Almost English Page 16
‘Enough,’ says Rozsi, switching from Hungarian into English.
Kisses can grow. They spread over your skin like lichen while, inside, you change too. You can’t stop thinking: what did it mean?
‘And another thing—’
Laura is getting into her stride. Peter has bought her red wine, then water, then a bigger glass of wine, and whenever self-pity threatens to make her cry, which would give him satisfaction, the big baby, the pretend artist, she lifts up her chin and takes a fierce gulp, and the tears recede.
She is doing so well. It is not difficult, given the brief scope of their marriage, from the banqueting suite of the Bayswater Royal Excelsior Hotel to its bitter end west of the Westway, to furnish him with details of his husbandly failings. The aftermath is an even richer source: financial indignity, gossip, guilt, uncertainty, primal infant pain. She has rehearsed and polished her hoard of resentments; she has taken them out to show him so many times in her head and, in these scenarios, his response is always either abject grovelling, or continued uselessness, both of which make her feel much better.
But the real Peter does neither. It is maddening. He just keeps saying, ‘I’m sorry,’ which isn’t nearly enough. Unlike the one she used to know, he neither drinks so much that he starts shouting and crashing into bar stools, nor sidles off, hands in his pockets, with one of his unsanitary friends. He still dresses like an idiot in huge boots, pretentiously scruffy work clothes: an artisan hero of the Spanish Civil War. But these days they are older, shabbier. His nails are clean.
What’s more, he is calm. He nods, he grimaces, as if they are friends – ha! – and he is just sympathizing about another man’s crimes. He wants more details of Marina’s character, his mother’s health, than he deserves; it shouldn’t be so easy to find out but he almost seems to want to feel as bad as possible. Fine: let him. She piles on evidence of his failings: the day when Marina stopped inventing excursions with him for her primary school weekend diary; his mother’s silent maintenance of her photographic shrine. The fact that he used to laugh at his family’s idiosyncrasies, and then just abandoned her to them.
And what does he have to say for himself? That he wanted to write, or send messages, but was afraid to. It was complicated. He didn’t know what to do, and the longer he left it the harder it became. So bravely he did . . . nothing.
Yes, she admits when she has recovered from this outrage, they are all reasonably well, in the circumstances. Yes, they manage. No, hardly anything has happened in the last thirteen years, only the premature end of Laura’s teaching career; the temporary-permanent move to his mother’s flat; the deaths of his fond aunts, poor Kitti in Detroit and Franci in Edmonton; the reign of Mrs Dobos; the transformation of their daughter – ‘sorry,’ Laura corrects herself, ‘my daughter’ – into a public schoolgirl.
How unsettling, now that his hair is so short, to be able to see his big handsome skull, his vulnerable temples. She wants to wound them. ‘There’s administration when someone buggers off, you know,’ she points out. ‘Letters from your bank. Not bills, obviously, because you never did those. But having to tell them over and over again that I had no . . . idea where . . . What? Where are you going?’
He is gathering his matches, his pouch of ‘baccy’, his cigarette papers with, as usual, half a cover. ‘Relax,’ he says.
‘How can you . . . Right, that’s it.’
‘Drinking-up time,’ he says. ‘Didn’t you notice?’
‘But . . .’ So many nights preparing speeches; she has only just begun. Can she ask him to meet again for further shouting? ‘I haven’t . . . I need . . .’
‘I wasn’t dumping the whole thing on you,’ he says. ‘I mean, it’s not your job to tell the others. I’m going to do it.’
‘Well. Ha. You shouldn’t have landed me in it then, should you? I’ve lied to them because of you.’
‘OK. But.’
‘But what?’
‘Writing seemed better than doing nothing. A first step. You can’t imagine what it’s like to hate yourself for so long, you know?’
Idiot. She won’t lie for him again. Anyway, shouldn’t he first answer the question of what he has been doing, and where, and how often? I have, she thinks, a right to know. Besides, there has not yet been a moment to mention Alistair Sudgeon, which is important. Peter should know that his deserted wife is in demand.
‘Let’s go,’ he says.
