Alison Lurie: Foreign Affairs

“I think you’d better wait,” he says, holding the door only slightly open. “Let me see what the situation is first.”

“No, I want-”

“Back in a moment.” Before Fred can protest Edwin slips into the hall and shuts the door behind him.

Fred sits down again on the steps beside his luggage. There is no sound from the house; all he can hear are the ordinary noises of a London summer morning: the wind shuffling the leaves in the square, the high voices of children playing, the lazy chirp of birds, and traffic on the King’s Road. The well-kept Victorian terrace houses, enameled in eggshell colors, glow in the warm sunlight; it is hard to believe that there is anything unpleasant behind their façades.

The door opens; he clambers quickly to his feet. “What-? How-?”

“Well, she’s there,” says Edwin. In the few minutes he has been inside something has happened to his face; he looks less worried and more angry. “She’s all right-physically that is. But she’s rather confused. She’s not quite awake yet, of course. And the house is in a dreadful state. Dreadful.” He gives a little shudder.

“Let me-” Fred tried to push past into the hall, but Edwin holds onto the door.

“I really don’t think you’d better come in. It will only upset Rosemary.”

“I want to see her.”

“What for?”

“For Christ’s sake. To know that she’s all right-To tell her I’m sorry about the other day-” Fred is younger, stronger, and much larger than Edwin Francis; if he chose, he thinks, he could easily get past him.

“I don’t see the point of that. She’s in no condition to have visitors, believe me.”

“But I want to do something. I don’t have to leave for”-Fred checks his watch-”twenty minutes.”

“I think you’ve done quite enough already,” Edwin says with a spiteful emphasis; then, registering Fred’s expression, he adds: “I expect it’s going to be all right, you know. I’m going to phone now and ask the doctor to come round, just to be sure.”

“I want to see her, damn it.” Fred puts a hand on Edwin’s shoulder and starts to shove him aside.

“Really, you make me rather cross,” Edwin says, not budging. “I’ll tell you what, though. If you’re prepared to stay in London and make Rosemary your life’s work, very well; I won’t stop you. Otherwise, anything you do is simply going to make it harder for her.”

“Just for a few minutes-” Fred realizes that in order to get past Edwin he will have to use force, perhaps even violence.

“You want to remind her that you’re leaving and make her feel worse, is that it?”

“No, I…” Feeling accused, Fred drops his arm and steps back. “I only want to see her, that’s all. I love her, you know.”

“Don’t be selfish.” Edwin begins to close the door. “It won’t do either of you the least good. Anyhow, the person you think you love isn’t Rosemary.”

Fred hesitates, wrenched between the desire to see her again and the fear that Edwin may be right; that he may do harm. He looks round as if for help or advice, but the street is empty.

“You go on home now, Freddy,” Edwin says. “And really, I think the best thing you can do is to forget Rosemary as fast as you can. Well, have a nice trip. And please don’t write,” he adds, shutting the door in Fred’s face.

Though he’s allowed himself what seemed enough time to get to the airport, Fred has reckoned without the scarcity of taxis in Chelsea and the heaviness of daytime traffic. For the next hour he is mainly preoccupied with the idea of catching his plane; if he had seen Rosemary, he realizes, he would certainly have missed it. Once he is safe in the departure lounge at Heathrow, however, all the confusion and anxiety of the past two days floods back over him.

Along with his boarding pass Fred has received a brochure listing what travelers are allowed to import into the United States. He crushes and discards it. He is too broke to buy any duty-free goods; besides, he is already weighted down with all he has acquired in England over the past six months. Physically, this isn’t much: a few books, the cashmere scarf Rosemary gave him, a stack of notes on John Gay and his times. His mental baggage is bulkier: he is carrying home a heavy weariness and disillusion with London, with Gay, and with life in general and himself in particular.

In the past Fred has thought of himself as a decent, intelligent person. Now it occurs to him that maybe he’s not so unlike Captain Macheath after all. His work, like all scholarship emptied of will and inspiration, has over the past months degenerated into a kind of petty highway robbery: a patching together of ideas and facts stolen from other people’s books.

And his love life is no better. Like Macheath’s, it follows one of the classic literary patterns of the eighteenth century, in which a man meets and seduces an innocent woman, then abandons her. Sometimes he merely “trifles with her affections”; at other times he rapes her. There are many possible endings to the story. The woman may fall into a decline and die, give birth to a live or dead baby, go on the streets, become a nun, etc. The man may go on to other victims, be exposed in time by a well-wisher, meet a violent and well-deserved end, or repent and return-either too late, or in time to marry his former sweetheart and be forgiven.

In these terms, Fred thinks, you could say that he had seduced both Roo and Rosemary and then deserted them when they needed him most-just as Macheath deserted Polly and Lucy. He hadn’t ever thought of it this way, of course. Because Roo was, in her own phrase, “a liberated woman,” because Rosemary was rich and famous, he had assumed he could do them no damage. Well, if he’s learned one thing this year, it’s that everyone is vulnerable, no matter how strong and independent they look.

Roo had wanted very badly to come to England, but he had made it impossible by quarreling with her. When she wrote in May she must have hoped that he’d ask her to join him here at once; instead he let her letter lie on his desk unanswered for weeks. He had encouraged Rosemary to love him unconditionally, while intending to love her only as long as it was convenient for him… Well, he had been caught there. Some part of him will probably always love her-even if, as Edwin put it, the Rosemary he loves doesn’t exist.

A notice flops on overhead announcing the boarding of Fred’s flight. Gathering his things, he follows the other passengers out into the corridor to the moving walkway that will carry them to the gate. As he stands on it, watching the same colored posters of scenic Britain that he saw six months ago-or ones much like them-move slowly backward past him, Fred feels worse about himself than he has ever felt in his adult life.

But he is, after all, a young, well-educated, good-looking American, an assistant professor in a major university; and he is on his way home to a beautiful woman who loves him. Slowly his natural optimism begins to reassert itself. He thinks that after all The Beggar’s Opera doesn’t dispense strict poetic justice. Gay steps into his play in the third act, like a god intervening in human affairs, to give it a happy ending. He interrupts the hanging of Macheath and reunites him with Polly, as Fred will soon be reunited with Roo.

Did Gay do this only to please the audience, as he claims? Or did it satisfy his own natural affection for his characters? Did he know, from experience or the intuition of genius, that there is after all hope-not for everyone, maybe, but for the most fortunate and energetic among us?

Fred’s spirits improve. He ceases to stand like a lump on the moving rubber sidewalk, and begins to walk forward along it. The colored views of Britain stream backward twice as fast as before, and he has the sensation of striding toward his future with a supernatural speed and confidence.