Foreign Affairs

by Alison Lurie

  Fred sits listening, becoming more and more angry. Rosemary’s praise of Daphne’s autobiography is fervent but, he knows, false—she has already described it to him as “a silly picture book” and made fun of Daphne for being too tight to hire a really good ghostwriter. Now she announces to anyone tuned to this station in Greater London—or, for all he knows, anywhere in Britain—that she “was absolutely bowled over” by Daphne’s “wonderful charm and wit.” How can she tell such lies? How can she chatter on like that, laugh like that, exchange trivial theatrical reminiscences with Daphne and those other fools? Obviously she isn’t in the same kind of pain he is. She really doesn’t give a fuck; she’s forgotten he exists. Well, as soon as the show is over he’ll remind her.

  The closing theme begins; Fred approaches the padded doors. Five minutes pass, but Rosemary doesn’t appear, nor do any of the other people who were on the program with her.

  “Hey!” The receptionist calls to him through a renewed blast of popular music. “Hey, you.”

  “Yeh?” Fred looks round.

  “You still waiting for Rosemary Radley?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re wasting your time. The talent doesn’t use this way out, ’less they want to see their fans or something.”

  “Thank you.” Fred approaches her desk, leans on it with both elbows, and projects as much sexual charm as he can manage in his present mood. “What way out do they use?”

  “Round the back, by the parking lot. But they’re probably all gone by now.” She lowers her slime-green, thick-lashed eyelids, leans toward him. “Anyhow, what does a hunk like you want with a bag that age?”

  “I—” Fred suppresses the impulse to defend his love; there’s no time to lose. “Excuse me.” He runs across the lobby, shoves open a thick glass door, and circles the block. Behind the studio building he finds another entrance, but the glass doors here refuse to open.

  His heart thumping, he stands beside a stack of empty packing cases watching for Rosemary to come out—with Daphne and those other fools probably, he realizes. But he won’t bother about them, he’ll pull her away, he’ll say . . . Slowly, as Fred rehearses his prepared speech, time leaks out of the air; slowly he realizes that Rosemary has left without waiting for him.

  Furious with blocked impulse, Fred curses aloud. “Goddamned bitch,” he cries to the empty parking lot, and much more. He says to himself that Rosemary is cold-hearted, cruel; that all her words and gestures—some rise to consciousness, but he shoves them down again—were false, theatrical. The Lively Arts, he thinks: so lively, so arty . . . Ah, fuck it. He kicks the side of a damp-stained packing case several times, stoving it in.

  Maybe he should have used more lively art himself. He should have lied to Rosemary, told her that he’d resigned his summer-school job, enjoyed himself for the next four weeks, and then got on the plane—been the Yankee skip-jack Mrs. Harris claimed he was.

  But he couldn’t have kept up the act; he’s no thespian. Anyhow the whole idea of it makes him sick. It wouldn’t have been love any longer, it would have been calculation, exploitation. Rosemary could have managed that maybe, if she’d wanted . . .

  And now a smog of suspicion and jealousy descends on Fred, as if the saturated smoky-purple clouds that hang over the parking lot had suddenly descended, blotting out London. Maybe Rosemary was faking all along. Maybe she staged that quarrel with him after her party deliberately; maybe she’d just met or renewed a connection with someone she likes better. Maybe even now she is in the arms of this man, whispering to him in her soft voice, giving her intimate trilling laugh. Again the idea that he has fallen into a Henry James novel occurs to Fred; but now he casts Rosemary in a different role, as one of James’ beautiful, worldly, corrupt European villainesses.

  What if it was all false, everything she’d ever said to him, everything he’d believed about her? What if, even, Debby was right, and Rosemary is really years older than she’d said? She doesn’t even look thirty-seven, but Nico had claimed that she’d had more than one face-lift, that all actresses did as a matter of course. Fred had assumed this was just fag spitefulness. But suppose it’s true, what difference does it make? Whatever her age, isn’t she still Rosemary, whom he loves? Who doesn’t love him, probably, who may never have loved him, who won’t even speak to him now; who lied to him, maybe, the whole fucking time.

