Snobs: A Novel

The food was predictably pretentious, with bonfires going at practically every table. Inadequate portions arranged like cocktail hats followed each other in blank, tasteless succession, fussed over by suspiciously French waiters. The maitre d'

would not, by this time, leave us alone and kept dashing up for a review of the current course until Simon finally suggested he might like to take a seat to save himself the bother. Of course we all laughed and of course he was never seen again. In truth the dinner itself was the least awful part of the evening because of Simon. He certainly was on very funny form that night. He could match Annette's stories without challenging her and the pair of them did keep things going. Even Lady Uckfield gave in to the prevailing mood and chuckled away as she toyed with her unsatisfactory and costly dishes.

Charles, on the other hand, was more or less in hell the entire time. He was not quick enough to get the point of most of the anecdotes, let alone tell his own. These were not his kind of people and unusually for him (for he seldom risked the possibility) he was outnumbered. Unlike his father he was not a flirt, unlike his mother he had very little sense of humour.

Caroline tried to rescue him once or twice but she was in a dark mood of her own and in the end it was Adela who got him onto the business of improving the shoot at Feltham. He had apparently only restarted it three years before after a long gap and the topic released some of the pent-up flow within him, but even this had a limited success for when Simon was telling a story about some production he'd been in where the stage manager had filled the bath with boiling instead of cold water, he paused for the punch line and into the silence came Charles's voice: 'The great thing is to leave a wide enough headland of kale, which of course some of the farmers are reluctant to do…'

Simon laughed. 'Well, obviously Charles is fascinated,' he said. He meant it pleasantly enough, I think, and all would probably have passed on if Edith had not spoken up at that moment: 'Oh, Charles for God's sake, shut up about your bloody shoot.'

I imagine she thought that in some way this would be a joke too and we would all smile but it came out wrong. Her voice was harsh and I suppose unloving in a way that, particularly in the presence of Charles's parents as we were, made a strange and embarrassing tremor at the table. I saw Annette catch Bob's eye as I felt Adela nudge my foot.

Charles looked up, hurt rather than angry, like a puppy who has been smacked for some other dog's pee. 'Am I being very boring?' he said.

There was a faint pause and then Eric, either misguidedly thinking to be amusing or, more probably in his case, just in order to be unkind, said, 'Yes, you are. Better have some more to drink.' He started to pour wine into Charles's glass but Charles shook his head.

'Actually, I don't know why but I'm terribly tired.' He turned his harassed eyes to Bob. 'Would you forgive me if I skipped the coffee and headed on home?'

Bob knew by now, long before he had reached for his plastic, that the evening had been the most crashing flop and so he shook his head merrily. 'Of course not! You go. We'll be fine.'

Charles smiled wanly and stood up. 'Well then, I think I will be off if I may. We've lots of cars, haven't we? Will you be all right, darling?'

Now it was perfectly plain to everyone present that Edith ought to have jumped to her feet, said that she, too, was tired and left with her husband. Normally this is exactly what she would have done but this evening some kind of devilry had got into her. Or maybe it was simple lust. At any rate, she neither moved nor spoke and it was Simon's voice that broke the silence:

'Don't worry about Edith. I'll bring her home.'

Charles looked at him and for a second they were what the Americans call 'eyeballing' each other. It might seem that Charles, rich and titled as he was, and really not that bad-looking in his 1930s-ish way, held all the aces, which of course in the long view he did, but Simon Russell, feeling successful and busy and as handsome as a man can be, bristled or rather shone with charismatic confidence that night. To all the onlookers at the table Charles paled before him and I at least felt a pang of real pity for this man who had everything. Obviously, looking back, I know that Simon had the confidence of a man in love whose love is returned and Charles conversely had the fear of a man facing ruin but even without that knowledge the figure of Russell, clad in his waisted blue velvet coat, eyes and hair aglow, looked like the embodiment of some unconquerable force in a mythological painting. I say this that one may perhaps be less hard and more forgiving of Edith. Having taken in the tableau for a moment, it was Lady Uckfield who spoke.

'That's very kind of you, Mr Russell. Are you sure?' She broke the mood further by rising and forcing the company to their feet. 'Am I leading the ladies out? Or do we all go through together, here?'

Even in this supreme moment of face-saving she could not resist pointing up the fact that she thought this place quite extraordinary and so, presumably, not governed by the normal rules of her existence. I have said before that I came to admire Lady Uckfield a good deal and this was one of the moments that underpinned my view of her. She had witnessed her son made a fool of, she had seen him dismissed by his wife, she was well aware of the danger in the air from Simon's offer and yet she would not have revealed any of these things for worlds. She would have cut out her tongue rather than give anyone the impression that she thought it a bad idea for Edith to travel home alone in the dark with Simon. And yet she would have given one hundred thousand pounds then and there to have Russell removed from her sight for ever. If Edith had only had her mother-in-law's control, there would have been no scandal of any kind, then or later.

Back in the horrible 'withdrawing room' Lady Uckfield beckoned to me to sit beside her. If she felt uneasy, she did not betray it with the slightest flicker. 'You must let me congratulate you on your choice.'

'You're pleased for me, then.'

'Well, as your friend I'm pleased but as a hostess I'm furious.' I smiled because she spoke the truth. She would forgive me the inconvenience of ceasing to be a single man but only because of the 'rightness' of the thing. 'When will you be married?' I explained that while I had every reason to believe I would be successful, it was not all quite settled yet. I imagined it would be five or six months. 'And what about children? Have you thought about that? I'm an old woman so I can ask.'

I shrugged. 'I don't know really. We both want them but I can't help feeling that the timing is rather up to the wife, isn't it?

After all, my bit's rather easy.'

Lady Uckfield laughed. 'It certainly is. But don't wait too long. I hope Charles and Edith don't.' She looked me in the eye as she said this because of course we both knew that they had already waited too long. If Edith was now fretting over some golden head in the nursery or indeed if she was simply big with child, none of the threatened