Foreign Affairs - Alison Lurie [29]
“Vinnie darling. Forgive me.” Edwin Francis leans over the table to brush her cheek with his. “How are you? . . . Oh, thank you, dear.” He removes his coat and presents it to the waiter. “You won’t believe what I’ve just heard.”
“I might. Try me,” Vinnie says.
“Well.” Edwin leans forward. Though he is some years younger than Vinnie, his appearance—when he is in good form, as now—also suggests an artificially aged child. In his case, too, smallness of stature plays a part in the illusion; his short limbs, round face and torso, high color, and curly fair hair—now becoming rather sparse—also contribute to the effect. (When he is not in good form—depressed, drinking too much, unhappily in love—he resembles an afflicted Hobbit.) In spite of his innocuous appearance, and a manner that matches it—amused, offhand, self-deprecating—Edwin is a figure of power in the children’s book world and a formidable critic of both juvenile and adult literature: learned, sharp-witted, and, when he chooses, sharp-tongued.
“Well,” he continues. “You know Posy Billings.”
“Yes, of course.” Contrary to Fred Turner’s assumption, Vinnie’s London circle isn’t composed exclusively or mainly of academics. Through Edwin and other friends she is acquainted with publishers, writers, artists, journalists, people in the theater, and even one or two society hostesses like Lady Billings.
“I was talking to Posy this morning, and you were quite wrong. Rosemary has taken up with your colleague Mr. Turner. She’s even proposed bringing him to Posy’s place in Oxfordshire for a weekend.”
“Really,” Vinnie says, frowning a little. Rosemary Radley, an old friend of Edwin’s, is a television and film actress. She is extremely pretty and charming; she also has a history of brief, impetuous, usually disastrous affairs. When Edwin first announced that she had “taken up with” Fred Turner, Vinnie frankly didn’t believe it. They had been seen together at a play, at a party? Very possibly they had; that didn’t mean they had come together, orwere romantically involved. Perhaps Rosemary had invited Fred to the event, because after all he is a nice-looking young man, and one whose transatlantic origin might lend a piquant variety to her usual crowd of admirers. Or perhaps she hadn’t: people always gossiped about Rosemary, often inaccurately: she’d been the heroine of so many BBC and real-life romantic serials.
Edwin particularly enjoys fantasizing about his friends and acquaintances. He likes to hover over their adventures or presumed adventures as he does over whatever Vinnie is cooking when he comes to dinner, occasionally giving the pot a stir or adding a pinch of spices himself. “Really,” Vinnie had once said to him, “you should have been a novelist.” “Oh no,” he had replied. “Much more fun this way.”
Even if things have gone as far as Edwin is claiming now, it can’t be very serious. Rosemary, after all, has frequent impulsive sexual lapses—referred to later with laughter in phrases like “I just don’t know what came over me” or “It must have been the champagne”—and Fred might be a relatively harmless instance of this habit. But she can hardly be serious about him. It isn’t just that she’s older, but that her world is so much more complex and resonant. If talking to Fred for any length of time rather bores Vinnie, who after all is in the same profession and department, what on earth can he have to say that would interest Rosemary Radley? On the other hand, perhaps you don’t have to interest her, as long as you are sufficiently interested in her. Perhaps what she wants is fans, not rival entertainers.
“Of course it’s all your doing,” Edwin remarks, breaking off his loving contemplation of the menu. “If you hadn’t given that party—”
“I never meant for Rosemary to take up with Fred.” Vinnie