by Alison Lurie
Though the sky is heavy with gray, lumpy clouds, a simmering golden light bathes the façade of one tall, elegant brick house and the courtyard and pavement before it. This artificial sunshine emanates from two banks of fluorescent tubes on poles—miniature versions of those he’s seen at night baseball games. The building glows not only with light but with fresh paint: glossy white on the pillars and trim, glossy black on the ironwork. The railings and woodwork of the two neighboring houses have also been freshly painted—but only on the sides visible to the camera: the backs of the pillars, for instance, are dull and cracked. At the other end of the square two men with a ladder are taking down a metal sign reading COOMARASWAMY FOODS and replacing it with a wooden one inscribed CHEMIST in shaded Victorian capitals.
Fred’s good looks, his American accent, and his modestly confident manner make it easy for him to talk his way past the barrier. He negotiates a section of pavement jammed with people and equipment and crawling with electrical snakes—yellow, black, poison-green—and accosts an anxious-looking young woman with a clipboard.
“Oh, yes, Rosemary Radley’s on location,” she tells him. “She’s inside the house there, but you can’t speak to her now”—she snatches at Fred’s arm to prevent him—”we’re going to start shooting in a couple of minutes.”
This, as usual in the film business, turns out to be overoptimistic. More than a quarter of an hour passes while Fred leans against the side of a van marked Lee Electrics, watching the scene. A man in a blue smock is wiring white plastic flowers onto the standard rosebushes that flank the front walk of the golden house; two other men are doing something to the lights. A group of actors in Edwardian costume stands by the curb chatting: an old woman in black with a basket, a younger woman twirling a ruffled white parasol, a man in tweeds and a hat, a nanny pushing an empty wicker pram. Many of the crew members also seem to be merely waiting about, though now and then there are outbreaks of activity and shouting. A short plump man resembling an untidy beaver, with an unraveling brown sweater and unraveled gray hair—much the shabbiest and least attractive of the company—seems always to be the focus of these confusions. Fred puts him down as an incompetent technician—some union-protected booby—and blames the continuing delay on him, then realizes he is the director.
At length the tumult focuses to a point and stops. The door of the golden house opens; a dignified elderly man in Edwardian morning dress steps out, then a beautiful woman in gray and pink, her flaxen hair piled high and floating an immense hat of pink feathers and veiling like a nesting flamingo: Rosemary. The man speaks to her; she replies at length, smiling sweetly up at him. Fred can hear nothing of what they are saying because of traffic noise at the bottom of the square and the shouted instructions of the director. This strikes him as weird; then he notices that there are no microphones in sight The scene is being photographed, but not recorded—presumably that will be done later, in some studio.
Now Rosemary and her companion descend the marble steps, speaking and laughing animatedly, or appearing to do so. The camera is rolled back; on the sidewalk the nanny begins to push the pram away downhill, the young couple to stroll in the other direction. The beaver raises both hands, shouting “Cut! Hold it!” Two women and a man in coveralls rush toward Rosemary and the elderly actor and swarm over them, adjusting their clothes, smoothing their hair, powdering their faces. His love and her companion stand there passively, receiving the attention with no more concern than two store-window dummies. The beaver consults with the man operating the camera, then with several others. Finally he gives a signal; Rosemary, who hasn’t even glanced in Fred’s direction, returns to the house.
Over the next forty minutes this series of events is repeated many times, with only minor variations. Rosemary and the elderly actor exchange sides as they descend the steps; they walk faster, and then slower; the flamingo-pink hat is tilted at a different angle; a dangling branch above the railings is lopped off by a man with a saw and a ladder; the nanny is instructed to walk away more rapidly; the lights are moved again. At other times Fred, unfamiliar with the language of television production, can’t figure out what change has been made. Twice the actors get as far as the front gate and are accosted by the shabby woman in black, causing Rosemary to look concerned, smile graciously, and make an inaudible but earnest appeal to her companion.
