Almost English (19 page)

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 her. ‘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.

It is too late; he is turning away from her. She says it without thinking: ‘I need you to help me.’

He starts laughing. ‘Forgive me. I’m not usually asked quite so directly. Certainly not by a child like you. Help how?’

‘I . . . I don’t know.’

‘Look, I’ve got to get back. They’ll think I’ve died or something. I know,’ he says, giving her upper arm a little squeeze, ‘we’re bloody back here on Sunday, one of Nancy’s tedious godchildren needs to be taken out.’ Marina rolls her eyes humorously. ‘Why don’t you come along to that and I’ll see if there’s a moment to talk.’

‘Oh, could I? Really? I’d love to. Just instruct me,’ she says. ‘Whatever you think I should do.’

18

Sunday, 5 February

Matins (Chapel Choir) or Pastoral Address, Divinity Hall, Dr Malling: ‘Appreciating Nature’s Bounty; lacrosse v Our Lady’s Convent: U17, U18 1st and 2nd Xs (A), 1.15 p.m.; netball v the OCs: 1st and 2nd VIIs, Greer’s; OC Society Banquet, Summoner’s Court, 7.30 p.m.

There has been an unpleasant scene. Apparently earlier today, just before Marina made her Sunday morning phone call, she received a visit at West Street. It was Mrs Dobos, unannounced, with her repulsive grandchild Natalya, intending to spend the morning with Marina and then to take her out for lunch.

Marina said no.

There must have been some misunderstanding. Rozsi’s ear for English is good, despite her accent, but every now and then . . .

No. No mistake. Laura is brought to the phone; Marina really has refused Mrs Dobos. It is grandmatricide. ‘I mean, how could I?’ says Marina. ‘I can’t, um, not do my homework. I mean, straight, after the Address. That’s when we do it. I’d get into trouble.’

‘Oh, sweetheart, I’m sure Mr Daventry would understand.’

‘He wouldn’t.’ She sounds tearful. ‘And, anyway, I hate Natalya. You do too. That Christmas violin concert of peasant music, last year you said you’d never ever—’

‘But you can’t not go out for lunch with them, sweetheart. You, really, you should. Can you, I don’t know, track her down?’

‘I can’t.’

‘Why not?’

‘I have, well, a lunch, um, plan. Already.’

‘They won’t care if you skip the Bakery—’

‘Buttery.’

‘Whatever it is. It’s all, well, it makes no difference.’

‘No,’ says Marina. ‘Anyway, it’s not there.’

‘Where then?’

‘It’s, um, a lunch for, for, biology.’

Laura hesitates. Her mouth tastes of coins. Marina is a hopeless liar – unlike, Laura thinks, her father. Unlike me. ‘I see,’ she says eventually, pretending not to notice Zsuzsi’s disgusted frown. ‘You have to go. I see. And you explained, politely? I . . . of course. Well, there it is.’

Zsuzsi sniffs. ‘
Rid
-iculos,’ she says and turns back to her newspaper. Rozsi crashes about in the kitchen; she will be frantic. Only Ildi will catch Laura’s eye; in fact, as the morning grinds slowly on, Laura begins to wonder if her aunt-in-law is trying to communicate something, with nowhere private to say it. She, too, has something increasingly pressing to tell the relatives. The note she received yesterday, which she claimed was from a wholly imaginary school friend, was in fact from Peter. She is meeting him near, of all places, the Elephant and Castle, this very night.

During Dr Malling’s address on the dangers of personal stereos, Marina tries to locate Guy. She is feeling on edge. She overheard a story yesterday about an Upper girl who last summer, Trinity term, was having actual sex with her boyfriend – she was wearing a long skirt, sitting somehow on top of him – when the Randolph housemaster came in and started chatting to them both, with her still sitting there, her skirt spread out. Is this technically possible? Afterwards she could not stop thinking about it and, later, she had a sexual dream of impressive vividness; the content and participants are blurry now, but a certain stickiness remains. Guilt, too: Guy wasn’t in it. She turns again in her chair, but a pillar is blocking most of her view of the Fivers: no sign of his unwashed sub-blond curls, his cheery expression. What if he forgets to pass on a message from his mother, with details about the lunch today? Would Pa Stenning help? She runs as quickly as she can back to West Street, looking for an embossed card saying where to meet. There is nothing for her on the hall table. Hannah North, the only Upper she likes, grins and lifts her eyebrows. Marina has no time to talk.

‘Looking for something?’ asks Isla Clewin pretend-sympathetically, picking chocolate off her kitten-paw slippers. Her damp hair is being plaited by Gemma Alcock, whose own is in a purpose-made towel turban. The television room smells of soapy green apples. ‘Letter from home?’

‘No,’ says Marina. It must be on her desk. However, her bedroom contains only limply creeping Heidi, squeezing something called Primula from a tube onto her finger and licking it off. ‘Has someone been up?’ she asks.

‘When?’ Heidi loves other people’s problems. ‘What sort of person?’

‘Never mind, just tell me. Quickly.’

‘Are you late? What for? Where are you going?’

They face each other over her desk chair. Marina unclenches her fists. ‘Just tell me.’

‘If you say,’ says Heidi, ‘who you were expecting, I can say if they’ve been.’

‘Forget it.’

