Almost English Page 14

  Or is she deluding herself? Is it truly hidden? Sometimes one of the aunts will look at her even more piercingly than usual and she thinks: they must suspect. Could Zsuzsi have followed her to the boatyard, ducking behind lamp posts in a fog of Je Reviens and rain-sparkled fur?

  Has Marina detected something? Is that why she was so strange on the phone?

  She passes Mrs Dobos the crystal sugar. You, she tells herself, are an abomination. You are thinking of Peter and his first letter, hidden not a yard from where Mrs Dobos is sitting on the sofa, while you wait for his next.

  A great furrow of longing has opened in Marina’s chest for no particular reason. It starts off with her mother, which is ridiculous because her mother seems to have forgotten about her entirely. She has not had a postcard from her for four days. It grows deeper, a split, a crevasse, until she feels broken in half with loneliness and hunger. It is a dismally grey afternoon. She trails out of chemistry, which has not gone well, and walks sadly towards Garthgate. Someone familiar is climbing out of a car on the chained-off tarmac outside Percy, and her blood gives a little leap. A strange cold feeling, like escaping unset jelly, spreads over her arm and chest.

  ‘Um, hi. Hello, hi.’ She is wearing her glasses, a blouse with covered buttons from Rozsi’s wardrobe, scuffed shoes, and a friendship bracelet Urs gave her in Form Four. She can feel a blush spreading across her neck like an infection. ‘I . . . was looking for something,’ she tells Mrs Viney. ‘Someone. Hello!’

  ‘Marvellous,’ says Mrs Viney vaguely.

  ‘Yes! Ha ha ha,’ Marina says. ‘Are you . . . will you . . . so, you’re going back? To your, you know, residence?’

  ‘Well—’

  ‘Oh, by the way . . .’ Should she mention the thank-you card débâcle? She looks at Mrs Viney helplessly, and receives a little smile in return.

  ‘OK, Ma,’ says Guy. ‘Stagger off now. Come on, Marina, let’s see if there’s anything to eat.’

  ‘Might see you tonight, darlings,’ says Mrs Viney airily, ‘on the way to Jasper.’

  ‘She means Stenning,’ Guy says. ‘They’re having, I don’t know, medieval fondues with him or something later.’

  Later means when? After dinner she and Guy will go to Evensong to give thanks. Chapel looks beautiful at night; they light the lamps, and the babies from the Choir School sing anthems of salvation, masses and motets and ‘Let All Mortal Flesh’. Pa Stenning, Mrs Viney’s friend. Dominus, salva me.

  ‘Don’t forget to leave my jockstrap,’ Guy instructs his mother and nods at Marina. ‘Come on. Getting malnutrition.’

  In childhood, Marina read comics. She always looks out for five-pound notes on the pavement; kicks aside dropped banana skins to protect old ladies; passes building sites expecting falling cans of paint. Lamp posts, however, have escaped her. She has forgotten to be alert.

  And so, following Guy while trying to look meaningfully at Mrs Viney – a distress flare, only for her – she turns her head and walks slap into ten foot of antique-effect metal-work.

  ‘Ha!’ bellows Guy. ‘Brilliant!’

  The pain is astonishing. She must have broken her nose. She will be covered in gore. Jesus. Jesus. She touches her face, licks her upper lip; is this blood she can taste, or snot, or tears?

  ‘Darling, are you all right?’

  More dreadful than blood is death by embarrassment; worse even than this colossal pain. ‘Er—’

  ‘You can’t be.’

  She blows out through pursed lips like an athlete. Then she adds, ‘Phew.’ The agony is unabated. She needs to hide like a wounded animal, feel her skull and howl. ‘Ab, absolutely.’

  ‘Idiot!’ says Guy joyfully. ‘Do it again!’

  ‘Shut up, Guy. Are you sure? It looked awfully painful.’

  ‘Fine. Golly. Yes. Really. I’m fine.’

  Mrs Viney looks quizzical. Is she worried? Is she amused?

  ‘Didn’t hurt at all!’ says Marina desperately. Now, unmistakably, Mrs Viney smiles. Marina takes a deep miserable breath. ‘But I’d better . . .’

  ‘Yeah,’ says Guy. ‘Come on. She’s fine.’

  And he takes Marina off to the Buttery for cream of broccoli soup, mince Mexicana, potato croquettes and syrup pudding, and Mrs Viney does not attempt to stop her.