As he watches, Fred is overwhelmed again by his love’s beauty and charm, which seem almost supernatural in the supernatural sunlight, and then by her cheerful endurance. Each time she emerges from the house she smiles with the same soft brilliance, trips down the steps with the same easy grace, laughs at the actor’s inaudible joke with the same perfect spontaneity. He understands for the first time that Rosemary is more than a beautiful creation of nature, a lily of the field; he sees that acting for television is hard, boring, skilled work, and admires her even more than before.
At the same time, many details of Rosemary’s performance make him uncomfortable. Her way of tilting her head and placing three fingers on the actor’s sleeve in half-serious, half-childish appeal, for instance. Until now, he has thought of this gesture as natural, impulsive, private—not a stage mannerism. Is this why Rosemary has never arranged for him to see Tallyho Castle on video tape, though the project has so often been discussed?
Finally a halt is called in the shooting. The pram is abandoned in the middle of the street: electricians and carpenters (Rosemary would call them “sparks” and “chippies”) lean against their equipment and pop open cans of soda; coffee in plastic cups is distributed. At last she emerges from the house again, without her hat. Fred hurries toward her, avoiding the tangle of cables as well as he can, once almost falling.
“Freddy!” Her face lights with pleasure, exactly as it has just done over and over again on camera. “Where have you been? Why didn’t you phone me? No—mustn’t touch—I’m plastered with makeup.” She gives him a quick hug, averting her face, which in close-up has an unnaturally flawless pasty surface, like the freshly painted house.
“I did, but all I got was the answering service. And you never called me back.”
“Oh, nonsense, darling. There wasn’t any message.”
“I called four or five times at least; and I left my name every time,” Fred insists.
“Really? Those stupid girls; I expect they’re jealous. Trying to ruin my love-life.” Rosemary giggles.
“I can’t believe—I mean, why the hell should they want to do that?”
“Who knows?” Rosemary shrugs. “People are so peculiar sometimes.” She reaches up to ruffle his dark curls. “Not like you. That’s what I adore about you, Freddy darling—you’re so reasonable. Come into the dressing-room. I’ve got to sit down; this corset is murder.”
She leads the way to a bus parked further up the street with its doors open. Within, most of the seats have been removed; the space is filled with mirrors, clothes-racks, and folding metal chairs and tables.
“Oh, darling.” She hugs him again, more closely, then sits, gives a quick, searching look into a glass, and swivels round. “I’m so happy to see you; I’ve got wonderful news. Pandora Box has invited us to her tower in Wales for the last week of June, it’s the most glorious place, and George owns the fishing rights on the river now—do you like to fish?”
“Yes—but I won’t be here at the end of June, you know.”
“Oh, Freddy, please. Don’t start that again.” She pivots back to the mirror and begins to smooth stray wisps of silken hair into the white-gold billows above.
“I can’t help it, damn it. I have to go back and teach. Besides, I’m broke. I can’t afford to stay here any longer even if I could.”
“Oh, Freddy,” Rosemary repeats, but in a very different manner, soft and surprised, leaning over the back of the folding chair toward him and extending round white arms delicately veiled in gray lace. “You mustn’t worry about that, pet. If that’s all it is, I can easily help you out. I’m quite flush now from residuals, and this
thing we’re shooting here—it’s a bore, but it does pay rather well.”
“I can’t live off you,” Fred says, his voice thickening.
“I’m not offering to keep you, silly. I haven’t come to that, I hope.” Rosemary laughs lightly, but there is an edge of impatience in her voice. “I’m only offering to lend you something.”
“I can’t take money from you. It would ruin everything.”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake, don’t be a ninny. It wouldn’t be very much. And you could save something by moving out of that nasty overpriced flat and staying with me for a bit, if you liked. And then once we’re in Ireland, everything’s practically gratis. Besides, I might ask Al if he couldn’t get you into the show as an extra. That’d be rather a lark, don’t you think?”
“Well . . .” says Fred, noticing that Rosemary seems to have adopted the slang of the Victorian age along with its fashions.
“You wouldn’t have to say anything,” she assures him. “Well, of course you couldn’t anyhow, because of your Yankee accent.”
Fred smiles. Though impossible from a practical point of view, the fantasy of appearing in a British television drama with Rosemary is agreeable.
