Mrs. McKisco said that they thought maybe Rosemary was in the plot, and that they didn't know who was and who wasn't in the plot but that her husband knew a man who turned out to be a main character, practically the assistant hero. When Rosemary inquired if there was definitely a plot, Mrs. Abrams jumped in and said that they didn't know because they weren't in it. As they continued talking, Rosemary wished that her mother was there to get them out of this uncomfortable situation. She decided that she did not like these people, particularly when comparing them to the other people who interested her - on the other side of the beach. After asking if she had been there long, they all went for a swim. After swimming a little bit, Mr. McKisco admitted that he did not know how to breathe while swimming. Rosemary explained that he should breathe out under the water, and roll his head over for air every fourth beat. Then, they swam to the raft, where a man helped up Mrs. McKisco for he thought that the raft had hit her. His voice was slow and shy, and he had one of the saddest faces Rosemary had ever seen, with the high cheekbones of an Indian, a long upper lip, and enormous golden eyes. Having made sure that Mrs. McKisco was alright, he swam off. Rosemary commented that he was a good swimmer, and was surprised when Mrs.
McKisco replied that he was a bad musician. Her husband agreed that Abe North was a rotten musician. Abe then swam over to Mrs. Diver, who had her two children in the water with her, and picked up one of the children onto his shoulders. The child yelled with excitement, and the woman watched, without smiling. Mrs. McKisco then stated that Mrs. Diver was not staying at the hotel, and returned to asking Rosemary more questions.
Rosemary then swam back to shore and lay down in the sun. As a man in a jockey cap created excitement on the beach, she slowly saw Campion come towards her, and she pretended to be asleep. After a while, she really did fall asleep and woke up sun burnt. She realized that the beach was deserted, except for the man in the jockey cap, who told her that he was going to wake her before he left. She laughed, inviting him to talk, but Dick Diver was already carrying a tent and beach umbrella up to a waiting car. He came back, and gathered up the rest of his belongings: a rake, a shovel and a sieve, and stowed them in a crevice of a rock. He checked that he hadn't left anything and then answered Rosemary's question of the time by saying that it was a half past one - not one of the worst times of day. He then looked at her with his blue eyes for a moment, and she felt eager and confident. She then went back to the hotel.
And then, in the chapter 3:At almost two, Rosemary and her mother went to the dining room for lunch. Rosemary informed her mother that she had fallen in love at the beach.
Her mother inquired whether she spoke to him, and Rosemary said that she had, just a little, and that he was very handsome with reddish hair, but married, as usual. Rosemary's mother was her best friend, and she had put every effort into guiding her. She, Mrs. Elsie Speers, had no personal resentments or bitterness about life, and had been twice satisfactorily married and twice widowed. One of her husbands was a cavalry officer and one an army doctor. She had not spared Rosemary, and had thus made her hard. By not sparing her own labor and devotion, she had cultivated an idealism in Rosemary, "so that while Rosemary was a 'simple' child she was protected by a double sheath of her mother's armor and her own - she had a mature distrust of the trivial, the facile and the vulgar."
Mrs. Speers then asked Rosemary if she liked it at Gausse's hotel, and Rosemary said that it might be fun if she knew those people, but that the people who spoke with her were not very nice. Then, she complained that they recognized her, and that everybody had seen "Daddy's Girl". Mrs. Speers waited until Rosemary's egotism subsided and then asked when she was going to go see Earl Brady. They decided that they would definitely see him some day before they left.
Rosemary then took the bus to the train station, and felt uncomfortable by the people staring at her silently. On the train, the first class compartment was filled with advertising and had its own atmosphere, created by the people in it who were scornful of the world around them which was less swift. At the station in Cannes, a dozen cab drivers slept.
As she came out of drug the store with a bottle of coconut oil, she saw Mrs. Diver, arms full of sofa-cushions, go to a car where a black dog was barking. The car's chauffeur woke with a start, and Mrs. Diver sat in the car, looking bravely straight ahead toward nothing, wearing a bright red dress, with her thick, dark, gold hair. Having half an hour left to wait for her train, Rosemary sat down in the Café des Allies, and starting reading The Saturday Evening Post, which she had bought for her mother, as she drank her lemonade. She had also bought Le Temps, but she found the memoirs of a Russian princess in The Saturday Evening Post more appealing. Being used to everything being either tragic or comic, she found the French life empty and stale. This was accentuated by the sad tunes of the orchestra playing. She was glad that she was returning to Gausse's Hotel.
Her shoulders were too burned to swim the next day, so she and her mother hired a car and drove along the Riviera. The chauffeur, a Russian Czar from the period of Ivan the Terrible, was a fabulous guide who knew of all the kings and rajahs who had come to the area for several reasons, and brought the names of different towns and places to life.
(To be continued......)
1 comment:
Rosemary takes care of falling asleep in the sun. If you fall asleep too long, you can burn such as me before.
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