by Alison Lurie
Fred’s choice of Roo had felt to him like a bold and expansive act, a defiance of conventions—and also of his own conventional self. For years he had been aware that in spite of all his abilities and advantages his life was a little unexciting. From babyhood on he had been what he once heard his father describe as “a very satisfactory child”—bright, good-looking, successful in everything, above all well behaved. His adolescent rebellion was of the most ordinary variety, and gave his parents no serious anxiety. Fred would have liked to worry them a little more—but not at the cost of failing school, scrambling his brains permanently with acid, or wrecking the battered tail-finned Buick he had delivered papers in zero weather and mowed lawns for five years to earn.
Roo was his red flag, his declaration of independence—and in the beginning, the less comfortable his family and more conventional friends were with her, the better pleased he was. Now he feels shamed and enraged to realize that they had judged her more accurately than he. His father, for instance, held the unspoken but clearly evident opinion that Roo was not a lady. Once Fred would have indignantly denied this, or rather condemned the concept as outmoded and meaningless. Now he has to recognize its validity. Even if you suppose, just for the sake of argument, that Roo never slept with either of the two guys whose semi-erect cocks were featured in her show, those photos were pretty vulgar. And worse, she didn’t even know it. As Joe had put it, she wasn’t on the same wavelength; they weren’t, as Debby had said, “coming from the same place”—though in fact they had both grown up in university towns with fathers who were professors.
Possibly it was this similarity of background that had helped mislead him into assuming that Roo and he were, whatever her language and manners, essentially in cahoots. It wasn’t his fault; Debby had said so: “Anyone can make a mistake—even you.”
As Fred hears her remark again in his head, however, it begins to deconstruct, becoming condescending, chilly, and spiteful. It occurs to him for the first time that Debby does not like him, possibly has never liked him, that she is glad to see him depressed and discomfited. Why this should be so, however, he has no idea. He has known Debby even longer than he has known Joe, since their first year in graduate school, and has always thought of her as a friend, though not an intimate one.
As a matter of fact, though he doesn’t know it, Debby had originally liked Fred very much—too much for her peace of mind. When they met—almost daily, in class or at some lecture or party—or when they had lunch together, usually in a group but now and then alone, Fred remained unaware of her feelings. With the good-natured vanity of the extremely good-looking, it didn’t occur to him that dumpy, dish-faced Debby might hope he was developing a romantic interest in her, or that as time passed she regarded herself as a woman scorned. At present Debby would tell anyone who asked that she “likes” Fred, but privately she thinks of him as rather immature and thoroughly spoilt. She resents him professionally too, both on her own account and on her husband’s. Why should Fred, who did no better in graduate school than they, and has published no more, have a job in an Ivy League university, while they are at California colleges nobody ever heard of? It is only because he dresses well and has a smooth manner at interviews, and because of his connections: because his father is a dean at another Ivy League school. Fred, according to an article Debby once read, is an example of Entitlement Psychology: he has been brought up to get, and think he deserves, all the good things of this world. So why should she mind seeing him stumble, even fall? It will do him good to get a few bruises and a little mud in his eye. The fact that Joe doesn’t resent Fred the way she does, though he is in her opinion basically much more brilliant and has a more original mind, is for Debby just another proof of her husband’s inner superiority.
Fred, however, has never been agile at discovering unpleasant motives for his friends’ behavior. What he thinks now is that he must somehow have offended Debby, maybe by coming to dinner too often. Maybe she thinks he is sponging on them; maybe he is sponging on them. (Actually, this idea has never occurred to either Joe or Debby.) He has to ease up, Fred thinks as the train jolts toward Notting Hill Gate; he has got to meet some other people in London.
He decides that he will go to Professor Miner’s party after all. Probably there will be nobody there but other elderly, touchy academics; but you never know. And at least there will be drinks, and more important, maybe food—enough hors d’oeuvres so that for once he won’t have to buy supper.
3
* * *
Raspberry, strawberry, blackberry jam,
Tell me the name of your young man.
