Snobs by Julian Fellowes (7 page)

The house looked no less forbidding than it had before but the fact that this fortress had been breached made its very chill gratifying. We stood outside the same door and rang the bell.

'I wonder if this is the right entrance,' said Isabel, but before we could ponder further, the door was opened by a butler and we were being escorted upstairs into the Red Saloon. I think I was surprised that the family appeared to use those rooms generally on public show. I had expected to be ushered into some other, sloaney sitting room on the first floor where the portraits and the Louis Quinze furniture would be interlarded with squashy sofas and chintz — that being the usual form on such occasions. I was to learn that I was quite right and the fact that we were having drinks in the Red Saloon and dinner in the State Dining Room should have given the game away at once. At all events, when I walked in and saw Mrs Lavery standing by the fireplace next to the burly figure of Lord Uckfield I knew. Edith had brought it off and we were there to witness her triumph.

Lady Uckfield stepped forward. She was a small, fine-boned, attractive woman who must have been extremely pretty in her youth but at first sight she seemed quite unimposing, even cosy. This always stands out in my mind as the most mistaken in a lifetime of incorrect first impressions. When she spoke her voice was light and belllike with that tremendously far-back enunciation that one associates with wartime newsreels. 'How terribly sweet you all are to be here,' she sparkled, smiling gaily. 'I know you've come down from London.' She directed this to me. The point being to show us that she had done her homework and she knew precisely who we were.

'How very kind you are to ask us.' I know this game and its responses.

'Not at all. We're
delighted
to see you here.' Lady Uckfield spoke with a kind of intimate urgency, which punctuated everything she said, as if she were sharing a permanent private joke that only you (or whomever she was talking to) would understand. I think of her now as the most socially expert individual I have ever known at all well. She combined a watchmaker's eye for detail with a madam's knowledge of the world. She was also utterly confident. I knew she had been born the prettiest daughter of a rich earl and I supposed then, young as I was, that her confidence was nothing to be wondered at, but I know now that such things do not always follow and I later learned that, like all of us, she had had her share of troubles. Maybe these had made her strong, maybe she was born strong anyway; whatever the reason, by the time I met her she was a complete and invulnerable perfectionist. Every evening I have ever participated in at her invitation has been constructed as carefully as a Cellini salt-cellar. From the species of potato to the arrangement of the cushions nothing was left to chance or others' judgement.

Of course, as soon as she said, 'How lovely it is to welcome some friends of our darling Edith,' I could see that she didn't like her future daughter-in-law. Having said that, 'didn't like' is probably not quite accurate. It was amazing to her that her son should be marrying someone she didn't know or even know of. It was fantastic to her that this girl's friends should not be the children of her friends.
Au fond,
it was extraordinary that Edith had got into the house at all. How had it happened? From thoughts like these, unfortunately for Edith, Lady Uckfield had deduced that Charles had been 'caught' and while she later (much later) qualified this impression, she never really changed it. As a matter of fact I'm not at all sure it wasn't true.

Isabel and I drifted over towards the fireplace. 'Hello, Mrs Lavery,' I said, and Edith's mother turned towards us, revealing in an instant that fatal, diffident graciousness that marks the successful social climber. Their manner invariably conveys to their true equals that the ladder has been pulled up and will never, ever be lowered again. The eager, snobbish Mrs Lavery we had known had gone and been replaced by the Snow Queen. It was as if we were in
Invasion of the Body Snatchers
and we were talking to a pod. Almost reluctantly, sounding every bit as vague about our identities as Lord Uckfield, she introduced us to our host.

He shook our hands in a hearty, blank way. 'Jolly good,' he said. 'Did you have a lot of trouble getting here?'

'We've only come from Ringmer,' said Isabel. 'My husband and I live there.'

'Really?' said Lord Uckfield. 'Was there a lot of traffic on the road? All those bloody people trying to escape the city if there's a glimmer of sun in the forecast. Was it difficult getting out?'

Isabel was about to embark on another long explanation of how she had not come from London, which I spared her. 'I came on the train,' I said.

'Very sensible.' He smiled his expansive, florid smile and nodded us away.