“But you could be a silent brooding undergardener, or a gypsy tramp, or something like that. And you’d be paid a bit too, of course. I’d insist on that.”
“No,” Fred says with force. He scowls, unconsciously acting the insulting role assigned to him by his love’s imagination. “That’d be as bad as taking money from you. Worse.”
Rosemary’s fair, finely penciled eyebrows approach each other in a tiny but somehow threatening frown. She stands up gracefully, smoothing the lacy tiers of her skirt. “Really, you’re being awfully stupid,” she says, gazing down at Fred. “You think you’re in some historical drama; it’s you who ought to be in costume. You want to make both of us perfectly miserable, all because of some Victorian moral principle, that a man can’t borrow money from a woman.”
“Not from one he loves, no,” says Fred stubbornly.
“I don’t understand what’s happening.” Her musical voice quavers, and so does her small round chin above the high frilled collar. “What do you want from me? Oh, damn.” Tearing a tissue from a cardboard box, she blots eyes shiny with moisture. “You’re ruining my makeup.”
Fred rises to embrace her. Avoiding the creamy plastered face and the soot-streaked eyes, he kisses the fine floss of hair behind her ear, the soft neck veiled with lace, the white ringed hand that holds the damp tissue. “Nothing. Everything. I just want us to go on loving each other. That’s all.”
“For four weeks.”
“Yes,” he says, distracted by the contrasting stiffness and softness of Rosemary’s body: the heavy, slippery watered silk and frail net and lace; the feel of corseting underneath and soft yielding flesh beneath that; he presses her harder to him.
“You little shit,” says Rosemary in coarse, unfamiliar tones, using a word he has never heard or expected to hear from her. “Take your bloody hands off me.” Jolted, he steps back.
“I should have listened to Mrs. Harris,” she goes on in a voice that is her own, but charged with fury. “She warned me not to trust you.” She is facing him now, her great fringed eyes narrowed. “‘He’s a Yankee skip-jack,’ she told me a long time ago. ‘He’s a low-life deceiver of women.’”
“Rosemary, darling—”
“Excuse me, please. I have to get my makeup repaired.” With a swish of her satin fishtail skirt, Rosemary is out the door and tripping down the street.
Fred stands a moment, stunned; then he races after her. “Rosemary, please—”
Rosemary halts. She looks round coldly at him, then calls to one of the attendant policemen. “Oh, officer!”
“Yes, Miss?” He approaches, smiling.
“Could you move this man away, please?” She indicates Fred with a toss of her head. “He’s bothering me.”
“Right you are, Miss.”
“Thank you.” She gives him a smile made more dazzling by the sooty dampness of her great blue-gray eyes, and trips off.
“All right, you don’t have to shove me, I’m going,” Fred says, shaking the policeman’s hand from his arm. He picks his way through the electrical snakes, round the barricade, and past a large crowd of spectators. Then he turns and looks back over their heads to the house bathed in brazen unnatural light. In its front courtyard a man with a bucket and brush is methodically painting the plastic roses a brilliant, glamorous crimson.
Even after this scene Fred isn’t wholly discouraged. He has never in his life been rejected by any girl or woman he seriously cared for, and he is almost as certain of Rosemary’s feelings as he is of his own. Hadn’t she been crying at the idea of parting from him?
Not that he takes her tears all that seriously. He has seen his love weep before: at a sad film, or for the death of some actor she barely knew; and then, half an hour later, he has seen her dissolved in laughter at some scandal about the same actor relayed by a friend. The theatrical temperament, he suspects, enjoys emotional scenes and tangles of misunderstanding, just as it later enjoys their untangling. The climate of their affair had always been, not stormy, but dramatically various, as changeable as the English spring weather—sunshine succeeding showers with a breezy, careless rapidity.
But as the days pass and he still can’t reach Rosemary, Fred becomes more and more tense and desperate. From one hour to the next his mood changes. He is enraged at Rosemary and never wants to see her again; he wants to see her, but only to tell her off, to let her know how angry he is; he wants to break into her house, to force his love upon her; he wants to plead with her: Hasn’t she shut him out long enough? There are so few weeks left; it is perverse and wasteful of her to squander them this way.
