Snobs by Julian Fellowes (17 page)

'You're sure this is all right?' said Bella for the twelfth time, as we crunched to a halt outside the front entrance.

'I'm sure.

She wriggled out of the car. 'God, I've brought nothing but dungarees and sweaters.' Actually she looked quite saucy in a black outfit with big earrings, like a French singer in some politically subversive
boîte.

Simon was considerably cooler as we approached the great horseshoe stair. He was one of those actors, who come if not in battalions at least not singly, who play aristocrats so often on television that they end by believing in themselves as one. He had worn almost every uniform, gone over the top in almost every conflict, ridden to hounds and danced till he dropped in epic serial after epic serial, and now in some way he believed that he was indeed the sort of person who gets his shoes from Lobb's and his hats from Lock's, that somehow he would be a member of White's if they only knew about him, that he was, in short, a member of the
gratin.
He would lounge around Fulham sitting rooms making disparaging remarks about junior members of the Royal Family with the air of one who would rather not tell all he knows. Not that there was much difference between him and David Easton down the road. It was just that he had been less in the country and so was still unaware that it is a harder act to bring off out of London.

Of course, what neither Simon nor David ever really grasped was that the key to these people is their familiarity with one another. Most of them are unable to receive anyone as 'one of their own' who is not either known to them from early youth or at the very least known to one of their circle. They cannot accept that they would not have come across, at least at one remove, anyone who was entitled to be included in their set. The best that all those grinning racing-drivers and cockney actors can hope for as they glow in the pews at Royal weddings is the position of unofficial court jester, a service that may be dispensed with at any time. Simon was insufficiently familiar with the great world to understand this and so he maintained throughout the evening a kind of swagger, which was presumably supposed to demonstrate to the company that he was always dining in large stately homes all over the country. Needless to say, they were neither deceived nor interested.

There were only the four of them at home when we were ushered by Jago into the family drawing room and when we walked in they were all silent and reading. I thought, although I could not be sure, that I detected a rather torpid atmosphere. Lady Uckfield came over to greet us. Receiving Bella's gushings, she led her instantly to her husband with whom, she could see straight away, Bella was going to be a great hit. When she turned back to us, Simon had already forged over to Charles to ask him about the possibilities of Brook Farm and I watched as Charles almost jumped at the ferocity of this full frontal attack, but he recovered his ground. In fact, he was nodding with an amiable half-smile after a while so I assumed that all would be well. Edith, I noticed, after acknowledging me, had not risen and had returned to her book. I watched Simon eyeing her but she would not be included and after he had tried throwing a few remarks sideways, he gave up for the moment and returned to dazzling her husband.

Lady Uckfield brought me some whisky and water, my evening drink, without being asked, which was flattering. Her glance followed mine. 'Charles seems to think Brook Farm will be fine if you're really serious. He'll have Mr Roberts go over it in the morning. We must have it ready for next month at the latest anyway so it'll be good to have a spurt at it. You could move in the day after tomorrow if you don't mind a bit of work going on around you all. I hope this means we'll be seeing a lot of you.'

'Much too much, I have no doubt.' I hesitated for a moment. 'Wasn't Brook Farm being done up for Charles and Edith?'

Lady Uckfield nodded. 'Yes. But they've changed their minds.' She caught my eye. 'Too lovely for Tigger and me,' she said firmly.

I nodded. 'Lovely,' I said.

Poor Charles had rather a dry time of it at dinner. Bella was having a great success with Lord Uckfield, telling him raucous and unsuitable stories to his obvious delight, and he was not inclined to include anyone else in their exchanges, while Simon was giving the same treatment — though more decorously — to Lady Uckfield at the other end. Edith certainly seemed to have very little to say to her husband though, as it happens, she didn't appear to have much to say to anybody. I saw her watching Simon as he sprayed her mother-in-law with wit and charm. He had of course met his match in Lady Uckfield who was not to be caught in such a frail net as his but I must say this for him: he clearly knew he was outranked, something that in all the time I knew him he was seldom conscious of.

'Your actor friend seems very confident,' said Edith.

'Why are you so grumpy this evening? What's the matter with you?'

'Nothing. I'm not grumpy. Although I am rather miffed that you turned us down for these two. Do you really think you'll enjoy sharing with them?' She was speaking half under her breath as if to excite curiosity while remaining audible. I found it rather tiresome.