  What an asshole he is, standing here among the rubbish, like some lovelorn groupie waiting at the stage door for a star who isn’t even there. Fred scowls at the smashed packing case, at the debris blown against the wall: scraps of soiled paper and foil, an empty beer can, a length of twisted red yarn of the sort Roo used to tie round her hair.

  And suddenly, for the first time in weeks, he sees Roo clearly in his mind. She is sitting naked on the edge of their unmade bed in the apartment in Corinth, her round tanned arms raised to gather the heavy weight of her dark chestnut hair. Then she separates it into three parts and, with an unconscious half smile of concentration, begins to plait them in and out to form a single thick, shining cable like the hawser of some sea-going ship. As the glossy rope lengthens, she pulls it forward and braids on till only about six inches of loose hair remain. Then she stretches a rubber band three times round the end of the plait, and over that a twist of scarlet wool. Finally, with a toss of her head, she flips the finished braid and its soft tail of coppery filaments back over her bare brown shoulder.

  Fred feels a rush of longing; he thinks that, whatever her faults, Roo is incapable of calculated theatrical falsity. The seas will all go dry and the rocks melt with the sun, to quote one of her favorite folksongs, before he will ever hear her voice announcing that it is quite marvelous to be in some fucking radio station.

  Next he feels a rush of guilt, remembering Roo’s letter, which is still lying desolate and unanswered on top of a pile of unread scholarly books in his flat in Notting Hill Gate. He’ll write her now, Fred thinks as he turns his back on the studio and starts home. This afternoon.

  But the mails are slow; it will take ten days for a letter to reach Roo. Maybe he should phone; the hell with the cost. But after such a long silence—over four weeks since she wrote, he remembers with a groan—Roo could be furious with him again; she has a right to be. She could hang up on him, scream at him. Or there could be somebody with her when he calls, some other guy. She has a right to that too, damn it. No. He’ll send a telegram.

  9

  * * *

  I’ll tell you the truth,

  Don’t think I’m lying:

  I have to run backwards

  To keep from flying.

  Old rhyme

  AT the London Zoo, Vinnie Miner sits on a slatted bench watching the polar bears. Several of them are visible: one splashing lazily in the artificial rock-pool; one asleep on its side at the entrance of a stone cave, looking like a heap of damp yellowish-white fur rugs; and a third padding back and forth nearby, occasionally turning its heavy muzzle, on which the coarse hair has separated into spiky clumps, to give her an inquiring glance from its small glittering dark eyes.

  Though she lives only a few blocks from the Zoo, this is the first time Vinnie has visited it all year, and she’s only here now because some American cousins insisted on coming. These cousins, who are frantically “doing London” in three days, have already gone on to the National Gallery. Vinnie lingers here partly from the sense that, having paid several pounds to enter the Zoo, she might as well get her money’s worth, and partly because it’s a fine day and her project is ahead of schedule. All her London data has been collected; she has read most of the relevant background material, and she has traveled to Oxford, Kent, Hampshire, and Norfolk to talk with experts in children’s literature and folklore.

  It isn’t in Vinnie’s nature to be wildly euphoric, but today she is at the peak of her own emotional curve, even off the graph. She is happier than she has been in months—maybe even in years. Everyone and everything looks good to her: the animals, the other vi
sitors, the graceful new-leafed trees and the damp, shining lawns of Regent’s Park. Even her cousins, whom she usually thinks of as boring, today seem only forgivably naive. She hasn’t had a visit from Fido—or even thought of him—for days. For all she knows, he has followed Chuck to Wiltshire.

  As she sits alone on her bench, Vinnie not only feels happy but curiously free. She is far from Corinth University, and from the duties and constraints of the role of Spinster Professor. The demanding and defining voices of her colleagues and students and friends are stilled. Moreover, English literature, to which in early childhood she had given her deepest trust, and which for half a century has suggested what she might do, think, feel, desire, and become, has suddenly fallen silent. Now, at last, all those books have no instructions for her, no demands—because she is just too old.

