Snobs: A Novel

'Oh, darling.' However irritated, Edith did feel sorry for her mother. She was forced to concede that Mrs Lavery, shallow as her values might be, was experiencing some perfectly genuine emotions. Particularly regret. 'You won't take any… step you might be sorry about, will you?'

'What step?'

'I mean… you won't burn your bridges until you're sure…'

Edith was used to her mother's seemingly limitless supply of cliches so she needed no translator to tell her what they were discussing. Oddly, despite the paucity of her mother's vocabulary, the question had succeeded in centring her thoughts on the matter. As she brought the conversation to an end and cleared the line, she knew the time had come for positive action.

It was a Saturday, a mild, pleasant day for them as a rule, involving newspapers, a lunch out somewhere, perhaps a cinema or possibly a dinner with some friends in a Wandsworth kitchen but as Edith dressed she knew that no such day lay ahead for her. She selected her outfit with considerable care, casual country clothes, well bred, unshowy, exactly the type of skirt and jersey that she had renounced with a religious fervour so short a time ago. Just as when she was choosing her clothes for the dress show, she was once more conscious that her two lives demanded two costumes. A duke's daughter might get away with wearing some streetwalker's outfit from Voyage at a dinner in Shropshire, indeed she would be praised for her aristocratic eccentricity but she, Edith, would never be given the same licence. Had she dared to wear London clothes in the country, to Charles's circle it would only have been a confirmation of her ill-breeding. When she entered the kitchen, Simon looked up in surprise. 'My word. You look as if you're auditioning for Hay Fever.'

'I feel such a fool. I promised to take my mother to a lunch party today and I completely forgot about it. That's why she rang. Can you forgive me?'

'Whose lunch party?'

'Just some country cousins.'

'You don't have any country cousins. Wasn't that the whole point?' In saying this, Simon showed one of his rare flashes of understanding. It was exactly the point.

'I do but I never talk about them. They're too boring to live.'

'Which means you don't want me to come.' Simon hated to be left out of anything. Or at least, if he was, it had to be his choice. He didn't mind being too busy to join in, in fact he quite enjoyed it, but the thought that people were not anxious for his company — even if it was for a journey to the post box — was anathema to him.

Edith smiled a wistful, wouldn't-that-be-nice smile. 'I wish. But she's been begging me for us to have some time on our own. I suppose she wants to talk about everything.' This was accompanied by a half-shrug that brooked no argument.

'Just be nice about me.'

She gave him a warm and supportive smile, knowing that in her heart she was plotting his fall, and set off downstairs to their bedroom to collect her coat. She did not want to tell Simon where she was going as that would have detonated a scene and she was by no means certain of the day's possible outcome. The last thing she wanted was for him to flounce back to his wife in a pet, leaving her to come home to an empty flat.

The truth was she had determined, in that morning moment of surveying her own floating sick, that she was not going to be put off for one day longer. She would drive that very morning to Broughton and beard the lion — or rather the lioness's cub

— in his den. As she sped out down the A22, she couldn't really understand what had taken her so long to come to this decision. This was her husband and she was going to what was, after all, her marital home. No one could argue with that.

An unpleasant surprise was waiting for her, as she had forgotten that on a Saturday in summer the house would of course be open to the public. Somehow that had slipped through her calculations and she was now in the faintly ludicrous position of having to choose between parking her car in the courtyard and going in through the family's entrance or entering by the public door and travelling up into the body of the house surrounded by tourists and housewives from Brighton. She made the bold decision to go in by the latter route. She thought there would be plenty of time to block her path if she rang the family's doorbell and she was gambling on Charles being in his own study, which was next to the library. It would be the work of a moment to slip through the cordon and open the door and she correctly guessed that none of the guides would stop her.

Indeed, she made a point of pausing to say hello to the pleasant woman in a stout, country suit who stood taking tickets.

'Hello, Mrs Curley, how are you? Can I creep in this way? Would you mind?' Edith had mastered this particular trick of her husband's people, that of asking as a favour something that cannot be refused. 'Oh, Mrs So-and-so, could you bear to wait up until we get home? Would that be a terrible bore for you?' Of course, the wretched woman being instructed in this way (as well as her employer) knows that this really means 'You are forbidden to go to bed until I have returned' but it is of course a more self-congratulatory way to deliver a command. It is all part of the aristocracy's consciously created image. They like to pride themselves on being 'marvellous with servants', which usually means making impossible demands in the friendliest voice imaginable.

Mrs Curley was clearly uncomfortable with the request but as Edith had predicted, there was nothing she could do about it. 'Of course, mi-lady,' she said with a cheerful nod, and dialled the family's private number the minute Edith had passed by.

===OO=OOO=OO===

Charles Broughton was indeed in his study or, as Lady Uckfield liked to call it, the Little Library, just as Edith suspected. He was answering letters in a vague sort of way, pretending to be, rather than actually being, busy. The house party was of his mother's choosing and, as always, those friends she had selected for him were not congenial to his wounded soul. Diana Bohun he found cold and too self-consciously grand to be of interest while her husband was very nearly mad. Clarissa was not among them. He had at least managed to persuade his mother that she was barking up the wrong tree there but… if not Clarissa then who?

He knew about Edith's appearance at Tommy Wainwright's. Indeed Tommy had told him the following day, perhaps not wanting to have someone else deliver the news. At first Charles had been extremely angry, not with Tommy but with his mother. On the evening in question she had suddenly made him take her to visit some ancient friend in hospital, a mission that was represented to him as crucial but was of course, as he could see now, the simplest ploy to keep him from the Wainwright party. But then, after he had calmed down a little, he wondered for the thousandth time what would have been achieved by their meeting. Whatever his friends might say about the