'What is the matter with you?'
Simon just smiled and shook his head. He himself was not exactly clear as to why he had such butterflies although it was true he did think that the Laverys were smarter than they were. He had a very unclear idea of the nuances of London Society and, since he had no knowledge of the Inner Circle whatever, he was unaware of the extent to which Edith had been an outsider at the time of her marriage. Since he still thought of his new mistress as fearfully smart he imagined her background was correspondingly impressive. But that was not actually the source of his unease on this particular evening. Probably it was the more ordinary complaint that this formalisation of their relationship, this presentation to the parents, seemed to set some sort of seal of finality on what had originally been nothing more than a flirtation. He had not really, even now, faced that he was heading into the realms of 'divorce' and 'division of property' and 'maintenance' and 'custody' and all sorts of other depressing words and phrases and yet that is what suddenly seemed to loom ahead. He supposed that in some perhaps roundabout way Mr Lavery was going to ask him about his 'intentions' and it struck him that he didn't really have any intentions — not absolutely fixed ones anyway. But then he glanced across at Edith and she did look very lovely when he thought about it and he was aware of how much prettier her profile was than Deirdre's, who had always looked just a little gormless from sideways on and he thought that after all he could do worse. And thus mollified and heartened he got out of the car.
Mrs Lavery had confided in her husband about her meeting in Colefax. The words of the conversation had gone round and round her head until she had tried to spin them into a skein of hope. Even as she cooked for her daughter's lover she shouted through to the drawing room, 'What do you think he meant by "cast down" exactly?'
Kenneth Lavery was almost as unhappy as his wife over the turn events had taken but for more honourable motives. He hated to see his beloved 'Princess' involved in a public scandal. He hated to witness his wife's despair. And he was not insensible to the fact that his daughter had thrown away a position of power from which she might have achieved fine things and run instead to a place barely within decent society. He had been proud of his daughter as a Great Lady and he was saddened by her fall. Having said that, he was a good deal more philosophical about the nature of Edith's folly than his wife.
Unlike her he had never deluded himself that Edith's marriage was going to make all that much of a difference in his own life.
'I think he meant what he said. Charles is cast down. Of course he's cast down. His wife has just gone off with another man. What would you expect him to be?'
Stella Lavery stuck her head round the door. 'I just meant that it sounds as if Charles still hasn't got used to the idea. I wondered if there was any point in perhaps getting in touch with him…?' Her voice trailed away, as her husband started to shake his head slowly but firmly from side to side.
'My dear, it is not Charles who decided to end the marriage. It doesn't matter what he thinks. He is not to blame for this.
Nor do I think it fair to start trying to stir him up. Maybe he is getting over her, maybe he isn't. Either way it will not help him to have his hopes revived by you. He is a nice man and our daughter has behaved badly to him. It is fitting for us to keep out of his way.' So saying he returned to the television.
His wife did not resent this treatment by her husband because in her heart she agreed with it. Try as she might to affect some sort of modern tolerance the fact remained that she was deeply, deeply ashamed of Edith's behaviour. As long as she could remember she had imagined herself perfectly suited for a Great Role in the public life of England. She would daydream as she watched those ladies-in-waiting hovering behind the Queen in Parliament, all dressed in their fifties Hartnell frocks, and she had thought how well she, Stella Lavery, would have acquitted herself as Duchess of Grafton or Countess of Airlie if fate had only called her. She would have served well, she knew, even if, like the little mermaid, every step had been taken on knives. And all this fantasy had been passed on to her daughter who had, miraculously, made it come true. But now, instead of hearing that Edith had been asked to chair the Red Cross or to join the household of one of the princesses, the telephone had rung to tell her that it was all over. That her dream was in ruins. And at the bottom of this pit of slime into which she had been hurled was the bitter gall of knowing that all over London people were tut-tutting and saying that after all Charles had married beneath him, that Edith was a little nobody who just couldn't 'handle it' and that he should have stuck to his own kind.
