Alison Lurie - Foreign Affairs

Fred, however, has never been agile at discovering unpleasant motives for his friends’ behavior. What he thinks now is that he must somehow have offended Debby, maybe by coming to dinner too often. Maybe she thinks he is sponging on them; maybe he is sponging on them. (Actually, this idea has never occurred to either Joe or Debby.) He has to ease up, Fred thinks as the train jolts toward Notting Hill Gate; he has got to meet some other people in London.

He decides that he will go to Professor Miner’s party after all. Probably there will be nobody there but other elderly, touchy academics; but you never know. And at least there will be drinks, and more important, maybe food-enough hors d’oeuvres so that for once he won’t have to buy supper.

IN Monsieur Thompson’s, a small but chic restaurant in Kensington Park Road, Vinnie Miner is waiting for her oldest London friend, a children’s book editor, writer, and critic called Edwin Francis. She is not anxious, for Edwin has thoughtfully called the restaurant to say he may be late; nor is she impatient. She is content to sit enjoying the book she’s just bought, the yellow and white chiffon of the fresh jonquils on the table, the matching alternation of sun and shade on the whitewashed houses outside, and the sensation of being in London in early spring.

Unless you knew Vinnie well, you would hardly recognize her as the miserable professor who got onto the plane in Chapter One. Perched on an oak settle with her legs tucked under her she looks girlish, almost childish. Her small size and the illustrated cover of her book (on Australian playground games) add to the illusion. Her costume is also juvenile by academic standards: a ruffled white blouse and a deep-flounced tan wool jumper. Round her narrow shoulders is her Liberty wool shawl, which gives her the look of a junior high school student, playing the part of a kindly grandmother. Her spectacles might well be a prop, the lines in her face drawn with eyebrow pencil, and her hair incompletely powdered gray.

“Vinnie darling. Forgive me.” Edwin Francis leans over the table to brush her cheek with his. “How are you?… Oh, thank you, dear.” He removes his coat and presents it to the waiter. “You won’t believe what I’ve just heard.”

“I might. Try me,” Vinnie says.

“Well.” Edwin leans forward. Though he is some years younger than Vinnie, his appearance-when he is in good form, as now-also suggests an artificially aged child. In his case, too, smallness of stature plays a part in the illusion; his short limbs, round face and torso, high color, and curly fair hair-now becoming rather sparse-also contribute to the effect. (When he is not in good form-depressed, drinking too much, unhappily in love-he resembles an afflicted Hobbit.) In spite of his innocuous appearance, and a manner that matches it-amused, offhand, self-deprecating-Edwin is a figure of power in the children’s book world and a formidable critic of both juvenile and adult literature: learned, sharp-witted, and, when he chooses, sharp-tongued.

“Well,” he continues. “You know Posy Billings.”

“Yes, of course.” Contrary to Fred Turner’s assumption, Vinnie’s London circle isn’t composed exclusively or mainly of academics. Through Edwin and other friends she is acquainted with publishers, writers, artists, journalists, people in the theater, and even one or two society hostesses like Lady Billings.

“I was talking to Posy this morning, and you were quite wrong. Rosemary has taken up with your colleague Mr. Turner. She’s even proposed bringing him to Posy’s place in Oxfordshire for a weekend.”

“Really,” Vinnie says, frowning a little. Rosemary Radley, an old friend of Edwin’s, is a television and film actress. She is extremely pretty and charming; she also has a history of brief, impetuous, usually disastrous affairs. When Edwin first announced that she had “taken up with” Fred Turner, Vinnie frankly didn’t believe it. They had been seen together at a play, at a party? Very possibly they had; that didn’t mean they had come together, orwere romantically involved. Perhaps Rosemary had invited Fred to the event, because after all he is a nice-looking young man, and one whose transatlantic origin might lend a piquant variety to her usual crowd of admirers. Or perhaps she hadn’t: people always gossiped about Rosemary, often inaccurately: she’d been the heroine of so many BBC and real-life romantic serials.

Edwin particularly enjoys fantasizing about his friends and acquaintances. He likes to hover over their adventures or presumed adventures as he does over whatever Vinnie is cooking when he comes to dinner, occasionally giving the pot a stir or adding a pinch of spices himself. “Really,” Vinnie had once said to him, “you should have been a novelist.” “Oh no,” he had replied. “Much more fun this way.”

Even if things have gone as far as Edwin is claiming now, it can’t be very serious. Rosemary, after all, has frequent impulsive sexual lapses-referred to later with laughter in phrases like “I just don’t know what came over me” or “It must have been the champagne”-and Fred might be a relatively harmless instance of this habit. But she can hardly be serious about him. It isn’t just that she’s older, but that her world is so much more complex and resonant. If talking to Fred for any length of time rather bores Vinnie, who after all is in the same profession and department, what on earth can he have to say that would interest Rosemary Radley? On the other hand, perhaps you don’t have to interest her, as long as you are sufficiently interested in her. Perhaps what she wants is fans, not rival entertainers.

“Of course it’s all your doing,” Edwin remarks, breaking off his loving contemplation of the menu. “If you hadn’t given that party-”

“I never meant for Rosemary to take up with Fred.” Vinnie laughs, for surely Edwin is teasing. “I never even considered-”

“The intentional fallacy.”

“I never even considered it. I thought Fred ought to meet some young people, so I invited Mariana’s eldest daughter. How was I to know she’d turned into a punk rocker? She was perfectly presentable when I saw her at her mother’s last month.”

“Well, you might have asked me,” Edwin says, breaking his current diet and liberally buttering one of the whole-wheat rolls for which Thompson’s is celebrated. Vinnie does not pick this up; if Edwin had his way, she is quite aware, he would dictate the guest lists of all her parties. His social circle is wider and considerably more glamorous than hers, and though she is perfectly happy to have him bring one or two of his well-known friends to her house-as he had brought Rosemary-she doesn’t want it to go any further. One or two celebrities are a social asset; but if you have too many, she has noticed, all they ever do is talk to one another.

“Besides, if Mariana’s daughter’s so punk,” she asks, “why did she bother to come to a party like mine, with that awful spotty young man in black zip-up leather?”

“To annoy her mother, of course.”

“Oh dear. Was her mother annoyed?”

“I think so, very,” Edwin says. “Of course she wouldn’t ever let it show, noblesse oblige .”

“No,” Vinnie agrees, and sighs. “It’s not safe any more, is it, giving parties? One never knows what fateful events are going to be precipitated.”

“The hostess as demiurge.” He giggles, and Vinnie, reassured, joins in.

“Fred’s being at that party wasn’t my fault,” says Vinnie, returning to the subject somewhat later. “It was yours, really. I only asked him because you said I didn’t know any Americans,” she lies.