Foreign Affairs - Alison Lurie [103]
“Boo-uh-aw! Bah-aw. Ball!” The baby strains toward his object of desire as it floats by, surrounded by waterlogged crap.
“He said ‘ball,’” his mother declares with triumph.
“His first word.” His father’s voice trembles.
“Ball,” Debby breathes. “Did you hear that, Fred? He said ‘ball.’” But she and Joe hardly wait for an answer; forgetting Fred, they gaze at their son with relief and awe, then clasp him in a double embrace and cover him with happy kisses.
Fred’s confrontation with Rosemary the next day has been planned without her knowledge or consent. A listing in the Sunday papers had informed him that she was appearing on a radio program featuring the newly published memoirs of her friend Daphne Vane, and he had determined to be there. After a morning of trying (without success) to work on his book, he checks the time and the address again and sets out.
The studio, when he finds it, is discouraging—not the sort of place anyone would choose for a lovers’ meeting. Fred would have preferred the BBC building in Portland Place, where he once went with Rosemary: a comic temple of art deco design with a golden sunburst over the door and a bank of gilded elevators. Behind them was a warren of corridors down which eccentric-looking persons hurried with White Rabbit expressions. The sound rooms were cosy burrows furnished with battered soft leather chairs and historical-looking microphones and switchboards; the Battle of Britain still seemed to reverberate in the smoky air.
This commercial station is cold and anonymous and ultra-contemporary; its glass-fronted lobby is decorated in Madison Avenue minimalism. A dozen or so teenagers slump on plastic divans, chewing gum and jiggling their knees to the pounding beat of rock music.
“I’m here to meet Rosemary Radley,” Fred shouts through the din at a sexy young receptionist with magenta lips and greasy-green iridescent eyelids. “She’s going to be on the Lively Arts program at four.”
“What name, please?”
Fred pronounces it, thinking a second later that maybe he should have claimed to be somebody else.
“Just a sec, baby; see what I can do.” She gives him an openly admiring look and a glossy ripe-plum smile, and lifts a red telephone. “They’re trying to locate her.” She smiles at Fred again. “You from America?”
“That’s right.”
“I thought so. That’s my dream, to go to the States.” She listens to the phone again, her smile tightening from plum to prune; finally she shakes her head.
“Tell her it’s important. Very important.”
The receptionist gives him a different sort of look, equally admiring but less respectful; Fred realizes that she has reclassified him from VIP to groupie. She speaks again into the shiny red phone.
“Sorry. Nothing doing,” she says finally. “I’d let you in, but they’d give me hell.”
“I’ll wait till the program’s over.” Fred makes for a cube covered in shiny black imitation leather. As he sits on its edge, waiting, other visitors approach the desk; after checking by phone the receptionist presses a buzzer, allowing them to pass through the quilted, metal-studded imitation-leather doors behind her. The rock music continues, then blares to a crescendo, inspiring some of the lounging teenagers to rise and dance with hysterical, jerky motions.
The music crashes to a halt and is followed by a string of deafening commercials. The teenagers swarm toward the rear of the lobby, some of them holding out what look like autograph books.
“Don’t miss this amazing opportunity! Call NOW! . . . Stay tuned now for The Lively Arts.” There is a surge of mood-music.
“Welcome again to The Lively Arts.” A different voice, fluty and confiding. “I am your host, Dennis Wither. This afternoon we have a real treat in store: we’re going to be talking to Dame Daphne Vane, whose autobiography, Vane Pursuits: A Life in the Theatre, has just been published by Heinemann. Dame Daphne is here in the studio, and with her is Lady Rosemary Radley, star of the prizewinning television series Tallyho Castle . . .”
The punk teenagers look grossed-out at this news; some groan, one pantomimes