Snobs: A Novel

Someone saw her as a latter-day Cinderella, the working girl suddenly transported into Dreamland, and wrote an article in one of the Sundays entitled 'The Lavery Discovery', featuring several large and highly coloured photographs. After that, she caught on. At first she was annoyed at being continually described as climbing the social ladder but, gradually, as the original reason for the press interest faded beneath a welter of fashion articles and award ceremonies and invitations onto afternoon television, Edith came to enjoy the attention. The seductive element in being pursued by newshounds is that inevitably one starts to feel that if so many people are interested in one's life, one's life must ergo be interesting and Edith wanted to believe this quite as much as anyone else. Of course, inevitably I suppose, it was not long before she began to lose touch with the fact that she was becoming famous for being famous and nothing more. I was at a charity lunch once when she was invited to give some tabloid award and I remember her saying afterwards how ghastly the other presenters were, all sports commentators and fashion gurus, and why on earth had they been invited? I pointed out that even a lowly sports commentator has earned his or her own celebrity in a way Edith had not. She smiled but I could see she rather resented me for saying it.

She had started at a perilously early stage to believe her own publicity.

These photo-shoots and column inches meant that, slightly mysteriously, she had begun to dress better or more expensively than before. I'm not quite sure how she managed this as I don't think Charles was forking out at that point.

Probably she did one of those deals where designers lend you clothes to wear for the night if there's a likelihood of your getting into the papers. Or perhaps Mrs Lavery was stumping up. If she'd had the money, she wouldn't have minded a bit.

I saw much less of Edith during this time. At this distance, I'm not sure if she was still working in Milner Street but I would think she probably was as she was never one for counting her chickens. However, she was obviously less at a loss as to what to do for lunch. But one day the following March, months after she had started seeing Charles, I spotted her in the corner of the Australian having a tuna sandwich and, after buying myself a drink, I walked over to her table. 'Hello,' I said. 'Shall I join you or are you meditating?'

She looked up with a surprised smile. 'Sit. You're just the person I need.' She was distracted and serious and generally rather unlike the cool blonde I was used to.

'What's up, Doc?'

'Are you, by any chance, going to the Eastons' next weekend?'

'No. Should I be?'

'It would be frightfully convenient if you were.'

'Well, I'm not doing anything else. I suppose I could telephone and invite myself. Why?'

'Charles's mother is giving a dinner party at Broughton on Saturday and I want some of my own people at it. I suppose Isabel and David would come?'

'Are you kidding?'

'That's just it. I want you there to calm them down. Charles likes you.'

'Charles doesn't know me.'

'Well, at least he's met you.' I knew what was worrying her. She was tired of being invisible. Of being entirely surrounded by people who automatically assumed that if she were worth knowing they would already know her. She wanted a friend of hers there whom she didn't have to introduce to Charles.

'I'll come if Isabel can put me up.'

She nodded gratefully. 'I'd ask you to stay at Broughton if I could.'

'Isabel would never forgive me. Have you had them over before?'

'No.' I looked surprised and she shrugged. 'I've only ever been down for the night and usually for something specific and you know what they're like…' I knew. I only had to think of the glint in David's eye at Ascot to know only too well.

'So how's it all going? I keep reading about you in the papers.'

She blushed. 'Isn't it silly?'

'And I saw you on This Morning with Richard and Judy.'

'Christ. Your life must be in serious trouble.'

'I had tonsillitis but anyway I rather like Judy,' I said. 'She always looks harassed and real. I thought you were quite good.'

'Did you?' She seemed astonished. 'I thought I was a total idiot. I don't mind the photographs but whenever I open my mouth, I sound like a complete half-wit. I'm sure they only got me because Tara Palmer-Tomkinson chucked.'

'Did she?'

'I don't know. I'm making it up.'

'Perhaps the answer is not to do any talking.'

'That's what Charles says, but it wouldn't make the smallest difference. They quote you anyway.' This is of course quite true.

'You and Charles make a fetching team. Your mother must be thrilled.'

Edith rolled her eyes. 'She's beside herself. She's afraid she'll find Bobby in the shower and it'll all have been a dream.'

'And will she?'

Edith's face hardened into a worldly mask that seemed more suited to an opera box in the belle époque than the Australian at lunchtime. 'No, I don't think so.'

I raised my eyebrows. 'Are congratulations in order?'

'Not yet,' she said firmly, 'but promise me you'll be there on Saturday. Eight o'clock. Black tie.'

'All right. But you must tell Isabel. Do you want me to write to Lady Uckfield?'

'No, no, I'll do all that. Just be there.'

When I telephoned Isabel that evening Edith had already spoken to her and the matter was swiftly arranged. And so, a few days later, I found myself joining the others in the Eastons' drawing room for a drink before we set off. David was being gauche and grumpy to conceal his palpitating excitement at finally being received within the citadel. Isabel was less excited and consequently less afraid of it showing.

'Well, do we think the dinner's in aid of anything?' she said with a giggle as I entered.

'I don't know,' I said. 'Do we?'

David pushed a glass into my hand. His whiskies were always warm, which was rather tiresome. He had read somewhere that gentlemen don't have ice. 'Isabel thinks they're going to announce their engagement.'

The thought had obviously crossed my mind, which would explain why Edith felt she had to have a few people on her own team but nursery training has made me beware of the obvious. 'Wouldn't her parents have been asked?'

'Perhaps they have been.' That was a thought. The image of Stella Lavery walking up to her room to find her bags unpacked and her evening dress laid out warmed my heart. Everyone deserves a few moments when life is Quite Perfect.

'Well, we'll know soon enough,' I said.

Isabel looked at the clock. 'Shouldn't we be off?'

'Not yet. There's plenty of time.' David could afford to mumble his prey now that he was sure of it. 'What about another drink?'

But Isabel won and we set off for our first but (as we were all secretly thinking) probably not our last private visit to Broughton Hall.

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.