Foreign Affairs (23 page)

“Come on in; great to see you,” he says, trying to sound enthusiastic. “You can put the baby upstairs, in one of the spare bedrooms. I’ll show you—”

“Certainly not.” Debby wraps her arms protectively around Jakie.

“That wouldn’t be right,” Joe explains, looking at Fred as if his suggestion could only issue from an almost criminal ignorance. “I mean, suppose he was to wake up alone in a strange room? It could be a serious trauma.”

“Well, okay.” For days Fred has been looking forward to the meeting between his old friends and his new love. Now it is with a sense of foreboding that he leads the Vogelers across the drawing room to where Rosemary stands in the bay window beside a flowering orange tree; like it, she is a fragrant spring vision in pale-green many-pleated glistening silk.

“Oh, how nice!” she cries, putting out her soft white ringed hand. “And you’ve hiked here all the way from North London, isn’t that amazing.” To Fred this appears a pointed reference to their footwear; but Joe and Debby smile, even grin, charmed already.

“Yeh, and we brought our baby,” Debby says, half belligerent, half apologetic.

“Oh yes, I see you did.” Rosemary laughs lightly, managing somehow to convey that it would have been politer not to mention this. “But Fred, darling, you haven’t got your friends anything to drink.”

“Sorry.” Fred goes to order a gin-and-tonic for Debby and—since there’s no beer—Scotch-and-water for Joe. Most of the guests, as is usual at warm-weather London parties, are drinking white wine.

On his way back across the room, Edwin Francis stops him. “If you have a moment, Fred,” he says, gesturing with a cream cracker overloaded with pâté, “I’d like to speak to you.”

“Sure, just a sec.” Partly because he doesn’t much like Edwin, Fred is always careful to be agreeable to him. Having delivered the Vogelers’ drinks and introduced them to other guests (Rosemary has drifted away), he follows Edwin into the hall.

“It’s about Mrs. Harris.” As if casually, Edwin steps onto the bottom tread of the gracefully curving stairs. He is still shorter than Fred, but the difference is now less pronounced.

“Yes?” Fred thinks that Edwin too—whom Rosemary loves and trusts—wants to swipe her cleaning lady.

“I’m becoming a bit concerned about her. She sounds, how shall I put it, such a dominant personality. So suspicious of everyone and everything. And possibly somewhat unbalanced as well. I’m really quite worried about her effect on Rosemary; she seems to be falling more and more under Mrs. Harris’ influence, if you see what I mean.” Edwin frowns, increasing his resemblance to a plump, solemn child. “Repeating all her ignorant reactionary opinions, well, you know.”

“Mm.” Fred is familiar with this complaint. Some of Rosemary’s friends have put it to him more strongly. “Rosemary’s far too impressed with that woman,” they complain. “Believes everything she says.”

“You know, for a certain sort of actor it’s an advantage to have a rather indefinite sense of self. It makes it much easier to get into various parts. But it can be a problem, too.”

“Oh?” Fred says, expressing doubt. He has no idea what Edwin is waffling on about; Rosemary obviously has a very definite, and wonderful, self. Her ability to mimic Mrs. Harris doesn’t preclude this.

“I mean, a joke’s a joke, right?”

Fred, without enthusiasm, agrees that a joke is a joke.

“But that sort of thing can go too far. What worries me is, I’m off to Japan to lecture next week, I’ll be away over a month, and if anything should happen—I mean, with Nadia in Italy and me in Japan and Erin due to go to the States for that film, and poor Posy immured in Oxfordshire with those boring little girls—Well, I won’t really feel comfortable unless I know someone’s looking out for our Rosemary. So it had better be you.”

“Um,” says Fred, who greatly dislikes the phrase “our Rosemary” and the idea of sharing his love with Edwin—or for that matter with anyone.

“Promise now. Because she’s very delicately balanced, you know. She can get a bit frantic—into rather a difficult state—sometimes.”

Repressing his annoyance, Fred nods. He has never seen Rosemary “frantic” or in a state; also, he doesn’t agree with Edwin that Mrs. Harris is imposing her opinions on her employer. On the contrary, he’s begun lately to suspect that Rosemary is imposing her opinions on—or rather, attributing them to—Mrs. Harris. It’s not just that the lines are too good; they also have a way of echoing Rosemary’s less harmonious opinions. For instance, she is rather bored by the ballet; Mrs. Harris, according to her, describes it as “all them faggots jumping and ‘opping.” Rosemary despises the current government; Mrs. Harris thinks they are a lot of bloody crooks.

