Alison Lurie - Foreign Affairs

“Hello!” Fred called. “I’ve left a note for Lady Rosemary-could you give it to her, please?” Mrs. Harris didn’t answer, but turned her back and resumed scrubbing.

Though she won’t speak to callers, Mrs. Harris does talk freely to her employer, and at length. Her conversation isn’t the burden Rosemary feared, but a source of entertainment. Mrs. Harris’ doings and remarks-maybe somewhat edited or heightened-are now regularly relayed by Rosemary to all her friends. Mrs. Harris believes that looking at the full moon through glass makes you loony, unless it’s over your left shoulder. She eats Marmite and golden-syrup sandwiches to build up her blood. She goes to the greyhound track and bets on dogs with names that begin with S for Speed or W for Win. “Them races are fixed, see, everybody knows that,” she has confided to Rosemary. “But there’s clues.”

Mrs. Harris’ specialty, however, is gnomic, usually sour pronouncements on current events and famous persons. She dislikes all politicians and most members of the royal family, though she remains loyal to “Princess Margaret Rose” in spite of the scandals about her love life. “Misguided she was, is all, misguided and betrayed by that midget.” Fred can hear Rosemary repeating this latest mot even now, mimicking her charlady’s voice-rough and cockney, with a hint of boozy sentiment-and indicating with a broad gesture the supposed height of Lord Snowdon.

Fred has even found himself telling Mrs. Harris stories to friends like the Vogelers. In spite of her ill-temper, she has been gradually assimilated into his image of England. Most American visitors-like, say, Vinnie Miner-are attracted mainly to the antique, the picturesque, and the noble aspects of Britain. Fred’s love is wider-ranging: essentially it comprehends whatever has been hymned in song or told in story. In his present high mood he embraces even what he might deplore in America. Slag heaps remind him of Lawrence, pawnshops of Gissing; the pylons that deface the Sussex hills suggest Auden, the sooty slums of South London, Doris Lessing. In his mouth, canned plum pudding tastes of Dickens; to his ear, every overweight literary man sounds a little like Dr. Johnson. Seen through these Rosemary-tinted glasses, Mrs. Harris is a character out of eighteenth-century literature: a figure from the subplot of some robust comedy illustrated by Hogarth or Rowlandson. Fred not only appreciates her eccentricities, he takes a proprietary pride in them. After all, if it hadn’t been for him she’d never have been hired.

The doorbell sounds again. Fred goes to answer it and sees that Joe and Debby Vogeler have arrived, and that they have brought with them-against his instructions-their baby.

“The sitter never showed up,” Debby says in an aggrieved voice as soon as Fred opens the door, as if this were somehow his fault. “So we had to bring Jakie.”

“He’s been very good all the way here,” Joe says in a more conciliatory tone. “He’s been sleeping mostly.” The baby is suspended against Debby’s bosom in a sort of scruffy blue canvas hammock, with his fat legs sticking out on both sides and his bald head lolling against her neck. Debby is got up to match in a washed-out denim jacket, a long ruffled denim skirt, and clogs, as if she were about to appear on Prairie Home Companion. Joe wears his usual shabby-academic costume: thick spectacles, worn cord jacket, pilled and sagging gray turtleneck jersey, scuffed loafers. Though Fred is used to seeing the Vogelers in clothes like these, his friends strike him as deliberately and even aggressively ill-dressed for the occasion. In one respect, however, they are improved: the fine weather has restored their health, and for the first time none of them has an obvious cold.

“Come on in; great to see you,” he says, trying to sound enthusiastic. “You can put the baby upstairs, in one of the spare bedrooms. I’ll show you-”

“Certainly not.” Debby wraps her arms protectively around Jakie.

“That wouldn’t be right,” Joe explains, looking at Fred as if his suggestion could only issue from an almost criminal ignorance. “I mean, suppose he was to wake up alone in a strange room? It could be a serious trauma.”

“Well, okay.” For days Fred has been looking forward to the meeting between his old friends and his new love. Now it is with a sense of foreboding that he leads the Vogelers across the drawing room to where Rosemary stands in the bay window beside a flowering orange tree; like it, she is a fragrant spring vision in pale-green many-pleated glistening silk.

“Oh, how nice!” she cries, putting out her soft white ringed hand. “And you’ve hiked here all the way from North London, isn’t that amazing.” To Fred this appears a pointed reference to their footwear; but Joe and Debby smile, even grin, charmed already.

“Yeh, and we brought our baby,” Debby says, half belligerent, half apologetic.

“Oh yes, I see you did.” Rosemary laughs lightly, managing somehow to convey that it would have been politer not to mention this. “But Fred, darling, you haven’t got your friends anything to drink.”

“Sorry.” Fred goes to order a gin-and-tonic for Debby and-since there’s no beer-Scotch-and-water for Joe. Most of the guests, as is usual at warm-weather London parties, are drinking white wine.

On his way back across the room, Edwin Francis stops him. “If you have a moment, Fred,” he says, gesturing with a cream cracker overloaded with pâté, “I’d like to speak to you.”

“Sure, just a sec.” Partly because he doesn’t much like Edwin, Fred is always careful to be agreeable to him. Having delivered the Vogelers’ drinks and introduced them to other guests (Rosemary has drifted away), he follows Edwin into the hall.

“It’s about Mrs. Harris.” As if casually, Edwin steps onto the bottom tread of the gracefully curving stairs. He is still shorter than Fred, but the difference is now less pronounced.

“Yes?” Fred thinks that Edwin too-whom Rosemary loves and trusts-wants to swipe her cleaning lady.

“I’m becoming a bit concerned about her. She sounds, how shall I put it, such a dominant personality. So suspicious of everyone and everything. And possibly somewhat unbalanced as well. I’m really quite worried about her effect on Rosemary; she seems to be falling more and more under Mrs. Harris’ influence, if you see what I mean.” Edwin frowns, increasing his resemblance to a plump, solemn child. “Repeating all her ignorant reactionary opinions, well, you know.”

“Mm.” Fred is familiar with this complaint. Some of Rosemary’s friends have put it to him more strongly. “Rosemary’s far too impressed with that woman,” they complain. “Believes everything she says.”

“You know, for a certain sort of actor it’s an advantage to have a rather indefinite sense of self. It makes it much easier to get into various parts. But it can be a problem, too.”

“Oh?” Fred says, expressing doubt. He has no idea what Edwin is waffling on about; Rosemary obviously has a very definite, and wonderful, self. Her ability to mimic Mrs. Harris doesn’t preclude this.

“I mean, a joke’s a joke, right?”

Fred, without enthusiasm, agrees that a joke is a joke.

“But that sort of thing can go too far. What worries me is, I’m off to Japan to lecture next week, I’ll be away over a month, and if anything should happen-I mean, with Nadia in Italy and me in Japan and Erin due to go to the States for that film, and poor Posy immured in Oxfordshire with those boring little girls-Well, I won’t really feel comfortable unless I know someone’s looking out for our Rosemary. So it had better be you.”

“Um,” says Fred, who greatly dislikes the phrase “our Rosemary” and the idea of sharing his love with Edwin-or for that matter with anyone.