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  ‘Come on,’ he says in a clotted voice. He is fumbling at his lap, but she pretends to them both not to notice; she moves her bare legs infinitesimally closer together and looks out of the window, into the darkness. ‘Christ,’ he says. ‘Move over, can’t you?’

  ‘I’m a bit . . . wedged,’ she says.

  Then she feels it against her leg, like a dog’s nose; hot and faintly sticky. There is that hot smell again, like, like . . . She catches her breath; she closes her eyes and a tear rolls beneath her eyelashes and splashes off her nose.

  ‘Sorry,’ she says.

  ‘For God’s sake!’ he says. ‘What is it now?’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I can’t.’

  ‘What do you mean? What the hell do you think you’re doing?’

  ‘Nothing.’ She thinks: if he’s expecting it, I probably have to let him. But he looks disgusted. ‘I just—’

  ‘Christ,’ he says. ‘Don’t cry now.’

  There is a pause. She keeps her eyes closed. Then she hears him exhale sharply, angrily, and a rustling sound as he tucks it into his trousers. He throws himself back in the seat. She keeps herself rigid, closed up like a seashell, until his breathing has slowed. ‘Sorry,’ she says again. ‘I . . . I didn’t realize—’

  ‘Now you do,’ he snaps, and starts the car.

  38

  Thursday, 16 March

  Founder’s Day Week

  10 a.m. Combined Cadet Force display, Memorial Quad, free

  11 a.m. Champagne reception, to the foot-tapping sounds of Mr Daventry’s Barber Shop Quartet – Founder’s Court marquee, free

  12 a.m. Prize-Giving featuring Tim Pirrey, Commonwealth champion rower and OC, Divinity Hall, free

  On Thursday morning, the climax of Founder’s Day, Rozsi and Ildi and Zsuzsi and Laura sit at breakfast in Braegarrold, ingesting mixed-fruit jam and battery eggs. Their bags are packed; Mrs Cousins had already stripped the beds, revealing mattresses which might have been better hidden. In the gap between the historical pageant and the pre-Prize-Giving champagne reception, Laura will be alone with Marina. It is all going to have to come out.

  So, while the others discuss their charming hosts in Hungarian and silently rock with laughter, Laura tries to prepare her material.

  One: the best friend, Tibor Szőllőssy, essentially robbed Zoltan of everything: the estate, his former girlfriend, his father’s love, all of it. This is the story Peter told her, now, with Ildi’s accent and place names, given flesh.

  Two: but Zoltan forgave him. At least, he carried on seeing Tibor Szőllőssy, and the divorced-woman-now-wife, once they reached England. But why? The Farkases and Károlyis are not like that; they will strike someone from their lives for a funny look outside a newsagent. It makes no sense.

  Wait. Didn’t someone, Peter maybe, say that the divorced woman, who was poor Zoltan’s girlfriend, and then Tibor’s, also knew Rozsi? That she was a college friend, a fellow girl-undergraduate pioneer? Might this be the reason?

  Three: in any case, Tibor’s son then robbed Zoltan in the mid-Seventies in London; at least, as she understood it from Ildi, he asked to borrow a huge sum of money which, as a fellow countryman of Tibor, honourable Zoltan naturally let him have. And then he failed to repay it, which somehow led to the downfall of Femina, and its sale to Mrs Dobos.

  Four: and to Zoltan’s death? Can that be right?

  Five: Tibor Szőllőssy’s son is . . . hang on.

  Can Tibor Szőllőssy’s son really be that historian? Marina’s boyfriend’s father: is that who they mean? It seems so unlikely; they must have made a mistake.

  Or could the Vineys have planned this all along?

  Marina has already told her that Guy’s parents live quite close to Combe, near Salisbury just over the Wiltshire border. It’s not so odd if they sent their bloody son to a school like Combe. Combe is the sort of school that kind of person likes. If anything, it is odder that the Farkases sent Marina.

  Laura pokes at her watery bacon. Why did we?

  Into her mind comes the voice of Mrs Dobos, recommender of Combe. Mrs Dobos will know all the answers; Mrs Dobos who bought Femina . . . hang on. Laura looks up cautiously, to find that Rozsi is looking at her, shaking her head.