An old man with perilously fastened trousers chooses this moment to begin shuffling into the Hercules. Laura and Peter have just entered the vestibule and so they have to stand aside to let him, slowly, pass. The area between front door and inner door is tiny, a box of glossy maroon anaglypta; she is trapped just behind Peter, close enough to feel his heat. Why does he never wear a jacket? His creased grey shirt, the back three inches from Laura’s eye line, is unbearably irritating: his untied bootlace, his grubby trousers, yet he doesn’t look as bad as he deserves. How dare his cells have renewed themselves while she suffered? And Rozsi, and Marina: whatever you say about missing them, she thinks, you chose to leave.
Her heart is beating too quickly, right through her body, as if at any moment it will reach the point when it shatters. His hormones or endorphins, that familiar Peter smell, are reactivating poisonous spores, undisturbed for all these years.
Oh God, she thinks. Don’t let it all start again.
Then the cold air hits her face. No. Absolutely sodding not. It’s just sweat and dirt; he probably exudes it on purpose. And it is possible that, for the first time in years, she is faintly drunk. They walk side by side past shuttered greasy spoons and flower stalls. He is properly tall, unlike her shrunken in-laws, or neat Alistair Sudgeon. He is still the only man who makes her feel normal, not a giraffe. Something floats between them: the ghost of congress past.
Do not turn. He does not deserve to be looked at. She starts to walk more quickly, furiously, to make him hurry, but he hardly lengthens his army-surplus stride, and she remembers being with him in a crowd – was it New Year’s Eve? God, 1971 – surrounded by everyone they knew, and he had whispered in her ear something she has never forgotten: that the only thing they all had in common was sex. ‘We’ve all done it,’ he said. ‘We all know.’ And he was right; this embarrassing hilarious knowledge still amazes her: the sticky secrets of the night.
Stop it. How many New Years did he spend with you?
‘So,’ he says. ‘They really are all all right?’
‘I told you. Why are you off alcohol?’ she asks.
‘Packed it in.’
‘No. Honestly? Just like that?’
‘It was screwing me up,’ he says mildly.
‘I know. Christ, Pete, anyone would think . . . I was there. Not just you, either. I—’
‘Well, I have now’
‘God. I mean good. You do . . . you look different.’
‘Yoga, too. Veggie. Worked on a farm in Wales, went pure. I’m a new man.’
Liar. If it were true, which it isn’t, he would have wept and prostrated himself. He would damn well have begged for forgiveness all night. And, by telling no one that he is alive and in London, she is now a co-conspirator.
She must tell them. She looks at the side of his face. She will do it as soon as she’s home.
‘Tube’s just down here,’ he says. She follows him down a short cobbled alleyway. At the other end, behind concrete bollards, flow buses and ambulances, a whirl of light. When we reach those, she tells herself, I’ll tell him to leave us alone for ever. That is what I will do.
‘What?’ he says over his shoulder.
Without meaning to, she has sat down on one of the bollards.
‘I . . .’ she says. ‘It’s just been . . . it’s been . . . When the hell are you going to tell them?’
Peter bends right down and looks her in the eye. Something seems to dislodge inside her, melt and fall away like an iceberg losing its grip on the land.
‘Christ,’ he says. ‘I know
I . . . it’s just . . . not easy. Does she talk about me a lot?’
‘Your ego! Jesus.’ It is almost funny enough to stop her crying. ‘Sorry, are we talking about your abandoned child or your mother?’
‘Rozsi, I meant. God, I didn’t—’
‘No, if you must know, she hardly ever mentions you. Because then she’d cry. What did you expect? Think how humiliating it’s been for her, on top of everything else. Divorce is bad enough, but . . . but . . .’
‘Poor Rozsi,’ he says. ‘What a fucker I’ve been. And to you, old girl.’
Her last coverings of self-control and dignity disintegrate. Down she sinks into the seas of self-pity, bitter waves of misery whacking her on the head. She is alone.
No, she is not. From somewhere outside the shameful swamp, a hand appears. It approaches her face, reaches out a finger to unstick the strands of hair which have stuck attractively to her lip. She closes her eyes.
