Foreign Affairs

by Alison Lurie

  “Really?” Vinnie sits forward. “And are you going to accept?”

  “Yeh; I think so.” Chuck grins. “Hell, I got nothing better to do. And it’s nice down there in the country now. Wildflowers everywhere, and so green. Besides, I kinda dig the dig.” He laughs at his own pun. “And Mike and his crew, I like their attitude. They work damn hard, but they aren’t frantic about it. Mike, sometimes he’ll just take the afternoon off to think, go for a long walk. And the students too. Course they don’t have to worry about production quotas, or showing a profit. In business you can’t ever stand still that way. If you’re not getting ahead every goddamn minute you feel as if you’re sliding back.”

  “Like the Red Queen.”

  “Yeh?” Chuck blinks at her. “What queen was that?”

  “In Through the Looking-Class.”

  “Oh, yeh? I never read that. You think I should?”

  “Well.” Vinnie has omitted Alice in Wonderland and its sequel from Chuck’s reading list, thinking that they would annoy and baffle him as they do many of her students. But if he is to spend the summer with an Oxford don, perhaps he should prepare himself. “Yes, probably you should.” She sighs, anticipating the explications that will be necessary if Chuck Mumpson is to read Alice properly: Victorian education, Victorian social history, Victorian poetry and parody, chess, developmental psychology, Darwinism—

  “Okay, if you think so. Hey, Vinnie. How are you feeling?”

  “Better, thanks.”

  “That’s great. Y’know, I could go for a cup of coffee, if you have one around.”

  “No, but I could make some,” Vinnie says, thinking that it is typical of men to believe that all women have a cup of coffee concealed about them somewhere.

  “Great.” Chuck follows her into the narrow kitchen, getting in her way while she fills the electric kettle and makes coffee for him and rose-hip tea (high in Vitamin C) for herself.

  “Thanks, that’s swell. You got any milk?”

  “I’m not sure—I might.” Vinnie opens her miniature fridge, which rests on the counter and is of a size that in America would be thought fit only for a student dormitory room. At the moment it is almost totally filled by three quarts of avocado-and-watercress soup made by her from Posy Billings’ recipe in Harper’s/Queen and intended for a luncheon party tomorrow that she will have to cancel if she doesn’t feel any better.

  In order to look for the milk, Vinnie lifts out the bowl of soup and turns to set it on the counter. At the same moment Chuck turns toward Vinnie. There is a collision: the stainless-steel bowl is knocked out of her hands and slides to the floor; she and Chuck are drenched with cold green soup and hot black coffee.

  “Aw, fuck! Excuse me.”

  “Oh, damn it!”

  “I didn’t see—Jesus. Sorry. Here, lemme—” Chuck grabs a dishtowel and begins wiping coffee and soup off the front of Vinnie.

  “That’s all right,” she says, swallowing with difficulty her irritation and the phrase You oaf. “My fault too.” Seizing a damp sponge, she starts to mop up Chuck. Luckily she is wearing a relatively soup-proof dress: an olive-green, densely flowered Laura Ashley cotton; Chuck’s synthetic yellow cowboy shirt and tan Western-cut slacks are much more vulnerable. Because he is so tall, most of the spill is on his pants. As Vinnie moves the sponge over them she suddenly becomes aware that they contain an unmistakable and even impressive bulge—and, simultaneously, that Chuck is to all intents and purposes stroking her breasts with a red checked linen dishtowel.

  “Thanks, that’s enough,” she says, backing away from him as far as possible in the tiny kitchen.

  “Vinnie—”

  “Really, I think we’d better just try to soak the stains out, and the sooner the better. Why don’t you just go into the bathroom and take your things off. Put them in the tub, and turn on some lukewarm water, not hot.”

  “Okay. If you say so.”

