Snobs: A Novel

'Really!' Adela was always curiously unforgiving about this sort of mess. 'Stupid fools!'

I don't know why she was so offended when people appeared to let their hearts rule their heads. After all, she had chosen to marry me, which her mother, for one, had thought a choice reckless to the point of lunacy.

'Why are you so cross?' I said. 'I think it's all jolly sad.'

'Sad for Charles and for that wretched woman with her children. Not sad for them. They're just wreckers.'

Once Dempster had opened the floodgates, Edith was predictably savaged by those very journalists who had taken such pains to ingratiate themselves with her as a bride only months earlier. The timing didn't help. It was during the period of disenchantment with John Major's government, when New Labour was performing the Dance of the Seven Veils before an increasingly bewitched electorate, and this tale of high corruption suited the public mood exactly. So there were critical columns from Lynda Lee-Potter on the right and snide disparagement from Private Eye on the left. Edith the self-made success story had been replaced by Edith the Social Climber to end all, her greedy, grasping ways apparently a reflection of the heartless society Mrs Thatcher had created. Like the Hamilton scandal or the Spencer divorce, it was soon clear that the actual events and personalities had ceased to have much significance and instead it was simply what the papers decided they stood for that counted. Predictably, it was a nightmare for the Uckfields, who were completely of that school where a respectable woman's name only appears in print three times: hatch, match and despatch — that is to say, when she is born, when she marries and when she dies. Finding their daughter-in-law criticised in column headlines was like being stripped naked and whipped in a public square and if it was ghastly for them it was really horrible for Charles. Slightly illogically, since the press was already limbering up for the Blairocracy that was then in training, they decided that Charles, despite being a worthless aristocrat, was the innocent party (probably because there was no other way of telling the story) but even so, to see his wife's adultery gloated over in newsprint and magazines was a kind of martyrdom for him. The more they telephoned Broughton, urging him to tell 'his side', the more invaded and violated Charles felt. The truth was his horror of scandal was not an affectation but a deeply held belief and here he was in the middle of one. He was being punished and he hadn't done anything wrong. This at least was Charles's view of the whole hideous episode and I do not think it was unjust.

After this circus had been played out for some weeks, it transpired that I had accepted an invitation for both of us to a supper party at the home of an actress I knew who had recently played Simon's mother in a television thriller. I thought there was every likelihood that the lovers might be there.

Adela was very cool when I told her. 'Well, I'm not going to flounce out of the room or cut her dead if that's what you're worried about.'

'I'm not worried. I'm just telling you they might have been invited. I think it's desirable to avoid publicly taking sides.'

'You need have no fear on that score,' she said witheringly. 'However,' she added, giving an unusually searching look in the glass and picking up her lipstick in real earnest, 'I'm not going to kiss her and wish her every happiness either.'

As it happened, I was right and Edith and Simon were on the guest list for that evening. Edith told me later she hadn't really wanted to go as they had been out every night since the scandal broke but Simon was insistent. He suffered from that common illusion among disappointed actors that it is good to be 'seen' at things. The truth is that it is good to be employed.

Whether one is seen at parties is immaterial. However, he had acquired a newsworthy mistress and he probably wanted to get some mileage out of her. If I'm honest and at this distance, I suspect Simon was sorry it had not all been managed without her leaving Charles. That said, since the breach had happened, he would have wanted to profit from the publicity.

Simon Russell was one of those actors whose initial progress had seemed to point inexorably toward a stardom that, somehow, the years had never quite delivered. In the early days he had been given the lead in a series opposite a popular female star but the show had failed. Then he had landed a good part in a Hollywood sequel, which had died at the box office.

And gradually the spotlight had shifted and slid away to those newer, younger, blonder men who seemed to arrive in such limitless supply. He was good — or good enough — and, as I have said, wonderful looking, especially when well photographed, and it could all still have happened for him but, by the point of our story, there was no time to lose. And now, most unexpectedly, his private life had put him into print. Edith had made him a topic.

As for his wife and children, I think it would be wrong to say he didn't worry about them. He did. As much as he was able.

She, Deirdre, had done her best for him and he really loved the kids, but I suppose it had all become a bit dreary over the last few years and so terribly the same. Besides, it was obvious when you saw them together (which we did a couple of times during the early days of the filming at Broughton) that Deirdre had ceased to think of him as a romantic figure and had begun to treat him more and more as a kind of overgrown, recalcitrant boy. He wanted worship and what he got was someone telling him to eat his greens. Of course, I wasn't sure how much unmixed adoration he would be able to count on from Edith. Or for how long.

===OO=OOO=OO===

'Darling, please… we must go…' It was quite unconscious but Simon had fallen into the habit of dealing with Edith in a wheedling tone, a cross between a lounge lizard and a travelling salesman. 'I hate to be naff but you have to get used to the idea that I earn my living. I'm not Charles swanning around giving orders at the Home Farm. I have to be out there. I have to remind people that I exist.'

She sat before the little dressing table in their dreary bedroom, frowning with concentration as she studied her reflection. It did seem rather naff really. Edith was hating her black celebrity. Every time some 'friend' rang her with the news that yet another journalist had taken a swipe at her ('I thought I ought to tell you, darling, before you read it unawares,' the voice would gloat), her heart would sink anew. She wanted fame in a way but fame that brought status and conferred glamour, not this awful washing of dirty linen. She even caught herself feeling sorry for her parents-in-law when she thought of the papers that were probably being edited by Charles or the servants before the Uckfields could set eyes on them. Poor Charles… how was he coping with it all, poor dear? And these frightful parties that Simon kept wanting to take her to. Could it be so necessary to keep chatting up these weird representatives from another planet? She had been too long a Broughton to be able to throw off (easily anyway) the notion that Simon's crowd was a sort of joke — useful to enliven a party but not quite right for every day.

'Why?' she said.

He watched her painting her face with care and artistry. He knew what she was thinking but he didn't much care. If she wanted to go back among her old world rather than spend all their time in his, well, that was fine so far as he was concerned.

In fact, he was becoming the teeniest bit impatient to get started on some of her gang. She had introduced him