Snobs: A Novel by Fellowes Julian

Author:Fellowes, Julian [Fellowes, Julian]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Orion Publishing Group
Published: 2009-12-17T04:00:00+00:00

THIRTEEN

I had wondered, when Simon made his offer to escort Edith home, whether his plot would be foiled by finding that he had to take various others with them, but as soon as I emerged from the house with Adela I saw that this would not be the case: the whole back seat of his car was stuffed with a pair of chairs and what looked like an assortment of gardening tools. By my side I could feel Lady Uckfield taking in the same fact. My guess is that she had intended to join her daughter-in-law in the shabby Cortina, but, if so, it was not to be. I offered her and Lord Uckfield a place in Adela’s Mini and, with a glance at Eric, who had brought some sort of Tonka Toy/Range Rover, they accepted. Lady Uckfield and I squeezed into the back seat, leaving Lord Uckfield and Adela in front. Eric gestured to them impatiently but in her sublime way Lady Uckfield affected not to notice. We drove off, leaving Bob and Annette to the tender mercies of Eric’s red-faced driving.

‘I hope he isn’t stopped,’ said Lord Uckfield.

Lady Uckfield made a slight moue with her mouth. ‘Oh well,’ she said.

We travelled in silence for a bit, all, I imagine, thinking of Simon and Edith whose car was nowhere in sight.

Lady Uckfield spoke again. ‘Aren’t those places too extraordinary? Who do you think goes to them?’

‘Isn’t it these whad’y’a call “yuppies”?’ Lord Uckfield spoke in inverted commas, pleased to be so up to the minute.

‘Well, it can’t only be yuppies. Are there enough of them? There can’t be that many round here. Americans too, I suppose. So sad, really.’

‘Oh, I don’t know,’ said Adela. ‘I’d rather see them as hotels than council offices or pulled down altogether.’

‘I suppose so.’ Lady Uckfield nodded doubtfully. In truth, she’d rather have seen them filled with the same well-mannered, rich people who’d lived in all these houses a hundred years ago. Even the ones whom, like the de Marneys, she disliked. For her there was no merit in the changes the twentieth century had wrought. Time had blurred her memory so that like the old recalling only the sunny days of childhood, she could think of nothing harsh or mean in the England of her beginnings. I found her views interesting. Even if her vision of the past was not quite as inaccurate or outlandish as Jeremy Paxman would have it, still Lady Uckfield’s beliefs were rare by the closing years of the twentieth century. She had that absolute faith in the judgement of her own kind, seldom seen since 1914. No doubt it was common enough before then, which must have made Edwardian society such a philosophically relaxing place to be. If one were an aristocrat.

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