Snobs: A Novel

'Well…'

Charles stopped walking for a minute and stood, looking mutely about him. 'Do you know what really depressed me about that?' We both had some pretty good ideas but naturally said nothing. 'It was because I suddenly realised how absolutely bloody stupid most of the people I know really are. These are supposed to be twelve of my best friends, for God's sake!' He chuckled bitterly. 'I'm embarrassed for them and I'm embarrassed for myself.'

In the end we walked home right across Paris. The others must all have gone to bed by the time we fell through the door in the Place Vendome. We parted and went to our rooms and I suppose, all in all, the evening must be rated as a flop —

particularly considering the planning and the cost — but in some odd and undefined way I found myself feeling rather encouraged by Charles's outburst. My assessment of his brain was not revised but I do not think I had appreciated before that night how thoroughly decent he was. It is not a fashionable quality these days but it seemed to me that Edith's happiness was in safer hands than I had realised.

SIX

When she opened her eyes she knew at once that this was the last morning in her life when she would awake as Edith Lavery.

Henceforth, that girl would have gone away and whatever might happen in the future she would not be coming back. Edith attempted to question herself as to what exactly she was feeling. Just as when you are forced into a decision it is often the mouthing of one choice that makes you realise you really want the other, so she wondered if her stomach would tell her that she was making a ghastly mistake simply because this was the day when the whole thing became irrevocable. But her stomach did not wish to play the part of a goat's entrails at Delphi and declined to give an opinion. She felt neither elated nor depressed

— simply that there was a lot to do. There was a faint knock on her door and her mother came in carrying a cup of tea.

It is no exaggeration to say that Stella Lavery was so happy on this morning she really felt she might burst, that her heart might stop, exhausted by pumping the feverish blood of satisfied ambition. It is not true to say she would have gladly sacrificed her daughter to a rich marquess's heir if she had thoroughly disliked him, simply that unless he had attacked her with a knife it was not physically possible that she could dislike him. Actually, I don't think she had given Charles qua Charles much thought. He was pleasant, well-mannered, not bad-looking. That, to coin a phrase, was all she knew and all she needed to know. That, and the fact that after tomorrow her daughter would be the Countess Broughton.

It had been a source of the faintest irritation to Stella that her daughter's title was not to be Countess of Broughton, which she thought more romantic, and it seemed to her tiresome of the first Broughton to receive the earldom not to have asked for the 'of.' After all, the Cholmondeleys had done so and so had the Balfours when they were presented with their titles. True there was a village called Cholmondeley and somewhere in Scotland called Balfour but was there not a place called Broughton? Surety there must be one somewhere? Still, allowing the fact that you can't have everything' she had grown used to the form and now gained a good deal of pleasure correcting her friends. After all, the blessed 'of would come, with the marquessate, all in good time.

'Good morning, darling.' She whispered the words, gently conveying, as she thought, great tenderness. This was a moment when she knew it behoved her to feel some nostalgia and regret at losing the child of her heart. The fact remained, however, that, notwithstanding the very real and deep joy Edith had given her mother over the years, this morning Mrs Lavery was as happy as a sandboy. Not only was she gaining a son, as the saying goes, but, as she saw it, a whole new position in the firmament. Gates as rusty as the ones at Ham, locked after the departure of the last Stuart king, were everywhere springing open before her. Or so it seemed. Stella Lavery was not a complete fool. She did realise that it was up to her to make a success of this opportunity, that if some of the people she was going to meet, most particularly Lady Uckfield, could be induced to like her, could actually want her friendship, then she could turn herself into Edith's asset rather than being (as she very secretly and reluctantly suspected) her liability. She also knew enough to go slowly. Never must there be the slightest scent about her of a beast of prey in pursuit of its quarry. Softly, quietly, mutual interests must be unearthed, books must be lent, dress-makers must be suggested. In her mind, on this dizzy morning, were shining images, holographs of elegant pleasure, showing her tucking into a light lunch with Lady Uckfield before they rushed off together to their shared milliner, pulling on their gloves as they waved for a taxi…

'Morning, Mummy.' Edith was by this time used to the dream-reverie in which her mother seemed to exist. She did not grudge her the pleasure this marriage brought, although she hoped it had not been a contributory factor, pushing her into the torrent that Edith felt whirling her towards the coronet. 'Is it raining?'

'No, it's heavenly. Now, there's no need to rush. It's just after half past eight. The hairdresser will be here at ten, then we've got two hours before we have to be at St Margaret's. I'll make some breakfast while you have a bath and if I were you I'd just get into your undies and stick on a dressing gown. Then you can stay in that until everything's ready.'

'I'm not madly hungry.'

'Well, you must have something. Or you'll feel sick.'

Edith nodded and started to get up, sipping her tea as she did so. It was one of those moments when she was acutely aware of every movement of her body, even of the muscles in her face. Each word seemed to come from some other source than her own brain. She felt drugged, but in a bright, unsleepy way. No, not drugged, dazed — or even hypnotised. Am I hypnotised? she thought. Have I been mesmerised by all those unquestioned values I have sucked down since I was three?

Have I lost myself in other people's ambitions? But then she thought of Charles, who was a nice man who loved her and of whom, by this time, she really was very fond, and of course, she thought of Broughton and of Feltham, the family's other estate in Norfolk, and most of all she thought of the flat in which she was now standing and the job in the estate agent's in Milner Street and the opportunities the one life offered and the exhausted, negligible opportunities of the other, and so thinking she threw back her head and strode towards the bathroom. Her father was just coming out. He smiled a rather wistful smile.

'Everything all right, Princess?' he said and she knew, even as he spoke, that he would probably have to stop calling her Princess, that it sounded suburban, and she made a resolution there and then that she would not let him stop calling her Princess. It was a resolution she broke almost at once.

'Fine. How about you?'

'Fine.'

The wedding was going to cost Kenneth Lavery a great deal of money. Although less than it might have done, as Lady Uckfield had been given permission for the reception to be held in St James's Palace. Nevertheless, and