Almost English Read online

  ‘Of course not. I thought I’d made that clear.’

  She can hardly ring home and explain, when they have taken against Mr Viney anyway, and she is already such a disappointment. She is going to do medicine; there is no choice. If she doesn’t dare admit to her recent spate of β++s and even a straight β, how will she convince them she wants to change? Being a doctor, she tells herself sternly, is what all this was for.

  But.

  What if she surprised them?

  What if Mr Viney is right? You can’t really be civilized and well rounded without knowing history; Rozsi and Ildi care about Art and Culture, they always have. Even Zsuzsi is always talking about Rome in her youth and the stupid old Musée d’Orsay.

  Whereas no one at Combe is civilized, least of all the ones who do science. Last week in both biology and chemistry she made a brilliant joke about Felix Holt the Cotyledon, and not even the masters laughed. Yet Mr Viney understood her. He said she was clever; she has potential. And, anyway, it was her father – she has decided not to think of him as ‘Dad’, or Peter – who wanted her to be a doctor, she’s sure it was, and although when she was young she did worship him a bit, and tried to imagine making him proud, lately she’s been thinking less about him. Maybe it’s Mr Viney whom she should be trusting.

  This is all Peter’s fault. She doesn’t even want to see him again, let alone in Bloomsbury Square, like a Regency prostitute exchanging hand jobs for gin. ‘We need to talk,’ he’d said, but what about?

  As she hurries along Bedford Place on Sunday afternoon, past the Cresta Hotel and the Selway Alhambra, her fury grows, not only at him but at men in general, the way they assume they can summon you and you will come. I need, she thinks sternly, to be concentrating on other things. My daughter’s well-being, for example.

  At last, a gate, closed, and a black wooden sign saying: PRIVATE GARDENS. Typical.

  She gives it a shove. It opens wide.

  Mrs Viney has nothing to do with it. She is the last person on Marina’s mind when, heart pounding to a medically alarming extent for a person of her age, she climbs the stairs to Pa Stenning’s rooms. Anyone who saw her from West Street would be astonished; you don’t just approach masters like this, uninvited. But she is answering a higher call.

  When Pa Stenning opens the door, without a tie and his hair very slightly rumpled, she thinks: sex. Then, at the sight of his sitting room, she forgets. There is too much to take in with mortal eye alone. It is beautiful, for one thing: mostly cream-coloured, including the carpet, so you cannot imagine Bill Salter’s rugby thighs or Pa Daventry’s twins anywhere near. There are real paintings and a million art books. Poor Pa Stenning, she thinks. What a waste, with no wife – only Mrs Viney, his friend, whom he is probably in love with. If she weren’t already so busy, Marina could develop a crush on Pa Stenning herself.

  The second she can, she will draw a plan of his rooms, to help her remember. The thought that Mrs Viney is regularly sitting on his white sofa, or the chair by the piano, while Marina mopes about in West Street, is almost too much to bear.

  Pa Stenning helps her. When she reminds him that she knows the Vineys, that this is Mr Viney’s idea, he looks surprised – she feels surprised – but he agrees. ‘I’ll probably,’ he says, ‘just speak to Clive.’

  ‘Sorry, who?’

  ‘Clive. Templar. The deputy head. Remember?’

  ‘Sorry, yes. But—’

  ‘If Alexander Viney recommends you, he won’t refuse. I’ll have a word with him, too.’

  Here is the secret garden, the Vineys’ world; a place she has only dreamed of. ‘Will you? Would you? Oh please.’

  ‘Yes, yes. If I remember.’

  ‘I . . . could . . . will you tell me what he says? I’d love to know.’

  ‘I dare say,’ he says, giving her an adult look. ‘And you’ve told your parents this, I suppose.’ He is looking out of the window. She makes a sound. ‘What were you going to do: medicine?’

  ‘Yes. I mean, I still can . . .’

  ‘Hardly. Need chemistry A level for that. Didn’t you realize?’

  ‘But—’

  ‘It’s fine. Old Kendall won’t care, let’s be frank.’

  Marina is gaping at him. Hastily, she shuts her mouth. ‘No,’ she says, swallowing. ‘He probably won’t.’

  ‘So. ’Tis done. Congratulations, Miss Farkas. You’ll start tomorrow.’

