Snobs: A Novel

Charles was waiting for us in the drawing room when we reappeared the next day or so it seemed. He bounded out of his chair, kissed Adela on both cheeks and almost wrung my hand. He wasn't able to say much more than how pleased he was to see us, as his mother approached to normalise the situation and lead us over to the drinks cupboard, cunningly inserted behind a dummy door that had originally been constructed to balance the door that led, through an ante-room, to the dining room. Tigger stood there in his role as Mine Host, dispensing Bloody Marys. He presented one to his wife. She wrinkled her nose fractionally. 'Not enough Tabasco, the wrong vodka — and you've forgotten the lime juice.' I was waiting for a bowl of fresh limes to be rung for when to my surprise Lord Uckfield took down a plastic bottle of lime juice cordial and sloshed a great measure into the jug. I was about to request one without this ingredient then thought better of it and took what I was given. Naturally enough, it was delicious.

'How do you think he's looking?' said my hostess.

She knew well enough that Charles looked perfectly terrible. His face was tired and lumpy. His skin, which normally shone with the kind of uncomplicated health redolent of grouse moors and hunting fields, looked sallow and almost dirty. His hair hung in unsorted tendrils down his neck.

'Not great,' I said.

She nodded. 'You do see why I felt I had to ask your help?'

She drifted away without referring again to our curious interview of the previous day. To be honest and in her defence I could see why, as a mother, she had been driven to pretty desperate measures. Clearly her son was dying by inches before her eyes. What puzzled me was this hinted-at, burgeoning romance that promised new life and happiness. He really did not look like one who has found his True Love, even though Clarissa was in his eye-line. There were some other pre-lunch drinkers and she was again playing the hostess, leading people here and there and introducing them but, so far as I could tell, without exciting any special interest in her cousin's heart.

The house-guests were as surly as they had been the previous day and I saw a couple of them being grudgingly yoked to David and Isabel. One, Viscount Bohun, who had been out for a walk the day before, I had met occasionally in London. His youngest sister had been a vague friend of mine at one time and I had always suspected him then of being mentally sub-normal

— or at least as near sub-normal as one can be without actually risking clinical classification — so I had been quite surprised to read somewhere that he had married a pretty girl with a respectable job in publishing. Remembering this, I was curious to see the new Lady Bohun, she who had made this unholy contract. She was easy to spot. Her shining hair swept back flawlessly under a velvet band, her nose tilted in the air, she was being as grand and as difficult with a foundering David as it is possible to be without actually resorting to insults. The poor man struggled on, hopefully dropping names and references, all of which were courteously spurned, until I could almost see the sweat popping out on his brow. I can only hope that such petty victories were worth the terrible sacrifice of her life that she had made. Bohun himself had caught the wretched Adela and was telling her some interminable story, which he kept punctuating with a shrill and unprovoked laugh. I could see her checking the exits.

Charles approached and touched me on the elbow. 'So how are you? How was your filming?'

'OK. How about you?'

He gestured towards a window seat where, untroubled by the others, we might perch and be a little alone. He stared out over the gardens for a moment in silence. 'Oh, I'm fine.' He smiled rather wryly. 'Well, quite fine.'

He didn't look it but I nodded. 'I'm glad.'

'Mummy said you were over here yesterday.'

'We came for tea.'

'I expect they wanted to talk to you about, you know, the mess.'

'A bit.'

'What did they say?' I wasn't really prepared to betray Lady Uckfield to her son. Apart from anything else, although I thought her request had been intrusive and improper, I did not question the honesty of her motives. Her child looked like hell.

Of course she wanted to bring things to an end, what mother wouldn't? I couldn't blame her for that so I shrugged. Charles continued. 'They're very keen to hurry everything on. They want me to "put it all behind me'".

'And shouldn't you?'

He stared back out of the window. It was early May and the flowers that were springing into life all over the lovingly tended terraces should have looked fresh and gay but there had been a cloudburst that morning and instead they all seemed rather soggy and careworn. Beyond the ha-ha, the trees in the park were in leaf but still light, their first foliage so much more subtle in its colours than the thick lushness of high summer. 'They packed me off to Jamaica in November with Clarissa and some friends of hers.'

'Was it fun?' I found Clarissa who was busying herself with refills. Charles followed my glance.

'Poor old Clarissa. Yes. Quite fun. I like Jamaica. Well, Ocho Rios anyway. Have you ever been?' I shook my head. 'My dear old mother's trying to make a match for me. She doesn't want to take her chances on the open market a second time.' He laughed.

'I suppose she just wants you to be happy,' I said.

He looked at me. 'It isn't quite that. You see, she does want me to be happy but this time she wants me to be happy in a way she understands. She fears the unknown. Edith was the unknown. She thinks she's working for my happiness but more than that she is anxious to prevent a repetition. There are to be no more strangers at Broughton. Edith and Eric have been quite enough.'

'Well, I can see her point so far as Eric's concerned,' I said, and we both laughed.

I looked back at Clarissa who was beginning to cast slightly nervous looks in our direction as if she sensed that our conversation would bode her no good. I felt sorry for her. She was a nice girl and she would have made a success of all this

— far more of a success probably than the wretched Edith ever could. Why shouldn't she have a go at making Charles happy? But even as I entertained such thoughts, I knew the whole thing was a figment of Lady Uckfield's imagination and destined to remain so.

'Have you seen Edith lately?' he asked.

I was struck again by the common error, into which I have often fallen, certainly with Charles, of assuming that stupid people are spared deep feeling. Not that Charles was exactly stupid. He was simply incapable of original thought. But I knew now that he was more than capable of great love. It is endlessly fascinating to speculate on the reasons for love's choices. I liked Edith and I had since I met her. I enjoyed her beauty and her low-key self-mockery and her naturally cool manner, but I could not pretend to understand how she had become so great a love object for this Young Man Who Had Everything. Her greatest merit as company, after all, was her sense of irony, which Charles was not capable of appreciating or even understanding. In my way I was as puzzled as Lady Uckfield as to why he had not chosen someone of his own sort who would have known the ropes and the other members of his world, who would have chaired her charities and ridden her horses and bossed the village around without a qualm, certainly with none of the suppressed sense of self-ridicule that underlay so much of Edith's role-playing. At all events, there it was. Charles had fallen in love with Edith Lavery and he loved her with a disinterested heart. The blow she had dealt to his self-esteem and indeed to his life had obviously been critical but it was quite clear from the look he turned to me that he loved her still.

'Adela saw her the other day at something.'

'How was she?'

'Well, I think.' This was a thorny path, if you like. I did not want to say she had looked rather down in case it stirred up hopes in his breast that were doomed to disappointment, nor did I care to say she was bursting with happiness as that would be needlessly painful. It would also be, from what I could gather from Adela, untrue.

'Will you be seeing her soon?'

'I thought I might give her lunch.'

'Tell her — tell her I'll do whatever she wants. You know. I'll fit in.' I nodded. 'And give her my love,' he said.

Predictably David had not enjoyed his sojourn in Valhalla. As so often in such cases, the realisation of the dream brings resentment in its wake. Perhaps because, in their imaginings, David and his like see themselves as inner members of the Charmed Circle, chums of half the peerage, swapping stories about childhood friends and making plans to share a villa in Tuscany. Inevitably, the reality of these attempts at intermingling tends to make them bitter and irritated as they find themselves snubbed as aliens by those very people they have spent their adult life admiring and emulating.

'I must say,' he muttered as he climbed into the back seat of my car, 'I found those Bohuns pretty hard going. Do you know them?'

'I used to know him a bit.'

'Really? I don't know what I thought of him.'

I smiled. 'He's a half-wit. What's she like?'

'Quite difficult, I'd say.'

Isabel nodded. 'Diana Bohun has made a hard bargain and her only compensation is the envy of strangers. I wonder how long she'll bear it. No doubt in five years we'll read that she's run off with the local doctor.'

Adela shook her head. 'No, we won't. I knew her when she came out. She'd stay with Hitler if he brought her a title and a house.'

Isabel raised her eyebrows. 'I think I'd rather have Hitler.'

I was interested in this exchange because, even as they ridiculed the pitiful hypocrisy of Diana Bohun, I was well aware that Adela and David and even Isabel, whatever they might say, fundamentally approved of her pact with the devil. Perhaps none of them would have been prepared to marry someone who actually repulsed them, but nevertheless those girls in their acquaintance who had done so (and I could name at least seven in my own address book) were not despicable figures to them unless they reneged on their bargain. To the members of this world this was Edith's real crime. Not marrying Charles without loving him, but leaving him for love of someone else. To them, her folly was in abandoning the false values she had endorsed with her marriage and in attempting to return to the timeless virtues. Her decision was unworldly, it was not mondaine.

Americans may affect to admire this in their fiction if not in their lives but their British counterparts, at least among the upper-middle and upper classes do not. In the States, the Abdication story, for example, is portrayed as The World Well Lost For Love while the English, of a certain type anyway, see it only as childish, irresponsible and absurd.

And it was by these standards that Edith had been judged and found wanting.

NINETEEN

Here was a hard task. On the one hand I had a commission from Lady Uckfield, which I had sworn to carry out, to ask Edith to allow herself to be divorced at once, on the other, I had been made fully aware during our time at Broughton that Charles was still in love with his wife.

'So what are you going to say?' said Adela on the day when I had arranged to meet Edith for lunch. Naturally I had told my wife all. I don't know that I had been sworn to secrecy but even if I had been I never feel it includes one's spouse except in the most exceptional cases. Nothing can be more irritating than attempting to live intimately with a Keeper of Secrets.

'What Lady Uckfield wants me to say, I suppose.'

'Don't tell me you're going to promote the cause of that wretched Marlowe girl?'

I shook my head. 'No, I'll keep off that. I'll tell her they want it to be over, that's all.'

Adela pondered. 'Tell her Lady Uckfield wants it to be over. That'll be nearer the mark.' Considering her prejudice, I thought this was commendably just.

I had arranged to meet Edith at the Caprice. At lunchtime particularly it seems to combine a sense of clean, business-like lines with a whiff of glamour, which I thought would be an appropriate and undepressing setting for our proposed conversation. I arrived to find that I had been allotted the table at the far end of the restaurant away from the bar. This was by chance but it could not have been more suitable. I ordered a glass of champagne to cheer myself up and waited for my guest.

Edith was glad of my choice of venue. Simon was working a lot these days and earning quite respectable sums but what with his mortgage and his wife and the general financial backlog that any actor has to pay off when things start to roll again, he was not one for much West End entertaining unless it was at someone else's expense. Edith could have managed it as she had been given no real guidelines as to how much she could spend but she was reluctant to use Charles's money for inessentials.

She had been known to interpret this term fairly widely but somehow to take Simon out for treats on her husband's money didn't seem quite cricket. And then the bore was she had no money of her own — something that had come to seem quite strange to her, so far had she travelled from the world of her girlhood. At all events she was always glad to have an excuse to dress up and go out.

We kissed and chatted and ordered, knowing as we did so that there was a conversation of some substance to come, but by mutual consent we waited until our first courses, bang bang chicken for me and some hot hors d'oeuvres for Edith, were on the table. The waiter filled our glasses and retreated and we knew that we had a little while to ourselves.

'We saw David and Isabel last weekend,' I opened. 'We stayed with them in fact.'

'How are they?'

'All right. David's quite busy though I never really know what with.' I paused. 'We all went over to Broughton for a drink.'

Edith took a bite of something in thin batter. 'David must have enjoyed that.'

'He didn't much. He was stuck with Diana Bohun. He kept trying to impress her, which I don't think was very successful.'

'I should say not. She cut me dead the other day in Peter Jones.' She continued to eat and drink with some gusto but she would not give me the slightest help with my task. With an inward sigh I soldiered on.

'Lady Uckfield was there.'

'So I imagined. How is dear old "Googie"?' She was of course being ironic although not uncomfortably bitter. The tiresome nickname had once again gone into inverted commas as it had been in the first weeks of her marriage. And there was the recognition of a barrier there, a deep divide, which now separated the existences of her former mother-in-law and herself.

'Very well. I think. Of course, she wanted to talk about you.'

'There's no "of course" about it. As a matter of fact, I'm rather surprised. Googie is not one for discussing the family troubles. You should feel very flattered.'

'I think she felt that I might be of some use.'

Edith nodded. The penny was dropping and she began to understand that this talk might be leading to deeper waters than she had come prepared for. 'Ah,' she said.

'She told me you were planning to wait the two years.' Edith looked at me in a non-committal way. 'It's not what they want.

They want Charles to divorce you now. Straight away. She needs to know what you would think about that.'

I had said it and there was some relief. The words were out. Edith stopped eating and laid her fork down gently on the plate. Very deliberately she sipped her wine as if she were savouring each separate droplet. I suppose the point was it had come. The End of Her Marriage. I am not sure to what extent she had truly accepted that this was where her romance with Simon had brought her until this moment. Though I must say her voice was quite calm when she spoke. 'You mean they want Charles to divorce me for adultery. Citing Simon.'

I nodded. 'I suppose so. I don't think it really works like that these days but I would guess that's the general idea. We didn't actually talk details. If he were to divorce you now it would have to be for a reason, or has that finished? I'm not too sure.'

'I can't say it seems very gentlemanly.'

'It wasn't very ladylike going off with a married actor.'

She nodded and resumed her eating. 'So what do you want from me? What am I to say?'

'I think they feel they have to know that if the divorce does go ahead now you won't suddenly try to fight it. It won't interest you but it won't make any difference, you know, to the money.'

She looked at me rather sadly. 'I don't want any money. Not much anyway. Less than Charles would give me tomorrow if I asked him.'

'I know,' I said. 'I told Lady Uckfield that.'

'Anyway,' she added after a pause, 'it's not a generous offer. Nowadays there isn't a "guilty party". It never does make any difference financially. Didn't you realise that?' I shook my head. 'Well, I bet "Googie" does.' We continued eating in silence for a while. The waiter returned, took away our plates and came back with salmon fishcakes and a bowl of pommes allumettes. But the subject remained there on the table like a weeping centrepiece. It was Edith who introduced the character we were both thinking of. 'What does Charles say about all this? I assume he was there. Did you talk to him?'

'Yes, I talked to him.' While theoretically correct, my answer was a lie, for Charles had not been there when Lady Uckfield was sketching out her plans, which is what Edith had meant by her question. I very much doubted he would have allowed his mother to talk as she did had he been. I corrected myself, suddenly oppressed by my implied deception. 'Actually he wasn't there when I was talking to his mother but we went back the next day.'

'And?'

'He says he'll abide by your decision. Whatever you want to do.'

'That sounds more like him. Poor old Charles,' said Edith. 'How was he?'

I had dreaded this. If I could have said that he was looking fine and dandy I would have. I had come to feel, like Lady Uckfield, that it was time to call a halt to this unsuccessful experiment in miscegenation. The problem was he had not looked fine and dandy. 'OK,' I said. 'I don't think all of this has done him much good.'

'No.' She helped herself to some more chips. 'Was Clarissa down there?'

I nodded and Edith was silent. I was about to tell her to discount whatever she had heard, that it was a rumour inspired by Lady Uckfield's ambitions and nothing else, but I was silent. What was the point? She had to let Charles go and where was the good in slowing up her decision? For the rest of lunch we chatted about Simon and acting and Isabel and buying a flat, but as we were leaving Edith reopened the topic.

'Let me think about it.' She smiled slightly. 'Of course, we both know that I'll do what I'm asked but let me think about it.

I'll telephone you.'

===OO=OOO=OO===

Edith Broughton did not go home — or rather she did not return to Ebury Street — at once. It was a crisp, sunny, spring day, when everything seems as clear as a cut-out, cold and bright as a jewel. She was warmly dressed and so, once past the Ritz, she turned left into the Green Park. She strolled down the path, past Wimborne House, past the restored, statue decorated splendour of Spencer House, past the Italianate magnificence of Bridgewater House until she stopped and looked up at Lancaster House, the golden pile, built and occupied for many years by the mighty Dukes of Sutherland. Their duchesses had dominated London Society, one after another, summoning the great and the good of the different eras to ascend the giant, gilded staircase in the grandest of all grand London halls to pay court to each other's wealth and power.

It struck Edith then that she would have enjoyed that older, simpler world when these houses had held sway over the capital. When the Guests and the Spencers and the Egertons and the Leveson-Gowers had lived their ordained lives under these teeming roofs instead of the charitable organisations and government departments and Greek shipping magnates who occupied them now. Forgetting for the moment that she, Edith Lavery, would have had the greatest difficulty in penetrating even the outermost fringe of this golden troupe in any period but our own, she saw herself in her crinoline, never questioning her own happiness and, consequently, being happy. And as she did so, she was struck by how similar her fantasies of the old, pre-Great War world were to those fantasies about her coming life as Lady Broughton, which she had entertained while lying in the bath just before her wedding. How simple things were to be, how the villagers and tenants were going to love her, how the family would bless the day she had come among them! She found herself smiling wistfully as the dream image of herself as the Great Social Force of Twenty-First Century Society receded before her inner gaze, swathed in mist, tearfully waving goodbye.

Pondering this, it seemed at first to her troubled brain that her mother had been wrong and the media had been right all along, that these dreams and ambitions were outmoded, that no one nowadays wants titles and rank and inherited power, that these are the days of the self-made man, of talent, of creativity. But then, looking about at the office workers and sweepers and job interviewees who loitered near her in the park, she was struck by the dishonesty of the media pundits of our time.

Was there one here who would not change places with Charles if they could? Was it not possible that the small screen gurus praised meritocracy because it was the only class system that would accord them the highest rank? Even if unearned riches and position had no moral merit, even if they embodied the Dream That Dare Not Speak Its Name, it was still a dream that figured in plenty of people's fantasies. And she had casually discarded it.

Then she thought again with puzzled wonderment of her own supposed unhappiness with Charles. Why exactly had she been so unhappy? When she tried to think back to their time together, she kept remembering those pretty rooms at Broughton and the servants and the park and her work in the village. The only discomforts she could recall were things like packing the car and standing behind Charles at a shoot in the rain. Were these so terrible? And if she thought of Charles, himself, it was with a rather intimate affection. She remembered him swearing at fellow motorists or farting in his sleep and it provoked in her a kind of nostalgic warmth. There was no trace of relief at his passing. If only there had been. Instead she found herself worrying about his loneliness. It pained her to think he was suffering. And increasingly she asked herself what exactly was this personal fulfilment for which so much disruption had been necessary? Was it sexual? Was she admitting that she had done all this because of Simon's cock? Or was it simply to do with boredom? But if it was, how much less bored was she now, sitting in Ebury Street talking to girlfriends on the telephone or meeting them for lunch than she had been working with her committees in the library at Broughton?

She turned away from Lancaster House and walked slowly towards the Victory Arch with Buckingham Palace on her left.

The Royal Standard announcing the monarch's presence in London hung limply against its staff. Tourists hovered at the railings, peering in with rapt attention, as if they hoped to catch a glimpse of some Royal Highness strolling down a corridor or coming out for a breather. And again, as she walked, Edith considered the mystery of unearned greatness. She thought how Tigger and Googie and Charles would all be invited to the next court ball, an event of unimaginable glamour to these Japanese travellers with their clicking cameras, to these northerners in their hideous anoraks, blobs of bright, synthetic colour against the cold grey, neo-Georgian facade. Any one of these would have made an invitation to the Palace into a life-long story, sodden with repetition and yet she had turned away from her role in this fairy tale in order to be — to be what precisely? Happy?