The doorbell went but before they could get to it Edith had let herself in and was calling to them through the flat. As the lovers entered the drawing room, she hurried to kiss her father. He gave her an affectionate squeeze and she knew he at least would be no trouble as she led him over to be introduced to Simon. One glance at the frozen statue of her mother framed in the doorway, however, told her all she needed to know about the evening to come.
Mrs Lavery advanced stiffly and extended a hand. But she could not smile and in a way it was almost a relief that, as soon as Kenneth had left them to fetch some drinks, she dispensed with Simon's inept attempts at small talk and launched straight into the heart of the matter. 'You will understand that this is all very difficult for us, Mr Russell.' She deliberately ignored his attempts to make her call him Simon and in this there was a certain similarity to the way her idol, Lady Uckfield, would have managed the meeting. The latter would have been much cosier, of course. 'We are both very fond of our son-in-law. So you will forgive us if we don't fall on your neck.'
Simon smiled, crinkling up his eyes in a way that was usually effective. 'Neck-falling is quite optional, I assure you,' he muttered gaily.
Mrs Lavery did not return his smile. It wasn't that she was immune to physical attraction. She could see well enough that Simon was one of the handsomest men she had ever encountered but in her eyes his beauty was the explanation of her daughter's ruin. Nothing less. At that moment she could cheerfully have taken a knife and cut the features from his face if it would have turned Edith back from her chosen course. 'My daughter was,' she paused, 'is married to a fine man. Obviously you've thought about what you're doing but it's hard for us to see her break her vows without a pang.'
'It wouldn't have cost you much of a pang if I was leaving Simon for Charles,' said Edith.
Now this was completely true. So true in fact that it made Mr Lavery smile momentarily as he came back in with a tray of glasses, but Edith was forgetting that Mrs Lavery had cast herself in the part of Hecuba, the Noble Widow. In Stella's shattered mind she and Googie Uckfield were two high-born victims in a cosmic disaster (she talked of Lady Uckfield as Googie but not yet to her. Now, she thought tearfully, she would never have the chance). There was no room for irony in her suffering. She looked at her daughter with brimming eyes.
'How little you know me,' she said, and retreated majestically into the kitchen. Edith, her father and Simon stared at each other.
'Well, I suppose we all knew it was going to be a rough night,' said Mr Lavery, tucking into his whisky.
Later, sitting round the oval reproduction table in the flat's modest dining room, the four of them did contrive some quasi-normal conversation. Mr Lavery questioned Simon about acting and Simon questioned Mr Lavery about business and Mrs Lavery fetched the food and removed the plates and made elaborately courteous remarks all evening. She had that uniquely media personality she hardly knows, only to discover in later years that nobody usually questions anyone's 'right' to send them an invitation. If they want to go, they will accept. If they don't, they won't. So, now, it would not have occurred to Lord Uckfield to ponder whether or not Simon Russell was his social equal. He appeared to consider himself so, and that, coupled to the fact that his role in Lord Uckfield's life consisted of eating dinners and telling funny stories, more than justified his amiability and relaxation in the peer's eyes. Just so are many social careers,
particularly in London, constructed. Simon was no different to the art-dealers and opera-enthusiasts that are taken up by the various duchesses of our day, whose grinning images, sandwiched between media personalities and the wives of the heirs to great fortunes, are glimpsed in magazines. Of course, such people, like Simon, are generally unaware that beneath the superficial acceptance that their charm and easy manner can gain for them, their grand hosts do not seriously consider them to belong to their world. It is sad to watch the
'walker-favourite' of a great family arrive, after years of drawing-room service, at a public event — a wedding, say, or, worse, a memorial — only to find that they are placed in the back pew between the local MP and the central heating duct, while half-known and much disliked grandees are shown up to the front. Such is life. Or such, at least, are the values of this life.
Something that Simon Russell was quite ignorant of, and Lady Uckfield knew very well indeed.