She storms back downstairs. Hannah North and Isla Clewin stop talking. ‘Oh poor Marina, I hope everything’s OK,’ says Hannah sweetly. Might the Vineys have changed their minds? I’m still not bloody having lunch with Mrs Dobos, she tells herself, making today’s fifth piece of white toast and changing into her velvet jacket again, just in case. She will have to race up to Guy’s room to leave him a note. Earlier, on the phone from home, Rozsi told her, ‘Cambridge would not want a naughty girl,’ but she can’t possibly have guessed.

Can she?

Marina loves Rozsi. She does not want to upset her. May I be smited, smitten, smited, she thinks, if I ever do.

‘But
dar
-link,’ says Rozsi in puzzlement, ‘
vot
are you doing for dinner?’

Laura has told her that she is going to see the wholly imaginary school friend, come from nowhere to meet her in central London. ‘I’ll eat with h— her, probably,’ she says, like a murderer setting up alibis.

Eight hours to go – ‘I’ll be there from six,’ Peter’s note said, but he can wait. She looks at the sisters as they drink their coffee, as they settle down with the papers: their downy faces, their trembling hands. ‘
Dar
-link, you vant a
vorl-
nutvirl?’ asks Ildi. ‘From daughter of Lotte, she is coming yesterday from
Om
-erica, Kveens or Harlem, somevere, her husband is doctor, she is coming straight to see us from hospital. Poor Lotte, she knows no one now.’

Laura’s hand hovers over the box. How can she tell what she wants? Would it be better to have one? She is unable to make even the smallest decision. She looks out of the window at the passing feet on Pembridge Road and screams help me, help me, incredibly loudly, in her head.

Marina heads for the Chapel. This is permitted, for those seeking succour. Does God really tolerate people who, despite ardent efforts, have not yet managed to believe in Him? It seems doubtful, like taking too many samples at a cheese counter, but perhaps He can tell that she is trying.

The Chapel smells of history, or decay, and is dimly lit; the chaplain considers candlelight more suitable for prayer-fulness. Yet, even here, God has so far declined to reveal His presence to Marina; unlike Heidi, who claims that Jesus came to her in the night. And where is the succour? Shouldn’t His servants, curates and things, at least make an effort? Approach her in the pews and offer guidance? She cries quietly but enough to be noticed, yet none of them, not even the chaplain, seems to see. There isn’t a single lost tourist to befriend. She smiles kindly at an old woman, imagining a rewarding May-to-September friendship, but too late realizes that the woman’s lips are moving not in prayer but in angry mutterings, and she backs away.

By the time she has returned to find a scrappy note with instructions in Guy’s handwriting, rather backward, she is already late. She reaches the Oak, Combe’s smartest restaurant, at twenty past one. She sits down a little too far from the table, so that a waiter has to shuffle her chair in, like a hospital porter wheeling a big fat patient to a bed. There are medallions of venison and a pudding trolley; Mrs Viney is sitting at the opposite end of the table, talking sweetly to a family of darkly tanned blond boys who are all Combe pupils, past and present. Guy’s father is in the middle of a complicated conversation about an American trip with Lucy Viney, who again has managed to ensure that she’s next to him. Now they are eating their main courses, in her case roast lamb with an embarrassing amount of fat. Guy is telling one of the tanned sons about snowboarding when Mrs Viney calls across to them: ‘Poor old Digby broke his – what was it, ulna? – skiing. What
is
an ulna – Guy? Marina, darling, do you know?’

‘She is going to be a doctor,’ says Mr Viney. The conversation stops. ‘So, if she doesn’t, God help us.’

‘How sweet,’ says Mrs Viney, looking at her.

‘Dear God,’ says Lucy Viney. ‘Really?’

‘Where is it, then?’ says Guy. ‘Leg?’

‘Arm,’ Marina mumbles.

Oddly, this improves things. Mrs Viney, who is only two people away, starts graciously drawing her into the conversation with the Blythes and asking her questions: her siblings, her UCCA plans. Her people.

‘My grandmother,’ Marina says, ‘is a businessman.’

‘
Is
she? Marvellous. What sort?’

‘Er . . . lingerie. You know, underwear.’

‘I do know,’ agrees Mrs Viney. ‘There’s nothing so marvellous as really good silk underthings. Any particular kind, I wonder?’

‘I . . . I don’t think so,’ Marina says. ‘I mean, there is a bit of silk and . . . satin, but it’s . . . you know, very good makes, Bella Figura and Castell, like you can buy in Self-ridges and I think Fenwick’s, but, well, mostly it’s made of nylon and . . . cotton.’

‘Of course,’ murmurs Mrs Viney comfortingly. ‘Cotton’s the only kind anyone wears nowadays,’ and Marina nods energetically. ‘And of course you must carry, or stock, or whatever you call it, Aston. For their belts and gloves, at least.’

‘Sorry?’

‘Don’t you know it? Golly, I am surprised.’ Dimly, Marina recognizes the name: a grand old English firm which makes very smart hosiery and nightwear and also woollen Argyle-patterned socks, occasionally shown off by girls in West Street. ‘It’s Al’s parents’ firm, didn’t you know? Oh yes, we’re all shopkeepers here. Are—’

‘I’m sure,’ Alexander Viney says firmly, ‘that the children don’t need to hear about all this.’