  ‘Hey.’

  Laura says, ‘This was a big mistake. No, really. If you had a bloody phone on that boat I’d have cancelled.’

  He is grinning. ‘You could have just not shown up.’

  ‘Well, I—’ Why is she here? To cancel out the events of last time; to punish him? To make him face the thought of telling his mother?

  ‘Hang on a sec,’ he says, bending down to examine a bit of gravel. He was always doing that, she remembers now; this must be where Marina’s fossil obsession came from. Laura looks at the top of his head, thinking of the hours she spent while her daughter sifted through the sandpit in Kensington Gardens. At that moment an ill wind, gusting through the rose bushes, picks up a whiff of his pheromones and delivers it to her.

  No. Definitely not. He is still a bastard. She will not fall for that. Never mind their last meeting, when she was clearly demented. This time, and for ever and ever, he is meaningless to her. Surely even chemistry dies.

  ‘This is quartz, I reckon,’ he says. ‘But you never know. Mate of mine once found a diamond in Preston Park.’

  ‘Don’t be an idiot,’ she says. There is the back of his neck with a new crease, the soft pale skin. Just the thought of the smell of it, like the inside of an empty wardrobe, makes her contract. She gives a small winded noise.

  He looks up. No, no, she thinks: this is what she had absolutely promised herself would not happen. She is not a blancmange; she will not let it. This man has devastated every woman who knew him. Their daughter, for Christ’s sake. Right, she thinks, standing up and walking off towards a leprous rose bush. That’s it.

  ‘Turn around,’ he says.

  She pulls at a dead-looking twig. ‘No.’ She seals herself against him, inhaling through her mouth, eyelids lowered. The light is thick, like primeval soup. If she could just escape—

  ‘Come on,’ he says.

  It is hopeless. She can smell him over here; the air is oily with capsules of sex. He must not come over. Please, she thinks. Save me.

  His footsteps crunch on the gravel. She presses her fingers into her eyes until the orange-grey shadows and softenings ache; she takes a shuddery breath, full of loathing. The pheromones are still doing their dirty work. He puts his hands on her shoulders.

  ‘Laura,’ he says.

  23

  I have, thinks Marina in biology, made a grievous error.

  She can’t stop worrying about what her grandmother will say. Tomorrow at lunchtime she is going home for half-term, by herself.

  The moment Rozsi or any of the others see her they will guess the terrible thing she has done. Not only has she betrayed them and their medical dreams, but she has no idea how to do history. What madness was this? What on earth should she do?

  She will have to tell Pa Stenning that she has changed her stupid mind.

  No, she can’t do it. Nothing, not even Rozsi’s outrage, could be worse than embarrassment. Mr Viney will find out, and tell his wife, maybe his daughter. The thought of being discussed – a puzzle, a failure – makes her toes clench with shame.

  And, worse still: if she can’t bear the thought of that reversal, how can she possibly leave and go back to Ealing Girls’?

  This is the dark seed, her greatest secret. The idea of escape has been creeping up on her as half-term approaches. She cannot imagine how she will make herself go back to Combe after spending a week at home.

  They are supposed to be finishing today’s dissection but she can’t identify the pig’s hepatic artery, let alone its inferior vena cava. It is only the afternoon but she feels so tire
d, as if she has been saving lives after dark. She never sleeps before two these days; there is much too much to do even apart from the fourteen-page essays, which take longer now that the dictionary’s dire predictions have to be found and counteracted, Combe’s pollution neutralized. She seems to spend hours wading around in the darkest pits of the night; there are now so many rituals to observe, proliferating infinitely like a new religion only she understands.

  And then in the morning, wide-eyed and jumpy, the self-disgust and worry begin again.

  ‘Sir,’ says Ivo Williams, known as Mammoth, from the back of the lab. ‘There’s mucus in my pocket.’

  The class convulses, but Marina stands still, the scalpel frozen in her hand. She has had a realization. She could leave, if Combe burned down, or there was some sort of scandal. If there was no alternative. But what kind of scandal would it have to be?

  Unlike last time, no one kisses anyone else. It’s for the best. Laura’s hands do not accidentally hold, then clutch, the small of his back, or his shoulders; he does not press her to his chest. He just puts his arms around her and they stand together, like two survivors watching the last lifeboat go down.

