Snobs: A Novel

Charles smiled wanly and stood up. 'Well then, I think I will be off if I may. We've lots of cars, haven't we? Will you be all right, darling?'

Now it was perfectly plain to everyone present that Edith ought to have jumped to her feet, said that she, too, was tired and left with her husband. Normally this is exactly what she would have done but this evening some kind of devilry had got into her. Or maybe it was simple lust. At any rate, she neither moved nor spoke and it was Simon's voice that broke the silence:

'Don't worry about Edith. I'll bring her home.'

Charles looked at him and for a second they were what the Americans call 'eyeballing' each other. It might seem that Charles, rich and titled as he was, and really not that bad-looking in his 1930s-ish way, held all the aces, which of course in the long view he did, but Simon Russell, feeling successful and busy and as handsome as a man can be, bristled or rather shone with charismatic confidence that night. To all the onlookers at the table Charles paled before him and I at least felt a pang of real pity for this man who had everything. Obviously, looking back, I know that Simon had the confidence of a man in love whose love is returned and Charles conversely had the fear of a man facing ruin but even without that knowledge the figure of Russell, clad in his waisted blue velvet coat, eyes and hair aglow, looked like the embodiment of some unconquerable force in a mythological painting. I say this that one may perhaps be less hard and more forgiving of Edith. Having taken in the tableau for a moment, it was Lady Uckfield who spoke.

'That's very kind of you, Mr Russell. Are you sure?' She broke the mood further by rising and forcing the company to their feet. 'Am I leading the ladies out? Or do we all go through together, here?'

Even in this supreme moment of face-saving she could not resist pointing up the fact that she thought this place quite extraordinary and so, presumably, not governed by the normal rules of her existence. I have said before that I came to admire Lady Uckfield a good deal and this was one of the moments that underpinned my view of her. She had witnessed her son made a fool of, she had seen him dismissed by his wife, she was well aware of the danger in the air from Simon's offer and yet she would not have revealed any of these things for worlds. She would have cut out her tongue rather than give anyone the impression that she thought it a bad idea for Edith to travel home alone in the dark with Simon. And yet she would have given one hundred thousand pounds then and there to have Russell removed from her sight for ever. If Edith had only had her mother-in-law's control, there would have been no scandal of any kind, then or later.

Back in the horrible 'withdrawing room' Lady Uckfield beckoned to me to sit beside her. If she felt uneasy, she did not betray it with the slightest flicker. 'You must let me congratulate you on your choice.'

'You're pleased for me, then.'

'Well, as your friend I'm pleased but as a hostess I'm furious.' I smiled because she spoke the truth. She would forgive me the inconvenience of ceasing to be a single man but only because of the 'rightness' of the thing. 'When will you be married?' I explained that while I had every reason to believe I would be successful, it was not all quite settled yet. I imagined it would be five or six months. 'And what about children? Have you thought about that? I'm an old woman so I can ask.'

I shrugged. 'I don't know really. We both want them but I can't help feeling that the timing is rather up to the wife, isn't it?

After all, my bit's rather easy.'

Lady Uckfield laughed. 'It certainly is. But don't wait too long. I hope Charles and Edith don't.' She looked me in the eye as she said this because of course we both knew that they had already waited too long. If Edith was now fretting over some golden head in the nursery or indeed if she was simply big with child, none of the threatened nightmare would be happening. 'I quite agree,' I said.

THIRTEEN

I had wondered, when Simon made his offer to escort Edith home, whether his plot would be foiled by finding that he had to take various others with them, but as soon as I emerged from the house with Adela I saw that this would not be the case: the whole back seat of his car was stuffed with a pair of chairs and what looked like an assortment of gardening tools. By my side I could feel Lady Uckfield taking in the same fact. My guess is that she had intended to join her daughter-in-law in the shabby Cortina, but, if so, it was not to be. I offered her and Lord Uckfield a place in Adela's Mini and, with a glance at Eric, who had brought some sort of Tonka Toy/Range Rover, they accepted. Lady Uckfield and I squeezed into the back seat, leaving Lord Uckfield and Adela in front. Eric gestured to them impatiently but in her sublime way Lady Uckfield affected not to notice. We drove off, leaving Bob and Annette to the tender mercies of Eric's red-faced driving.

'I hope he isn't stopped,' said Lord Uckfield.

Lady Uckfield made a slight moue with her mouth. 'Oh well,' she said.

We travelled in silence for a bit, all, I imagine, thinking of Simon and Edith whose car was nowhere in sight.

Lady Uckfield spoke again. 'Aren't those places too extraordinary? Who do you think goes to them?'

'Isn't it these whad'y'a call 'yuppies'?' Lord Uckfield spoke in inverted commas, pleased to be so up to the minute.

'Well, it can't only be yuppies. Are there enough of them? There can't be that many round here. Americans too, I suppose.

So sad, really.'

'Oh, I don't know,' said Adela. 'I'd rather see them as hotels than council offices or pulled down altogether.'

'I suppose so.' Lady Uckfield nodded doubtfully. In truth, she'd rather have seen them filled with the same well-mannered, rich people who'd lived in all these houses a hundred years ago. Even the ones whom, like the de Marneys, she disliked. For her there was no merit in the changes the twentieth century had wrought. Time had blurred her memory so that like the old recalling only the sunny days of childhood, she could think of nothing harsh or mean in the England of her beginnings. I found her views interesting. Even if her vision of the past was not quite as inaccurate or outlandish as Jeremy Paxman would have it, still Lady Uckfield's beliefs were rare by the closing years of the twentieth century. She had that absolute faith in the judgement of her own kind, seldom seen since 1914. No doubt it was common enough before then, which must have made Edwardian society such a philosophically relaxing place to be. If one were an aristocrat.

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