Alison Lurie - Foreign Affairs

Since Chuck is no longer a useful object of pity, Vinnie, lying in bed with her nasty cold, considers pitying Fred Turner. Certainly he seemed miserable enough the last time she saw him.

Lately, Fred hasn’t been at any of the parties Vinnie has attended. She met him instead at the British Museum, just before the descent of her cold. It was the first time in weeks that she had gone there, for most of her research is complete and she dislikes the Reading Room-especially in the spring and summer when all the tourists and lunatics come out and it becomes intolerably stuffy, and the staff (perhaps understandably) is harassed and grumpy.

She was crossing the wet cobbled forecourt after a sudden spatter of rain when she saw Fred sitting under the portico eating a sandwich. Her first thought was that as a single man on a fairly generous study leave he should have no need for such economies. Either he didn’t want to wrench himself away from his research for more than a few minutes, or-more likely-the purchase of theater tickets, flowers, and expensive meals for Rosemary Radley had greatly depleted his bank account.

Fred’s handsome countenance wore a melancholy, ill-fed expression which brightened only slightly when he saw Vinnie. He invited her to join him on the slatted bench, but agreed only dully with her praise of the day, though the scene before them resembled a British Air travel poster: whipped-cream clouds sailed overhead, the trees were sprinkled with a shiny confetti of new leaves, and the courtyard steamed and glinted with rainbow fragments of light.

“Oh, I’m okay,” he replied to her query, in tones that suggested the reverse. “Maybe you know, Rosemary and I aren’t seeing each other any more.”

“Yes, I heard that.” Vinnie refrained from adding that so had all her London friends, not to mention Private Eye. “I understand she was upset because you have to go back and teach so soon.”

“That’s about it. But she thinks-she acts like I’ve betrayed her or something.” Fred crumpled and uncrumpled his damp paper bag, banging his fist into it in an angry way. “She thinks it’d be easy for me to stay here if I wanted. Damn it, you know that’s not true.”

Vinnie assented emphatically. In case he might be thinking of some such move, she pointed out that his sudden and unexcused withdrawal from the Summer School faculty would annoy and inconvenience a great many people at Corinth University; she began to list these people by name and title.

“You don’t have to tell me,” Fred interrupted. “I explained all that to her. Rosemary’s a wonderful woman, but she just doesn’t listen. When she doesn’t like what you’re saying she just fucking doesn’t listen, excuse me.”

“That’s all right.”

“Christ, I’d stay here if I could. I love her, and I love London,” he exclaimed, shedding crumbs of peanut-butter sandwich. “I don’t know what more I can say.”

“No,” Vinnie agreed, sympathizing with one of Fred’s passions. “It’s always so hard to leave. I know.”

“But why is she being so goddamned unreasonable? We were going to have such a great time together this month, we had tickets to Glyndebourne… I never said I was going to be in England forever, or anything like that. I didn’t lie to her. I told her a long time ago I had to go back in June-hell, I know I did.” Fred shook his head while running one hand through his wavy dark hair, a gesture both of puzzlement and of self-reassurance For the first time, Vinnie saw in him what she had often seen in Rosemary Radley: the assumption of very good-looking persons that as they pass through life they are entitled to take-and to leave-whatever they choose when they choose. In both of them it was the stronger for being largely-in Fred’s case perhaps wholly-unconscious.

“Maybe she’ll get over it.”

“Yeh. Maybe,” he replied in a dead, unconvinced voice, frowning at the pigeons that had begun to gather. “Right now she won’t see me, or talk to me on the phone, or anything. Oh, okay.” He dropped a crust from the bag onto the pavement; the fat gray birds jostled and pecked. “She’d better get over it fast; I’ll only be around another three weeks.”

“I certainly hope she does,” Vinnie said, though in fact it mattered nothing to her.

“Me, too.” A kind of geological tremor passed over the stormy, handsome landscape of Fred’s face. “Listen, Vinnie,” he added, controlling the threatened volcanic erruption. “You know Rosemary pretty well.”

“I wouldn’t say that.”

“Well, anyhow. You see her all the time. I was wondering… Maybe if you were to talk to her.”

“Oh, I don’t think-”

“You could explain about summer school; how I can’t just walk out on it.” Fred scattered the rest of his half-eaten sandwich, causing a further invasion of pigeons, dozens of them it seemed, flapping and swooping from all directions.

“I really don’t think I could do that.” To protect her stockings, Vinnie kicked a particularly intrusive lavender-gray bird away with the side of her shoe.

“She’d listen to you, I bet. All right, get lost! There isn’t any more, for Christ’s sake.” He stood up, lifting a loaded briefcase. “Please, Vinnie.”

Vinnie rose too, and retreated several steps from the crowd of pigeons. She looked at Fred Turner standing on the porch of the British Museum, waiting for her answer in a clutter of equally demanding and unreasonable iridescent birds, with his tall athletic figure thrown off-balance by overloaded feelings and an overloaded briefcase. At that moment she realized that he had enrolled himself in the class of persons (usually but not always ex-students) who take it for granted that Vinnie will write them recommendations, give them letters of introduction to colleagues abroad, read their books and articles, and take an interest in their personal and professional happiness. Typically, the fulfillment of any such request does not discharge the obligation, but rather recharges it, just as the use of an automobile recharges its battery. The academic relation of protéger to protégé is a closed electrical circuit not subject to the law of entropy; often it sends out sparks until death.

For Vinnie, one of the advantages of being in England is that she can escape most of these parasites (though a few, of course, have pursued her by mail). Now here is Fred, who has elected himself her protégé simply because they are in the same department, and in the same foreign city, and she is a quarter-century older. And also probably because, quite without having intended it, she is in a sense responsible for his present situation. She was on the department committee that granted him a study leave, and she had invited him to the party at which he met Rosemary Radley.

Sighing, Vinnie told Fred that if the opportunity arose she would try to talk to Rosemary. She had little expectation of succeeding in this assignment, and privately wished that she might have no chance to carry it out. Since she became ill the next day, that wish was granted, though not in a very pleasant manner. But as Vinnie has often noted, both in folklore and in real life, that is the way with most wishes.

Perhaps Fred is somewhat pitiable at the moment, Vinnie thinks as she lies in bed with her lukewarm hot-water bottle, but he is not really the right sort of person for her to contemplate. In the long run, there is no reason to feel sorry for him. He is young, healthy, handsome, smart, well-educated, and-though Vinnie has no intention of ever telling him this-regarded in the English Department as a corner. Right now he feels sore and disoriented because Rosemary has thrown him over, but he will recover. Many other women will love him; his career will steadily advance; and unless he is struck by a car or a deadly disease or some other form of lightning his whole life will be irritatingly fortunate