unkempt. He was almost dirty. Caught out by her stare, he pushed his fingers through his hair. 'Hello,' he said, with a watery smile. 'Fancy seeing you here.'
At this point Caroline took her leave. 'I'm going in to Norwich,' she said. 'I'll be back in a couple of hours.' It was a relief really that she didn't even try to normalise the situation or start any we-were-just-driving-past nonsense.
Charles nodded. 'I see,' he said.
Left alone, Edith was oddly blank as to quite what she was going to say next. She sat on the edge of a chair near the fire like a housemaid at an interview and leaned forward to warm her hands. 'I hope you're not cross. I did so want to talk to you.
Properly. And I began to feel that I was never going to be allowed to. I'm afraid I thought I'd just chance it.'
He shook his head. 'I'm not a bit cross. Not at all.' He hesitated. 'I — I'm sorry about the telephone calls and all the rest of it. It wasn't my mother not telling me, you know. Well, it wasn't only that. I expect you thought it was. It was just that I didn't really know what to say. It seemed better to leave it all to the professionals. Of course now you're here…' He tailed off disconsolately.
Edith nodded. 'I had to know what you were thinking about everything. I understand your parents want you free straight away.'
'Oh that.' He looked sheepish. 'I don't mind. Honestly. Whatever suits you.' He stared at her in the unflattering light of an overhead bulb. 'How's Simon?'
'Fine. Very well. Loving his series.'
'Good. I'm glad.' He didn't sound it but he was trying to be courteous. Edith was struck anew by the decency and kindness of this man she had tossed aside. What had she been thinking of? Her own actions sometimes seemed to her so hard to understand. Like a foreign film. And yet these had been her choices. The conversation limped on.
'I don't think I ever came to Feltham at this time of year. I must have but I don't remember. It's rather lovely, isn't it?'
Charles smiled. 'Dear old Feltham,' he said.
'You ought to live here. Do it up. Get some of the stuff back.'
He half nodded. 'I think I'd be a bit lonely, stuck out here on my own. Don't you? Nice idea, though.'
'Oh, Charles.' In spite of the cynicism with which she had embarked on this mission Edith had become a victim of her own justifications. Like Deborah Kerr in
Oddly perhaps, it was only at this moment that Charles fully grasped she had definitely come to try to get him back. Up to this point he was still wondering if it might not just be for some financial or time-related scheme that she had made the journey.
Despite his earlier suspicions, his non-existent vanity made him slow to reach the obvious conclusion and he thought she might want him to agree to something before his lawyers could talk him out of it. He was not offended by this but, if it should prove to be the case, he was anxious to conceal his wretchedness from her. Both out of consideration for her feelings and from a (perfectly justifiable) sense of pride. It now occurred to him, with a lurch in his stomach, that this was not what he was dealing with. She wanted to come back to him. He looked at her.
For all his simplicity, he was not an idiot. Thinking along the same lines as that night in his study at Broughton he knew that he was no more interesting than when she left him. He also suspected that the world of show business had not really appealed to her, not at any rate for 'every day'. Just as a year of sin had served to give Edith a clearer idea of what Simon consisted of, so two years of marriage and a year apart had made Edith comprehensible to Charles. He knew she was an
He stared at the hunched-up figure, trying to scoop warmth out of the electric bars. Her coat was a sort of camel colour and looked rather cheap. Was this sad little figure, this 'blonde piece' as his mother would say, to be the next Marchioness of Uckfield? To be painted by some indifferent chocolate box portraitist and hung alongside the Sargeants, Laszlos and Birleys of the preceding generations? Was it in her to make a go of it?
But as he watched her, the sense of how vulnerable she suddenly seemed to him, with her bright make-up and her chain store coat, trying to charm him and looking instead somehow pathetic, overwhelmed him with pity and, in the wake of pity, with love. Whatever her suitability, whatever the limitations of her feelings, whatever her motives, he knew that he, Charles Broughton, could not be responsible for her unhappiness. He was, in short, incapable of hurting her.
'Are you happy?' he said slowly, knowing as he did so that the words gave her permission to return to him and to his life.
At the sound of them Edith knew her pardon had come through. Despite the difficulties with Simon, with her mother-inlaw, with the newspapers, with the sun, with the moon, she could now be Charles's wife again if she chose, which, not very surprisingly given all the circumstances, she did. For a second she felt almost sick with relief but then, since she did not wish to appear too desperate, she waited for a minute before she spoke, deliberately punctuating the moment with a pregnant pause. Once satisfied that her answer was anticipated by them both she carefully raised her tear-stained eyes to his.
'No,' she said.
EPILOGUE
It did not, so far as I remember, cause any great murmur when Edith was delivered of a daughter seven months or so after the reconciliation. Of course, there was a lot of talk, particularly from her mother, about their being taken by surprise as Edith was