Old rhyme
IN Monsieur Thompson’s, a small but chic restaurant in Kensington Park Road, Vinnie Miner is waiting for her oldest London friend, a children’s book editor, writer, and critic called Edwin Francis. She is not anxious, for Edwin has thoughtfully called the restaurant to say he may be late; nor is she impatient. She is content to sit enjoying the book she’s just bought, the yellow and white chiffon of the fresh jonquils on the table, the matching alternation of sun and shade on the whitewashed houses outside, and the sensation of being in London in early spring.
Unless you knew Vinnie well, you would hardly recognize her as the miserable professor who got onto the plane in Chapter One. Perched on an oak settle with her legs tucked under her she looks girlish, almost childish. Her small size and the illustrated cover of her book (on Australian playground games) add to the illusion. Her costume is also juvenile by academic standards: a ruffled white blouse and a deep-flounced tan wool jumper. Round her narrow shoulders is her Liberty wool shawl, which gives her the look of a junior high school student, playing the part of a kindly grandmother. Her spectacles might well be a prop, the lines in her face drawn with eyebrow pencil, and her hair incompletely powdered gray.
“Vinnie darling. Forgive me.” Edwin Francis leans over the table to brush her cheek with his. “How are you? . . . Oh, thank you, dear.” He removes his coat and presents it to the waiter. “You won’t believe what I’ve just heard.”
“I might. Try me,” Vinnie says.
“Well.” Edwin leans forward. Though he is some years younger than Vinnie, his appearance—when he is in good form, as now—also suggests an artificially aged child. In his case, too, smallness of stature plays a part in the illusion; his short limbs, round face and torso, high color, and curly fair hair—now becoming rather sparse—also contribute to the effect. (When he is not in good form—depressed, drinking too much, unhappily in love—he resembles an afflicted Hobbit.) In spite of his innocuous appearance, and a manner that matches it—amused, offhand, self-deprecating—Edwin is a figure of power in the children’s book world and a formidable critic of both juvenile and adult literature: learned, sharp-witted, and, when he chooses, sharp-tongued.
“Well,” he continues. “You know Posy Billings.”
“Yes, of course.” Contrary to Fred Turner’s assumption, Vinnie’s London circle isn’t composed exclusively or mainly of academics. Through Edwin and other friends she is acquainted with publishers, writers, artists, journalists, people in the theater, and even one or two society hostesses like Lady Billings.
“I was talking to Posy this morning, and you were quite wrong. Rosemary has taken up with your colleague Mr. Turner. She’s even proposed bringing him to Posy’s place in Oxfordshire for a weekend.”
“Really,” Vinnie says, frowning a little. Rosemary Radley, an old friend of Edwin’s, is a television and film actress. She is extremely pretty and charming; she also has a history of brief, impetuous, usually disastrous affairs. When Edwin first announced that she had “taken up with” Fred Turner, Vinnie frankly didn’t believe it. They had been seen together at a play, at a party? Very possibly they had; that didn’t mean they had come together, orwere romantically involved. Perhaps Rosemary had invited Fred to the event, because after all he is a nice-looking young man, and one whose transatlantic origin might lend a piquant variety to her usual crowd of admire
rs. Or perhaps she hadn’t: people always gossiped about Rosemary, often inaccurately: she’d been the heroine of so many BBC and real-life romantic serials.
Edwin particularly enjoys fantasizing about his friends and acquaintances. He likes to hover over their adventures or presumed adventures as he does over whatever Vinnie is cooking when he comes to dinner, occasionally giving the pot a stir or adding a pinch of spices himself. “Really,” Vinnie had once said to him, “you should have been a novelist.” “Oh no,” he had replied. “Much more fun this way.”
Even if things have gone as far as Edwin is claiming now, it can’t be very serious. Rosemary, after all, has frequent impulsive sexual lapses—referred to later with laughter in phrases like “I just don’t know what came over me” or “It must have been the champagne”—and Fred might be a relatively harmless instance of this habit. But she can hardly be serious about him. It isn’t just that she’s older, but that her world is so much more complex and resonant. If talking to Fred for any length of time rather bores Vinnie, who after all is in the same profession and department, what on earth can he have to say that would interest Rosemary Radley? On the other hand, perhaps you don’t have to interest her, as long as you are sufficiently interested in her. Perhaps what she wants is fans, not rival entertainers.