Also, for the first time, he seriously asks himself if he should do as Rosemary demands. Should he cable or telephone to the Summer School office in Corinth and say that he won’t be able to teach this year—maybe say he is ill? Isn’t two months in England with Rosemary worth it—worth angering his senior colleagues and risking his promotion? But if he doesn’t teach this summer, what the hell is he going to live on? He’s practically broke now, and if he stays on he’ll be—there’s no getting round it—living on Rosemary, in her house; letting her buy his meals and, when they go to Wales or to Ireland, his train and plane tickets. He will be what is called a kept man—a man who is maintained, enclosed, as one might house and feed and cage an expensive pet. And hadn’t Rosemary, when they last met, called him “pet”? No, no, never.
If he could only find the key to Rosemary’s house that she once gave him, he would go there and wait for her to come home. But the damn thing is lost; he must have left it behind the day of the party. Without it, he does what he can: he phones again and again; he even goes to the house in Chelsea, but nobody is ever home, except, once, Mrs. Harris, who won’t let him in or take a message, only shouts through the locked door something that sounds like “bugger off!” Is Rosemary staying somewhere else? Has she left town? He tries her agent, but now the man is coolly and smoothly uncommunicative. He is awfully sorry, he says, but he has no idea where Rosemary might be—two evident lies.
Rosemary’s friends are more agreeable, but just as unhelpful. And their agreeableness, Fred realizes now, is and always was generic rather than specific. In the past, because he was Rosemary’s current boyfriend, they had inquired about his work and solicited his opinions on matters cultural, political, and domestic. Now they have dropped him—though in all cases with the gentlest and most casual motion, as if brushing a crumb to the floor. They all have charming manners; when he telephones they are uniformly pleasant, but rather vague and always “awfully busy.” Some seem to have difficulty remembering who he is (“Oh yes, Fred Turner. How nice to hear from you”). Though he isn’t leaving for several weeks, they wish him a pleasant journey back to “the States” as if he were just about to step onto a plane. His questions about Rosemary a
re passed over as if unheard, or met with what he is beginning to recognize as the classic waffling manner of the British upper classes when confronted with the insignificant unpleasant. (“Goodness, I haven’t the faintest—wasn’t she going to the Auvergne or somewhere like that?”) Rosemary’s closest friends, who might have been more helpful, and with whom he could have been more direct, are unavailable. Posy lives out of town, and he doesn’t have her (unlisted) number; Erin, Nadia, and Edwin are abroad.
His colleague and fellow-citizen Vinnie Miner is also of no use. When he saw her last week at the British Museum she promised to speak to Rosemary for him, promised to explain that Fred didn’t want to leave London, that he loves her—Nothing has come of that commission, if she carried it out, which he doubts. And even if she did, Fred thinks, she probably didn’t make much of a job of it. If Vinnie ever in her life experienced real romantic love, let alone sexual passion, she has probably forgotten it.
Whereas he, Fred, is—shit, he might as well admit it—emotionally and physically obsessed. All he can think of, day and night both, is Rosemary. He tries to work at home, he goes to the BM, but he can’t concentrate, can’t read, can’t take notes, can’t write. And this although he has, for the first time in months, all the time in the world: long empty days and nights.
Again, just as he did last winter, he has taken to wandering about London. But now he knows that the city exists; that a rich, complex, intense life goes on within its walls, behind its shuttered and curtained windows. Everywhere he passes houses, restaurants, office buildings, shops, and blocks of flats where he has been with Rosemary; the streets themselves shimmer with the almost visible ghosts of his love affair. In this keyed-up state he often thinks he sees Rosemary herself at a distance: going into Selfridge’s, or in the intermission crowd at a theater; he spots her pale-gold halo of hair and light tripping walk three blocks away down Holland Park Road or getting out of a taxi in Mayfair. His heart pounds; he races, dodging traffic and shoving aside pedestrians, toward what always turns out to be some stranger.