The fact was that of late Edith had come to wonder just how much she could be fulfilled by 'personal happiness', if that was what Simon was offering her. Perhaps because she had never succeeded in disentangling her ambitions of fulfilment from her mother's values, she had already begun to hanker for that sweet sense of self-importance that her life at Broughton had brought with it. She understood that these feelings did her no credit but her defence was a pragmatic one. How else was she to enjoy the good things in life if she did not marry them? And her faith in Simon's eventual triumph was waning. She knew more about show business now than she had when they met and she sensed that the series he was in, with a couple more to follow, was probably the best he could hope for. Whatever they might pretend together, they would not be holding hands tightly, stiff with anticipation, at the Oscar ceremony. What was her life to be then? A vicarage in the Home Counties and the occasional interview for an evening newspaper? Was she really expected to provide vocal and emotional support through twenty years of semi-failure to prove she was a real person? Some might say it is only personal achievement that should lead on to glory but what of those who have no talent or special gift with which to achieve? Are they so blameworthy to want to live among the blessed? Poor Edith was aware that she could neither weave nor spin but was she therefore forbidden to covet a life of splendour? Was this so shameful? She shook her head in irritation. At the far corner of her brain, these thoughts were beginning to tell her that despite the reckless choice she had made, her own assessment of the world and her place in it had not really changed in the least. She felt herself resenting anew the accusations she heard from her parents and friends when she first made her run for it, that she could not settle to her new life because beneath the skin of a rebel beat the heart of Mrs Lavery's little girl. And she resented them because she was beginning to be horribly afraid they might be true.

Walking towards Victory Arch, watching the afternoon light glint against the windows of Apsley House, whither she and Charles had been summoned for a party the previous summer, one of the first engagements she had been obliged to cancel because of the split, she recalled with amazement (and it really had begun to seem almost unbelievably strange) that she had jettisoned a high place in the world of the worldly for the position of partner to an obscure man in a generally despised profession. And not for the first time she sat down to think about the extraordinary events of the last year of her life in more detail.

Simon was at the flat when she got back. He was drinking tea and watching an old film. When he was working he was at peace and so inclined to relax and take it easy. It was only when he was out of a job that he would go haring about London keeping lunch dates with people he disliked and telephoning his agent every four hours.

Edith left her coat in the hall. 'Is there a cup for me?' He waved his mug in the air. 'I just made it with a bag. The water's still hot if you want some.' He had taken his trainers off and they lay, pigeon-toed on the hearth rug. His coat had been thrown across an armchair and books and scripts were littered about the room. Edith stood at the door, taking in the whole scene like a spectator from another country. The Way We Live Now. This was the way she lived now, with sixties sofas covered in stained, oatmeal tweed, with large nondescript flower prints in coloured mounts on the walls, with a Perspex coffee table and a gas-log fire. This was the way she was living now. She was acutely aware that she had no desire to enter the room.

Simon, sensing some strangeness between them, stood and approached her in the doorway. He slid an arm around her waist and squeezed her, pushing his mouth onto hers. They had been in an Indian restaurant the night before and she could still taste the spices on his breath. He pressed himself against her and she could feel that he was already aroused. 'Good lunch?' he said.

She nodded. 'Googie sent him. He and Adela were down in Sussex last weekend. They went over to Broughton and of course Googie dragged him off to her lair. The meeting was her idea.'

'And?'

'They want to hurry the divorce.' She paused, sensing his recoil. 'Googie wants to involve you.'

'Jesus!' Simon didn't know what to think. Part of him revelled in it. Visions of more picture spreads on page three in the Daily Mail flickered through his brain but with them came trailing streamers of a distant panic. He felt as if he was hurtling down some tube, weightless and powerless, into the unknown. 'Is she serious?'

'I think so but you can calm down. They're wrong. I'm fairly sure no one has to be cited any more. The point is they want to get on with it.'

'What did you say?'

Edith studied the pretty boy before her. He had abandoned his customary flirtatious, winking manner and, although he didn't realise, he looked the better for it. A little seriousness added charm to his bright blue eyes and the careless locks of shining hair that fell forward to veil them. 'I said I had to think about it.'

'Can you stop them?'

'If I want to.'

'How?'

'I'll tell Charles not to go ahead with it.'

Simon laughed. 'And that would do it?'

Edith observed him coolly. How provincial he was! How little he understood men like Charles! She was almost haughty in her defence of her discarded husband to her preferred lover. 'Yes. That would do it.' Simon had stopped laughing but suddenly there seemed to be something irredeemably irritating about him. She couldn't be bothered to embark on the usual chats about how bad everyone was in any film they were watching, how jealous his fellow actors were, how stupid the cameraman. 'I'm going to have a bath,' she said, disengaging herself from his embrace.

Simon threw himself back into the sofa, fixing his gaze once more upon the screen. 'You're very sulky,' he said. 'I shall be charitable and blame the time of the month.'

She didn't answer but went instead down to the basement bathroom that opened off their dark, little bedroom. An attempt had been made with a looking glass and a wallpaper of enormous poppies to brighten the two rooms up but it only deepened their lightless gloom. She ran the bath, undressed and climbed in. She was aware that since she had entered the park she had been in a kind of strange, unworldly mental state. She felt intensely aware of every movement of her limbs, of every ripple of the water against her skin. She felt spacey, almost drunk — although she certainly drank very little at lunch. A vague sense of apprehension seemed to bloat her stomach and her very nerve ends prickled individually the length of her body. But then, at last, she realised what it was that was catching at the edge of her attention. Simon had said no more than he knew. It was her time of the month. She was as regular as clockwork.

And she was five days late.

TWENTY

The morning following my lunch with Edith our doorbell rang at not much later than a quarter past eight.

'Christ!' said Adela. 'Who on earth's that?' We were in our tiny bedroom, which overlooked the area. As the front door was just out of sight to the right, it wasn't possible to sneak a preview of our visitor but, in any case, at that time in the morning, I just assumed it was the postman so I was not particularly careful with my toilet as I shouted that I was coming.

When I unlocked the door in my underpants with my hair unbrushed, I discovered it was not the postman, who must after all be accustomed to such sights, but Edith Broughton who stood on the mat.

'Hello,' I said with something of a tone of wonder.

Edith pushed past me into the room. 'I have to talk to you.' She threw herself down onto the sofa that divided the living bit from the eating bit of the flat's solitary 'reception room'.

'Can I dress first?' I asked.

She nodded and I hurried back into the bedroom to inform the amazed Adela, busy struggling into her clothes, of the identity of our early morning caller.

She was ready first and when I rejoined them Edith already had a cup of coffee in her hand and a piece of toast before her.

'So?' I said. There didn't seem to be much point in pretending that this was a normal way of carrying on. Edith glanced at Adela who jumped up.

'I'd better be off, hadn't I? Not to worry. I've a mass of paperwork to do…'

Edith waved her back to her seat. 'Stay. There's no secret. Anyway,' she glanced around at our minuscule accommodation, 'I imagine you'd be within earshot wherever you went.' Adela settled herself and we both waited.

'I want to see Charles.' Her voice was quite flat as she spoke but of course we were both most interested by what she said.

I did not really understand why she had felt the need to come round and communicate this to us at dawn but I was fascinated nevertheless. I was soon to understand what my part was to be. 'I want you to arrange it.'

Adela caught my eye and faintly shook her head. She had all the horror of her kind for getting involved in this kind of thing. Whatever the outcome, somehow one is always blameworthy. She also, as she told me later, had no wish to incur Lady Uckfield's enmity and she suspected that this would be an inevitable by-product of the proposed plan of action. One must remember of course that Adela, from first to last, was entirely on Lady Uckfield's side and never on Edith's.

'Why do you need me?' I said rather wanly.

'I rang Broughton last night. I asked for Charles but I got Googie. She said he wasn't there but I'm sure he was. I rang London and Feltham and they said he was at Broughton. I know he was. She doesn't want me to speak to him.'

All this would only confirm Adela's suspicions that in some vague way we were being asked to take on Lady Uckfield. 'I don't really see what I can do.'

'They'll let you speak to him. Say you want to ask him to lunch or something and then, when he comes on the line, tell him I want to meet him.'

'I don't think I can do that,' I said. 'I don't mind telephoning,' which was a lie, 'but if Lady Uckfield asks me what I'm going to say, I'll tell her. She can't imagine she can prevent you meeting for ever.'

'Not for ever, no. Just long enough.'

'I don't believe that,' I said. Although I did.

In truth, I was pretty sure that I too was on Lady Uckfield's side when it came down to it. The facts were simple enough.

Edith had married Charles without loving him in order to gain a position. She had then made a complete failure of that same position, abandoned it, broken her faith with Charles, made a great scandal and caused him a good deal of pain. Lady Uckfield now wished to be rid of her once and for all and, frankly, could anyone wonder at it?

'Do you think Charles will want to see you?' asked Adela. 'Perhaps it was he who refused to come to the telephone.'

Which was certainly a point worth considering.

'If he doesn't, I want to hear it from him.'

The three of us sat in silence for a while. Adela crunched her toast and turned to Nigel Dempster.

'Anything?' I said.

'Sarah Carter's sister's married some painter and the Langwells are getting a divorce, which we knew last October.'

'Will you do it?' said Edith.

Adela and I looked at each other but I refused the message in her eyes. Ultimately, much as I would have liked to, it would have been wrong of me to have abandoned Edith to her fate and espoused the cause of the Broughtons. Whatever I might privately think about the wrongs and rights of the matter, this would have been a dishonourable course. First, and before everything else, I had been Edith's friend, as even Lady Uckfield had acknowledged.

'I will,' I said. 'But I won't do it either at this time of the morning or with you listening. Go home and I'll telephone you.'

Edith nodded and, after finishing her coffee, left.

'Something's up,' said Adela.

I rang at half past ten and asked for Charles. Despite what Edith had said I was quite surprised when Lady Uckfield came on the line.

'Hello,' she said. 'How are you?'

'I was trying to track down Charles.'

She was very smooth and clearly four steps ahead of me. 'I'm afraid he's not here. Can I give him a message?'

I toyed with the idea of bluffing but she was obviously well aware of why I was ringing and it seemed a foolish corner to paint myself into. 'I'm on an errand, I'm afraid. And I'm not at all sure you'll approve.'

'Try me.' Her voice had gone from reserved to glacial.

'It's Edith. She wants to see Charles.'

'Why?'

'I don't know why.' This was true.

'What's the point?'

'I don't know that there is any point but I do know that you won't get a straight answer out of her concerning your proposals re the divorce unless she sees him.'

'You've asked her then?'

'I've asked her and she says she wants to think about it. Part of that thinking, I take it, has to go on in Charles's presence.'

There was a pause for a moment and I could hear down the line that eerie echo of other conversations, other, strange anonymous bits of lives being lived, a thousand miles away. 'Are you free this afternoon? Can you meet me for tea?'

'There's nothing I would enjoy more but in this instance I don't know that I'll be able to add anything to what I've already told you.'

'I'll be at the Ritz. At four.'

I was interested that she did not want me to come to their flat in Cadogan Square.

'Perhaps Tigger's coming up with her. Perhaps Charles is there,' said Adela and for a moment I was tempted to walk round and ring the bell. I thought better of it, having decided that it might behove me to hear what Lady Uckfield had to say first.

I did, however, telephone Edith.

'What are you going to say to her?'

'I don't know. That she is wasting her time trying to keep you two apart, I suppose. If that's what she's doing.'

'Of course it's what she's doing.'

'I mean without Charles's knowledge.' Edith was silent. 'At any rate, I'll call you this evening.' I rang off.

I asked tentatively whether or not Lady Uckfield had arrived but the manager was not one to let such an opportunity slip by.

'Gentleman for the Marchioness of Uckfield,' he observed loudly to a passing waiter, who escorted me courteously past the turning heads to where she waited. She was sitting trimly at a table in the Marble Hall to the right of the great, gilded fountain.

She smiled and waved a little hand as I approached, and stood to greet me with her neat, bird-like movements. The man brought the tea with a lot of milady'ing, all of it gently and serenely acknowledged. She laughed gaily. 'Isn't this a treat?'

'It is for me,' I said.

Her manner became not exactly more serious but at any rate more direct. She was a little less breathlessly urgent and remembering that scene in her sitting room at Broughton I understood that she was going to impart some real, as opposed to faked, intimacy. 'I want to be quite honest because I think you may be able to help.'

'I'm simultaneously flattered and dubious,' I said.

'I don't want Charles to have to see Edith.'

'So I gathered.'

'It's not that I'm being unkind. Truly. It's just that I think he's in the most tremendous muddle and I don't want him any more confused.'

'Lady Uckfield,' I said, 'I know very well why you think it a bad idea. So do I. You believe the marriage was a mistake and you had rather not prolong it. I quite agree. The fact remains that, at this moment, Edith is Charles's wife and if she wants to see him and if he, as I suspect, also wants to see her, then hadn't we better get out of the way?'

A momentary flicker of irritation shadowed her face. 'Why do you think he wants to see her?'

'Because he's still in love with her.'

She said nothing for a moment but poked among the sandwiches to find an egg one, which she nibbled with exaggerated delight. 'Aren't these good!' she whispered covertly, as if we must prevent anyone else hearing at all costs. She looked at me with her darting, cat-like eyes. 'You think I've been unfair to Edith.'

I shook my head. 'No. I think you don't like her but I don't think you've been particularly unfair to her.'

She nodded in acknowledgement of this. 'I don't like her. Much. However, that's not the point.'

'What is the point?'

'The point is that she cannot make Charles happy. Whether I like her or not is neither here nor there. I detested my mother-in-law and yet I was fully aware of what a success she had made of Broughton and of Tigger's wretched father. It took me twenty years to bury her memory. Do you think it would matter to me if I simply didn't like her? I'm not a schoolgirl.'

'No.' I sipped my tea. This was flattering indeed. For some reason Lady Uckfield had decided to draw aside the curtain that habitually clothed all her private thoughts and actually talk to me. She had not finished.

'Let me tell you about my son. Charles is a good, kind, uncomplicated man. He's much nicer than I am, you know. But he is less…' She faltered, searching for a loyal adjective that would fit the need.

'Intelligent?' I ventured.

Since I had said it, she let it pass. 'He needs a wife who values not just him but who he is, what he does. What their life is.

He is not one to be able to give weight to a different philosophy in his own home. He could not be married to a socialist opera singer and respect her for her different views. It is not in him.'

'I don't think it's in Edith either,' I said.

'Edith married an idea of a life that she had gleaned from novels and magazines. She thought it meant travel and fashion shows and meeting Mick Jagger. She saw herself throwing parties for Princess Michael in Mauritius…' She shrugged. I was quite impressed that she'd heard of Mick Jagger. 'I don't know if some people live like that. Maybe. What I do know is that will never be Charles's life. His whole existence is the farming calendar. For the next fifty years he will shoot and farm and farm and shoot and go abroad for three weeks in July. He will worry about the tenants and have fights with the vicar and try to get the government to contribute to rewiring the east wing. And his friends, with very few exceptions, will be other people reroofing their houses and farming and shooting and trying to get government grants and exemptions. That is his future.'

'And you're sure it could never be Edith's?'

'Aren't you?'

I could remember Edith sobbing with boredom on the shoot at Broughton and sulking through evening after evening of Tigger's stories and Googie's charm. But of course, what Lady Uckfield did not know and I suspected, was how bored and depressed Edith was with her new life. I thought of her at Fiona Grey's party being led around like a prize heifer. Lady Uckfield interpreted my silence as agreement and her manner warmed. 'It's not entirely her fault. Even I can see that. That terrible mother has stuffed her head with a lot of Barbara Cartland nonsense. What chance had she?'

'Poor old Mrs Lavery,' I said. Lady Uckfield shuddered with a tiny grimace. This was the woman Mrs Lavery had planned to share scrumptious lunches with and trips to the milliner.

'I'm not a snob,' started Lady Uckfield but this was really too much and I could not prevent at least one eyebrow rising.

She attempted to rebuke me. 'I'm not! I know people can marry up and bring it off. I have lots of different sorts of friends. I do!' She was quite indignant. I suppose she believed she was telling the truth.

'Who?' I said.

She thought for a moment. 'Susan Curragh and Anne Melton. I like them both very much. I defy you to say that I don't.'

She had named an immensely rich American heiress who was now the wife of a rather dull junior minister and the daughter of a clothing millionaire who had married an impoverished Irish earl thereby putting him on the social map. I knew neither woman but I trembled for Edith if Lady Uckfield thought them good examples of 'marrying up'. 'You don't believe me, I know, but I was brought up not to think in terms of "class".'

What interested me in this was that Lady Uckfield could have made that statement quite safely on a lie detector while the truth was, of course, that she had been brought up to think in terms of nothing else and she had largely (if not entirely) been true to her teaching. She continued. 'The important thing is not Edith's class, whatever that means, but that she simply doesn't enjoy the job. She and her frightful mother are "London Ladies". They want to lunch in Italian restaurants and go to charity balls and fly to the sun for the winter. Running a house like Broughton, or Feltham for that matter, is just slog once the gilt's worn off. It's paperwork and committees. It's arguing with English Heritage inspectors who all hate you for living there and want to make everything as difficult for you as they possibly can. It's pleading with government departments and economising on the heating. Those houses are fun to stay in. Even "London Ladies" like that. But they're hard, hard work to own. She could never take either pleasure or satisfaction in that life. I don't even blame her but she couldn't. And to be quite frank,' she paused, almost hesitating in case she was giving away too much ammunition, 'I'm not sure how much she likes Charles.'

I thought of that far away engagement dinner with Caroline Chase on my left. It's frightfully dreary down here… flower shows all summer, freezing pipes all winter. I could hear the echo of her cold, hard voice. I suppose Edith's ready for all that? And how triumphant Edith had seemed. How she had swept the pool and gained the prize.

'If what you say is true then where's the danger of letting them meet?'

'Because I suspect that eight months with an out-of-work actor in Ebury Street has reminded her of why she found Charles attractive, or should I say an attractive proposition, in the first place. I think she may want him back.'

'And you're against that?' I felt a bit sorry for Simon to be described as an 'out-of-work actor' when he, poor soul, thought he was dazzling in his success. Still, it didn't seem the moment to cavil.

She spoke with statesmanlike clarity. 'I am against it with every fibre of my being.' I suppose in some part of me I was surprised at her honesty. I was used to the token revulsion for divorce that is one of the obligatory attitudes in Society.

Although in truth they care little whether people are divorced or not, simply whom they are married to at the time. Even so, she was of the old school and I was fairly sure there was no such thing as a divorce in either her, or Tigger's, genealogy. She nodded. 'You're surprised I'd prefer the scandal to run its course. I admit it. I would rather have what little of this story is left than patch things up and risk a bigger smash in five years when Edith has either rediscovered how bored she is, or found someone as rich as Charles who bores her less. There may be children involved by that time and I prefer to see my grandchildren brought up at Broughton by both parents.'

'I do see,' I said. It was fruitless to deny that there was a good deal of logic in her reasoning.

'So can you help me?' She tucked busily into another sandwich and filled both our cups. She had been honest with me and I could not be less than honest with her.

'No, Lady Uckfield, I cannot help you.' She stopped pouring in her surprise. I suppose she felt that she had extended such an enormous privilege to me by revealing so much of her hand that I could not fail to be firmly attached to her interest. Seeing her disappointment, I clarified. 'It is not because I do not agree with you. As a matter of fact I do. It is because I do not believe any argument will turn Edith from her meeting. And I do not believe I have the smallest right to interfere.'