  Vinnie picks up the broken shards of coffee cup and begins to mop the kitchen floor, then stops, retreats to the bedroom, pulls off her sticky wet dress, and changes into a skirt and shirt. Her mind is full of nervous confusion. Three quarts of soup gone, what can she serve at lunch tomorrow instead? There’s no doubt what was going on in Chuck’s mind and body—is there? Or was she mistaken? Should she go out tomorrow morning and buy some pâté? Anyhow, she reacted quite fast—fast enough? At least she got him out of the way— Or a pound of shrimps perhaps, from Camden Lock market— Yes, but not very far out of the way. He is in her bathroom now, with almost nothing on and his clothes floating in her tub (she can hear the water running). Maybe the soup stains will come out, if not the coffee, but what the hell is Chuck going to wear instead? She should have sent him back to his hotel, but now it’s too late, he can’t go anywhere in sopping wet clothes. Her head is muddled by too many aspirin, and she didn’t think ahead. If he only had a decent raincoat instead of that awful transparent plastic thing—she gives it a nasty look as it hangs in the hall—then he could wear that while his clothes dried, or even go home in it.

  “Hey, Vinnie! Have you got a bathrobe or something?”

  Well, now Chuck has thought of this problem too. She’ll have to find him something to put on, he can’t stay in her bathroom all night; and as soon as he comes out he’s going to make a pass at her. Or maybe not. Maybe the whole thing was just a nervous reaction. Maybe she imagined it. Vinnie begins opening cupboards and drawers, all of which contain only female garments in sizes six and eight.

  “Vinnie?”

  “Coming.” In desperation she goes into her study and drags the spread off the daybed. “Here You can put this round you for now, it’s all I’ve got.” She shoves through the bathroom door a rough bundle of brown homespun with a geometrical border pattern and fringe. Not waiting for any possible objection, she returns to the kitchen floor, which is still splashed and smeared with green soup.

  “Aw, what a mess. Lemme help you.”

  “No, thanks.” Vinnie, on hands and knees with a bucket of soapy water and the same sponge she used on Chuck, glances up. Scrolled leather boots, thick naked muscled legs furred with pale-red hair, fringed homespun bedspread which, draped round his bulk, looks smaller than before. She stands up.

  “You have some kinda green plant stuff in your hair.” Chuck picks it out and presents it to her.

  “Watercress.” Vinnie throws it away. “It was watercress-and-avocado soup. I’d better go put my dress to soak, excuse me.”

  “Sure.”

  In the bathroom she shakes out her sticky Laura Ashley and lays it in the tub, then checks the mirror to make sure there is no more soup in her hair. How awful I look, how old, gray, unattractive, she thinks. Of course he’s not going to make a pass. As she leaves she glances again into the tub, where her dress and Chuck’s shirt and slacks lie wetly together in embarrassing proximity. She runs in lukewarm water to give them more room, causing the garments to turn and slosh about in a promiscuous embrace. Come on, get ahold of yourself, she thinks, and returns to the kitchen where, surprisingly, Chuck has just finished mopping the floor

  “I didn’t expect—thank you,” she says, noting that the bedspread has managed to transform Chuck from a fake cowboy to a fake Indian. “Would you like another cup of coffee?”

  “No, thanks.” He gives her a brief smile, a longer stare. Vinnie, uneasy, returns neither.

  “Well then,” she begins, “maybe you’d like—”

  “Y’know what I’d like?” Before she can answer, the imitation Indian grabs Vinnie by both shoulders and kisses her full on the mouth.

  “Mm! No!” she protests, but after the fact.

  “Aw, Vinnie. If you knew how long I’ve been wanting to do that. Ever since that day we had tea. But I didn’t have the, I don’t know, the nerve. I was too goddamn low.” He hugs her again, warmly rather than hotly—perhaps he only feels especially friendly?

  “Please, let’s take it easy,” she says. “And let’s get out of the kitchen, befor
e something else spills.”

  “Okay.” Chuck stands aside, then follows her into the sitting room. But they are hardly there before he moves closer again, crowding Vinnie against the wall under a watercolor of New College. This time his intention is evidently more than friendly. Vinnie feels the flutter of satisfaction that has always, for her, followed any expression of sexual interest: I may be plain, but I’m not after all hopelessly plain, it says. Then she catches her breath, tries to collect herself. But it is the first time since she left America that anyone has done more than shake her hand or kiss her on the cheek, and Chuck’s embrace is close, strong, deeply and alarmingly comforting. A flush of warmth spreads through her, an impulse to relax, to forget who she is, where she is—.

