Foreign Affairs

by Alison Lurie

  Edwin has brought with him a very young man called Nico, who according to Rosemary is his current “particular friend.” Rosemary and Posy approve of Nico; they regard him as a great improvement on Edwin’s previous particular friends, most of whom Posy says she has “simply refused to have in the house.” Compared with these persons Nico is well educated, fluent in English, and “really quite presentable.” He is a Greek Cypriot: slight, smooth-skinned, with abundant dark glossy curls and pronounced artistic and political opinions. His ambition is to work in British—or even better, American—television or cinema, eventually as a director. At lunch today he expressed an interest in Fred’s views that was evidently more sincere than Edwin’s, though less disinterested. (“You have very original ideas on the cinema, Fred, I think very exciting. I suppose that you know many people in the American film industry, or in the American theater, perhaps, that you have discussed these theories with? . . . No, none at all? That is a pity. I would like so much sometime the chance to talk with American film makers.”) Though Nico is still polite to Fred, it is clear that he now regards him as professionally useless.

  The final houseguest is William Just, who is a sort of cousin of Posy’s and is referred to by her and Rosemary as Just William. In appearance he is middle-aged and nondescript, with rumpled-looking tweedy clothes and an air of vague detachment. Just William does something at the BBC and is unusually well informed on current events; he also seems to be acquainted with everyone Posy, Rosemary, Edwin, and even Nico know in London. His manner is mild and self-effacing; Fred assumes he has been invited partly out of family obligation (he is no longer married, and probably lonely) and partly because he might be able to get Nico a job at the BBC.

  Fred finds Edwin and Nico interesting as types, and William for his behind-the-scenes political knowledge. He is sorry, though, that he won’t get to meet Posy’s husband, Jimbo Billings. According to the newspapers, Billings is a shrewd and aggressive character who deals in high-risk investments, and knows many world leaders; a large, imposing-looking man (his photograph is prominent on the sitting-room mantelpiece). At the moment, however, he is in the Near East on business.

  Nico is even more disappointed that he will not meet Jimbo Billings. “Yes, I wish the chance to tell him many things, what I think of his government, and of his policies,” he said belligerently to Fred when they were all out for a walk after lunch. “There is much that he could do for my country, for my friends there, if he would.” But Posy’s husband has no connection with the British government, Fred protested, he is only a businessman. “Only, that is a lie,” Nico said, slashing at Posy’s newly leafed box hedges with a willow switch he had broken off beside the ornamental lake. “He has much influence, more than many politicians here, believe me, but in my country he uses it for evil.”

  As the landscape outside darkens, Fred turns away from the window and takes up one of the four daily newspapers that since lunchtime have been refolded by some unseen hand and neatly ranged on the polished mahogany table. Presently he is joined by Edwin and Nico, and then by Posy, Just William, and Rosemary. Drinks are served, followed by a five-course dinner (sorrel soup, spring lamb, watercress salad, lemon fool, fruit and cheese) and coffee in the long drawing-room. Among the topics discussed are the Common Market, growing exotic bulbs indoors, the films and love life of Werner Fassbinder, the novels and love life of Edna O’Brien, various ways of cooking veal, a current mass murder case, the financial and staffing difficulties of the TLS, and hotels in Tortola and Crete. Fred tries to keep up his end of the conversation, but without much success; he has never grown bulbs, cooked veal, seen a film by Fassbinder, etc. He feels provincial and out of it, though Posy and William try to help by asking him about American customs of gardening and cooking and filmgoing. He is glad when Posy proposes that they all stop gossiping and play charades.

  As it turns out, the British game of charades differs from the one Fred knows—though each, it occurs to him, is characteristic of its culture. In the American version every player has to act for his team-mates some popular proverb, or the title of a book, play, film, or song, provided by the opposite team; victory goes to the side whose members collectively do this the fastest. America, that is, rewards speed and individual achievement, and encourages frantic attempts to communicate with compatriots who literally or metaphorically don’t speak your language.