She nodded slightly, a sharp, jerky movement, which betrayed her terrible pain. 'I imagine you mean I have no right either.'

I shook my head. 'You're Charles's mother. You have the right to interfere. I am not sure you have any hope of success but you have the right to try.' I felt the interview had come to an end and I stood. As it was, I doubted that Lady Uckfield and I would be so easy in each other's company again. She'd abandoned too many of her customary defences to be able to forgive me quickly for witnessing her in this state. To make matters worse I could see that her eyes were beginning to moisten and before my horrified gaze a single tear, amazed to be released from a duct that must have held it prisoner for twenty years, started to make its tentative way down her carefully powdered cheek.

She stood and put her hand on my arm. 'Just don't help her.' Her voice was urgent, it is true, but not with that girlish, don't-tell-Father, pseudo-urgency that I had grown used to. This was a cry of desperation. 'Just don't encourage her. That's all I beg. For her sake as much as for his. They'll both be wretched.'

I nodded and gave what assurances I felt I could, thanked her for my tea and watched her pull herself together before my eyes so that, by the time I turned at the arch taking me towards the Arlington Street entrance, she could wave at me as composed as if she were in the Royal Box at Ascot. All I knew was that I could not have been less clear as to quite what I was going to say to Edith.

'You're right, of course. She doesn't want you to meet.'

'I told you.'

'Even so, I don't really see how she can prevent it'

'She'll send him away again. To America. For horse sales or something. She'll fix it up with her friends. They're everywhere.'

'Sounds like Watergate.'

She gave a harsh little laugh. 'You think you're joking.'

'At any rate,' I said, 'he can't stay in America for ever. You'll just have to keep trying. I don't think he'll avoid you when you do run him to earth. Really I don't. You must just bide your time.'

'I haven't got time,' said Edith.

Something in the tone of her voice prevented my asking for clarification and, indeed, I confess that I deliberately put the remark out of my mind. I did not want to address it, I suppose, and I certainly did not want to share it with Adela, sensing perhaps that it could mean everything or nothing. If everything, why risk the release of that knowledge into the ether? If nothing, why not forget it?

We were silent a moment with Edith perhaps aware that she had said more than she'd intended. She may have been pondering how to contain the remark without referring to it again.

'What do you plan to do then?' I asked.

'I don't know,' she said.

TWENTY-ONE

She didn't know. It seemed crazy but she literally did not know how she could contact her own husband. It may surprise some people but for a time, Edith had assumed that either Sotheby's or Christie's would rescue her from this dilemma. The public is not aware of it but over the last decade the summer parties of those two great auction houses have become in many ways the high points of the London social calendar, a chance for the genuine gratin, as opposed to the ubiquitous Cafe Society, to meet and mingle before they disperse for the summer. Edith knew that Charles would attend both, as would Googie. Even Tigger was prepared to struggle up from the country in order to renew his acquaintance with most of his class.

It was an annual, pleasurable duty cheerfully undertaken by a large proportion of the high aristocracy much as the opening day of the Summer Exhibition used to be. There Charles would be found and there Edith would buttonhole him. The only trouble was that the days went by and every morning the envelopes flopped down onto the mat but the requisite, white, pasteboard cards with their embossed, italic script were not among them. Whether to spare Charles from embarrassment or perhaps to shield Lady Uckfield from discomfort (nobody can have thought that Lord Uckfield would even notice Edith's presence), for whatever reason, the Countess Broughton's name had clearly been excised from the list. She was not invited to either gathering.

At last it became impossible for her not to accept that she had been passed over. It was time for an alternative plan. She sat hunched over her address book, leafing through the neatly pencilled names. This was a habit she had unconsciously adopted from her hated mother-in-law. It meant the entries could be more easily rubbed out when their owners moved or when their use was finished and done with. This morning she stared at page after page, trying to find one who would help. At last, faute de mieux, she dialled Tommy Wainwright's number. Arabella answered and Edith asked for Tommy, a request that was greeted with a cool silence at the other end before Arabella spoke.

'He's at the House, I'm afraid.'

'When will he be back?'

'The thing is, he's most frightfully busy at the moment. Can I help?'

No, thought Edith. You cannot and you would not. 'Not really,' she said lightly. 'I don't want to be a bother. Just say I telephoned.'

'Of course I will.' It was obvious from her flat tone of voice that Arabella intended to say nothing but, in the event, she felt discomfort at the thought of being discovered in a lie so she did pass on the message while predictably urging her husband to ignore it. Edith had already played out this scenario or something like it in her brain so it was quite a surprise that evening when she picked up the receiver to hear Tommy speaking.

'I want to see Charles and everyone's stopping me,' she said after the usual pleasantries.

'Why?'

'Because they're frightened of Googie, because they want to stay in with the family. I don't know why.'

There was a short silence. The request may not have been articulated but it had nevertheless been made. 'I don't want to land him in it.'

'Nor do I,' said Edith firmly. 'I just want to see him.'

Another silence. Then with something like a sigh, Tommy spoke. 'He's coming here for a drink on Wednesday at about seven. You could always drop in then.'

'I will never forget this.' Edith's voice was sonorous with significance and from it Tommy could easily gauge the treatment she had been receiving elsewhere from her erstwhile world.

'Don't get your hopes up too much,' he said. He was after all fully aware of the powers she was ranging herself against.

===OO=OOO=OO===

I was already in the Wainwright drawing room when Edith arrived. It wasn't a large party, roughly twenty or thirty souls who had nothing better to do. They had dutifully assembled in the cramped mews house near Queen Anne Street to start their evening with a few smoked salmon whirls from Marks & Spencer and some bottles of Majestic champagne. The gathering was already past its zenith and the guests had begun to peel away, heeding the call of dinner reservations and theatres and baby-sitters, when Edith came through the door. She was smiling with anticipation but I could see her face shrink with disappointment as she surveyed the room. I went up to her.

'Don't tell me Charles has gone. I got stuck in traffic and I left too late anyway.'

It was easy to see why. She had taken immense trouble with her appearance and I could not remember seeing her in better fettle, her lovely face flawless, her hair shining and an alluring evening outfit encasing her already desirable form.

'Stop worrying,' I murmured reassuringly. 'He hasn't arrived yet.'

'But he is coming?'

'I suppose so. Tommy said he was.'

'That's what he said to me but where is he?'

She bit her lip in annoyance as a couple of her former friends grudgingly decided to acknowledge her presence and draw her into conversation. Adela came up to me.

'What's she doing here?' she said. 'I thought this was the other camp.'

'Not really. I gather Tommy was trying to bring them together.'

'You amaze me. Two days ago, I ran into Arabella at Harvey Nicks and she was saying the break-up was the best thing that could have happened.'

'I don't doubt it but even married couples can on occasion disagree. Or don't you believe such a thing possible?'

'I believe it,' said Adela sourly, 'but I still don't see how Arabella could have allowed the invitation in the first place.'

The answer, of course, which I could not give then but I was able to supply later, was that Arabella had given no such agreement.

The party was on its last legs. A few of us had been invited to stay on for dinner and we were in that uncomfortable, if familiar, period when almost everyone who is not invited to remain has gone but there is always a couple who do not realise that they are delaying the launch of the next stage of the evening. Usually, the hostess weakens and says to the obdurate, 'Do stay for something to eat if you'd like to.' To the trained ear, this translates as, 'Please go. We are hungry and you are not invited.' The old hand on the cocktail party circuit will then look around, blush and scuttle away, muttering about having to be somewhere else. But there is always the risk that the stayer will be uninitiated in these rituals or stubborn or simply stupid — in which case they may accept the unmeant offer of hospitality. In this instance, Arabella Wainwright was clearly not prepared to take a chance on having to entertain Edith for the rest of the evening and so she said nothing. But still Edith would not leave. I strolled over to her.

'I suppose you're having dinner here?' she said.

'We are. And so I imagine is more or less everyone else in the room.'

She looked around. When she spoke her voice had a bleakness that almost brought tears to my eyes. 'I was all geared up.

It didn't occur to me that he wouldn't come. His mother must have got wind of it and put him off somehow.'

'I don't see how. Tommy didn't tell me you were coming and I can't imagine he would have told anyone else.'

She didn't linger all that much longer. When Arabella brought a pile of plates out of the tiny kitchen and plonked them noisily onto the dining room table alongside an arrangement of sporting mats even Edith had to admit defeat.

'I must run,' she said to her detached and unbending hostess. 'Thank you. It's been lovely seeing you again.'

Arabella nodded silently, only too glad to be rid of her but Tommy took her to the door. 'I don't know what happened,' he said. 'I am sorry.'

Edith gave him a sad little smile. 'Oh well. Perhaps it's not meant to be.' Then she kissed him and left. But for all her pretended acceptance of fate, she continued to think someone had wrecked her chances. And she was right.

It was much later in the evening when, in a rare break with my personal tradition, I was helping to clear some plates away, that I overheard a short snatch of conversation coming from behind the kitchen door.

'What do you mean?' said an exasperated Tommy.

'Exactly what I say. I thought it was unfair to spring an ambush on him when we're supposed to be his friends.'

'If that was really what you thought then why didn't you tell Charles and let him make up his own mind?'

'I might ask you the same question.'

Tommy was clearly flustered. 'Because I'm not sure he knows his own mind.'

When Arabella spoke again, it was hard to discern the faintest traces of regret. 'Precisely. And that is why I told his mother.'

'Then you're a bitch.'

'Maybe. You can tell me I was wrong in six months time. Now take in the cream and don't spill it.'

Unable to pretend that I was arranging the dirty plates for much longer, I pushed the kitchen door open to find no sign of dispute within.

'How kind you are,' said Arabella, smoothly relieving me of my burden.

My wife was reluctant to be drawn into a moral position as we drove home. 'Just don't do anything of the sort to me,' she said, and I agreed. Not that I would criticise Tommy. Indeed I thought he had acted the part of a true friend but, rather feebly perhaps, it was not a position I was anxious to find myself in. I did not repeat what Arabella had said about the six-month interval probably because, even at that stage, I did not want to take it on board.

===OO=OOO=OO===

A few days later, Edith awoke to find herself vomiting into the lavatory bowl. She must have fumbled her way there in half-sleep and it was only the act of retching that finally brought her to her senses. When at last it seemed that even the very lining of her stomach must have been discharged into the pan, she stopped, gasped for air and sat back. Simon came to the door, with his hand over the portable telephone. He slept naked and normally the sight of his godly form cheered her into a sense of present good but this morning, his lightly muscled charms were wasted on her.

'Are you all right?' he asked superfluously.

'I think it must have been those prawns,' she said, knowing full well that he had chosen the soup.

'Poor you. Better out than in.' He smiled, holding up the receiver, and mimed, 'It's your mother,' with a comic grimace.

Edith nodded and reached out her hand for the telephone. 'I'll make some coffee,' said Simon, and wandered off to the kitchen.

Edith wiped her mouth and settled her thoughts. 'Mummy? No, I was in the bathroom.'

'Was that you being sick?' said Mrs Lavery at the other end.

'Well, I don't know who else.'

'Are you all right?'

'Of course I'm all right. We went to a ghastly place in Earl's Court last night that's been opened by some failed actor Simon knows. I had shellfish. I must have been mad.'

'Only I thought you were looking rather green around the gills when I saw you.' Edith had accompanied her mother on a fruitless search for a hat the previous week. That was enough in itself to make most people fairly green but she said nothing.

'So you're not ill?'

'Certainly not.'

'You would tell me if there was… something, wouldn't you?'

Edith knew very well that she would hesitate to trust her mother with the time of day but there was no point in going into that now. 'Of course I would,' she said. There was a pause.

'And I suppose there's no news. About… everything…'

'No.'

'Oh, darling.' However irritated, Edith did feel sorry for her mother. She was forced to concede that Mrs Lavery, shallow as her values might be, was experiencing some perfectly genuine emotions. Particularly regret. 'You won't take any… step you might be sorry about, will you?'

'What step?'

'I mean… you won't burn your bridges until you're sure…'

Edith was used to her mother's seemingly limitless supply of clichés so she needed no translator to tell her what they were discussing. Oddly, despite the paucity of her mother's vocabulary, the question had succeeded in centring her thoughts on the matter. As she brought the conversation to an end and cleared the line, she knew the time had come for positive action.

It was a Saturday, a mild, pleasant day for them as a rule, involving newspapers, a lunch out somewhere, perhaps a cinema or possibly a dinner with some friends in a Wandsworth kitchen but as Edith dressed she knew that no such day lay ahead for her. She selected her outfit with considerable care, casual country clothes, well bred, unshowy, exactly the type of skirt and jersey that she had renounced with a religious fervour so short a time ago. Just as when she was choosing her clothes for the dress show, she was once more conscious that her two lives demanded two costumes. A duke's daughter might get away with wearing some streetwalker's outfit from Voyage at a dinner in Shropshire, indeed she would be praised for her aristocratic eccentricity but she, Edith, would never be given the same licence. Had she dared to wear London clothes in the country, to Charles's circle it would only have been a confirmation of her ill-breeding. When she entered the kitchen, Simon looked up in surprise. 'My word. You look as if you're auditioning for Hay Fever.'

'I feel such a fool. I promised to take my mother to a lunch party today and I completely forgot about it. That's why she rang. Can you forgive me?'

'Whose lunch party?'

'Just some country cousins.'

'You don't have any country cousins. Wasn't that the whole point?' In saying this, Simon showed one of his rare flashes of understanding. It was exactly the point.

'I do but I never talk about them. They're too boring to live.'

'Which means you don't want me to come.' Simon hated to be left out of anything. Or at least, if he was, it had to be his choice. He didn't mind being too busy to join in, in fact he quite enjoyed it, but the thought that people were not anxious for his company — even if it was for a journey to the post box — was anathema to him.

Edith smiled a wistful, wouldn't-that-be-nice smile. 'I wish. But she's been begging me for us to have some time on our own. I suppose she wants to talk about everything.' This was accompanied by a half-shrug that brooked no argument.

'Just be nice about me.'

She gave him a warm and supportive smile, knowing that in her heart she was plotting his fall, and set off downstairs to their bedroom to collect her coat. She did not want to tell Simon where she was going as that would have detonated a scene and she was by no means certain of the day's possible outcome. The last thing she wanted was for him to flounce back to his wife in a pet, leaving her to come home to an empty flat.

The truth was she had determined, in that morning moment of surveying her own floating sick, that she was not going to be put off for one day longer. She would drive that very morning to Broughton and beard the lion — or rather the lioness's cub

— in his den. As she sped out down the A22, she couldn't really understand what had taken her so long to come to this decision. This was her husband and she was going to what was, after all, her marital home. No one could argue with that.

An unpleasant surprise was waiting for her, as she had forgotten that on a Saturday in summer the house would of course be open to the public. Somehow that had slipped through her calculations and she was now in the faintly ludicrous position of having to choose between parking her car in the courtyard and going in through the family's entrance or entering by the public door and travelling up into the body of the house surrounded by tourists and housewives from Brighton. She made the bold decision to go in by the latter route. She thought there would be plenty of time to block her path if she rang the family's doorbell and she was gambling on Charles being in his own study, which was next to the library. It would be the work of a moment to slip through the cordon and open the door and she correctly guessed that none of the guides would stop her.

Indeed, she made a point of pausing to say hello to the pleasant woman in a stout, country suit who stood taking tickets.

'Hello, Mrs Curley, how are you? Can I creep in this way? Would you mind?' Edith had mastered this particular trick of her husband's people, that of asking as a favour something that cannot be refused. 'Oh, Mrs So-and-so, could you bear to wait up until we get home? Would that be a terrible bore for you?' Of course, the wretched woman being instructed in this way (as well as her employer) knows that this really means 'You are forbidden to go to bed until I have returned' but it is of course a more self-congratulatory way to deliver a command. It is all part of the aristocracy's consciously created image. They like to pride themselves on being 'marvellous with servants', which usually means making impossible demands in the friendliest voice imaginable.

Mrs Curley was clearly uncomfortable with the request but as Edith had predicted, there was nothing she could do about it. 'Of course, mi-lady,' she said with a cheerful nod, and dialled the family's private number the minute Edith had passed by.

===OO=OOO=OO===

Charles Broughton was indeed in his study or, as Lady Uckfield liked to call it, the Little Library, just as Edith suspected. He was answering letters in a vague sort of way, pretending to be, rather than actually being, busy. The house party was of his mother's choosing and, as always, those friends she had selected for him were not congenial to his wounded soul. Diana Bohun he found cold and too self-consciously grand to be of interest while her husband was very nearly mad. Clarissa was not among them. He had at least managed to persuade his mother that she was barking up the wrong tree there but… if not Clarissa then who?

He knew about Edith's appearance at Tommy Wainwright's. Indeed Tommy had told him the following day, perhaps not wanting to have someone else deliver the news. At first Charles had been extremely angry, not with Tommy but with his mother. On the evening in question she had suddenly made him take her to visit some ancient friend in hospital, a mission that was represented to him as crucial but was of course, as he could see now, the simplest ploy to keep him from the Wainwright party. But then, after he had calmed down a little, he wondered for the thousandth time what would have been achieved by their meeting. Whatever his friends might say about the strangeness of her actions, he did understand why Edith had left him.

He was dull. He knew this was true because, alas for him, he was just clever enough to be aware of it. He knew he was no company for her once the joy of her advancement had worn off. Half the time, if he was honest, he didn't really know what his wife was talking about. When she questioned the policy of the Opposition or tried to evaluate the benefits and harm of intervening in the Middle East… Charles knew there were differing points of view on these subjects but he didn't see why he was called upon to have them. So long as he kept voting Conservative and saying how frightful he thought New Labour, wasn't that enough? It was all and more than most of his pals in White's expected of him. Well, clearly it wasn't enough for Edith. Now even he had begun to suspect that she might conceivably want him back — or at least that she wanted to talk about it — but had anything changed? Wouldn't she tire of him again within a matter of months, if not weeks? Wouldn't it be better for her and for him if they knew when they were beaten? This in short was how he had begun to think of his marriage. A defeat certainly but a defeat that should now be faced up to and walked away from. Which was of course precisely what Lady Uckfield had intended. It is customary these days to suggest that all interference in the private lives of one's children invariably leads to disappointment but this is not true. Clever parents, who do not play their game too fast, can achieve their aims. And the Marchioness of Uckfield was cleverer than most.

He looked up as the door opened and the sedate figure of the Viscountess Bohun slid into the room. 'Charles?' she said with a despairing roll of her eyes. 'Thank God you're here.'

'Why? What is it?'

'I'm in the most frightful fix. Peter's gone for a walk and we haven't got the car with us. Anyway…' Charles waited patiently. 'The thing is…' Diana moistened her lip nervously. She was really quite a talented actress. 'I've made a sort of muddle of the dates and I've come without anything…'

Charles looked at her, puzzled. This made no sense at all, like a piece translated badly from a foreign tongue. 'I'm so sorry,' he said in answer to Diana's pseudo-blushes, 'I'm not sure I…'

Diana overcame her revulsion for this sort of tactic. Desperate times breed desperate measures and as her hostess had made clear, these were desperate times. 'I wasn't expecting it but… it's that time of the month and I've got to get to a chemist…'

'Oh, Lord.' Charles leaped to his feet in a frenzy of embarrassment. 'Of course. What can I do?'

Diana breathed more easily. She had reached her goal and wonderfully quickly. 'Could you bear to run me into Lewes, only everything in the country shuts at one and—'

'Certainly. Right away.'

'I've just got to tell your mother something.'

