by Alison Lurie
“Oh dear,” Edwin said when Fred called early this morning and related his story. “I thought she must be away; she didn’t answer the phone. I was afraid of something like this. Well, I’ve nearly finished breakfast; I’ll take the first train in and go straight to Rosemary’s from Victoria.”
“All right. I’ll meet you there.”
“I don’t see the point of that. Besides, I thought you just told me you were leaving for the States this morning.”
“I can make it. My plane isn’t until noon.”
“Well—”
“I want to.”
“If you insist,” Edwin says with a sigh. “But promise me you won’t try to get into the house until I come.”
Restless now with waiting, Fred rises, crosses the street to the park in the center of the square, and scans the front of the house, both hoping and fearing that Rosemary will come out of it before Edwin arrives. The place looks deserted; all the shutters are closed and the stoop is littered with throwaway papers and advertising brochures. It’s hard to believe there’s anyone inside—let alone the woman he saw the day before yesterday. Or thought he saw. Was that really Rosemary, or was it only Mrs. Harris after all? What if his identification of the two was a delusion, a mental abberation caused by frustrated desire?
“Oh, there you are,” Edwin Francis says, getting out of a taxi; he looks white and anxious. “Did you try the bell? No? Good. Well, oh dear, let’s see now. I think perhaps you should go down the street a bit; it might upset her, seeing you suddenly.”
“I—All right,” Fred agrees.
He retreats, and from a middle distance watches Edwin ring and wait, then beckon him back.
“It’s rather worrying,” he says.
“Yeh.” Fred realizes that for Edwin, as for many Englishmen, the word “rather” is an intensifier.
“I think I’d better see if I can find the spare key.” He turns to one of the stone urns by the steps and begins to poke about in the earth under the ivy and white geraniums with a broken twig. “Yes, here we are.” Edwin takes out a large linen handkerchief of the sort Fred’s grandfather used to carry, and wipes the key and his small neat hands.
“I think you’d better wait,” he says, holding the door only slightly open. “Let me see what the situation is first.”
“No, I want—”
“Back in a moment.” Before Fred can protest Edwin slips into the hall and shuts the door behind him.
Fred sits down again on the steps beside his luggage. There is no sound from the house; all he can hear are the ordinary noises of a London summer morning: the wind shuffling the leaves in the square, the high voices of children playing, the lazy chirp of birds, and traffic on the King’s Road. The well-kept Victorian terrace houses, enameled in eggshell colors, glow in the warm sunlight; it is hard to believe that there is anything unpleasant behind their façades.
The door opens; he clambers quickly to his feet. “What—? How—?”
“Well, she’s there,” says Edwin. In the few minutes he has been inside something has happened to his face; he looks less worried and more angry. “She’s all right—physically that is. But she’s rather confused. She’s not quite awake yet, of course. And the house is in a dreadful state. Dreadful.” He gives a little shudder.
“Let me—” Fred tried to push past into the hall, but Edwin holds onto the door.
“I really don’t think you’d better come in. It will only upset Rosemary.”
“I want to see her.”
“What for?”
“For Christ’s sake. To know that she’s all right—To tell her I’m sorry about the other day—” Fred is younger, stronger, and much larger than Edwin Francis; if he chose, he thinks, he could easily get past him.
“I don’t see the point of that. She’s in no condition to have visitors, believe me.”
“But I want to do something. I don’t have to leave for”—Fred checks his watch—”twenty minutes.”
“I think you’ve done quite enough already,” Edwin says with a spiteful emphasis; then, registering Fred’s expression, he adds: “I expect it’s going to be all right, you know. I’m going to phone now and ask the doctor to come round, just to be sure.”
“I want to see her, damn it.” Fred puts a hand on Edwin’s shoulder and starts to shove him aside.
“Really, you make me rather cross,” Edwin says, not budging. “I’ll tell you what, though. If you’re prepared to stay in London and make Rosemary your life’s work, very well; I won’t stop you. Otherwise, anything you do is simply going to make it harder for her.”
“Just for a few minutes—” Fred realizes that in order to get past Edwin he will have to use force, perhaps even violence.
“You want to remind her that you’re leaving and make her feel worse, is that it?”
“No, I . . .” Feeling accused, Fred drops his arm and steps back. “I only want to see her, that’s all. I love her, you know.”
“Don’t be selfish.” Edwin begins to close the door. “It won’t do either of you the least good. Anyhow, the person you think you love isn’t Rosemary.”
Fred hesitates, wrenched between the desire to see her again and the fear that Edwin may be right; that he may do harm. He looks round as if for help or advice, but the street is empty.
