Snobs by Julian Fellowes (27 page)

And she left the shop, her shoulders stooping as she pulled at the heavy door. When I had last seen her she had resembled a character from some frothy Coward comedy. Now she looked like Mother Courage.

===OO=OOO=OO===

Simon was oddly nervous as they turned right off the King's Road down the Vale towards Elm Park Gardens. He'd been fiddling with his tie every time they stopped at a light and as they drew closer, he started picking at his nails. Edith could feel herself tensing with irritation. She couldn't decide if he was apprehensive because he thought her parents were much grander than they in fact were — or if he was nervous of his role as a Wrecker of Marital Bliss. Either way she just wished he'd relax, as the evening promised to be quite sticky enough as it was.

'What is the matter with you?'

Simon just smiled and shook his head. He himself was not exactly clear as to why he had such butterflies although it was true he did think that the Laverys were smarter than they were. He had a very unclear idea of the nuances of London Society and, since he had no knowledge of the Inner Circle whatever, he was unaware of the extent to which Edith had been an outsider at the time of her marriage. Since he still thought of his new mistress as fearfully smart he imagined her background was correspondingly impressive. But that was not actually the source of his unease on this particular evening. Probably it was the more ordinary complaint that this formalisation of their relationship, this presentation to the parents, seemed to set some sort of seal of finality on what had originally been nothing more than a flirtation. He had not really, even now, faced that he was heading into the realms of 'divorce' and 'division of property' and 'maintenance' and 'custody' and all sorts of other depressing words and phrases and yet that is what suddenly seemed to loom ahead. He supposed that in some perhaps roundabout way Mr Lavery was going to ask him about his 'intentions' and it struck him that he didn't really have any intentions — not absolutely fixed ones anyway. But then he glanced across at Edith and she did look very lovely when he thought about it and he was aware of how much prettier her profile was than Deirdre's, who had always looked just a little gormless from sideways on and he thought that after all he could do worse. And thus mollified and heartened he got out of the car.

Mrs Lavery had confided in her husband about her meeting in Colefax. The words of the conversation had gone round and round her head until she had tried to spin them into a skein of hope. Even as she cooked for her daughter's lover she shouted through to the drawing room, 'What do you think he meant by "cast down" exactly?'

Kenneth Lavery was almost as unhappy as his wife over the turn events had taken but for more honourable motives. He hated to see his beloved 'Princess' involved in a public scandal. He hated to witness his wife's despair. And he was not insensible to the fact that his daughter had thrown away a position of power from which she might have achieved fine things and run instead to a place barely within decent society. He had been proud of his daughter as a Great Lady and he was saddened by her fall. Having said that, he was a good deal more philosophical about the nature of Edith's folly than his wife. Unlike her he had never deluded himself that Edith's marriage was going to make all that much of a difference in his own life.

'I think he meant what he said. Charles is cast down. Of course he's cast down. His wife has just gone off with another man. What would you expect him to be?'

Stella Lavery stuck her head round the door. 'I just meant that it sounds as if Charles still hasn't got used to the idea. I wondered if there was any point in perhaps getting in touch with him…?' Her voice trailed away, as her husband started to shake his head slowly but firmly from side to side.

'My dear, it is not Charles who decided to end the marriage. It doesn't matter what he thinks. He is not to blame for this. Nor do I think it fair to start trying to stir him up. Maybe he is getting over her, maybe he isn't. Either way it will not help him to have his hopes revived by you. He is a nice man and our daughter has behaved badly to him. It is fitting for us to keep out of his way.' So saying he returned to the television.