'Righto. I'll get the car. Be outside our entrance in five minutes. And don't worry.'

She rather loved him for telling her not to worry about an experience she had been going through once a month since she was twelve but she chose not to assuage his anxiety. With a weak smile, she watched him scuttle out of the room. In this choice of lie, Diana had judged correctly if she wanted instant action. As she calculated, Charles, like all men of his type, had the greatest possible distaste for any of the mechanics of womanhood. One hint of them and he neither needed nor wanted further explanation in order to make him act fast. As he thundered down the family staircase, she listened with the just pride of an efficient workman.

===OO=OOO=OO===

Edith had hardly reached the landing by the bronze of the slave before Lady Uckfield issued forth from a roped-off archway.

'Edith? Is that you? Why didn't you tell us you were coming?' Her mother-in-law slid her arm through hers and attempted to drag her towards the door into the family sitting room. Edith knew that the game was up, silently cursing herself for not pulling a scarf over her face and sliding in unnoticed, but even so she would not give in at once. She extricated herself from Googie's grip and started towards the library and Charles's study beyond.

'I thought I'd be a nuisance and I only want a quick word with Charles. It won't take a moment.' She was walking so fast that, to the delight of the public present, Lady Uckfield was forced to break into a sort of trot to keep up with her. They passed into the splendid library with its high mahogany and ormolu-mounted bookshelves. Above the chimneypiece, an early Broughton in a chestnut periwig gazed down, startled at the scene being played out below him. A few tourists had recognised one or other of them and since the marital split had been in half the newspapers in the country, they left off their bored examination of the thousands of gilded, leather spines and turned all their attention to the two women, thrilled by this unexpected entertainment opportunity.

'Are you staying for luncheon?' said Lady Uckfield, aware of being the cynosure of all eyes and anxious to normalise this very abnormal situation.

'Why? Would you like me to?' said Edith. She in contrast was thoroughly enjoying the exposure of her mother-in-law to the gaze of the common multitude.

'Of course,' said Lady Uckfield, grabbing and pulling at Edith's sleeve in a vain attempt to slow her progress across the gleaming floor.

'I don't think so,' said Edith. She was at the study door by now and her hand was almost on the knob when it opened to reveal the stately form of Lady Bohun. Imperceptibly, with a movement hardly visible to the naked eye, she nodded to her hostess. Edith saw it and at once knew she was too late. The bird had flown.

'Hello, Edith,' said Diana in her slowest and most mannered drawl. 'Will you excuse me? I'm just running into Lewes for something and I must get there before everything closes. Will you be here when we get back?'

'What do you think?' said Edith, and Diana had gone without further ado. Left alone with her daughter-in-law, Lady Uckfield drew her into the room and closed the door. 'Sit down for a moment,' she said, taking her own place behind Charles's desk and absent-mindedly tidying his scattered papers into neat piles.

'There's no need for this,' answered Edith. 'If Charles isn't here, I'll go.'

'Please sit down,' was the repeated request, and Edith did. 'I am sorry you see us as your enemies, my dear.'

'You may be sorry but you can hardly be surprised.'

Lady Uckfield gave her a hurt look. 'I wanted your marriage to work, you know. You have misjudged me if you think otherwise. I always wanted you to be happy.'

'You wanted us to make the best of a bad job.'

'But you didn't, did you?' said Lady Uckfield crisply, all trace of her customary gush and vibrato gone.

There was a measure of reason to this that took some of the wind out of Edith's sails as she was forced to admit. Was it rational of her to suggest that Lady Uckfield should have celebrated when she, Edith, came into their lives? Why should her mother-in-law want her back now that this unpleasant episode was almost over? Lady Uckfield was not finished. 'A year ago,'

she said, 'you were sick of the sight of Charles. When he spoke you gritted your teeth, when he touched you, you shivered. I am his mother and I lived in the same house with you. Did you think I wouldn't notice these things?'

'It wasn't like that.'

'It was exactly like that. He bored you. He bored you to death. Worse than that, he irritated you to the point of distraction.

He could not please you however hard he tried. Nothing he said or did was right. He set your nerves on edge by his very presence and yet now… what am I to make of this sudden eagerness to see him? What has changed?'

Edith drew herself up and looked her opponent in the eye. She was determined somehow to try to gain the initiative. 'Has it occurred to you that I might have had some time for reflection? Or am I too stupid in your eyes to think of anything but money and social climbing?'

'My dear, I never thought you stupid.' Lady Uckfield held up her palm in protest. 'You must at least give me credit for that.' There was a noise on the gravel and the older woman walked over to the window but it was not, as she had feared, Charles coming back for something he'd forgotten. 'I have to ask myself why now, why suddenly, a meeting is so essential when in the first months away you exhibited no such wish. I am a mother and I have to say to myself, what could have changed that might make a reunion with my son so desirable now when it was so un desirable then?'

'Perhaps I don't feel I've made a good choice. Is that hard to understand?'

'On the contrary. I find it easy to understand. Especially since I think you've made a very poor choice indeed. But…' She rested her fingertips against each other like an avuncular preacher making a point in a pulpit. 'Why now? Why such a change upon an instant?'

Edith stared at her. 'You can't stop me seeing him for ever,' she said.

Lady Uckfield nodded. 'No. I dare say I can't.'

'Well then.'

'I think I can stop you seeing him for a few months. Six perhaps, or even three. Let us see how we all feel then about this poor choice you have made.'

At that moment Edith realised that of course her mother-in-law, dear Googie with her mind as pure as snow, knew. They never talked about it, neither at that time nor in the ensuing years, but they were always aware from then on that, beyond a shadow of doubt, they both knew. Edith stood up. 'I'm going now.'

'Are you sure? Can I at least give you something to eat? Or what about a loo? You've come such a long way.' Once again the tone had settled back into its usual intimate pattern with the rhythm of shared midnight secrets in the dormitory.

At this moment, in some strange way, it was hard for Edith not to admire this woman, her sworn foe, who held onto the high ground in every argument against all-comers. It was hard but it was not impossible. 'You are a fucking cow,' she said. 'A fucking cow with a hide of leather and no heart.'

Lady Uckfield seemed to think over these words for a moment before nodding. 'Probably there is some truth in your unflattering description,' she acknowledged. 'And it is perhaps for that reason, or something resembling it, expressed hopefully in more fragrant language, that I have made such a success of my opportunities and you have made such a failure of yours. Goodbye, my dear.'

TWENTY-TWO

You may ask yourself why Edith, outfoxed at every turn, did not travel the more modern route out of her dilemma and, released from embarrassment after a short stay in some discreet, rural nursing home, why she did not then wait the three or six months stipulated by Lady Uckfield and outface them all. I suspect that she hardly knew the reason herself but somehow she was determined not to go that way. She was not, so far as I am aware, particularly religious and, I would have thought, operated on the minimum of moral scruples generally but perhaps because she had seen a way in which she could spare a life, a life that depended on her and her alone, she could not now bring herself to sacrifice it. It was, I think, an essentially animal decision rather than a sentimental one — or else then every tigress in the jungle is sentimental. Women, I suspect, can understand better than most men why something that hardly existed notionally and legally did not yet exist at all should still have been able to command such loyalties.

In the end, help came from a most unlikely sector. She had told me the following morning about her brief sojourn at Broughton and I was naturally dreading the request that I should take a more proactive hand in the whole business when she surprised me by telling me that she was going to wait until Charles's next visit to Feltham. 'He goes every fortnight or so. I'll collar him there.'

'How will you know when he's visiting?'

'Caroline's going to tell me. She'll drive me down.'

This information was both relieving and astonishing. Relieving because of course it meant I could be dispensed with and astonishing because it would never have occurred to me that Caroline would work against her mother's interest. Even now I am not completely sure of her motives. The Chase marriage was looking rocky. It is possible that she did not want the issue of her own satisfactory divorce arrangements being swamped by the divorce of the heir. It may have been an act of rebellion against her mother whose values Caroline always thought (quite wrongly as it happens) she had rejected. It may have been simpler. She loved her brother and she must have hated seeing him unhappy. In the end, I suppose it was, as always, a mixture of all these elements.

'When did you get in touch with her?'

'She telephoned me this morning. She'd heard about my visit to Broughton. I suppose she feels sorry for me.'

'Well, I won't say I'm not surprised but I'm pleased for you. It's certainly a good deal more suitable that Charles's sister should help you than that I should. Will you let me know how you get on?'

'I will,' she said.

===OO=OOO=OO===

Despite her explanation, Edith herself was not really clear as to Caroline's motives. They had never been close since Edith's admission into the family. They were not enemies. Indeed, despite Eric's almost continual stream of snide comments directed at Edith, she and her sister-in-law had achieved a kind of guarded familiarity but 'friendship' would have been too strong a word for it and Caroline would never have been confused as to where her loyalties lay. For all her professed modernity, Caroline Chase, devoid of self-knowledge as she was, remained very much a chip off her mother's block. She might despise the taut-faced countesses and ministers' wives that made up Lady Uckfield's coterie but when it came down to it her own friends were generally these women's rebellious and oddly-dressed children.

At all events, whatever her motives, she was as good as her word. Two days later the telephone rang in the Ebury Street flat and when Edith picked it up Caroline was on the line. 'Charles is at Feltham now if you're serious. He went down last night and he's on his own there until tomorrow.'

Edith glanced over to where Simon was deep in the Daily Mail. He also had the Independent delivered every day but he never read it. She steadied herself for one of those faintly Chinese telephone conversations designed to conceal their subject from the witnesses present. 'That's kind of you,' she said.

'So do you want me to take you down?'

'If you can,' came the stilted reply.

'Can't you talk?'

'Not really.'

'I'll be at the top of lower Sloane Street by Coutts at ten o'clock.'

'Fine.' Edith replaced the receiver carefully. It was not, as she explained later, that she ever wavered in her desire to see Charles but, just as she kept silent about the Sussex visit, she was not a big one for bridge-burning. As it happened, Simon had hardly been aware of the telephone conversation at all. She smiled across at him. 'Aren't you working today?'

He looked up. 'In the afternoon. Why?'

'That was Caroline. Asking me to lunch.'

'You're keeping your options open, then.'

She didn't answer but he didn't care.

Once again, she chose her clothes with some deliberation. The easy option was to repeat herself and simply to don a country outfit from her Broughton days but that seemed somehow dishonourable after her humiliation at the hands of Lady Uckfield. It was also, as she now saw more clearly, obvious, which was worse. No, if Charles were to take her back it must be as herself and not because she could pass as Diana Bohun or any of the other cold-hearted bitches who enjoyed their loveless marriages at the heart of Charles's world. Eventually she selected a tight black skirt that showed her legs and a loose blue sweater interwoven with coloured ribbons. She brushed her hair and applied her make-up fairly heavily (that is, for Charles rather than for Caroline). She surveyed the results and was pleased. She looked pretty and bright and just Londony enough for it not to seem as if she was trying too hard.

'Very nice,' said Simon. 'Where are you off to now?'

'I thought I'd do some shopping. I've got to get a birthday present for my father.'

'I suppose I'm not included in the girls' lunch.'

'It's at Caroline's flat…' She shrugged sadly. 'Why not come with me now? If I can find something for Daddy, I'm going on to Harrods. See what they've got in for the summer.'

It may seem that there was a calculated risk in this cunning approach but there wasn't really. No man in his right mind would accept the job of trailing a woman through a series of departments when she isn't even looking for anything specific.

Especially when there's no lunch at the end of it. He shook his head as she knew he must. 'Not really. If it's all right. I'll see you tonight.'

'What time will you be back?'

He shrugged. 'Seven. Eight.'

They kissed and Edith seized a coat and was gone. A minute later she was walking towards the antique shops at the Pimlico Road end of the street. She knew that Caroline would ask her what she was up to in the two hours on the road that lay ahead and she was trying to determine both what she would say and what was the truth — not that these two would necessarily correlate.

She knew by now, if only from Lady Uckfield's near-hysterical opposition, that there must be a chance she could get Charles back. For a while she had pretended to herself that she was still simply exploring the possibility but in her heart she had already gone a stage further than that. She was bound to acknowledge that she would not have been as anxious as she had been in her attempts to secure a meeting had this not been the case. The question remained, how much did she want him back? Did she want him at any cost? Would she try to exact concessions? Would their life return to precisely the same pattern? And then again, could she gain concessions anyway? Weren't all the cards in Charles's hand? Worst of all: suppose she was wrong and he didn't want her back? In these ruminations, she was conscious that she had pushed the real reason for her change of heart to the back of her mind but she reasoned that if she was successful then that was after all where it was going to stay and so why worry about it now? It seemed to present her with such a yawning chasm that there was no reason to negotiate it before she absolutely had to. To all intents and purposes, from the moment she had known that she was at last to be permitted to see Charles, her secret had ceased to be true.

She stopped outside the art gallery opposite the Poule Au Pot and glanced at some sketches in the window. As she stood there, a gleaming limousine drew to a halt and the chauffeur helped a woman of some indeterminate Middle Eastern aspect to alight from the vehicle and enter the shop. Looking at this heavily-rouged, sable-wrapped creature, diamond bracelets flashing in the sun, Edith suddenly thought of her mother-in-law. How well she knew that this would not be Lady Uckfield's way. She would arrive in a taxi with a minimum of fuss, in sensible clothes and excellent pearls, and rely on the recognition of the manager. And yet the fact remained that, should these women meet, this Levantine would be nervous of Lady Uckfield while Lady Uckfield would be politely indifferent to her.

Her clash in the Little Library at Broughton, far from lowering Lady Uckfield in Edith's eyes, had paradoxically resulted in a grudging respect for her code. She had always faintly despised those members of her, or Charles's, circle who had fawned over her mother-in-law, but over the last days she had come to re-examine her feelings. In the early stages of her marriage she had perhaps yearned for more of what this Eastern woman in her furs took for granted in her daily round, luxury, glamour, famous faces. All these things — at any rate an English version of them — the young Edith Lavery had wrongly perceived as being connected to the world of a 'Lady Broughton' and she had been taken aback when so much of her new life had proved mundane. She knew that Lady Uckfield thought she, Edith, had gleaned her ideas from novels and nineteenth-century biographies, she had even attempted to defend her own mother occasionally from the accusation of filling her head with bourgeois fantasy, but she realised there was justice in the charge. The reality of life with Charles had seemed so flat and changeless compared to those action-packed plots, the glittering, power-filled ballrooms, that dizzying Lady-Palmerston-like career that she had been anticipating.

And yet, that day at the dress show, when the crowd had broken before Lady Uckfield and her minor Royal Highness like the Red Sea before Moses, Edith had seen what she had thrown away, the key to every closed door in England and most of the rest of the world — at least among the superficial. A landed title might not secure an invitation to Camp David but, even in the twenty-first century, she need never be alone in Palm Beach. And Edith knew by now that the kind of people who were superficial, the snobs whose social life was based around collecting people to underpin their own status, outnumbered the rest by ten to one. This kind of power might not be worth much in the great scheme of things but it was something and what had she gained in exchange for it? Life at Broughton might be dull but what was life in Ebury Street? Which did she prefer, lack of noise or lack of muscle? She had walked out of the world of the worldly in a petulant pout of boredom and overnight she had transformed herself from a high court card in the Game of Society into a non-person that people were ashamed to be seen with.

With something akin to a shiver she resumed her walk. Then she thought of the two men. Her subconscious assumption, because she knew that she had married Charles for his name and his fortune, had always been that, stripped of these things, she would never have looked at him. In their two years together she had grown to resent him, absurd as that now seemed even to her, for luring her with his worldly possessions without having the personality to amuse her once she was caught. The truth was she had pursued him and yet, in her self-justifying and dishonest mind, by the time Simon had come along, Charles had assumed the moral status of a baited trap.

Now, strolling down Pimlico Road, admiring the antique window displays, she thought back to her ruminations in the Green Park and realised that separation had changed things. It was her unconscious habit these days to think of her husband more gently. Was he really so disagreeable as company? So much less attractive than Simon? After all, men far worse than Charles find wives all the time. Would the idea of Charles as a husband have seemed so bad in the old days before her marriage? If she had been introduced to Mr Charles Broughton as a schoolfriend's suitor would she have wanted to run out screaming into the night, dragging the doomed girl with her? Of course not. Certainly Simon was a good deal better looking, there could be no doubt of that, but over the months she had grown used to his looks and she had begun to be irritated by the perpetual twinkling that seemed to accompany his every social interchange. All those half-smiles and narrowed lids lavished on waitresses and air hostesses and girls at the checkout in Partridges, all that tossing back of the golden locks, had started to bore her.

More troubling than the comparison of appearance (Charles, after all, while no beauty, was perfectly respectable to look at) was the question of sex. She had to concede that Simon was much the better lover, an excellent lover indeed by any standards let alone poor Charles's, and this was harder to dismiss. She enjoyed going to bed with Simon. Very much. In fact, the thought of making love with him was still enough to tickle her innards, to make her slightly fidgety and uncomfortable, to make her want to cross and uncross her legs. Dear Charles could never be a competitor here with his fumbling, five-minute thrust and his 'thank you, darling', which nearly drove her mad.

But for the first time she acknowledged, predictably perhaps, that after a year, making love to Simon had lost its novelty.

The sex, though less frequent than at first, was still excellent, no question, but it could no longer blind her to the life for which she had left her gilded cage. After all, how much time does one actually spend in bed making love? Was it really worth the rest of the bargain? Did a pleasurable half an hour two or three times a week compensate for those endless, terrible parties, those awful people with their flat accents, sitting around the flat smoking, or those frightful drama school pals discussing 'hair-dos'

and gardening tips and bucket-shop holidays? And anyway, wasn't Charles rather sweet in his way? Wasn't he more decent than Simon? Wasn't he truer as a person?

So Edith continued up Sloane Street belabouring herself with her false values, all the while attempting to convince herself with a litany of Charles's essential worth until, in a rare moment of honesty, like the sun breaking through the clouds, she saw the irony of this inner conversation. She, Edith, was using these arguments as if the opposition to them would overwhelm her should she give it a hearing. She was forcing herself to the next step when any impartial observer, and of this she was suddenly quite sure, would have freely volunteered that of course Charles was more decent than Simon. In fact, in any real way, it was perfectly obvious that Simon wasn't decent at all. Unlike Charles he had no honour, only pragmatism. He could not be true because there was no truth in him. His morality was a tawdry bundle of received, fashionable causes that he believed would make him attractive to casting directors. Edith was talking herself into thinking that in some ways she preferred Charles to Simon when to anyone who knew them both there could be no comparison. Charles, dull as he might be, was infinitely the better man. Simon was a mass of nothing.

She saw then that people would not think ill of her for coming round to this opinion — something she dreaded — but, on the contrary, they were amazed she had ever walked out on her husband for such a hollow gourd. Even so, and at this moment she felt it behoved her to be honest for once in her life, it was not for Charles's virtues that she wanted him back nor even because of her secret. It was for the sense of protected importance that she missed and that now, in her unadmitted crisis, she needed more than ever. The truth was that her months away had only finally confirmed her mother's prejudices.

Edith had gone for a walk and found it was cold outside.

'I think I'm leaving Eric,' said Caroline, as they nosed at last on to the M11. Edith nodded, raised her eyebrows slightly and said nothing. 'No comment?' asked Caroline. She was a terrifying driver, as she had never mastered the art of conducting a conversation without facing the other person.

Edith glanced nervously at a lorry that passed within inches and shook her head. 'Not really. I don't know that I'm in a position to make a comment. Anyway,' she stared out of the window, 'I never grasped why you married him. Leaving him seems much easier to understand.'

