Alison Lurie - Foreign Affairs

“‘An eye for an eye-’”

“‘Makes the whole world blind,’” she finishes.

“Yeh-I see what you mean.” Chuck grins suddenly. “That’s a smart proverb. I never heard it before.”

“Gandhi.”

“What? Oh, yeh, that Indian.” Chuck ceases to smile. “Anyways.” He shifts uncomfortably on the sofa, causing it to creak in protest. “I thought you oughta know. I mean, in case you might not want to have anything more to do with me.”

An excuse to draw back has been handed to Vinnie on a platter, but she hesitates. It would be hateful and hurtful to reject Chuck because of what had happened to him on the Muskogee Turnpike. Indeed, now she looks at the platter again, what is on it seems more like a watertight excuse for going ahead.

“Don’t be silly,” she says nervously. “It was a terrible accident, that’s all.”

“Aw, Vinnie.” Chuck lunges toward her, so precipitately that he leaves most of the bedspread behind, and folds her in a warm half-naked hug. “I shoulda known you’d say that. You’re a good woman.”

Vinnie does not smile. No one has ever said this to her before, and she knows it to be false: she is not, in Chuck’s presumed sense of the word, or any sense of it, a good woman. She is not particularly generous, brave, or affectionate; she steals roses from other people’s gardens and enjoys imagining nasty deaths for her enemies. Of course, in her own opinion, she is quite justified in being like this, considering how the world and its inhabitants have treated her; and she has positive qualities as well: intelligence, tact, taste…

“You’ve been so great to me all along,” Chuck continues. “Hell, you saved my life, just about.” He begins kissing her face, breaking off at intervals to speak. “Y’know, if I hadn’t met you, I probably never woulda thought of looking for my ancestors… Or found South Leigh. That time we had tea, I was about ready to give up. If it weren’t for you, I wouldn’t have found Old Mumpson, or met Mike or anything. I woulda managed to get myself killed by now, probably. Or else, a damn sight worse, I’d be back in Tulsa.”

“Wait,” Vinnie tries to say between kisses, in which somehow she has begun to join. “I’m not sure I want…” But her voice now entirely refuses to function; and her body-rebellious, greedy-presses itself against Chuck’s. Now, now it cries; more, more. Very well, she says to it. Very well, if you insist. Just this once. After all, no one will ever have to know.

FOR the first day or so after Rosemary’s party, Fred doesn’t take their quarrel very seriously. Her temper is always volatile, and she’s been briefly unreasonable before. Once, for instance, she broke a date because she disliked the way her hair had been done: it looked, she said, like some demented mouse’s nest, and she couldn’t bear for him to see it. But she made the disappointment up to him, and more, when they next met. Fred smiled, remembering.

When forty-eight hours have passed and Rosemary still hasn’t answered her private telephone or responded to the messages he left with her service, Fred begins to feel uneasy. Then he remembers that she is working: she has a guest role in a historical television series that’s filming this week. He makes some phone inquiries, starting with Rosemary’s agent, who seems to know nothing of any quarrel (a good sign, Fred thinks), and discovers that they are shooting an outdoor scene early the following morning within walking distance of his flat.

Now full of hope, he rises at eight, gulps some coffee and a piece of half-scorched gritty toast (he has never mastered the British open grill), and hastens toward Holland Park. Early as it is, the square where they are shooting and the streets leading into it are choked with cars and vans and what the British call lorries. Part of the road has been cordoned off; a policeman stands by the barrier in the relaxed posture of one who has drawn an easy assignment; passersby have begun to gather.

Though the sky is heavy with gray, lumpy clouds, a simmering golden light bathes the façade of one tall, elegant brick house and the courtyard and pavement before it. This artificial sunshine emanates from two banks of fluorescent tubes on poles-miniature versions of those he’s seen at night baseball games. The building glows not only with light but with fresh paint: glossy white on the pillars and trim, glossy black on the ironwork. The railings and woodwork of the two neighboring houses have also been freshly painted-but only on the sides visible to the camera: the backs of the pillars, for instance, are dull and cracked. At the other end of the square two men with a ladder are taking down a metal sign reading COOMARASWAMY FOODS and replacing it with a wooden one inscribed CHEMIST in shaded Victorian capitals.

Fred’s good looks, his American accent, and his modestly confident manner make it easy for him to talk his way past the barrier. He negotiates a section of pavement jammed with people and equipment and crawling with electrical snakes-yellow, black, poison-green-and accosts an anxious-looking young woman with a clipboard.

“Oh, yes, Rosemary Radley’s on location,” she tells him. “She’s inside the house there, but you can’t speak to her now”-she snatches at Fred’s arm to prevent him-”we’re going to start shooting in a couple of minutes.”

This, as usual in the film business, turns out to be overoptimistic. More than a quarter of an hour passes while Fred leans against the side of a van marked Lee Electrics, watching the scene. A man in a blue smock is wiring white plastic flowers onto the standard rosebushes that flank the front walk of the golden house; two other men are doing something to the lights. A group of actors in Edwardian costume stands by the curb chatting: an old woman in black with a basket, a younger woman twirling a ruffled white parasol, a man in tweeds and a hat, a nanny pushing an empty wicker pram. Many of the crew members also seem to be merely waiting about, though now and then there are outbreaks of activity and shouting. A short plump man resembling an untidy beaver, with an unraveling brown sweater and unraveled gray hair-much the shabbiest and least attractive of the company-seems always to be the focus of these confusions. Fred puts him down as an incompetent technician-some union-protected booby-and blames the continuing delay on him, then realizes he is the director.

At length the tumult focuses to a point and stops. The door of the golden house opens; a dignified elderly man in Edwardian morning dress steps out, then a beautiful woman in gray and pink, her flaxen hair piled high and floating an immense hat of pink feathers and veiling like a nesting flamingo: Rosemary. The man speaks to her; she replies at length, smiling sweetly up at him. Fred can hear nothing of what they are saying because of traffic noise at the bottom of the square and the shouted instructions of the director. This strikes him as weird; then he notices that there are no microphones in sight The scene is being photographed, but not recorded-presumably that will be done later, in some studio.

Now Rosemary and her companion descend the marble steps, speaking and laughing animatedly, or appearing to do so. The camera is rolled back; on the sidewalk the nanny begins to push the pram away downhill, the young couple to stroll in the other direction. The beaver raises both hands, shouting “Cut! Hold it!” Two women and a man in coveralls rush toward Rosemary and the elderly actor and swarm over them, adjusting their clothes, smoothing their hair, powdering their faces. His love and her companion stand there passively, receiving the attention with no more concern than two store-window dummies. The beaver consults with the man operating the camera, then with several others. Finally he gives a signal; Rosemary, who hasn’t even glanced in Fred’s direction, returns to the house.