Alison Lurie - Foreign Affairs

“Really?” Vinnie echoes.

“I saw her two days ago, just before she left for Ireland, and she was in top form. But I don’t mind telling you, it was a near thing.”

“Really,” she says, with quite another intonation.

“Now this mustn’t go any further.” He pours them both more Blanc de Blanc, then looks hard at Vinnie. “I wouldn’t say anything even to you, but I want you to understand the situation, so you’ll see how important it is for us to be very very discreet.”

“Yes, of course,” Vinnie says, becoming a little impatient.

“You see, there have been, mm, other episodes in the past… Well, nothing quite like this, but Rosemary often gets… well, a bit odd when she isn’t working steadily.”

“Oh?”

“It’s no joke, really, you know, always having to be a lady. Or a gentleman, if it comes to that. The best of us-and I do believe, in a way, that Rosemary is one of the best-might find it a strain.”

“Yes,” Vinnie agrees. “It must have been rather difficult for you,” she prompts, since Edwin remains silent.

“Well. Initially. Then… Well, as it happens, there’s this extremely gifted doctor-Rosemary’s seen him before, actually. He was tremendously helpful. Luckily, she has a complete amnesia for most of the worst period.”

“Really.”

“Yes. You know, drink does that sometimes. She doesn’t remember Fred’s coming round to the house at all, for instance.”

“I suppose that’s just as well.”

“Oh, I think so. A mercy, the doctor said. But you mustn’t say anything about any of that to anyone. Seriously. Promise.”

“Of course, I promise,” Vinnie says. The British hush-hush attitude towards psychotherapy is something that, in spite of her Anglophilia, she has never quite understood. Eccentricity, even eccentricity of a sort that would be designated “sick” in America, is admired over here. Men who dress up like Indian chieftains and hold pow-wows, women who keep fifty Siamese cats in royal splendor, are written up admiringly in the newspapers. But ordinary neurosis is denied and concealed. If you consult a psychologist, it is something to be hidden from everyone while it is going on and forgotten as soon as possible afterward.

If Rosemary were an American actress, Vinnie thinks, she would already be in therapy, and would refer with easy familiarity to “my analyst” on every possible occasion. She might very well give interviews about her problems with drinking. And her split personality-if in fact it was really split, and not just an act-would be discussed on talk shows and celebrated in People magazine.

“And you mustn’t say anything to Fred, either. Let him think it was all theatrics. Have you heard from Fred, by the way?”

“Yes, I had a letter-well, a note. He wanted to tell me that he and his wife have reconstructed their marriage, as he put it.”

“Really.” Edwin rises and begins to clear the garden table. “And is that a good thing?”

“Who knows? Fred seems to think it is.” Vinnie sighs; she has a deep distrust of marriage, which in her observation has an almost irresistible tendency to turn friends and lovers into relatives, if not into foes.

“It’s just as well really that he couldn’t get in touch with Posy,” Edwin says a little later, returning from the basement kitchen with a plate of fruit and another of macaroons. “She would have coped magnificently, of course, but she’s not as discreet as she might be… Please, help yourself. I especially recommend the apricots.

“I had my suspicions about Mrs. Harris all along, you know,” he continues. “She simply sounded too good to be true.”

“Yes, I thought Rosemary was improving the story sometimes,” Vinnie says. “Or do you mean-do you think there never was any Mrs. Harris?”

“I do, rather. It’s hard to imagine Rosemary doing her own housework, though. I expect she just went on hiring those part-time people-only rather more of them, perhaps, so that Fred would stop complaining of how the place looked.”

“But Fred saw Mrs. Harris at least once. He told me so.”

“Yes, well… You know, Rosemary’s always been annoyed that she’s so narrowly typecast. She’s convinced she could play working-class characters, for instance, only no one will ever let her.”

“But she was scrubbing the hall floor, Fred said. I can’t believe-”

“You have to remember her training. She always gets tremendously into her parts. Almost carried away, sometimes. When she’s taping Tallyho Castle , for instance, she starts to have this frightfully gracious lady-of-the-manor manner. I can easily imagine her washing a floor just to get the feel of it.”

“Ye-es.” Vinnie is aware that Edwin is skillfully rationalizing and diminishing what would otherwise seem highly neurotic or even psychotic behavior. “But I think there must have been someone like Mrs. Harris for a while,” she insists. “Even if that wasn’t her real name. I spoke to what I thought was Mrs. Harris on the telephone twice at least. She’d have to be an awfully gifted actress.”

“Oh, she’s gifted,” Edwin agrees, carefully skinning a ripe peach with one of his ivory-handled Victorian fruit knives. “She can imitate just about anyone. You should hear her do your cowboy friend, Chuck what’s-his-name. How is what’s-his-name, by the way?” he adds, changing the subject with his customary deftness. “Is he still digging for ancestors down in Wiltshire?”

“Yes-no,” Vinnie replies uncomfortably. Though she has been at Edwin’s for nearly two hours, and spoken to him earlier on the phone, she hasn’t dared to mention Chuck. She knows it will be nearly impossible for her to tell the story without falling apart as she has been falling apart at intervals for the past ten days. But she plunges in, beginning with Barbie’s telephone call.

“So the wife and the son couldn’t make it to England,” Edwin remarks presently.

“No. Of course, it’s just a convention that when someone dies you have to hurry to the fatal spot. It doesn’t actually do them any good.”

“I suppose not. Still, it does give one a certain opinion of Chuck’s relatives.”

“It does.” Vinnie continues with her story. Several times she hears a tell-tale wobble in her voice, but Edwin seems to notice nothing.

“So there’s some corner of an English field that is forever Tulsa,” he says finally, smiling.

“Yes.” Vinnie strangles the cry that rises in her.

“Poor old Chuck. Rather awful to go out like that, so unprepared and sudden and far from home.”

“I don’t know,” Vinnie says, lowering her head and pretending to be spitting out a grape-seed to conceal her face. “Some people might prefer it. No fuss, you know. 1 think I’d rather have it that way myself.” She imagines herself dead, and her ashes scattered like Chuck’s over a hillside field that’s she’s never seen and never will see. A longing comes over her to look upon that place; to visit the grotto where Old Mumpson lived, the cottage in which Chuck and his ancestors slept; to talk to Professor Gilson and his students about Chuck. And she could do all this… Nothing prevents her from doing it except a sense of the hopeless ridiculousness of such an excursion.

“Not me.” Edwin helps himself to the last of the macaroons, of which he has already had more than his fair share. “When I die, I want it to be in my own bed, with flattering interviews in the papers and tearful farewell visits from all my friends and admirers. I want to be prepared for it, not just hit over the head.”

“Well, Chuck should have been prepared,” Vinnie says. “The doctor told him not to drink or smoke; he told him to be careful, his daughter said, but he wouldn’t listen. Climbing three flights of stairs on such a hot day! It really makes me furious. And he probably had a cigarette and a drink in some pub before that. So stupid of him.” Realizing that she has spoken with more feeling than is appropriate, Vinnie gives a false laugh.