You would tell me if there was… something, wouldn't you?'

  Edith knew very well that she would hesitate to trust her mother with the time of day but there was no point in going into that now. 'Of course I would,' she said. There was a pause.

  'And I suppose there's no news. About… everything…'

  'No.'

  'Oh, darling.' However irritated, Edith did feel sorry for her mother. She was forced to concede that Mrs Lavery, shallow as her values might be, was experiencing some perfectly genuine emotions. Particularly regret. 'You won't take any… step you might be sorry about, will you?'

  'What step?'

  'I mean… you won't burn your bridges until you're sure…'

  Edith was used to her mother's seemingly limitless supply of clichés so she needed no translator to tell her what they were discussing. Oddly, despite the paucity of her mother's vocabulary, the question had succeeded in centring her thoughts on the matter. As she brought the conversation to an end and cleared the line, she knew the time had come for positive action.

  It was a Saturday, a mild, pleasant day for them as a rule, involving newspapers, a lunch out somewhere, perhaps a cinema or possibly a dinner with some friends in a Wandsworth kitchen but as Edith dressed she knew that no such day lay ahead for her. She selected her outfit with considerable care, casual country clothes, well bred, unshowy, exactly the type of skirt and jersey that she had renounced with a religious fervour so short a time ago. Just as when she was choosing her clothes for the dress show, she was once more conscious that her two lives demanded two costumes. A duke's daughter might get away with wearing some streetwalker's outfit from Voyage at a dinner in Shropshire, indeed she would be praised for her aristocratic eccentricity but she, Edith, would never be given the same licence. Had she dared to wear London clothes in the country, to Charles's circle it would only have been a confirmation of her ill-breeding. When she entered the kitchen, Simon looked up in surprise. 'My word. You look as if you're auditioning for Hay Fever.'

  'I feel such a fool. I promised to take my mother to a lunch party today and I completely forgot about it. That's why she rang. Can you forgive me?'

  'Whose lunch party?'

  'Just some country cousins.'

  'You don't have any country cousins. Wasn't that the whole point?' In saying this, Simon showed one of his rare flashes of understanding. It was exactly the point.

  'I do but I never talk about them. They're too boring to live.'

  'Which means you don't want me to come.' Simon hated to be left out of anything. Or at least, if he was, it had to be his choice. He didn't mind being too busy to join in, in fact he quite enjoyed it, but the thought that people were not anxious for his company — even if it was for a journey to the post box — was anathema to him.

  Edith smiled a wistful, wouldn't-that-be-nice smile. 'I wish. But she's been begging me for us to have some time on our own. I suppose she wants to talk about everything.' This was accompanied by a half-shrug that brooked no argument.

  'Just be nice about me.'

  She gave him a warm and supportive smile, knowing that in her heart she was plotting his fall, and set off downstairs to their bedroom to collect her coat. She did not want to tell Simon where she was going as that would have detonated a scene and she was by no means certain of the day's possible outcome. The last thing she wanted was for him to flounce back to his wife in a pet, leaving her to come home to an empty flat.

  The truth was she had determined, in that morning moment of surveying her own floating sick, that she was not going to be put off for one day longer. She would drive that very morning to Broughton and beard the lion — or rather the lioness's cub

  — in his den. As she sped out down the A22, she couldn't really understand what had taken her so long to come to this decision. This was her husband and she was going to what was, after all, her marital home. No one could argue with that.

  An unpleasant surprise was waiting for her, as she had forgotten that on a Saturday in summer the house would of course be open to the public. Somehow that had slipped through her calculations and she was now in the faintly ludicrous position of having to choose between parking her car in the courtyard and going in through the family's entrance or entering by the public door and travelling up into the body of the house surrounded by tourists and housewives from Brighton. She made the bold decision to go in by the latter route. She thought there would be plenty of time to block her path if she rang the family's doorbell and she was gambling on Charles being in his own study, which was next to the library. It would be the work of a moment to slip through the cordon and open the door and she correctly guessed that none of the guides would stop her.

  Indeed, she made a point of pausing to say hello to the pleasant woman in a stout, country suit who stood taking tickets.

  '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 won
dered 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.'

  'Righto. I'll get the car. Be outside our entrance in five minutes. And don't worry.'

  She rather loved him for telling her not to worry about an experience she had been going through once a month since she was twelve but she chose not to assuage his anxiety. With a weak smile, she watched him scuttle out of the room. In this choice of lie, Diana had judged correctly if she wanted instant action. As she calculated, Charles, like all men of his type, had the greatest possible distaste for any of the mechanics of womanhood. One hint of them and he neither needed nor wanted further explanation in order to make him act fast. As he thundered down the family staircase, she listened with the just pride of an efficient workman.

  ===OO=OOO=OO===

  Edith had hardly reached the landing by the bronze of the slave before Lady Uckfield issued forth from a roped-off archway.

  'Edith? Is that you? Why didn't you tell us you were coming?' Her mother-in-law slid her arm through hers and attempted to drag her towards the door into the family sitting room. Edith knew that the game was up, silently cursing herself for not pulling a scarf over her face and sliding in unnoticed, but even so she would not give in at once. She extricated herself from Googie's grip and started towards the library and Charles's study beyond.

