Snobs: A Novel Page 10

  'Where's Charles?' I said.

  She nodded towards the grandstand. 'He's gone to find the people he's staying with tonight. He's coming tomorrow and Friday.'

  'Good luck to him.'

  'Haven't you enjoyed yourself?'

  'Oh yes,' I said. 'But not half as much as you.'

  She laughed and said nothing, and at that moment David arrived to unlock the vehicle. He did not mention Charles and he was noticeably grumpy with Edith, so it was not as a general announcement but in a whisper that she informed me that Charles had asked her out for dinner the following Tuesday. It was of course more than she could do to keep it to herself.

  THREE

  Edith sat at her dressing table, bathed and sweet-smelling, and prepared to paint on her social face. She hadn't told her mother exactly whom she was dining with and now she pondered why she had not. It would certainly have given Stella a great deal of pleasure. It was probably a fear of this very pleasure that kept her daughter silent. And anyway, at this stage, Edith had not made up her mind whether or not she thought there was any what the magazines call 'future' in it.

  Edith Lavery was not in the least promiscuous but, at this point, she was certainly not a virgin. She had, in her time, had several boyfriends. None was serious until she was about twenty-three but then there had been a stockbroker, five years older than her and very good-looking, whom she had made up her mind to accept when he proposed. They went out for about a year, stayed in a lot of house-parties, enjoyed quite a few of the same things, and generally were happy or at least as happy as anyone else. His name was Philip, his mother was fairly grand, there was a little money — enough to start them off in Clapham

  — and in fact it all seemed fine, so no one was more surprised than Edith when he explained one evening, in halting tones, that he had met someone else and it was all over. For a moment Edith had difficulty making sense of this. Partly because he chose to tell her in San Lorenzo in Beauchamp Place, where the customers on the two neighbouring tables were listening to every word, and partly because she couldn't imagine in all modesty what this 'someone else' could have that she, Edith, didn't. She and Philip liked each other, they were a good-looking pair, they both enjoyed country weekends, they both skied. Where was the difficulty?

  At any rate, Philip left and three months later she was invited to his wedding. She went, being very gracious and looking (as she was determined to do) ravishing. The bride was plainer than her, naturally, and rather ordinary really but as Edith watched her gazing up at Philip as if he were God on earth, she had an uncomfortable inkling that this had something to do with what had gone wrong.

  After that there had been various walk-outs but not much more. One, an estate agent named George, had lasted about six months but this was only because he was the first competent lover she had experienced and the pleasures he unlocked in her made her wilfully blind to his shortcomings until one day, at Henley (which he had taken her to imagining, rather touchingly, that it was a smart event), while they were lunching in some members' tent, she had looked across the table at him, laughing his loud and gummy laugh, and realised that he really was too frightful. After that it was simply a matter of time.

  Her parents had been quite sorry about Philip whom they liked, not in the least sorry about George and, on the whole, without an opinion on the various others who had briefly penetrated Elm Park Gardens, but Edith had begun to notice that the veiled hints and half-joking, half-worried remarks from her mother had been getting more frequent since her twenty-seventh birthday. And for the first time she had started to feel a very far-away, distant echo of panic. Just supposing, for the sake of argument, that no one did ask her to marry them, what would she do?

  What on earth was she going to do?

  But then, she thought as she pulled out the heated rollers and picked up her Mason Pearson brush, everything could change so quickly. Being a woman wasn't like being a man. Men were either born with money or they spent years beavering away at careers to make themselves rich while women… women can be poor one day and rich, or at least married to a rich man, the next. It might not be fashionable to admit it but even in this day and age, a woman's life can be utterly transformed by means of the right ring.