Also, more and more often, Mrs. Harris gives Rosemary reasons for doing what she wants to do anyhow—or not doing what she doesn’t want to do. Recently a late-night variety show was organized in aid of a famous old East London theater. Rosemary declined to participate, not because it would be inconvenient, unprofitable, and exhausting, but because, she claimed, Mrs. Harris had told her that “them people in ‘ackney got no use for fancy stage acting, they’d rather watch the telly.” What they really wanted was a kiddies’ playground—her niece who lived out that way knew all about it. Anyhow, Mrs. Harris—as reported by Rosemary—said, the whole thing was a sell. “Most of the cash those types take in’ll stay in their own pockets, always does with them charity things.” At a lunch party last week Rosemary’s friend Erin protested these statements, and tried, with considerable patience and charm, to make her reconsider. She refused to listen. “Please, darling, don’t tell me any more nonsense,” she cried, giving her silvery laugh and spearing a profiterole with the silver tines of her fork (she adores what she calls “wicked desserts”). “You don’t know the least thing about Hackney, and neither do I. But I know Mrs. Harris is right about it; she’s always right.”

Feeling annoyed at Edwin, Fred leaves him and returns to the party. He sees at once that the Vogelers are not mixing, but standing by themselves in a corner trying to soothe Jakie, who has begun to make a whimpering squeaking noise, like a stuck drawer.

“Let me take him now, it’s my turn,” Joe says, checking his watch. With Fred’s help, the surprisingly heavy baby and his canvas sling are transferred to his father’s back, where the whimpering and squeaking resume. “Maybe if he had a cracker or something.”

“Sure.” Fred finds a plate of canapés and scrapes the caviar off one.

“Great. There you are now, ducky.” Jakie reaches for the cracker and stuffs it clumsily into his mouth, shedding crumbs over Joe’s jacket.

Asleep and slumped against Debby’s chest, Jakie was relatively inconspicuous. Now, because of his father’s greater height and his own wakefulness, he is a visible presence in the room—and a rather grotesque one, Fred thinks; from the front Joe seems to have two heads and four arms. Something has got to be done about the Vogelers. He remembers his mother’s rule that you musn’t allow anyone at a party to stand alone talking to the people they came with; you must try to separate them.

Taking the easiest first, he leads Debby away and presents her to a woman novelist as “an American feminist.” (It doesn’t much matter what you say when you make introductions, his mother has also advised him, but you’ve got to say something, to provide a conversational opening.) Then, to avoid parading his two-headed, four-armed, crumb-littered friend across the drawing room, Fred introduces Joe to a drama critic, TV personality, and notorious bore who is leaning against the mantelpiece nearby, under the pretense that Joe is a visiting American anxious to know what shows to see in London. All right, that should do it, he thinks, and goes off in search of Rosemary and a drink.

But the Vogelers remain on Fred’s conscience, and he keeps checking to see how they are doing. Twenty minutes later Debby seems to be circulating, but Joe is still trapped in the same spot talking—or rather listening—to the same man. He is clearly not engrossed; in a gesture Fred remembers well from graduate school, he has pushed his spectacles up onto his head. Aloft or his untidy mouse-brown hair, they suggest another pair of eyes fixed upon higher and more philosophical objects of contemplation.

Altogether, in his shabby clothes, with Jakie wiggling on his back, Joe is an incongruous figure at Rosemary’s party. He looks especially out of place in front of the white marble fireplace, with its curved mantel crowded with framed photographs, engraved invitations, objets d’art, and tall vases of hothouse flowers doubled into a profusion of bloom by the big gilt-framed rococo mirror. The baby is awake and restless, waving his small fat arms about, grabbing at the air or at his father’s hair.

As Fred prepares to go to Joe’s rescue there is a movement in the crowd. Joe steps back to let one of the caterer’s men pass, and Jakie’s clutching baby hand finds a silver vase full of tall white iris and candy-hued freesia. Fred waves, shouts a warning, but this serves only to startle Joe and alert the other guests, many of whom glance up in time to see the vase totter, tip, and fall, sending a torrent of water and foliage over the famous drama critic. As in a thunderstorm, the associated sound effects follow a second or two later: loud curses, shocked exclamations, and infantile howling.