His wife did not resent this treatment by her husband because in her heart she agreed with it. Try as she might to affect some sort of modern tolerance the fact remained that she was deeply, deeply ashamed of Edith's behaviour. As long as she could remember she had imagined herself perfectly suited for a Great Role in the public life of England. She would daydream as she watched those ladies-in-waiting hovering behind the Queen in Parliament, all dressed in their fifties Hartnell frocks, and she had thought how well she, Stella Lavery, would have acquitted herself as Duchess of Grafton or Countess of Airlie if fate had only called her. She would have served well, she knew, even if, like the little mermaid, every step had been taken on knives. And all this fantasy had been passed on to her daughter who had, miraculously, made it come true. But now, instead of hearing that Edith had been asked to chair the Red Cross or to join the household of one of the princesses, the telephone had rung to tell her that it was all over. That her dream was in ruins. And at the bottom of this pit of slime into which she had been hurled was the bitter gall of knowing that all over London people were tut-tutting and saying that after all Charles had married beneath him, that Edith was a little nobody who just couldn't 'handle it' and that he should have stuck to his own kind.

The doorbell went but before they could get to it Edith had let herself in and was calling to them through the flat. As the lovers entered the drawing room, she hurried to kiss her father. He gave her an affectionate squeeze and she knew he at least would be no trouble as she led him over to be introduced to Simon. One glance at the frozen statue of her mother framed in the doorway, however, told her all she needed to know about the evening to come.

Mrs Lavery advanced stiffly and extended a hand. But she could not smile and
in a way it was almost a relief that, as soon as Kenneth had left them to fetch
some drinks, she dispensed with Simon's inept attempts at small talk and
launched straight into the heart of the matter. 'You will understand that this
is all very difficult for us, Mr Russell.' She deliberately ignored his attempts
to make her call him Simon and in this there was a certain similarity to the way
her idol, Lady Uckfield, would have managed the meeting. The latter would have
been much cosier, of course. 'We are both very fond of our son-in-law. So you
will forgive us if we don't fall on your neck.'

Simon smiled, crinkling up his eyes in a way that was usually effective.
'Neck-falling is quite optional, I assure you,' he muttered gaily.

Mrs Lavery did not return his smile. It wasn't that she was immune to
physical attraction. She could see well enough that Simon was one of the
handsomest men she had ever encountered but in her eyes his beauty was the
explanation of her daughter's ruin. Nothing less. At that moment she could
cheerfully have taken a knife and cut the features from his face if it would
have turned Edith back from her chosen course. 'My daughter was,' she paused,
'is
married to a fine man. Obviously you've thought about what you're
doing but it's hard for us to see her break her vows without a pang.'

'It wouldn't have cost you much of a pang if I was leaving Simon for
Charles,' said Edith.

Now this was completely true. So true in fact that it made Mr Lavery smile
momentarily as he came back in with a tray of glasses, but Edith was forgetting
that Mrs Lavery had cast herself in the part of Hecuba, the Noble Widow. In
Stella's shattered mind she and Googie Uckfield were two high-born victims in a
cosmic disaster (she talked
of
Lady Uckfield as Googie but not yet
to
her. Now, she thought tearfully, she would never have the chance). There
was no room for irony in her suffering. She looked at her daughter with brimming
eyes.

'How little you know me,' she said, and retreated majestically into the
kitchen. Edith, her father and Simon stared at each other.

'Well, I suppose we all knew it was going to be a rough night,' said Mr
Lavery, tucking into his whisky.

Later, sitting round the oval reproduction table in the flat's modest dining
room, the four of them did contrive some quasi-normal conversation. Mr Lavery
questioned Simon about acting and Simon questioned Mr Lavery about business and
Mrs Lavery fetched the food and removed the plates and made elaborately
courteous remarks all evening. She had that uniquely English talent of
demonstrating, through her scrupulously polite manner, just how awful she
thought the company. She could leave a roomful crushed and rejected and yet
congratulate herself on behaving perfectly. It is of course of all forms of
rudeness the most offensive as it leaves no room for rebuttal. Even at the
height of hostility the Moral High Ground is never abandoned.

Edith watched the three familiar faces and tried to question herself as to
what was really taking place. Was this the cementing of a new alliance that
would shape her future life? Would these three people be her companions through
twenty Christmases to come? Would Simon and her mother build their bridges and
talk about the children and come to share private jokes? Handsome as Simon was
and strong as her desire for him remained, she was struck this evening by the
dreariness of them all.

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.'