“Of course it’s all your doing,” Edwin remarks, breaking off his loving contemplation of the menu. “If you hadn’t given that party—”
“I never meant for Rosemary to take up with Fred.” Vinnie laughs, for surely Edwin is teasing. “I never even considered—”
“The intentional fallacy.”
“I never even considered it. I thought Fred ought to meet some young people, so I invited Mariana’s eldest daughter. How was I to know she’d turned into a punk rocker? She was perfectly presentable when I saw her at her mother’s last month.”
“Well, you might have asked me,” Edwin says, breaking his current diet and liberally buttering one of the whole-wheat rolls for which Thompson’s is celebrated. Vinnie does not pick this up; if Edwin had his way, she is quite aware, he would dictate the guest lists of all her parties. His social circle is wider and considerably more glamorous than hers, and though she is perfectly happy to have him bring one or two of his well-known friends to her house—as he had brought Rosemary—she doesn’t want it to go any further. One or two celebrities are a social asset; but if you have too many, she has noticed, all they ever do is talk to one another.
“Besides, if Mariana’s daughter’s so punk,” she asks, “why did she bother to come to a party like mine, with that awful spotty young man in black zip-up leather?”
“To annoy her mother, of course.”
“Oh dear. Was her mother annoyed?”
“I think so, very,” Edwin says. “Of course she wouldn’t ever let it show, noblesse oblige.”
“No,” Vinnie agrees, and sighs. “It’s not safe any more, is it, giving parties? One never knows what fateful events are going to be precipitated.”
“The hostess as demiurge.” He giggles, and Vinnie, reassured, joins in.
“Fred’s being at that party wasn’t my fault,” says Vinnie, returning to the subject somewhat later. “It was yours, really. I only asked him because you said I didn’t know any Americans,” she lies.
“I never said any such thing,” Edwin lies, though both of them know that he had recently made this remark, which flattered Vinnie and also aroused in her a guilty patriotism.
“Anyhow, I don’t see why you’re complaining. I would have thought Fred was about the safest sort of person Rosemary could become involved with. Compared to Lord George, or to Ronnie, you have to admit—”
“Oh, I do. I have nothing against Fred per se . . . Thank you, that looks delicious.” Edwin gives his sole véronique a concupiscent glance, then delicately attacks it. “Mmm. Perfect. . . . And I admit he’s beautiful.”
“Too theatrical for my taste.” Vinnie, less passionately, begins on her grilled chop.
“Well of course, for Rosemary that could hardly be an objection.”
“No.” Vinnie laughs. “But the point is, he seems to me almost ideal for a fling.”
“Very likely.” Edwin, against his doctor’s advice, plunges into the creamed potatoes. “But Rosemary isn’t looking for a fling. She’s looking for an undying passion, the way most of us are.” Edwin, like Rosemary Radley, is known for his disastrous romantic affairs, though his are somewhat less frequent and naturally less well publicized. They tend to involve unstable young men, usually recent émigrés from southern European or Near Eastern countries, with menial jobs (waiter, grocer’s clerk, dry cleaner’s assistant) and grandiose ambitions (theatrical, financial, artistic). From time to time one of them leaves Edwin’s flat unexpectedly, taking with him Edwin’s liquor, stereo, fur-collared overcoat, etc. Others have had mental breakdowns in the flat and refused to leave it at all.
Vinnie refrains from remarking that she at least is not looking for an undying passion; Edwin surely knows that by now.
“Maybe it’s Fred we should be worrying about,” Edwin continues. “Her friend Erin thinks she’s going to eat him alive.”
“Oh, I doubt that,” Vinnie exclaims. After twenty years she feels a certain amount of loyalty to and identification with the Corinth English Department; and the idea that one of its members (no matter how junior) could be totally consumed by an English actress is displeasing. “He doesn’t look all that digestible to me.”
