His dreams were not realistic. On this particular evening, for example, he'd only been invited because he was in the papers.
Despite their high-sounding principles, these players share one characteristic with their Hollywood brethren: they love to be with famous people. If they lunch with Labour politicians, they like them to be front bench Labour politicians, if they march in a cause, they like to march next to Ian McKellen or Anita Roddick, not some obscure enthusiast from Harlow. But if Miss Grey had taken Simon up because he was In The News, she was incurious about his talent.
===OO=OOO=OO===
The party was in a house in Hampstead, which seemed to Edith to have taken about a year to get to and which, from the street anyway, did not appear to be worth the effort. Inside, every trace of the labourer, whose domestic arrangements it was designed to house in the 1890s, had been swept away in a sea of gleaming wooden floors and concealed lighting. There were knots of earnest discussion in the large living room, which opened off the hall, but the loudest noise was, inevitably, coming from the kitchen downstairs. Adela and I were standing by the stove, surrounded by bowls of pulses and pasta interlarded with strange creatures from the deep, when they came in. I felt Adela nudge me with her elbow as she went on talking animatedly to the unemployed designer we had got stuck with.
Our hostess advanced to Simon and kissed him, staring at Edith throughout. 'Now first you must have a drink and then you must let me introduce you. Do you know David Samson?' She indicated a famous comedy star who had planted himself at her elbow almost as soon as the couple had appeared. Edith smiled and took his hand only to find that hers had been raised to his hoary lips.
'Lady Broughton.' His fruity and familiar tones rolled the name round his tongue, savouring its flavour. He spoke loudly enough for bystanders to turn in curiosity and connect Simon and Edith with the stories they had read or vaguely heard of.
There was a faint buzz of awareness. Edith received Samson's adulation coldly, I thought, with a murmured, 'Edith. Please.'
Samson was not to be put off. He drew her arm through his and prepared to wheel her about the room. He turned to an inquisitive group nearby, booming out, 'Do you know the Countess of Broughton?'
Edith, needless to say, was in hell.
I would have rescued her earlier but Adela restrained me. I wonder if she didn't take a malicious pleasure in seeing Edith exhibited like a captive in a Roman Triumph. Adela had never endangered her footing in the old camp when she ventured into this new one and I suppose it was hard for her not to feel a tremor of victory. Simon came up to us, beaming. There are some who shudder at the thought of being an 'item' in the news. There are, conversely, others who cannot live without it. Simon was on the latter team. As the half-curious eyes followed him about the room, he was in his element. We broke away, leaving Adela to work over a rather grim-faced casting director on my behalf.
'How are you getting on?' I asked.
'Fine,' said Simon. 'Great.'
'So what happens next?'
'What do you mean?'
'Well, divorce, marriage, statements to the press?'
Simon raised his hands and eyebrows. 'Woah!' he cried with a spangled laugh. 'You sound like my mother.' It is easy to forget that even people like Simon have mothers. Some decent widow of a civil servant sitting in a flat in Leatherhead wondering what on earth was going on. He made me rather cross.
'You do know that you've got in very deep here? You do see that a lot of people are very upset about all this?'
He stroked my cheek. 'Oh well,' he said.
Of course, Adela enjoyed the whole evening hugely. Quite as much as Edith detested it, paraded round the rooms, as she was, like a sacred cow. Adela watched her struggling for small talk with these people who were so remarkably like ordinary people — the very people, in fact, that Edith had spent her twenties trying to escape from forever. The irony of all this was that, for all her hatred of the world of the Name Exchange, Edith had grown used to the comforting snugness of its limited membership. Suddenly she was back in open country where nobody seemed to know anyone she'd ever met. She felt something akin to panic. What did one talk about to people with whom one had no interest and no acquaintance in common?
After her time in Broughtonland, she had forgotten.
'Well, I hope she's enjoying herself.' Adela snuggled down into her coat as we started the long trek south.
'Do you?'
'Well, really! What has she done? And to leave without producing a child! So when the door shuts it's shut for ever. What a fool!'
I was still capable of being shocked by my wife's intense worldliness that lived so happily alongside her great, and I knew quite genuine, kindness.
'Isn't it better that there aren't any children?'
'Better for whom? Better for Charles and Googie. Not for her. To produce the heir is the only effective second act for a first wife. Think of Consuelo Vanderbilt's triumph when she returned to hated Blenheim as the mother of the new duke.
There'll be none of that for little Edith.' She sighed wearily. 'As for him!'
'I thought you rather liked him.'
'He's pleasant enough in his silly, blond way but hardly the craft to be entrusted with the cargo of life's happiness. What is she thinking of?'
===OO=OOO=OO===
