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.
