Snobs: A Novel

On the terrace a tea had been set out 'English-style', that is to say 'American-hotel-style' and three white- coated footmen waited to serve it. Mrs Frank led them to their chairs. Peter's girl, Bob and Annette were thoroughly squashed by this time and secretly longing to regain the villa and turn this flattening experience into a funny story. Eric brought up the rear, red-faced with his exertions and clearly irritated that his social ignorance had excluded him from the conversation that had revolved around his wife for most of the afternoon. He dumped down onto a chaise next to Edith and seized a proffered cup.

Mrs Frank turned her attention back to the bride. 'Tell me, was Hilary Weston at the wedding? Someone said she was stuck in Canada.'

Eric looked up with a snort. 'No good asking Edith, is it, old girl? You'll have to wait until she's done a bit more training.'

Edith ignored him. By some merciful providence it so happened that she had spoken to Mrs Weston for quite a time at the reception. She thanked her patron saint as she spoke chattily across Eric making no reference to him. 'No, she was there.

Galen was in Florida and couldn't get back. I suppose that's what they were thinking of.'

Mrs Frank nodded, casting a slightly strange look at Eric. 'She does so much! I feel like a sloth when I think of her.' She moved on. Edith had passed.

Eric lay back and looked at her: 'Well done. Ten out of ten.'

She stared back at him, holding every inch of gained ground. 'Do you know Hilary?'

'I know her as well as you do,' said Eric, and stood up to join Caroline at the other end of the terrace. This interchange was oddly refreshing to Edith because it established beyond any doubt that Eric was her enemy in the family circle. There was no pretence necessary any longer and, best of all, in their first round, Edith had won.

She was singing in the shower when Charles came in to change for dinner later that evening. He smiled. 'You seem very happy. Did you enjoy yourself today? What a collection! What a place!' Even in these circles amazement is not forbidden in private between consenting adults and Charles clearly felt he had been unimpressed for long enough.

'I'll say. And yes, I am happy.' She turned off the tap and kissed him, standing there wet and naked.

The next few minutes, indeed the rest of the evening, were as agreeable as any she had known with Charles and it was with a sense of victory and well-being that she climbed into bed that night.

Charles turned to her. 'I gather the Franks want to give us a dinner before we go.'

She pulled a slight face. 'Oh dear. I suppose we have to?'

'Come on, darling,' said Charles. 'It's good of them and they're not that bad.'

'The old girl's not that bad but the niece is a nightmare.'

He laughed. 'I thought she was rather sweet. We must be kind.'

Edith propped herself up on her elbows beside him. 'Why is it that when someone like Annette is talkative and funny you all cold-shoulder her and wrinkle your noses behind her back and yet with Tina Frank, who must be the most boring and inconsequential young woman I have ever met, you make excuses and pretend that she's a dear?'

'I don't know what you mean.'

'Yes, you do, Charles.' She felt oddly confident, almost breezy. For the first time since her marriage she began to sense that she really was Lady Broughton. She had managed things well and according to the ancient tradition she was 'entitled to her own opinions'. She continued, smilingly severe. 'You know very well. And I'll tell you the answer. Annette does not know the people we know and Tina does and Tina has a hundred million besides. I don't know, darling, doesn't it ever make you wonder? Just a bit?' Edith was feeling her oats. She smiled at her husband quizzically, shaking her head slightly, imagining how charming her hair must look, rippling against her neck.

Charles stared at her. 'Who are all these people that you and Tina Frank know?' he said sourly and turned out the light.

PART TWO

Forte-Piano

NINE

I did not see a great deal of Edith in the months after she had returned from her honeymoon although they were in London from time to time. She did not apparently care for her mother-in-law's lair in Cadogan Square but they used Charles's little flat in Eaton Place and occasionally they would come up for a party or a show. I ran into them at a couple of dinners and I was asked for a drink with a few others in their tiny second-floor sitting room one day in October but there wasn't much of an opportunity for talk. Edith looked happy enough and had already begun 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.