Contrary to Edith's belief, he had not taken her to Annabel's as part of any romantic strategy. The truth was that, without admitting it to himself, he liked to take girls to places where he was known. It put a spin on the dinner that anonymity lacked.
It was his turn to speak.
'Have you lived a lot in the country?'
'Not much, really.' Edith realised this was an odd answer even as she said it for she had never, for half an hour, actually
'lived' in the country. Unless one counted boarding school, which of course one couldn't. Still, she liked the country. She'd stayed a lot in the country. She'd walked behind the guns. She'd ridden. It wasn't a total lie. She qualified it: 'My father's business. You know.'
Charles nodded. 'I suppose he has to move about quite a bit.'
Edith shrugged. 'Quite a bit.'
Actually, Kenneth Lavery had had to move about from the London Underground to the same office in the city for the last thirty-two years. He had once had to go to New York and once to Rotterdam. That was it. This slight re-shading of the truth was never corrected. Charles was forever thereafter under the impression that Edith's father had been some sort of international whizz-kid, jetting between Hong Kong and Zurich. In creating this false picture, however, Edith had read Charles correctly. There is something much less petit bourgeois about a businessman with permanent jet lag than a stationery drudge buying a ticket for the Piccadilly Line northbound, and Charles did like things just so.
Time had passed and the club was filling.
'Charlie!' Edith looked up to see a pretty brunette in a sharply tailored, sequinned cocktail dress bearing down on them.
She was accompanied by, or rather trailing, a whale. He wore a suit that must have taken a bale of worsted and a large spotted tie. When they had made it to the table, Edith noticed the rivulets of sweat that trickled continuously from behind his ears over the fat, red neck.
'Jane. Henry.' Charles stood up and gestured at Edith. 'Do you know Edith Lavery? Henry and Jane Cumnor.' Jane took Edith's hand in a swift and lifeless hold then turned back to Charles as she sat down and poured herself a glass of their wine.
'I'm parched. How are you? What happened to you at Ascot?'
'Nothing happened. I was there.'
'I thought we were all having lunch on Thursday. With the Weatherbys? We hunted and hunted for you before we gave up.
Camilla was bitterly disappointed.' She gave a half-smirk to Edith, ostensibly inviting her to join the joke. In fact, of course, consciously excluding her from it.
'Well, she shouldn't have been. I told her and Anne that I had to have lunch with my parents that day.'
'Needless to say they'd completely forgotten. Anyway, doesn't matter now. By the way, tell me: are you going to Eric and Caroline in August? They swore you were but it seemed so unlike you.'
'Why?'
Jane shrugged with a lazy, sinuous movement of the shoulder. 'I don't know. I thought you hated the heat.'
'I haven't made up my mind. Are you going?'
'We don't know, do we, darling?' She reached across to her puffing husband and kneaded his doughy hand. 'We're so behind with everything at Royton. We've hardly been home since Henry got political. I've a ghastly feeling we might be stuck there all summer.' She again broadened her smile to include Edith.
Edith smiled back. She was quite used to this curious need on the part of the upper-classes to demonstrate that they all know each other and do the same things with the same people. This was perhaps an unusually manic example of the palisade mentality but, looking at Lord Cumnor, aka Henry the Green Engine, it was not difficult to see that Jane had made some severe sacrifices to achieve whatever position she was in command of. It would be hard for her to set it aside, even for a moment, as a thing of little importance.
'Are you very political?' Edith said to Henry, who seemed to be recovering from the effort it had taken him to cross the floor.
'Yes,' he said, and turned back to the others.
Edith had been inclined to feel rather sorry for him but she saw in a moment that he perceived no need to feel sorry for himself. He was quite happy being who he was. Just as he was quite happy to demonstrate that he knew Charles and did not know Edith. Charles, however, was not prepared to have the Cumnors be rude to the girl he had invited for dinner and he consciously and obviously turned the conversation back to her.
'Henry's frightfully serious since he took his seat. What was your latest cause? Organic veg for prisoners?'
'Ha, ha,' said Henry.
Jane came to her husband's aid. 'Don't be beastly. He's done a lot of work for the national diet, haven't you, darling?'
'Which didn't include going on it, I gather,' said Charles.
'You laugh now but they'll come after you when your father snuffs it. You'll see,' said Jane.
'No they won't. Labour will win next time and they'll have the hereditaries out before you can say Jack Robinson.'
'Don't be so pessimistic.' Jane did not want to hear that the world she had pinned all her hopes on was threatened with extinction. 'Anyway, it'd be years before they came up with a formula for the Lords that works better and they won't do anything in a hurry.'
Charles stood up and asked Edith to dance.
She raised her eyes in a half-query as they shambled around the floor, by now crammed with Iranian bankers and their mistresses.
He smiled. 'Henry's all right.'
'Is he a great friend?'
'He's a sort of cousin. I've known him all my life. God, he's fat at the moment, isn't he? He looks like a balloon.'
'How long have they been married?'
He shook his head. 'Four, five years, I suppose.'
'Do they have any children?'
He made a wry shape with his mouth. 'Two girls. Poor old Henry. Setchell's got him drinking port and eating cheese and Christ knows what.'
'Why?'
'To get a boy, of course. To get the bloody boy.'
'What happens if they don't have one?'
Charles frowned. 'There are no brothers. I think some bloke in South Africa gets the title although I'm not sure if he or the girls get the swag. Anyway, they're both quite young. They'll bash on for a while longer, I should think.'
'It could get rather expensive.'
'It certainly could. You never know how long to keep going. Look at the Clanwilliams. Six girls before they called it a day and it's worse nowadays.'
'Why?'
'Why do you think? Even the girls have to go to decent schools.'
They danced in silence for a while with Charles occasionally nodding to various acquaintances on the floor. Edith gratefully recognised two girls from her deb season and flashed brilliant smiles at them. Taking in the identity of her partner, they waved back, allowing her to feel less invisible. By the time they returned to the table, she was beginning to feel that she was really having quite a jolly time.
Henry and Jane had not moved and as they approached, Jane jumped up and seized Charles's hand. 'It's time you danced with me. Henry hates dancing. Come on.' She led Charles back to the floor, leaving Edith alone with her porcine husband.
He smiled vaguely. 'She always says that. I don't really hate dancing at all. Would you like to give it a go?'
Edith shook her head. 'Not unless you're dying to, if you don't mind. I'm exhausted.' The thought of being pressed into that pillow of blubber made her shudder.
He nodded philosophically. Being turned down was obviously not a new experience. 'Do you know Charlie well?'
'No. We just met in the country and then again at Ascot and here I am.'
'Where in the country? Who with?' He perked up a bit at the chance of some more Name Exchange.