Snobs: A Novel

'I don't know why.' This was true.

'What's the point?'

'I don't know that there is any point but I do know that you won't get a straight answer out of her concerning your proposals re the divorce unless she sees him.'

'You've asked her then?'

'I've asked her and she says she wants to think about it. Part of that thinking, I take it, has to go on in Charles's presence.'

There was a pause for a moment and I could hear down the line that eerie echo of other conversations, other, strange anonymous bits of lives being lived, a thousand miles away. 'Are you free this afternoon? Can you meet me for tea?'

'There's nothing I would enjoy more but in this instance I don't know that I'll be able to add anything to what I've already told you.'

'I'll be at the Ritz. At four.'

I was interested that she did not want me to come to their flat in Cadogan Square.

'Perhaps Tigger's coming up with her. Perhaps Charles is there,' said Adela and for a moment I was tempted to walk round and ring the bell. I thought better of it, having decided that it might behove me to hear what Lady Uckfield had to say first.

I did, however, telephone Edith.

'What are you going to say to her?'

'I don't know. That she is wasting her time trying to keep you two apart, I suppose. If that's what she's doing.'

'Of course it's what she's doing.'

'I mean without Charles's knowledge.' Edith was silent. 'At any rate, I'll call you this evening.' I rang off.

I asked tentatively whether or not Lady Uckfield had arrived but the manager was not one to let such an opportunity slip by.

'Gentleman for the Marchioness of Uckfield,' he observed loudly to a passing waiter, who escorted me courteously past the turning heads to where she waited. She was sitting trimly at a table in the Marble Hall to the right of the great, gilded fountain.

She smiled and waved a little hand as I approached, and stood to greet me with her neat, bird-like movements. The man brought the tea with a lot of milady'ing, all of it gently and serenely acknowledged. She laughed gaily. 'Isn't this a treat?'

'It is for me,' I said.

Her manner became not exactly more serious but at any rate more direct. She was a little less breathlessly urgent and remembering that scene in her sitting room at Broughton I understood that she was going to impart some real, as opposed to faked, intimacy. 'I want to be quite honest because I think you may be able to help.'

'I'm simultaneously flattered and dubious,' I said.

'I don't want Charles to have to see Edith.'

'So I gathered.'

'It's not that I'm being unkind. Truly. It's just that I think he's in the most tremendous muddle and I don't want him any more confused.'

'Lady Uckfield,' I said, 'I know very well why you think it a bad idea. So do I. You believe the marriage was a mistake and you had rather not prolong it. I quite agree. The fact remains that, at this moment, Edith is Charles's wife and if she wants to see him and if he, as I suspect, also wants to see her, then hadn't we better get out of the way?'

A momentary flicker of irritation shadowed her face. 'Why do you think he wants to see her?'

'Because he's still in love with her.'

She said nothing for a moment but poked among the sandwiches to find an egg one, which she nibbled with exaggerated delight. 'Aren't these good!' she whispered covertly, as if we must prevent anyone else hearing at all costs. She looked at me with her darting, cat-like eyes. 'You think I've been unfair to Edith.'

I shook my head. 'No. I think you don't like her but I don't think you've been particularly unfair to her.'

She nodded in acknowledgement of this. 'I don't like her. Much. However, that's not the point.'

'What is the point?'

'The point is that she cannot make Charles happy. Whether I like her or not is neither here nor there. I detested my mother-in-law and yet I was fully aware of what a success she had made of Broughton and of Tigger's wretched father. It took me twenty years to bury her memory. Do you think it would matter to me if I simply didn't like her? I'm not a schoolgirl.'

'No.' I sipped my tea. This was flattering indeed. For some reason Lady Uckfield had decided to draw aside the curtain that habitually clothed all her private thoughts and actually talk to me. She had not finished.

'Let me tell you about my son. Charles is a good, kind, uncomplicated man. He's much nicer than I am, you know. But he is less…' She faltered, searching for a loyal adjective that would fit the need.

'Intelligent?' I ventured.

Since I had said it, she let it pass. 'He needs a wife who values not just him but who he is, what he does. What their life is.