The Man Who Understood Women

by Rosemary Friedman

  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 taught us 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 that sickened us the more because we knew that we too, in spite of ourselves, were not immune to the eyes that brainwashed as they looked.

  To be late for a class was a heinous sin. But not for Rosita. We could all be deep in Addison, Swift or Livy, when the slowly opened door would reveal the shining head, and with a silvery laugh she would proclaim: ‘Sorry. I’m late again!’

  ‘Settle down quickly, Rosita, you’re holding up the class.’ But there was no venom in the remark, which was no more than a half-hearted rebuke. Anyone else would have found herself in disgrace, the subject of a lecture on punctuality. Sometimes we thought it was because Rosita’s father was a film director, and you could read about him and his various wives and not-wives in the newspapers. We knew that from time to time he sent tickets to the headmistress and the staff for film premières. But I don’t think it was only that, because people who didn’t know about her father were not immune.

  We travelled home on the bus, she to her father’s penthouse overlooking the park, I to the aunt with whom I stayed in term time. I gave up making bets with myself that the conductor, no matter how busy, would stop for a chat with Rosita, It was inevitable and you knew that selling Rosita a ticket would cheer him up however morose he had been before, and that afterwards he’d probably be singing.

  ‘Do I know her?’ asked Mitchell.

  ‘I’ve shown you her picture in the newspapers. You met her once, remember?’

  ‘Oh, that Rosita!’

  He looked eager, investments forgotten. One meeting and the odd photo on the Society Page. That was the effect she had.

  ‘What does she want? She’s never written to you before.’

  Neither had she. Curious that she should do so now. I held up the letter. Rosita and I had never been close friends. Because she was always head and shoulders above everyone else in looks, in knowledge (knowledge of the world, that is, not academic) and in worldly wealth, Rosita never formed one of those passionate, vulnerable, adolescent alliances common among girls. But, looking back, I suppose I did know her a fraction better than any of the others.

  She chose me because she had to talk to someone and, out of the whole class, I was the one who wanted nothing from her. She was too remote. Our main point of contact began and ended with our common need of the number 12 bus to carry us to and from school. Those who were nearly beautiful envied her her perfect features; those who were wealthy, her disdainful use of money; and those who aspired to fame, her father whose name was a household word.

  I think, perhaps, I alone had no snag. I wasn’t pretty, my education was paid for by my aunt, and I knew with the utmost certainty that whatever my future held it would have nothing to do with fame or fortune, both of which waited like toys to be played with in Rosita’s lap.

  Of course we talked a good deal on the bus but it was mostly Rosita telling me about the men her father entertained and who were old enough to be her father. She hinted at things, wicked things. I pretended to understand, but I often puzzled about those hinted things, together with my geometry or my algebra, when I got home.

  On one memorable occasion she asked me to the penthouse to tea. I thought in my naiveté that tiger-skin rugs, silk-panelled walls and blinds that slid up to reveal giant television sets existed only in novels and films. That Rosita actually lived with such refinements widened the gap between us. We didn’t even have tea. We helped ourselves to milk and little bits of toast with caviar left from the night before, from the fridge that was large enough to put your bed in.

  Later, Rosita said: ‘Let’s have a drink, I’m gasping,’ and a whole section of what I had thought were books disappeared to reveal what must have been a hundred bottles. I’ve never really trusted people’s books since and usually go around taking surreptitious prods at them.

  I invited her back, diffidently, out of politeness. I warned my aunt that she came of film people and was a little unconventional. I underestimated Rosita. When she’d gone my aunt was positively bubbling over and demanding to know why I hadn’t introduced her to my charming friend before.

  The bus journeys and those two visits, and of course the brief times we chatted to each other at school, was the extent of our friendship. Since we had left school, I for my physiotherapist training through which I ultimately met Mitchell, and Rosita for the great wide world that was lying at her feet, I had seen her only once. I had been dining with Mitchell in a basement restaurant, which was enjoying a wave of popularity at the time. It was our wedding anniversary, fourth I think, and we were dancing, happy with each other, on a minute, crowded floor. Suddenly a voice s
creamed: ‘Darling!’

  Drowsy with champagne, I looked up idly to see who it was that was being hailed. On the edge of the floor, attached by two fingers to a man whose antics on the racecourse and elsewhere frequently filled several columns of several newspapers, was Rosita. And she was looking at me.

