Snobs: A Novel

covered the wedding in such loving, glutinous detail barely two years before. I know, only too well, the high moral tone those raddled alcoholic journalists love to take when they choose to discuss the low lives of the haut monde. And Edith had made herself their creature, had willingly allowed herself to become a columnist's toy, something I knew would give them every licence to tear her in pieces now.

'Can it be avoided?' I asked.

'I don't know. That's where I need your help.'

Naturally my heart sank at the sound of these words. All, of this was happening too close to me. I yearned to get back into the outer circle of this family's world. How little Americans know when they disparage acquaintanceship in favour of real, true friendship. It is in acquaintanceship, bringing with it as it does delicious dinners, comfortable weekends, gossip shared in picturesque surroundings, but no real intimacy, no responsibility, that the greatest charm of social intercourse lies. I am an observer. It troubles me to be forced into the role of participant.

'You'd take her back then?'

Charles looked almost puzzled by the question. 'What do you mean? She's my wife.'

It is hard to explain quite why I found these words so moving but I did. It sounds odd to write it in our tawdry era but at that moment I was aware I was in the presence of a good man, a man whose word could be trusted, a man whose morality was more than fashion. What could Edith possibly have found in the embrace of her tinsel lover that was worth more than this solid, unquestioning commitment? He looked almost embarrassed by his noble declaration.

'I just want you to talk to her.'

'Well, I assumed you didn't want me to kidnap her.' I put down my glass. 'But what can I say? I think she's quite mad.'

Charles smiled. 'But I don't imagine that my telling her that will make much odds if she doesn't listen to you or her mother.'

Poor Mrs Lavery! This news would bring hara-kiri in its wake.

'I know that but…' Charles paused. 'I mean, you know the world that this Simon chap operates in. I don't mean to be, well, rude, but is it the sort of world that Edith would like? Has she thought about all that?'

Now this was quite a complicated question, certainly more complicated than Charles was aware. Nobody knows who is going to like the stage world. Adela took to it like a duck to water and never had a moment's difficulty synthesising it with her other, more traditional, social group. She found she liked the feast-or-famine, crisis-ridden, siege mentality of the whole thing.

To others, my mother-in-law for instance, the people of the stage seem simply awful, a sleazy crowd of oiks, all plastered in makeup, falling in and out of other people's beds, and getting drunk in restaurants. There is a good deal of truth in this picture, too. Charles was of the latter school. It quite amused him to know an actor socially but it was no accident that the only one he did know had grown up in fairly traditional circumstances. If he came to us for a drink it was fun for him to see people he recognised from various television series but he had no desire to befriend them. This was one of his main difficulties throughout the whole affair. He found it impossible to understand how Edith, having known his world from the inside, a world that if nothing else is elegant and rooted in charming settings, could have deliberately renounced it for an environment as alluring to him as Cardboard City.

Of course, the danger of the stage world, even for those initially drawn to its glitter, is that there is always a risk that one may grow out of it. It is the choice of high colour over more muted shades in terms of one's daily drama and for many there comes a time when the sobbing in the dressing room, the anti-director cabals, the midnight telephone calls of reassurance, simply become an adolescent bore. Some actors slake this sense of growing emptiness by the discovery of a 'cause' and try to put their need for daily trouble and strife to some use. Nothing is easier than to raise a crowd of furiously indignant actors who will happily protest at almost anything. But causes are a taste not shared by all, certainly not much by the pragmatic.

Besides, there is a risk, not always avoided by some quite famous stage names, of attaching oneself to so many noble struggles against injustice that the weight of one's contribution finally becomes rather flimsy. All in all, the most effective antidote to the palling pleasures of stage gossip is simply to become very successful. Then the money and the status that fame brings are pleasant enough in themselves and lead to a rather broader life willy nilly. Which thought brought me back to the question of Edith's adjustment to her new existence. I attempted to answer honestly.

'I think it would depend on how well Simon does.' Charles shook his head impatiently. 'I'm not saying she'd mind moving in with Jude Law but how successful is this fellow? I've never heard of him. Edith's used to living high on the hog, you know.'

I knew. 'It's difficult to say. He's started picking up some good parts. He might easily get the lead in a series and then he'd be up and running.'

'But he might not.'

This was certainly true. People in the outside world talk of actors being 'successful', which roughly means stars that they have heard of, or 'unsuccessful', which means the bottom 60 per cent who never really make a decent living. You do not need to be a mathematician to work out that there is a large group in between these two, doing quite well, earning reasonable amounts, known within the business, any one of whom can be picked for a new television show and have their fortunes transformed, as the papers like to put it, 'overnight'. This is the trap of the stage life. It is easy to give up something if you are failing, almost impossible to do so if you are almost succeeding. Simon Russell was definitely in this category.

I bought some time as our main course arrived. 'The trouble is, Charles, what argument could I employ that would make any difference? As I have just told you, I think she's quite crazy but she's a grown woman. To give up what you've offered her in order to go and live with an actor of moderate talent and even more moderate means is beyond comprehension to me.

But she already knows all this and so I don't know what I could add to it that would be helpful.'

'I suppose she loves him. I suppose it's sex.' He bit the word out of the air and two men on the next table glanced briefly in our direction.

'It might be sex,' I said. 'But I'm not at all sure that she loves him.'

Charles frowned disapprovingly. 'I can't quite follow you there,' he said, and turned his attention to the bones of his lamb chops, which he began to scrape fiercely, apparently anxious to retrieve every last morsel of edible