  'I thought I'd be a nuisance and I only want a quick word with Charles. It won't take a moment.' She was walking so fast that, to the delight of the public present, Lady Uckfield was forced to break into a sort of trot to keep up with her. They passed into the splendid library with its high mahogany and ormolu-mounted bookshelves. Above the chimneypiece, an early Broughton in a chestnut periwig gazed down, startled at the scene being played out below him. A few tourists had recognised one or other of them and since the marital split had been in half the newspapers in the country, they left off their bored examination of the thousands of gilded, leather spines and turned all their attention to the two women, thrilled by this unexpected entertainment opportunity.

  'Are you staying for luncheon?' said Lady Uckfield, aware of being the cynosure of all eyes and anxious to normalise this very abnormal situation.

  'Why? Would you like me to?' said Edith. She in contrast was thoroughly enjoying the exposure of her mother-in-law to the gaze of the common multitude.

  'Of course,' said Lady Uckfield, grabbing and pulling at Edith's sleeve in a vain attempt to slow her progress across the gleaming floor.

  'I don't think so,' said Edith. She was at the study door by now and her hand was almost on the knob when it opened to reveal the stately form of Lady Bohun. Imperceptibly, with a movement hardly visible to the naked eye, she nodded to her hostess. Edith saw it and at once knew she was too late. The bird had flown.

  'Hello, Edith,' said Diana in her slowest and most mannered drawl. 'Will you excuse me? I'm just running into Lewes for something and I must get there before everything closes. Will you be here when we get back?'

  'What do you think?' said Edith, and Diana had gone without further ado. Left alone with her daughter-in-law, Lady Uckfield drew her into the room and closed the door. 'Sit down for a moment,' she said, taking her own place behind Charles's desk and absent-mindedly tidying his scattered papers into neat piles.

  'There's no need for this,' answered Edith. 'If Charles isn't here, I'll go.'

  'Please sit down,' was the repeated request, and Edith did. 'I am sorry you see us as your enemies, my dear.'

  'You may be sorry but you can hardly be surprised.'

  Lady Uckfield gave her a hurt look. 'I wanted your marriage to work, you know. You have misjudged me if you think otherwise. I always wanted you to be happy.'

  'You wanted us to make the best of a bad job.'

  'But you didn't, did you?' said Lady Uckfield crisply, all trace of her customary gush and vibrato gone.

  There was a measure of reason to this that took some of the wind out of Edith's sails as she was forced to admit. Was it rational of her to suggest that Lady Uckfield should have celebrated when she, Edith, came into their lives? Why should her mother-in-law want her back now that this unpleasant episode was almost over? Lady Uckfield was not finished. 'A year ago,'

  she said, 'you were sick of the sight of Charles. When he spoke you gritted your teeth, when he touched you, you shivered. I am his mother and I lived in the same house with you. Did you think I wouldn't notice these things?'

  'It wasn't like that.'

  'It was exactly like that. He bored you. He bored you to death. Worse than that, he irritated you to the point of distraction.

  He could not please you however hard he tried. Nothing he said or did was right. He set your nerves on edge by his very presence and yet now… what am I to make of this sudden eagerness to see him? What has changed?'

  Edith drew herself up and looked her opponent in the eye. She was determined somehow to try to gain the initiative. 'Has it occurred to you that I might have had some time for reflection? Or am I too stupid in your eyes to think of anything but money and social climbing?'

  'My dear, I never thought you stupid.' Lady Uckfield held up her palm in protest. 'You must at least give me credit for that.' There was a noise on the gravel and the old
er woman walked over to the window but it was not, as she had feared, Charles coming back for something he'd forgotten. 'I have to ask myself why now, why suddenly, a meeting is so essential when in the first months away you exhibited no such wish. I am a mother and I have to say to myself, what could have changed that might make a reunion with my son so desirable now when it was so un desirable then?'

  'Perhaps I don't feel I've made a good choice. Is that hard to understand?'

  'On the contrary. I find it easy to understand. Especially since I think you've made a very poor choice indeed. But…' She rested her fingertips against each other like an avuncular preacher making a point in a pulpit. 'Why now? Why such a change upon an instant?'

  Edith stared at her. 'You can't stop me seeing him for ever,' she said.

  Lady Uckfield nodded. 'No. I dare say I can't.'

  'Well then.'

  'I think I can stop you seeing him for a few months. Six perhaps, or even three. Let us see how we all feel then about this poor choice you have made.'

  At that moment Edith realised that of course her mother-in-law, dear Googie with her mind as pure as snow, knew. They never talked about it, neither at that time nor in the ensuing years, but they were always aware from then on that, beyond a shadow of doubt, they both knew. Edith stood up. 'I'm going now.'

  'Are you sure? Can I at least give you something to eat? Or what about a loo? You've come such a long way.' Once again the tone had settled back into its usual intimate pattern with the rhythm of shared midnight secrets in the dormitory.

  At this moment, in some strange way, it was hard for Edith not to admire this woman, her sworn foe, who held onto the high ground in every argument against all-comers. It was hard but it was not impossible. 'You are a fucking cow,' she said. 'A fucking cow with a hide of leather and no heart.'

  Lady Uckfield seemed to think over these words for a moment before nodding. 'Probably there is some truth in your unflattering description,' she acknowledged. 'And it is perhaps for that reason, or something resembling it, expressed hopefully in more fragrant language, that I have made such a success of my opportunities and you have made such a failure of yours. Goodbye, my dear.'