Caroline laughed. 'I've forgotten why I married him. That's the problem.'

'What luck there are no children.'

'Is it?' Caroline's face had assumed a hard Mount Rushmore look, which gave her the appearance of an Indian chief in some fifties western when one was still allowed to be on the side of the cowboys. 'I think it's rather a bore. It means if I want any I'll have to go through the whole bloody business again.' There was some truth in this. 'I can't help feeling sometimes that, within limits, it doesn't seem to make much odds whom one marries. One's bound to get a bit sick of them in the end.'

'Then why leave Eric?'

'I said "within limits",' answered Caroline with some asperity, taking her eyes completely off the road and narrowly avoiding a large transporter. 'In my old age, I have to concede that Lady Uckfield may have been right.' One of the most chilling comments on the private family life of the Broughtons was that Caroline and Charles, when talking to each other, would refer to their mother as 'Lady Uckfield'. It was sort of a joke and sort of a comment. Either way there was something troubling in it. Caroline continued. 'She told me it was a mistake to marry a man who was vulgar and had no money, which of course I went on to do. But she added that if I had to break these primary rules then I should be sure to marry a man who was polite and kind, rudeness and cruelty being the only two qualities that absolutely poison life.'

Edith nodded. 'I agree with her,' she said. She was perhaps surprised at the wisdom of her mother-in-law's injunction. She shouldn't have been. Lady Uckfield was far too intelligent not to realise that true misery stifles all endeavour. It was just that she was much more sensible than Edith about what constitutes true misery.

'Eric was so rude. Not just to me but to everyone. A dinner party at our house was a kind of survival course. The guests had to arrive armed and see how many brickbats they could avoid before escaping into the night. Looking back, I can't imagine why anyone ever came twice.'

'Then why did you marry him?'

'Partly to annoy my mother,' said Caroline, as if that was absolutely understood. 'Then partly because he was so good-looking. And finally, I suppose, because he tremendously wanted to marry me.'

'And now you don't think he was genuine.'

'No, he was genuine all right. He was desperate to marry me. But it was because I was a marquess's daughter. I didn't see that. Or I didn't see it was only that.'

Edith said nothing. The conversation was moving into a dangerous area. She heard the distant sound of cracking ice under her halting steps. 'Right,' she murmured.

But Caroline had not finished with her. 'Rather as you wanted to marry Charles,' she said. When Edith made no comment, she continued, 'Not that I blame you. There's much more point to it that way round. At least marrying Charles made you a countess. Even now, I can't see what Eric thought he'd get out of it.'

They drove on for a bit in silence. Then Edith re-opened. 'If that's what you think why are you driving me up here?'

Caroline thought for a moment, wrinkling her brows, as if the idea had only just occurred to her. She was almost hesitant when she spoke. 'Because Charles is so unhappy.'

'Is he?' said Edith, thrilled.

'Yes.' Caroline lit a cigarette and for a moment Edith thought they were going into the central divider. 'I know Lady Uckfield thinks it'll blow over. She has a fantasy that he will forget you and marry the daughter of some peer who'll give him four children, two of whom will inherit estates from relations of their mother's.' Caroline laughed wryly. This was of course a wonderfully accurate résumé of Lady Uckfield's dreams.

'Are you quite sure she's wrong?'

'How little you know my brother,' said Caroline, and lapsed again into silence. Edith naturally longed to hear more of this wretched and unhappy man, whose life was a misery without her and to whom, by some strange miracle, she was already married. She gave Caroline a quizzical look and the latter relented. 'In the first place I do not think that my mother's idea of your perfect successor is Charles's. To put it bluntly, if that was what he was looking for he could have found it with very little difficulty. But that is no longer the point. Charles is a simple man. He is capable of feelings but they are uncomplicated, straightforward and deep. He can hardly communicate and he cannot flirt at all.' Edith thought with wonder of her other love, who could only communicate and flirt. Simon's problem was the opposite of Charles's. He could not feel. Caroline was still talking. 'Charles has made his choice. You. You are his wife. In his heart that's it. Finish. I am not saying that if you did divorce him he wouldn't eventually settle for someone else as brood-mare but in his heart he would have failed and his real wife would be out there walking around with someone else. And that, my dear, would be you.'

The rest of the drive was accomplished in silence. It was almost as if they were waiting for the next event in the plot before they could continue their discussion. And so they wound their way through the flat Norfolk landscape until at last they turned into a well-kept but somewhat overshadowed drive, which in its turn, when they had been released from the high walls of rhododendron, brought them to the wide, gravelled forecourt of the main house.

Feltham Place had passed into the Broughton family in 1811 when the then Lord Broughton had married Anne Wykham, only child of Sir Marmaduke Wykham, sixth baronet and the last of his line. The house was Jacobean, more a gentleman's than a nobleman's residence, picturesque rather than magnificent with roofs bristling with barley sugar chimneys and possibly for this reason it had never managed to catch at the family's imagination. Like many houses of its period it was in a dip (before the pumping innovations of the late seventeenth century allowed those splendid, landscaped views), although the flatness of the county gave a certain openness at the bottom of its valley. It might have functioned as the Broughtons' Dower House or as a seat for the heir, but there were other houses nearer Uckfield that had served these turns at least until the Second World War and recently, as we know, the heir had chosen to live with his parents.

In the past, Feltham had been let but it was taken back for the shooting in the 1890s and had been farmed in hand ever since, despite the family's allowing the sport to lapse after the war. Charles had revived the shoot over the last few years and he was proud of the fact that he could now safely let two and three-hundred-bird days, secure in the knowledge that there would be no great disappointments. He and his keeper had worked hard. The covers and hedgerows had been replanted, the feeding pens reorganised, indeed the whole appearance of the countryside had been more or less restored to the condition of a century before. But despite this, he was not tempted to bring his own shooting guests to Feltham. They were offered the splendours of Broughton while businessmen, people with mobile telephones and gleaming sports wear, took the shooting at Feltham by the day. At a (considerable) extra cost they could even stay overnight, which may have accounted for the somewhat boarding-house quality within.

The Wykham who'd built the place had been a favourite of King James I and in those days it had been much larger but the king's beau had been improvident and his heir (a nephew since, unsurprisingly, the builder had never married) demolished two-thirds of it. This meant that the brickwork and carving on the façade and throughout the house was of a much higher standard than one would normally associate with the scale of building. Inside, all the first-rate furniture and pictures had long since been swallowed up by Broughton and most of what remained dated from its rehabilitation as a shooting-lodge at the end of the last century. Lumpy, leather-covered Chesterfields provided the seating and the walls were covered with second-rate portraits and enormous, indifferently painted scenes of hunting, shooting and all the other methods of country killing. Still, the rooms themselves were pleasant and the staircase, more or less the sole survivor from the days of the Jacobean favourite, was magnificent.

Edith hardly knew the place. In Charles's mind it was the nearest thing to an 'office' in his weekly round. He ran it as a business and apart from an occasional appearance at a village show and an annual cocktail party for all those neighbours who might be tiresome about the shoot were they not courted every so often, he had no social profile in the county at all. Quite frequently he stayed with the Cumnors at their infinitely larger and more luxurious house four miles down the road, rather than put the ancient care-taking couple to the trouble of opening a bedroom.

Caroline drew up by the front door and the two women made their way into the wide and gloomy hall that took up two-thirds of the entrance front. It was decorated by a frieze of slightly bogus armorial tributes to the Wykhams and the Broughtons but otherwise boasted no colour at all apart from the brown of the panelling and the less attractive brown of the leather furniture. 'Charles!' Caroline called out. It was a chilly day and the interior of the house was noticeably colder than the air outside. Edith pulled her coat tightly around her. 'Charles!' shouted Caroline again, and she set off through a doorway that led first to the staircase and then into the former morning room that operated as Charles's office. Edith followed her. Desks and filing cabinets stood about the room, the chill slightly alleviated by a three-bar electric fire in the grate that looked as if its very existence breached the entire safety code. They were still standing there when another door, facing them, opened and there all at once stood a flummoxed Charles. To her amazement, even to her delight, Edith suddenly realised that she was shocked at his appearance. Gone was that sleek country gentleman who always looked as if he was on the way to make an advertisement for Burberry's. She was astonished to see that her fastidious husband was looking scruffy and unkempt. He was almost dirty. Caught out by her stare, he pushed his fingers through his hair. 'Hello,' he said, with a watery smile. 'Fancy seeing you here.'

At this point Caroline took her leave. 'I'm going in to Norwich,' she said. 'I'll be back in a couple of hours.' It was a relief really that she didn't even try to normalise the situation or start any we-were-just-driving-past nonsense.

Charles nodded. 'I see,' he said.

Left alone, Edith was oddly blank as to quite what she was going to say next. She sat on the edge of a chair near the fire like a housemaid at an interview and leaned forward to warm her hands. 'I hope you're not cross. I did so want to talk to you.

Properly. And I began to feel that I was never going to be allowed to. I'm afraid I thought I'd just chance it.'

He shook his head. 'I'm not a bit cross. Not at all.' He hesitated. 'I — I'm sorry about the telephone calls and all the rest of it. It wasn't my mother not telling me, you know. Well, it wasn't only that. I expect you thought it was. It was just that I didn't really know what to say. It seemed better to leave it all to the professionals. Of course now you're here…' He tailed off disconsolately.

Edith nodded. 'I had to know what you were thinking about everything. I understand your parents want you free straight away.'

'Oh that.' He looked sheepish. 'I don't mind. Honestly. Whatever suits you.' He stared at her in the unflattering light of an overhead bulb. 'How's Simon?'

'Fine. Very well. Loving his series.'

'Good. I'm glad.' He didn't sound it but he was trying to be courteous. Edith was struck anew by the decency and kindness of this man she had tossed aside. What had she been thinking of? Her own actions sometimes seemed to her so hard to understand. Like a foreign film. And yet these had been her choices. The conversation limped on.

'I don't think I ever came to Feltham at this time of year. I must have but I don't remember. It's rather lovely, isn't it?'

Charles smiled. 'Dear old Feltham,' he said.

'You ought to live here. Do it up. Get some of the stuff back.'

He half nodded. 'I think I'd be a bit lonely, stuck out here on my own. Don't you? Nice idea, though.'

'Oh, Charles.' In spite of the cynicism with which she had embarked on this mission Edith had become a victim of her own justifications. Like Deborah Kerr in The King and I, whistling her happy tune to make herself brave, Edith had succeeded in talking herself into believing that she was a romantic figure who had lost her love rather than a selfish girl who bitterly regretted her comforts. Her eyes began to moisten.

Oddly perhaps, it was only at this moment that Charles fully grasped she had definitely come to try to get him back. Up to this point he was still wondering if it might not just be for some financial or time-related scheme that she had made the journey.

Despite his earlier suspicions, his non-existent vanity made him slow to reach the obvious conclusion and he thought she might want him to agree to something before his lawyers could talk him out of it. He was not offended by this but, if it should prove to be the case, he was anxious to conceal his wretchedness from her. Both out of consideration for her feelings and from a (perfectly justifiable) sense of pride. It now occurred to him, with a lurch in his stomach, that this was not what he was dealing with. She wanted to come back to him. He looked at her.

For all his simplicity, he was not an idiot. Thinking along the same lines as that night in his study at Broughton he knew that he was no more interesting than when she left him. He also suspected that the world of show business had not really appealed to her, not at any rate for 'every day'. Just as a year of sin had served to give Edith a clearer idea of what Simon consisted of, so two years of marriage and a year apart had made Edith comprehensible to Charles. He knew she was an arriviste and the child of an arriviste. He saw her vulgarities of spirit now as sharply as he saw her fine points, of which, despite Lady Uckfield's comments, he still believed there were many. He also knew that if he made a move towards her the thing was settled.

He stared at the hunched-up figure, trying to scoop warmth out of the electric bars. Her coat was a sort of camel colour and looked rather cheap. Was this sad little figure, this 'blonde piece' as his mother would say, to be the next Marchioness of Uckfield? To be painted by some indifferent chocolate box portraitist and hung alongside the Sargeants, Laszlos and Birleys of the preceding generations? Was it in her to make a go of it?

But as he watched her, the sense of how vulnerable she suddenly seemed to him, with her bright make-up and her chain store coat, trying to charm him and looking instead somehow pathetic, overwhelmed him with pity and, in the wake of pity, with love. Whatever her suitability, whatever the limitations of her feelings, whatever her motives, he knew that he, Charles Broughton, could not be responsible for her unhappiness. He was, in short, incapable of hurting her.

'Are you happy?' he said slowly, knowing as he did so that the words gave her permission to return to him and to his life.

At the sound of them Edith knew her pardon had come through. Despite the difficulties with Simon, with her mother-inlaw, with the newspapers, with the sun, with the moon, she could now be Charles's wife again if she chose, which, not very surprisingly given all the circumstances, she did. For a second she felt almost sick with relief but then, since she did not wish to appear too desperate, she waited for a minute before she spoke, deliberately punctuating the moment with a pregnant pause. Once satisfied that her answer was anticipated by them both she carefully raised her tear-stained eyes to his.

'No,' she said.

EPILOGUE

Smorzando

It did not, so far as I remember, cause any great murmur when Edith was delivered of a daughter seven months or so after the reconciliation. Of course, there was a lot of talk, particularly from her mother, about their being taken by surprise as Edith was

'so frighteningly early'. In fact, Mrs Lavery rather over-egged her performance by insisting on sitting in the hospital throughout the night because of the 'risks of premature birth', which naturally gave rise to a few funny stories on the dinner circuit, but nobody minded. Versions of this sort of folderol are still rather touchingly employed in Society on such occasions. These things are rituals rather than untruths and cause no harm. The point was the baby was female, which took any future strain out of the situation. It meant everything could return to normal without a lingering after-taste.

Even Lady Uckfield, usually so careful, gave herself away in a rare unguarded moment when I telephoned to learn the news.

'Boy or girl?' I asked when she picked up the receiver.

'Girl,' said Lady Uckfield. 'Isn't it a relief?' Then, quickly but not quickly enough, she added, 'That they're both doing so well.'

'A great relief,' I answered, going along with this dishonesty. There was no point in blaming her for retaining the deepest prejudices of her kind. Now that the baby could not inherit the glories of Broughton, thanks to the arcane laws governing the peerage that even Mr Blair, for all his trumpeting of women's rights, has not seen fit to change, she would present no further danger and might be lived with in peace. Since all three 'parents' were fair there was not much chance of the baby having the wrong colouring and, at least to date, the girl does not seem particularly to favour Simon, always assuming of course that the infant is his — something of which one can, after all, never be entirely sure. Not at least without resorting to DNA testing, which no entrant in Debrett's would ever risk for fear of what it might reveal. One foreign visitor at Broughton, ignorant of the excellent Edwardian maxim never to 'comment on a likeness in another's child' asked me if I did not think she took after Charles.

I may have imagined a momentary chill in the room but I nodded. 'I do,' I said. 'She's not like Edith at all.' Thereby earning an especially warm glance from my host. Amusingly enough, when I looked at the toddler properly, she did seem to resemble him a bit. But then again that may have been in expression rather than feature. It might seem strange but in later years Charles came to love the girl so much that his younger children would complain of his favouritism. Even less logically, she would eventually develop into the preferred grandchild of Lady Uckfield, which only goes to show that the old maxim is correct and there's nowt so queer as folk. At any rate, barely fourteen months later, Lady Broughton was once more brought to bed, this time of a boy. The new Viscount Nutley was welcomed with bonfires and bun fights in Sussex and Norfolk and, frankly, to be brutal and unmodernist about it, the exact paternity of little Lady Anne had ceased to matter much to anyone.

Caroline did divorce Eric. It was a quiet business without acrimony and with more style than I confess I thought Eric capable of. He was not single long. Within eighteen months he had married the daughter of an immensely rich Cheshire industrialist, Christine somebody or other. They were much better suited than he and Caroline had been. For one thing, she shared Eric's ambitions, which she pursued as relentlessly as if they had been her own and of course they soon were. I happened to meet them both at Ascot a few months after they married and I must say I liked her. She was full of energy and in many ways a good deal easier to rub along with than Caroline, even if she was already infected with Eric's nonsense. I remember her using the phrase 'our sort of people', meaning, I imagine, some sort of exclusive social group to which they belonged. It must have been a luxury for Eric who had spent his entire first marriage being reminded daily of an Inner Circle forever closed to him.

He growled at me by way of recognition but I was not offended. I had by this time forgiven Eric his earlier insults and anyway one of the freedoms of growing older is that one is no longer obliged to dislike someone simply because they dislike you. After all, he was entitled. Lady Uckfield had made no secret of how little she relished his company and had, somewhat maliciously I suspect, used me at times to demonstrate this.

'I suppose you still see them all?' he said when his wife had stopped discussing her new Poggenpohl kitchen.

I nodded. 'We've got a baby now so a bit less than I did. But yes, I see them.'

'And is dear Edith happy in her work?' Of course, it was quite understandable that he should be irritated when he contemplated one who had survived the course that had brought him down.

'I think so.'

'I'll bet she is. And how is darling "Googie"?' He spat out the name just as I had once heard Edith do before her rehabilitation. Now, for her at least, the name had re-normalised. 'I wonder what my dear ex-mother-in-law thinks of all the recent developments.'

'Oh, I'd say she was pretty merry, one way and another,' I said, for all the world as if I thought he cared, and we nodded to each other and moved on.

As I strolled away to rejoin Adela for tea with Louisa in the Household Stand I pondered my answers and concluded that I had spoken no more than the truth. Of course, as everyone had predicted, the children had changed everything. One may be exhausted but there is little time to be bored with two children under four, particularly as Edith, to her mother-in-law's bemusement, had eschewed a proper Norland nanny and chosen instead to have a series of Portuguese and Australians.

Charming girls, one and all (or nearly all), but not the type to take over the nursery as their province. I thought it a wise decision and so, I was pleased to note, did Charles.

But as to quite what Lady Uckfield really made of it all … One would have to get up very early in the morning to know precisely what she thought about anything, earlier than I rise, certainly. We were not, as I had predicted, quite such friends after the reinstatement of Edith. Although I have not yet given up hope of regaining my former position of Court Favourite.

Poor woman, she had allowed herself to dream a little during the interregnum and the imagined life she had woven for herself with dear Clarissa or one of her kind as junior chatelaine had filled her with happy prospects. Ironically her imaginings had not been all that unlike the despised Mrs Lavery's. Lady Uckfield, too, had seen herself as a special friend of her daughter-in-law's family. The two grandmothers would lunch together perhaps and take in an exhibition… So it was hard to reconcile herself to the Return of Edith, not least because she had allowed herself the rare luxury of admitting what she really felt while Edith was away. Worse, she had confessed these secrets not only to herself and her husband, which was bad enough, but to me, a non-relation. In doing so she knew she had given me a weapon. From now on whenever she referred to 'our darling Edith' there was a risk that I might catch her eye if I so wished and in her heart expose her. I had no intention of doing this but the threat of it introduced a coldness between us nevertheless. I was and am sorry but there is nothing to be done about it. Meanwhile, Adela and I continue to stay at Broughton pretty regularly.

I remember once Lady Uckfield did let herself go a little. There had been a dinner party and the guests were spread out in knots over the drawing room and the Red Saloon next door. Edith was at the centre of an admiring group, for you will understand that a lot of people had a good deal of ground to make up having dropped her during her period of exile. One might have thought that those who had been loyal, Annette Watson for one, would have been rewarded with a shower of invitations but I don't believe they were. Perhaps this was predictable. Anyway, on this particular evening, surrounded as she was, Edith made some remark, I forget what, which was greeted with gales of sycophantic laughter. I was alone, having helped myself to some more coffee, so there was no one to overhear when Lady Uckfield drew level.

