Snobs: A Novel

extraordinary that Edith had got into the house at all. How had it happened? From thoughts like these, unfortunately for Edith, Lady Uckfield had deduced that Charles had been 'caught' and while she later (much later) qualified this impression, she never really changed it. As a matter of fact I'm not at all sure it wasn't true.

Isabel and I drifted over towards the fireplace. 'Hello, Mrs Lavery,' I said, and Edith's mother turned towards us, revealing in an instant that fatal, diffident graciousness that marks the successful social climber. Their manner invariably conveys to their true equals that the ladder has been pulled up and will never, ever be lowered again. The eager, snobbish Mrs Lavery we had known had gone and been replaced by the Snow Queen. It was as if we were in Invasion of the Body Snatchers and we were talking to a pod. Almost reluctantly, sounding every bit as vague about our identities as Lord Uckfield, she introduced us to our host.

He shook our hands in a hearty, blank way. 'Jolly good,' he said. 'Did you have a lot of trouble getting here?'

'We've only come from Ringmer,' said Isabel. 'My husband and I live there.'

'Really?' said Lord Uckfield. 'Was there a lot of traffic on the road? All those bloody people trying to escape the city if there's a glimmer of sun in the forecast. Was it difficult getting out?'

Isabel was about to embark on another long explanation of how she had not come from London, which I spared her. 'I came on the train,' I said.

'Very sensible.' He smiled his expansive, florid smile and nodded us away.

The Marquess of Uckfield was a dull and stupid man but there was, on the whole, no harm in him. He had been spoiled all his life and surrounded by the kind of toadies that such people find comfort in, garnered from the distant strands of their own families as well as on the highways and byways, and so he had no conception of how dull and stupid he really was. His uneducated banalities were greeted as if they had come from Solomon and his unfunny, old jokes were rewarded with gales of breathless laughter. If it is the experience of life that shapes us, is it to be wondered at that men like Lord Uckfield are so signally unshaped? People would speak, even out of his hearing, of his wisdom and judgement when he certainly had neither.

The reason for this was that if they could convince themselves they truly believed him to possess these qualities, then they would not have to admit to themselves that they were toadies, which is a powerful motive among the fashionable. And if their outer acquaintance ever expressed doubt as to his Lordship's mental prowess, they could always answer, 'Ah, you wouldn't think that if you really knew him,' thereby giving themselves one mark for being on intimate terms with yet another Great House and a second mark for being a genuine person. He was not ungenerous, just lazy with the fundamental laziness that marks most friendships of the privileged with a dead hand. He had long since decided that pursuing relations with any but sycophants and those members of his own class necessary for his self-image was far too like hard work and he had abandoned the effort, but the decision had been a subconscious one and he still thought of himself as a kind man. In truth, he would always be kind to Edith. He was not in the least admirable but nor was he a snob and anyway, apart from anything else, he was just glad she was so pretty.

I could see the butler in the door catching Lady Uckfield's eye. She nodded, cast her professional glance about the room and walked over to me. 'We're having dinner in a minute,' she said. 'I wonder if you'd like to take in Lady Tenby?' She indicated a stout party of sixty-plus wedged in a chair by the fire. I nodded and muttered and Lady Uckfield continued her rounds. We had been almost the last-comers and I suppose everyone else already had their orders. I walked towards my partner, thinking I might be needed to haul her into an upright position. She looked up and extended a fat, jewelled hand.

'Are you taking me in?' she said. I nodded. 'Googie's so brilliant at organising things. She should have run a hotel chain.

Help me up.'

I have always been uncomfortable with the jejune pseudo-informality implicit in the upper-class passion for nicknames.

Everyone is 'Toffee' or 'Bobo' or 'Snook'. They themselves think the names imply a kind of playfulness, an eternal childhood, fragrant with memories of Nanny and pyjamas warming by the nursery fire, but they are really a simple reaffirmation of insularity, a reminder of shared history that excludes more recent arrivals, yet another way of publicly displaying their intimacy with each other. Certainly the nicknames form an effective fence. A newcomer is often in the position of knowing someone too well to continue to call them Lady So-and-So but not nearly well enough to call them 'Sausage', while to use their actual Christian name is a sure sign within their circle that one doesn't really know them at all. And so the new arrival is forced back from the normal development of friendly intimacy that is customary among acquaintances in other classes.

Dinner had been announced and my partner had lumbered to her feet and was now leaning heavily against me. I could see that for her at least this arm-in-arm procession was more than a self-conscious replay of an Edwardian custom: it was a very necessary service. A few couples ahead of us I could see Lady Uckfield chattering gaily into the face of a shell-shocked Kenneth Lavery. They reminded me of the front benches going through into the Lords to hear the Queen's speech, when the Tory ministers always seem to be filmed frenetically gabbling away to their glum and serious Socialist opposite numbers.

Behind them Edith was with Lord Uckfield. She was wearing a black velvet dress, cut low at the neck with long tight sleeves and no jewellery of any sort. The effect was beautiful and triste, like Juliet in mourning. I suppose she felt it would be tasteless to look too merry.

Lady Tenby followed my glance. 'Very good-looking. No question about that. But who on earth is she?'

I smiled down at her. 'She's a great friend of mine,' I said.

'Oops,' said Lady Tenby, and we continued in silence.

I later learned that the Countess of Tenby was the widowed mother of four daughters and, as Lady Uckfield's second cousin, had always rather hoped to get Charles for one of them. It was not an unreasonable ambition. They were nice girls and quite pleasant of face. Any one of them would probably have made him happy. In the end only the eldest, Lady Daphne, married at all 'well' in their mother's opinion (and he was a younger son), two married routine Hoorays and the youngest and best-looking went to California to live with the founder of a rather sinister sect. The point being that Lady Tenby was not a nasty or an unreasonable woman. She had put in many years work on her daughters for what were to be meagre dividends and now, this evening, she had been invited to witness the triumph of an interloper, a stranger who had stolen into their camp under cover of darkness and made off with the fattest sheep of all. Of course she would smile and congratulate and kiss but then she would go home and say how marvellous Googie and Tigger had been, how nobody would have known they were disappointed, how the girl was, after all, very pretty and seemed fond of Charles. And forever Edith would be marked as a lucky outsider.

Dinner was delicious, which was a surprise. I had been expecting the usual country house fare dispensed by my