Foreign Affairs - Alison Lurie [34]
Even as she issued the invitation, Vinnie had regrets. But at the party Fred caused her no anxiety. She noticed that he didn’t spend much time talking to Mariana’s punk daughter and her angry-looking boyfriend—well, who could blame him for that? He ate a good deal, which was understandable considering the financial difficulties suggested by the vegetable soup and his rather desperate inquiries about how one could get Corinth paychecks cashed without a four-week delay. (No way, is the answer.)
Later on at her party Vinnie had noticed that Fred was part of the circle around Rosemary Radley; but then there is always a circle around Rosemary. She has the knack of becoming the center of a group without seeming to dominate it that, Vinnie supposes, any successful actor must possess. Her sphere of influence is rather small—only a few feet in diameter—as you might expect of someone who works mainly in television and films. She cannot, like some stage performers Vinnie has met, effortlessly focus all attention in a large room; but within her range she is invincible. And this somehow without holding forth on any topic, retailing gossip, wholesaling personal confessions, or saying anything especially clever or shocking—anything, really, that would have been out of character for the roles she plays on camera.
Professionally, Rosemary’s specialty is ladies: highborn women of every historical period from classical Greece to modern Britain. She doesn’t portray queens or empresses: she isn’t sufficiently regal or monumental for that. She is extraordinarily pretty rather than in any sense beautiful: pink-and-white-and-gold like a refined Boucher; her features are agreeable but small and unemphatic. What she mainly projects is elegance and breeding—comic, pathetic, or tragic according to the demands of the script—and a sweet, airy graciousness. She is frequently in work, since ladies are overrepresented in British television drama, and is often praised in reviews as one of the few actresses who is totally convincing as an aristocrat. It is sometimes mentioned that this is not suprising, since she is really Lady Rosemary Radley, her father having been an earl.
Rosemary’s private life is generally believed to be unsatisfactory. She has been married twice, both times briefly and unhappily and without issue; now she lives alone in a large beautiful untidy house in Chelsea. Of course some people say it is her own fault that she’s alone: that she is impossibly romantic, asks too much (or too little) of men, is unreasonably jealous, egotistical/a doormat; sexually insatiable/frigid; and so on—the usual things people say of any unmarried woman, as Vinnie well knows. In all this, Rosemary has Vinnie’s sympathy. But, somehow, not her trust.
It is Rosemary’s charm that Vinnie doesn’t trust: the silken flutter and flurry of her social manner; her assumption of a teasing, impulsive intimacy which yet holds its victim at arm’s length. For instance, when someone new comes within her range, Rosemary will often compliment that person extravagantly on some quality or attribute nobody else would have fixed on, or perhaps even noticed. She will declare that she adores some acquaintance, or a cousin, or her greengrocer or dentist, because they are so marvelous at arranging roses, or speak so slowly, or have such curly hair. She always makes this announcement with an air of wondering discovery to everyone who is within listening range, and without regard to whether its subject is sitting next to her or is miles away.
At a luncheon of Edwin’s once, for instance, she sang out during a pause in the hubbub that she really loved the way Vinnie’s friend Jane ate salad. It was no use asking what she meant by that, as Jane discovered. Even if you could get her attention again, which was never easy, Rosemary