Snobs by Julian Fellowes (9 page)

'Charles,' I said, 'if there's one thing that makes me uncomfortable it's modesty and we'll have no more of it tonight.'

He laughed and the moment was passed.

I love Paris. There are certain cities where you can only have a good time with the help of the residents and there are others where a good time is available to all. Such is Paris, which is just as well given the amount of help one generally gets from the residents. My mother, a poor linguist herself, had been extremely anxious that her children should not suffer as she had suffered, nodding and smiling at French diplomats' wives in a kind of frozen tableau of international goodwill. Consequently, in our early teens we all had one or more school holidays ruined by being sent off to families in the depths of France where, as she had made a ruthless point of checking, we would find no English spoken. As a result of these draconian cruelties we all speak tolerable French, which of course enhances the pleasure of visiting their beautiful capital city.

I had not previously stayed at the Paris Ritz, although I had been there once to a very grand reception, which formed part of a series celebrating a marriage between two spectacularly Faubourg families. It is a great hotel in the sense that it belongs more to that lost era of great hotels, where veiled beauties stood about waiting for their maids to check twenty pieces of luggage before embarking for the Riviera, than to our own eat-and-run epoch. A red, white and gilt palace, sumptuous and yet pretty — quite unlike the modern, Park Lane equivalents got up, as they are, like enormous Maida Vale hairdressing salons. I was thoroughly glad to be there, particularly since I wasn't paying, and even the contemptuous looks the hotel employees cast at my torn and broken luggage could not quench my enthusiasm.

We gathered in the bar, slicked up in our black ties, with that faintly desperate air of the English embarking on a 'good time', and started to tuck into the champagne. Tommy Wainwright came over to me and I asked him if he knew what the plan was for the evening.

He shrugged. 'I imagine we'll have dinner here and then push on to somewhere embarrassing on the Left Bank. Isn't that the form?'

'I expect so. Have you known Charles a long time?'

'We were at Eton together. Then I went out with Caroline for a bit when we were about twenty so we sort of re-met. What about you?'

'I hardly know him. I feel rather a fraud being here. It's just that I introduced him to Edith so I suppose I'm representing her. Just to check that no one tries to put him off the whole idea.'

Wainwright smiled. 'So you're a friend of Edith. How interesting. We've scarcely met. I must say she's a real beauty. But then she'd have to be to carry off the prize.'

'I imagine there were quite a few noses out of joint when they made the announcement.'

He laughed. 'There certainly were. I think they were all so irritated because none of them knew her. Or none of the ones I know seemed to. Like an outsider winning the Derby. At one point she was starting to sound like a cross between Eliza Doolittle and Rebecca.' I could just imagine and said so. He smiled. 'From the little I know of her, I'm sure she'll do very well.' He nodded over towards the groom. 'He's really smitten, you know. Charming. I like to see it.'

It was a particularly warm evening and the manager had decided to have the tables of the dining room carried out into the little courtyard that lies alongside it. The mellow stone, carefully carved for the seeing eye of César Ritz, and the modest fountain splashing coolly in the darkening night, induced that spirit of contentment, resting on a combination of luxury and beauty, which one would be foolish, whatever one's philosophy, always to resist. God knows it is rare enough. Euro-smart couples sat about, the women in their brilliant jewellery, one with a white poodle, idly barking its unhungry bark. To me it seemed agreeable to watch the rich taking their less controversial pleasures. Unfortunately nothing is perfect and I was seated next to Eric Chase, who proceeded to hijack as much of the arrangement as he could.

'Bring us another bottle,' he said brusquely to the waiter as he sat down. 'And try to get the temperature right this time.' He turned to me. 'We met at my in-laws' house, didn't we?' I nodded. 'You came with those frightful friends of Edith.' I nodded again, since I was certainly not prepared to wreck the evening for the sake of Isabel and David. But like all bullies he was not to be pacified. 'Where on earth did she meet them?'

'I don't really know. I met them because I've known Isabel since we were children.'

'Poor you. Some of this?' Without waiting for an answer he slopped some wine into my glass. 'Well, I'm afraid little Edith'll have to shape up a bit if she wants to bring it off.'

'What do you mean?'

'If she wants to get away with it. As Lady Broughton.' He started to sing, 'There'll be some changes made.'