  When it stops, she finds herself standing in a flowerbed. A tree is pressing its rough bark against her back like a big hopeless beast. ‘What are we doing?’

  Peter grins.

  ‘I missed you,’ he says. ‘A lot. I thought you’d hate me too much to—’

  ‘I did.’

  ‘Marina won’t want to see me, will she?’

  ‘No,’ says Laura, digging her nails into her palm.

  ‘And I don’t know what to do about Mum. I’m useless really, aren’t I?’

  Her brain seems to hover, like a racehorse refusing at a fence. All she can think of to say is, ‘Please. We really can’t.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Today. Us. Ever meet like this. Peter, please. I need you to think.’

  ‘Why? It’s fine.’

  ‘It’s not. How can you even say that? I—’

  ‘I don’t mean . . . no, no, not more crying. Come here.’

  ‘No! No, I will not. And I’m not upset, I’m, I’m angry, actually.’

  ‘Fair dos.’

  ‘And why do you say these stupid things?’

  ‘Look, I hadn’t–– When I came back to London I didn’t know what to do. If, how, to see you.’

  ‘What? You weren’t going to? That’s—’

  ‘I didn’t know what to do. I just thought, being miles from Mum, well, London’s big enough, I thought.’

  ‘I didn’t come looking for you.’

  ‘I know. But I suddenly thought I could just, well, say hello. If I wrote to you at Mum’s you’d get it. I’d heard you were there, you see.’

  ‘How? You knew? What else did you know?’

  ‘Not much. Stuff reached me.’

  ‘Who told you? Jesus. What, spies?’

  ‘Course not. Just guys. From London, from the past, you know. Heard the odd report. Anyway, I knew it was a bit of a . . . well. But I just missed you.’

  ‘Then why did you leave?’ He must, she thinks, be insane. Has he suffered? That’s when it comes to her, one phrase: a broken man.

  No, no: pity must be resisted. He doesn’t deserve it. ‘I suppose,’ she says crossly, ‘you had lots of girlfriends out there.’

  ‘Yeah,’ he says, and another piece rips off her heart and lands, steaming, on the gravel. ‘But—’ he shrugs. She gives an encouraging lift of her eyebrows. ‘You know how it is.’

  She has a sudden vivid image of shooting herself in the head. ‘Well, no, not really,’ she says. ‘I didn’t have time for all that. I was raising our child. Anyway, you got sick of me, remember? Remember? You called me Bore-a.’

  ‘Bloody hell. Did I?’

  ‘Yes. God. How can you—’

  ‘What an arse,’ he says.

  ‘That doesn’t even . . . oh, never mind.’

  ‘Well, exactly. When I think about it I just want to run back there, so, well, this is the best I can do. Be here. Try to be Zen. In fact I was going to ask you. What should I, you know, do now?’

  Laura sighs. ‘I’m hardly . . . I don’t have a clue,’ she says. ‘I suppose earn money? What are you living on?’

  ‘Spot of cash I saved in Wales. I was,’ he says, grinning, ‘a gardener.’

  ‘Blimey. Well, be one again. That would be a start. Or, I don’t know, go back there. Whatever you wanted here, it’s—’

  ‘No, I meant with the others. I’ve got to see them. Rozsi and the others. I just thought of, you know, saying sorry. But it might screw them up even more.’

  ‘Christ. Peter. I—’

  ‘I’m serious. I’m not proud of myself. But I’m trying to change. I think. Since giving up the booze I, well. I’ve been doing workshops.’

  ‘You’re joking. Car maintenance? No.’

  ‘Seriously. Oh, and therapy too. I knew you’d laugh. Male bonding. Shamanism, tantra, meditating; most of it was complete cobblers, I’ll give you that, excuse for lots of stinky egos to feel sorry for themselves and sleep around.’

  ‘Please.’

  ‘But it helped.’

  ‘With what? What’s been so difficult? What—’

  ‘Don’t shout.’

  ‘This is like a dream of bonkersness.’

  ‘Yeah. Thing is, now I hrrhrm myself.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Hrrm.’

  ‘I can’t hear you. You what yourself ?’

  He lifts his eyes to hers. ‘I own myself,’ he says, and the faintest pinkness suffuses his skin.

