Foreign Affairs - Alison Lurie [123]
He will never be able to dream sentimentally about Rosemary’s bedroom again, Fred thinks; but hell, maybe that’s for the best. Who wants to be haunted by some goddamn room? He admits to himself that he hadn’t gone back only for his things, but in the stupid vain hope of seeing Rosemary again. In spite of everything he isn’t over her. Maybe he only got what he deserved. His job now is to forget Rosemary, who has obviously forgotten him and is enjoying herself in some luxurious country place.
In a calmer state of mind, Fred leaves the river and heads home. He has more packing to do, and in a couple of hours he is having supper and going to a late film with two old friends who have just arrived in England for the summer.
By the time Fred meets Tom and Paula his equilibrium is nearly restored, though he remains depressed. Their pleasure at the reunion and their eagerness for information about London raise his spirits somewhat. He is reminded that all American academics are not like the Vogelers (whom he has seen too much of lately) or like Vinnie Miner. A keen homesickness comes over him, a longing for American scenes and American voices, for people like Paula and Tom who say what they think without irony, who won’t ever pretend to like him and then drop him casually and graciously.
Over crepes and Beaujolais at Obelix, around the corner from his flat, Fred recommends to his friends a number of London sights, restaurants, and cultural events, without revealing his disillusion with the place. (Why discourage them, after all? They’re only here for a few weeks.) He also relates a censored version of the scene that afternoon with Mrs. Harris. He doesn’t say, for instance, that he had a key to the house; and Rosemary is transformed into “some people I know who are out of town.” Stripped of these aspects, his experience that afternoon begins to seem almost comic, in a rough way—a scene from Smollett, or maybe a cartoon by Rowlandson. It becomes a jocular tale, a kind of jest or fabliau, and is a riotous success with Tom and Paula.
“Great story,” Tom pronounces. “It would only happen to you.”
As he lies in bed much later that evening Fred recalls this comment, which at the time made him uncomfortable. But of course Tom, who has never heard of Rosemary, meant it as a kind of compliment. Because of Fred’s appearance, he was saying, it is comically appropriate that a drunken cockney charwoman should make obscene proposals to him.
It is true that over the years Fred has received other unwelcome—though less comically revolting—offers of this sort. Girls and women he has hardly looked at and never would look at have sometimes, there’s no denying it, thrown themselves at him, or at least in his general direction, causing him acute embarrassment. His male friends have often been less than sympathetic. Hell, they sometimes say, they wouldn’t complain if girls were falling all over them—not realizing what it’s really like to be heavily fallen upon by some woman you don’t want, even if some other guy does.
Physical attraction is a mystery, Fred muses as he watches the lamplight playing on his wall through the leaves outside. It makes a pattern like that of the dress Rosemary wore to Così fan tutte, which folded itself closely round and floated loose below her