Snobs: A Novel

hurry up and get the place rented and dealt with. Its empty, pretty rooms, which they had discussed together in such detail just after their marriage, were a reproach to him, a bewildering reminder of his failure to —what? To understand? But what was it he was supposed to be understanding? One minute, they seemed to be having such fun 'setting up home'. He would puzzle obediently over little squares of wallpaper and swatches of fabric (although he couldn't have cared less which she chose) and they would refer coyly to one of the bedrooms possibly being 'useful' later on, as they planned a better bathroom for it than the room might reasonably have expected. Then the next moment it all seemed somehow… Charles was aware of his wife's dissatisfaction. He was sufficiently anxious as to her well-being not to wish to ignore any signs of her unhappiness but he couldn't see where it had come from. What had changed? Certainly, he was completely stumped when it came to progressing the situation. He offered to spend more time in London but, no, that was not the answer. He invited her to take more of a role in running the house shop and the visitors' centre but, no, she thought she'd be treading on his mother's toes. In the end, he had hoped that doing up Brook Farm and perhaps generating a social life down in Sussex that was separate from his parents'

might do the trick but one day Edith had suddenly decided that she didn't want to leave the main house after all and then he had really come to a full stop. 'I just can't quite see us sitting there staring at each other, can you?' she said lightly. These words struck a low and sombre note in Charles's heart because of course this was exactly what he had envisaged. The two of them, possibly eating at the kitchen table or with trays on their laps in the little library, watching television, chatting over the day's dramas…

Charles's real difficulty, as he would freely admit (to himself, at least) was that he just couldn't see what was wrong with their life. He couldn't grasp what was wrong with seeing the same people and having the same conversations and doing the same things month after month, year after year. His annual round had always been circumscribed by the usual demands: shooting until the end of January, hunting on until March, a bit of time in London, then perhaps a trip away, fishing somewhere and up to Scotland for some stalking. What could be the matter with that? Well, obviously something was the matter with it, but he couldn't see it. And quite what he was supposed to do next to please this wife whom he loved but who bit his head off at the slightest provocation was a serious conundrum to him. A conundrum he was unlikely to solve that morning, he thought, as he put on his tweed jacket and started downstairs for breakfast with his father in the dining room.

Meanwhile, Edith lay back silently in the warm water, listening to his footsteps clattering on the polished wood of the great staircase. She knew she was a worry to Charles, but in some odd and undefined way, she thought he deserved a bit of worry.

And this morning, more than usual, she was disturbed and yet she hardly knew why. It was as if some kind of creeping rot had infiltrated itself behind the grand structure of her life and could only be detected by the faintest, acrid smell in the most sensitive of nostrils. There was a knock at the bedroom door and Mary came in with the tray. 'Milady?'

'I'm in here, Mary. Just leave it.'

'Are you all right, Milady?' Mary's voice, hovering discreetly near the open bathroom door, was tinged with worry occasioned, presumably, by this fractional alteration of routine.

'I'm fine, Mary. Thank you. Just leave the tray. I'll be straight out.'

'Very good, Milady.'

Edith listened to the maid bustling about in the bedroom until the door closed and she heard the footsteps retreating along the corridor.

How ordinary her life seemed to her. Today it seemed to be drenched in a kind of grey ordinariness that suffused the atmosphere of these stuffy, chintz-filled rooms and hovered like a mist above the waters of the bath. And yet, how recently these details — these Miladys, these echoing footsteps on polished floors, these male breakfasts far below, sparkling with silver dishes, these lace-covered trays glistening with exquisite china — how sweet to the senses these touches had been. In those early days at Broughton how much pleasure had she derived simply from the monograms on her linen, from the damask-covered bergeres in her room, from the Derby figures on her desk, from the telephone with its buttons for 'stables'

and 'kitchen', from the footman, Robert, blushing with nervousness when he came to collect her emptied luggage, from the swans on the lake, from the very trees in the park.

She was a princess in fairyland. And how quickly she had learned the tricks of graciousness, of being showily unaware of her setting, of making people ill at ease with her studied relaxation. She delighted in the Eastons' discomfort in their triumph, as they found themselves at the Broughton table (at last!) surrounded by people all of whom knew each other and none of whom knew them. She had quite consciously imitated some of the tricks of the late Princess of Wales in the way she perfected her warm and delightful manner for the village, that combination of undisappointing celebrity and studied informality that was guaranteed to win all hearts. She would glow and gush as she was escorted round the new playgroup facilities or as she gave away prizes at the flower show, winning new friends, disarming old critics. What fun it was to catch the children shyly glancing at her and to disarm them with a sudden, winning smile and then to follow it up with a sunbeam directed at the mothers. But then again it was so easy…

With a low groan, she pulled herself out of the water, shut off the tap, pulled out the plug and sloped through into her bedroom to pick at her breakfast. Mary had tidied her bed and lit the fire — the dernier cri of luxury, particularly in September — and her tray, as pretty as ever, had been left on the table in the middle of the room. Nestling among the charming flowered china were her letters, appeals, thank-yous, invitations to boring parties in the country, which they would be going to, and amusing parties in London, which they would not. She flicked through them idly as she bit into a piece of toast, mid-brown with its crusts carefully removed. Mary had tidied her clothes, a tweed skirt, a cotton shirt, a jersey with a rabbit motif. She would wear these things, with some pearls and some not very sensible shoes, as a costume for the endless part that she found herself playing. She thought of her day: some errands, the librarian, Mr Cook, to luncheon ('luncheon' —

she even thought in the language of her role), a committee meeting in the village to discuss the summer show, a cousin of Googie's for tea. It was a dreary prospect.

But although she had already decided that resuming a London life would not be sensible for her, Edith had not at this point fully articulated her objections to it. She would murmur that it was a 'bad idea' without specifics. She explained these feelings to herself with observations on how 'left out' Charles would feel with her friends. After all, his London acquaintance was tremendously similar to the people they spent their time with in Sussex. And anyway it was true, or sort of true, when she told people how much he hated London and that (at this stage at least) she too had 'come to the end of it'. Still, she was aware that she was talking about being in London with Charles. There was already a potentially fatal sense that it might be more amusing, and therefore more dangerous, to be in the capital on her own. Even so, it was only occasionally, and then in a very faint voice, that she actually admitted to herself she was ready to take a lover.

Edith prided herself on having become, more or less instantly, a Great Lady, on obeying all the rules of her new life as one born to it. Of course, by this time, she had pretty well lost touch with the fact that she was not born to it. She had succumbed to her mother's self-image, and now imagined, in