'Well, they don't believe in the soft sell,' said Edith.
From the Under Hall, clutching our guide-books, we climbed the Great Staircase with its carved oak flights clambering up around a burly and rather depressing bronze of a dying slave. At the top, after crossing the wide landing, we came first to the Marble Hall, a vast, double-storeyed space with a balustraded gallery round all four sides at second-floor level. Had we entered by the exterior horseshoe stair this would have been our (intentionally flattening) introduction to the house. From this we progressed to the Saloon, another huge room, this time with heavy mahogany mouldings picked out in gold and walls hung with crimson flock wallpaper.
'Chicken tikka for me,' said Edith.
I laughed. She was quite right. It looked exactly like a gigantic Indian restaurant.
Isabel opened the guide-book and began to read in a geography-mistress voice: 'The Saloon is hung with its original paper, one of the chief glories of Broughton's interior. The gilt side-tables were made for this room by William Kent in seventeen-thirty-nine. The maritime theme of the carved pier glasses was inspired by the appointment of the third earl to the embassy in Portugal in seventeen thirty-seven. The Earl, himself, is commemorated in this, his favourite room in the full-length portrait by Jarvis, which hangs, together with its companion of his countess by Hudson, on either side of the Italian fireplace.'
Edith and I stared at the pictures. The one of Lady Broughton made a little stab at gaiety by posing the heavy- featured young woman on a bank of flowers, a summer hat trailing from her large hand.
'There's a woman at my gym exactly like that,' said Edith. 'She's always trying to sell me Conservative raffle tickets.'
Isabel droned on. 'The cabinet in the centre of the south wall is by Boulle and was a gift from Marie-Josephe de Saxe, Dauphine of France, to the bride of the fifth earl on the occasion of her marriage. Between the windows…'
I drifted away to these same, tall windows and looked down into the park. It was one of those hot, sulky days in late August when the trees seem overburdened with leaf and the green upon green of the countryside is stuffy and airless. As I stood there, a man came round the corner of the house. He was wearing tweeds and corduroys despite the weather and one of those tiresome brown felt derbies that Englishmen in the country imagine to be dashing. He looked up and I saw it was Charles Broughton. He barely glanced at me and looked away, but then he stopped and looked up again. I supposed that he had recognised me and I raised my hand in greeting, which he acknowledged with some slight gesture of his own and went on about his business.
'Who was that?' Edith was standing behind me. She had also abandoned Isabel to her orisons.
'Charles Broughton.'
'A son of the house?'
'The only son of the house, I think.'
'Will he ask us in for tea?'
'I shouldn't think so. I've met him precisely twice.'
Charles did not ask us in for tea and I'm sure he wouldn't have given me another thought if we hadn't run into him on our way back to the car. He was talking to one of the many gardeners who were drifting about the place and happened to finish just as we started back across the forecourt.
'Hello,' he nodded quite amiably. 'What are you doing here?' He had clearly forgotten my name and probably where we had met but he was pleasant enough and stood waiting to be introduced to the others.
Isabel, taken short by this sudden and unexpected propulsion into the Land Where Dreams Come True, fumbled for something to say that would fasten like a fascinating burr inside Charles's brain and result in a close friendship springing up more or less immediately. No inspiration came.
'He's staying with us. We're two miles away,' she said baldly.
'Really? Do you get down often?'
'We're here all the time.'
'Ah,' said Charles. He turned to Edith. 'Are you local, too?'
She smiled. 'Don't worry, I'm quite safe. I live in London.'
He laughed and his fleshy, hearty features looked momentarily quite attractive. He took off his hat and revealed that fair, Rupert Brooke hair, crinkly curls at the nape of the neck, that is so characteristic of the English aristocrat. 'I hope you liked the house.'
Edith smiled and said nothing, leaving Isabel to reel off her silly gleanings from the guide-book.
I stepped in with the pardon. 'We ought to be off. David will be wondering what's happened to us.'
We all smiled and nodded and touched hands, and a few minutes later we were back on the road.
'You never said you knew Charles Broughton,' said Isabel in a flat tone.
'I don't.'
'Well, you never said you'd met him.'
'Didn't I?'
Although, naturally, I knew I hadn't. Isabel drove the rest of the way in silence. Edith turned from the front passenger seat and made a that's-torn-it expression with her mouth. It was clear I had failed and Isabel was noticeably cool to me for the rest of the weekend.
TWO
Edith Lavery was the daughter of a successful chartered accountant, himself the grandson of a Jewish immigrant who had arrived in England in 1905 to escape the pogroms of the late, and to Edith's father, unlamented Tsar Nicholas II. I do not think I ever knew the family's original name, Levy, perhaps, or Levin. At any rate, the