The Marquess of Uckfield was a dull and stupid man but there was, on the whole, no harm in him. He had been spoiled all his life and surrounded by the kind of toadies that such people find comfort in, garnered from the distant strands of their own families as well as on the highways and byways, and so he had no conception of how dull and stupid he really was. His uneducated banalities were greeted as if they had come from Solomon and his unfunny, old jokes were rewarded with gales of breathless laughter. If it is the experience of life that shapes us, is it to be wondered at that men like Lord Uckfield are so signally unshaped? People would speak, even out of his hearing, of his wisdom and judgement when he certainly had neither. The reason for this was that if they could convince themselves they truly believed him to possess these qualities, then they would not have to admit to themselves that they were toadies, which is a powerful motive among the fashionable. And if their outer acquaintance ever expressed doubt as to his Lordship's mental prowess, they could always answer, 'Ah, you wouldn't think that if you really knew him,' thereby giving themselves one mark for being on intimate terms with yet another Great House and a second mark for being a genuine person. He was not ungenerous, just lazy with the fundamental laziness that marks most friendships of the privileged with a dead hand. He had long since decided that pursuing relations with any but sycophants and those members of his own class necessary for his self-image was far too like hard work and he had abandoned the effort, but the decision had been a subconscious one and he still thought of himself as a kind man. In truth, he would always be kind to Edith. He was not in the least admirable but nor was he a snob and anyway, apart from anything else, he was just glad she was so pretty.

I could see the butler in the door catching Lady Uckfield's eye. She nodded, cast her professional glance about the room and walked over to me. 'We're having dinner in a minute,' she said. 'I wonder if you'd like to take in Lady Tenby?' She indicated a stout party of sixty-plus wedged in a chair by the fire. I nodded and muttered and Lady Uckfield continued her rounds. We had been almost the last-comers and I suppose everyone else already had their orders. I walked towards my partner, thinking I might be needed to haul her into an upright position. She looked up and extended a fat, jewelled hand.

'Are you taking me in?' she said. I nodded. 'Googie's so brilliant at organising things. She should have run a hotel chain. Help me up.'

I have always been uncomfortable with the
jejune
pseudo-informality implicit in the upper-class passion for nicknames. Everyone is 'Toffee' or 'Bobo' or 'Snook'. They themselves think the names imply a kind of playfulness, an eternal childhood, fragrant with memories of Nanny and pyjamas warming by the nursery fire, but they are really a simple reaffirmation of insularity, a reminder of shared history that excludes more recent arrivals, yet another way of publicly displaying their intimacy with each other. Certainly the nicknames form an effective fence. A newcomer is often in the position of knowing someone too well to continue to call them Lady So-and-So but not nearly well enough to call them 'Sausage', while to use their actual Christian name is a sure sign within their circle that one doesn't really know them at all. And so the new arrival is forced back from the normal development of friendly intimacy that is customary among acquaintances in other classes.

Dinner had been announced and my partner had lumbered to her feet and was now leaning heavily against me. I could see that for her at least this arm-in-arm procession was more than a self-conscious replay of an Edwardian custom: it was a very necessary service. A few couples ahead of us I could see Lady Uckfield chattering gaily into the face of a shell-shocked Kenneth Lavery. They reminded me of the front benches going through into the Lords to hear the Queen's speech, when the Tory ministers always seem to be filmed frenetically gabbling away to their glum and serious Socialist opposite numbers. Behind them Edith was with Lord Uckfield. She was wearing a black velvet dress, cut low at the neck with long tight sleeves and no jewellery of any sort. The effect was beautiful and
triste,
like Juliet in mourning. I suppose she felt it would be tasteless to look too merry.

Lady Tenby followed my glance. 'Very good-looking. No question about that. But who on earth is she?'

I smiled down at her. 'She's a great friend of mine,' I said.

'Oops,' said Lady Tenby, and we continued in silence.