“Perhaps you’re right . . . Ahh. Have you tried the courgettes?”
“Yes, very nice.”
“Tarragon, obviously. And is there perhaps a little dill?” Edwin gives a gourmet’s frown.
“Hard to say.” Vinnie’s interest in food is comparatively moderate.
“No. Not dill. I must ask the waiter.” Edwin sighs. “So how do you see the future of the affair, then?”
“I don’t know.” Vinnie puts down her fork, considering. “But whatever happens, it can’t last very long. Fred’s going back to America in June.”
“Oh? Who says so?”
“Why, Fred does. He told me himself.”
“Yes; but when did he tell you?”
“What? I don’t know—in December, before he left, it must have been.”
“Exactly.” Edwin gives the wide smile that increases his resemblance, noted before by Vinnie, to the Cheshire Cat.
“But that won’t make any difference. Fred has to be back in Corinth by the middle of June: he’s teaching two courses in summer school.”
“Unless he decides not to.”
“Oh no; that’s impossible,” Vinnie explains. “That’d be most inconvenient for the Department. They wouldn’t like that at all.”
“Really.” Edwin raises his eyebrows, somehow expressing doubt not of the English Department’s annoyance but of its very existence, and even of the existence of Hopkins County, New York. (“Tell us again the wonderful name of that place where you live in the States,” he occasionally says. “What is it? Simpkins County?”)
“Besides, he couldn’t afford it,” Vinnie continues. “Between us, he’s quite hard up.”
“Rosemary has plenty of money,” Edwin says.
This time Vinnie represses her immediate reaction, though the idea that one of her colleagues might allow himself to be kept by an English actress is not only displeasing but disgusting. “I’m sure that Fred’s not serious about her anyhow,” she says. “For one thing, she must be at least ten years older than he, don’t you think?”
“Who knows?” Edwin, who probably does know, shrugs. Officially, and in press releases, Rosemary is thirty-seven; her actual age is a matter of constant speculation among her acquaintances. “Oh yes, now let’s see,” he adds, his eyes lighting as the dessert menu is presented. “A lemon ice, perhaps? Or a teeny little bit of the apricot tart, would that be too fattening? What do you think, Vinnie?”
“If you’re really on a diet, you should have the cantaloupe,” she sugge
sts, refusing for once to be an accessory before the fact; she is annoyed at Edwin both for his discretion about Rosemary’s age and his insinuations about Fred’s motives.
“No; not the cantaloupe.” Edwin continues to study the menu; his expression is both firm and a little injured.
“Just coffee for me, thanks,” Vinnie tells the waiter, offering a good example.
“Two coffees. And I’ll have the apricot tart, please.”
Vinnie does not comment, but it occurs to her for the first time that for such an intelligent man Edwin is disgracefully plump and self-indulgent; that his pretense of dieting is ridiculous; and that his demand that his friends join in the charade is becoming tiresome.
“But we musn’t just enjoy ourselves,” he says a few minutes later, wiping a bit of whipped cream from the side of his muzzle. “We must consider the problem of Rosemary, before there’s another disaster like the Ronnie one. If she keeps breaking her professional commitments to go off with some fellow . . . Well, naturally the word gets round: better not cast Rosemary Radley, she’s not dependable.” Edwin moves his plump forefinger in a horizontal circle, indicating world-wide distribution of this warning. “Jonathan, for instance, I know he wouldn’t consider it after the Greenwich debacle. . . . But she’s been working fearfully hard on that TV special, and in July she’s got to go on location for her series, she mustn’t be upset. I really think it’s your job to do something.”
“To do what? Warn Rosemary against Fred Turner?” Vinnie speaks rather impatiently; while watching Edwin’s loving consumption of his apricot tart it has struck her that in order to shame him into sticking to his diet—what a silly idea!—she has denied herself any dessert. And to no practical purpose, for she isn’t at all overweight; rather the reverse.