'Oh, I don't know,' I said. 'Did you find it very difficult to get away with marrying Caroline?' Of course, in a way, this was a mistake and Chase turned to his other neighbour having registered me as an enemy, but I was satisfied to have maintained Edith's honour. Like many aggressive
parvenus
who have climbed the greasy pole, he was under the illusion that the reason people did not point out his social failings was because they were no longer visible. As rude as he was, he could not credit anyone else with politeness. That was his armour. I did not mind crossing him as I had disliked him a good deal on sight and anyway I was not entirely joking when I said I thought I was there as Edith's champion.

The next stage of the evening was quite as embarrassing as anyone could wish. We were transported to Chez Michou in Montmartre, a pocket-handkerchief of a club, where assorted female impersonators mimed to the records of various stars. This was the idea of Lord Peter, who turned out to be, as I think I already vaguely knew, an amiable drunkard with a reputation for being 'quite a card'. Actually we were all pretty drunk by this time, having been at it more or less non-stop since we arrived at the airport in London. Doubtless this helped us enjoy the show, which contained few surprises: Garland, Streisand, a rather compelling Monroe, and an absolutely unlike Rita Hayworth miming to 'Long Ago and Far Away', which Rita herself only mimed to anyway. Drink or no drink, I was beginning to feel the siren call of my bed and I caught Tommy's eye as he made a let's-get-out-of-here gesture towards the door when the compere — or
commère
should it be? — jumped up onto the stage. 'Now, I'd like to introduce our special act for this evening, with our best wishes and congratulations. Ladies and Gentlemen, Miss Edith Lavery!'

I nearly jumped out of my seat as the young man who had given us Monroe reappeared as Edith. An over-made-up Edith with a kind of flashiness she didn't possess, but otherwise astonishingly accurate. Even down to her dress, which could easily have been one of her own. I looked at Charles. He was stunned as were we all. Peter, of course, was grinning like a clown. On the stage the boy/Edith started to sing a song from
Guys and Dolls.
'Ask me how do I feel, Little me with my quiet upbringing…' She wiggled her way across the stage to where Charles sat, still motionless. 'Well, sir, all I can say is if I were a bell I'd be ringing…' At about this moment I realised that this was, in some undefined and complicated way, a terrible insult to Edith. The others started to snicker, as the blonde on the stage frisked and shouted her silly lyrics about striking it lucky. Charles was silent. The performer beckoned him up onto the stage and clearly this was part of what had been pre-arranged but he shook his head and kept his seat, with no change in his expression. The boy/girl looked, puzzled, over to where Peter was sitting with a laughing Eric and a couple of the others. The act was grinding to a halt. In another moment, Peter jumped up onto the stage as her partner and the dance went on. Towards the end, Peter was given a cardboard jewel-box to present to her, which he did, going down on one knee. 'Edith' opened it and started to deck herself out in the glittering gewgaws within. I was reminded of Gillray's cartoon attacks on the actress, Elizabeth Farren, who succeeded in marrying the Earl of Derby in the 1790s. At the bottom of the box was a little coronet, a pantomime walk-down affair, bright with coloured glass. At the last note of the song 'Edith' took it up and planted it on her head.

In fairness to Peter Broughton I'm sure he hadn't quite hoisted in how fantastically offensive the cumulative effect of all this would be to Charles. Certainly the last thing he wanted was for the evening to end as it did. Peter was not one of the cleverest, poor soul, and I remember I thought then that Chase or one of the others must have embellished his original idea of simply having someone impersonate Edith, which, in itself, if 'she' had just sung a love song, could have been quite amusing. As it was, and without I think Peter's really knowing, she was lampooned as a greedy, social-climbing adventuress in front of her bridegroom. Chase and some of the others were applauding loudly. They were sitting behind Charles and so could not see the expression on his face, though for the life of me I can't imagine how they thought he was going to find it funny. But Chase was one of those who insults you and then says, 'Can't you take a joke?' and I suppose he had done this so often he had begun to think these insults really were jokes and that Charles, or anyone who couldn't take them, was simply being dull.

Charles stood up. 'I'm rather tired. I think I'm going back to the hotel,' he said.

Tommy and I volunteered to join him and that was that. We strode off, leaving the others to nurse the failure of Peter's prank.

'Shall we get a taxi?' said Tommy. It was late and the night was perceptibly cooler than it had been but Charles shook his head.