  Where did it all go wrong for Laura? Was it her doing? Was she weak? Doomed by her parents’ mild genes: too apologetic to escape the lower middle classes, let alone to get ahead? Or just distracted by her half-cocked consumerist hopes? Because wrong it has gone, quite clearly. Surely there is time to stop it? If she is very strong and sensible, can’t her life still change?

  Every time the phone rings, she thinks: it’s him.

  ‘It’s me,’ says Alistair Sudgeon in a hoarse whisper. ‘I know the rule was no contact, domestically speaking. But I have news.’

  Laura backs into the entrance hallway, away from where Rozsi and Zsuzsi and their dear friend Perlmutter Sári, just returned from a very satisfying funeral, are whispering on the sofa like members of the Resistance. There is definitely an atmosphere. When Laura arrived home from work, cold and sad, Sári kissed her, patted her dismissively on the left haunch and said, ‘Tair-ible,’ lightly. They are keeping their voices low, as if Laura could have recently learned Hungarian and failed to mention it. Every second or so they shake their heads.

  ‘I,’ Laura says into the telephone, leaning against the coat cupboard, ‘I thought you were someone else.’

  ‘Who? Let’s not be foolish; I’m me. Do you think Farkas Rozsi recognized my voice?’ He likes saying names backwards in the Hungarian way, sometimes with accents.

  ‘This . . . it’s not a good moment.’ Her palms are sticky. She has been waiting all day for word from Peter, and time has concentrated; every minute making the next more likely, like Russian roulette. ‘I can’t really talk.’

  ‘Well, we have to. Might I pop round?’

  Sári’s perfect amber hair is only three feet away. ‘Byoo-tifool,’ she hears her say. ‘Igen. Nagyon szép ház. Vim-bledonpark.’

  ‘Yoy,’ says Zsuzsi.

  ‘No!’ says Laura. ‘Christ. I . . . don’t think that would be wise.’

  ‘I thought maybe they’d be out.’

  ‘They never are.’ Is it her imagination, or have the murmurings from the sofa died away? ‘I’m sure you know that, “Jenny”.’

  ‘What? Oh, I see, they’re listening. Anyway, look, everything’s become rather difficult. Mitzi’s being tricky. I think she may have rumbled us.’

  Her mouth has filled with powder. ‘Hang on,’ she says slowly. ‘What do you—’

  Alistair says, ‘I think I may have to spill the beans.’

  ‘What? No. No, no, no. You can’t. Don’t, please, honestly, not for me, or, I mean—’

  ‘Actually, it would be a relief, asking for her forgiveness. All this creeping around and secrecy isn’t what it was.’

  Even now, with a future being handed to her, she is craning to see if there is anything from Peter on the sideboard. ‘Isn’t it?’

  ‘Of course not. It’s probably for the best, anyway. She’s a very powerful woman, you know, my wife. Time to make a clean swee—’

  ‘No! God, no, Julie, Jenny, it’s, no, definitely not. Definitely not a good time. For that. Think of your . . . little children. Seriously, you mustn’t. You need to think—’

  ‘Kivel beszél? ’ mutters Zsuzsi.

  ‘Dar-link,’ Sári says reproachfully in English, ‘you said she has no friends.’

  Marina is leaning against the War Memorial, watched over by the fallen servants of Combe Abbey, as she waits to spot Mrs Viney through the gap in Pa Stenning’s curtains. Her urge to touch walls and windows is stronger than ever; she knows that whatever happens next, whether the first person she sees emits lucky or unlucky vibrations, will determine whether or not she sees Mrs Viney, but the people walking through the Percy entrance aren’t particularly helpful: Liza Church; a Fresher whose name she doesn’t
know. She has just witnessed Pa Jenkin, the Head of the CCF, who is putting the troops through their paces, shouting at Una ‘Fats’ Squire to take the long route round to the Science Block for no good reason. The entire CCF, hundreds of boys, all laughed and jeered too. I should do something, Marina thinks, be friendly to her, but she knows she doesn’t dare.

  Something, call it instinct, makes her glance at Percy’s front door. A man in a suit is coming down the steps towards her. He clears his throat loudly, frowns, looks around.

  There is, she has discovered, a painting of Mr and Mrs Viney in the Tate, from when they were young. He has just become famous; his hair is longer, as in photographs of Marina’s own father. In this painting Mr Viney sits on the green green grass and Nancy Viney lies beside him, framed by a house-height hedge painted in minute detail. Marina has gazed at that painting until she is lying with them, the grass under their hands.