  In the world of classic British fiction, the one Vinnie knows best, almost the entire population is under fifty, or even under forty—as was true of the real world when the novel was invented. The few older people—especially women—who are allowed into a story are usually cast as relatives; and Vinnie is no one’s mother, daughter, or sister. People over fifty who aren’t relatives are pushed into minor parts, character parts, and are usually portrayed as comic, pathetic, or disagreeable. Occasionally one will appear in the role of tutor or guide to some young protagonist, but more often than not their advice and example are bad; their histories a warning rather than a model.

  In most novels it is taken for granted that people over fifty are as set in their ways as elderly apple trees, and as permanently shaped and scarred by the years they have weathered. The literary convention is that nothing major can happen to them except through subtraction. They may be struck by lightning or pruned by the hand of man; they may grow weak or hollow; their sparse fruit may become misshapen, spotted, or sourly crabbed. They may endure these changes nobly or meanly. But they cannot, even under the best of conditions, put out new growth or burst into lush and unexpected bloom.

  Even today there are disproportionately few older characters in fiction. The conventions hold, and the contemporary novelist, like an up-to-date fruit-grower, reconstructs the natural landscape, removing most of the aging trees to leave room for young saplings that haven’t yet been grafted or put down deep roots. Vinnie has accepted the convention; she has tried for years to accustom herself to the idea that the rest of her life will be a mere epilogue to what was never, it has to be admitted, a very exciting novel.

  But the self, whatever its age, is subject to the usual laws of optics. However peripheral we may be in the lives of others, each of us is always a central point round which the entire world whirls in radiating perspective. And this world, Vinnie thinks now, is not English literature. It is full of people over fifty who will be around and in fairly good shape for the next quarter-century: plenty of time for adventure and change, even for heroism and transformation.

  Why, after all, should Vinnie become a minor character in her own life? Why shouldn’t she imagine herself as an explorer standing on the edge of some landscape as yet unmapped by literature: interested, even excited—ready to be surprised?

  Today the Zoo, her immediate landscape, is at its best. An early-afternoon shower has sluiced the dust from the still-shiny leaves and the mica-flecked paths, and has lent the air a scented freshness. It has also given Vinnie a chance to wear her new raincoat: dramatic, full-cut, of shimmery silvery-blue waterproofed silk—the sort of coat she could never have afforded to buy, and in fact hasn’t bought. In it she feels taller and better-looking, almost proud of herself.

  She is proud of London too today. She rejoices in its natural and architectural beauty, the safety and cleanliness of its streets, the charm and variety of its shops; in its cultural sophistication—the educated, ironic tone of its press, its appreciation of historical tradition, its deference toward maturity, its tolerance of, even delight in, eccentricity.

  Today, events that at another time would have infuriated or depressed her seem mere annoyances. The arrival in this morning’s post of the current issue of the Atlantic, containing a letter in praise of L. D. Zimmern’s article, hardly rippled her mood. Poor stupid Zimmern, imprisoned in ugly, dirty New York and in his own sulky spitefulness. Vinnie imagines this spitefulness as a deep cold muddy rock-pool like the one in the polar bears’ enclosure. She visualizes L. D. Zimmern as sunk in it up to his (in her imagination) pudgy chin, unable to climb out. Whenever he attempts to clamber up its slippery sides, the largest polar bear—who has now hauled himself out of the water and is lying dripping on the rocks beside the pool—places a heavy paw like a sopping-wet floor mop on his head and shoves him back down again.

  Since she feels so good, and it is such a nice warm day, Vinnie refrains from actually drowning Professor Zimmern in her fantasy. It would be bad publicity for the London Zoo, such a death. Besides, it might be upsetting for the bear—and perhaps even dangerous, if the keeper discovered that his prize Thalarctos maritimus was a man-killer. She rather likes this particular bear. It is true that his movements are slow and rather clumsy and his coarse yellow-white fur coat none too clean; and he doesn’t look awfully intellectual. But he is satisfyingly large, and he has a humorous, sly, agreeable expression. To tell the truth, he is a little like Chuck Mumpson. She saw exactly that look on Chuck’s face when they were shopping in Harrods last week, just before he left for Wiltshire.