'Edith Triumphans,' she said. I nodded. But she would not let it go. 'To the victor the spoils.'

'And is Edith the victor?' I asked.

'Isn't she?'

'I don't know.' I shrugged. I imagine I was attempting to be philosophical and by an easy and familiar transition had become dishonest.

'Of course she is the victor,' said Lady Uckfield, quite truthfully. 'You have won.'

Now this was irritating. She was right about Edith, I do admit, but not about me. If anything I had always been a partisan of the Uckfields during the struggle for Charles's soul and she knew it. 'Don't blame me,' I said quite firmly. 'You asked me not to encourage her and I didn't. It was your own daughter who arranged it all, not me. The fact is Charles wanted her back.

Voilà tout. He must know what's best for himself, I suppose.'

Lady Uckfield laughed. 'That, of course, is precisely what he does not know.' Her tone was a little bitter but more predominately sad. It was also, as I knew it must be, the tone of resignation. 'I told you I didn't believe they would be happy and I wait anxiously to be proved wrong. However,' she waved her little claws and the jewels in her rings flashed in the firelight, 'the thing is done. We must make the best of it. It is time to move on to the next square. Let us at least hope they will be no less happy than everybody else.' And she was gone.

Would they be less happy than everybody else? That was certainly the question. Although she had returned to him without treaty, Edith had nevertheless wrung some considerable concessions in the process. To start with she had grasped the folly of her earlier belief that it was safer to be bored in the country than entertained in London and she had persuaded Charles into a house in Fulham, which had been purchased for more or less what the little flat in Eaton Place had gone for. Now she allowed herself a day or two in London a week. She had also found some committees to sit on and had become involved, down in Sussex, in the actual day-to-day running of a hospice near Lewes. All in all, she had started to evolve the life she would be leading at sixty when she herself, never mind everyone else, would have forgotten that there had ever been a hiccup in her early married life. I thought, on reflection, that it all boded quite well.

We went down to Broughton two or three times a year as a rule. Adela and Edith were never much more than amiable with each other but Charles became very fond of my wife and so we were easy guests, I think. We enjoyed it as, apart from anything else, we had a baby in tow and the houses we could stay in without feeling that we had imported a miniature anarchist were few. Our son, Hugo, was about five months older than Anne and that ensured a measure of shared activity, accompanied by a good deal of merriment from both mothers. It is a truism but it is still true that the longer one knows people the less relevant it becomes whether or not one liked them initially. As I knew from my friendship with Isabel Easton, there is no substitute for shared history and it was clear that by the time ten years had passed, my wife and Lady Broughton would think of themselves as close friends without ever necessarily liking each other much more than they did to start with.

Needless to say, at an early stage after the great patch-up, Edith wished me to understand that she was not interested in pursuing long conversations about her choices, past or present. I quite agreed with her so she needn't have worried. I know only too well how tedious it is to have the recipient of earlier intimacies still hanging around when those intimacies have become irrelevant embarrassments. Anyway, so far as I was concerned, she had seen sense and I hadn't the slightest desire to shake her resolve.

She tested me a few times, waiting, when we happened to be alone, to see if I would bring up the subject of Simon or Charles or marriage or, worse, the baby, but I never did and I am happy to say she began to relax into our old intimacy.

In truth, even had she questioned me, I would have had little to report on the Simon front. I don't know how anxious his wife was to take him back when she had been given the surprising news that his Great Affair was over but, whatever her feelings, she had done it. I saw him once, some months later, at an audition and he told me he was planning to move to Los Angeles to 'try my luck'. I wasn't surprised since this is not an unusual reaction for a player after a disappointing career. As a rule the Hollywood pattern for English actors is simple. They are delighted to go, they are told there is a lot of work for them if they stick it out, they tell everyone how fabulous it is, they spend all their money — and then they come home. It seems to take from two to six years. However, there are always exceptions and I would not be surprised if Simon were one. He seemed to have all the qualities the natives of that city admire and none that they dislike.

Perhaps because he knew we would not be meeting for a while, he asked after Edith. I muttered that she was well and he nodded. 'I'm glad.'

'Good.'

He shook his head at me and raised his eyebrows. 'I don't know,' he said. 'Women!'

I nodded and gave him a sympathetic laugh so we parted friends. I suppose one might gauge the extent of his heartbreak from this subsequent reaction. I do not think Charles would have shaken his head to an acquaintance and said, 'Women!' like a character from a situation comedy had his wife chosen never to return. I think he would have curled up in the dark somewhere and never mentioned her name again, so I suppose we must all concede that Edith had ended up with the man who loved her most. Even so, there was no malice in Simon's eyes and I think one should remember this at least, that when all was said and done there really wasn't any harm in him. It is surely not so terrible a testimonial.

Nor did I ever betray to Edith the Eastons', or rather David's, anxiety to stay in with the family, if necessary at her expense.

Gradually even that slightly uncomfortable connection was also resumed. All in all, things went back to normal surprisingly quickly. Even the papers only gave it a couple of squibs — in the Standard, I seem to remember, and in one of the tabloids

— and then it was over.

Just once she did bring it up, perhaps because I never had. We were walking in the gardens on a Sunday in summer three or even four years after she had returned to the fold and we found ourselves down by the approach to the rose garden where they had set up our chairs for the filming, however long ago it was. The others were playing croquet and as we strolled along, the sound of balls being hit and people getting cross wafted gently over us. Suddenly I was struck by the image of Simon Russell, in his frilled shirt, stretched out on the ground in all his comeliness, as he gossiped that faraway day to a younger, sillier Edith. I said nothing of course and I was taken by surprise when she suddenly spoke into my imaginings.

'Do you ever see him now?' she said.

I shook my head. 'No. I don't think anyone does. He's gone off to California.'

'To make films?'

'Well, that's the idea. Or at least to make a television series.'

'And is he making one?'

'Not yet but you never know.'

'What about his wife?'

'She's gone with him.'

Edith nodded. We strolled on into the rose garden. Some heavily scented, dark red blooms, Papa Meilland maybe, filled the warm air with their sweet stench.

'Aren't you ever going to ask me if I'm happy?' said Edith with a provocative flick of her head.

'No.'

'Well, I'll tell you anyway.' She broke off a half-open bud and fed its stalk through the top buttonhole of my shirt. 'The fact is, I'm happy enough.'

I did not question her statement. I am glad she was and is happy enough. That is a good deal happier than a large proportion of my address book.

About the Author:

Julian Fellowes, writer, actor and film director, was educated at Ampleforth, Magdalene College, Cambridge and the Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art. As an actor he is probably best-known for his portrayal of the incorrigible Lord Kilwillie in BBC Television's series Monarch of the Glen. In the cinema he was seen in Shadowlands with Anthony Hopkins and Tomorrow Never Dies with Pierce Brosnan. His film screenplay debut was Gosford Park, directed by Robert Altman, which won the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay among many other prizes. He has written and directed the film of A Way Through the Wood, based on a book by Nigel Balchin. In the theatre he has written the 'book' for the Cameron Mackintosh/Walt Disney stage musical of Mary Poppins. As well as Snobs, he has a children's story being published in 2006. He has a wife, Emma, a son, Peregrine, and a dachshund called Fudge.

'I've just got to tell your mother something.'

'Righto. I'll get the car. Be outside our entrance in five minutes. And don't worry.'

She rather loved him for telling her not to worry about an experience she had been going through once a month since she was twelve but she chose not to assuage his anxiety. With a weak smile, she watched him scuttle out of the room. In this choice of lie, Diana had judged correctly if she wanted instant action. As she calculated, Charles, like all men of his type, had the greatest possible distaste for any of the mechanics of womanhood. One hint of them and he neither needed nor wanted further explanation in order to make him act fast. As he thundered down the family staircase, she listened with the just pride of an efficient workman.

===OO=OOO=OO===

Edith had hardly reached the landing by the bronze of the slave before Lady Uckfield issued forth from a roped-off archway.

'Edith? Is that you? Why didn't you tell us you were coming?' Her mother-in-law slid her arm through hers and attempted to drag her towards the door into the family sitting room. Edith knew that the game was up, silently cursing herself for not pulling a scarf over her face and sliding in unnoticed, but even so she would not give in at once. She extricated herself from Googie's grip and started towards the library and Charles's study beyond.

'I thought I'd be a nuisance and I only want a quick word with Charles. It won't take a moment.' She was walking so fast that, to the delight of the public present, Lady Uckfield was forced to break into a sort of trot to keep up with her. They passed into the splendid library with its high mahogany and ormolu-mounted bookshelves. Above the chimneypiece, an early Broughton in a chestnut periwig gazed down, startled at the scene being played out below him. A few tourists had recognised one or other of them and since the marital split had been in half the newspapers in the country, they left off their bored examination of the thousands of gilded, leather spines and turned all their attention to the two women, thrilled by this unexpected entertainment opportunity.

'Are you staying for luncheon?' said Lady Uckfield, aware of being the cynosure of all eyes and anxious to normalise this very abnormal situation.

'Why? Would you like me to?' said Edith. She in contrast was thoroughly enjoying the exposure of her mother-in-law to the gaze of the common multitude.

'Of course,' said Lady Uckfield, grabbing and pulling at Edith's sleeve in a vain attempt to slow her progress across the gleaming floor.

'I don't think so,' said Edith. She was at the study door by now and her hand was almost on the knob when it opened to reveal the stately form of Lady Bohun. Imperceptibly, with a movement hardly visible to the naked eye, she nodded to her hostess. Edith saw it and at once knew she was too late. The bird had flown.

'Hello, Edith,' said Diana in her slowest and most mannered drawl. 'Will you excuse me? I'm just running into Lewes for something and I must get there before everything closes. Will you be here when we get back?'

'What do you think?' said Edith, and Diana had gone without further ado. Left alone with her daughter-in-law, Lady Uckfield drew her into the room and closed the door. 'Sit down for a moment,' she said, taking her own place behind Charles's desk and absent-mindedly tidying his scattered papers into neat piles.

'There's no need for this,' answered Edith. 'If Charles isn't here, I'll go.'

'Please sit down,' was the repeated request, and Edith did. 'I am sorry you see us as your enemies, my dear.'

'You may be sorry but you can hardly be surprised.'

Lady Uckfield gave her a hurt look. 'I wanted your marriage to work, you know. You have misjudged me if you think otherwise. I always wanted you to be happy.'

'You wanted us to make the best of a bad job.'

'But you didn't, did you?' said Lady Uckfield crisply, all trace of her customary gush and vibrato gone.

There was a measure of reason to this that took some of the wind out of Edith's sails as she was forced to admit. Was it rational of her to suggest that Lady Uckfield should have celebrated when she, Edith, came into their lives? Why should her mother-in-law want her back now that this unpleasant episode was almost over? Lady Uckfield was not finished. 'A year ago,'

she said, 'you were sick of the sight of Charles. When he spoke you gritted your teeth, when he touched you, you shivered. I am his mother and I lived in the same house with you. Did you think I wouldn't notice these things?'

'It wasn't like that.'

'It was exactly like that. He bored you. He bored you to death. Worse than that, he irritated you to the point of distraction.

He could not please you however hard he tried. Nothing he said or did was right. He set your nerves on edge by his very presence and yet now… what am I to make of this sudden eagerness to see him? What has changed?'

Edith drew herself up and looked her opponent in the eye. She was determined somehow to try to gain the initiative. 'Has it occurred to you that I might have had some time for reflection? Or am I too stupid in your eyes to think of anything but money and social climbing?'

'My dear, I never thought you stupid.' Lady Uckfield held up her palm in protest. 'You must at least give me credit for that.' There was a noise on the gravel and the older woman walked over to the window but it was not, as she had feared, Charles coming back for something he'd forgotten. 'I have to ask myself why now, why suddenly, a meeting is so essential when in the first months away you exhibited no such wish. I am a mother and I have to say to myself, what could have changed that might make a reunion with my son so desirable now when it was so un desirable then?'

'Perhaps I don't feel I've made a good choice. Is that hard to understand?'

'On the contrary. I find it easy to understand. Especially since I think you've made a very poor choice indeed. But…' She rested her fingertips against each other like an avuncular preacher making a point in a pulpit. 'Why now? Why such a change upon an instant?'

Edith stared at her. 'You can't stop me seeing him for ever,' she said.

Lady Uckfield nodded. 'No. I dare say I can't.'

'Well then.'

'I think I can stop you seeing him for a few months. Six perhaps, or even three. Let us see how we all feel then about this poor choice you have made.'

At that moment Edith realised that of course her mother-in-law, dear Googie with her mind as pure as snow, knew. They never talked about it, neither at that time nor in the ensuing years, but they were always aware from then on that, beyond a shadow of doubt, they both knew. Edith stood up. 'I'm going now.'

'Are you sure? Can I at least give you something to eat? Or what about a loo? You've come such a long way.' Once again the tone had settled back into its usual intimate pattern with the rhythm of shared midnight secrets in the dormitory.

At this moment, in some strange way, it was hard for Edith not to admire this woman, her sworn foe, who held onto the high ground in every argument against all-comers. It was hard but it was not impossible. 'You are a fucking cow,' she said. 'A fucking cow with a hide of leather and no heart.'

Lady Uckfield seemed to think over these words for a moment before nodding. 'Probably there is some truth in your unflattering description,' she acknowledged. 'And it is perhaps for that reason, or something resembling it, expressed hopefully in more fragrant language, that I have made such a success of my opportunities and you have made such a failure of yours. Goodbye, my dear.'

TWENTY-TWO

You may ask yourself why Edith, outfoxed at every turn, did not travel the more modern route out of her dilemma and, released from embarrassment after a short stay in some discreet, rural nursing home, why she did not then wait the three or six months stipulated by Lady Uckfield and outface them all. I suspect that she hardly knew the reason herself but somehow she was determined not to go that way. She was not, so far as I am aware, particularly religious and, I would have thought, operated on the minimum of moral scruples generally but perhaps because she had seen a way in which she could spare a life, a life that depended on her and her alone, she could not now bring herself to sacrifice it. It was, I think, an essentially animal decision rather than a sentimental one — or else then every tigress in the jungle is sentimental. Women, I suspect, can understand better than most men why something that hardly existed notionally and legally did not yet exist at all should still have been able to command such loyalties.

In the end, help came from a most unlikely sector. She had told me the following morning about her brief sojourn at Broughton and I was naturally dreading the request that I should take a more proactive hand in the whole business when she surprised me by telling me that she was going to wait until Charles's next visit to Feltham. 'He goes every fortnight or so. I'll collar him there.'

'How will you know when he's visiting?'

'Caroline's going to tell me. She'll drive me down.'

This information was both relieving and astonishing. Relieving because of course it meant I could be dispensed with and astonishing because it would never have occurred to me that Caroline would work against her mother's interest. Even now I am not completely sure of her motives. The Chase marriage was looking rocky. It is possible that she did not want the issue of her own satisfactory divorce arrangements being swamped by the divorce of the heir. It may have been an act of rebellion against her mother whose values Caroline always thought (quite wrongly as it happens) she had rejected. It may have been simpler. She loved her brother and she must have hated seeing him unhappy. In the end, I suppose it was, as always, a mixture of all these elements.

'When did you get in touch with her?'

'She telephoned me this morning. She'd heard about my visit to Broughton. I suppose she feels sorry for me.'

'Well, I won't say I'm not surprised but I'm pleased for you. It's certainly a good deal more suitable that Charles's sister should help you than that I should. Will you let me know how you get on?'

'I will,' she said.

===OO=OOO=OO===

Despite her explanation, Edith herself was not really clear as to Caroline's motives. They had never been close since Edith's admission into the family. They were not enemies. Indeed, despite Eric's almost continual stream of snide comments directed at Edith, she and her sister-in-law had achieved a kind of guarded familiarity but 'friendship' would have been too strong a word for it and Caroline would never have been confused as to where her loyalties lay. For all her professed modernity, Caroline Chase, devoid of self-knowledge as she was, remained very much a chip off her mother's block. She might despise the taut-faced countesses and ministers' wives that made up Lady Uckfield's coterie but when it came down to it her own friends were generally these women's rebellious and oddly-dressed children.

At all events, whatever her motives, she was as good as her word. Two days later the telephone rang in the Ebury Street flat and when Edith picked it up Caroline was on the line. 'Charles is at Feltham now if you're serious. He went down last night and he's on his own there until tomorrow.'

Edith glanced over to where Simon was deep in the Daily Mail. He also had the Independent delivered every day but he never read it. She steadied herself for one of those faintly Chinese telephone conversations designed to conceal their subject from the witnesses present. 'That's kind of you,' she said.

'So do you want me to take you down?'

'If you can,' came the stilted reply.

'Can't you talk?'

'Not really.'

'I'll be at the top of lower Sloane Street by Coutts at ten o'clock.'

'Fine.' Edith replaced the receiver carefully. It was not, as she explained later, that she ever wavered in her desire to see Charles but, just as she kept silent about the Sussex visit, she was not a big one for bridge-burning. As it happened, Simon had hardly been aware of the telephone conversation at all. She smiled across at him. 'Aren't you working today?'

He looked up. 'In the afternoon. Why?'

'That was Caroline. Asking me to lunch.'

'You're keeping your options open, then.'

She didn't answer but he didn't care.

Once again, she chose her clothes with some deliberation. The easy option was to repeat herself and simply to don a country outfit from her Broughton days but that seemed somehow dishonourable after her humiliation at the hands of Lady Uckfield. It was also, as she now saw more clearly, obvious, which was worse. No, if Charles were to take her back it must be as herself and not because she could pass as Diana Bohun or any of the other cold-hearted bitches who enjoyed their loveless marriages at the heart of Charles's world. Eventually she selected a tight black skirt that showed her legs and a loose blue sweater interwoven with coloured ribbons. She brushed her hair and applied her make-up fairly heavily (that is, for Charles rather than for Caroline). She surveyed the results and was pleased. She looked pretty and bright and just Londony enough for it not to seem as if she was trying too hard.

'Very nice,' said Simon. 'Where are you off to now?'

'I thought I'd do some shopping. I've got to get a birthday present for my father.'

'I suppose I'm not included in the girls' lunch.'

'It's at Caroline's flat…' She shrugged sadly. 'Why not come with me now? If I can find something for Daddy, I'm going on to Harrods. See what they've got in for the summer.'

It may seem that there was a calculated risk in this cunning approach but there wasn't really. No man in his right mind would accept the job of trailing a woman through a series of departments when she isn't even looking for anything specific.

Especially when there's no lunch at the end of it. He shook his head as she knew he must. 'Not really. If it's all right. I'll see you tonight.'

'What time will you be back?'

He shrugged. 'Seven. Eight.'

They kissed and Edith seized a coat and was gone. A minute later she was walking towards the antique shops at the Pimlico Road end of the street. She knew that Caroline would ask her what she was up to in the two hours on the road that lay ahead and she was trying to determine both what she would say and what was the truth — not that these two would necessarily correlate.