Then she opens them. What the hell is Peter doing? She lifts her head to tell him so, to say leave me alone, and how dare he even presume—
He kisses her.
20
Monday, 6 February
Netball v Southampton College: U18 VIIs (A), 3.15 p.m.; Fivers art history trip begins (Florence); careers talk by Hilary Burtenshaw, OC: ‘The Civil Service’, 6 p.m.
Marina gets up on Monday morning, world-weary after a torrid and confusing night, and finds a message from the matron:
FARKISS M. (Lwr):- ring Mother
She is almost too frightened to make the telephone work. It is the week of her birthday and she has been orphaned. When Zsuzsi answers, she says, ‘What is it? Who rang? What’s happened to Mum?’
‘Don’t be funny,’ says Zsuzsi.
‘So—’
But Zsuzsi has so many questions about Combe that some time passes before she reaches the point. ‘Your lovely Mrs Dobos lunch yesterday,’ she says, you do not tell us.’
‘Mrs— oh, God.’
‘Marinaka.’
‘But I said . . .’
‘Marina. I do not realize you are so stupid.’
Rozsi comes to the phone but is very quiet, which is worse. Marina’s mother is not even there – ‘She goes early to her surgery,’ Ildi tells her when she takes over, ‘she work so hard,’ – so when Zsuzsi comes back the phone to ask, ‘But vy must you go to silly science lunch?’ there is no one to help her. Should she tell them about the Oak, in case Mrs Dobos saw her? But if she didn’t?
‘I,’ she begins. ‘I—’
Zsuzsi lowers her voice; it buzzes in her ear. ‘Dar-link,’ she says. ‘I don’t believe it. Tell me, it is a boy?’
Alexander Viney’s kiss is still upon her, as real, or realer, than yesterday. She can’t keep it in. She suddenly says, ‘Remember Guy?’
‘Of course.’
‘Turns out he’s the son of someone famous.’
‘Really? Von-darefool. Very-good.’
‘It’s that historian,’ Marina persists. ‘Alexander Viney. Do you know of him—’
A pause. Then ‘Hihetetlen,’ says Zsuzsi in her fiercest whisper. ‘Nem értem. But this is not right.’
‘No, honestly,’ says Marina, but her voice wavers. ‘Why? It’s good. Isn’t it?’
Zsuzsi will not tell her. She won’t even stay on the phone. Afterwards, Marina decides that it must be one of their mad grudges, like the sisters’ lifelong refusal to listen to Brahms or visit Surrey.
It is peculiar, though.
Laura’s mind is thick with death. When she wakes up, she knows exactly what she must do.
On Monday mornings the surgery is closed, in order for Alistair to catch up on paperwork in the tiny back room where they keep the old scales and the records of the dead. This gives Laura and Marg, the senior receptionist, what Alistair calls ‘ample time for administrative necessities’, all of which must be completed weekly, without fail. This week Laura is even more behind than usual. Marg is not speaking to her because, as well as having forgotten to clean the toilet two days in a row, Laura accidentally ordered thirty-six non-returnable executive desk tidies in tortoiseshell plastic. If Laura asks her for help, Marg will not answer. Her immense purple-flowered back is turned away as she flirts simultaneously with the couriers and scratches her thigh with a biro. She does no work, despite her quasi-medical omniscience; why does Alistair not fire her? Fear, sexual thrall, blackmail, or his own, greater, ignorance?
So, while she listens to Marg giving pensioners made-up advice about granular ulcers, Laura types letters, quickly and inaccurately (on applying for this job she had pretended she could touch-type), to brave widows and harried fathers, giving them terrible news. She fails to obtain a replacement for the faulty ear thermometer; she telephones a specialist in parasitic diseases and is told that he is on compassionate leave, due to the death of his pregnant wife.
By eleven o’clock she has had enough. She stares in hopelessness at the last word she typed, ‘Sudgerorn’, and thinks: I am beyond Tippex, even retyping. She pushes back her chair. She needs to stop thinking about Peter for a start.
