Foreign Affairs (39 page)

Fred also compares himself, unfavorably, with Captain Macheath. The women in his life hate rather than love him; and if he is presently to perish it will not be like Macheath for what he has done, but for what he has failed to do: specifically, for his failure to write and publish a scholarly work.

Apart from their anxiety about Jakie, the Vogelers’ mood is cheerful. In the last few weeks—ever since the weather became really warm—their view of England has altered. They still don’t care much for London; but a trip to East Anglia, where their Canadian friends have been lent a cottage, has given them a passion for the English countryside. “It’s like being back in the nineteenth century, really,” Debby enthuses. “Everybody in the village is so friendly, not like here in London, and they’re all such perfect
characters
.”

Next month, Joe tells Fred, they and the Canadians are planning to rent a boat and cruise on the canals. “It’s too damn bad you have to leave tomorrow, otherwise you could come along. It’s going to be great.”

“Yeh, it sounds like fun,” Fred says, thinking to himself that being confined for a week on a canal boat with the Vogelers and their friends, not to mention Jakie, isn’t his idea of great. While their opinion of contemporary England has improved, his has worsened. Everywhere about him now he sees all that they used to complain of: the meaningless imitation and preservation of the past, the smug hypocrisy, the petty regulations, the self-conscious pretense of refinement and virtue. London especially—like Rosemary—seems to him alternately false and mad. He wishes it were already tomorrow evening and he were back home where he belongs, though Christ knows nothing much awaits him there. Roo never answered his telegram; she’s probably off him for good.

Because of his height Fred is one of the first to see the Druids approaching up the path from the east: a procession of maybe two dozen persons hooded and robed in white, many of them carrying lanterns of antique design. At a distance, climbing the dark hill in the hazy moonlight, they are mysterious, even moving: numinous ghostly figures from the prehistoric past come back to life.

Joe and Debby suck in their breath, and Fred, awed in spite of himself, thinks a kind of prayer at the Druids and whatever supernatural powers they may be in touch with—in much the same spirit in which, as a child, he used to wish on a white horse and a load of hay. Make everything come out right, he whispers silently.

But as the Druids draw nearer, the illusion, like so many of Fred’s illusions about England, wavers and is shattered. At close hand these figures are undeniably modern, middle-class, and middle-aged or worse. Under their loose monkish hoods are long smooth pink-and-white English faces of the kind Fred used to see every day at the British Museum; they wear solemn self-conscious expressions and, in many cases, glintingly anachronistic spectacles. And beneath their long robes is an assortment of leather and plastic sandals, only a few pairs of which could pass even on stage as Early British.

The Vogelers don’t seem to be disturbed by these incongruities, or even to notice them. “Hey, this is great,” Joe says as the procession continues past them and forms into a straggly circle before the clump of trees that crowns Parliament Hill.

“Really pretty impressive,” Debby agrees; and in an almost reverent whisper she points out that many—in fact more than half—of the celebrants are female. Druidism is a gender-neutral faith; she read that in the
Guardian
.

Joe isn’t so sure. Maybe that’s the way it is now, he whispers back, but weren’t all the original Druids men?

Whatever the truth of the matter, Fred thinks as the Vogelers continue to debate the point sotto voce, these modern London Druids are patently phony and amateurish. The elbowy gestures with which their leader flourishes his ceremonial sword are awkward and unconvincing, and so are those of the two bespectacled women waving leafy branches toward the four points of the compass. The fragments of liturgy blown toward Fred on the night wind suggest an Edwardian rather than an Anglo-Saxon religious service; the manner of delivery reminds him of college productions of Greek drama. There’s something almost mad about them too, he thinks, as the Druids raise their lanterns aloft in semi-unison, chanting a hymn to what sounds like The Great Circle of Being in thin well-educated voices, and incidentally revealing a large number of anachronistic wristwatches and trouser legs.

Fred turns away, disgusted with this mummery, and with all the phoniness that surrounds him as far as his eye can see, from Bloomsbury to Notting Hill, from the lights of Highgate in the north to Chelsea in the south, and further.

As he stares toward Hampstead Village he sees another, even stupider-looking Druid climbing the path, coming from the wrong direction and obviously late for the show. At the crest of the hill she halts, peering anxiously about at the crowd of spectators; then she trudges on, wavering this way and that as if uncertain whether or not to approach her fellow-worshipers. Her welcome seems doubtful to Fred, for she is not only late but ill-equipped. She has forgotten her lantern; and small as she is her hooded robe is far too short; it doesn’t reach the ground by almost a foot, and exposes a pair of modern pumps.

Yes, Fred thinks as the foolish figure drifts nearer, this is what England, with her great history and traditions—political, social, cultural—has become; this is what Britannia, that vigorous, ancient, and noble goddess, has shrunk to: a nervous elderly little imitation Druid—

No. Wait a second. That isn’t a Druid, or even an Englishwoman. It is Vinnie Miner.

Eight hours later Fred is sitting on the front steps of Rosemary’s house in Chelsea, surrounded by all his luggage. Or maybe not all; when he jammed stuff into his canvas backpack early this morning he was still groggy from a second night of interrupted sleep. But if he’s forgotten anything, it’s too late now; his plane leaves from Heathrow at noon.

Though tired, Fred is in a far better frame of mind than he was last night. He knows now that Roo is waiting for him in New York; and he has managed to pass on his anxiety about Rosemary first to Vinnie Miner and then, with her help, to Edwin Francis, who is back from Japan and staying in Sussex with his mother.

“Oh dear,” Edwin said when Fred called early this morning and related his story. “I thought she must be away; she didn’t answer the phone. I was afraid of something like this. Well, I’ve nearly finished breakfast; I’ll take the first train in and go straight to Rosemary’s from Victoria.”

“All right. I’ll meet you there.”

“I don’t see the point of that. Besides, I thought you just told me you were leaving for the States this morning.”

“I can make it. My plane isn’t until noon.”

“Well—”

“I want to.”

“If you insist,” Edwin says with a sigh. “But promise me you won’t try to get into the house until I come.”

Restless now with waiting, Fred rises, crosses the street to the park in the center of the square, and scans the front of the house, both hoping and fearing that Rosemary will come out of it before Edwin arrives. The place looks deserted; all the shutters are closed and the stoop is littered with throwaway papers and advertising brochures. It’s hard to believe there’s anyone inside—let alone the woman he saw the day before yesterday. Or thought he saw. Was that really Rosemary, or was it only Mrs. Harris after all? What if his identification of the two was a delusion, a mental abberation caused by frustrated desire?

“Oh, there you are,” Edwin Francis says, getting out of a taxi; he looks white and anxious. “Did you try the bell? No? Good. Well, oh dear, let’s see now. I think perhaps you should go down the street a bit; it might upset her, seeing you suddenly.”

“I—All right,” Fred agrees.

He retreats, and from a middle distance watches Edwin ring and wait, then beckon him back.

“It’s rather worrying,” he says.

“Yeh.” Fred realizes that for Edwin, as for many Englishmen, the word “rather” is an intensifier.

“I think I’d better see if I can find the spare key.” He turns to one of the stone urns by the steps and begins to poke about in the earth under the ivy and white geraniums with a broken twig. “Yes, here we are.” Edwin takes out a large linen handkerchief of the sort Fred’s grandfather used to carry, and wipes the key and his small neat hands.

“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.