She knew by now, if only from Lady Uckfield's near-hysterical opposition, that there must be a chance she could get Charles back. For a while she had pretended to herself that she was still simply exploring the possibility but in her heart she had already gone a stage further than that. She was bound to acknowledge that she would not have been as anxious as she had been in her attempts to secure a meeting had this not been the case. The question remained, how much did she want him back? Did she want him at any cost? Would she try to exact concessions? Would their life return to precisely the same pattern? And then again, could she gain concessions anyway? Weren't all the cards in Charles's hand? Worst of all: suppose she was wrong and he didn't want her back? In these ruminations, she was conscious that she had pushed the real reason for her change of heart to the back of her mind but she reasoned that if she was successful then that was after all where it was going to stay and so why worry about it now? It seemed to present her with such a yawning chasm that there was no reason to negotiate it before she absolutely had to. To all intents and purposes, from the moment she had known that she was at last to be permitted to see Charles, her secret had ceased to be true.

She stopped outside the art gallery opposite the Poule Au Pot and glanced at some sketches in the window. As she stood there, a gleaming limousine drew to a halt and the chauffeur helped a woman of some indeterminate Middle Eastern aspect to alight from the vehicle and enter the shop. Looking at this heavily-rouged, sable-wrapped creature, diamond bracelets flashing in the sun, Edith suddenly thought of her mother-in-law. How well she knew that this would not be Lady Uckfield's way. She would arrive in a taxi with a minimum of fuss, in sensible clothes and excellent pearls, and rely on the recognition of the manager. And yet the fact remained that, should these women meet, this Levantine would be nervous of Lady Uckfield while Lady Uckfield would be politely indifferent to her.

Her clash in the Little Library at Broughton, far from lowering Lady Uckfield in Edith's eyes, had paradoxically resulted in a grudging respect for her code. She had always faintly despised those members of her, or Charles's, circle who had fawned over her mother-in-law, but over the last days she had come to re-examine her feelings. In the early stages of her marriage she had perhaps yearned for more of what this Eastern woman in her furs took for granted in her daily round, luxury, glamour, famous faces. All these things — at any rate an English version of them — the young Edith Lavery had wrongly perceived as being connected to the world of a 'Lady Broughton' and she had been taken aback when so much of her new life had proved mundane. She knew that Lady Uckfield thought she, Edith, had gleaned her ideas from novels and nineteenth-century biographies, she had even attempted to defend her own mother occasionally from the accusation of filling her head with bourgeois fantasy, but she realised there was justice in the charge. The reality of life with Charles had seemed so flat and changeless compared to those action-packed plots, the glittering, power-filled ballrooms, that dizzying Lady-Palmerston-like career that she had been anticipating.

And yet, that day at the dress show, when the crowd had broken before Lady Uckfield and her minor Royal Highness like the Red Sea before Moses, Edith had seen what she had thrown away, the key to every closed door in England and most of the rest of the world — at least among the superficial. A landed title might not secure an invitation to Camp David but, even in the twenty-first century, she need never be alone in Palm Beach. And Edith knew by now that the kind of people who were superficial, the snobs whose social life was based around collecting people to underpin their own status, outnumbered the rest by ten to one. This kind of power might not be worth much in the great scheme of things but it was something and what had she gained in exchange for it? Life at Broughton might be dull but what was life in Ebury Street? Which did she prefer, lack of noise or lack of muscle? She had walked out of the world of the worldly in a petulant pout of boredom and overnight she had transformed herself from a high court card in the Game of Society into a non-person that people were ashamed to be seen with.

With something akin to a shiver she resumed her walk. Then she thought of the two men. Her subconscious assumption, because she knew that she had married Charles for his name and his fortune, had always been that, stripped of these things, she would never have looked at him. In their two years together she had grown to resent him, absurd as that now seemed even to her, for luring her with his worldly possessions without having the personality to amuse her once she was caught. The truth was she had pursued him and yet, in her self-justifying and dishonest mind, by the time Simon had come along, Charles had assumed the moral status of a baited trap.

Now, strolling down Pimlico Road, admiring the antique window displays, she thought back to her ruminations in the Green Park and realised that separation had changed things. It was her unconscious habit these days to think of her husband more gently. Was he really so disagreeable as company? So much less attractive than Simon? After all, men far worse than Charles find wives all the time. Would the idea of Charles as a husband have seemed so bad in the old days before her marriage? If she had been introduced to Mr Charles Broughton as a schoolfriend's suitor would she have wanted to run out screaming into the night, dragging the doomed girl with her? Of course not. Certainly Simon was a good deal better looking, there could be no doubt of that, but over the months she had grown used to his looks and she had begun to be irritated by the perpetual twinkling that seemed to accompany his every social interchange. All those half-smiles and narrowed lids lavished on waitresses and air hostesses and girls at the checkout in Partridges, all that tossing back of the golden locks, had started to bore her.

More troubling than the comparison of appearance (Charles, after all, while no beauty, was perfectly respectable to look at) was the question of sex. She had to concede that Simon was much the better lover, an excellent lover indeed by any standards let alone poor Charles's, and this was harder to dismiss. She enjoyed going to bed with Simon. Very much. In fact, the thought of making love with him was still enough to tickle her innards, to make her slightly fidgety and uncomfortable, to make her want to cross and uncross her legs. Dear Charles could never be a competitor here with his fumbling, five-minute thrust and his 'thank you, darling', which nearly drove her mad.

But for the first time she acknowledged, predictably perhaps, that after a year, making love to Simon had lost its novelty.

The sex, though less frequent than at first, was still excellent, no question, but it could no longer blind her to the life for which she had left her gilded cage. After all, how much time does one actually spend in bed making love? Was it really worth the rest of the bargain? Did a pleasurable half an hour two or three times a week compensate for those endless, terrible parties, those awful people with their flat accents, sitting around the flat smoking, or those frightful drama school pals discussing 'hair-dos'

and gardening tips and bucket-shop holidays? And anyway, wasn't Charles rather sweet in his way? Wasn't he more decent than Simon? Wasn't he truer as a person?

So Edith continued up Sloane Street belabouring herself with her false values, all the while attempting to convince herself with a litany of Charles's essential worth until, in a rare moment of honesty, like the sun breaking through the clouds, she saw the irony of this inner conversation. She, Edith, was using these arguments as if the opposition to them would overwhelm her should she give it a hearing. She was forcing herself to the next step when any impartial observer, and of this she was suddenly quite sure, would have freely volunteered that of course Charles was more decent than Simon. In fact, in any real way, it was perfectly obvious that Simon wasn't decent at all. Unlike Charles he had no honour, only pragmatism. He could not be true because there was no truth in him. His morality was a tawdry bundle of received, fashionable causes that he believed would make him attractive to casting directors. Edith was talking herself into thinking that in some ways she preferred Charles to Simon when to anyone who knew them both there could be no comparison. Charles, dull as he might be, was infinitely the better man. Simon was a mass of nothing.

She saw then that people would not think ill of her for coming round to this opinion — something she dreaded — but, on the contrary, they were amazed she had ever walked out on her husband for such a hollow gourd. Even so, and at this moment she felt it behoved her to be honest for once in her life, it was not for Charles's virtues that she wanted him back nor even because of her secret. It was for the sense of protected importance that she missed and that now, in her unadmitted crisis, she needed more than ever. The truth was that her months away had only finally confirmed her mother's prejudices.

Edith had gone for a walk and found it was cold outside.

'I think I'm leaving Eric,' said Caroline, as they nosed at last on to the M11. Edith nodded, raised her eyebrows slightly and said nothing. 'No comment?' asked Caroline. She was a terrifying driver, as she had never mastered the art of conducting a conversation without facing the other person.

Edith glanced nervously at a lorry that passed within inches and shook her head. 'Not really. I don't know that I'm in a position to make a comment. Anyway,' she stared out of the window, 'I never grasped why you married him. Leaving him seems much easier to understand.'

Caroline laughed. 'I've forgotten why I married him. That's the problem.'

'What luck there are no children.'

'Is it?' Caroline's face had assumed a hard Mount Rushmore look, which gave her the appearance of an Indian chief in some fifties western when one was still allowed to be on the side of the cowboys. 'I think it's rather a bore. It means if I want any I'll have to go through the whole bloody business again.' There was some truth in this. 'I can't help feeling sometimes that, within limits, it doesn't seem to make much odds whom one marries. One's bound to get a bit sick of them in the end.'

'Then why leave Eric?'

'I said "within limits",' answered Caroline with some asperity, taking her eyes completely off the road and narrowly avoiding a large transporter. 'In my old age, I have to concede that Lady Uckfield may have been right.' One of the most chilling comments on the private family life of the Broughtons was that Caroline and Charles, when talking to each other, would refer to their mother as 'Lady Uckfield'. It was sort of a joke and sort of a comment. Either way there was something troubling in it. Caroline continued. 'She told me it was a mistake to marry a man who was vulgar and had no money, which of course I went on to do. But she added that if I had to break these primary rules then I should be sure to marry a man who was polite and kind, rudeness and cruelty being the only two qualities that absolutely poison life.'

Edith nodded. 'I agree with her,' she said. She was perhaps surprised at the wisdom of her mother-in-law's injunction. She shouldn't have been. Lady Uckfield was far too intelligent not to realise that true misery stifles all endeavour. It was just that she was much more sensible than Edith about what constitutes true misery.

'Eric was so rude. Not just to me but to everyone. A dinner party at our house was a kind of survival course. The guests had to arrive armed and see how many brickbats they could avoid before escaping into the night. Looking back, I can't imagine why anyone ever came twice.'

'Then why did you marry him?'

'Partly to annoy my mother,' said Caroline, as if that was absolutely understood. 'Then partly because he was so good-looking. And finally, I suppose, because he tremendously wanted to marry me.'

'And now you don't think he was genuine.'

'No, he was genuine all right. He was desperate to marry me. But it was because I was a marquess's daughter. I didn't see that. Or I didn't see it was only that.'

Edith said nothing. The conversation was moving into a dangerous area. She heard the distant sound of cracking ice under her halting steps. 'Right,' she murmured.

But Caroline had not finished with her. 'Rather as you wanted to marry Charles,' she said. When Edith made no comment, she continued, 'Not that I blame you. There's much more point to it that way round. At least marrying Charles made you a countess. Even now, I can't see what Eric thought he'd get out of it.'

They drove on for a bit in silence. Then Edith re-opened. 'If that's what you think why are you driving me up here?'

Caroline thought for a moment, wrinkling her brows, as if the idea had only just occurred to her. She was almost hesitant when she spoke. 'Because Charles is so unhappy.'

'Is he?' said Edith, thrilled.

'Yes.' Caroline lit a cigarette and for a moment Edith thought they were going into the central divider. 'I know Lady Uckfield thinks it'll blow over. She has a fantasy that he will forget you and marry the daughter of some peer who'll give him four children, two of whom will inherit estates from relations of their mother's.' Caroline laughed wryly. This was of course a wonderfully accurate résumé of Lady Uckfield's dreams.

'Are you quite sure she's wrong?'

'How little you know my brother,' said Caroline, and lapsed again into silence. Edith naturally longed to hear more of this wretched and unhappy man, whose life was a misery without her and to whom, by some strange miracle, she was already married. She gave Caroline a quizzical look and the latter relented. 'In the first place I do not think that my mother's idea of your perfect successor is Charles's. To put it bluntly, if that was what he was looking for he could have found it with very little difficulty. But that is no longer the point. Charles is a simple man. He is capable of feelings but they are uncomplicated, straightforward and deep. He can hardly communicate and he cannot flirt at all.' Edith thought with wonder of her other love, who could only communicate and flirt. Simon's problem was the opposite of Charles's. He could not feel. Caroline was still talking. 'Charles has made his choice. You. You are his wife. In his heart that's it. Finish. I am not saying that if you did divorce him he wouldn't eventually settle for someone else as brood-mare but in his heart he would have failed and his real wife would be out there walking around with someone else. And that, my dear, would be you.'

The rest of the drive was accomplished in silence. It was almost as if they were waiting for the next event in the plot before they could continue their discussion. And so they wound their way through the flat Norfolk landscape until at last they turned into a well-kept but somewhat overshadowed drive, which in its turn, when they had been released from the high walls of rhododendron, brought them to the wide, gravelled forecourt of the main house.

Feltham Place had passed into the Broughton family in 1811 when the then Lord Broughton had married Anne Wykham, only child of Sir Marmaduke Wykham, sixth baronet and the last of his line. The house was Jacobean, more a gentleman's than a nobleman's residence, picturesque rather than magnificent with roofs bristling with barley sugar chimneys and possibly for this reason it had never managed to catch at the family's imagination. Like many houses of its period it was in a dip (before the pumping innovations of the late seventeenth century allowed those splendid, landscaped views), although the flatness of the county gave a certain openness at the bottom of its valley. It might have functioned as the Broughtons' Dower House or as a seat for the heir, but there were other houses nearer Uckfield that had served these turns at least until the Second World War and recently, as we know, the heir had chosen to live with his parents.

In the past, Feltham had been let but it was taken back for the shooting in the 1890s and had been farmed in hand ever since, despite the family's allowing the sport to lapse after the war. Charles had revived the shoot over the last few years and he was proud of the fact that he could now safely let two and three-hundred-bird days, secure in the knowledge that there would be no great disappointments. He and his keeper had worked hard. The covers and hedgerows had been replanted, the feeding pens reorganised, indeed the whole appearance of the countryside had been more or less restored to the condition of a century before. But despite this, he was not tempted to bring his own shooting guests to Feltham. They were offered the splendours of Broughton while businessmen, people with mobile telephones and gleaming sports wear, took the shooting at Feltham by the day. At a (considerable) extra cost they could even stay overnight, which may have accounted for the somewhat boarding-house quality within.

The Wykham who'd built the place had been a favourite of King James I and in those days it had been much larger but the king's beau had been improvident and his heir (a nephew since, unsurprisingly, the builder had never married) demolished two-thirds of it. This meant that the brickwork and carving on the façade and throughout the house was of a much higher standard than one would normally associate with the scale of building. Inside, all the first-rate furniture and pictures had long since been swallowed up by Broughton and most of what remained dated from its rehabilitation as a shooting-lodge at the end of the last century. Lumpy, leather-covered Chesterfields provided the seating and the walls were covered with second-rate portraits and enormous, indifferently painted scenes of hunting, shooting and all the other methods of country killing. Still, the rooms themselves were pleasant and the staircase, more or less the sole survivor from the days of the Jacobean favourite, was magnificent.

Edith hardly knew the place. In Charles's mind it was the nearest thing to an 'office' in his weekly round. He ran it as a business and apart from an occasional appearance at a village show and an annual cocktail party for all those neighbours who might be tiresome about the shoot were they not courted every so often, he had no social profile in the county at all. Quite frequently he stayed with the Cumnors at their infinitely larger and more luxurious house four miles down the road, rather than put the ancient care-taking couple to the trouble of opening a bedroom.

Caroline drew up by the front door and the two women made their way into the wide and gloomy hall that took up two-thirds of the entrance front. It was decorated by a frieze of slightly bogus armorial tributes to the Wykhams and the Broughtons but otherwise boasted no colour at all apart from the brown of the panelling and the less attractive brown of the leather furniture. 'Charles!' Caroline called out. It was a chilly day and the interior of the house was noticeably colder than the air outside. Edith pulled her coat tightly around her. 'Charles!' shouted Caroline again, and she set off through a doorway that led first to the staircase and then into the former morning room that operated as Charles's office. Edith followed her. Desks and filing cabinets stood about the room, the chill slightly alleviated by a three-bar electric fire in the grate that looked as if its very existence breached the entire safety code. They were still standing there when another door, facing them, opened and there all at once stood a flummoxed Charles. To her amazement, even to her delight, Edith suddenly realised that she was shocked at his appearance. Gone was that sleek country gentleman who always looked as if he was on the way to make an advertisement for Burberry's. She was astonished to see that her fastidious husband was looking scruffy and unkempt. He was almost dirty. Caught out by her stare, he pushed his fingers through his hair. 'Hello,' he said, with a watery smile. 'Fancy seeing you here.'

At this point Caroline took her leave. 'I'm going in to Norwich,' she said. 'I'll be back in a couple of hours.' It was a relief really that she didn't even try to normalise the situation or start any we-were-just-driving-past nonsense.

Charles nodded. 'I see,' he said.

Left alone, Edith was oddly blank as to quite what she was going to say next. She sat on the edge of a chair near the fire like a housemaid at an interview and leaned forward to warm her hands. 'I hope you're not cross. I did so want to talk to you.

Properly. And I began to feel that I was never going to be allowed to. I'm afraid I thought I'd just chance it.'

He shook his head. 'I'm not a bit cross. Not at all.' He hesitated. 'I — I'm sorry about the telephone calls and all the rest of it. It wasn't my mother not telling me, you know. Well, it wasn't only that. I expect you thought it was. It was just that I didn't really know what to say. It seemed better to leave it all to the professionals. Of course now you're here…' He tailed off disconsolately.

Edith nodded. 'I had to know what you were thinking about everything. I understand your parents want you free straight away.'

'Oh that.' He looked sheepish. 'I don't mind. Honestly. Whatever suits you.' He stared at her in the unflattering light of an overhead bulb. 'How's Simon?'

'Fine. Very well. Loving his series.'

'Good. I'm glad.' He didn't sound it but he was trying to be courteous. Edith was struck anew by the decency and kindness of this man she had tossed aside. What had she been thinking of? Her own actions sometimes seemed to her so hard to understand. Like a foreign film. And yet these had been her choices. The conversation limped on.

'I don't think I ever came to Feltham at this time of year. I must have but I don't remember. It's rather lovely, isn't it?'

Charles smiled. 'Dear old Feltham,' he said.

'You ought to live here. Do it up. Get some of the stuff back.'

He half nodded. 'I think I'd be a bit lonely, stuck out here on my own. Don't you? Nice idea, though.'

'Oh, Charles.' In spite of the cynicism with which she had embarked on this mission Edith had become a victim of her own justifications. Like Deborah Kerr in The King and I, whistling her happy tune to make herself brave, Edith had succeeded in talking herself into believing that she was a romantic figure who had lost her love rather than a selfish girl who bitterly regretted her comforts. Her eyes began to moisten.

Oddly perhaps, it was only at this moment that Charles fully grasped she had definitely come to try to get him back. Up to this point he was still wondering if it might not just be for some financial or time-related scheme that she had made the journey.

Despite his earlier suspicions, his non-existent vanity made him slow to reach the obvious conclusion and he thought she might want him to agree to something before his lawyers could talk him out of it. He was not offended by this but, if it should prove to be the case, he was anxious to conceal his wretchedness from her. Both out of consideration for her feelings and from a (perfectly justifiable) sense of pride. It now occurred to him, with a lurch in his stomach, that this was not what he was dealing with. She wanted to come back to him. He looked at her.

For all his simplicity, he was not an idiot. Thinking along the same lines as that night in his study at Broughton he knew that he was no more interesting than when she left him. He also suspected that the world of show business had not really appealed to her, not at any rate for 'every day'. Just as a year of sin had served to give Edith a clearer idea of what Simon consisted of, so two years of marriage and a year apart had made Edith comprehensible to Charles. He knew she was an arriviste and the child of an arriviste. He saw her vulgarities of spirit now as sharply as he saw her fine points, of which, despite Lady Uckfield's comments, he still believed there were many. He also knew that if he made a move towards her the thing was settled.

He stared at the hunched-up figure, trying to scoop warmth out of the electric bars. Her coat was a sort of camel colour and looked rather cheap. Was this sad little figure, this 'blonde piece' as his mother would say, to be the next Marchioness of Uckfield? To be painted by some indifferent chocolate box portraitist and hung alongside the Sargeants, Laszlos and Birleys of the preceding generations? Was it in her to make a go of it?