I later learned that the Countess of Tenby was the widowed mother of four daughters and, as Lady Uckfield's second cousin, had always rather hoped to get Charles for one of them. It was not an unreasonable ambition. They were nice girls and quite pleasant of face. Any one of them would probably have made him happy. In the end only the eldest, Lady Daphne, married at all 'well' in their mother's opinion (and he was a younger son), two married routine Hoorays and the youngest and best-looking went to California to live with the founder of a rather sinister sect. The point being that Lady Tenby was not a nasty or an unreasonable woman. She had put in many years work on her daughters for what were to be meagre dividends and now, this evening, she had been invited to witness the triumph of an interloper, a stranger who had stolen into their camp under cover of darkness and made off with the fattest sheep of all. Of course she would smile and congratulate and kiss but then she would go home and say how marvellous Googie and Tigger had been, how nobody would have known they were disappointed, how the girl was, after all,
very
pretty and seemed
fond
of Charles. And forever Edith would be marked as a lucky outsider.

Dinner was delicious, which was a surprise. I had been expecting the usual country house fare dispensed by my parents' generation, more redolent of a girls' prep school than the kitchens of the Ivy but I was not then used to Lady Uckfield's command of detail. I had Lady Tenby on my left and I spent the first course in one of those are-you-an-actor-what-might-I-have-seen-you-in conversations, which are so disheartening, but when the plates were taken away and I was allowed to turn to my companion on my right, I found myself talking to a rather hard-faced but intriguing woman of about my own age who introduced herself as Charles's sister, Caroline.

'So you're an old friend of Edith?' she said.

'I don't know how "old". I've known her about a year and a half.'

'Longer than we have,' she said with a crisp little laugh.

'And do you think you're going to like her?' I asked.

'I don't know,' said Caroline, looking down the table to where Edith was flirting gently with her future father-in-law. 'As a matter of fact I think I might. But is she going to like Charles? That's the question.'

This was of course the question. I followed my neighbour's gaze to where Charles was sitting, his heavy, good-natured face frowning over what was in all probability a rather small intellectual problem being posed by his neighbour. I wondered if Edith had faced up to how thick he really was. Or, for that matter, to how bleak the country can be. Caroline was reading my mind. 'It's frightfully dreary down here, you know. I suppose Edith's ready for all that? Flower shows all summer, freezing pipes all winter. Does she hunt?'

'She rides so she probably could hunt.'

'I don't suppose it matters much. With the antis about to kill it off at any moment.'

'Perhaps she's an anti and doesn't approve. You never know these days.'

'Oh, I doubt Edith is anti-blood sport,' said Caroline carefully. 'She looks quite carnivorous to me.'

'What about you? Do you hunt?'

'Heavens no. I hate the country. I don't even go to Hyde Park if I can avoid it.'

'What does your husband do? Or is it common to ask?'

'It is. But I'll answer anyway. Mainly advertising but he also organises charity events.'

I have often thought how simple it must have been to live a hundred years ago when every man one knew was in the army, the navy, the Church, or owned land. These extraordinary jobs one hears about every day, that one never even knew existed, have an unsettling effect on me. Headhunting or working in futures, credit management or people skills, as explanations they all sound as if one were concealing one's true activity. Perhaps a lot of them are. I couldn't think of an appropriate response. 'Does he favour any particular cause?' I said.

'So how do you know Edith?' said Caroline, who was obviously as uninterested in her husband's activities as I was. I explained about the Eastons. 'I wondered what they were doing here. It's funny we haven't met before if they're so near.' I was glad David was too far down the table to hear this. After that we turned to more general topics and I soon learned that Lady Caroline Chase was one of those children of the purple who manage to reject their upbringing in their way of living, their philosophy, their chosen partner and their choice of address and yet take their snobbery with them absolutely intact into their new life. I liked her but she was in her way quite as dismissive as her mother only without, perhaps, Lady Uckfield's armour of moral certainty. To Lady Uckfield her social position was an article of faith; to Caroline it was simply a matter of fact.

The meal progressed with some sort of apple snow for pudding, then the cheese and just when I was expecting our hostess to gather up the women with her and leave us to leaden political discussion and port, I was pleased to see that an unused glass in the nest before me was being filled with champagne. This then was the moment.