Alison Lurie: Foreign Affairs

“Poor old Chuck,” Edwin says again. “He was quite a character, wasn’t he? Do you remember…”

Yes, Vinnie thinks as Edwin relates his anecdote; for her London friends Chuck Mumpson was a character, a comic type-not a real person. And she, who had known him better and should have known better, had put off going to him in Wiltshire not only because she was afraid to trust herself to any man, but because she didn’t want to be associated with him in their minds or even in her own. It was as if, in her blind Anglophilia, she had even taken on what are said to be the characteristic English weaknesses of timidity and snobbishness-neither of them, in fact, particularly characteristic of those English she knows best.

“Still,” Edwin concludes, “I did rather like him, didn’t you?”

“No,” Vinnie is extremely surprised to hear herself say. “I didn’t ‘rather like Chuck,’ if you want to know. I loved him.”

“Really.” Edwin moves his chair back from the table, and incidentally away from the force of Vinnie’s statement and perhaps its content.

It’s true, Vinnie thinks. Chuck had loved her, and-she says this to herself with surprise and difficulty-she had loved him. “Yes.” She meets his stare, his insulting slight smile.

“Well, we did all rather wonder sometimes,” he says at last. “But I never really thought you-” He recollects his manners and breaks off. “I do understand,” he says in another tone, consoling and sympathetic. “These things happen. As I know all too well, you can love someone you don’t admire-love them passionately, even. Of course that’s not very nice for either of you.” A cloudy, fixed look comes over his small neat features; he stares past Vinnie and the orderly little courtyard with its clean white gravel and clipped roses, into the part of his life that she has always preferred to know nothing of.

“But I did admire Chuck,” Vinnie says, realizing the truth of this as she speaks.

“Really. Well, no doubt he was admirable, in his own way. One of nature’s noblemen.”

“I-” Vinnie begins, and chokes herself off. The patronizing phrase enrages her, but she doesn’t trust herself to speak without screaming or crying. And after all, what right has she to scream at Edwin for thinking as she had thought for months?

“Well,” he says, splashing the last of the wine into their balloon glasses. “We mustn’t judge everyone by our own silly standards. I suppose we ought to learn that at our mother’s knee.”

“I suppose so,” says Vinnie, thinking that she did not learn it then, and that if she had, her whole life might have been different. “How is your mother, by the way?” she adds, hoping to divert Edwin.

“Oh, very well, thank you. Her arthritis is much better-one good effect of this frightful heat.”

“That’s nice.” To Vinnie the day is only pleasantly warm, but she is used to the British intolerance of temperatures over seventy-five degrees.

“If she stays well, I’m thinking of giving a little luncheon for her next week; I hope you’ll be able to come.”

“I’m not sure,” Vinnie says. “I may be going down to the country this weekend, and if I do I won’t be back until next month.”

“Oh dear. Really?”

“I’m afraid so,” says Vinnie, who is as surprised by her declaration as Edwin is.

“And when are you leaving for the States?”

“On the twentieth, I think it is.”

“Oh, Vinnie. You can’t possibly. That’s very naughty of you.”

“I know. But you see I’ve got to get ready for my fall term.”

“Come on, now. That’s ages away.”

“Not in America it isn’t.” Vinnie sighs, thinking of her university’s academic calendar, revised recently to save on fuel bills. Classes now start before Labor Day, and by August 24 known and unknown advisees will be fidgeting in her office.

“Besides, you’ve only just come.”

“Silly.” She smiles. “I’ve been here since February.”

“Well, good. Anyhow, I think of you as living here always. Why don’t you?”

“I certainly would if I could.” Vinnie sighs again, well aware that she cannot possibly afford to quit her job and move to London.

“Never mind. I’ll make the most of you now. Let’s have some coffee. And I’ve got a rather shameless strawberry mousse; I hope you have room for it.”

An hour later Vinnie is on her way back to Regent’s Park Road in a taxi, feeling somewhat overfed. Ordinarily she would have taken first one and then another tube train, but an extravagant impulse came over her. If she does go down to Wiltshire-and she realizes that she’s probably going to, ridiculous as that is-she’ll be in London so little longer; why should she waste any of her remaining time here underground? Especially on an afternoon like this one, when everything seems to shimmer with light and warmth: the trees, the shop windows, the people on the pavement. Why does London look so marvelously well today? And why does she feel for the first time that she’s not only seeing it, but is part of it? Something has changed, she thinks. She isn’t the same person she was: she has loved and been loved.

The taxi turns into the Park, and Vinnie gazes out the open window at the smooth green lawns, the nannies with their carriages, the gamboling children and dogs, the strollers, the joggers, the couples sitting together on the grass: all these fortunate people who live in London, who will still be here when she is alone and exiled in Corinth. Even Chuck, in his own way, will be here forever. The cold nauseous ache of past and coming loss squeezes her heart, and she shivers in the heat.

As they swing east into the Bayswater Road she leans back against the seat, feeling tipsy, tired, and low. She thinks again how inconsiderate and wrong it was of Death to come for Chuck just when he had begun to want to live. Then she thinks how inconsiderate and wrong it was of her not to have agreed to visit him in Wiltshire that last weekend. Chuck wouldn’t have gone to look for the De Mompessons then, or climbed those stairs in the Town Hall.

And even if he had gone there some time later, it mightn’t have been so hot that day; or she might have been with him and made him ascend more slowly (she could have saved his dignity by pretending that it was she who needed to stop awhile on each floor to catch her breath). Then he would be alive now.

If only he had told her that he was ill… If only she had gone to stay with him, made sure he didn’t drink too much, encouraged him not to smoke, to see a doctor regularly… He might have lived many years; and she might have lived with him, here in England. She might have resigned her job and given all her time to research and writing (“Money is no problem”). She would have kept the flat, so that they’d have a place in town as well as the old house in the country Chuck had talked about buying, with a flower garden, raspberry and currant bushes, an asparagus bed…

Why does she keep having this stupid fantasy? It’s not what she wants at all, not what would ever have worked, even if Chuck were alive. It’s not her nature, not her fate to be loved, to live with anyone, her fate is to be always single, unloved, alone-

Well, not completely alone. From the corner of the taxi comes a snuffle and whine inaudible to anyone in the world but Vinnie Miner. She recognizes it at once: Fido has returned from Wiltshire. Slowly he becomes visible to her inner eye: considerably smaller than ever before, only about the size of a Welsh terrier now; dusty, travel-worn, and not quite sure of his welcome.

“Go away,” Vinnie says silently. “I’m perfectly fine. I’m not a bit sorry for myself. I’m a well-known scholar; I have lots of friends on both sides of the Atlantic; I’ve just spent five very interesting months in London and finished an important book on playground rhymes.” But even to her the list seems painfully incomplete.