starkest illustration so far of the extent of her fall and she could not yet talk about it without beginning to feel slightly ill.
I knew enough from Adela's account to understand that Edith must be going through a pretty rough time however happy she was with Simon and I resolved to telephone her and buy her a decent lunch. But before I got around to it, I was surprised to receive an invitation from Isabel Easton to go down to Sussex for the weekend. The envelope was in fact addressed to Adela.
Isabel had apparently learned her lessons well and grasped that the upper classes only ever address an envelope to the female part of a couple. Why? Who knows? At any rate it was Adela who read it first and she who suggested we accept. Adela was only mildly fond of Isabel and she didn't like David much so I suspected at once that she had an ulterior motive.
'We might give Charles a ring when we're there,' she said, so I didn't have to wait long to know what it was.
I don't think I had stayed with the Eastons since that time, three years before, when we had all been summoned to Broughton to witness Edith's triumph. I had seen them in London so the gap was not obvious and, looking back, I'm not sure why I had got out of the habit of going there. Perhaps the fact that Edith and I had become friends over their heads had made an awkwardness between us. I'm not sure. At any rate I was quite glad to find myself and my wife, a couple of Friday nights later, back in their familiar, GTC drawing room of frilled tables and chintz sofas and over-stuffed cushions. We had unpacked and bathed and been given a pre-dinner drink, but not much more than this before the real reason for our invitation became clear.
'Are you going to go over to Broughton while you're here?' said David.
I looked at Adela. 'I don't know. I don't know if they're there. We thought we might give them a ring.'
'Good,' said David. 'Good.' He paused. 'Give our love to Charles when you speak to him, anyway.'
And there it was. I should have guessed. After all, what a situation they were in! For years they had been driven nearly mad by their inability to get onto any sort of terms with the local family. Then, miracle of miracles, their friend marries the heir.
They start to inch their way into the County. They are just beginning to make a little headway with the Sir William Fartleys of this world when, bang, a scandal erupts. Suddenly Edith, their friend, the woman they first invited down to these parts (for one may be sure they had made no secret of the role they had played), runs off with an actor, disgraces the family, lets down poor, darling Charles. Exeunt David and Isabel Easton.
I think one would have to be very hard-hearted indeed not to feel some sympathy for them, poor things, even if their goal was a worthless one. It is easy to laugh at the pretensions of others — particularly when their ambitions are trivial — but most of us have a thorny path of it in some area of our lives, which is not worth the importance we give it. I suppose it is hard to live in a small society and to be obliged to accept that one is excluded from the first rank of that little group. This is what drives so many socially minded people back to the towns where the game is more fluid and up for grabs. On top of which the Eastons had come, at least in their own minds, so near the prize…
David continued. 'I'm afraid the simple truth is that our dear Edith has behaved most fearfully badly.'
We all, including Isabel, greeted this with a slight silence. Even Adela (who, I knew, most thoroughly agreed with this assessment) seemed reluctant to weigh in with David in Edith's absence. 'I don't know,' I said.
'Really!' David was quite indignant. 'I'm surprised to hear you defending her.'
'I'm not defending her exactly,' I said. 'I'm just saying that one doesn't 'know'. One never knows anything about other people's lives. Not really.'
This is a truism but it isn't completely true. One does know about other people's lives. And I, in fact, knew quite a lot about Edith's and Charles's lives but, even if I was guilty of a certain dishonesty, there was some truth in what I said. I am not convinced that one ever knows quite enough to come down with a full condemnation.
Isabel entered with her peace-making hat. 'I think all David means is that we felt so sorry for poor Charles. He didn't seem to deserve any of it. Not from where we were sitting anyway.'
We all agreed with this but it was nevertheless perfectly obvious that David hoped to be able to ditch Edith and by demonstrating his indignation to someone who would report it to the Broughton household, he believed he would earn points and end up back on their list. Or on their list, full stop, since he wrongly thought he had penetrated the citadel during Edith's reign. In this I think he was mistaken for two reasons. The first was that he was simply not Charles's cup of tea. The English upper classes are, as a rule, not amused by upper-middle-class facsimiles of themselves. This brand of
At any rate, following both David's urgings and Adela's original suggestion, I did indeed telephone Broughton that night.
Jago, the butler, answered and told me that Charles was in London but when I was about to sign off there was the sound of an extension being lifted and Lady Uckfield came on the line.
'How are you?' she said. 'I ran into your pretty wife the other day.' I said I knew. 'Is there any chance of seeing you down here in the future? I do hope so.' She spoke with the intimate urgency, with that voice of a Girl With A Secret, that I had come to associate with, and enjoy about, her social manner.
'In actual fact we are here. Staying with the Eastons. I just rang to see if Charles was down.'
'Well, he should be back tomorrow night. What are you doing for dinner? I don't suppose you can get away?' She made the heartless request without the glimmer of a qualm. Did she know that David would give his life's blood to be included among her intimates? Probably.
'Not really,' I said.
Her tone became even more conspiratorial. 'Can't you talk?'
'Not really,' I said again, glancing over to where David stood by the fireplace watching me like a sparrow hawk.
'What about tea? Surely you can manage that?'
'I should think so,' I answered, still rather non-committally.