  “No, no,” she tries to say. “You’re making a mistake, I really don’t want this—” But the words are hardly more than a murmur. Push him away, she commands herself; but her body refuses—though one hand, with great difficulty, manages to keep their lower torsos separated a vital inch or two.

  It is Chuck who first pulls back. “Vinnie. Hold on a minute.” He removes his large warm hand from within her shirt, breathing hard. “God, this is great. But there’s something I’ve got to tell you.” He drags the bedspread back round his shoulders. “Let’s sit down a minute, okay?”

  “Okay,” she echoes shakily.

  “What it is, is—” Chuck, who has lowered himself to the sofa, halts. “Oh hell.”

  “Go on,” she prompts, taking a chair across from him and beginning to regain control. “I know what you’re going to say.”

  “You can’t. How could you?” He sounds angry, perhaps frightened.

  “Because I’ve heard it before.” Vinnie’s voice is almost steady now. She glances at Chuck, thinking how ridiculous he looks: a comic oversized pink-faced Red Indian, incongruous among the English furniture and flowered chintz. “You’re going to tell me that you’re awfully fond of me, but you want to be honest, and I should realize that your marriage is very important to you and you really love your wife.”

  “The hell I am. I don’t love Myrna—I hate her, or pretty near. My marriage is as dead as a skunk.” Chuck looks dark. “What I hafta say, it’s a lot worse than that.” He clutches at the bedspread, clears his throat. “Uh, you remember I told you I was in an accident back in Tulsa, smashed up my car.”

  “Yes,” Vinnie says, wondering if Chuck is about to confess some incapacitating and shameful sexual disability.

  “Wal, it wasn’t just my car I smashed up. There was this kid in a VW. It was out on the Muskogee Turnpike, about two A.M. I was tearing along, doing near eighty I guess, in my usual midnight funk, and suddenly there was this old VW pulling out from the access road right in front of me, weaving like a drunken chicken. I still keep seeing it. It was this sixteen-year-old kid, half out of his mind on amphetamines. I tried to stop, but my reaction time wasn’t fast enough, I was too goddamn pissed.”

  “So what happened?” she asks finally.

  “So I killed him. That’s what happened.” Chuck throws a panicky, searching look toward Vinnie; then, as if afraid of reading her expression, he transfers his gaze to the floor.

  “You know those little old foreign cars, they don’t have a hope in hell in a crash,” he informs the carpet. “That beetle crumpled up like a broil-in bag. The Pontiac wasn’t in such great shape either, but I got out of it somehow. I had a cracked knee, and my head was bleeding, only I didn’t notice it then. But the kid—He was stuck inside the VW with the wheel shaft through him, screaming. I couldn’t do anything for him—I couldn’t even get the door open.” He looks up at Vinnie again.

  “So there we were,” he goes on. “It was dark all around, black as hell. One of my headlights was still working, and I could see a slice of the road, with ripped-off pieces of metal thrown around, and a lot of smashed glass, looked like crushed ice.

  “By the time the cops got there I was kinda incoherent. I had point twelve percent of alcohol in my blood, and I tried to fight them when they wanted me to get into the patrol car; I had some idea I had to stay with the kid. So naturally they took me in. Resisting arrest, and assaulting an officer, and driving while intoxicated, and exceeding the speed limit, and failure to exercise proper caution . . . And then the kid’s parents decided to sue me for manslaughter. I wanted to plead guilty; the way I felt, I didn’t care too much what happened to me any more. Myrna thought I was nuts. If I didn’t have any self-respect, she said, at least I might have the decency to think of her and the children, of their standing in the community.”

  “And did you?”

  “Yeh. In the end. I let her get me an expensive lawyer, and he won the case for us. I had the right of way, see, and the kid was on drugs, that’s a lot worse than booze in Tulsa. Except if I hadn’t been so damn bombed I would have seen him in time, easy.”

  “I’m sorry,” Vinnie says. “What an awful thing to happen.”

