Snobs: A Novel

Of course, what made this doubly hard was that Charles's statement, bald as it was, was essentially true. There was no question in my mind but that Edith did not then love him. She did not desire him (which of course I only surmised at that time), she did not enjoy his company, she did not share his interests, she did not like most of his friends. I do not think, then or later, that she ever actually disliked him but I could hardly say that in answer to Charles's cry of pain. I was silent, which I suppose was in itself a tacit agreement, and Charles looked up. I cannot say how moved I was by the terrible suffering in his simple, county face. His narrow eyes were reddening with tears, which had already begun to run down his large and bony nose. His hair, normally as sleek as a 1930s advertisement for unguent, was ruffled and untidy and sticking up in awkward little spikes. Great grief can be worn charmingly by a beauty and I have seen a lot of gracious dignity at funerals in my time but it is my experience that when grief is becoming it is also suspect. Real unhappiness is ugly and wounding and scarring to the soul.

I blush to recall that I was surprised that Charles — nice, bluff Charles with his shooting and his hedgerows and his dogs —

had a heart that could be broken. But he had and I was there to witness its breaking.

Before I could say anything there was a sound from the corridor outside. 'Charles?' It was Lady Uckfield. Rather than commit, even in a moment of emotional tension such as this, the social solecism of knocking at a sitting-room door (an action that, with white-gloved butlers, always plays so prominent a part in inaccurate television period drama) she contrived to wrestle with the door knob as if it would have been easier to get into the Ark of the Covenant. At any rate, having given us both enough time to dress had we so needed let alone dry our tears, she opened the door and came into the room. 'Ah, Charles,' she smiled easily into her son's face, ignoring the Fall of Rome that was written there, 'Edith's back. They got stuck getting out of the town. Too boring.' She nodded towards me. 'Your friend's gone straight on up to the farm.' Charles nodded his thanks in a kind of daze and started back towards the drawing room. I would have followed but Lady Uckfield, with an almost imperceptible pressure on my arm, held me back.

'We'd better be off, too.' I said. 'Where's Bob? I must thank him for dinner.'

'He's gone to bed,' she replied. 'Your nice Adela said thank you.' We were silent. She stood by the fireplace, idly fingering the pasteboard squares that summoned her child to various festivities. There was only one light on in the farthest corner of the room, a glass and ormolu desk lamp, which threw longish shadows about her and in the half- light grooved her face cruelly.

For once she looked her years. The glamorous veil of her manner was momentarily lifted and a tired, worried woman in late middle-age was revealed to the naked eye.

'Well, this is a pretty kettle of fish,' she said, not looking up from the invitation to a wedding on which I could see a tick and 'Acc' in Edith's loose scrawl.

'Oh, I don't know,' I replied. My position was an awkward one for, after all, I was in that house as a friend of Edith. It behoved me to be loyal to her and yet I did think she had behaved foolishly. I was not, if you like, 'on her side' while finding it unsuitable that I should be on anyone else's.

'Well, I do.' She paused while I looked up in answer to her acid tone. 'It's worse than you think. Eric was by his car when they arrived. He saw them kissing.'

I was for a moment what a cockney friend of mine would call gobsmacked. I had thought we had been fringing around slight improprieties brought on by Edith's tedium. I had expected a little chat about Edith 'bucking up'. Of course, I suspected at once that Eric was not 'by his car' when they drove up but was quite consciously concealed somewhere near the entrance that he might not miss this Heaven-sent chance to nail Edith, whom, by this stage, he absolutely detested. Much more than I had realised. At any rate, whatever the truth of his motive, he had not lied about what he had seen. For old times' sake I tried to dig Edith out of the hole she had buried herself in. 'Oh, surely, she was just kissing him goodnight.'

'She was kissing him passionately. His hand was inside her shirt and hers was out of sight beneath the dashboard.' Lady Uckfield spoke with the dead-pan delivery of a policeman giving evidence in the County Court. I stared at her in silence. My first instinct was to apologise for being there at all and run for it. Certainly I could think of nothing more to say. Lady Uckfield continued. 'It is the greatest pity that it should have been Eric who saw them. He is quite incapable of keeping anything to himself and anyway I have a suspicion he is not overly fond of Edith. He has already told Caroline who told me. She will try to keep him quiet but I imagine she will fail.' What interested me most about all this was Lady Uckfield's manner. I had grown used to her passionate, half-whispered intimacy when she shared with you the day's headlines or your place at dinner. Now she really did have a secret to impart and all her girlish urgency was gone. She might have been an officer in the WVS

addressing a group of recruits. 'I suppose we may hope that things have not progressed any further but I'm not sure what difference that makes anyway.'

'Will you tell Charles?'

She looked up startled. 'Of course not. Do you think I'm mad?' She relaxed again. Her shock at being thought unworldly was past. She dropped the card and strolled over to the window. 'He'll find out, though.'

'How?' I asked, meaning to imply that I too would be silent.

She smiled sadly. 'Probably because Edith will tell him. At any rate, someone will.' There was nothing I could profitably add to this since she was unquestionably right. Edith in her boredom was just ripe for succumbing to that fatal desire to 'bring things to a head' that so many married couples these days seem to indulge in. In sharp contrast to their great-grandparents who expended all their energy in trying to stop things coming to a head at any cost. My silence felt clumsy but I didn't in truth know exactly why Lady Uckfield was telling me any of this. For all her pseudo-intimacy she never usually imparted anything even faintly private, let alone potentially scandalous. She must have caught this question from my manner for she answered it without being asked: 'I want you to do something for me.'

'Of course.'

'I want you to tell the boy Simon to leave her alone.'

'Well…' Woe betide the man who accepts this kind of commission readily. Whatever opinion I might have of Simon's character or morals, I was hardly in a position to act the wise uncle with him.

Lady Uckfield drove full tilt at my hesitation. Her voice resumed more of its normal glib, light tone as the words gushed forth. 'She's bored. That's all there is to it. She's bored and she ought to get up to London more. She ought to see more of her friends. Or have a baby. Or get a job. That's what she needs. As for this boy…' She shrugged. 'He's handsome, he's charming and, above all, he's here. One does these things when one is settling into a new life. They mean nothing. The nuisance is that Eric saw her. He will almost certainly tell and it's our job to make sure no one can corroborate his story.'