Foreign Affairs - Alison Lurie [78]
“Certainly not.” Debby wraps her arms protectively around Jakie.
“That wouldn’t be right,” Joe explains, looking at Fred as if his suggestion could only issue from an almost criminal ignorance. “I mean, suppose he was to wake up alone in a strange room? It could be a serious trauma.”
“Well, okay.” For days Fred has been looking forward to the meeting between his old friends and his new love. Now it is with a sense of foreboding that he leads the Vogelers across the drawing room to where Rosemary stands in the bay window beside a flowering orange tree; like it, she is a fragrant spring vision in pale-green many-pleated glistening silk.
“Oh, how nice!” she cries, putting out her soft white ringed hand. “And you’ve hiked here all the way from North London, isn’t that amazing.” To Fred this appears a pointed reference to their footwear; but Joe and Debby smile, even grin, charmed already.
“Yeh, and we brought our baby,” Debby says, half belligerent, half apologetic.
“Oh yes, I see you did.” Rosemary laughs lightly, managing somehow to convey that it would have been politer not to mention this. “But Fred, darling, you haven’t got your friends anything to drink.”
“Sorry.” Fred goes to order a gin-and-tonic for Debby and—since there’s no beer—Scotch-and-water for Joe. Most of the guests, as is usual at warm-weather London parties, are drinking white wine.
On his way back across the room, Edwin Francis stops him. “If you have a moment, Fred,” he says, gesturing with a cream cracker overloaded with pâté, “I’d like to speak to you.”
“Sure, just a sec.” Partly because he doesn’t much like Edwin, Fred is always careful to be agreeable to him. Having delivered the Vogelers’ drinks and introduced them to other guests (Rosemary has drifted away), he follows Edwin into the hall.
“It’s about Mrs. Harris.” As if casually, Edwin steps onto the bottom tread of the gracefully curving stairs. He is still shorter than Fred, but the difference is now less pronounced.
“Yes?” Fred thinks that Edwin too—whom Rosemary loves and trusts—wants to swipe her cleaning lady.
“I’m becoming a bit concerned about her. She sounds, how shall I put it, such a dominant personality. So suspicious of everyone and everything. And possibly somewhat unbalanced as well. I’m really quite worried about her effect on Rosemary; she seems to be falling more and more under Mrs. Harris’ influence, if you see what I mean.” Edwin frowns, increasing his resemblance to a plump, solemn child. “Repeating all her ignorant reactionary opinions, well, you know.”
“Mm.” Fred is familiar with this complaint. Some of Rosemary’s friends have put it to him more strongly. “Rosemary’s far too impressed with that woman,” they complain. “Believes everything she says.”
“You know, for a certain sort of actor it’s an advantage to have a rather indefinite sense of self. It makes it much easier to get into various parts. But it can be a problem, too.”
“Oh?” Fred says, expressing doubt. He has no idea what Edwin is waffling on about; Rosemary obviously has a very definite, and wonderful, self. Her ability to mimic Mrs. Harris doesn’t preclude this.
“I mean, a joke’s a joke, right?”
Fred, without enthusiasm, agrees that a joke is a joke.
“But that sort of thing can go too far. What worries me is, I’m off to Japan to lecture next week, I’ll be away over a month, and if anything should happen—I mean, with Nadia in Italy and me in Japan and Erin due to go to the States for that film, and poor Posy immured in Oxfordshire with those boring little girls—Well, I won’t really feel comfortable unless I know someone’s looking out for our Rosemary. So it had better be you.”
“Um,” says Fred, who greatly dislikes the phrase “our Rosemary” and the idea of sharing his love with Edwin—or for that matter with anyone.
“Promise now. Because she’s very delicately balanced, you know. She can get a bit frantic—into rather a difficult state—sometimes.”
Repressing his annoyance, Fred nods. He has never seen Rosemary