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 even because of this, the Laverys had both been determined that they would carry the entire bill for the rest. They had even eschewed the modern, rather charmless custom of expecting the bridesmaids' parents to pay for their dresses. Edith was, after all, their only daughter and they did not want there to be any suspicion that she came from a family which could not afford to pay its way. Mrs Lavery, living as she was a plot from a Barbara Cartland novel, had even wondered if they were not expected to make some sort of dowry settlement on Edith but although her husband had touched on this with Lord Uckfield it had not been taken up.
Probably because the Uckfields did not want to embroil themselves in any corresponding legal entitlement. After all, as Lady Uckfield had pointed out before turning out the light, nowadays one could never be sure these things were
She lay back in the bath and tried to conjure up her favourite mental image of herself presiding over charity boards, raising money for the disabled, curtseying to various Royalties before escorting them to her box on gala nights, visiting the sick in the village — she stopped. Do people still visit the sick in the village? She realised she had unconsciously clad herself in a crinoline in her daydreams. And she thought of Lady Uckfield and of what a model daughter-in-law she was going to be, how the day would come when they would all bless the hour that Edith came into their lives.
===OO=OOO=OO===
I arrived at St Margaret's at about twenty past ten to be handed my white carnation, stripped of course of the fern that the florist had so painstakingly arranged with it, and my list for the front pews. It was the expected combination of duchesses and nannies, with places marked for the tenants and staff at Broughton and, behind them, the tenants and staff at Feltham. From the Reigning Family we were to get the Princess Royal and the Kents, all of them, but not the Prince of Wales (a bit of a disappointment for Lady Uckfield, a tragedy for Mrs Lavery) as he was on a goodwill junket somewhere in the South Seas.
Nor were we to welcome the Queen. I don't know why as I believe Her Majesty and Lady Uckfield got on well. Needless to say, I was not deputed to usher any of them, this honour going to Lord Peter Broughton, who nodded to me as I came in. I had not seen him since leaving Chez Michou as we had been given a choice of return flights and, having no City deadline to meet, I was still in bed when most of the party had set off. I had written to thank him and Henry but I had obviously said nothing of the debacle.
'I got your letter. You shouldn't have bothered.' The English always say you shouldn't have bothered to thank them when, of all races on earth, they are the most unforgiving when one does not. I smiled in reply. He pulled a face. 'God, I had a head the next day! I was in a meeting by eleven. I do not think I gave it my best.'
I couldn't remember what he did. Something financial, I assumed, although I have noticed of late that the brain standard of the City has been rising in inverse ratio to the fall of its social status. I wonder where this is going to leave people like Peter Broughton. 'You were very kind to lay it all on,' I said.
He nodded in turn, slightly awkwardly. 'I'm afraid Charles was a bit shirty.' I shrugged. 'The thing is, it seemed the most frightfully funny idea, d'you see? Henry and I went over with photographs and things and we'd even borrowed one of Edith's frocks… She thought it'd be terrifically funny too, d'you see? She was a great sport about it, she even told Charles not to be silly…' He tailed off rather lamely. Good for Edith, I thought, to come out of that ghastliness ahead. I hardly needed to point out that had she seen the act she would have been less sanguine. We could be sure that Charles had not told her exactly what he had found so offensive.
'I expect the boy doing it misunderstood his brief,' I said, borrowing Tommy Wainwright's line.
Lord Peter nodded furiously. 'That's it, exactly. I think the song was wrong, that was the trouble. That and Eric's idea of the jewel-box. I can see that wasn't too clever.'
I nodded, unsurprised at Eric's complicity. It was interesting, though predictable I suppose, that Edith's first enemy in the Broughton household should be someone of considerably lower rank than herself, who had made an infinitely greater leap in catching at his bride. 'I should forget about it,' I said. 'I'm sure Charles has.' I was actually sure that Charles had not, although I was pretty certain he would never refer to the incident again.
