Lady Uckfield patted my hand. 'Seriously. You must come. I'll see to it.'
'I'd love to, but only if you promise not to ask any writers or talkers. I don't want to lose face in front of Edith.'
She smiled her conspiratorial smile and was gone about her duties.
It was all over quite soon after that. The lucky pair went off to change and we followed them out as a shining barouche landau carried them away. This rather mawkish detail had been specially arranged by Edith's father with the mistaken idea that it would lend glamour to the occasion. At any rate, when we all turned back we found that the Palace had been locked against us. The authorities had decreed that the day was over and there was nothing more to do but go home.
SEVEN
To Edith, as much as to anyone else who knew it, one of the oddest aspects of her marriage, at least in the context of the 1990s, was that she had never slept with Charles before their wedding night. It sounds quite remarkable but the fact remains that it was so. At first she had resisted his advances as she knew that he was definitely the type who did not respect in the morning the easy conquest of the night before and several dates had to have taken place before it was sufficiently established that she was a 'nice girl'. This went on for two or three months but when she had decided that it was just about safe to yield she found to her puzzlement that Charles seemed to have accepted the pattern of their relationship and that he did not apparently want more. He would kiss her, of course, and embrace her but without the deadly urgency that she had come to expect in these moments. Once when they were lying on the sofa in her parents' flat (Kenneth and Stella were in Brighton for the weekend) she had casually allowed her hand to slide across the front of his trousers but although she could feel a perfectly satisfactory erection beneath the fabric, the gesture made him jump so sharply that she did not repeat it. And after he had asked her to marry him there didn't seem much point. After all, she wanted him whether or not they 'suited' between the sheets but, if they did not, might he be put off? So when, a few weeks before the wedding, he had suggested that they 'get away together' for a weekend she had murmured that she thought it better to wait, now it was so near, and not 'spoil it'. Charles had accepted this because although, being a man of his generation he had acquired a certain amount of sexual experience, deep in his subconscious he still believed that bride-material should enter the wedding-chamber chaste. Of course, Edith was not chaste in this sense but she decided that, if questioned, she would refer to 'an incident' when she had been very young which she didn't want to talk about. In actual fact she never had to as Charles seemed to be satisfied with the fact that this was
He had booked a room in the Hyde Park Hotel in Knightsbridge. The world knows that this establishment now forms part of the Mandarin chain and so, technically, the old name is defunct but the upper classes are slow to alter accepted nomenclature. To them it will be the Hyde Park Hotel at least until their children are in late middle age. The plan was to spend the wedding night there and then fly to Rome at noon the following day. Accordingly the barouche swept them up St James's, down Piccadilly past the Ritz, over Hyde Park Corner, and turned round in front of the Bowater House entrance to the park, to deposit them on the steps of the hotel. As they bowled along, passers-by, tourists and Anglo-Saxons alike, turned to smile and even wave. Probably the connection between carriages and Royal occasions is fixed in the public Pavlovian consciousness. So that she might be undisappointing and because the brilliance of her new state filled her brain with a cloud of sparkling lights, Edith waved tentatively back. Charles, on the other hand, looked straight ahead as if somehow his candidacy for officer material was in question. She understood why. Charles was saddled with that most tedious of all English aristocratic affectations, the need to create the illusion that you are completely unaware of any of your privileges. That cool insouciance, so chic in theory, so crashingly boring in practice, was to ruin many occasions in the future for the pair as Edith suspected, looking at the frozen profile beside her. But this time at least the drive did not last long, certainly not long enough for Edith. Barely fifteen minutes after they had left the reception they were in the foyer of the hotel. It was still only about half past five and Edith wasn't absolutely clear what happened next.
She thought of suggesting that they stay downstairs and have some tea but since this would betray a total lack of urgency to be alone with Charles (that she was afraid she was feeling), she rejected the idea. They were shown into the Bridal Suite, which they had not requested but was theirs anyway — the difference in price being compliments of the management, following the age-old principle 'To them that hath shall be given' — and there they found their luggage as well as flowers and fruit and more of the bottomless supply of champagne. Then the door shut and they were alone. Married. They stared at each other in silence. Edith felt a slight tremor of panic as the reality of seeing this man more or less every day for the remainder of her life hit her. What on earth were they going to talk about?
Charles pointed at the bottle. 'Shall I open this?' he said.
'Honestly I don't think I could. I'm swimming in it already.' She paused. 'I think I'll have a bath.'
She started to undress as casually as she could with Charles lying on the bed watching her but at the last moment her nerve failed and, still with her bra and pants on, she snatched her dressing gown out of her suitcase and dashed into the bathroom.
When she came out, half an hour later, Charles was still lying on the bed, reading a newspaper. He had taken off his coat, waistcoat and tie as well as his shoes and socks, and something about the slightly studied relaxation of his pose told Edith that her hour had come. She strolled over to the bed and lay down next to him, naked beneath the gown, and pretended to read the paper over his shoulder.
'Happy?' he said, without raising his eyes.
'Mmm,' she replied, wondering how long it was going to take him to get to it. Now that the moment was here, she was suddenly rather anxious. She felt the need to reassure herself about the physical attraction between them. This, after all, was the side of their relationship that had nothing to do with ambition or even shared interest. It was the sexual conjunction that, at this point at least, she was determined was going to be the only one she would know for the rest of her natural life.
After what seemed an eternity, Charles folded the paper and turned to her. With a deadly earnestness and in absolute silence (which lasted throughout), he started to kiss her as he inexpertly unfastened her dressing gown. She responded as well as she could, trying not to lead. This time when she touched his penis, although he still started like a frightened colt, he didn't actually pull away. And so they lay there, fondling each other through their garments until Charles deemed a suitable period had passed and then he sat up, still in absolute silence, and removed his shirt, trousers and underpants. Edith shrugged off the gown and waited. Charles had quite a good figure, in that he was muscled and covered without being fat, but he had one of those English bodies, white, faintly freckled skin, with a little ginger pubic hair around his groin and none on his chest. His beaky nose and crinkly, public-school hair looked somehow odd on top of an undressed body, as if he had been born in a double-breasted suit and being nude was too raw to be natural. In truth, he seemed more skinned than naked.
Still without a word he turned back to her, the same furious intensity in his face, and, avoiding direct eye contact, he started to kiss her while he planted his right hand against her vagina. Once it was in place, he began to massage her with a kind of dry pumping action, which reminded her of someone blowing up a lilo. She groaned a bit
