Foreign Affairs - Alison Lurie [120]
Look at him now: nearly thirty years old, nearly six arid a half feet tall, a professor at a major American university, standing dumbly in front of the V and A shifting from one foot to the other, too fucking chicken to go and get his own goddamn sweater back. For Christ’s sake, stop acting like some British twit, he tells himself, and begins to stride south toward Chelsea.
When Fred reaches Cheyne Square twenty minutes later, he understands his reluctance better. The house looks exactly, painfully the same; it is hard to believe that Rosemary—his real Rosemary, not the phony imitation of the radio station—won’t in a moment open the shiny lavender front door and hold up her heart-shaped face for his kiss. He feels deeply reluctant to enter the familiar rooms again, to pass through them as an intruder. If only it hadn’t all gone wrong he might now, today—A tight choked feeling fills his chest, as if he’d swallowed a wet balloon.
Fighting down the sensation, fixing his mind on the image of a gray sweater, Fred climbs the steps and rings the bell; he hears the two familiar musical notes of the chime within, but nothing more.
“Rosemary!” he calls finally. “Rosemary! Are you there?”
Silence. After ringing the bell again, and waiting a few more minutes, he puts his key in the lock.
The house, as he had expected, is darkened and silent. He shuts the door behind him, and forestalls the shrill clamor of Rosemary’s burglar alarm by clicking the switch under the gilt-legged hall table as he has so often done at her request.
The shutters are closed in the long drawing room, but even in this light its total disorder is evident. Newspapers and cushions are strewn on the floor, plates and glasses on the tables. Evidently Mrs. Harris too is away on holiday. He searches round for his book, but can’t see it anywhere; maybe it’s upstairs.
As Fred starts for the hall he hears noises below: a thump and a scuffling of feet. He halts, holding his breath, listening. Has Rosemary lent the house to someone? Have burglars got in in spite of the alarm system? His first impulse is to turn and run, abandoning his possessions, but this strikes him as cowardly and twit-like. Instead he looks round for a weapon, then grabs a tight-rolled black umbrella from the Chinese urn by the hall table. The poker would be more effective; but if it’s not burglars the umbrella will pass as part of his getup. That it’s a sunny afternoon won’t matter: in London many men carry such umbrellas in all weathers, as Gay and his contemporaries carried canes.
Clutching the bamboo handle so tightly that his knuckles whiten, Fred descends the dark, twisting backstairs. In the basement kitchen a greeny half-dusk seeps through the net of ivy that shrouds the barred window. A woman—Mrs. Harris, he recognizes her by her headscarf, and the mop and bucket leaning against the sink—is sitting in a rocker at the far end of the long room. In front of her is a glass and a nearly empty bottle of what looks like Rosemary’s gin.
“So it’s you,” says Mrs. Harris in a drunken, hostile cockney, hardly raising her head to look at him. Though Fred has seen her only once before, and then only briefly, he is aware of her appearance as greatly altered for the worse. Her shoes are off, and shreds of hair hang thickly over her face. “I thought you were off to the States.”
“I’m leaving the day after tomorrow.”
“Y’are, are you?” Her voice is slurred, shaky. “Then what the bloody ’ell are you doin’ ’ere?’”
“I’ve come to pick up some clothes I left,” Fred explains, repressing his irritation. “I heard noises, so I came down to see what was going on.”
“Oh, yeh,” Mrs. Harris sneers.
“Yeh.” He is not going to be intimidated by a drunken charwoman.
“Creepin’ into the ’ouse behind my back. I oughta call the p’lice.” She grins tipsily.
Fred doesn’t believe for a moment