Pray, did you lately observe in the show
A noble Italian called Signor Dildo?
“‘Naughty’ is precisely how I would describe that,” Lady Antonia said.
Vidia was fidgeting, made uncomfortable by the turn in the conversation. I knew he was impatient to leave the table and end this talk. He had taken out his pipe and was smoothing it and sticking his thumb in the bowl.
“Malcolm can go on all night,” Robin said, and patted her husband’s rigid arm.
“Rochester is all foreplay,” Jebb said. “Who was it who said foreplay is terribly middle class?”
Malcolm’s eyes were glassy with rage, and I guessed it was because Lady Antonia was smiling and turned slightly away from him, her hands primly in her lap. Malcolm set his jaw at her and said:
So a proud bitch does lead about
Of humble curs the amorous rout
Who most obsequiously do hunt
The savory scent of salt-swollen c—
“Language, I hear!” Jebb shouted in glee, and then, “Your New Zealand accent lends piquancy and incredible nuance to Augustan poetry.”
“Shall we have coffee?” Pat said.
“Is this another branch of the awful study of English?” Vidia said.
Jebb said, “My grandfather hated that poetry. Do you know my grandfather?”
I said, “No. Do you know mine?”
“Mine was Hilaire Belloc. Who was yours?”
Lady Antonia was smiling directly at Malcolm now. He looked fussed and breathless and indignant. She put her lisp to dramatic advantage as she said,
Then talk not of inconstancy,
False hearts and broken vows;
If I, by miracle can be
This live-long minute true to thee,
’Tis all that heaven allows.
“Rochester wrote that as a lame excuse, because he found it impossible to be faithful,” Malcolm said.
“I think it’s lovely and lyrical,” Lady Antonia said. “I don’t know those poems you’re quoting. But maybe that’s because we invent the writer we want. I know why I think Vidia is brilliant. I’m sure you could quote something against him. But Rochester is for me a lyric poet with heaps and heaps of charm.”
The dispute was probably less about Lord Rochester than it was about class and accents. It created a staleness in the air around the lunch table and an awkwardness for all that remained unspoken. Vidia got up, Malcolm and Robin whispered to each other in a wound-licking way, and Jebb giggled. Hugh Fraser was frowning as though listening for an echo that would reveal a meaning. At that point I heard Lady Antonia sneeze, and saw tawny snuff-dust around her nostrils. She smiled at me with watery eyes. I wanted her to ask me about erectile tissue.
“I have just thought of it, Vidia,” Hugh Fraser said, returning to an interrupted conversation. “It’s that odd racial contradiction you get with so much intermarriage. Black becomes white and white becomes black.”
“I have written about that,” Vidia said. He went to a bookshelf, picked out a leatherbound copy of The Mimic Men, and read the concentrated paragraph about the fable “The Niger and the Seine.”
As soon as he began speaking — and he spoke clearly and well, knowing just how to emphasize each word, knowing what was coming, timing his pauses — the lunch guests stopped talking. Vidia sat upright, holding the book straight, his thumb in the gutter of the spine, and read on, carefully, as if giving a lesson in recitation to Malcolm, who had blurted out the rude Lord Rochester stanzas. When Vidia was done, he shut the book like a vicar shutting a Bible after a homily.
“You see?”
We went for a walk behind The Bungalow so that Vidia could show us the water meadows and the trees.
Robin and Malcolm were walking together, wife reassuring husband, who still looked flustered. Pat went over to them, to walk along with them — it was only now, outside, that it was obvious there had been a scene at lunch; Pat was being a pleasant peace-making hostess. I jostled onward to walk next to Lady Antonia.
We talked about nothing — the delightful woods, the overhanging branches, the thicknesses of ivy.
“Your fantasy is my fantasy,” I finally said. “A hot island and idleness, clear sky and a blue lagoon.”
“I am so glad you agree with me. Everyone thinks I’m absolutely mad.”
“No, no.” I could see the white dress, the parasol, the hat — and the thrashing legs and damp flanks.
Hugh Fraser was walking up front with Vidia, both men talking about a weighty matter — I could see it from the way they held their heads, tilted at an angle that indicated seriousness.
“I also like your ‘seize the day’ lines of Rochester,” I said.
“That’s so sweet of you to say,” Lady Antonia said. “What are you writing at the moment?”
“A novel, set in London.”
“I am sure it will be a great hit. Vidia is so proud of your success.”
I wanted to hug her and bury my face against her neck — she looked so soft and warm, her lips so pretty. I wanted to clutch her shepherdess costume. She skipped slightly to avoid stepping on muddy ground.
For that brief orderly moment we were eight people moving down a path by an old water meadow, a path so narrow that most of the time we followed in single file. It seemed to me that it was no more than a live-long minute of harmony and vitality, a happy convergence, all of us different people together, like dancers around a Maypole.
Jebb fell in with us, and he turned to me and said, “I’ve got a tide for my novel at last. Want to hear it?” He spread his hands before him, laying it out in the air. “I’m going to call it Light.”
He hurried ahead, perhaps to tell Vidia. He walked in a jaunty way, in his bright red waistcoat with the gold piping, a little clownish, a bit like a circus performer, but eager to please.
“I didn’t know Julian was a novelist,” I said.
“He’s not,” Lady Antonia said. “But he is awfully sweet.”
My mind was elsewhere. I was considering the thought that the obscene poems of Rochester had aroused me, especially at the point I had seen Lady Antonia smile and shrug. I wanted to tell her how I imagined the two of us on the tropical island. But the day would soon end, and I thought, What’s the use? I was just fantasizing. It was the habit of a lifetime.
Back at the house, Pat served tea outside on a little wicker table. Vidia got his air rifle. We took turns shooting at a paper target. Robin scored the highest. She said, two or three times, “I’ve never even tried this before!” Lady Antonia looked beautiful holding the rifle and squinting when she fired. She was not a shrinking violet; she was a game-for-anything woman. I loved that. Another reason she would be great company on a tropical island. When she raised the rifle again and pressed her lips together, I wanted her to spin around and shoot me.
It was Jebb’s turn next. He said, in his American accent, “Okay, drop your guns!” He fired four times and missed the target entirely. He posed with the rifle while Vidia snapped a picture with his Kampala camera.
“Vidia, this has been just the most super treat,” Hugh Fraser said, turning the drinking of the last of his tea into a gesture of farewell. He pulled his car keys from his pocket and raised his hand to signal to Lady Antonia.
I wanted to go back to London with them in their car, to be with her. But it was useless yearning. They did not offer anyone a lift. I had the feeling they were planning to use the return trip to discuss something serious and domestic.