Snobs: A Novel

her new life because beneath the skin of a rebel beat the heart of Mrs Lavery's little girl. And she resented them because she was beginning to be horribly afraid they might be true.

Walking towards Victory Arch, watching the afternoon light glint against the windows of Apsley House, whither she and Charles had been summoned for a party the previous summer, one of the first engagements she had been obliged to cancel because of the split, she recalled with amazement (and it really had begun to seem almost unbelievably strange) that she had jettisoned a high place in the world of the worldly for the position of partner to an obscure man in a generally despised profession. And not for the first time she sat down to think about the extraordinary events of the last year of her life in more detail.

Simon was at the flat when she got back. He was drinking tea and watching an old film. When he was working he was at peace and so inclined to relax and take it easy. It was only when he was out of a job that he would go haring about London keeping lunch dates with people he disliked and telephoning his agent every four hours.

Edith left her coat in the hall. 'Is there a cup for me?' He waved his mug in the air. 'I just made it with a bag. The water's still hot if you want some.' He had taken his trainers off and they lay, pigeon-toed on the hearth rug. His coat had been thrown across an armchair and books and scripts were littered about the room. Edith stood at the door, taking in the whole scene like a spectator from another country. The Way We Live Now. This was the way she lived now, with sixties sofas covered in stained, oatmeal tweed, with large nondescript flower prints in coloured mounts on the walls, with a Perspex coffee table and a gas-log fire. This was the way she was living now. She was acutely aware that she had no desire to enter the room.

Simon, sensing some strangeness between them, stood and approached her in the doorway. He slid an arm around her waist and squeezed her, pushing his mouth onto hers. They had been in an Indian restaurant the night before and she could still taste the spices on his breath. He pressed himself against her and she could feel that he was already aroused. 'Good lunch?' he said.

She nodded. 'Googie sent him. He and Adela were down in Sussex last weekend. They went over to Broughton and of course Googie dragged him off to her lair. The meeting was her idea.'

'And?'

'They want to hurry the divorce.' She paused, sensing his recoil. 'Googie wants to involve you.'

'Jesus!' Simon didn't know what to think. Part of him revelled in it. Visions of more picture spreads on page three in the Daily Mail flickered through his brain but with them came trailing streamers of a distant panic. He felt as if he was hurtling down some tube, weightless and powerless, into the unknown. 'Is she serious?'

'I think so but you can calm down. They're wrong. I'm fairly sure no one has to be cited any more. The point is they want to get on with it.'

'What did you say?'

Edith studied the pretty boy before her. He had abandoned his customary flirtatious, winking manner and, although he didn't realise, he looked the better for it. A little seriousness added charm to his bright blue eyes and the careless locks of shining hair that fell forward to veil them. 'I said I had to think about it.'

'Can you stop them?'

'If I want to.'

'How?'

'I'll tell Charles not to go ahead with it.'

Simon laughed. 'And that would do it?'

Edith observed him coolly. How provincial he was! How little he understood men like Charles! She was almost haughty in her defence of her discarded husband to her preferred lover. 'Yes. That would do it.' Simon had stopped laughing but suddenly there seemed to be something irredeemably irritating about him. She couldn't be bothered to embark on the usual chats about how bad everyone was in any film they were watching, how jealous his fellow actors were, how stupid the cameraman. 'I'm going to have a bath,' she said, disengaging herself from his embrace.

Simon threw himself back into the sofa, fixing his gaze once more upon the screen. 'You're very sulky,' he said. 'I shall be charitable and blame the time of the month.'

She didn't answer but went instead down to the basement bathroom that opened off their dark, little bedroom. An attempt had been made with a looking glass and a wallpaper of enormous poppies to brighten the two rooms up but it only deepened their lightless gloom. She ran the bath, undressed and climbed in. She was aware that since she had entered the park she had been in a kind of strange, unworldly mental state. She felt intensely aware of every movement of her limbs, of every ripple of the water against her skin. She felt spacey, almost drunk — although she certainly drank very little at lunch. A vague sense of apprehension seemed to bloat her stomach and her very nerve ends prickled individually the length of her body. But then, at last, she realised what it was that was catching at the edge of her attention. Simon had said no more than he knew. It was her time of the month. She was as regular as clockwork.

And she was five days late.

TWENTY

The morning following my lunch with Edith our doorbell rang at not much later than a quarter past eight.

'Christ!' said Adela. 'Who on earth's that?' We were in our tiny bedroom, which overlooked the area. As the front door was just out of sight to the right, it wasn't possible to sneak a preview of our visitor but, in any case, at that time in the morning, I just assumed it was the postman so I was not particularly careful with my toilet as I shouted that I was coming.

When I unlocked the door in my underpants with my hair unbrushed, I discovered it was not the postman, who must after all be accustomed to such sights, but Edith Broughton who stood on the mat.

'Hello,' I said with something of a tone of wonder.

Edith pushed past me into the room. 'I have to talk to you.' She threw herself down onto the sofa that divided the living bit from the eating bit of the flat's solitary 'reception room'.

'Can I dress first?' I asked.

She nodded and I hurried back into the bedroom to inform the amazed Adela, busy struggling into her clothes,