Snobs: A Novel

to acquire that patina of the privileged, the faint, touch-me-not aura of luxe that marks such people apart from us mortals, and I was amused to trace the beginnings of an hauteur starting to obliterate the lucky girl from Fulham. I didn't see them at all in the build-up to Christmas and I was just beginning to feel myself drifting out of their circle when I received a letter tucked into a card, not from Edith but from Charles, asking me for a day's shooting in January. It was to be a Friday so I was asked for dinner and the night on the Thursday and, since nothing further was specified, I was presumably intended to vanish after the shoot to make way for the arrival of Saturday's guests. The lateness of the invitation meant that someone had chucked, but it was no less attractive for that and I knew (for once) that I was going to be free on the date in question. I had already been booked to be villain-of-the-week in one of those endless boy- and-girl-detective series, which was due to start five days after the date proposed so I wrote back accepting and received, almost by return, directions by road or rail. These told me which train to be on if that was how I would be travelling or alternatively to arrive at the house at about six o'clock.

I enjoy shooting. This I know is as difficult for one's kind-hearted London theatrical friends to understand as it is easy for the country-bred fraternity but I do not propose to launch into a defence of blood sports since I have never encountered anyone of either opinion who could be swayed. While I must say that there does not seem much logic in people gaily eating battery-processed food and objecting to conservation-conscious game-keepers, still I accept that there is not necessarily a logical basis for all or even any of one's feelings. At all events, at that time in my life, most of my sport had been of the country shoot variety and so it was with a sense of pleasurable anticipation that I set off for what promised to be a real, Edwardian Grand Battu.

I knew the way well enough, as I had often been down for weekends with the Eastons, but getting out of London to the South can be a nightmare and so I was in the habit of leaving time for hold-ups. On this occasion, I had not allowed for the fact that I was making the journey on Thursday instead of Friday and so, after a comparatively free run, I arrived at Broughton not much after half past five. The butler who went by the unlikely name of Jago told me that Lady Uckfield and Lady Broughton were in the yellow drawing room finishing a committee meeting of some sort.

Having no desire to join in — the committees one is forced to attend are bad enough — I settled into a surprisingly comfortable velvet-and-gilt William Kent armchair in the Marble Hall. I didn't have very long to wait before the door opened to release some of the members, muttering fawning farewells to Edith who was in the process of showing them out. She broke away.

'Hello,' she said. 'I didn't know you were here.'

'I'm rather early so I thought I'd wait instead of coming in to spoil your fun.'

She sagged her shoulders with a comic sigh. 'Some fun!' she said. 'Come and have a cup of stewed tea.' Ignoring the nods and smiles of the departing ones, she led the way back into the room. They did not object to this treatment. Far from it. The net result of her cutting them in order to greet me was simply to make them include me in their deferential smiles as they sidled towards the staircase. I imagine they thought that I too had been touched by the golden wand.

The remaining members of the committee, the usual collection of provincial intellectuals, tightly permed councillors and farmers mad with boredom, were in the final stages of leaving. Some of them had that dilatory manner of collecting their things together, which betrays a resolve to 'catch' somebody before they go. The prey that most of the lingerers were after was, of course, Lady Uckfield, who was ensconced in a pretty, buttoned chair by the chimney-piece, surrounded by admirers. A few of the aspirants, disconcerted by the competition, made do with five minutes of Edith and left. I approached my hostess, who rose to greet me with a kiss, which was a kind of signal to the entourage that the audience was over.

'Goodbye, Lady Uckfield,' said a black councillor in a baggy artist's smock, 'and thank you.'

'No, thank you.' Lady Uckfield spoke with her usual intimate urgency. 'I gather you're doing the most marvellous things down in Cramney. I hear it's simply buzzing. I can't wait to come and see for myself.'

Her companion beamed, shedding his Socialism on the spot. 'We will be most glad to see you there.' He retreated, wreathed in smiles.

'Where's Cramney?' I said.

Lady Uckfield shrugged. 'Some ghastly little place in Kent. Do you want some tea?'

By the time I made it to my room, my things had been unpacked and my evening shirt, tie, socks and cummerbund lay waiting for me. There was, however, no sign of my clean underpants. I hunted around through various drawers and was just in the process of searching under the bed when I heard a voice behind me. 'What can you be looking for?' I turned and saw Tommy Wainwright standing in the doorway that connected my room, aka the Garden Room, with its larger neighbour, the Rose Velvet Room, where Tommy was billeted. Actually, despite these impressive titles, the chambers themselves were rather small, having been squeezed into a sort of mezzanine floor at one side of the house. They had been created by the architect as part of an arrangement to provide a score of secondary bedrooms while only messing up one end facade of the house.

Consequently, despite the fragrant names, these chambers overlooked the stable yard, had eight-foot ceilings, and faced north.

We hunted around for my missing undergarment for a bit, then gave up, abandoning it to its fate. Presumably, to this day, a rather old pair of pants is still wedged at the back of some drawer in the Garden Room of Broughton Hall. Tommy retreated to his chamber and returned with a small bottle of Scotch and two tooth glasses. 'Essential equipment for hotels and house-parties,' he said, and poured us both a slug.

'Are they mean with the booze?' I asked. I have often been surprised at the fantastic discomfort and deprivation the grand English are prepared to put their friends (and total strangers) through, particularly in my youth. I've been shown into bathrooms that could just about manage a cold squirt of brown water, bedrooms with doors that don't shut, blankets like tissue, and pillows like rocks. I have driven an hour cross-country to lunch with some grand relations of my father, who gave me one sausage, two small potatoes and twenty-eight peas. Once, during a house-party for a ball in Hampshire, I was so cold that I ended up piling all my clothes, with two threadbare towels, onto the bed and then holding all this together with a worn square of Turkish carpet — the only bit of floor-covering in the room. When my hostess woke me the next day, she made no comment on the fact that I was sleeping in a sort of webbing sarcophagus and clearly could not have been less interested in whether I had ever shut my eyes. When one thinks of the Edwardians who revelled in luxury it seems odd that their grandchildren should be so impervious to it. Recently I have detected that the comfort demanded by new money is effecting a slow improvement in the houses of the anciens riches but, heavens, what a time it's taken.

Tommy shook his head in answer to my question. 'No, no. They're not mean at all. Not a bit of it. Lord U chucks it down everyone's throat. It's just too complicated to try and get a dressing drink.'

We sat and gossiped for a bit and I asked if Tommy had seen a lot of the Broughtons.