'I don't see why not.'

She looked at Simon again, sharply. 'Googie's taken a great shine to him, I must say. She announced at tea that she'd let Brook Farm to the handsomest man she'd ever seen. I was rather surprised.'

'Were you?' I said.

We were both looking across at Russell as he laughed and flirted with our hostess. The candlelight reflected in his hair, which he constantly tossed back, like a restless stallion. His eyes, darker than by day, shone like two sharply-cut sapphires. I looked back at Edith. She was beautiful too, of course, as a general rule by far the most beautiful at this table but this evening I was aware of how much of her animation had gone. I remembered her twinkling away at Lord Uckfield when her engagement was announced but her flickering secret smile had been replaced by something grander and more resolute. It was not a becoming alteration.

'He is handsome, I suppose,' she said dismissively. 'But actors are such girls about their looks. I can't take a man seriously who worries about eye-drops and mascara.'

I turned to her. 'Who's asking you to take him seriously?' I said.

Edith returned to her plate.

The Countess Broughton lay brooding in her bath, occasionally wriggling her body to disperse the hot water trickling from the tap that she operated expertly with her toes. Soon Mary would be bringing up her breakfast and would be surprised to find her in the bathroom. She was breaking the routine that had already somehow contrived to become established in her cabined life. Even Charles had looked startled when she had rolled out of bed and started to run the water. 'Are you having your bath, now?' he said, watching her like a puzzled puppy. Hardly daring to question her actions, and yet, as ever, fearful of change.

'Yes. Why shouldn't I?'

'No reason. No reason.' Charles was not a fighter. 'You normally have it after your breakfast, that's all.'

'I know. And this morning I'm having it before my breakfast. All right?'

'Yes. Yes. Of course.' He raised his voice, as she moved into the bathroom and started to clean her teeth. 'I'm going up to Brook Farm with Roberts. Do you want to come?'

'Not really.'

'We can look over what has to be done. I don't think much, if they only want it for a few weeks. It seems an odd idea to me. Wouldn't they be better off in a hotel?'

'Well, obviously they don't think so.'

'No. No, I suppose they don't. Well then. Did you like the other two?'

'I hardly spoke to them. Your parents didn't give me much of a look in.'

Charles laughed. 'I must say that Bella gave the Guv'nor a pretty good evening. I can see him wandering up to Brook Farm to see if she wants a cup of sugar. Russell looks a bit of a smoothy to me.'

'Googie seemed very taken with him.'

But Charles had said all he wanted to say. Leaving his wife to her novel arrangements, he pushed off into his dressing room.

Whatever he may have sounded like, he didn't object in the least to letting the farmhouse. Far from it. It gave him an excuse to gee up its completion and now that Edith had gone off the idea of living there he was anxious to hurry up and get the place rented and dealt with. Its empty, pretty rooms, which they had discussed together in such detail just after their marriage, were a reproach to him, a bewildering reminder of his failure to —what? To understand? But what was it he was supposed to be understanding? One minute, they seemed to be having such fun 'setting up home'. He would puzzle obediently over little squares of wallpaper and swatches of fabric (although he couldn't have cared less which she chose) and they would refer coyly to one of the bedrooms possibly being 'useful' later on, as they planned a better bathroom for it than the room might reasonably have expected. Then the next moment it all seemed somehow… Charles was aware of his wife's dissatisfaction. He was sufficiently anxious as to her well-being not to wish to ignore any signs of her unhappiness but he couldn't see where it had come from. What had changed? Certainly, he was completely stumped when it came to progressing the situation. He offered to spend more time in London but, no, that was not the answer. He invited her to take more of a role in running the house shop and the visitors' centre but, no, she thought she'd be treading on his mother's toes. In the end, he had hoped that doing up Brook Farm and perhaps generating a social life down in Sussex that was separate from his parents' might do the trick but one day Edith had suddenly decided that she didn't want to leave the main house after all and then he had really come to a full stop. 'I just can't quite see us sitting there staring at each other, can you?' she said lightly. These words struck a low and sombre note in Charles's heart because of course this was exactly what he had envisaged. The two of them, possibly eating at the kitchen table or with trays on their laps in the little library, watching television, chatting over the day's dramas…