  ‘You . . .’

  ‘I know what I am.’

  She has a pressing desire to hit him. She is hugging herself already; now she grips herself more tightly, like a referee. ‘Do you? At last. Well, I don’t think that you have the faintest understanding of how—’

  ‘Irresponsible, selfish, blah, blah. OK, yeah. It’s completely true. And, thing is, I still am.’

  ‘Are you proud of it? Is that what they taught you? God. You are unbearable.’

  ‘I know,’ he says. ‘But being married, sorry, being a good son, a dad after what happened with, you know, my dad, all of that. I couldn’t do it. And the worse I got the more I hated— well, it’s obvious. So bailing just seemed the best— and then it got harder. Oh screw it. I got what I deserved. But, you know what? I still think it was better.’

  A thrill of anger rolls up through her. ‘What?’

  ‘I know it’s been tight. But I’d have cocked you up some other way if I’d stayed. You . . . both.’

  ‘Hah.’

  ‘I meant to keep away from you. I shouldn’t have written.’

  ‘Right,’ says Laura. She thinks: I’ve had enough of this self-indulgent lunacy, this rooster of a man. She picks up her bag. Merely the thought of her pills in their dim bottles, the sugar coating, soothes her.

  ‘There’s one more thing,’ he says.

  Another woman. Probably dozens. You fool, she thinks, returning from the land of the dead, to nothing. ‘What?’

  ‘Maybe not.’ He looks, by his standards, almost serious. ‘Tell you next time.’

  ‘There won’t be a next time. This is the worst, stupidest, thing I’ve ever done. I’m not just . . . I . . .’ She thinks: I could tell him how bad a mother I’ve been, and maybe he’d step in. How much worse could he be?

  ‘I’m not sure.’ He gives an awkward cough. ‘No, let’s leave it. Better not.’

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ she says, ‘you’ve started.’ She wants to be alone with her hoard of misery. ‘Pete, enough drama. Just tell me.’

  He pulls a strange downwards smile. ‘Bit of cancer,’ he says.

  Part Two

  24

  The alumni of Combe have always been a disappointment. Thanks to its faintly liberal leanings, a modest endowment by a relative of fat Queen Anne, the notable ugliness of its original buildings and its belated introduction of ev
erything from laboratories to girls, the school has never attracted pupils of quite the calibre of Rugby and Marlborough. The prospectus makes much of those Old Combeians it can claim: a spy, an unpopular post-war deputy prime minister; a racing driver expelled from the Remove; and, curiously, several authors of second-rate and now morally ambiguous children’s books.

  Schools, however, need history. They need money even more. Three headmasters ago, the financially suspect Captain Porteous invented most of its ancient traditions, climaxing at the end of the Hilary term, close to his own birthday in mid-March, with Founder’s Day: a week-long spectacular of concerts, rugby matches, Evensong, fund-raising, feasts and, on the final day, an embarrassing pageant of Combe boys dressed as famous historical characters, processing around the Founder’s Lawn to a marching band. On Founder’s Day rests Combe’s reputation in the school guides as ‘tremendously arty’. ‘Participation is a hallowed Combe tradition,’ the pupils are frequently reminded; whether or not they can act or sing, they must join in. It is, the Uppers will tell you, an almighty snore. But the Lowers, Marina’s year, and the younger boys still have high hopes for Founder’s Day week, currently a month away. Their parents and godparents stay near by; it is a chance to show off. And there is, to an extent, misrule. Things might happen. Virginities might be lost.

  Sunday, 12 February

  Matins: Chapel, 9 a.m., the Rev. Jonathan Hitch, vicar of Melcombe, hymns: 285, 57, 297; half-term exeat begins

  Marina is home at last. She has survived another half-term of Combe, despite being practically deranged with homesickness. Now she is ready to fall into her mother’s arms, climb inside her pocket, be swallowed alive like a baby catfish. I will, she vows, never be irritated with any of my family, or the burning radiators, or nosy Hungarians asking about my periods, ever again.

  How long does that last? Ten minutes? Five?

  On her very first evening home, the oldies start making suggestions: a haircut; tea at Lady Renate’s; coming in to Femina to be shown off. Everything makes her feel guilty; if one of them asks the slightest question about chemistry, she thinks, it will all come out.