What interested me this evening, however, was not Lady Uckfield's response to Simon, which was predictably one of careful amusement, but Edith's. The sulks and rather affected hostility of the previous night had gone and been replaced by a mannered silence. She was looking more beautiful than she had been the evening before, in a black skirt and cream silk top, with some pearls at her throat and another string wound round her wrist in a chunky tangle. For want of a better word, she looked sexier than I had seen her since her marriage. She had not abandoned her cold hauteur, which I truly believe was already unconscious, but as we walked in, she looked up from the sofa with the kind of measured glance that I have learned from experience generally indicates that a woman means business.
Looking back, I am forced to conclude that Edith's plan to stay in the country in order to keep out of trouble was a poor one. Like some bored colonial wife in a hill station in India, the lack of sympathetic companions only really served to throw into advantageously high relief anyone who did make it to the outpost. I am not sure that if she and Charles had flung themselves into the whirl of parties, charities and all the other rubbish so eagerly awaiting them in London, that her virtue would have been in graver danger. I suspect it would have been quite the contrary. Society has the great merit of blunting the dullness of one's partner. The couple that never talk to each other never discover how little they have in common.
Companionship, like retirement in the middle classes, can so often bring divorce in its wake. One thing I am sure of: in London, Edith would never have been attracted to Simon Russell. He was astonishingly good-looking as I have said, but in truth the trailer was better than the feature. He could talk and he was a really expert flirt, a joy to watch in action in fact, but when the chips were down and the doors were closed there was not much substance there. I do not mean to imply that I disliked him. On the contrary, I was extremely fond of him. And he could discuss mortgages or Europe or Madonna as well as anyone, but then couldn't Charles (at least the first two)? Of the feu sacré, that holy, charismatic flame that makes the world seem well lost for love, Simon had none at all. Or none that was discernible to me.
'Tell me, Mr Russell, what sort of acting do you like best?' This was Lady Uckfield. She was always careful to address strangers, especially those younger than herself as 'Mr' and 'Miss' or by their correct title. The main reason for this, indeed the reason for her whole vocabulary, was to underpin her image of herself as a miraculous survival of the Edwardian age in modern England. She liked to think that in her behaviour and manner people had a chance to see how things were done in the days when they were done properly. How matters would have been managed by Lady Desborough or the Countess of Dudley or the Marchioness of Salisbury or any of the other forgotten fin de siècle beauties who made their lives their art, which consequently perished with them. As part of this carefully studied performance, everything she touched was credited with uniqueness. She would speak of 'receipts' and 'luncheon' as she made a special point of her Irish ham ('dry and delicious and quite unfindable in England') or her French cherries ('I'm simply stuffing myself with them') or her yellow, American paper ('I find I just can't write without it'). The fun of this approach was that all her guests were blackmailed, on the principle of the Emperor's New Clothes, into agreeing that they could perceive an enormous difference in everything that was set before them, thus reinforcing the very prejudices that had made them lie. Actually, the food was always good and well-chosen so I was as craven as the rest in pretending to discern huge shades of taste between different types of asparagus or whatever the challenge of the day might be. And anyway, the more I came to know Lady Uckfield the more I came to admire the completeness of her self-image. She never took time off from being the ultra-charming but ultra-fastidious marchioness of the long Edwardian Summer. Never. I am sure that if she were going in for a potentially fatal operation, she would be fussing about the make of the surgeon's scissors.
Edith never understood the strength of her mother-in-law's chosen path. She thought her a fuss-pot and a pain in the neck.
But Lady Uckfield had a self-discipline that would have kept Edith out of trouble. She did not know what it was to be bored
— or rather, to admit to herself that she was bored. The fact she was married to a man who hadn't a quarter of her brain had never disturbed her conscious mind for half a second. Her road was chosen and she would make a success of it without pity or remorse. In our sloppy century, one must at least respect, if not revere, such moral resolution. And, after all, to borrow a phrase from Trollope, when all was said and done, 'her lines had fallen in pleasant places'.