  Turn. Please. See me.

  And he does.

  ‘You’re that girl,’ says Alexander Viney. ‘Remind me . . . Oh yes, you.’

  The shoutings and belches and slamming doors are quieter now; the courtyard dark and still. Marina has been out here for longer than she had realized and, unless she hurries, she will be late for curfew, for the first time in her life.

  ‘I was just passing,’ she says. ‘I mean—’

  ‘Goodnight then,’ he says, feeling in his pockets. ‘Where’s my buggering key?’

  Out here, unfiltered, you hear the depth of his voice, its intimacy. It makes her want to close her eyes. ‘I don’t know,’ she says. The air between them sparkles with alcohol. He may be drunk. Now, Marina, go inside. Instead she asks, ‘Have you been having dinner?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So . . . why . . .’

  ‘It’s a complicated and dull story, involving my sentimental wife and a friend of her youth. I shan’t trouble you.’

  ‘Are you joking?’

  ‘Why would I joke?’ he says as he heads in the direction of the Old Laboratories. ‘I have to get something from the car.’

  She is losing him. In her confusion, she says the first thing that comes into her mind. ‘It’s very exciting to meet you again.’

  What is wrong with her? Why is she such a freak of nature that she cannot play it cool? In her voice she can hear the great-aunts and Rozsi when they hover around horrible Mrs Dobos, their nervous flattery of doctors, the great excitement in the shop when a politician’s wife once bought popsocks. But Alexander Viney does not seem to mind. He lowers his head and his stare is like a lighthouse beam brushing her face.

  ‘Is it, indeed?’ he says. ‘Excellent. Tell me more.’

  ‘I used to watch you on television. We all did. You were fantastic,’ she adds politely, although in truth she barely remembers.

  ‘Do you think so?’ he says. ‘I am delighted to hear that. Because my peers, I don’t know if you’re aware of them, the one with the bow tie and the bald one, ugh—’

  She summons up Guy’s way of speaking, his confident disdain. ‘Oh,’ she says. ‘Them. They’re just idiots.’

  They are standing quite close together now. She can feel him: large, hot, like a temporarily tame bear. He folds his arms across his big chest. It is surprising, given how short and distinguishedly grey his head-hair is, to see dark wires at the open neck of his shirt: the infinite hairiness of men.

  In the presence of greatness it is easy to forget curfews and matrons. She crosses her arms to conceal the points of her Bellissima Sally-Anne bra in whisper blue, whose Parisienne lace is showing through her school blouse, and tries to look intelligent and brave.

  ‘You’re cold,’ he says, ‘in that ridiculous milk-maidy garment. Here.’ And he takes off his jacket and gives it to her. It is warm; it smells of male hormones. She drapes it gratefully over her shoulders. ‘But let me ask,’ he says. ‘When you say all of you—’

  ‘Oh, I see – I mean, all of us at my old school watched you. Here they’re Philistines. They like game shows.’

  ‘You’re not a Philistine, though, I trust.’ Something seems to ping in her chest. ‘Civilizing influence on my oaf of a son, are you? I’ll tell you what,’ he says, touches her back with his hand. ‘Come and help me with the car.’

  Photographs do not make enough of his profile; he looks like something in the National Gallery made of marble. The lines around his very blue eyes suggest kindness, experience. Under the cover of darkness, she slips one arm into his jacket, its lining silky against her bare forearm like the inside of his skin and, very slowly, begins to pull the other sleeve closer around her back.

  His car is big and silver. ‘When’s your next, you know, show?’ she asks politely, as he unlocks the boot. In its mysterious depths are tentacles, tools, a bottle of blue liquid. Rope.

  ‘We air the new series in January.’

  ‘What do—’

  She stops suddenly. A group of Uppers are coming towards them. They have music cases; one of them, a fantastically square day-girl called Tansy Edwards, is singing scales. Next to her is Simon Flowers.

  Marina decides to laugh, merrily, as if she is having a wonderful time without him.

  ‘What are you giggling about?’

  She watches them walking up Garthgate; how could Simon Flowers not have noticed her, when she spotted him almost before he turned the corner? He is quite close now. She tries to smile at him as he passes, to encompass his thin shoulders and smudged glasses with interest and love. ‘Well,’ she says loudly, to draw his attention to her escort, ‘some of us here will be watching it, I promise. Those of us who are a bit more civilized.’

