Read Online The Man Who Understood Women by Rosemary Friedman - Free Book Online
Authors: Rosemary Friedman
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well.
‘Is Uncle Judd coming back?’ Harriet asked from the floor where she was busy with her new doll.
Sara shook her head. ‘I don’t think so, Harriet.’
Simon said, ‘I think he is, Mummy. He’s left his golf clubs in the hall.’
Sara ran across the polished floor. The large, heavy leather bag leaned solidly against her own light one as it had done for months. She knew that he had not left them by mistake.
Rosita
1961
I had been married for ten years when I heard from Rosita. It was not so strange, really, when you considered that she inhabited one planet and I another. At first I couldn’t make out who the letter was from. It was on very thick white paper written in very black ink and began ‘Helen darling’. Since I had only one lover and he sat not two feet away spreading marmalade on his toast, and none of my women friends ever addressed me as ‘darling’, it had me puzzled for a moment or two, and I picked up the envelope to see if perhaps it wasn’t for another Helen at a different address.
Having made sure that I was, in fact, the ‘darling’ concerned, I turned over the page and looked at the signature. It occupied the entire width of the page and was in itself a conceit. How did she know my life was not peppered with Rositas? What made her imagine that after twelve years the mere sight of her name would crowd out the teeming events of a decade and take me back to my schooldays?
Yet had she added an explanatory ‘Your old chum, remember ?’ or more explicitly, ‘Barclay, that was’, it would not have been Rosita.
‘Who is it from?’ Mitchell asked, not raising his eyes from the share prices.
‘Rosita.’
‘Rosita?’
‘Rosita Barclay.’ My brain did a quick flip down the years and back into school. Rosita Barclay with the face of an angel; wide blue eyes and long blond hair; at sixteen a perfect figure ; legs destined for things other than tearing down the right wing; darling of them all. Particularly the men.
Yes. The men. Fat Monsieur Bonnard devoid of breath after toiling up the three flights of narrow stairs, mopping his brow as he stood at his desk on the rostrum, chest heaving as the minutes ticked. A voice at last: ‘
Et bien mes enfants
. But why must I have
toutes mes petites fleurs
in the back row? It is not a pleasing arrangement.’
All the little flowers, but he’d be looking at Rosita, tenderly, speculatively. Some would pick up their books and shuffle forward good-naturedly, not Rosita. She didn’t need to. Where she sat, eyelids lowered, indolent, was the centre of the class. Did she still remember the French for a ‘double-edged sword’? I wondered.
And it wasn’t only fat Monsieur Bonnard, the essence of Gallic goodness, who really believed that to understand everything was to forgive and tried to teach us to understand.
Nor was it only Mr Jarvis, the human hairpin who taughtus to fence in the dingy gym; taught us, a white spider, dancing , lunging, never still, his eyes on Rosita. She was, of course, the best – accurate, quick on her feet – but did he always have to pick her to demonstrate a point, illustrate a common fault?
As they stood, backs straight, foils raised in salute, before commencing the thrust and parry, every one of us was uncomfortably aware that there was more to it than the points that Mr Jarvis allowed Rosita to score on the white front of his target; more to the terse instructions he called to Rosita as they danced back and forth between the lines of we who were watching.
When Rosita took off her mask and shook loose her hair the spell was broken. Mr Jarvis would choose another partner but it was not the same, the power had gone out of the battery ; Mr Jarvis’s feet, though they twinkled just as fast, seemed no longer inspired.
Nor was it only the men. For that we could have forgiven her, not fully understanding, yet not unaware of the power of sex appeal. The women too responded to her magnetism with a predictability
‘Is Uncle Judd coming back?’ Harriet asked from the floor where she was busy with her new doll.
Sara shook her head. ‘I don’t think so, Harriet.’
Simon said, ‘I think he is, Mummy. He’s left his golf clubs in the hall.’
Sara ran across the polished floor. The large, heavy leather bag leaned solidly against her own light one as it had done for months. She knew that he had not left them by mistake.
Rosita
1961
I had been married for ten years when I heard from Rosita. It was not so strange, really, when you considered that she inhabited one planet and I another. At first I couldn’t make out who the letter was from. It was on very thick white paper written in very black ink and began ‘Helen darling’. Since I had only one lover and he sat not two feet away spreading marmalade on his toast, and none of my women friends ever addressed me as ‘darling’, it had me puzzled for a moment or two, and I picked up the envelope to see if perhaps it wasn’t for another Helen at a different address.
Having made sure that I was, in fact, the ‘darling’ concerned, I turned over the page and looked at the signature. It occupied the entire width of the page and was in itself a conceit. How did she know my life was not peppered with Rositas? What made her imagine that after twelve years the mere sight of her name would crowd out the teeming events of a decade and take me back to my schooldays?
Yet had she added an explanatory ‘Your old chum, remember ?’ or more explicitly, ‘Barclay, that was’, it would not have been Rosita.
‘Who is it from?’ Mitchell asked, not raising his eyes from the share prices.
‘Rosita.’
‘Rosita?’
‘Rosita Barclay.’ My brain did a quick flip down the years and back into school. Rosita Barclay with the face of an angel; wide blue eyes and long blond hair; at sixteen a perfect figure ; legs destined for things other than tearing down the right wing; darling of them all. Particularly the men.
Yes. The men. Fat Monsieur Bonnard devoid of breath after toiling up the three flights of narrow stairs, mopping his brow as he stood at his desk on the rostrum, chest heaving as the minutes ticked. A voice at last: ‘
Et bien mes enfants
. But why must I have
toutes mes petites fleurs
in the back row? It is not a pleasing arrangement.’
All the little flowers, but he’d be looking at Rosita, tenderly, speculatively. Some would pick up their books and shuffle forward good-naturedly, not Rosita. She didn’t need to. Where she sat, eyelids lowered, indolent, was the centre of the class. Did she still remember the French for a ‘double-edged sword’? I wondered.
And it wasn’t only fat Monsieur Bonnard, the essence of Gallic goodness, who really believed that to understand everything was to forgive and tried to teach us to understand.
Nor was it only Mr Jarvis, the human hairpin who taughtus to fence in the dingy gym; taught us, a white spider, dancing , lunging, never still, his eyes on Rosita. She was, of course, the best – accurate, quick on her feet – but did he always have to pick her to demonstrate a point, illustrate a common fault?
As they stood, backs straight, foils raised in salute, before commencing the thrust and parry, every one of us was uncomfortably aware that there was more to it than the points that Mr Jarvis allowed Rosita to score on the white front of his target; more to the terse instructions he called to Rosita as they danced back and forth between the lines of we who were watching.
When Rosita took off her mask and shook loose her hair the spell was broken. Mr Jarvis would choose another partner but it was not the same, the power had gone out of the battery ; Mr Jarvis’s feet, though they twinkled just as fast, seemed no longer inspired.
Nor was it only the men. For that we could have forgiven her, not fully understanding, yet not unaware of the power of sex appeal. The women too responded to her magnetism with a predictability
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