  ‘You are not listening one little bit,’ says Rozsi. ‘But today we leave you with Marinaka, so you wake up now. We, with Ildi and Zsuzsi, leave you in charge.’

  Ten past eight, and Marina has not gone to breakfast. She has never broken a school rule like this before; there will be such trouble if she is discovered up here, in the West Street second-floor bathroom, scrubbing at her thighs with a flannel and groaning with self-disgust.

  Last night she lay awake until the dawn chorus, listening to seagulls or vultures squawking their mating songs, reminding herself that Mr Viney had done her a great honour and trying not to think of the seatbelt or the car on the bridge, the press of his corduroy. Curiously, although her body feels terrible, her mind, hanging high above thought and feeling, is alert. Her thoughts move in slow motion but with clarity: I made him feel bad. It wasn’t rape. Maybe I should have done what he expected: an older, a distinguished man. He’d have been gentle. No one will ever volunteer to do that for me again.

  Now he never will. Thanks to her frigidity, she was not deflowered. Instead she had stared out of her window while he reversed quickly back along the bridge and then, frowning, drove out to the hill road down to Combe and Melcombe.

  ‘I, I love the country,’ she’d said. ‘The way the trees, you know, arch over the . . . it’s one of my favourite things.’

  ‘How original.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Never mind. I’ll take you straight back. Kindly keep this to yourself, though. More for your sake than mine.’

  ‘Yes. I mean no. Thanks, thank you.’

  He had given a little snort. She wanted to lighten the mood, like a good hostess; make him forget his humiliation and disappointment. To think that she could move a grown man’s trousers so. ‘Sorry about, er, you know.’ There was a pain in her throat. ‘Will you be OK? I mean, without . . . relief?’

  He ignored her.

  She thought of penises, engorged past the point of recovery; alarming stories told in West Street, after dark. She bit her dry lips. ‘Your . . . interest. I’m very, well, it’s lovely of you. But won’t you—’

  He turned his head and looked at her. ‘I expect I’ll get over it,’ he’d said.

  One day, Laura has always hoped, she will have to punch someone for her daughter. It would be more satisfying to have to lift a bus to save her, or sacrifice a limb, but physical violence would be better than nothing: a way to express the white heat of motherhood, the helpless rage.

  Standing now at the War Memorial in the drizzle, watching Combe’s young soldiers stamping and shouting and waving presumably plastic bayonets, she can imagine herself grabbing a weapon from a boy and running riot. How dare that man, that family, take advantage of Marina’s ignorance? Poor Zoltan cheated, denied of his inheritance and then, and then—

  She looks at her daughter, just as Marina turns and stares back. She seems very flushed: tonsillitis, probably, which would explain her oddness yesterday. Maybe the only wise thing I’ve done so far, she thinks, was not to have told Peter that the Viney son, grandson, is at Combe. I may have made my life as complicated and unmanageable as possible by failing to tell anyone that Pete is alive, but at least he won’t be blundering onto the lawn at Combe, drunk and shaven-headed, to accuse the Viney father of embezzlement.

  Isn’t that Marina’s housemaster, bellowing at the little boys? I can’t ask Marina about last night, Laura decides; she’s barely speaking today. Must I tell her off about going to the pub? I suppose I should, and at least then I can stop wondering who those people at the Crown and Mitre with her were, the man who was standing up, facing the window. He could be any respectable adult – a teacher, a parent – but, still, should
Marina have been there, unsupervised, with him?

  She tells herself this, but she knows the truth.

  The last quill-waving Elizabethan poet and bowing courtier and merrie minstrel have passed. The historical pageantry is over, at least for this year. Marina has taken two Pro Plus, which was a mistake on top of instant coffee. Her brain feels tangled up in an enormous knot; her heart is fluttering but the rest of her is still half asleep. Everyone at school now will have heard her family’s accents, and seen their shabby suitcases propped beside them while the CCF marched past. When she comes back next term she might have a nickname, a horrible one.

  She thinks: how can I come back?

