Alison Lurie - Foreign Affairs

Of course he hadn’t thought that she had no past, Fred tells himself as he wanders disconsolate down a long gallery of late-Renaissance furnishings toward a looming pillared structure described on a placard as The Great Bed of Ware and said to have housed up to a dozen sleepers a night. But to be referred to in print as just one of a series-Fred clenches his teeth and focuses again on the Great Bed, associating it in his mind with Rosemary and her lovers. There is room here between these twisted columns for all those mentioned or hinted at in Private Eye , and more. And no doubt there were more. He’s only the most recent-by now, maybe not even that. Against his will he sees Rosemary, in her pale satin nightgown scattered with lace butterflies, sporting in the Great Bed with a dozen shadowy naked male figures. The legs, the arms, the cocks, the backsides-her tumbled pale-gold hair-the stained and tumbled bedclothes-the rebound of springs, the smell of sex…

To shake off this hallucination, Fred moves nearer and puts his hand on the unwrinkled brocade coverlet, receiving a shock: the Great Bed of Ware is as hard as stone.

But why should he be surprised? Functionally speaking this is no longer a bed. No one will ever sleep or fuck in it again. No one will sit in these high-backed oak chairs: their stringy crimson velvet seats, now faded to pink, are protected from contemporary rear ends by tarnished gilt cords. The engraved goblets in the glass cases will never again hold water or wine; the pewter plates will never be heaped with the roast beef of Old England.

Art museums are better. Paintings and sculptures continue to serve the purpose for which they were made: to be gazed at and admired, to interpret and shape the world. They live on, immortal, but all this sluff is functionally dead; no, worse, fixed in a kind of living death, like his passion for Rosemary Radley. There’s something futile, something hideous, about this immense Victorian junkshop full of expensive household things: all these chairs and dishes and cloths and knives and clocks, so many of them, too many of them, preserved forever in frozen uselessness, just as his passion for Rosemary and his love for Roo are uselessly preserved.

A revulsion from the thousands of undead objects that surround him on all sides seizes Fred, and he starts to walk, then to run toward the staircase and the exit. Outside the vast cocoa-colored mausoleum he takes deep breaths of a living air that smells of auto exhaust and cut grass. Okay, what shall he do now? Is it safe to rescue his clothes from Rosemary’s house, or should he abandon them to a V and A zombie existence?

If Rosemary were only in London-If only he’d found the damn key when she was still around-Yes, then he could have gone to the house whether she’d invited him or not, let himself in, and told her and showed her that he loved her, sworn he wasn’t tired of her. How could he be tired of Rosemary, for Christ’s sake?

If only he’d gone there sooner after their quarrel… Or, two weeks ago at the radio station, if only he’d been bolder, if he’d pushed his way into the studios behind some of those other people, found Rosemary, made her listen to him-Why has he become so slow, so cautious, so respectful of rules and conventions and public opinion; why has he become so-yes, that’s it-so goddamn English?

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 that Mrs. Harris will call the police, but it occurs to him that she will certainly report his visit to Rosemary, no doubt with disagreeable embellishments. “And what are you doing here?” he asks, taking the offensive.

Mrs. Harris stares at him through the gloom in a boozy, fixed way. “You tell me, Professor Know-All,” she says finally.

Fred flinches. “Professor Know-All” was one of Rosemary’s private nicknames for him, used half fondly, half mockingly when he brought forth some item of general information. Where has Mrs. Harris heard it? Either Rosemary has told her, or Mrs. Harris has listened in on their phone calls.