  This expedition was the final move in Vinnie’s campaign to improve Chuck’s appearance, both for his sake and for her own. If she was to go about London with him—and evidently she was—she was determined that he shouldn’t look like a cartoon American Packaged Tourist, Western Division, especially since he really wasn’t one any longer. She didn’t try to alter his cowboy costume. That, she realized, would be almost impossible; and besides it was if anything a social advantage here. But she did gradually manage to persuade Chuck not to carry around so many maps and guide-books, and to leave his cameras and light meters at the hotel—suggesting that she could guide him, and that his constant picture-taking interfered with conversation.

  Getting rid of his deplorable plastic raincoat was harder. There was no point in telling Chuck how ugly it was, she finally realized. His aesthetic sense was poorly developed; he judged even art almost wholly by its meaning rather than its looks. (Probably this was just as well for her, Vinnie thought, since it meant that her appearance had little importance for him; his appreciation of her was tactile rather than visual.)

  Vinnie therefore tried a moral and connotative approach: she spoke disparagingly of the raincoat, associating it with ignorant tourists, with traveling salesmen, and with the shower curtains of cheap motels. But even when—in a fit of exasperation—she compared the garment to a male prophylactic, Chuck remained unmoved.

  “Aw, come on, Vinnie,” he said, grinning. “Nothing wrong with it that I can see. Sure, maybe it’s not beautiful; but it keeps the water out real fine. Besides, it’s just about brand-new.”

  “Really,” she remarked, implying doubt.

  “Yeh; I bought it specially for the trip. It comes in this little plastic case, made outa the same stuff as the coat, see? You can fold the whole thing up and put it in your pocket. Great for traveling. You oughta get yourself one.”

  Observing his expression of satisfaction, Vinnie had despaired. Her only hope—a faint one, considering the English climate—was that when she and Chuck went anywhere together it wouldn’t rain.

  Two days later, however, Chuck came to lunch at her flat; and when he departed considerably later, with an even more satisfied expression, he left his raincoat behind. Vinnie found it lying on the carpet in a corner of the sitting room, looking like a large very dead fish. She picked it up with distaste, observing how the greenish-gray plastic managed to feel stiff and slimy at the same time. How could Chuck, who is really quite an attractive man, wear such a thing? And where could she put it until she saw him again? Certainly not in her hall closet—a mere doorless alcove—w
here it would be visible to anyone who came to the flat.

  She lugged the dead fish into the bedroom, opened her too-small wardrobe, and shoved her clothes aside. The pretty pale dresses and skirts and blouses, all of soft, natural fibers, seemed to flinch away from the vulgar plastic companion she offered them. She put out her hand to pull them back. Then, on a sudden impulse, she dragged the coat off its hanger. She carried it back down the hall by the scruff of its neck, opened the door of her flat and then the front door, and descended the steps to the yard. There she lifted the metal lid of a trashcan and wadded the raincoat down inside beneath a green plastic bag of garbage and a stack of wet newspapers.

  That’s where you belong, she told the dead fish. And if Chuck asks, I’ll say I never saw you, and he’ll assume he left you somewhere else.

  As it turned out, however, Chuck did not assume this. Nor was he convinced by Vinnie’s protestations of ignorance.

  “Naw. I know I left my raincoat at your place Thursday. I bet you hid it.”

  “Of course I didn’t,” she said easily, smiling. “Why on earth would I do that?”

  “On account of you can’t stand the thing.” Chuck grinned.

  “Oh, don’t be ridiculous. It’s probably somewhere back at your hotel.”

  “Come on, Vinnie. I left it right here, day before yesterday.” His grin widened. “You hid my raincoat; I can see it in your eyes. You can’t fool an old con like me.”

  “Really, I didn’t.” Confronted with Chuck’s steady, smiling gaze, Vinnie’s voice faltered. “Not that I wouldn’t have liked to.”

  “Uh-huh.” He glanced into the hall closet, then walked on into Vinnie’s bedroom and yanked open the door of the wardrobe.