  Except of course she can, and will; she has had that thought countless times since starting at Combe, yet here she is, still a coward. Everyone is congregating on the Founder’s Lawn, although the champagne reception isn’t for a couple of hours, and then it will be Prize-Giving, with A Special Guest. All this time she has not let herself look at Mrs Viney, who is frankly beautiful in a greenish suit with a long straight skirt, but she can resist no longer. Everything about her, her hair, her skin, her figure, her smile, makes Marina want to cry. She should catch Mrs Viney’s eye, give her a wave or a smile before she drives off to Stoker, but Mrs Viney does not look at her once.

  So Marina kisses Rozsi and the others goodbye; she tells them that she has to go and talk to a master, which even her mother believes. Her legs feel stiff; her bottom lip is trembling. Off she goes.

  Laura, at the first possible moment, is going to do something about those Vineys. But what? She needs guidance, but no one can give it other than her mother-in-law and the aunts, whom she is escorting towards Garthgate and last night’s taxi rank. How can it be so difficult to ask any of them what happened? Laura’s mother liked nothing more than an ailment or a crisis, but the in-laws’ refusal to discuss painful matters has grown upon Laura like a shell. Upsetting poor Ildi still further, even approaching Rozsi, whom she is hurting so much already, would feel like a criminal act.

  ‘Dar-link’ she hears behind her and obediently she turns. She is already carrying both big suitcases, but now Zsuzsi is standing in the middle of the pavement, oblivious to passers-by, holding out her handbag for her niece-in-law to take.

  ‘It is ri-diculos,’ says Zsuzsi. ‘I do not lift. I am old lady.’ Rozsi and Ildi, crossing Upper Garth Street arm in arm, are talking, their old heads close together. She sees Rozsi shrug. This morning, with her sunglasses and lipstick, Zsuzsi is wearing a short silver-fox jacket borrowed from Perlmutter Sári, her black ‘sol-opette-troo-sair, vair-y smart’, a silky blooze in silver and black, silver wedge-heeled sling-backs and a great gold ‘necklet’ like a medal. Her perfume is stunningly powerful. Instead of taking her bag, Laura puts a hand on her arm.

  ‘I need to ask you something,’ she says.

  39

  Marina is tearing in half a term’s worth of artistic postcards. She can’t bring them home to Westminster Court, with Combe’s polluting address upon them; nor can she throw out all these sweet family messages. This seems the logical solution. What should she do with her uniform? It feels like folding up plague-infested cloth to bring into the flat. She is behind schedule already. West Street girls are supposed to have finished packing last night.

  She is just watching Heidi lock her vanity case when someone knocks on the door.

  ‘Hello, Hel, Heidi. Heidi. Marina sweetheart,’ says her mother. ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘What are you?’ says Marina. ‘You’re meant to wait outside. I said. Will we manage all my stuff ?’ She is sounding unwelcoming; she is past the point of self-control.

  ‘Lovely to see you, Mrs Farkas,’ says Heidi, the creep. She starts saying things like ‘Could you possibly tell me if my valise is going to close?’ and ‘I don’t know how to get the Blu-Tack off’.

  Marina waits for Heidi to go, unable even to look at her any longer. She needs to start touching home-related objects. Her hands twitch with the effort of keeping them to her sides. She pretends to be straightening her mattress; it looks like a hospital bed after somebody has died.

  ‘I must dash,’ Heidi says at last. ‘My father’s here. I heard his Jag pull up.’

  Now they are alone, looking at each other. There is a strange warm heavy silence.

  Marina says, ‘Actually I don’t feel very well.’

  Her mother sits down on the edge of the mattress of death. She says, ‘I need to talk to you,’ and Marina falls to the floor.

  Laura thinks: she’s dead. I have to die.

  Then Marina blinks. ‘What happened?’ She sits up. ‘Am I all right?’

  ‘Oh, thank God, I don’t know. What did happen? I think you fainted, my poor love. Do you feel bad?’

  ‘Did I?’ says Marina. ‘Really?’

  ‘Are you feeling sick at all?’

  ‘No. Actually, yes. Well, a bit weird.’

  ‘Look, sit, no, like this, your head . . . that’s right.’

  ‘Like in a book,’ says Marina, muffled, but it sounds as if she is smiling.

  ‘Haven’t you fainted before? I should know that, if you have, but—’

  ‘Never. I’m just tired,’ and, briefly, she leans her forehead like a pet against Laura’s upper arm. Laura stiffens. Her desire to seize Marina and hold her is so strong but she has learned this, at least, from motherhood: do not react to love, or it will go.