  We pushed our way over to her and when I introduced Mitchell, Rosita kissed both of us, Mitchell not objecting in the slightest.

  ‘Helen, darling, how exciting!’ Rosita exclaimed, her eyes bright. But I couldn’t quite see what it was that she found so exciting.

  We stood talking for just a moment and then her boyfriend – she never did marry that one, whose type we were not at all – pulled her away and Rosita blew kisses at us as they weaved towards their table. Afterwards the bandleader, shaking his maracas, looked at us with different eyes and I swear we had better attention from our waiter. Our claim to fame was manifest. We knew Rosita.

  The incident, though leaving me quite unmoved, had obviously seared itself into Mitchell’s memory. He leaned forward, waiting eagerly to hear what was in the letter from Rosita.

  There was no address or date.

  ‘Helen, darling,’ I read aloud. ‘White sand and blue sky as far as the eye can see, you’d think that nothing else existed …’

  ‘Wait a second,’ Mitchell said, ‘there were no foreign stamps.’

  I looked at the envelope again. It had been posted in Streatham. I continued to read.

  ‘… and that everyone in the whole world was lying in the sun. I came today from Tangier and it’s not so. Helen I must see you. At Bellotti’s on the thirty-first at one? Have you changed? I visualise you in your green coat going back and forth on the number 12 to eternity. I’ll try not to be late. Yours as ever, Rosita.’

  ‘The thirty-first,’ Mitchell said, ‘that’s tomorrow.’

  ‘She might have meant last month. She could hardly have been lying on the white sands in Streatham.’

  ‘Last month had only thirty days. Shall you go?’

  I read a certain urgency into the phrase: ‘Helen, I must see you.’ ‘I’ll take a chance,’ I said.

  Quite apart from the fact that the letter had obviously been written in one place and posted in another, there were several things that puzzled me. How did Rosita know my married name and where I lived? As far as I knew, we had no mutual acquaintance and she could not possibly have followed my career as I had hers in the newspapers. How did she know whether or not I could keep the appointment when there was no indication of where I could contact her?

  And, most odd of all, what did she mean by her reference to Tangier? Rosita had never had a social conscience.

  The rest of the day I spent in speculation. What could she want? Had she perhaps fallen on hard times and needed help from an old schoolfriend? Bellotti’s hardly suggested financial difficulties. Might she have come to realise the folly of her roaming and unstable life and want from me the recipe for a settled existence in suburbia? Was she in some sort of personal trouble, ill maybe, and needing someone upon whom she could rely or confide in?

  The possibilities were endless.

  The next morning I stood before my wardrobe knowing that no matter what I wore it would not be up to the standard of Bellotti’s. Mine was not that sort of life.

  I dressed in the best I had and, knowing that I looked nice but not outstanding, set off, feeling doubtful that Rosita would be there at all, almost certain that it would turn out to be a wild-goose chase.

  The lobby of Bellotti’s was full of people waiting for other people and for tables, nibbling olives and sipping at glasses of sherry. There was a girl, a paper cut-out from a fashion paper in a fabulous pink suit, and another in mink with banana-coloured hair, but no Rosita.

  ‘Madame has a reservation?’ the head waiter murmured.

  ‘No, yes, that is I’m waiting …’ and then to my horror I realised that I did not even know Rosita’s name. She had been married to an Alsopp and after that to a South American millionaire called Diaz but according to my newspaper all that was in the past. Messrs Alsopp and Diaz had long ago moved on to pastures new.

  I took a chance. ‘I don’t know if Rosita has booked a table,’ I said, and had an unsolicited view of half a dozen gold teeth as the head waiter embraced me with his smile.

  ‘Aha! Rosita,’ he made the name a caress. ‘Lady Harrington. Yes, we are waiting for her to arrive.’

  At least I had not come all the way for nothing. I squeezed in on the banquette between a young man with a red carnation in his buttonhole and an American matron with a whimsy veil, and watched the revolving doors. I finished the sweet sherry I had ordered to while away the time and had almost worked my way through a dish of peanuts when the doors were suddenly hurled into motion and there, deeply tanned and gorgeous as ever, was Rosita. I had a moment to examine her before she saw me, and noticed first that her handbag was such that its price alone would have dressed me from head to foot. It was as if an alarm had been rung. Everyone, the headwaiter, the barman, my neighbour with the red carnation, the American matron, was looking at her.

