Snobs: A Novel

star. Nor was he, in my opinion, very likely to become one. I felt myself becoming caustic. 'What makes you think so well of Simon's prospects?'

'You're very acid this morning. Anyway,' she looked at me with a real expression of appeal and I felt myself softening a little, 'the simple fact is I love him. I don't know whether he's worth it, perhaps he isn't, but I do. And there we are. You wouldn't want me to deny the first genuine feeling I've ever had, would you?'

Part of me wanted to scream yes into her stupid ear but I could see that was not what the moment called for. Poor Edith.

She was probably right when she said this passion for Simon was the first real emotion she had ever felt. That was precisely why she knew so little of what she was going through. She never guessed that after a year, however lovely the sex might be, it would no longer obscure from her the life they were leading together. Besides, I knew the strength of the ambition that lurked below Edith's placid surface. Modern psychology constantly harps on the dangers of suppressing one's true sexual nature. It seems to me that it is quite as dangerous to give one's sexual nature free rein and suppress one's worldly aims. Edith was, au fond, the ambitious child of an ambitious mother. Quite unconsciously, she had begun to defend her defection by assuming Simon's eventual stardom and wealth. In her mind's eye she already saw herself at a premiere in white fox (or whatever the glamour equivalent is in these ecological days), blowing a kiss to the waiting crowds and sweeping into a stretch limo with a motorcycle escort.

'Darling Edith,' I tried a softer tone, 'I'm not here to lecture you on your morals. I just want to be sure you understand that the likelihood of Simon being able to give you anything approximate to the life you have tasted since your marriage is more or less nil.'

'Well, hurrah for that,' said Edith.

We were done. For the rest of lunch we gossiped about various topics. Moving into the stage world she had of course crossed paths with a few people I knew so we had a new field for our malice. As we were leaving she asked after Adela. I said she was well. 'And madly disapproving, I suppose?'

'Well, she'd hardly be madly approving. Who is?'

'She should have married Charles. She'd have stuck to him through thick and thin.'

'Am I supposed to think badly of her for that?'

She smiled and ruffled my hair. 'You've earned your living in chaos and married into the system. I've been imprisoned in the system. Can you blame me if I yearn for a bit of chaos?'

We parted amicably enough. I telephoned Charles who was grateful and sounded more resigned, I thought. At any rate about a week later it hit the papers so the chance of sorting everything quietly was gone. Adela laid Nigel Dempster's column before my breakfast eyes and I studied the laughing, bosomy picture of Edith that had been selected. There was a more sombre one of Charles and a perfectly terrible 'cad' shot of Simon, which was presumably a still from some television show.

It was clear from the illustrations and the headline — 'the Countess and the Showboy' that Dempster had already chosen his side. In fairness to him, both pragmatism and decency seemed (for once) to favour the same team and I couldn't see Edith picking up many supporters.

The story itself was a moderately accurate account of the meeting at Broughton with a dignified quote from Simon's wife that did her credit.

'Really!' Adela was always curiously unforgiving about this sort of mess. 'Stupid fools!'

I don't know why she was so offended when people appeared to let their hearts rule their heads. After all, she had chosen to marry me, which her mother, for one, had thought a choice reckless to the point of lunacy.

'Why are you so cross?' I said. 'I think it's all jolly sad.'

'Sad for Charles and for that wretched woman with her children. Not sad for them. They're just wreckers.'

Once Dempster had opened the floodgates, Edith was predictably savaged by those very journalists who had taken such pains to ingratiate themselves with her as a bride only months earlier. The timing didn't help. It was during the period of disenchantment with John Major's government, when New Labour was performing the Dance of the Seven Veils before an increasingly bewitched electorate, and this tale of high corruption suited the public mood exactly. So there were critical columns from Lynda Lee-Potter on the right and snide disparagement from Private Eye on the left. Edith the self-made success story had been replaced by Edith the Social Climber to end all, her greedy, grasping ways apparently a reflection of the heartless society Mrs Thatcher had created. Like the Hamilton scandal or the Spencer divorce, it was soon clear that the actual events and personalities had ceased to have much significance and instead it was simply what the papers decided they stood for that counted. Predictably, it was a nightmare for the Uckfields, who were completely of that school where a respectable woman's name only appears in print three times: hatch, match and despatch — that is to say, when she is born, when she marries and when she dies. Finding their daughter-in-law criticised in column headlines was like being stripped naked and whipped in a public square and if it was ghastly for them it was really horrible for Charles. Slightly illogically, since the press was already limbering up for the Blairocracy that was then in training, they decided that Charles, despite being a worthless aristocrat, was the innocent party (probably because there was no other way of telling the story) but even so, to see his wife's adultery gloated over in newsprint and magazines was a kind of martyrdom for him. The more they telephoned Broughton, urging him to tell 'his side', the more invaded and violated Charles felt. The truth was his horror of scandal was not an affectation but a deeply held belief and here he was in the middle of one. He was being punished and he hadn't done anything wrong. This at least was Charles's view of the whole hideous episode and I do not think it was unjust.

After this circus had been played out for some weeks, it transpired that I had accepted an invitation for both of us to a supper party at the home of an actress I knew who had recently played Simon's mother in a television thriller. I thought there was every likelihood that the lovers might be there.

Adela was very cool when I told her. 'Well, I'm not going to flounce out of the room or cut her dead if that's what you're worried about.'

'I'm not worried. I'm just telling you they might have been invited. I think it's desirable to avoid publicly taking sides.'

'You need have no fear on that score,' she said witheringly. 'However,' she added, giving an unusually searching look in the glass and picking up her lipstick in real earnest, 'I'm not going to kiss her and wish her every happiness either.'

As it happened, I was right and Edith and Simon were on the guest list for that evening. Edith told me later she hadn't really wanted to go as they had been out every night since the scandal broke but Simon was insistent. He