  It is easy to get the impression from these ruminations that Edith was harshly, even exclusively, mercenary at this time in her life but that would be unjust. And it would have surprised her. If asked whether she was materialistic she would have answered she was practical, if snobbish she would have said she was worldly. After all, she read novels, she went to the cinema, she knew about happiness, she believed in love. But she saw her future career as primarily social (how could she not?) and if it was to be social then how could she have a career worthy of the name without money and position? Of course, by the 1990s, these were supposed to be outmoded ambitions but Edith did not have it in her to rush off and found a keep-fit empire or publish a new magazine. As for any of the professions, she had missed her chance of those ten years before when she left school. And it was no longer unfashionable to want to be affluent. The brown rice and dirndl-skirted generation of her childhood had given way to a brasher, post-Thatcherite world and weren't her dreams, in a way, in tune with that development?

  Still, if she was ambitious and reluctantly committed to the idea that it would be a man who would open the golden pathway to fulfilment, it would not be true to say that Edith was fundamentally a snob. Certainly not compared to her mother.

  She said herself that she liked to be on the inside looking out rather than the other way round, but she was more interested in achievement (or power, to use its less fragrant name) than rank. She wanted to be at the centre of things. She wanted a winner, not a coronet. Within limits. She was not looking for a successful costermonger but she was not really looking for an earl either. Which probably explains why she got one.

  She stared at her reflection in the glass. She was wearing a short black dress in wild silk. What her mother would have called 'a little black number', the eternal stand-by of the London Lady. It was well-cut, quite expensive and, apart from a French paste bracelet, she wore no ornament. She looked pretty and snappy with that slight tang of severity a certain kind of Englishman finds intriguing. She was satisfied. Edith was not vain but she was glad, not to say relieved, that she had not been saddled with a plain face. The doorbell rang.

  She had entertained the idea that she might simply tell Charles to wait downstairs but then he might think she was concealing something far more compromising than a rather routine father and a snobbish mother so she decided to ask him up but to introduce him in the American way, Christian names only. A modern habit that as a rule she particularly disliked as it withheld the only part of a name that might carry any information. Her mother defeated her as soon as she had taken the field.

  'Charles what?' she said, while Kenneth was making them all a drink.

  'Broughton.' Charles smiled. Edith saw the penny drop with a silent boing but not for nothing had her mother been a lifelong admirer of Elizabeth I. The mask remained smiling but immobile.

  'And how do you know Edith?'

  'We met in Sussex at my parents' house.'

  'When I was staying with Isabel and David.'

  'Oh, so you know the Eastons?'

  Charles nodded, for which Edith was grateful. He was not prepared to say, 'No, I do not know them and we were not introduced at a private party. I met your daughter when she had bought a ticket to see where I live.' This was about the size of it but it would have got the evening off to an odd start. Nevertheless, having escaped this manhole, Edith brought the chat to a fairly rapid conclusion rather than chance her arm a second time. So, far from being nervous, she was actually quite relieved when they settled themselves into the gleaming Porsche that awaited them below.

  'I thought we'd go to Annabel's.'

  'Now?' She was surprised and spoke before she had edited.

  'Is that all right? We don't have to.' Charles looked faintly h
urt and she felt mean at dashing what he might have supposed to be a bit of a treat. The thought that he had actually planned an evening for her was rather gratifying.

  'Lovely.' She smiled warmly into his open, pleasant, slightly dim face. 'It's just that I've always gone on late. I don't think I've ever had dinner there.'

  'I rather like it.'

  He drove off and they lapsed into silence until the car pulled up outside the famous basement entrance in Berkeley Square.

  Charles got out and handed the keys to a doorman. Edith had always been to Annabel's with young men who parked their cars around the square and walked to the club. There was a cosy feeling in the knowledge that she was out with someone who had no need to cut corners. They made their way down the steps and in through the door at the bottom. Charles signed in with a lot of 'good evenin', m'lord' going on all round.

  There was practically no one in the bar and seemingly even fewer in the restaurant. The empty dance-floor looked dark and maudlin with its black mirrors reflecting nothing. Charles seemed puzzled at first and then embarrassed. 'You're right. It is too early. I don't think it really picks up until about ten. Do you want to go somewhere else?'