  Helen!’ she exclaimed as dramatically as if I were her long-lost sister, and held out both her hands. I stood up and she kissed me. Her skin was cool and had the exotic tang of expensive perfume used lavishly. She took my arm, clinging as if she’d never let me go, and we followed the headwaiter to a table by the window.

  When he’d left us I watched her go through the small settling motions of seeking comfort; I knew that Rosita had not fallen upon hard times. She hadn’t changed, except that the long blond hair was now shorter in keeping with the current fashion and perhaps owed a little, but I could not really be sure, to artifice. She seemed unaware that everyone at the tables around us was watching her, admiring the chiselled perfection of her features, as she leant forward and said: ‘It’s so wonderful to see you.’

  ‘How did you know my address?’

  ‘I saw the birth announcement, a daughter, wasn’t it? I meant to write to you.’

  ‘The birth announcement?’ My youngest child was four.

  ‘I came across the piece of paper in my wallet. I often wondered what I’d done with it.’

  ‘That was four years ago.’

  ‘As long as that? I stick things away.’ She opened her handbag. ‘I bought a present. I should have looked at the date.’ She handed me a jeweller’s box.

  Inside was an exquisite coral bracelet which would have fitted a baby no older than six months.

  ‘It’s very lovely,’ I murmured. ‘Thank you, Rosita.’

  Rosita dismissed it with a wave of her hand. ‘You can put it away for the next.’

  The waiter asked me what I’d like to eat and it wasn’t until he’d gone that I realised Rosita hadn’t ordered anything at all.

  ‘So you live in Sutton,’ Rosita said.

  ‘Yes,’ I said, on the defensive although she hadn’t attacked. ‘Where do you?’

  ‘All over,’ she shrugged. ‘London, Paris, Florida. Hooper’s in oil.’

  I only now remembered reading about her recent marriage to the Harrington heir. According to the papers they were blissfully happy. That put paid to my theory that Rosita was in some sort of emotional trouble, which she thought I might be able to sort out. She certainly looked happy enough and the personification of radiant health. All my speculations as to why she might want to see me became groundless in her actual presence and I waited, curious throughout the meal, for some logical explanation of why I was lunching with Rosita at Bellotti’s on an ordinary Wednesday when normally I would have been at home boiling myself an egg.

  The waiter brought the lunch I had ordered and the headwaiter himself brought Rosita a small portion of salad although I hadn’t heard her ask for anything.

  ‘You are a darling, Emilio,’ she smiled at him and then at me. ‘I never take anything more complicated at midday.’

  I was a darling, too: ‘Helen, darling.’

  I asked her about th
e letter. She had written it in Miami, she said, and forgotten to post it. She had given it to Hooper to post when she’d returned. I didn’t ask what Hooper had been doing in Streatham.

  ‘What upset you in Tangier?’ I asked. I pictured the beggars with their running sores, the waifs of children, ragged, barefooted, Rosita distributing largesse.

  She wrinkled the peach-brown forehead. ‘Tangier?’ she said. ‘Oh, yes, it was the rainy season …’

  She asked me and I told her about my life in Sutton, and about my marriage and about my two children. She was listening with only half her mind and I didn’t blame her; it didn’t sound much compared with Tangier, with Paris, with Florida.

  ‘Have you kept in touch with anyone else from school?’ I asked.

  ‘No, no one.’

  ‘Were you happy there?’

  Rosita looked surprised. Happiness and its elusive quality was a subject I often pondered on and had long discussions about with Mitchell.

  ‘I suppose so,’ Rosita said.

  I should have known that for Rosita life was for living and not for questioning.

  ‘How long are you staying in London?’ I asked, thinking perhaps that her visit was only to be brief and there was something she wanted me to do for her.

  ‘Oh, until one of us gets the urge to move, I suppose.’

  I imagined her waking up in the morning and standing on the balcony in her negligée and deciding with no ado at all to transport herself to the other side of the world. Thus it was to be Rosita.

  She was still terribly amusing. While we ate she told me stories about her life, her homes, her husbands. The people at the next table listened too. The fabric she wove was of bright colours, each stitch close to the next. There was no delicate shading of hope or of dream or of aspiration.

  Was this scudding across life’s surface perhaps happiness? Rosita certainly seemed to be content.

  With the coffee, which Rosita had in a specially large cup brought again unasked-for by Emilio, I could not resist asking why it was that after so many years Rosita had wanted to see me.