Alison Lurie - Foreign Affairs

Edwin was right, she tells herself as the tall red bus approaches. He saw what was happening before he left for Japan: he said that Mrs. Harris was a bad influence. And now, from imitating her as a parlor trick, Rosemary has progressed to the point where, when her own rather weak ego is blurred by alcohol, the strong but disagreeable personality of her charlady takes over and says things Rosemary herself would never say, or probably even think. Because surely she doesn’t think that Vinnie is personally messing up London and knows fuck-all about life.

Yes, that’s an interesting theory, and a nice, reassuring one, Vinnie says to herself as the 74 bus grinds north toward Regent’s Park. But isn’t it more likely that Rosemary, however drunk, meant what she said? That her jealous rage at Fred spilled over onto Vinnie, and the real truth came out? But what she really thinks of Vinnie-what all her friends-maybe everyone in London-think of Vinnie couldn’t be properly expressed by anyone as sweet and charming and refined as Lady Rosemary Radley. To say it she had to become, and because she is an actress could become, a coarse, ill-tempered, vindictive person like Mrs. Harris.

When she reaches her flat, Vinnie’s impulse is to go to bed and hide. But she resists it; she isn’t really tired or ill, just angry and miserable and headachy. She doesn’t feel up to going out again, even just up the road to Limonia to have supper with her cousins. She distrusts the world: people she has never done any harm to-or (as in the case of L. D. Zimmern) even met-are walking around in it wishing her ill. She decides to telephone her cousins and excuse herself. But before she can find the number of their hotel, her phone rings.

“Hi, honey, this is Chuck.”

“Oh, hello. How is everything in Wiltshire?”

“Great. I’ve got a heap to tell you. You remember that picture of the grotto with the Hermit of South Leigh that Colonel and Lady Jenkins showed me when I first came down here?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Wal, I’ve been trying to get ahold of a copy, and this guy in Bath just came up with one. Not the whole book, just that etching, but it’s hand-colored and in great condition.”

“Oh, that’s nice.”

“And yesterday we found a stone on the dig with real interesting carvings; Mike thinks-” Chuck expounds; Vinnie, holding the phone with one hand and her headache with the other, listens, making appropriate noises. “So it looks like-Hey, Vinnie. Are you feeling all right?”

“Oh yes, thanks,” she lies.

“You sound kinda low.”

“Well. Perhaps a little. A rather upsetting thing happened this afternoon.” Though she hasn’t meant to, Vinnie finds herself relating her encounter with Rosemary, omitting only the characterization of her own appearance.

“Weird,” is Chuck’s comment. “Sounds to me like she’s having some kinda crackup.”

“I don’t know. It could easily have been deliberate. After all, Rosemary’s an actress. Probably she just doesn’t like Americans. And I expect she never did like me very much.” In spite of herself, Vinnie’s voice wavers.

“Aw, baby. It’s rough to be cursed out like that. I wish I was there; I’d make you feel better.”

“I’m all right, really. It’s just that it upset me, the way she kept changing voices.”

“Yeh, I get what you mean. Myrna used to do something like that. She’d be screaming at me or the kids, or maybe the help, practically out of control. Then the phone would ring, and she’d answer it sweet and smooth as soft ice cream, talking to some client or one of her lady-friends. Just as easy as switching channels. It used to spook me.”

“I can understand that. You wonder which one is real.”

“Yeh. Wal, no. I never wondered that.” Chuck laughs harshly. “Listen, honey. Maybe what you need is to get out of London for awhile. I mean, you don’t hafta be back home till late August, right?”

“That’s right.”

“Wal, I was thinking. There’s a lotta folklore down here in Wiltshire. All these books and manuscripts and stuff in the historical society, I was looking at some of them the other day. And there’s schools here of course, and kids. There oughta be lots of rhymes you could collect. I was thinking, maybe you could come down and stay with me for the summer. There’s plenty of room for you to work here. I’d really like that.”

“Oh, Chuck,” Vinnie says. “That’s kind of you, but-”

“Don’t decide now. Think about it awhile. Okay?”

“Okay,” Vinnie repeats.

Of course she can’t spend the whole summer in Wiltshire, she tells herself after she has hung up; she doesn’t want to leave the London Library and all her friends. But a short visit-several visits, even-that might be possible. And that way she could see Chuck every day, and every night, without anyone in London knowing about it. Yes, why not?

While she wasn’t watching it, Vinnie’s headache has dissolved. She feels able to go out to dinner after all.

IN Notting Hill Gate, Fred Turner is packing to return home. It is midsummer, and London is in full bloom. Tall horse chestnuts press their green hands and creamy candles of blossom against his windows, and through them a hazy vanilla light seeps into the room, transfiguring its scratched wooden furniture, turning its paint-clogged Victorian woodwork and flowery plaster ceiling decorations into confections of whipped cream. The air is warm and windy, the sky beyond the trees a deep, still blue.

Fred, however, sees little of this. His mood is gray, flat, icy, and bitter as a brackish winter pond. In less than two days he will be gone from London, without having finished his research, seen Rosemary again, or heard from Roo. More than two weeks have passed since he cabled an answer to his wife’s letter: but though his message included the words LOVE and CALL COLLECT, there has been no answer. He had waited too damn long, or Roo never wanted him back in the first place.

As for his work, it is in a dead funk. He goes through the motions of scholarship, reading primary and secondary sources, copying down quotations from Gay’s work and from eighteenth-century critical essays, contemporary records, and true-crime narratives, patching them together somehow into a kind of whole, but it is all false and forced. Everything Fred puts into his two battered canvas suitcases reminds him of failure, of waste. Stacks of notes-skimpy and disordered compared to what they should have been-half-empty notebooks, blank three-by-five-inch index cards. Unanswered letters, including one from his mother and two from students asking for recommendations which should have been dealt with weeks ago. A favorite snapshot of Roo at fourteen with a pet rabbit, taken by her with her first time-release camera; the innocent warmth of her smile, the openness, the trust, wrenches his heart: this Roo has never loved him or any man, never been hurt by him-A great lump rises in Fred’s chest; he turns the photograph face down, sets his jaw, goes on with his packing.

Paper, envelopes, manila folders, all unused, mutely accusing. Programs for plays, operas, and concerts he’d attended with Rosemary-why the hell is he still saving these? Fred shoves them in the overloaded wastebasket. The long handwoven tan cashmere scarf that Rosemary gave him for his birthday, winding it round and round his neck with her own hands. A square of pocket mirror with the mauve-pink imprint of her mouth on it, commemorating their first kiss. They had just finished lunch at La Girondelle in the Fulham Road, and Rosemary was renewing her lipstick. Fred, suddenly realizing that they were about to part, leaned over the table toward her, saying something impulsive, passionate. She glanced up, smiling slowly and wonderfully, then blotted her open mouth on the glass to avoid smudging his. How charming, how thoughtful, he had marveled. Later he had put his hand on her wrist to stop her from returning the bit of mirror to her handbag, claiming it as a souvenir. Now it has another meaning: before she kissed him, Rosemary had kissed herself.