  Mr Viney looks over his shoulder at her. ‘Fuck that.’

  She smiles, to conceal her shock. ‘But it’s one of the finest schools in—’

  ‘Rubbish,’ he says. ‘This place? If it wasn’t so close, which my wife wanted – well, and if Guy wasn’t a dunderhead – we wouldn’t have bothered. There are many better schools.’

  ‘Oh,’ she says. ‘So you think—’

  ‘That lot,’ he says, jerking his head towards the musicians’ backs. Simon Flowers has not turned round; he has ignored her. Hope leaks from her like sand. ‘Not much alternative to the beefy ones, is there? Just a few limp physics day boys to keep the grades up, and tedious well-behaved happy clappies. I have often noticed,’ he says, ‘that Jesus is bad for the skin.’

  Then he bends into the car again, unaware of the mortal blow he has dealt her. Mr Viney is right; Simon Flowers is not only a day boy but he also has spots – just a few, around his mouth, which she has been trying to find beautiful. They are not.

  Mr Viney is lifting out a wooden wine box. ‘Plants,’ he says. ‘Stenning’s keen on flowers. My wife supplies him. Or rather my gardener does. Hellebores and dahlias and God knows. Peonies. You’re not interested in crap like that, are you?’

  ‘No way,’ she says. ‘I hate gardening,’ and then, because she can remember every word she has ever said to him or his wife, has analysed and prodded and spat upon it and examined it again, she blushes ferociously.

  ‘Really,’ he says coolly. ‘Then we shall get on. Now tell me,’ he says, locking the boot and turning to face her. He looks as though he can read her mind. ‘What are you interested in? History? Historians? Like Stenning?’ He grins. ‘Or my kind?’

  She gives a silly nervous laugh – ahaHA! ‘In fact,’ she says, accidentally glancing at his trousers, ‘I don’t, well, do history. Sorry. I just . . . don’t.’

  ‘Why on earth not?’

  ‘I loved it. I really did. But . . . I had to drop it for A level.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘To do the sciences. Well, biol and chem. But I kept English. I love,’ she confides, ‘the Arts.’

  ‘Science, though. Oh dear,’ he says. ‘Well, if chemistry is the sort of thing you like . . .’

  ‘It’s not. I mean, I had to do it. I’m meant to be reading medicine at Cambridge.’ For the first time, these words do not thrill he
r. ‘It’s more . . .’

  ‘Don’t tell me. Useful.’

  ‘I . . . I suppose for careers,’ she says.

  ‘Careers? What are you, forty? Surgery, I trust, at least?’

  Marina winces. That is what everyone expects, what at Ealing Girls’ she had always imagined. Lately she has realized how little her family understands of what she’s up against. Marina Farkas, trying to hold her own among all those brilliant confident arrogant men? It’s impossible. ‘I . . . I’m not sure,’ she says.

  ‘But what about enriching the mind? You’ll know about some crappy little atom but will you be civilized, eh? Is that how you want to live?’

  ‘I know,’ says Marina, inconveniently close to tears. ‘I want to be civilized, of course I do. God, I think about it all the time, you know, books, and things. But—’

  ‘And don’t tell me it’s doing good. You look like a girl who’d rather sit in a garret writing great works, not changing pensioners’ nappies on an NHS gastro ward.’

  She swallows. All her fantasies had involved her in a lab coat, frowning but beautiful: no secretions of any kind. ‘I could do research.’

  ‘Trust me, sweetheart. I have teams of slaves, fact-checking, photocopying: it’s like the salt mines. Graduate students, mostly. Research is grim as buggery. Grimmer.’

  ‘I thought—’

  ‘You’d be better off dropping the lot and doing something interesting. You’ll be fine, if you’re reasonably clever.’

  Maybe he is right. Vistas stretch out before her in which she is an aesthete, living a cultured life of Latin and sonnets and plovers: a gentleman. ‘I think I am clever,’ she says, and feels blood beating up from her heart.

  ‘I dare say.’

  He could be her mentor, her patron. People have them, the ones picked for greatness; she has read so many books about Helen Keller and Jeanne d’Arc, Girls and Boys of History, Lives of the Artists, that it seems inconceivable that she will not be chosen. But what will she be famous for? Time is running out. If it doesn’t happen very soon, it never will.