Charles's real difficulty, as he would freely admit (to himself, at least) was that he just couldn't see what was wrong with their life. He couldn't grasp what was wrong with seeing the same people and having the same conversations and doing the same things month after month, year after year. His annual round had always been circumscribed by the usual demands: shooting until the end of January, hunting on until March, a bit of time in London, then perhaps a trip away, fishing somewhere and up to Scotland for some stalking. What could be the matter with that? Well, obviously something was the matter with it, but he couldn't see it. And quite what he was supposed to do next to please this wife whom he loved but who bit his head off at the slightest provocation was a serious conundrum to him. A conundrum he was unlikely to solve that morning, he thought, as he put on his tweed jacket and started downstairs for breakfast with his father in the dining room.

Meanwhile, Edith lay back silently in the warm water, listening to his footsteps clattering on the polished wood of the great staircase. She knew she was a worry to Charles, but in some odd and undefined way, she thought he deserved a bit of worry. And this morning, more than usual, she was disturbed and yet she hardly knew why. It was as if some kind of creeping rot had infiltrated itself behind the grand structure of her life and could only be detected by the faintest, acrid smell in the most sensitive of nostrils. There was a knock at the bedroom door and Mary came in with the tray. 'Milady?'

'I'm in here, Mary. Just leave it.'

'Are you all right, Milady?' Mary's voice, hovering discreetly near the open bathroom door, was tinged with worry occasioned, presumably, by this fractional alteration of routine.

'I'm fine, Mary. Thank you. Just leave the tray. I'll be straight out.'

'Very good, Milady.'

Edith listened to the maid bustling about in the bedroom until the door closed and she heard the footsteps retreating along the corridor.

How ordinary her life seemed to her. Today it seemed to be drenched in a kind of grey ordinariness that suffused the atmosphere of these stuffy, chintz-filled rooms and hovered like a mist above the waters of the bath. And yet, how recently these details — these Miladys, these echoing footsteps on polished floors, these male breakfasts far below, sparkling with silver dishes, these lace-covered trays glistening with exquisite china — how sweet to the senses these touches had been. In those early days at Broughton how much pleasure had she derived simply from the monograms on her linen, from the damask-covered bergères in her room, from the Derby figures on her desk, from the telephone with its buttons for 'stables' and 'kitchen', from the footman, Robert, blushing with nervousness when he came to collect her emptied luggage, from the swans on the lake, from the very trees in the park.

She was a princess in fairyland. And how quickly she had learned the tricks of graciousness, of being showily unaware of her setting, of making people ill at ease with her studied relaxation. She delighted in the Eastons' discomfort in their triumph, as they found themselves at the Broughton table (at last!) surrounded by people all of whom knew each other and none of whom knew them. She had quite consciously imitated some of the tricks of the late Princess of Wales in the way she perfected her warm and delightful manner for the village, that combination of undisappointing celebrity and studied informality that was guaranteed to win all hearts. She would glow and gush as she was escorted round the new playgroup facilities or as she gave away prizes at the flower show, winning new friends, disarming old critics. What fun it was to catch the children shyly glancing at her and to disarm them with a sudden, winning smile and then to follow it up with a sunbeam directed at the mothers. But then again it was so easy…

With a low groan, she pulled herself out of the water, shut off the tap, pulled out the plug and sloped through into her bedroom to pick at her breakfast. Mary had tidied her bed and lit the fire — the
dernier cri
of luxury, particularly in September — and her tray, as pretty as ever, had been left on the table in the middle of the room. Nestling among the charming flowered china were her letters, appeals, thank-yous, invitations to boring parties in the country, which they would be going to, and amusing parties in London, which they would not. She flicked through them idly as she bit into a piece of toast, mid-brown with its crusts carefully removed. Mary had tidied her clothes, a tweed skirt, a cotton shirt, a jersey with a rabbit motif. She would wear these things, with some pearls and some not very sensible shoes, as a costume for the endless part that she found herself playing. She thought of her day: some errands, the librarian, Mr Cook, to luncheon ('luncheon' — she even thought in the language of her role), a committee meeting in the village to discuss the summer show, a cousin of Googie's for tea. It was a dreary prospect.