'Not lately, no. Not since Adela saw her at the dress show.'
'I see,' she said. She was silent for a moment. In truth I had never before seen her uncomfortable but that is certainly what she was at this moment.
'How's Charles?'
She answered with a shrug of the mouth. 'I want to ask you something. I know that Edith is still with what's- his-name.
Does she intend to marry him?'
I was rather taken aback. 'I don't know. He isn't divorced yet — I'm not even sure he's started the whole process.'
She nodded to herself. 'Charles has told me she's planning to wait the two years and go for a non-contested separation.'
She paused and I sort of nodded back. This was news to me but it didn't seem such a bad idea, if only because it would hardly be headlines by that time. 'The thing is, Tigger and I are not behind this plan…'
She hesitated, more awkward than I had ever seen her. 'We feel that the sooner Charles can draw a line under the whole thing and start his life afresh, the better for him. We hate the idea of everything dragging on and on and his never really feeling that anything's over.' She looked at me quizzically. 'You do see what we mean?'
'I suppose I do.'
'You may not know it but it has cut him up most dreadfully. He's not a great one for showing his feelings but he was in the most frightful state, I can tell you.'
I nodded. I had only to think of that scene in his study when he had cried in front of me to believe this implicitly. Charles was one of those men, much less rare than modern women's magazines would have us believe, who make their choice in marriage and then never question it. They do not ration the commitment they give their wives because it never occurs to them that they will have to regroup their emotions before death separates them — and even then they tend to assume that it will be the husband who will go first. I do not necessarily think that he would have been incapable of infidelity. On some farming convention in America, during some shooting party in Scotland, who knows what could happen? But I would say that he would have been incapable of instigating the end of his own marriage. Having chosen Edith, he had given her all the love of which he was capable and, as a natural sequitur, all the trust. Neither of these would have been very interesting in their quality but they would have been given in great quantity. Of that I am sure. No, I was not surprised to hear that he had been in 'a frightful state'.
Lady Uckfield had not finished. 'We are so desperately hoping he can rebuild his life and we really feel that he has a chance of that now.'
'Has he met someone else?'
She inclined her head to one side without answering and I knew he had. Or that they hoped he had. Minutes later I had worked out it was probably Clarissa.
'The point is if he was free he could plan in those terms. Now he can't. The past is pulling and pulling at him until I don't believe he can think straight.'
Now this was an intriguing choice of phrase. In what way was Charles not 'thinking straight'? She watched me, waiting for some acknowledgement.
'How can I help?' I said. I wanted to find out what Lady Uckfield had in store for me. I knew it would be something big because it is an absolute truth that for a woman of her type to discuss any aspect of the intimate life of her family with anyone other than a life-long, contemporary friend of similar rank (and that only rarely) was a kind of torture. Whether she liked me or not was irrelevant. This interview was agony for her.
'Can you talk to Edith? Can you ask her if she'll let Charles divorce her now? Of course, in the past that would have been an uncomfortable way round but do people think like that these days? I don't believe they do — and you must assure her that it would make no difference to the settlement. None at all.' She was gushing to cover her own embarrassment. And no wonder. This was a vulgar request if ever I heard one. Perhaps the only vulgar thing I ever knew to issue from her lips. My surprise must have shown on my face. 'You must think this a very tiresome commission.'
'I don't know that tiresome is the word I'd have chosen.' My tone was a little severe but Lady Uckfield was enough of a lady to know that she had transgressed her own code. She took the reprimand gracefully as one who deserved it.
'Of course, it's an awful thing to ask.'
'You do Edith an injustice,' I said. 'She wouldn't think about the money.' This was true. I do not think it ever occurred to Edith to take anything off Charles beyond a few thousand to give her a breathing space. It was enough that he had paid the rent in Ebury Street and left her able to cash cheques in this interim. What Lady Uckfield did not understand was that Edith was fully conscious of having behaved badly. People like the Uckfields can be slow, indeed unable, to realise that 'honour' is not a perquisite of their own class. They have heard so often about the materialism of the middle classes and the grace and self-sacrifice of their own kind that they have come to believe these two fictions equally.
She raised her eyebrows slightly. 'I suppose that might be true.'
'It is true,' I said. 'You do not like Edith and because you don't like her you underestimate her.'
At this she unbent slightly. She did not deny what I had said and when she answered me she spoke with a slight smile.
'You are right to defend her. You first came to this house as her friend — and you are right to defend her.'
'I will tell Edith what you've said but I really cannot do much more than that.'
'You see, we can't have Charles bringing a case and her contesting it or challenging it in any way. We must know that won't happen. You see that?'
'Of course I do.' Which I did. 'But I can't advise her. She wouldn't listen to me if I tried.'
'You'll tell me what she says?'
