nightmare would be happening. 'I quite agree,' I said.
THIRTEEN
I had wondered, when Simon made his offer to escort Edith home, whether his plot would be foiled by finding that he had to take various others with them, but as soon as I emerged from the house with Adela I saw that this would not be the case: the whole back seat of his car was stuffed with a pair of chairs and what looked like an assortment of gardening tools. By my side I could feel Lady Uckfield taking in the same fact. My guess is that she had intended to join her daughter-in-law in the shabby Cortina, but, if so, it was not to be. I offered her and Lord Uckfield a place in Adela's Mini and, with a glance at Eric, who had brought some sort of Tonka Toy/Range Rover, they accepted. Lady Uckfield and I squeezed into the back seat, leaving Lord Uckfield and Adela in front. Eric gestured to them impatiently but in her sublime way Lady Uckfield affected not to notice. We drove off, leaving Bob and Annette to the tender mercies of Eric's red-faced driving.
'I hope he isn't stopped,' said Lord Uckfield.
Lady Uckfield made a slight
We travelled in silence for a bit, all, I imagine, thinking of Simon and Edith whose car was nowhere in sight.
Lady Uckfield spoke again. 'Aren't those places too extraordinary? Who do you think goes to them?'
'Isn't it these whad'y'a call 'yuppies'?' Lord Uckfield spoke in inverted commas, pleased to be so up to the minute.
'Well, it can't only be yuppies. Are there enough of them? There can't be that many round here. Americans too, I suppose.
So sad, really.'
'Oh, I don't know,' said Adela. 'I'd rather see them as hotels than council offices or pulled down altogether.'
'I suppose so.' Lady Uckfield nodded doubtfully. In truth, she'd rather have seen them filled with the same well-mannered, rich people who'd lived in all these houses a hundred years ago. Even the ones whom, like the de Marneys, she disliked. For her there was no merit in the changes the twentieth century had wrought. Time had blurred her memory so that like the old recalling only the sunny days of childhood, she could think of nothing harsh or mean in the England of her beginnings. I found her views interesting. Even if her vision of the past was not quite as inaccurate or outlandish as Jeremy Paxman would have it, still Lady Uckfield's beliefs were rare by the closing years of the twentieth century. She had that absolute faith in the judgement of her own kind, seldom seen since 1914. No doubt it was common enough before then, which must have made Edwardian society such a philosophically relaxing place to be. If one were an aristocrat.
===OO=OOO=OO===
Simon made a show of fuss in getting out his car keys so that the other Broughton cars had all pulled away as he started the motor. He turned to look at Edith. She hugged her coat around her and leaned back against the window. They were two games players, with equal hands, and now at last they were alone with intent. 'With intent' because something in the nature of Edith's rudeness to Charles, something in the brashness of Simon's offer of a lift, had signalled to both of them that the fun was about to begin. Looking at Simon's roguish smile, the slightly crooked crease by the side of his mouth where his beard was beginning to push through, Edith felt a tremor of sexual excitement shiver through her body. She was startled by the immediacy of her own lust. She had been with men who had attracted her, she remembered enjoying making love with George and there had been a time, admittedly mostly before her marriage, when she had relished the thought of being alone with Charles, but she was sharply aware that this was something rather different. Looking into Simon's dark blue eyes, she realised she simply and absolutely wanted to be naked with him. She wanted to feel his hard, nude body against and inside hers. She felt hot and faintly uncomfortable. The terrifying, exhilarating thrill of her principles deserting her rippled through her stomach.
'Hadn't we better get going?' she said.
Simon was watching her carefully. Her blonde hair fell over her grey-blue eyes and she pushed it out of the way with a slightly petulant gesture. Her lips had not shut again after she spoke but stayed moist and parted with her white teeth just visible in the darkness. He too was excited but not in quite the same way as she. He had made love to a good many pretty women in his time and it was not the thought of the sexual delights to come that aroused him. It was the certain and confirmed knowledge of her attraction to him.
He was intensely aware of his own beauty. What is more he respected and enjoyed it as he sensed, quite rightly, that it was the core of his power. It was this simple truth that was at the epicentre of his flirtatious charm. From everyone, friend or foe, man or woman, he needed to eke out some response to his own physical desirability. Only then, in the warm glow of these aliens' admiration could he relax and be happy. The more threatening the situation, the more necessary it became to be wanted and wanted physically. He spent his life throwing out smouldering looks, laughing mysteriously, winking and twinkling at strangers solely in order to reassure himself that he was in control. Needless to say, he left behind a bewildered trail of wounded, who had responded for weeks or even months to clear signs of sexual and romantic interest only to find, once they were captive, that he had no more need of their love than if they had been trees in the field.
He did not trouble himself much over his search for constant reassurance. He simply expected his looks to break down all barriers, even if he did glimpse dimly that this is not the behaviour of a securely-based personality. In a way, this lack of faith in his other qualities meant that his vanity was closely entwined with a kind of modesty. He had no real respect for his own intellect, and socially, for all his bravado, he knew he could be clumsily inept. Given these reasons, it was probably inevitable that his bourgeois yearnings coupled to his compulsion to inflame desire should have led him to Edith. The irony being that she saw in him some kind of escape from the Broughton life, while he, conversely, saw her as the entree to it. At this stage of the proceedings however these truths were concealed from them both. They were, in short, enraptured with each other.
Lust, that state commonly known as 'being in love', is a kind of madness. It is a distortion of reality so remarkable that it should, by rights, enable most of us to understand the other forms of lunacy with the sympathy of fellow-sufferers. And yet as we all know, it is a madness that, however ferocious, seldom, if ever, lasts. Nor, contrary to the popular teaching on the subject, does lust usually give way to a 'deeper and more meaningful love'. There are exceptions of course. Some spouses
'love' forever. But, as a rule, if the couple is truly well matched, it gives way to a warm and interdependent friendship enriched with physical attraction. Should they be ill-assorted it simply fades into boredom or, if they have the misfortune to be married in the interim, dull hatred. But, paradoxically, mad and suffering as one is in the heat of the flame, few of us are glad as we feel passion slip away. How many of us, re-meeting objects of desire who once burned a scar through seasons and even years, whose voices on the telephone could start up flights of butterflies, whose slightest expression could set off a peal of tremulous sexual bells in our vitals, search our inner
