'If she wants to get away with it. As Lady Broughton.' He started to sing, 'There'll be some changes made.'
'Oh, I don't know,' I said. 'Did you find it very difficult to get away with marrying Caroline?' Of course, in a way, this was a mistake and Chase turned to his other neighbour having registered me as an enemy, but I was satisfied to have maintained Edith's honour. Like many aggressive
The next stage of the evening was quite as embarrassing as anyone could wish. We were transported to Chez Michou in Montmartre, a pocket-handkerchief of a club, where assorted female impersonators mimed to the records of various stars.
This was the idea of Lord Peter, who turned out to be, as I think I already vaguely knew, an amiable drunkard with a reputation for being 'quite a card'. Actually we were all pretty drunk by this time, having been at it more or less non-stop since we arrived at the airport in London. Doubtless this helped us enjoy the show, which contained few surprises: Garland, Streisand, a rather compelling Monroe, and an absolutely unlike Rita Hayworth miming to 'Long Ago and Far Away', which Rita herself only mimed to anyway. Drink or no drink, I was beginning to feel the siren call of my bed and I caught Tommy's eye as he made a let's-get-out-of-here gesture towards the door when the compere — or
I nearly jumped out of my seat as the young man who had given us Monroe reappeared as Edith. An over- made-up Edith with a kind of flashiness she didn't possess, but otherwise astonishingly accurate. Even down to her dress, which could easily have been one of her own. I looked at Charles. He was stunned as were we all. Peter, of course, was grinning like a clown. On the stage the boy/Edith started to sing a song from
Synopsis:
SNOBS is the story of Edith Lavery, who earns a living answering the telephone in a Chelsea-based estate agents. She is the attractive only child of a comfortably-off accountant. When she attends Royal Ascot as a guest of friends, she meets bachelor Charles Broughton, who as Earl Broughton and heir to the Marquess of Uckfield, is a gossip-column favourite. He proposes, she accepts — and here is the crux of the story: is she really in love with Charles or with his title and all that goes with it? The story is narrated by a journeyman character actor who comfortably moves among the upper and middle classes, while observing their foibles.
Superbly observed, the story includes a fabulous character in Charles's mother, Lady Uckfield, known as
'Googie', who wants for her son the daughter of a peer from the old, familiar world she knows and trusts. She perceives Edith to be a young woman on the make, and is vindicated when Edith, now Countess Broughton, falls for a blonde good-looking actor. Fellowes resolves his story with twists and turns aplenty. This is a tale worthy of a contemporary Jane Austen with a dash of Evelyn Waugh.
SNOBS
A NOVEL BY
JULIAN FELLOWES
Copyright © 2004 Julian Fellowes
ISBN 0 75382 009 9
To Emma and Peregrine, of course, but also to dearest Micky without whom this book would not have been possible
PART ONE
ONE
I do not know exactly how Edith Lavery came first to be taken up by Isabel Easton. Probably they had a friend in common or sat on some committee together, or perhaps they just went to the same hairdresser. But I can remember that from quite early on, for some reason, Isabel decided that Edith was rather a feather in her cap, someone that little bit special to be fed to her country neighbours in rationed morsels. History was of course to prove her right, although there was no tremendously compelling evidence for this when I first met her. Edith was certainly very pretty then but not as she would be later when she had, as designers say, found her style. She was a type, albeit a superior example of it: the English blonde with large eyes and nice manners.
I had known Isabel Easton since we were children together in Hampshire and we enjoyed one of those pleasant, undemanding friendships that are based entirely on longevity. We had very little in common but we knew few other people who could remember us on our ponies at the age of nine and there was a certain comfort in our occasional encounters. I had gone into the theatre after leaving university and Isabel had married a stockbroker and moved to Sussex so our worlds scarcely crossed, but it was fun for Isabel to have an actor to stay occasionally who had been seen on television (though never, as it happens, by any of her friends) and for me, it was pleasant enough to spend the odd weekend with my old playmate.
I was in Sussex the first time that Edith came down and I can testify to Isabel's enthusiasm for her new friend, later queried by her less generous acquaintance. It was quite genuine: 'Things are going to happen for her. She's got something.' Isabel was fond of using phrases that seemed to imply an inside knowledge of the workings of the world. Some might have said that when Edith climbed out of the car half an hour later, she didn't appear to have got very much beyond her appearance and a rather beguiling, relaxed charm, but I was inclined to agree with our hostess. Looking back, there was a hint of what was to come in the mouth, one of those cut-glass mouths, with the clearly defined, almost chiselled lips that one associates with the film actresses of the forties. And then there was her skin. To the English, skin is, as a rule, the compliment of last resort, to be employed when there is nothing else to praise. Good skin is frequently dwelt on when talking of the plainer members of the Royal Family. Be that as it may, Edith Lavery had the loveliest complexion I have ever seen: cool, clear, pastel colours under layers of flawless wax. I have all my life had a weakness for good-looking people and in retrospect, I think I became Edith's ally in that first moment of admiring her face. At all events, Isabel was destined to become a self-fulfilling prophet for it