  ‘Are you sure?’ she asks in an unnatural voice.

  ‘Sure.’ Marina takes her head away, gives a little smile, brushes her hair from her face. Then she says: ‘Mum, I need to— Look. There’s a thing.’

  So this is it, thinks Laura with the benefit of foresight: she has found out about Peter. I have to confess everything and then we will be permanently estranged.

  Tell her, says what remains of her conscience.

  Where should she begin? She can’t just come out with: ‘Your father is alive but maybe not for long and is sorry and wants to see you and by the way I want him all over again.’

  ‘Look, Mum . . .’

  But, if she tells Marina, in the crying and blaming which will follow the story about the grandparents, and Mr Viney, will be lost. Isn’t that more urgent? What if they bump into each other and have a hideous two-family brawl on bloody Garthgate? Prioritize, Laura tells herself, but she is scared to. She knows that she must tell the old story first but not how to make herself say the words.

  ‘Sweetheart,’ she says quietly, ‘just let me . . . I need to think.’ She grips her left hand with her right: go on, she urges herself, viciously.

  ‘Mum— Mummy. Mum. I—’

  And what happens if—

  ‘Mum.’

  Marina is looking at her: her dear pale face. ‘I have something to tell you,’ Laura says bravely.

  ‘No,’ says Marina. ‘There’s something I’ve got to tell you.’

  Two seconds before, Marina swore herself to secrecy. But Mr Viney keeps bursting into her brain; she hadn’t meant to say anything, but now she has begun. This is a desperate situation. Her mother looks worried. What if, thinks Marina, I tell her and she goes on the rampage? Shouts at Mr Viney? Mrs Viney? Oh God.

  She clears her throat. ‘Look, will you concentrate? It’s really important. I . . . I can’t deal with it by myself. I need you.’

  ‘I’m listening,’ says her mother.

  ‘I did a mad thing.’

  ‘How mad? Oh Christ. Marina, not now.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘What have you done? Hell, no, no, don’t cry, my . . . don’t use your sleeve, love, hang on, there’s one in my bag. But tell me quickly, you know I hate—’

  ‘I . . . I can’t be a doctor any more.’

  ‘What? Of course you can.’

  Now she has started down the wrong route, how can she go back? ‘I . . . I really can’t.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I can’t say.’

  ‘Marina. Don’t be silly. Say.’
<
br />   ‘I, I dropped chemistry. For history.’

  ‘Hang on,’ says her mother. ‘I don’t . . . you . . . sorry, what?’

  ‘I know,’ Marina says, blowing her nose. ‘It makes no sense.’

  ‘But how did you, what did you—’

  ‘It was so awful, not telling you. Don’t be cross.’

  ‘I’m not cross,’ her mother says. ‘But . . . I’m completely confused. You can’t have. Why?’

  ‘I don’t even . . . it’s complicated,’ Marina says. Then she thinks of something which may help. ‘OK. You know that family I know? The, the Vineys?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Guy’s, you know, Guy, my boyfriend, Guy?’

  ‘What about them?’

  ‘It was his father. No, don’t be— honestly. He’s an expert. He advised me. And I don’t even want to go to Cambridge any more. Don’t look like that. Please, Mum. Honestly, he’s . . .’ She has practised this speech so often; never mind that it is nonsense since last night. ‘I just want you to understand—’

  Her mother reaches out her hand. She takes hold of Marina’s shoulder and gives it a little shake.

  ‘Darling,’ she says. ‘There’s something I need you to know.’

  Of course Laura has to tell her. The Farkases are right; there are things children should never be told, but an emergency seems to be slowly unfurling. So she tries.

  And, naturally, fails. Is this because she is distracted by Peter, or because she is a bad mother? At first Marina is only interested in defending the Viney family: their refinement, their style, their elegance. The way that they never drop their t’s.

  ‘I don’t,’ says Laura. ‘Do I?’

  ‘All the time,’ says Marina crossly. ‘I’m always trying to s— to help you remember. People would take you more seriously.’

  With a supermaternal effort, Laura manages not to smite her child. She merely says, ‘Sweetheart, you’ve misunderstood. It’s because of your grandfather. It’s what they did to him.’