But as he watched her, the sense of how vulnerable she suddenly seemed to him, with her bright make-up and her chain store coat, trying to charm him and looking instead somehow pathetic, overwhelmed him with pity and, in the wake of pity, with love. Whatever her suitability, whatever the limitations of her feelings, whatever her motives, he knew that he, Charles Broughton, could not be responsible for her unhappiness. He was, in short, incapable of hurting her.

'Are you happy?' he said slowly, knowing as he did so that the words gave her permission to return to him and to his life.

At the sound of them Edith knew her pardon had come through. Despite the difficulties with Simon, with her mother-inlaw, with the newspapers, with the sun, with the moon, she could now be Charles's wife again if she chose, which, not very surprisingly given all the circumstances, she did. For a second she felt almost sick with relief but then, since she did not wish to appear too desperate, she waited for a minute before she spoke, deliberately punctuating the moment with a pregnant pause. Once satisfied that her answer was anticipated by them both she carefully raised her tear-stained eyes to his.

'No,' she said.

EPILOGUE

Smorzando

It did not, so far as I remember, cause any great murmur when Edith was delivered of a daughter seven months or so after the reconciliation. Of course, there was a lot of talk, particularly from her mother, about their being taken by surprise as Edith was

'so frighteningly early'. In fact, Mrs Lavery rather over-egged her performance by insisting on sitting in the hospital throughout the night because of the 'risks of premature birth', which naturally gave rise to a few funny stories on the dinner circuit, but nobody minded. Versions of this sort of folderol are still rather touchingly employed in Society on such occasions. These things are rituals rather than untruths and cause no harm. The point was the baby was female, which took any future strain out of the situation. It meant everything could return to normal without a lingering after-taste.

Even Lady Uckfield, usually so careful, gave herself away in a rare unguarded moment when I telephoned to learn the news.

'Boy or girl?' I asked when she picked up the receiver.

'Girl,' said Lady Uckfield. 'Isn't it a relief?' Then, quickly but not quickly enough, she added, 'That they're both doing so well.'

'A great relief,' I answered, going along with this dishonesty. There was no point in blaming her for retaining the deepest prejudices of her kind. Now that the baby could not inherit the glories of Broughton, thanks to the arcane laws governing the peerage that even Mr Blair, for all his trumpeting of women's rights, has not seen fit to change, she would present no further danger and might be lived with in peace. Since all three 'parents' were fair there was not much chance of the baby having the wrong colouring and, at least to date, the girl does not seem particularly to favour Simon, always assuming of course that the infant is his — something of which one can, after all, never be entirely sure. Not at least without resorting to DNA testing, which no entrant in Debrett's would ever risk for fear of what it might reveal. One foreign visitor at Broughton, ignorant of the excellent Edwardian maxim never to 'comment on a likeness in another's child' asked me if I did not think she took after Charles.

I may have imagined a momentary chill in the room but I nodded. 'I do,' I said. 'She's not like Edith at all.' Thereby earning an especially warm glance from my host. Amusingly enough, when I looked at the toddler properly, she did seem to resemble him a bit. But then again that may have been in expression rather than feature. It might seem strange but in later years Charles came to love the girl so much that his younger children would complain of his favouritism. Even less logically, she would eventually develop into the preferred grandchild of Lady Uckfield, which only goes to show that the old maxim is correct and there's nowt so queer as folk. At any rate, barely fourteen months later, Lady Broughton was once more brought to bed, this time of a boy. The new Viscount Nutley was welcomed with bonfires and bun fights in Sussex and Norfolk and, frankly, to be brutal and unmodernist about it, the exact paternity of little Lady Anne had ceased to matter much to anyone.

Caroline did divorce Eric. It was a quiet business without acrimony and with more style than I confess I thought Eric capable of. He was not single long. Within eighteen months he had married the daughter of an immensely rich Cheshire industrialist, Christine somebody or other. They were much better suited than he and Caroline had been. For one thing, she shared Eric's ambitions, which she pursued as relentlessly as if they had been her own and of course they soon were. I happened to meet them both at Ascot a few months after they married and I must say I liked her. She was full of energy and in many ways a good deal easier to rub along with than Caroline, even if she was already infected with Eric's nonsense. I remember her using the phrase 'our sort of people', meaning, I imagine, some sort of exclusive social group to which they belonged. It must have been a luxury for Eric who had spent his entire first marriage being reminded daily of an Inner Circle forever closed to him.

He growled at me by way of recognition but I was not offended. I had by this time forgiven Eric his earlier insults and anyway one of the freedoms of growing older is that one is no longer obliged to dislike someone simply because they dislike you. After all, he was entitled. Lady Uckfield had made no secret of how little she relished his company and had, somewhat maliciously I suspect, used me at times to demonstrate this.

'I suppose you still see them all?' he said when his wife had stopped discussing her new Poggenpohl kitchen.

I nodded. 'We've got a baby now so a bit less than I did. But yes, I see them.'

'And is dear Edith happy in her work?' Of course, it was quite understandable that he should be irritated when he contemplated one who had survived the course that had brought him down.

'I think so.'

'I'll bet she is. And how is darling "Googie"?' He spat out the name just as I had once heard Edith do before her rehabilitation. Now, for her at least, the name had re-normalised. 'I wonder what my dear ex-mother-in-law thinks of all the recent developments.'

'Oh, I'd say she was pretty merry, one way and another,' I said, for all the world as if I thought he cared, and we nodded to each other and moved on.

As I strolled away to rejoin Adela for tea with Louisa in the Household Stand I pondered my answers and concluded that I had spoken no more than the truth. Of course, as everyone had predicted, the children had changed everything. One may be exhausted but there is little time to be bored with two children under four, particularly as Edith, to her mother-in-law's bemusement, had eschewed a proper Norland nanny and chosen instead to have a series of Portuguese and Australians.

Charming girls, one and all (or nearly all), but not the type to take over the nursery as their province. I thought it a wise decision and so, I was pleased to note, did Charles.

But as to quite what Lady Uckfield really made of it all … One would have to get up very early in the morning to know precisely what she thought about anything, earlier than I rise, certainly. We were not, as I had predicted, quite such friends after the reinstatement of Edith. Although I have not yet given up hope of regaining my former position of Court Favourite.

Poor woman, she had allowed herself to dream a little during the interregnum and the imagined life she had woven for herself with dear Clarissa or one of her kind as junior chatelaine had filled her with happy prospects. Ironically her imaginings had not been all that unlike the despised Mrs Lavery's. Lady Uckfield, too, had seen herself as a special friend of her daughter-in-law's family. The two grandmothers would lunch together perhaps and take in an exhibition… So it was hard to reconcile herself to the Return of Edith, not least because she had allowed herself the rare luxury of admitting what she really felt while Edith was away. Worse, she had confessed these secrets not only to herself and her husband, which was bad enough, but to me, a non-relation. In doing so she knew she had given me a weapon. From now on whenever she referred to 'our darling Edith' there was a risk that I might catch her eye if I so wished and in her heart expose her. I had no intention of doing this but the threat of it introduced a coldness between us nevertheless. I was and am sorry but there is nothing to be done about it. Meanwhile, Adela and I continue to stay at Broughton pretty regularly.

I remember once Lady Uckfield did let herself go a little. There had been a dinner party and the guests were spread out in knots over the drawing room and the Red Saloon next door. Edith was at the centre of an admiring group, for you will understand that a lot of people had a good deal of ground to make up having dropped her during her period of exile. One might have thought that those who had been loyal, Annette Watson for one, would have been rewarded with a shower of invitations but I don't believe they were. Perhaps this was predictable. Anyway, on this particular evening, surrounded as she was, Edith made some remark, I forget what, which was greeted with gales of sycophantic laughter. I was alone, having helped myself to some more coffee, so there was no one to overhear when Lady Uckfield drew level.

'Edith Triumphans,' she said. I nodded. But she would not let it go. 'To the victor the spoils.'

'And is Edith the victor?' I asked.

'Isn't she?'

'I don't know.' I shrugged. I imagine I was attempting to be philosophical and by an easy and familiar transition had become dishonest.

'Of course she is the victor,' said Lady Uckfield, quite truthfully. 'You have won.'

Now this was irritating. She was right about Edith, I do admit, but not about me. If anything I had always been a partisan of the Uckfields during the struggle for Charles's soul and she knew it. 'Don't blame me,' I said quite firmly. 'You asked me not to encourage her and I didn't. It was your own daughter who arranged it all, not me. The fact is Charles wanted her back.

Voilà tout. He must know what's best for himself, I suppose.'

Lady Uckfield laughed. 'That, of course, is precisely what he does not know.' Her tone was a little bitter but more predominately sad. It was also, as I knew it must be, the tone of resignation. 'I told you I didn't believe they would be happy and I wait anxiously to be proved wrong. However,' she waved her little claws and the jewels in her rings flashed in the firelight, 'the thing is done. We must make the best of it. It is time to move on to the next square. Let us at least hope they will be no less happy than everybody else.' And she was gone.

Would they be less happy than everybody else? That was certainly the question. Although she had returned to him without treaty, Edith had nevertheless wrung some considerable concessions in the process. To start with she had grasped the folly of her earlier belief that it was safer to be bored in the country than entertained in London and she had persuaded Charles into a house in Fulham, which had been purchased for more or less what the little flat in Eaton Place had gone for. Now she allowed herself a day or two in London a week. She had also found some committees to sit on and had become involved, down in Sussex, in the actual day-to-day running of a hospice near Lewes. All in all, she had started to evolve the life she would be leading at sixty when she herself, never mind everyone else, would have forgotten that there had ever been a hiccup in her early married life. I thought, on reflection, that it all boded quite well.

We went down to Broughton two or three times a year as a rule. Adela and Edith were never much more than amiable with each other but Charles became very fond of my wife and so we were easy guests, I think. We enjoyed it as, apart from anything else, we had a baby in tow and the houses we could stay in without feeling that we had imported a miniature anarchist were few. Our son, Hugo, was about five months older than Anne and that ensured a measure of shared activity, accompanied by a good deal of merriment from both mothers. It is a truism but it is still true that the longer one knows people the less relevant it becomes whether or not one liked them initially. As I knew from my friendship with Isabel Easton, there is no substitute for shared history and it was clear that by the time ten years had passed, my wife and Lady Broughton would think of themselves as close friends without ever necessarily liking each other much more than they did to start with.

Needless to say, at an early stage after the great patch-up, Edith wished me to understand that she was not interested in pursuing long conversations about her choices, past or present. I quite agreed with her so she needn't have worried. I know only too well how tedious it is to have the recipient of earlier intimacies still hanging around when those intimacies have become irrelevant embarrassments. Anyway, so far as I was concerned, she had seen sense and I hadn't the slightest desire to shake her resolve.

She tested me a few times, waiting, when we happened to be alone, to see if I would bring up the subject of Simon or Charles or marriage or, worse, the baby, but I never did and I am happy to say she began to relax into our old intimacy.

In truth, even had she questioned me, I would have had little to report on the Simon front. I don't know how anxious his wife was to take him back when she had been given the surprising news that his Great Affair was over but, whatever her feelings, she had done it. I saw him once, some months later, at an audition and he told me he was planning to move to Los Angeles to 'try my luck'. I wasn't surprised since this is not an unusual reaction for a player after a disappointing career. As a rule the Hollywood pattern for English actors is simple. They are delighted to go, they are told there is a lot of work for them if they stick it out, they tell everyone how fabulous it is, they spend all their money — and then they come home. It seems to take from two to six years. However, there are always exceptions and I would not be surprised if Simon were one. He seemed to have all the qualities the natives of that city admire and none that they dislike.

Perhaps because he knew we would not be meeting for a while, he asked after Edith. I muttered that she was well and he nodded. 'I'm glad.'

'Good.'

He shook his head at me and raised his eyebrows. 'I don't know,' he said. 'Women!'

I nodded and gave him a sympathetic laugh so we parted friends. I suppose one might gauge the extent of his heartbreak from this subsequent reaction. I do not think Charles would have shaken his head to an acquaintance and said, 'Women!' like a character from a situation comedy had his wife chosen never to return. I think he would have curled up in the dark somewhere and never mentioned her name again, so I suppose we must all concede that Edith had ended up with the man who loved her most. Even so, there was no malice in Simon's eyes and I think one should remember this at least, that when all was said and done there really wasn't any harm in him. It is surely not so terrible a testimonial.

Nor did I ever betray to Edith the Eastons', or rather David's, anxiety to stay in with the family, if necessary at her expense.

Gradually even that slightly uncomfortable connection was also resumed. All in all, things went back to normal surprisingly quickly. Even the papers only gave it a couple of squibs — in the Standard, I seem to remember, and in one of the tabloids

— and then it was over.

Just once she did bring it up, perhaps because I never had. We were walking in the gardens on a Sunday in summer three or even four years after she had returned to the fold and we found ourselves down by the approach to the rose garden where they had set up our chairs for the filming, however long ago it was. The others were playing croquet and as we strolled along, the sound of balls being hit and people getting cross wafted gently over us. Suddenly I was struck by the image of Simon Russell, in his frilled shirt, stretched out on the ground in all his comeliness, as he gossiped that faraway day to a younger, sillier Edith. I said nothing of course and I was taken by surprise when she suddenly spoke into my imaginings.

'Do you ever see him now?' she said.

I shook my head. 'No. I don't think anyone does. He's gone off to California.'

'To make films?'

'Well, that's the idea. Or at least to make a television series.'

'And is he making one?'

'Not yet but you never know.'

'What about his wife?'

'She's gone with him.'

Edith nodded. We strolled on into the rose garden. Some heavily scented, dark red blooms, Papa Meilland maybe, filled the warm air with their sweet stench.

'Aren't you ever going to ask me if I'm happy?' said Edith with a provocative flick of her head.

'No.'

'Well, I'll tell you anyway.' She broke off a half-open bud and fed its stalk through the top buttonhole of my shirt. 'The fact is, I'm happy enough.'

I did not question her statement. I am glad she was and is happy enough. That is a good deal happier than a large proportion of my address book.

About the Author:

Julian Fellowes, writer, actor and film director, was educated at Ampleforth, Magdalene College, Cambridge and the Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art. As an actor he is probably best-known for his portrayal of the incorrigible Lord Kilwillie in BBC Television's series Monarch of the Glen. In the cinema he was seen in Shadowlands with Anthony Hopkins and Tomorrow Never Dies with Pierce Brosnan. His film screenplay debut was Gosford Park, directed by Robert Altman, which won the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay among many other prizes. He has written and directed the film of A Way Through the Wood, based on a book by Nigel Balchin. In the theatre he has written the 'book' for the Cameron Mackintosh/Walt Disney stage musical of Mary Poppins. As well as Snobs, he has a children's story being published in 2006. He has a wife, Emma, a son, Peregrine, and a dachshund called Fudge.

'I've just got to tell your mother something.'

'Righto. I'll get the car. Be outside our entrance in five minutes. And don't worry.'

She rather loved him for telling her not to worry about an experience she had been going through once a month since she was twelve but she chose not to assuage his anxiety. With a weak smile, she watched him scuttle out of the room. In this choice of lie, Diana had judged correctly if she wanted instant action. As she calculated, Charles, like all men of his type, had the greatest possible distaste for any of the mechanics of womanhood. One hint of them and he neither needed nor wanted further explanation in order to make him act fast. As he thundered down the family staircase, she listened with the just pride of an efficient workman.

===OO=OOO=OO===

Edith had hardly reached the landing by the bronze of the slave before Lady Uckfield issued forth from a roped-off archway.

'Edith? Is that you? Why didn't you tell us you were coming?' Her mother-in-law slid her arm through hers and attempted to drag her towards the door into the family sitting room. Edith knew that the game was up, silently cursing herself for not pulling a scarf over her face and sliding in unnoticed, but even so she would not give in at once. She extricated herself from Googie's grip and started towards the library and Charles's study beyond.

'I thought I'd be a nuisance and I only want a quick word with Charles. It won't take a moment.' She was walking so fast that, to the delight of the public present, Lady Uckfield was forced to break into a sort of trot to keep up with her. They passed into the splendid library with its high mahogany and ormolu-mounted bookshelves. Above the chimneypiece, an early Broughton in a chestnut periwig gazed down, startled at the scene being played out below him. A few tourists had recognised one or other of them and since the marital split had been in half the newspapers in the country, they left off their bored examination of the thousands of gilded, leather spines and turned all their attention to the two women, thrilled by this unexpected entertainment opportunity.

'Are you staying for luncheon?' said Lady Uckfield, aware of being the cynosure of all eyes and anxious to normalise this very abnormal situation.

'Why? Would you like me to?' said Edith. She in contrast was thoroughly enjoying the exposure of her mother-in-law to the gaze of the common multitude.

'Of course,' said Lady Uckfield, grabbing and pulling at Edith's sleeve in a vain attempt to slow her progress across the gleaming floor.

'I don't think so,' said Edith. She was at the study door by now and her hand was almost on the knob when it opened to reveal the stately form of Lady Bohun. Imperceptibly, with a movement hardly visible to the naked eye, she nodded to her hostess. Edith saw it and at once knew she was too late. The bird had flown.

'Hello, Edith,' said Diana in her slowest and most mannered drawl. 'Will you excuse me? I'm just running into Lewes for something and I must get there before everything closes. Will you be here when we get back?'

'What do you think?' said Edith, and Diana had gone without further ado. Left alone with her daughter-in-law, Lady Uckfield drew her into the room and closed the door. 'Sit down for a moment,' she said, taking her own place behind Charles's desk and absent-mindedly tidying his scattered papers into neat piles.

'There's no need for this,' answered Edith. 'If Charles isn't here, I'll go.'

'Please sit down,' was the repeated request, and Edith did. 'I am sorry you see us as your enemies, my dear.'

'You may be sorry but you can hardly be surprised.'

Lady Uckfield gave her a hurt look. 'I wanted your marriage to work, you know. You have misjudged me if you think otherwise. I always wanted you to be happy.'

'You wanted us to make the best of a bad job.'

'But you didn't, did you?' said Lady Uckfield crisply, all trace of her customary gush and vibrato gone.

There was a measure of reason to this that took some of the wind out of Edith's sails as she was forced to admit. Was it rational of her to suggest that Lady Uckfield should have celebrated when she, Edith, came into their lives? Why should her mother-in-law want her back now that this unpleasant episode was almost over? Lady Uckfield was not finished. 'A year ago,'

she said, 'you were sick of the sight of Charles. When he spoke you gritted your teeth, when he touched you, you shivered. I am his mother and I lived in the same house with you. Did you think I wouldn't notice these things?'

'It wasn't like that.'

'It was exactly like that. He bored you. He bored you to death. Worse than that, he irritated you to the point of distraction.

He could not please you however hard he tried. Nothing he said or did was right. He set your nerves on edge by his very presence and yet now… what am I to make of this sudden eagerness to see him? What has changed?'

Edith drew herself up and looked her opponent in the eye. She was determined somehow to try to gain the initiative. 'Has it occurred to you that I might have had some time for reflection? Or am I too stupid in your eyes to think of anything but money and social climbing?'

'My dear, I never thought you stupid.' Lady Uckfield held up her palm in protest. 'You must at least give me credit for that.' There was a noise on the gravel and the older woman walked over to the window but it was not, as she had feared, Charles coming back for something he'd forgotten. 'I have to ask myself why now, why suddenly, a meeting is so essential when in the first months away you exhibited no such wish. I am a mother and I have to say to myself, what could have changed that might make a reunion with my son so desirable now when it was so un desirable then?'