  In the British version of charades—or at least in Posy’s version—there is no premium on speed and there are no winners. Each team chooses a single word and acts out its syllables in turn, with spoken dialogue that must include the relevant syllable. Though some trouble is taken to confuse the issue and make guessing harder, the game mainly seems to be an excuse for dressing up and behaving in ways that would otherwise be considered silly or shocking. It thus combines verbal ingenuity, in-group loyalty and cooperation, love of elaborate public performance, and private childishness—all traits that Fred has begun to associate with the British, or at least with Rosemary and her friends.

  Before the charades can begin, nearly an hour is spent choosing the words and rummaging about in closets and trunks to outfit the players. Rosemary, Edwin, and Just William go first. They seem to have chosen their word (which turns out to be HORTICULTURE) partly for the opportunities it gives Edwin to wear Posy’s clothes—which, since she is a large woman and he a small man, fit pretty well. In the first scene (WHORE) he and Rosemary appear as streetwalkers, and William, with a cane and bowler, as their drunken client. Edwin is comically horrifying in a red fright wig, an orange-and-yellow flowered sundress stuffed with facial tissues, and high-heeled gold sandals. Fred is nearly as startled by Rosemary. She is not only vulgarly made up and loaded with costume jewelry, but wearing the lace butterfly nightgown in which, just a few hours ago . . . He wants to protest, but makes himself laugh along with the rest; after all, it’s only a game.

  In the second scene (TIT) Edwin is a milkmaid (sunbonnet, pink checked pinafore) while Rosemary and William—with the help of a brown woolly blanket, two bone drinking horns, and a pink rubber balloon filled with water—represent the front and back halves of an uncooperative cow. For CULTURE Edwin wears one of Posy’s tweed suits, a tweed porkpie hat, horn-rimmed spectacles, and a string of pearls. With his neat, rather handsome features and his well-padded small frame he looks, Fred thinks, better and even more natural as a fortyish matron. He obviously enjoys his part, in which he tries to force a series of highbrow books and records on Rosemary and William, who represent two sulky semi-punk schoolchildren.

  After much laughter and applause and another round of drinks, Posy, Nico, and Fred retire to the library to get into costume for the first syllable of their word (CATASTROPHE). Nico and Fred, now in shirtsleeves, are fitted with colorful sashes and black rubber boots (Posy calls them “Wellies”) and breadknife daggers. They represent pirates and will soon pretend to lash her (as a cabin boy) with an improvised clothesline CAT o’nine tails.

  “What’s that noise outside? It sounds like a car.” In the white sailor-boy blouse she has just pulled on over her long pleated red silk dress, Posy runs to the window and pushes aside the heavy velvet curtain. “Oh, my God. It’s Jimbo. Quick, upstairs, everybody—and don’t forget your proper clothes.” She flings open the library doors and dashes across the hall to the drawing room.

  “William, it’s Jimbo, get upstairs as fast as you can, he’s just putting the car away. All of you, come on.” Ignoring their questions and exclamations, Posy herds her guests up the crimson-carpeted staircase and along a hall lined with heavy gilt-framed eighteenth-century portraits.

  “Now,” she declares, checking to make sure that none of them are visible from below through the banisters. “William, dearest, you go straight out by the back stairs and down to the boathouse, the key’s in the stone urn under the ivy. Look out when you pass the stables, in case Jimbo’s still there. Rosemary, and Edwin, oh Christ—” She takes in Rosemary’s naughty schoolgirl outfit and Edwin’s dowager
tweeds. “All right, both of you; get dressed as fast as you can and then come down to the drawing room. I’m counting on you to keep Jimbo occupied for at least five minutes while I change the sheets and tidy up. Fred, and Nico, you’ve got to help too, darlings, this is a crisis. I want you to pack everything in William’s room into his bag, all his clothes and books, every single thing you find. If you’re not sure it’s his, put it in anyhow. Right, everyone? Let’s go.”

  Fred hears a door opening below and steps in the hall, then a weary, peremptory male voice. “Hallo? Is anybody still up?”

  “Jimbo!” Posy cries. She drags the sailorboy blouse over her head, stuffs it into an antique oak chest, and runs down the stairs. “Darling, how lovely! I didn’t expect you till Monday.”

  “I sent a cable this morning from Ankara.”