  'Not at all,' she said with a brisk smile as she settled into the banquette. 'Now, tell me what to eat.'

  She had not yet decided what she thought about Charles but one thing she was quite sure of. This evening was going to be a great success if it killed her. The menu provided a few minutes of welcome chat. Charles knew about food and drink, and he was happy to take command, although in fact she had only asked for his help in order to re-establish herself as the helpless underdog like the good, nubile girl she was. The last thing she wanted was for him to start apologising. Experience had taught her that much. But in the event he chose well and the dinner was a good one.

  Charles Broughton was not exactly handsome. His nose was too large for that and his lips too thin. But in the candlelight he was not unattractive. He was very what Nanny would call 'distinguished'. He looked so like an English gentleman that he could have come from Central Casting and Edith felt herself being quite drawn to him physically. Much more than she had imagined she would be. She was mildly surprised to realise that she was looking forward to his asking her to dance.

  'Do you spend a lot of time in London?' she said.

  He shook his head. 'Good Lord no. Little as possible.'

  'So you're generally in Sussex?'

  'Most of the time. We've got a place in Norfolk as well. I have to get up there from time to time.'

  'Funny. I'd thought of you as rather social.'

  'Me? You must be joking.' He laughed out loud. 'Why was that?'

  'I don't know.' She did know although she was not prepared to say that she had read about him in various social columns.

  Since he and she had run into each other at Ascot, it all seemed to add up to a rather fun-filled image. It was a mistaken impression that lingered for some time before it was firmly put right.

  The truth was that, like most of the human race, Charles went to parties if he was asked and had nothing else to do but he did not have many friends — certainly not many that he had made in the last few years — and he saw himself exclusively as a countryman, helping his father to run the estates and the houses that God had seen fit to entrust to their care. He did not question nor resist his position but neither did he exploit it. If he had ever thought about the issues of inheritance or rank he would only have said that he felt very lucky. He would not have said this aloud, however.

  Contrary to Edith's belief, he had not taken her to Annabel's as part of any romantic strategy. The truth was that, without admitting it to himself, he liked to take girls to places where he was known. It put a spin on the dinner that anonymity lacked.

  It was his turn to speak.

  'Have you lived a lot in the country?'

  'Not much, really.' Edith realised this was an odd answer even as she said it for she had never, for half an hour, actually

  'lived' in the country. Unless one counted boarding school, which of course one couldn't. Still, she liked the country. She'd stayed a lot in the country. She'd walked behind the guns. She'd ridden. It wasn't a total lie. She qualified it: 'My father's business. You know.'

  Charles nodded. 'I suppose he has to move about quite a bit.'

  Edith shrugged. 'Quite a bit.'

  Actually, Kenneth Lavery had had to move about from the London Underground to the same office in the city for the last thirty-two years. He had once had to go to New York and once to Rotterdam. That was it. This slight re-shading of the truth was never corrected. Charles was forever thereafter under the impression that Edith's father had been some sort of international whizz-kid, jetting between Hong Kong and Zurich. In creating this false picture, however, Edith had read Charles correctly. There is something much less petit bourgeois about a businessman with permanent jet lag than a stationery drudge buying a ticket for the Piccadilly Line northbound, and Charles did like things just so.

  Time had passed and the club was filling.

  'Charlie!' Edith looked up to see a pretty brunette in a sharply tailored, sequinned cocktail dress bearing down on them.

  She was accompanied by, or rather trailing, a whale. He wore a suit that must have taken a bale of worsted and a large spotted tie. When they had made it to the table, Edith noticed the rivulets of sweat that trickled continuously from behind his ears over the fat, red neck.

  'Jane. Henry.' Charles stood up and gestured at Edith. 'Do you know Edith Lavery? Henry and Jane Cumnor.' Jane took Edith's hand in a swift and lifeless hold then turned back to Charles as she sat down and poured herself a glass of their wine.

