Snobs: A Novel

matter.

It was clear Charles was not prepared to admit that his wife could differentiate between these elements, that she might be able to indulge her body without involving her heart. I loved him for it.

We didn't say much more. All I knew was that by the time I was back in Piccadilly strolling down the Ritz arcade towards Green Park Underground station I had agreed to telephone Edith and attempt to 'reason' with her.

FIFTEEN

As it happened Edith sounded quite eager to meet, 'so long as you don't start to lecture me.' I shouldn't have been surprised.

Freud has some special word for this 'compulsion to reveal' that undermines us all. She longed to discuss everything with someone who knew all the characters involved and given that she would expect some sympathy from her listener, I was probably in a category of one. We decided on a cheap and cheerful little restaurant in Milner Street, alas long gone now, a victim of the developers, that we had occasionally used during her estate agency days. When I arrived I found her already seated in a separate booth in the corner. She wore a scarf tied tightly and pulled forward over her brow. It was all quite exciting.

'I suppose Charles has put you up to this?' she said. I nodded since I supposed he had. 'How is he?'

'How do you think?'

'Poor darling.'

'Indeed.'

She wrinkled her nose crossly. 'Now you're not to make me feel like a beast.'

'But I think you are a beast.' We were interrupted, perhaps just in time, by the arrival of the waitress. Of course it was easy to see that Edith was enjoying the whole adventure tremendously. 'How's Simon?' I said.

'Oh, terribly well. He's having lunch with his new agent. Apparently she thinks he's the natural successor to Simon McCorkindale.'

'And that's good, is it?'

'Very good,' she said crisply with an admonishing glance. 'At any rate, it's much better than his last agent who always seemed to think he was lucky to get a job.'

'Is he working now?'

'He's about to do a play in Bromley. A revival of Rebecca. Apparently they're hoping it might come into the West End.'

'Edith, it'll be a cold day in hell when a revival of Rebecca comes into London from Bromley.'

'Well, that's what they've told him.'

'They say such things for two reasons. One is to tempt you into being in it, and two, so that you have something slightly less pathetic to tell your friends when they ask you what you're doing. This is my world, remember.'

She nodded slightly, 'I imagine that's why Charles has chosen you to talk to me. You're to take the gilt off the gingerbread and show me the dingy lowlife that lies beneath. He's given up trying to remind me of the glories of Broughton although I dare say I've got all that to look forward to when Googie gets in on the act.' She shivered in mock dread.

I felt rather slighted. 'I don't see why I shouldn't remind you of the glories of Broughton,' I said. She shrugged. Suddenly I was irritated by her air of insouciance. I knew, better than most, the effort that had gone into netting Charles and I was damned if I was going to witness Edith playing the part of a jaded aristocrat coming to the end of an arranged marriage.

'Come off it,' I said, driving back the waitress who was approaching with our first courses. 'You loved it. You loved every minute of it. All those cringing shop assistants and sucking-up hairdressers. All that 'yes, milady, no, milady'. You'll miss it, you know.'

She shook her head. 'No, I won't. You know better than anyone that I didn't grow up with it.'

'It's precisely because you didn't grow up with it that you'll miss it so severely.' I sighed. 'You're in for a terrific setting down, I'm afraid.'

'You don't sound afraid,' she said. 'You sound thrilled.' She took a sip of her Perrier as the plates were laid before us.

'And if Simon becomes a star? What then? Aren't more people interested in meeting a star than some boring old lord?'

It was then that I perceived that Edith, in the full flush of something akin to love, had made two tremendous miscalculations. Firstly, in weighing up the relative merits of aristocracy and stardom she had assumed that the benefits that would accrue to her, as partner, would be roughly equivalent. In fact, nothing could be further from the truth. The wife of an earl is, after all, a genuine countess. When people meet her it is not solely because they see her as a route to her husband.

Better still, if the family she has married into still possesses its estates, as the Broughtons did, then the landed peer offers his wife a mini-kingdom where she may reign as queen. On the other hand, the wife of a star is… his wife. Nothing more. If she is cultivated by people it is usually only so that they may ingratiate themselves with her husband. He has no land where she may reign. His kingdom is the studio or the stage where she has no place and where in fact, on her rare visits, she is in the way, an unprofessional among working people. She is excluded from the shared jokes between her husband and his workmates, she holds no interest even for his agent except as a method of controlling him. At dinner her opinions only irritate the other professionals present. Finally and worst of all, while a divorced peeress faces the world and the search for a new husband with a dented but legal title, the divorced wife of a star has returned absolutely to square one. As many Hollywood wives have had to learn before now.

Edith's second miscalculation was simpler. The comparison was false. Charles was a lord. Simon was not a