“You go on home now, Freddy,” Edwin says. “And really, I think the best thing you can do is to forget Rosemary as fast as you can. Well, have a nice trip. And please don’t write,” he adds, shutting the door in Fred’s face.
Though he’s allowed himself what seemed enough time to get to the airport, Fred has reckoned without the scarcity of taxis in Chelsea and the heaviness of daytime traffic. For the next hour he is mainly preoccupied with the idea of catching his plane; if he had seen Rosemary, he realizes, he would certainly have missed it. Once he is safe in the departure lounge at Heathrow, however, all the confusion and anxiety of the past two days floods back over him.
Along with his boarding pass Fred has received a brochure listing what travelers are allowed to import into the United States. He crushes and discards it. He is too broke to buy any duty-free goods; besides, he is already weighted down with all he has acquired in England over the past six months. Physically, this isn’t much: a few books, the cashmere scarf Rosemary gave him, a stack of notes on John Gay and his times. His mental baggage is bulkier: he is carrying home a heavy weariness and disillusion with London, with Gay, and with life in general and himself in particular.
In the past Fred has thought of himself as a decent, intelligent person. Now it occurs to him that maybe he’s not so unlike Captain Macheath after all. His work, like all scholarship emptied of will and inspiration, has over the past months degenerated into a kind of petty highway robbery: a patching together of ideas and facts stolen from other people’s books.
And his love life is no better. Like Macheath’s, it follows one of the classic literary patterns of the eighteenth century, in which a man meets and seduces an innocent woman, then abandons her. Sometimes he merely “trifles with her affections”; at other times he rapes her. There are many possible endings to the story. The woman may fall into a decline and die, give birth to a live or dead baby, go on the streets, become a nun, etc. The man may go on to other victims, be exposed in time by a well-wisher, meet a violent and well-deserved end, or repent and return—either too late, or in time to marry his former sweetheart and be forgiven.
In these terms, Fred thinks, you could say that he had seduced both Roo and Rosemary and then deserted them when they needed him most—just as Macheath deserted Polly and Lucy. He hadn’t ever thought of it this way, of course. Because Roo was, in her own phrase, “a liberated woman,” because Rosemary was rich and famous, he had assumed he could do them no damage. Well, if he’s learned one thing this year, it’s that everyone is vulnerable, no matter how strong and independent they look.
Roo had wanted very badly to come to England, but he had made it impossible by quarreling w
ith her. When she wrote in May she must have hoped that he’d ask her to join him here at once; instead he let her letter lie on his desk unanswered for weeks. He had encouraged Rosemary to love him unconditionally, while intending to love her only as long as it was convenient for him . . . Well, he had been caught there. Some part of him will probably always love her—even if, as Edwin put it, the Rosemary he loves doesn’t exist.
A notice flops on overhead announcing the boarding of Fred’s flight. Gathering his things, he follows the other passengers out into the corridor to the moving walkway that will carry them to the gate. As he stands on it, watching the same colored posters of scenic Britain that he saw six months ago—or ones much like them—move slowly backward past him, Fred feels worse about himself than he has ever felt in his adult life.
But he is, after all, a young, well-educated, good-looking American, an assistant professor in a major university; and he is on his way home to a beautiful woman who loves him. Slowly his natural optimism begins to reassert itself. He thinks that after all The Beggar’s Opera doesn’t dispense strict poetic justice. Gay steps into his play in the third act, like a god intervening in human affairs, to give it a happy ending. He interrupts the hanging of Macheath and reunites him with Polly, as Fred will soon be reunited with Roo.
Did Gay do this only to please the audience, as he claims? Or did it satisfy his own natural affection for his characters? Did he know, from experience or the intuition of genius, that there is after all hope—not for everyone, maybe, but for the most fortunate and energetic among us?
Fred’s spirits improve. He ceases to stand like a lump on the moving rubber sidewalk, and begins to walk forward along it. The colored views of Britain stream backward twice as fast as before, and he has the sensation of striding toward his future with a supernatural speed and confidence.
12
* * *
Sticks and stones may break my bones,
But names will never hurt me.
When I die, then you’ll cry
For the names you called me.
Old rhyme
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 s
hake, 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.
“Yes,” Vinnie prompts. An awful unfocused uneasiness has come over her. “You’re visiting your father in South Leigh?”
“Yeh—No—Oh gee, excuse me. I guess maybe—Oh, I’m so stupid—” To Vinnie, everything seems to be falling apart: Barbie Mumpson’s grasp of the English language has failed, and the room is full of darkness. “I thought maybe Professor Gilson told you. Dad, uh—Dad passed on last Friday.”