Alison Lurie: Foreign Affairs

IT is a sopping wet summer afternoon in London. Rain pours from a gray sky, drenching everything outside Vinnie’s study window: houses, gardens, trees, cars; people huddled into raincoats or defending themselves with umbrellas-unsuccessfully, for the sheets of water deflected from above splatter up again from the pavement and blow at them sideways. Vinnie gazes irritably through the downpour in the direction of Primrose Hill and the West Country, wondering again why she hasn’t heard from Chuck in nearly a week.

Or not exactly wondering: rather guessing, almost knowing that his silence must be deliberate. It has turned out just as she feared, just as it always does for her. Chuck’s affections have cooled; he has realized as many others have before him-notably her former husband-that he had mistaken gratitude for love. Possibly he has also met someone else, someone younger, prettier… Why should he think any more of Vinnie, who isn’t even around, who when they last spoke on the phone declined again to set a date for her visit to him?

Until that moment their conversation had been as easy and intimate as ever. Chuck was interested to hear about Roo’s telephone call and Vinnie’s midnight excursion to Hampstead Heath. “You’re a good woman,” he said during her story, and again at its end; and for the first time Vinnie almost believed him. She isn’t a good woman; but perhaps she has done one good thing.

As for Chuck himself, he seemed to be in high (too high?) spirits. Work on the dig was going great, he told her, and so was his genealogical research. “I’ve found a lotta Mumpsons now. All of them related some way, I guess, if you go back far enough. One of Mike’s students, he was saying maybe that’s why I feel so good down here. Said it could be a genetic memory, didja ever hear of that?”

“I know the theory, yes.”

“Sure, it sounds kinda crazy. But y’know, Vinnie, I really like this place. I could stay here forever, that’s how I feel sometimes. I even got the idea of buying myself a house. Nothing fancy, no castles. But there’s a lotta nice property for sale round here. Going for practically nothing, too, compared to what it’d be in Tulsa.”

The people in the local historical society had been a big help, Chuck said. One of them had even suggested that Chuck’s family might have been descendants of an aristocratic follower of William the Conqueror called De Mompesson-of which the name “Mumpson” may be a plebeian contraction. Most of Chuck’s recorded forebears, however, from what Vinnie can gather, were like Old Mumpson: illiterate or near-illiterate farm laborers. One such family, he recently learned, may have lived in the cottage where he is now staying.

“That really got to me,” Chuck said. “Last night I was looking at the furniture in my room-it’s real old, like most of the stuff here-and I was lying there wondering if maybe one of my ancestors slept in that same room. Maybe even in that same bed. And then this morning when I was out on the site-Mike was rushed because of the rain coming on, so I was lending a hand-it came to me, maybe Old Mumpson or one of his relatives dug in that same field. Maybe he even turned over that same shovelful of earth. It makes you think.”

“Yes.”

“Y’know I’ve been planning to go over to Somerset, to track down those De Mompessons. But what’s kinda weird, I almost hope I don’t find them. I don’t know if I want some Frenchy lord for an ancestor. All the same, I figure I’ll drive over there tomorrow if it’s raining like it is now. They say it’s going to keep up. Unless you might be coming down, of course.”

“No,” Vinnie said. “I don’t think so, not this weekend.”

“Okay.” Chuck gave a sigh-of disappointment, she had thought then. Now she wonders if it wasn’t also a sigh of exasperation, even of rejection. “Wal then. Maybe I’ll give you a call day after tomorrow, let you know what I find.”

Or maybe I won’t, he should have said, Vinnie thinks now; for Chuck did not call on Friday, or on Saturday, Sunday, or Monday. He’s sulking, she thought. Or he’s met someone else, just as she had predicted. These ideas upset Vinnie far more than she would have expected; indeed, they preoccupied her the entire weekend. On Monday morning she telephoned Paddington to inquire about trains to Wiltshire; and late that night, after a considerable struggle with her dignity, she picked up the phone and dialed Chuck’s number in Wiltshire, planning to say that she would be coming down to stay with him this week. Against her better judgment, yes; expecting it all to turn out badly in the end, yes; but still unable to stop herself. But there was no answer, neither then nor any time the next day.

Presumably Chuck is still away in Somerset, which must mean that he’s found more relatives, possibly even some aristocratic ones. But in that case, why hasn’t he called to tell her all about it? Because he’s angry at her, or tired of her, and/or because he’s met somebody he likes better. Well, she might have foreseen it. As the old rhyme puts it,

She that will not when she may,

When she would she shall have nay.

Vinnie feels an irritability rising to anger at Chuck and at herself. Until she took up with him, she had been content in London, almost happy, really. Like the Miller of Dee, as long as she didn’t really care for anyone, the fact that nobody cared for her could not trouble her. She’s just as well off now as she was before Chuck got into her life, but she feels miserable, hurt, rejected, and sorry for herself.

Vinnie imagines the long sitting room of a large expensive country house, far away in the southwest of England in a town she has never seen. There, at this very moment, Chuck Mumpson is having tea with newly discovered English cousins named De Mompesson, who have a rose garden and hunters. Charmed by his American naïveté and bluntness of speech, they are plying him with watercress sandwiches, walnut cake, raspberries, and heavy cream.

Beside the chintz-covered armchair in which Chuck sits, an invisible dirty-white dog yawns and lifts his head. He directs a discouraged look at Chuck; then, slowly, he rises to his feet, gives himself a shake, and pads across the peach-colored Aubusson carpet toward the door. Fido is abandoning Chuck, who no longer has any need of him; he is on his way home to Vinnie.

Well, there’s no point in brooding about it. When the rates go down at six she’ll phone again. Meanwhile she might as well get back to her own less fancy tea and to the piece she promised to the Sunday Times a month ago.

Vinnie is deep into this task, with the four collections of folktales she is reviewing spread open round her typewriter, when the telephone rings.

“Professor Miner?” The voice isn’t Chuck’s, but female, American, nervous, very young. Vinnie classifies it generically as that of a B-minus student, perhaps one of her own B-minus students.

“This is she.”

“You’re Professor Miner?”

“Yes,” Vinnie says impatiently, wondering if perhaps this call, like the one last week, relates to Fred Turner. But the flat, anxious tone of voice suggests not so much a lovelorn condition as some serious touristic crisis: stolen luggage, acute illness, or the like.

“My name is Barbie Mumpson. I’m in England, in a place called Frome.”

“Oh, yes?” Vinnie recognizes the names of Chuck’s daughter and of a large town not far from South Leigh.

“I’m calling you because of this picture-I mean because of my father”-Barbie’s voice wavers.