The other reason that Lady Uckfield called Simon 'Mr Russell' of course, was to stop him calling her 'Googie'.
'Well, I like being employed,' he said in answer to her question. 'I don't know that there's much more to it than that.'
'Don't you want to be a great film star?' To an actor, this is an unfair question. They all want to be great film stars but it is something that, by universal unspoken agreement, they are not supposed to admit to.
Simon fell back on the stock reply. 'I think I just want to do good work.' He looked awkward as he said it although there was, to be fair, more truth in this than one might suppose. Or rather, it would be true to say he wanted to be admired for doing good work, which is not quite the same thing. But how else was he to answer her? Obviously, he wanted to be a great film star, just as Lady Uckfield had supposed. But while he knew this, he also knew not to reveal it.
'And will you always be an actor?' Here Lady Uckfield unconsciously exposed her own prejudices and put Simon even more securely in his place. It is a question often asked and yet I cannot for the life of me imagine people saying, 'And will you always be a doctor? Will you always be an accountant?' The reason is simple: try as they might they cannot see acting as a
'real' job. There is a distinction to be made here between the middle classes, who in some mysterious way are often affronted by the choice of acting as a career — as if one was choosing to live off immoral earnings — and the upper classes, who are usually only too delighted for one to be having a jolly time. But neither group can envisage actually staying with it. Perhaps because, despite quite a large number of posh actors in recent years, very few seem to make it through into the top strata of the profession. This may be because of prejudice, or lack of temperament, or simply because the road is too thorny for those with financial options, but the result is that while almost every aristocrat knows someone whose younger son or daughter has had a 'go at the stage' almost none of them know one who has succeeded. It can't be encouraging.
'Will you always be a marchioness?' said Edith from her place on the sofa, without raising her eyes.
Lady Uckfield glanced at her daughter-in-law for a moment. She quite understood the significance of Edith's weighing in on Simon's behalf. But she turned it back with a laugh. 'These days, my dear, who knows?' The smile became general and although I could not resist exchanging a quick look with Bella, we set about the business of being guests.
Simon, delighted to have acquired so attractive a champion, joined Edith on the sofa and was soon regaling her with Tales of the Film Set in his most engaging fashion.
Within minutes he was sparkling like the Regent Street Christmas lights. I watched Edith as she laughed and answered and flicked her hair about and laughed again, and watching her, I became aware that Charles, half talking to his mother across the room, was watching too. We both knew that we were looking at a more animated Edith than we had either of us seen in many moons and I knew that, above all things, I must be careful not to catch his eye or I would become complicit in a knowledge that would ultimately bring him great unhappiness. When he glanced towards me, I looked away and joined Bella, who was, needless to say, telling some risqué story about being stranded overnight in a garage to a fascinated Tigger.
Once into the dining room, the evening was undemanding and pleasant enough. The food was excellent as usual and I noticed that the servants had begun to assume towards me that slightly ingratiating manner that is their usual defence in the case of 'regulars'. Having ascertained that you will be back, all servants who view their position as a career will abandon the (no doubt great but inevitably temporary) pleasure of assuming a patronising air and snubbing you on behalf of their masters.
Instead they adopt a kind of respectful chumminess that will ensure large tips and a good mention for them if they come up in conversation. This pat-a-cake is usually accepted. I have known many people who should know better to feel flattered at being made a fuss of by the staff of the grand. They believe this intimacy will bring them many opportunities in the future of demonstrating their familiarity with a Great House that may be denied to other guests. They will enjoy these moments a good deal. Properly handled, the relationship soon develops into a mutual, if slightly glutinous, admiration society. At any rate, on this occasion I disappointed myself by feeling quite warmed by deference as we made our way back to the car. Bella and I chatted on the way home, both of us relieved that the evening was over and yet pleased that it had been easier than we had anticipated. Reaching Brook Farm, we loitered outside as Simon went in and started to turn on the lights.
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