Maybe if she has a quick think about him first, she will succeed. She goes to the loo and is sitting, knickers round her ankles for authenticity, resting her head against the toilet paper, breathing in the perfume of old men’s urine, when into her mind drifts the solution to all of this, clear as truth. She does not need a river, or an Underground train. It could be done more easily, more ambiguously and before she can do any further damage. She should do it soon.
Quickly and fairly quietly, she creeps back to reception. Marg is still on the telephone and so does not notice Laura approaching the metal cabinet where they keep bulldog clips and document ties and finger protectors and sliding open the drawer.
There is the key.
As soon as she holds it in her palm, she feels calmer. Still, she holds her breath as she walks out into the corridor and stands before the door of Alistair’s office. She does not dare look back at Marg, who is saying, ‘So I said, “I hope it was a mango.”’ At any moment, Alistair could come out of the back room seeking tea. Mitzi could drop in for a tidy. Act quickly, Laura instructs herself, like a commander of men. She turns the handle of his office door, closes it behind her and stands alone in the Elastoplast-scented air.
It is like being inside his skull. The light is dim; he always keeps the blinds closed, as if his framed certificates and National Trust castle plans need protection. Her ears crackle with the effort of listening. She runs a trembly finger along his windowsill, over the end of the examination couch and down the cubbyholes. Marg alone is authorized to refill them with fresh surgical tweezers; wooden tongue-depressors; KY Jelly; a fat roll of condoms; small-to-medium disposable gloves. She feels oddly sexy. She wants to steal them. What has she become?
She knows his little cupboard well; she has never been permitted to unlock it, merely to stand by while Marg does. It is, like most of their equipment, not in a state of which the General Medical Council would approve. She could jemmy it open with Alistair’s Tudor paper knife. Nevertheless, the key is here, waiting to be used.
She unlocks the cupboard. Two narrow metal shelves; three rows of brown bottles. They must have been inventoried; she had not thought of that. Would Alistair, or Marg, be less likely to notice if different kinds were missing? Would just one type of pill be, well, more effective? Quicker? Or might it be better to take several, to eliminate the possibility of doubt? She dithers, picks up a bottle, puts it back in such a way that it knocks all its fellows out of line. Maybe—
There is a sound in the corridor. Quickly, clumsily, she grabs three bottles of Dalmane from the top shelf, slams the cupboard shut and, stuffing the bottles up her top, runs for the door.
21
Tuesday, 7 February
Netball v Queen’s School, Taunton, 1st and 2nd VIIs (H), 4.30 p.m.; Combe Abbey Rifle Corps Annual Dinner: Guest of Honour Lt Col Stevens DSO of the Welsh Guards, SCR, Basil Pilkington Room, 8 p.m.
This may be partly a question of caffeine. The kitchen is out of bounds once prep has started, so she survives on instant coffee made with water from the hot tap, liquorice, dried apricots. She cannot endure being watched so she reads until Heidi turns off her desk light, then starts to work. Or not only work. She is becoming more alert to signs. Her family is scathing about superstition; at home she tries to force it away from herself like a dog but lately, at Combe, it has been creeping back. So even as she learns the properties of liquefied gases and writes her essay on irony in Othello, she is constantly on the alert for indications of imminent tragedy.
This term she has discovered that, with the help of the two-volume Shorter Oxford English Dictionary given by her proud relatives, she can control, or at least guess, the future. Random words are full of meaning, mostly about health or illness in Westminster Court, or other clues: what Mrs Viney thinks of her; if she’ll get into Cambridge; whether she will ever be invited to join the netball team, even the B team. Even the Cs.
Once started, it is difficult to stop. She makes it an additional rule to check the etymology of every four-syllable word, then three, then a few of the twos and, as almost every Greek or Anglo-Saxon word can mean something bad, if you look at it a certain way, she then has to find others to counteract it.
This evening it has gone on for even longer than usual. When at last she makes herself close the dictionary, stiff and cold and scared at two o’clock, she cannot sleep. She wants to be at home. She wants her mother. Her skin aches for her. She thinks: let me come back.