DIANA TRILLING
17
tion of the war from anyone in England and it would constitute for
Lionel and me a vitalizing return to reality to visit in Amsterdam and be
at once taken to the home of Anne Frank and to the synagogue which,
whatever the intent of the Nazis, still so solidly stood its ground.
The Warburgs' dinner wasn't the most stirring entertainment one
might have anticipated. Ironically, for this occasion it was the French–
born Pamela who produced what little drama the evening offered. "The
English are the dirtiest people in the world," she proclaimed as we gath–
ered at the table. She looked around at her guests invitingly, soliciting
contradiction. As a shocker, it was a distant second to her lost tampon.
No one ventured a reply. The remark lay on the table like a flattened
balloon.
The Osbornes were not really aloof from the rest of us but they
were quiet guests. They did their conversational duty but it was clear
that they were not eager celebrants of the occasion. It struck me that
they were perhaps disappointed in the company which the Warburgs had
provided for them and were sitting out the time until they could go
elsewhere more to their taste.
While the Reeses were quiet as well, they managed to communicate
even more than that they were enjoying the evening: a flattering
deference to the company i.n which they found themselves. There was a
grace in their social behavior which, together with the straightforward
intelligence in everything they said, made me hope that our introduction
was a prelude to further acquaintance.
Initially, I was more drawn to Margie than to Goronwy Rees but
this soon altered as I grew to like them equally. Margie Rees had surely
been a very pretty girl. Even now, in her mid-forties, she was effortlessly
appealing. She had a small, mobile face with regular features and a quick
generous smile, and she moved with an unconscious grace . I especially
liked her manner of speech, her gently-chiding voice. In her speech there
was a colloquialism not of her own time, more of the Twenties than the
Thirties or Forties. In America it would have been realized that she had
first appeared in the pages of F. Scott Fitzgerald. As I came to know her
better, I would often think how lucky Fitzgerald would have been if, in
what we like to call "real life," he had had Goronwy's Margie as his
wife instead of his unfortunate Zelda.
Goronwy Rees was probably the most attractive man I have ever
met - I soon learned that a crowded calendar of sexual conquests at–
tested to his power with women. At the time we met, he was already in
his mid-fifties but he was still slim and lithe, quick-moving. His face was
at once boyish and, like that of the poet Auden, deeply furrowed by ex–
perience. I forget the color of his eyes but not their probing inquisitive-
