Foreign Affairs - Alison Lurie [139]
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,