Thinks... by David Lodge

Author:David Lodge [David Lodge]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House
Published: 2001-02-28T16:00:00+00:00

18

FRIDAY 21ST MARCH. Ralph has just left, after trying and failing to get me to go to bed with him. It was a close call – closer, I suspect, than he had any inkling of. If he had seen me this morning, frantically preparing for his arrival, he would have really fancied his chances.

I phoned him at about eleven o’clock this morning, asking for help in getting fixed up with Email, and he promptly invited himself to lunch. Just bread and cheese, he said. There was a heel of old Cheddar in my fridge and not much else, so I dashed over to the campus supermarket and stocked up with Stilton, Gruyère and chèvre, Ardennes pâté, salad stuff, and enough tomatoes to make soup. Then I tore round the house with the vacuum cleaner, tidied the living-room, plucked my drying underwear from the line over the bath, changed the sheets on the bed (why? because they show under the slightly-too-small duvet and looked as if they needed changing, or so I told myself, but who knows what ideas were simmering in my subconscious – and anyway, why should I suppose that he would see the inside of my bedroom? Though as it happened he insisted on a thorough tour of the accommodation as soon as he arrived, including the bathroom, which had a pair of discarded knickers on the floor that had escaped my notice.)

By this time I was sweating profusely from all the exertion, so took a shower for the second time today, and decided to wash my hair while I was about it, and changed my clothes – twice, because the skirt and blouse I first put on seemed too dressy for the occasion, especially crowned with my freshly washed hair, so I adopted a more casual look, a loose denim shirt worn outside a pair of trousers. I wanted to make a pleasing impression without sending any seductive signals. Not that he needed any encouragement. I’m quite sure he came here with every intention of trying to seduce me, and that the request to see over the house was just a pretext for learning the relevant domestic geography – casing the joint, as burglars say, or used to say in novels.

‘Seduce’ is another word that sounds terribly old-fashioned and literary now, suggestive of deflowered maidens and ruined women, of Richardson’s Pamela defending her ‘virtue’ against Mr B, but I can’t think of a better one at the moment. After all, he was trying to get me into bed and I was resisting temptation. And there’s no doubt that I was tempted. He’s the first man I’ve met since Martin died that I have felt physically attracted to – that I can imagine myself naked and entwined with, without the image seeming ridiculous or repellent. There’ve been a few occasions in the last year, literary parties and suchlike, when I’ve been chatting away to some man, and perhaps got carried away a bit by alcohol so as to

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.