===OO=OOO=OO===
Simon was oddly nervous as they turned right off the King's Road down the Vale towards Elm Park Gardens. He'd been fiddling with his tie every time they stopped at a light and as they drew closer, he started picking at his nails. Edith could feel herself tensing with irritation. She couldn't decide if he was apprehensive because he thought her parents were much grander than they in fact were — or if he was nervous of his role as a Wrecker of Marital Bliss. Either way she just wished he'd relax, as the evening promised to be quite sticky enough as it was.
'What is the matter with you?'
Simon just smiled and shook his head. He himself was not exactly clear as to why he had such butterflies although it was true he did think that the Laverys were smarter than they were. He had a very unclear idea of the nuances of London Society and, since he had no knowledge of the Inner Circle whatever, he was unaware of the extent to which Edith had been an outsider at the time of her marriage. Since he still thought of his new mistress as fearfully smart he imagined her background was correspondingly impressive. But that was not actually the source of his unease on this particular evening. Probably it was the more ordinary complaint that this formalisation of their relationship, this presentation to the parents, seemed to set some sort of seal of finality on what had originally been nothing more than a flirtation. He had not really, even now, faced that he was heading into the realms of 'divorce' and 'division of property' and 'maintenance' and 'custody' and all sorts of other depressing words and phrases and yet that is what suddenly seemed to loom ahead. He supposed that in some perhaps roundabout way Mr Lavery was going to ask him about his 'intentions' and it struck him that he didn't really have any intentions — not absolutely fixed ones anyway. But then he glanced across at Edith and she did look very lovely when he thought about it and he was aware of how much prettier her profile was than Deirdre's, who had always looked just a little gormless from sideways on and he thought that after all he could do worse. And thus mollified and heartened he got out of the car.
Mrs Lavery had confided in her husband about her meeting in Colefax. The words of the conversation had gone round and round her head until she had tried to spin them into a skein of hope. Even as she cooked for her daughter's lover she shouted through to the drawing room, 'What do you think he meant by 'cast down' exactly?'
Kenneth Lavery was almost as unhappy as his wife over the turn events had taken but for more honourable motives. He hated to see his beloved 'Princess' involved in a public scandal. He hated to witness his wife's despair. And he was not insensible to the fact that his daughter had thrown away a position of power from which she might have achieved fine things and run instead to a place barely within decent society. He had been proud of his daughter as a Great Lady and he was saddened by her fall. Having said that, he was a good deal more philosophical about the nature of Edith's folly than his wife.
Unlike her he had never deluded himself that Edith's marriage was going to make all that much of a difference in his own life.
'I think he meant what he said. Charles is cast down. Of course he's cast down. His wife has just gone off with another man. What would you expect him to be?'
Stella Lavery stuck her head round the door. 'I just meant that it sounds as if Charles still hasn't got used to the idea. I wondered if there was any point in perhaps getting in touch with him…?' Her voice trailed away, as her husband started to shake his head slowly but firmly from side to side.
'My dear, it is not Charles who decided to end the marriage. It doesn't matter what he thinks. He is not to blame for this.
Nor do I think it fair to start trying to stir him up. Maybe he is getting over her, maybe he isn't. Either way it will not help him to have his hopes revived by you. He is a nice man and our daughter has behaved badly to him. It is fitting for us to keep out of his way.' So saying he returned to the television.
His wife did not resent this treatment by her husband because in her heart she agreed with it. Try as she might to affect some sort of modern tolerance the fact remained that she was deeply, deeply ashamed of Edith's behaviour. As long as she could remember she had imagined herself perfectly suited for a Great Role in the public life of England. She would daydream as she watched those ladies-in-waiting hovering behind the Queen in Parliament, all dressed in their fifties Hartnell frocks, and she had thought how well she, Stella Lavery, would have acquitted herself as Duchess of Grafton or Countess of Airlie if fate had only called her. She would have served well, she knew, even if, like the little mermaid, every step had been taken on knives. And all this fantasy had been passed on to her daughter who had, miraculously, made it come true. But now, instead of hearing that Edith had been asked to chair the Red Cross or to join the household of one of the princesses, the telephone had rung to tell her that it was all over. That her dream was in ruins. And at the bottom of this pit of slime into which she had been hurled was the bitter gall of knowing that all over London people were tut-tutting and saying that after all Charles had married beneath him, that Edith was a little nobody who just couldn't 'handle it' and that he should have stuck to his own kind.
The doorbell went but before they could get to it Edith had let herself in and was calling to them through the flat. As the lovers entered the drawing room, she hurried to kiss her father. He gave her an affectionate squeeze and she knew he at least would be no trouble as she led him over to be introduced to Simon. One glance at the frozen statue of her mother framed in the doorway, however, told her all she needed to know about the evening to come.
Mrs Lavery advanced stiffly and extended a hand. But she could not smile and in a way it was almost a relief that, as soon as Kenneth had left them to fetch some drinks, she dispensed with Simon's inept attempts at small talk and launched straight into the heart of the matter. 'You will understand that this is all very difficult for us, Mr Russell.' She deliberately ignored his attempts to make her call him Simon and in this there was a certain similarity to the way her idol, Lady Uckfield, would have managed the meeting. The latter would have been much cosier, of course. 'We are both very fond of our son-in-law. So you will forgive us if we don't fall on your neck.'
Simon smiled, crinkling up his eyes in a way that was usually effective. 'Neck-falling is quite optional, I assure you,' he muttered gaily.
Mrs Lavery did not return his smile. It wasn't that she was immune to physical attraction. She could see well enough that Simon was one of the handsomest men she had ever encountered but in her eyes his beauty was the explanation of her daughter's ruin. Nothing less. At that moment she could cheerfully have taken a knife and cut the features from his face if it would have turned Edith back from her chosen course. 'My daughter was,' she paused,
'It wouldn't have cost you much of a pang if I was leaving Simon for Charles,' said Edith.
Now this was completely true. So true in fact that it made Mr Lavery smile momentarily as he came back in with a tray of glasses, but Edith was forgetting that Mrs Lavery had cast herself in the part of Hecuba, the Noble Widow. In Stella's shattered mind she and Googie Uckfield were two high-born victims in a cosmic disaster (she talked