  'I'm parched. How are you? What happened to you at Ascot?'

  'Nothing happened. I was there.'

  'I thought we were all having lunch on Thursday. With the Weatherbys? We hunted and hunted for you before we gave up.

  Camilla was bitterly disappointed.' She gave a half-smirk to Edith, ostensibly inviting her to join the joke. In fact, of course, consciously excluding her from it.

  'Well, she shouldn't have been. I told her and Anne that I had to have lunch with my parents that day.'

  'Needless to say they'd completely forgotten. Anyway, doesn't matter now. By the way, tell me: are you going to Eric and Caroline in August? They swore you were but it seemed so unlike you.'

  'Why?'

  Jane shrugged with a lazy, sinuous movement of the shoulder. 'I don't know. I thought you hated the heat.'

  'I haven't made up my mind. Are you going?'

  'We don't know, do we, darling?' She reached across to her puffing husband and kneaded his doughy hand. 'We're so behind with everything at Royton. We've hardly been home since Henry got political. I've a ghastly feeling we might be stuck there all summer.' She again broadened her smile to include Edith.

  Edith smiled back. She was quite used to this curious need on the part of the upper-classes to demonstrate that they all know each other and do the same things with the same people. This was perhaps an unusually manic example of the palisade mentality but, looking at Lord Cumnor, aka Henry the Green Engine, it was not difficult to see that Jane had made some severe sacrifices to achieve whatever position she was in command of. It would be hard for her to set it aside, even for a moment, as a thing of little importance.

  'Are you very political?' Edith said to Henry, who seemed to be recovering from the effort it had taken him to cross the floor.

  'Yes,' he said, and turned back to the others.

  Edith had been inclined to feel rather sorry for him but she saw in a moment that he perceived no need to feel sorry for himself. He was quite happy being who he was. Just as he was quite happy to demonstrate that he knew Charles and did not know Edith. Charles, however, was not prepared to have the Cumnors be rude to the girl he had invited for dinner and he consciously and obviously turned the conversation back to her.

  'Henry's frightfully serious since he took his seat. What was your
latest cause? Organic veg for prisoners?'

  'Ha, ha,' said Henry.

  Jane came to her husband's aid. 'Don't be beastly. He's done a lot of work for the national diet, haven't you, darling?'

  'Which didn't include going on it, I gather,' said Charles.

  'You laugh now but they'll come after you when your father snuffs it. You'll see,' said Jane.

  'No they won't. Labour will win next time and they'll have the hereditaries out before you can say Jack Robinson.'

  'Don't be so pessimistic.' Jane did not want to hear that the world she had pinned all her hopes on was threatened with extinction. 'Anyway, it'd be years before they came up with a formula for the Lords that works better and they won't do anything in a hurry.'

  Charles stood up and asked Edith to dance.

  She raised her eyes in a half-query as they shambled around the floor, by now crammed with Iranian bankers and their mistresses.

  He smiled. 'Henry's all right.'

  'Is he a great friend?'

  'He's a sort of cousin. I've known him all my life. God, he's fat at the moment, isn't he? He looks like a balloon.'

  'How long have they been married?'

  He shook his head. 'Four, five years, I suppose.'

  'Do they have any children?'

  He made a wry shape with his mouth. 'Two girls. Poor old Henry. Setchell's got him drinking port and eating cheese and Christ knows what.'

  'Why?'

  'To get a boy, of course. To get the bloody boy.'

  'What happens if they don't have one?'

  Charles frowned. 'There are no brothers. I think some bloke in South Africa gets the title although I'm not sure if he or the girls get the swag. Anyway, they're both quite young. They'll bash on for a while longer, I should think.'

  'It could get rather expensive.'

  'It certainly could. You never know how long to keep going. Look at the Clanwilliams. Six girls before they called it a day and it's worse nowadays.'

  'Why?'

  'Why do you think? Even the girls have to go to decent schools.'