'Is it all right if we walk for a bit? I want some air.' We strode along in silence until he spoke again. 'That was rather unpleasant, wasn't it?'

'Well,' Tommy was placatory, 'I'm sure they didn't mean it to be. I dare say the girl, or boy or whatever she was, misunderstood the brief.'

'It was Peter's fault.'

'Well…'

Charles stopped walking for a minute and stood, looking mutely about him. 'Do you know what really depressed me about that?' We both had some pretty good ideas but naturally said nothing. 'It was because I suddenly realised how absolutely bloody stupid most of the people I know really are. These are supposed to be twelve of my best friends, for God's sake!' He chuckled bitterly. 'I'm embarrassed for them and I'm embarrassed for myself.'

In the end we walked home right across Paris. The others must all have gone to bed by the time we fell through the door in the Place Vendôme. We parted and went to our rooms and I suppose, all in all, the evening must be rated as a flop — particularly considering the planning and the cost — but in some odd and undefined way I found myself feeling rather encouraged by Charles's outburst. My assessment of his brain was not revised but I do not think I had appreciated before that night how thoroughly decent he was. It is not a fashionable quality these days but it seemed to me that Edith's happiness was in safer hands than I had realised.

When she opened her eyes she knew at once that this was the last morning in her life when she would awake as Edith Lavery. Henceforth, that girl would have gone away and whatever might happen in the future she would not be coming back. Edith attempted to question herself as to what exactly she was feeling. Just as when you are forced into a decision it is often the mouthing of one choice that makes you realise you really want the other, so she wondered if her stomach would tell her that she was making a ghastly mistake simply because this was the day when the whole thing became irrevocable. But her stomach did not wish to play the part of a goat's entrails at Delphi and declined to give an opinion. She felt neither elated nor depressed — simply that there was a lot to do. There was a faint knock on her door and her mother came in carrying a cup of tea.

It is no exaggeration to say that Stella Lavery was so happy on this morning she really felt she might burst, that her heart might stop, exhausted by pumping the feverish blood of satisfied ambition. It is not true to say she would have gladly sacrificed her daughter to a rich marquess's heir if she had thoroughly disliked him, simply that unless he had attacked her with a knife it was not physically possible that she
could
dislike him. Actually, I don't think she had given Charles
qua
Charles much thought. He was pleasant, well-mannered, not bad-looking. That, to coin a phrase, was all she knew and all she needed to know. That, and the fact that after tomorrow her daughter would be the Countess Broughton.

It had been a source of the faintest irritation to Stella that her daughter's title was not to be Countess
of
Broughton, which she thought more romantic, and it seemed to her tiresome of the first Broughton to receive the earldom not to have asked for the 'of.' After all, the Cholmondeleys had done so and so had the Balfours when they were presented with their titles. True there was a village called Cholmondeley and somewhere in Scotland called Balfour but was there not a place called Broughton? Surety there must be one somewhere? Still, allowing the fact that you can't have everything' she had grown used to the form and now gained a good deal of pleasure correcting her friends. After all, the blessed 'of would come, with the marquessate, all in good time.

'Good morning, darling.' She whispered the words, gently conveying, as she thought, great tenderness. This was a moment when she knew it behoved her to feel some nostalgia and regret at losing the child of her heart. The fact remained, however, that, notwithstanding the very real and deep joy Edith had given her mother over the years, this morning Mrs Lavery was as happy as a sandboy. Not only was she gaining a son, as the saying goes, but, as she saw it, a whole new position in the firmament. Gates as rusty as the ones at Ham, locked after the departure of the last Stuart king, were everywhere springing open before her. Or so it seemed. Stella Lavery was not a complete fool. She did realise that it was up to her to make a success of this opportunity, that if some of the people she was going to meet, most particularly Lady Uckfield, could be induced to like her, could actually want her friendship, then she could turn herself into Edith's asset rather than being (as she very secretly and reluctantly suspected) her liability. She also knew enough to go slowly. Never must there be the slightest scent about her of a beast of prey in pursuit of its quarry. Softly, quietly, mutual interests must be unearthed, books must be lent, dress-makers must be suggested. In her mind, on this dizzy morning, were shining images, holographs of elegant pleasure, showing her tucking into a light lunch with Lady Uckfield before they rushed off together to their shared milliner, pulling on their gloves as they waved for a taxi…