Foreign Affairs - Alison Lurie [36]
“Wal, hey! Aren’t you, uh, Professor Miner?’
Vinnie turns. A very large man is grinning at her; he wears a semitransparent greenish plastic raincoat of the most repellent American sort, and locks of graying reddish-brown hair are plastered to his broad, damp red forehead.
“Metchoo on the plane last month. Chuck Mumpson.”
“Oh, yes,” she agrees without enthusiasm.
“How’s it going?” He blinks at her in the slow way she recalls from the flight.
It? Presumably, her work. Or life in general, perhaps? “Very well, thank you. How about you?”
“Oh, doing okay.” There is no enthusiasm in his voice. “Been shopping.” He holds up a damp-stained paper shopping bag. “Stuff for the folks at home, wouldn’t dare go back without it.” He laughs in a way that strikes Vinnie as nervous and unreal. Either it is in fact the case that Mr. Mumpson would be afraid to return to his “folks” without gifts, or, more likely, the remark is just an example of the debased and meaningless jesting common among half-literate middle Americans.
“Hey, glad I ran into you,” Mumpson continues. “Wanted to ask you something; you know this country lots better than I do. How about a cup of coffee?”
Though she isn’t especially glad that Chuck Mumpson has run into her, Vinnie is moved by the appeal to her expertise and the prospect of immediate refreshment. “Yes; why not.”
“Great. A drink’d be more like it, but I guess everything’s shut now, crazy regulations they have here.”
“Until five-thirty,” Vinnie confirms, glad for once of the licensing laws. She doesn’t care for city pubs, and would especially not care to be seen drinking in one with someone dressed like Mumpson. “There’s a tearoom here in the store, but it’s awfully expensive.”
“No sweat. I’m taking you.”
“Well. All right.” Vinnie leads the way past elaborate ziggurats of biscuits and candied fruits and up the steps to the mezzanine.
“Hey, did you see those guys?” Mumpson says in a loud whisper, jerking his head back at the small table at the head of the stairs where two Fortnum’s employees in Regency dress are having tea and playing chess. “Weird.”
“What? Oh, yes.” She moves on to a more polite distance. “They’re often here. They represent Mr. Fortnum and Mr. Mason; the founders of the store, you know.”
“Oh, yeh.” Turning, Mumpson gives the executives the slow rude animal stare characteristic of tourists. “I get it. A kinda advertising gimmick.”
Vinnie, irritated, does not assent. Of course it is in a sense an “advertising gimmick;” but she has always thought of it as an agreeable tradition. She regrets having accepted Mumpson’s invitation; for one thing, if she isn’t careful she will have to listen for at least half an hour to his tourist experiences, to hear about everything he has seen, bought, and eaten, and what is wrong with his hotel.
“I didn’t realize you were planning to be in England so long,” she says, settling herself on one of the pale-green butterfly-design metal chairs that give Fortnum’s tearoom the look of an Edwardian conservatory.
“Yeh, wal, I wasn’t.” Chuck Mumpson peels off his plastic raincoat, revealing a brown Western-cut leather jacket trimmed with leather fringe, a shiny-looking yellow Western-cut shirt with pearlized studs instead of buttons, and a leather string tie He hangs the raincoat on an empty chair, where it continues to drip onto the crimson carpet, and sits down heavily. “Yeh, the rest of them all went home last month. But I figured once I was here, there was plenty I hadn’t seen; hell, I might as well stay on a while. I was doing the sights with this couple from Indiana I met at the hotel, but they left Monday.”
“I’ve never seen the point of those fourteen-day tours,” Vinnie says. “If you’re going to visit England, you really should allow a month at least. If you can spare the time from your work, of course,” she adds, reminding herself