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.
Of course, Edith made a lovely bride and the collection of familiar Royal and Society faces on the Broughton side of the aisle put a glamorous spin into the whole business, which I, for one, thoroughly enjoyed. Even the sermon seemed quite interesting. The Lavery side of the church was inevitably rather over-shadowed but Edith had managed to attract one or two of her new, media-friendly friends and her mother, desperate to keep face, had written to her third cousin, the present baronet, introducing herself and enclosing an invitation to the wedding. Consequently, this very ordinary solicitor who lived in an old vicarage near Swindon (the family's modest pile had gone two generations before), suddenly found himself in the front pew of a London wedding, staring at what seemed to be half the Royal Family a few feet away. Actually, because of St Margaret's custom of keeping an empty pew for the Speaker on the right-hand side of the aisle, this necessitated a kind of half-backwards squint but he soon got the hang of it. At any rate, he was delighted to be there and so was his ugly wife, although she, understanding these things better than her husband, retained an air of having done the Laverys a favour in agreeing to come.
Which was, of course, quite true.
We had all been given special stickers to park on the gravel at the edge of the Mall so it was easier than usual to get to the reception. I had never got past the tables in the lower gallery of the Palace where, in those days, you could collect your badge for Ascot, so I was curious, as we stood in a long, slowly-moving, drinkless queue, to see what the state rooms had in store.
We shuffled up the great staircase, past a suitably dissolute full-length of Charles II, through a small ante- room, sumptuously lined with dark tapestry, where we were at last given a glass of the inevitable champagne, and then into the first of the three huge, red, white and gold apartments. In the receiving line it was not Mrs Lavery, whom I had met many times, but Lady Uckfield who greeted me by name and to my surprise offered me a cheek to kiss.
'I saw you beavering away in church,' she said, using her habitual tone of sharing a naughty secret that only I would understand. 'What a happy day.'
'We've been jolly lucky with the weather.'
'I think we're jolly lucky all round.' With that she dismissed me by angling me towards her husband, who, needless to say, hadn't a clue who I was, and having shaken his hand, I wandered off into the throng. It was clear that Lady Uckfield was making an effort to be agreeable to me but it wasn't all that obvious as to why. Probably she wanted to make sure that the only friend of Edith's that Charles liked at all would be her ally. She meant to subvert any attempts of Edith's to set up a 'rival court'
right from the start. This would ensure that if anyone had to do any adjusting it would be Edith, not her. I would not hazard a guess as to how conscious this was but I am fairly sure it was so. Just as I am sure that she was successful and that we all played our parts. From the start I was very taken by Lady Uckfield's ability to combine the kittenish with the autocratic and I do not think that where she was concerned I was ever a very useful friend for Edith.
I had hardly spoken to the bride in the line and I didn't really expect to get much of a chance to talk to her as I murmured and nodded my way through various chattering and kissing groups. David and Isabel were there of course, but I could see that they had not come to St James's Palace in order to spend their time talking to me so I let them get on with it and wandered into another huge, scarlet and gilded chamber, at right angles to the first. Large, full-length portraits, mostly of Stuarts, hung on chains against the stretched damask. I stopped beneath one, which, from the half-shut eyes and luscious
Edith's voice behind me made me jump. 'What do you think of the show so far?'
'There's nothing like starting at the top,' I said.
'It seems rather fitting that my wedding should be celebrated in a Royal palace, traditional seat of the arranged marriage.'
I looked up at the heaving, painted bosom of the queen. 'I shouldn't think this one was very hard to arrange.'
Edith laughed. We were almost alone in the room for a minute and I had time to marvel at her beauty, now reaching the years of its zenith. She had chosen a dress in the style of the 1870s, with wide flounces and a bustle behind. It was of ivory silk with a tiny self-patterned sprig of flowers. What I assume was someone's mother's lace fell from her thick blonde hair, held there by a light, dazzling tiara, fashioned for a young girl, like a glistening diamond-studded cobweb, not one of those heavy metal plates made for dowagers to sport at the opera, which always look as if they belong in a Marx Brothers comedy.
I imagine it was part of the Broughton trove.
'You'll come and visit us?' she said.
'If I'm asked.'
We stared at each other for a moment. 'We're going to Rome for a week, then on to Caroline and Eric in Mallorca.'
'That sounds nice.'
'Yes, it does, doesn't it? I'm not supposed to know but I do. I like Rome. I don't really know Mallorca. I gather
