Foreign Affairs - Alison Lurie [125]
As he clears the cupboard over the sink, he stops dead with a package of McVitie’s Cream Crackers in his hand, suddenly remembering Rosemary’s party, and Edwin Francis standing on the stairs eating one of these crackers overloaded with pâté, and confiding in his nervous nice-old-lady manner that he was worried about Mrs. Harris’s effect on Rosemary. He hears Edwin saying: “She can get a bit frantic . . . She can get into rather a state sometimes.”
Suppose Rosemary hadn’t been playing Mrs. Harris as a joke, out of rage and spite when she saw Fred, whom she thought she’d got rid of, walk into her kitchen. Because she couldn’t have expected him. Whether he’d been there or not she would have been sitting drinking in the basement in Mrs. Harris’s clothes.
Suppose she wasn’t just acting; suppose she was “in a state,” whatever that means. What if Fred isn’t the only one who doesn’t know who Rosemary is? What if she doesn’t know either? What if she is a disturbed person, and there’s something really wrong with her?
Maybe Rosemary has started to drink at other times before this; maybe she’s become “frantic”—had some kind of breakdown—in the past, maybe more than once. Is that what Edwin was hinting? Was he trying to warn Fred?
No. More likely Edwin was asking for his help, just as he’d claimed, twittering that he wouldn’t feel comfortable unless Fred promised to “look out for our Rosemary.” Fred hadn’t paid any attention; he hadn’t looked out for their Rosemary. He hadn’t been able to, because an hour or two later she’d thrown him out of her house. Anyhow, he hadn’t thought she needed to be looked after.
But maybe she needs it now, he tells himself as he stands in the kitchen holding the box of crackers. If she’s on a binge or having a nervous breakdown or both, somebody ought to be taking care of her. The trouble is, who?
By three A.M. he has finished the Scotch, two leftover beers, and most of a bottle of souring white wine. He is drunk in Notting Hill Gate, and Rosemary is drunk or mad in Chelsea It’s all too goddamn much for him. He wants to go home to America; he wants to see Roo again. Only by now she probably doesn’t want to see him, he thinks, falling back onto the bed without bothering to take off his clothes, and dizzily spiraling into unconsciousness.
When Fred comes to, with a headache like an ax blow, the sun is high in the sky and hot on his disordered bed. Too ill to think of eating anything, he stands in the shower for a long time soaking his headache, with little effect. The one clear thought in his mind is that he’s got to tell somebody to look out for Rosemary before he leaves. He bundles his dirty clothes together with the dirty sheets and towels and drags them through the streets to the laundromat. While they slosh about in the machine in a queasy way that makes his headache worse, he goes to the pay phone and tries to call Edwin Francis, who ought to be back from Japan by now. Then he tries to get Posy’s or Nadia’s number from William Just at the BBC. Finally, because he can’t think of anyone else, he calls Vinnie Miner. None of these people are in, and for the rest of the day and the evening they continue not to be in. But he keeps on trying.
11
* * *
Don’t care was made to care,
Don’t care was hung,
Don’t care was put in a pot
And boiled till she/he was done.
Old rhyme
AT the London University School of Education, Vinnie Miner is attending a symposium on “Literature and the Child” and becoming steadily more bored. The subject is promising, and the first panelist was a friend of hers and an amusing speaker;