“I’m really sorry about the Vogelers’ baby,” Fred says to Rosemary as she closes the door behind her last guests.

“Sorry? Darling, it was wonderful. It made my party.” Rosemary’s elaborately piled hairdo has slipped from its moorings, her lipstick has been kissed away by departing friends, and there is a smudge of mascara below her left eye. Fred finds it sentimentally piquant, like the symbolic tear drawn on the cheek of a mime.

“Oh, the expression on Oswald’s face!” A ripple of laughter. “The way his nasty shiny red hair came unstuck from the crown of his head and hung down in strings; of course one always suspected he must be combing it forward into those silly bangs to disguise a bald patch. And there’s no damage done at all, really.” Rosemary surveys the drawing-room. The caterers have removed all the glasses and china, and rearranged the furniture; nothing remains of the party but an irregular damp patch on the pale-beige carpet and a few scattered flower petals. “Perfect.” She sinks onto a low cream-colored sofa heaped with silk tapestry cushions.

“I thought you were furious.” Fred laughs too, recalling Rosemary’s startled outcry, her repeated loud apologies and expressions of shock and concern, her demand that he fetch more and more towels to wipe Oswald off—But of course, she’s an actress.

“Darling, never for a moment.” She rests her tumbled pale-gold floss of hair against the back of the sofa and holds out her arms. “Ahh. That’s lovely.”

“Lovely,” Fred repeats. A wave of euphoria lifts him. He has never, he thinks, been happier than he is at this moment.

“Really, darling.” Rosemary disengages herself from a second long kiss. “It was one of the nicest moments of my life. When I think of what Oswald said when I was in
As You Like It
—that was years ago, of course, but I still positively shudder whenever I remember it. And the awful things he’s written about poor old Lou over the years. And even Daphne, if you can imagine. He was so beastly clever about her being too old for romantic parts once that she almost left the stage. It was wonderful for all of us to see him looking so ridiculous.” She begins to laugh again. “And what a silly vulgar fuss he made, far worse than the baby.” Another freshet of giggles. “And the best thing was, almost everyone saw it.”

“Yeh, they sure did.” The commotion caused by Rosemary’s solicitude takes on another meaning. “You took care of that.” Fred runs his hands down his love’s back, feeling the deep lace border of her chemise below the gauzy dress, the rounded convexities below that, marveling again that anyone so slight, soft, and silky could have so much purpose and will. In a few moments, he decides, he will get up and lower the lights.

“Well, naturally,” Rosemary agrees. She smiles slyly, charmingly. “But I had help. What a wonderful baby! But you mustn’t invite it again, darling, once is enough.”

“I didn’t invite the baby. I told Joe and Debby not to bring him. Honestly.”

“I believe you. Honestly.” Rosemary mimics Fred’s intonation, then gives him a butterfly kiss. “One can’t trust these hippies, they’ll do anything.”

Not wanting to break the mood, Fred refrains from explaining that the Vogelers are not hippies. He kisses Rosemary; she laughs softly and presses him closer. “Or say anything,” she adds; a little puckered frown appears between the feathery golden arches of her brows. “Your friend Joe, for instance”—her intonation subtly but definitely conveys that Joe is not and never will be her friend—”your friend Joe says that you’re going back to the States next month. I told him he was quite mistaken, that you’ll be here till the autumn at least.”

“I’m afraid he’s right,” Fred says reluctantly. “I’ve got to start teaching summer school at Corinth June twenty-fourth. I told you about that,” he adds, uncomfortably aware that he hasn’t mentioned it lately, or even wanted to think about it.

“Oh, nonsense,” Rosemary purrs. “You never said a word. Anyhow, you can’t leave then, we’ve got far too many lovely things to do. There’s Michael’s play opening, and I’m getting tickets for Glyndebourne. And then in July we start shooting the outdoor scenes for next season’s
Tallyho Castle
in Ireland—you’ll adore that. We always have such a good time: we stay at this perfectly delicious inn run by two of the most amusing old characters. They do marvelous meals: fresh salmon sometimes, and real Irish soda bread and scones. And of course it usually rains half the time, and then we’re free all day long.”

“It sounds great,” Fred says. “I wish I could come. But if I canceled out of summer school they’d be really pissed.”

“Who cares?” Rosemary ruffles his hair. “Let them rage.”

“I can’t. Everyone in the department would think I was irresponsible. It’d count against me in the tenure vote, I know it would.”