Similar thoughts were flickering somewhere at the back of Edith's brain at just that moment as they too sped back towards what she regarded as Civilisation. She was conscious of a kind of dull disappointment deep in her vitals. She had just been to another 'show business party' and as the phrase echoed through her brain she remembered the image it used to conjure up: vivid actresses, over made-up beauties in sequinned
Nor did she care for their fascination with her as the envoy of a different, and obviously disapproved of, world. She was not indifferent to the glamour of the stage but she had started to see that the quality of glamour as such was no longer rated by the fashionable thespians themselves. To make matters worse, she felt that she had entered this strange arena not as a star (which privately she had counted on) but as a freak.
'What a ghastly bunch! Who were those people?'
Simon never answered these questions, which were in truth more or less rhetorical. They both knew that what Edith was pointing out was that she found theatre folk 'common', though she would never quite say it. Simon, partly because he was not interested in whether they were common or not because it wasn't relevant, and partly because he suspected (deep in his heart) that by her standards he was pretty common himself, never rose to this one. 'I had a good time,' he said.
'You didn't have some frightful man with a voice like a bowl of fruit salad slobbering over your hand all evening. Are all your parties going to be like that?'
'Are all your parties going to consist of six Sloane Rangers and someone who lost money in Lloyd's? Because, if so, I'll take the fruit salad. Any day of the week.'
They drove home in silence.
SIXTEEN
It happened that I was in the Fulham Road late one afternoon running various errands and Adela had asked me to look in on Colefax and Fowler to collect some braid she had ordered a few weeks before. Normally I would have refused the commission since at that time (unlike today) all the assistants there seemed to have taken a degree in Higher Rudeness, but she insisted and in fact I was dealt with by a pleasant enough woman. Even though, as Adela had expected, the order had still not arrived, she did seem quite sorry about it.
At any rate, I was just receiving my token apology together with the standard assurances that it would be in next week when I glanced back towards the street and there, leafing idly through the racks of samples, was Edith's mother. I had last seen Mrs Lavery almost exactly two years before, around the time of the festivities of the wedding. It moved me now to think of that victorious figure, trembling with satisfied ambition in the Red Saloon at Broughton, as I looked at this lost and broken soul. She stared glassily at the huge flapping areas of pattern as they waved past her face but she saw nothing. Nothing, that is, except the ruin of all her dreams, which clearly played endlessly like a cursed tableau in her brain.
'Hello, Mrs Lavery,' I said.
She turned to me, gathered the knowledge of who I was from some distant mental shelf and nodded a greeting. 'Hello,' she answered in a hollow, frigid tone.
I learned later that she blamed me for introducing Simon to the Broughton family. With some justice, I suppose. It is customary nowadays for people to shrug off guilt in this sort of thing by saying 'it would have happened anyway' but I am not at all convinced by this argument. Most of our lives are not the fulfilling of some inexorable design laid down at birth but rather the sum total of a series of random events. If Edith had never met Simon — or not met him until after she'd had a child
— I think it quite unlikely that the whole thing would have happened. However, she had met him. And it did happen. And, when all is said and done, I had introduced them.
'Have you seen anything of Edith lately?' I said. The sense of her daughter's Banquo-like presence in the room, of her daughter's story, was making us both uncomfortable. It seemed easier to normalise the situation by talking about it.
'Not very much, no.' She shook her head. 'But she…' she hesitated,
I nodded. 'Well, give her my love.'
But Mrs Lavery was not quite prepared to let me go. 'You know him, I gather. This new fellow.'
'Simon? Yes, I know him. Not very well but we were in a film together. Down at Broughton. That's how they met.'
'Yes.' She stared at the floor for a moment. 'And is he nice?'
I was rather touched at this. Mrs Lavery was trying to force herself to be a Good Mother and to concentrate on the timeless values in assessing her daughter's new beau when we both knew that if Simon had been the nicest man in Europe he could never have repaid what had been lost with Charles. 'Very nice,' I said. 'In his way.'
'I don't suppose you've seen much of Charles? Since all the — business happened?'
'I have, in fact. I had lunch with him the other day.'
Mrs Lavery was surprised. I suppose in her romantic imaginings of her son-in-law's world she had erected much fiercer divisions than in fact exist. Also my admission gave the impression that I might not have encouraged Edith in her folly. She softened noticeably. By this time she had convinced herself, of course, that her affection for Charles was genuine and based entirely on his qualities as a man. It wasn't but I don't know that it was any the less felt for that. 'How is he? I'd love to see him but…' She trailed off miserably.
'Oh, you know. I'm sure he'd love to see you,' I lied. 'He's still pretty cast down.'
'Well, he would be.' She sighed wearily and without hope. 'I'd better get going. They're coming at eight and I haven't done a thing.'
And she left the shop, her shoulders stooping as she pulled at the heavy door. When I had last seen her she had resembled a character from some frothy Coward comedy. Now she looked like Mother Courage.
