Foreign Affairs - Alison Lurie [114]
The light changes, the taxi jolts ahead. Rosemary turns to her and says in a light sweet voice, “Next time you happen to see Mr. Frederick Turner—”
“Er-yes?”
“You might be kind enough to give him a message from me. Would you do that?” Her manner has become exaggeratedly gracious, almost caressing.
“Yes, of course,” Vinnie agrees, bewildered and even a little frightened by these rapid histrionic changes.
“I’d like for you to tell him, mm—Please tell him, would he be kind enough to stop telephoning me, and writing to me”—her voice alters again—”and just bloody well go screw himself.”
“Now really, Rosemary. You don’t mean—”
“Now really, Vinnie. That’s exactly what I do mean,” Rosemary interrupts, caricaturing Vinnie’s intonation and accent. “I’ve had it with all you fuckin’ Americans,” she goes on in the other voice, the coarse cockney Vinnie has heard somewhere. “Why don’t you stay home where you belong? Nobody wants you comin’ over here, messin’ up our country.” She waves at the souvenir shops and hamburger bars with which this portion of Oxford Street is disfigured. The loose, excessive gesture and grimace are those of a low-comedy stage character—of a music-hall charlady, say—of Mrs. Harris. Yes. That’s where Vinnie has heard this voice before: once or twice on the phone when she called Rosemary, and often at parties when Rosemary, telling some story, had imitated Mrs. Harris.
“It wasn’t me,” she starts to protest, with a strained laugh, trying to treat Rosemary’s performance as a joke—which after all it must be. “I certainly never wanted—”
“Of course not,” Rosemary interrupts smoothly. “Tell me something, Vinnie. How old are you?”
“Uh, I’m fifty-four,” replies Vinnie, who makes a point of answering this question accurately.
“Imagine that.” Rosemary smiles sweetly. “I would never have guessed it.”
“Thank you.” She is pleased in spite of herself, and somewhat mollified, “It’s just because I’m small, really.”
“You know what’s so wonderful about you, Vinnie?”
“Er—no.” Vinnie smiles expectantly.
“I’ll tell you what’s so wonderful about you.” It is Mrs. Harris’ voice again, speaking through the pink sweet-pea lips of Rosemary Radley. “You’re fifty-four years old, and you look sixty, and you don’t know fuck-all about life.”
The taxi has, with many stops and starts, negotiated the turn into Portman Square, and is halted next to a bed of yellow parrot tulips. Seizing the opportunity, Vinnie mumbles something about having to be home by seven-thirty, shoves the door open, and flees.
Not looking back, she makes her way hazardously through the traffic toward the 74 bus stop, walking too fast and breathing painfully hard, but congratulating herself on having had the nerve to get out of Rosemary’s taxi and escape from her drunken insults. Messing up our country. Fifty-four, and you look sixty. Standing on the curb, she shivers with rage and pain. She shouldn’t have sat there and taken it, she should have said—But Vinnie can’t think what she should have said. And after all, what’s the point of arguing with a drunk?
Of course Vinnie has never liked Rosemary, and probably Rosemary doesn’t like her. It’s not as if they’d ever been friends. Vinnie’s real friends don’t like Rosemary very much either, except for Edwin, and even he admits that she is self-indulgent and erratic, though he excuses it because she’s an artist, an actress—as if that were any excuse, Vinnie thinks, with another spasm of fury.
She’s always thought there was something unpleasant about the art of acting, Vinnie remembers as she reaches the bus stop; something unnatural, really, in the ability of certain persons to assume at will a completely alien voice and manner. She has felt this often at the theater, where she is never really comfortable, however entertained or moved she may be. The mimicry of other living beings is a nasty business; the more successful the imitation, the more there is essentially