  “It never came. Never mind, darling. Did you drive all the way from Gatwick? You must be simply exhausted. Come into the drawing room and I’ll fix you a lovely strong whisky. I’ve got a few people here for the weekend, but most of them have gone to bed. Rosemary’s still up, though, I think, and Edwin Francis. I’ll go tell them you’re here in a moment, but first I want to know all about—” Her words fade.

  “Remarkable,” Edwin says sotto voce, shaking his head under the tweed matron’s hat. “Did you ever see such natural authority, such military decision, such a grasp of strategic essentials? Hereditary, of course,” he adds. “The Army blood . . . Poor Posy, really, all those Empire-building genes wasted on this sad century. She should have lived a hundred years ago—”

  “Edwin, do go on, before Jimbo sees you like that,” Rosemary whispers, giggling.

  “—and been a man, of course. Very well. But I must say, I hope Jimbo has the sense to take her into partnership as soon as the babies are safely in school.”

  “Okay, let’s get started,” Fred says to Nico a few moments later, lifting William’s worn leather Gladstone bag onto the bed. “I’ll do the closet, and you can empty the drawers.” He opens the wardrobe door and begins sliding clothes off hangers. “Lucky there isn’t much.”

  But when he turns around with a load over his arm Nico is still standing in the middle of the Turkey carpet. In his open-necked white shirt and black rubber boots, with Posy’s red fringed scarf knotted around his waist, he looks as if he were playing pirates; his expression is theatrically stormy.

  “Hey, let’s go,” Fred says.

  “No,” Nico hisses through his teeth, in character.

  “No?”

  “I am not a servant.” Nico’s voice is barely under control. “I don’t pack the dirty clothes of people.”

  “Oh, for Christ’s sake.” Fred rolls up some suprisingly elegant maroon silk pajamas and stuffs them into the bag. “Don’t be a wimp.”

  Nico does not move. He looks insulted; probably he has never heard of a wimp and thinks it is something unspeakable. “Sorry,” Fred says. “Look, maybe you could just pile up those books and papers, all right?”

  “All right,” Nico says sullenly.

  “What I don’t understand,” Fred goes on, trying to ease the atmosphere in the room, “is why William has to get out of the way so fast. I can understand that maybe Sir James Billings wouldn’t want to meet a lot of strangers when he’s just got back from Turkey late at night. But he must be used to William; after all he’s Posy’s cousin.”

  Nico snorts. “You are wrong, and also stupid,” he says, slinging Royal Charles and Betrayal onto the bed.

  Fred decides not to notice the word stupid, which Nico has no doubt used as a riposte for wimp. “But he is her cousin; Posy said so when she introduced us before lunch,” he says, starting to pack up William’s leather toilet kit.

  “Yes, her cousin, I suppose.” Nico’s tone is scornful. “They are all cousins here. And also her lover.”

  “Aw, come on.” Fred thinks of Posy, so blond and queenly and tall, in her way as much the real thing as Rosemary. “I can’t believe that.” He imagines Posy naked, a luscious full-bodied late-Victorian nude, in sexual juxtaposition with the lanky, dim, fiftyish William, the relevant part of whom is somehow represented in his mind by the worn beaver shaving brush with dried white soap on it that he has just stowed away.

  “No? Why not?”

  “Well, I mean, he’s too old. And he’s not all that attractive either. I mean, hell, Posy’s a beautiful woman.”

  “Who can calculate these things?” Nico tosses the Times untidily beside the books. “It’s a matter of opinions. Myself, I would not want to fuck with Lady Posy; you would not want to fuck with Cousin William.”

  “No,” Fred agrees vehemently, reminded that Nico, in spite (or perhaps because) of his macho appearance, presumably fucks regularly with Edwin Francis.

  “Also, sex, it is not always a matter of only desire, as you must know.” Nico allows a slight unpleasant pause. “Cousin William is not wealthy or famous, but he has many connections. With his help Posy is a feature in the magazines, on the television. Soon she introduces for him six programs about English gardens, for a nice payment. He does much for her.”

  And if Cousin William would do as much for me, Nico seems to be saying, I might fuck with him. Or even worse: Rosemary is rich and famous, she does much for you. The conviction that Nico is a sly, second-rate, opportunistic person, a blot on the country-house scene, comes over Fred. “Maybe, but that doesn’t prove—”

  “Also you see he stays in the room next to Lady Posy’s, the customary room of the husband.” With a mocking flourish Nico pulls open a paneled oak door, exposing a vertical slice of Posy’s blue-and-white sprigged and ruffled Laura Ashley bedroom.

