Isabel telephoned me the same morning: 'I gather you're an usher,' she said. 'David isn't.' I answered, as I knew I must, that this seemed a bit hard. 'Well, I must say I think it really is. He's in a sulk, which is a great bore and I don't see that there's anything I can do about it.' I said there was absolutely nothing she could do about it and after all, I was the only one of Edith's friends that Charles had even met before the whole thing began. 'I know that and I've said it, but you know David.'
'What about you?'
'What do you mean?'
'Are you going to play any part in it all? I thought Alice might be one of the bridesmaids or something.' Alice was the Eastons' eldest child. She was as plain as a pikestaff but quite amiable withal.
'No.' Isabel's voice was sodden with disappointment. 'Edith tried but apparently there were covens of prior claims and so she's settled for just having tinies. Much nicer really,' she muttered drearily. I could tell she had not finished. 'I was wondering about Charles's night out.'
'What about it?'
'Is he having one?'
'I don't know. I suppose so.'
'But you haven't been asked?'
'No. Should I have been?'
'Well, it's just that David was wondering if he, or both of you, shouldn't do something about organising one ... ' Her voice trailed away.
'Come off it. We hardly know him. What are you thinking of?'
'I dare say you're right.' I wondered if David was in the room with her. 'You might let us know if you are asked.'
David's background anxiety was becoming uncomfortable. He had obviously started on a lifetime's career of dropping Charles's name and he could not face the obloquy of being publicly excluded from his circle of intimates.
'All right,' I said, 'but I'm sure I won't be.'
As it happened, a month later, ten days before the wedding, I was asked. Presumably because of a dropout. A party of twelve was being flown to Paris in a week's time, three days before the Great Event, to dine and stay overnight at the Ritz. I was sent the ticket by bike and all I had to do was to be ready for collection from the flat at the appointed hour. The flight was to take off from the City airport. Instead of telephoning Isabel, I spoke to Edith. 'I've been asked to Charles's shindig.'
'I know. Completely his idea. I think it'll be fun, don't you? I love the Paris Ritz.'
'I suppose David isn't going?'
'No. The thing is Henry Cumnor and Charles's uncle Peter are organising and paying for the whole thing and so he can't have everyone.'
'Fains I tell David.'
'I've told Isabel.' Edith paused. 'As a matter of fact, I do think they're being tiresome. I am fond of Isabel but they want to be such 'best friends' all the time. I feel like a heroine out of Angela Brazil. After all, I don't know David well and Charles has hardly met him.'
'My dear,' I said sagely. 'This is only the beginning.'
At three o'clock the following Saturday a capped and uniformed chauffeur rang my basement bell and seized my waiting suitcase to carry it up to the car. I had treated myself to a new one in honour of the elevated company I was about to keep so it was especially irritating when he caught it on the corner of the cellar steps and wrenched one of the handles off. As a result, despite my reckless extravagance, I felt shabby for the entire trip.
Henry Cumnor was already in the car, his corpulence spilling itself across the back seat in vast folds of Turnbull and Asser-shirted flesh, leaving the barest ledge of vacant leather beside him. As I climbed in, I felt like Carrie Fisher squeezing up against Jabba the Hutt. I knew Henry vaguely, as it so happened that we had attended the same school although in different years, and this afforded me a faint protection against his exclusivity, but only faint. At any rate, I knew what to expect as Edith had made quite a funny story out of her 'first date' with Charles.
There was another passenger in the front seat who was cursorily introduced as Tommy Wainwright and whom I recognised as a rising Member of Parliament — if any Tory could be said to be rising at that time. So far as I could remember from those profiles beloved of the Sunday colour sections he was the younger son of a Home Counties peer and was consequently a slightly surprising inclusion in the group on whom Mrs Thatcher had smiled — she not being much in favour of the aristocracy. He was tall, almost lanky, with an amiable, round face and thinning hair that made him look like a kind of trainee old buffer, although, as I would learn, this was not at all the case. He turned, smiled and shook my hand, which placed him three-nil in the courtesy stakes against Henry and we set off.
The talk on the way to the airport was political and I was amused at the contrast between my two companions. Tommy gave his reasons for why the Conservatives had gone so completely down the plug. These were on the whole reasonable and seemed worthy of discussion but Cumnor countered them with a bundle of ridiculous assertions, all smug, all out of date and all apparently received unchewed from his late father (rather like his wardrobe). Feeling that I ought to contribute, I observed that it did not seem to me that the party had been very imaginative in their relationship with the arts.
Cumnor angled his bulk towards me. 'My dear fellow, how many people constitute what you call 'the Arts'? We're talking thousands, not hundreds of thousands, not millions. Do you know how many members there are in the TGWU? The plain truth is, whether you like it or not, your 'arts' don't matter.' He sat back, having won his point to his own satisfaction.
'Forty million people turn on their televisions every night to find out what they think,' said Tommy. 'What could
