Foreign Affairs - Alison Lurie [54]
“Says who?”
“Edwin says it to me. They have an arrangement, he says.”
“You mean like an open marriage.” Fred begins to pull out the drawers below the wardrobe. They are empty and lined with glazed paper in an overcomplicated and disagreeable red paisley design.
“I don’t know what you call it,” says Nico. He has given up all pretense of helping and is lounging on the window seat. “Edwin says they well understand each other, and if Billings does not have to meet Cousin William he is content, why not? He has still the beautiful aristocratic wife, the pretty children, the rich country house—”
“Yeh, but—”
“He also has his freedom, naturally. His own amusements.”
“Oh, yeh? What amusements?”
“I don’t know.” Nico shrugs. “But Edwin says they are expensive ones, and not very nice.”
Without wanting to, Fred starts trying to imagine the sort of amusements that might be considered not very nice by Edwin Francis, a homosexual who likes to dress up in his hostess’s clothes; but he is interrupted.
“Well, how are you getting on?” Posy pauses in the doorway with an armful of scalloped yellow sheets. She is as beautiful and gracious as ever; but she looks different to Fred, somehow fleshy and loose.
“Almost done.” He bundles the Times into William’s bag and pulls the sides together.
Posy surveys the room, taking in Nico lazily prone on the window seat. “Very good,” she says to Fred. “Now, could you be a real sport, and take the bag down to the boathouse?”
“Yeh, sure.”
“I’ll show you the way; and then you can come back and have a drink and meet Jimbo. But you musn’t keep him up late, please, he’s had such a long trip. I know what; you might say you have to turn in early so you can get up and jog before breakfast. Jimbo will like that, he often runs himself; and it might not be a bad idea if you were to arrange to meet him tomorrow and go jogging together. Then we can make sure he doesn’t run in the wrong direction.” Posy smiles at him again, then clicks it off. “And you. Nico.” She gives him a chilly look. “I want you to go straight to bed. Don’t even think of having a shower tonight, or there won’t be enough hot water for Jimbo. You were in there for an hour this afternoon as it is. And please don’t come down for breakfast; Jimbo’s very grumpy at breakfast. I’ll send you up a tray.”
For a long moment Nico does not move. His handsome features have darkened and distorted as Posy spoke and are now set in an angry flush. But her aristocratic stare is too much for him; he rises slowly and moves toward the door.
“Thank you,” she says, gracious again. “All right now, Freddy darling, it’s this way.”
Posy leads him along the hall between two rows of ancestors: plump-jawed self-satisfied countenances in heavy curled wigs. The portraits are hung from near the ceiling in such a way that they tilt outward from the top, creating an oppressive effect.
“He’s such a nuisance sometimes, Nico,” she says. “He’s got all sorts of silly ideas about politics, and I’m simply not going to have him bothering poor Jimbo with them, especially not at breakfast. You know how excitable these Mediterranean types can be.” She opens the door to some back stairs, smiling at Fred, inviting him into the company of non-Mediterranean types who are not excitable and have no silly ideas. “So if you should see him trying to sneak downstairs tomorrow morning, I hope you’ll be a dear and head him off.”
“Well. I’ll try,” says Fred reluctantly.
“I knew I could count on you.” She stops at the bottom of the stairs and smiles up from under her golden mane, which from this angle looks almost too thick, too perfectly curled—almost like a wig. Maybe it is a wig; maybe underneath all that hair Posy Billings is bald or stubble-headed, as her eighteenth-century ancestors along the corridor probably were under their powdered headpieces.
“Here you are.” She swings open a door, admitting a gust of cold, dark air. “Now there’s the way down to the lake, where we were this afternoon, you remember?”
“I think so.”
“Very good.” As Edwin has remarked, there