  “So?” Fred says, concealing his fear that Nico is right, but not his dislike.

  “So convenient.” Nico smiles.

  Fred does not smile. He goes on packing William’s clothes, faster than before. Though most of them are clean, they now feel disagreeable: the tightly rolled thin dark lisle socks, the slippery starched shirts with the name of a Belgravia laundry on the paper band. He does not like them; he does not like the paneled room with its deep tapestry-cushioned chairs and window seat, its distorting mullioned panes, its connecting door. An impulse to walk away comes to him, but his training in manners is strong, and he presses on.

  “You’re saying that William had to get out of the house fast because if Posy’s husband saw him here, he’d think they were having an affair,” he says, trying to clarify it in his mind.

  “Not think.” Nico’s expression is condescending. “He knows already that they fuck, since a long time.”

  “Says who?”

  “Edwin says it to me. They have an arrangement, he says.”

  “You mean like an open marriage.” Fred begins to pull out the drawers below the wardrobe. They are empty and lined with glazed paper in an overcomplicated and disagreeable red paisley design.

  “I don’t know what you call it,” says Nico. He has given up all pretense of helping and is lounging on the window seat. “Edwin says they well understand each other, and if Billings does not have to meet Cousin William he is content, why not? He has still the beautiful aristocratic wife, the pretty children, the rich country house—”

  “Yeh, but—”

  “He also has his freedom, naturally. His own amusements.”

  “Oh, yeh? What amusements?”

  “I don’t know.” Nico shrugs. “But Edwin says they are expensive ones, and not very nice.”

  Without wanting to, Fred starts trying to imagine the sort of amusements that might be considered not very nice by Edwin Francis, a homosexual who likes to dress up in his hostess’s clothes; but he is interrupted.

  “Well, how are you getting on?” Posy pauses in the doorway with an armful of scalloped yellow sheets. She is as beautiful and gracious as ever; but she looks different to Fred, somehow fleshy and loose.

  “Almost done.” He bundles the Times into William’s bag and pulls the sides together.

  Posy surveys the room,
taking in Nico lazily prone on the window seat. “Very good,” she says to Fred. “Now, could you be a real sport, and take the bag down to the boathouse?”

  “Yeh, sure.”

  “I’ll show you the way; and then you can come back and have a drink and meet Jimbo. But you musn’t keep him up late, please, he’s had such a long trip. I know what; you might say you have to turn in early so you can get up and jog before breakfast. Jimbo will like that, he often runs himself; and it might not be a bad idea if you were to arrange to meet him tomorrow and go jogging together. Then we can make sure he doesn’t run in the wrong direction.” Posy smiles at him again, then clicks it off. “And you. Nico.” She gives him a chilly look. “I want you to go straight to bed. Don’t even think of having a shower tonight, or there won’t be enough hot water for Jimbo. You were in there for an hour this afternoon as it is. And please don’t come down for breakfast; Jimbo’s very grumpy at breakfast. I’ll send you up a tray.”

  For a long moment Nico does not move. His handsome features have darkened and distorted as Posy spoke and are now set in an angry flush. But her aristocratic stare is too much for him; he rises slowly and moves toward the door.

  “Thank you,” she says, gracious again. “All right now, Freddy darling, it’s this way.”

  Posy leads him along the hall between two rows of ancestors: plump-jawed self-satisfied countenances in heavy curled wigs. The portraits are hung from near the ceiling in such a way that they tilt outward from the top, creating an oppressive effect.

  “He’s such a nuisance sometimes, Nico,” she says. “He’s got all sorts of silly ideas about politics, and I’m simply not going to have him bothering poor Jimbo with them, especially not at breakfast. You know how excitable these Mediterranean types can be.” She opens the door to some back stairs, smiling at Fred, inviting him into the company of non-Mediterranean types who are not excitable and have no silly ideas. “So if you should see him trying to sneak downstairs tomorrow morning, I hope you’ll be a dear and head him off.”