Foreign Affairs - Alison Lurie [79]
Also, more and more often, Mrs. Harris gives Rosemary reasons for doing what she wants to do anyhow—or not doing what she doesn’t want to do. Recently a late-night variety show was organized in aid of a famous old East London theater. Rosemary declined to participate, not because it would be inconvenient, unprofitable, and exhausting, but because, she claimed, Mrs. Harris had told her that “them people in ‘ackney got no use for fancy stage acting, they’d rather watch the telly.” What they really wanted was a kiddies’ playground—her niece who lived out that way knew all about it. Anyhow, Mrs. Harris—as reported by Rosemary—said, the whole thing was a sell. “Most of the cash those types take in’ll stay in their own pockets, always does with them charity things.” At a lunch party last week Rosemary’s friend Erin protested these statements, and tried, with considerable patience and charm, to make her reconsider. She refused to listen. “Please, darling, don’t tell me any more nonsense,” she cried, giving her silvery laugh and spearing a profiterole with the silver tines of her fork (she adores what she calls “wicked desserts”). “You don’t know the least thing about Hackney, and neither do I. But I know Mrs. Harris is right about it; she’s always right.”
Feeling annoyed at Edwin, Fred leaves him and returns to the party. He sees at once that the Vogelers are not mixing, but standing by themselves in a corner trying to soothe Jakie, who has begun to make a whimpering squeaking noise, like a stuck drawer.
“Let me take him now, it’s my turn,” Joe says, checking his watch. With Fred’s help, the surprisingly heavy baby and his canvas sling are transferred to his father’s back, where the whimpering and squeaking resume. “Maybe if he had a cracker or something.”
“Sure.” Fred finds a plate of canapés and scrapes the caviar off one.
“Great. There you are now, ducky.” Jakie reaches for the cracker and stuffs it clumsily into his mouth, shedding crumbs over Joe’s jacket.
Asleep and slumped against Debby’s chest, Jakie was relatively inconspicuous. Now, because of his father’s greater height and his own wakefulness, he is a visible presence in the room—and a rather grotesque one, Fred thinks; from the front Joe seems to have two heads and four arms. Something has got to be done about the Vogelers. He remembers his mother’s rule that you musn’t allow anyone at a party to stand alone talking to the people they came with; you must try to separate them.
Taking the easiest first, he leads Debby away and presents her to a woman novelist as “an American feminist.” (It doesn’t much matter what you say when you make introductions, his mother has also advised him, but you’ve got to say something, to provide a conversational opening.) Then, to avoid parading his two-headed, four-armed, crumb-littered friend across the drawing room, Fred introduces Joe to a drama critic, TV personality, and notorious bore who is leaning against the mantelpiece nearby, under the pretense that Joe is a visiting American anxious to know what shows to see in London. All right, that should do it, he thinks, and goes off in search of Rosemary and a drink.
But the Vogelers remain on Fred’s conscience, and he keeps checking to see how they are doing. Twenty minutes later Debby seems to be circulating, but Joe is still trapped in the same spot talking—or rather listening—to the same man. He is clearly not engrossed; in a gesture Fred remembers well from graduate school, he has pushed his