  “I can’t fucking get it out of my mind. At least I couldn’t. It’s been better lately. For a long time I felt like I oughta die too, to make it up to the kid and his parents. That’s what it was mostly. Not so much losing my job like I told you. Whenever I get in a car, even sometimes just crossing the street, I think about it. I keep taking chances, to see if I’ll cash in; and if I make it, maybe I’m forgiven. I know that’s sort of crazy.”

  “Of course it’s crazy,” Vinnie says decidedly. “It wouldn’t do that boy or his parents the least bit of good for you to be killed in an accident.”

  “‘An eye for an eye—’”

  “‘Makes the whole world blind,’” she finishes.

  “Yeh—I see what you mean.” Chuck grins suddenly. “That’s a smart proverb. I never heard it before.”

  “Gandhi.”

  “What? Oh, yeh, that Indian.” Chuck ceases to smile. “Anyways.” He shifts uncomfortably on the sofa, causing it to creak in protest. “I thought you oughta know. I mean, in case you might not want to have anything more to do with me.”

  An excuse to draw back has been handed to Vinnie on a platter, but she hesitates. It would be hateful and hurtful to reject Chuck because of what had happened to him on the Muskogee Turnpike. Indeed, now she looks at the platter again, what is on it seems more like a watertight excuse for going ahead.

  “Don’t be silly,” she says nervously. “It was a terrible accident, that’s all.”

  “Aw, Vinnie.” Chuck lunges toward her, so precipitately that he leaves most of the bedspread behind, and folds her in a warm half-naked hug. “I shoulda known you’d say that. You’re a good woman.”

  Vinnie does not smile. No one has ever said this to her before, and she knows it to be false: she is not, in Chuck’s presumed sense of the word, or any sense of it, a good woman. She is not particularly generous, brave, or affectionate; she steals roses from other people’s gardens and enjoys imagining nasty deaths for her enemies. Of course, in her own opinion, she is quite justified in being like this, considering how the world and its inhabitants have treated her; and she has positive qualities as well: intelligence, tact, taste . . .

  “You’ve been so great to me all along,” Chuck continues. “Hell, you saved my life, just about.” He begins kissing her face, breaking off at intervals to speak. “Y’know, if I hadn’t met you, I probably never woulda thought of looking for my ancestors . . . Or found South Leigh. That time we had tea, I was about ready to give up. If it weren’t for you, I wouldn’t have found Old Mumpson, or met Mike or anything. I woulda managed to get myself killed by now, probably. Or else, a damn sight worse, I’d be back in Tulsa.”

  “Wait,” Vinnie tries to say between kisses, in which somehow she has begun to join. “I’m not sure I want . . .” But her voice now entirely refuses to function; and her body—rebellious, greedy—presses itself against Chuck’s. Now, now it cries; more, more. Very well, she says to it. Very well, if you insist. Just this once. After all, no one will ever have to know.

  8

  * *
*

  The heart when half wounded is changing,

  It here and there leaps like a frog.

  John Gay, Molly Mog

  FOR the first day or so after Rosemary’s party, Fred doesn’t take their quarrel very seriously. Her temper is always volatile, and she’s been briefly unreasonable before. Once, for instance, she broke a date because she disliked the way her hair had been done: it looked, she said, like some demented mouse’s nest, and she couldn’t bear for him to see it. But she made the disappointment up to him, and more, when they next met. Fred smiled, remembering.

  When forty-eight hours have passed and Rosemary still hasn’t answered her private telephone or responded to the messages he left with her service, Fred begins to feel uneasy. Then he remembers that she is working: she has a guest role in a historical television series that’s filming this week. He makes some phone inquiries, starting with Rosemary’s agent, who seems to know nothing of any quarrel (a good sign, Fred thinks), and discovers that they are shooting an outdoor scene early the following morning within walking distance of his flat.

  Now full of hope, he rises at eight, gulps some coffee and a piece of half-scorched gritty toast (he has never mastered the British open grill), and hastens toward Holland Park. Early as it is, the square where they are shooting and the streets leading into it are choked with cars and vans and what the British call lorries. Part of the road has been cordoned off; a policeman stands by the barrier in the relaxed posture of one who has drawn an easy assignment; passersby have begun to gather.