Almost English

by Charlotte Mendelson

  Which is, of course, exactly the sort of Peterish comment she has edited from her thoughts of him. Keeping her face averted from five floors of nets and proud window boxes, she scans the street. Was it even love, given the quantity of her crying? Hadn’t his selfishness always shown beneath the skin? She thinks of never seeing his handwriting again, his allegedly good intentions, the predictable fact that he is living on someone’s houseboat, and waits to feel purged, renewed. If she doesn’t write back he will leave them alone, which is what she wants, and she can decide what to tell the others in due course: his mother and daughter, whom he has so horribly hurt.

  But the tomato can, which had seemed, at the time, an uncharacteristically practical solution to the gratelessness of Westminster Court, contains not enough oxygen, or too much liquid vegetable, to be quite the furnace she had hoped. Burning the letter had seemed the right thing to do when it was ticking away inside the flat: a stupid idea, she can see that now. Six matches left. Five. Four. She could, she realizes now, have flushed it down the toilet, thrown it out with the potato peelings, but burning seemed better.

  It is the only way; severing the last tie with this man whom she loved, or thought she loved, to the point of idiocy. This is definitely the right thing to do: a final act of revenge.

  But what if she has to contact him?

  She needs time alone to think what to do, how to contain him and preserve what little peace she has. The worst thing, she is absolutely certain, would be for the old ladies and Marina to come across the letter before she has prepared them, and she is not ready to tell them quite yet. Anyway, if he is desperate to see them again, which his letter did not mention, he will phone them. He—

  Now, too late, she realizes that she has just watched the last match go out. There is nothing to do but haul open the fire door; she is about to creep back inside to her lair when she sees a man crossing the road in front of the building. Her stomach slips. It is Peter. And although in the next moment she knows that it is someone else entirely – the real Peter has bigger eyes, bigger nose, bigger gut and voice and ego – after she has hurried down the cold concrete steps to the basement flat, she is telling herself that this racing heart is fear, of course it is. What else could it be?

  15

  Sunday, 29 January

  ‘What the hell time is it?’ says Guy.

  ‘Half eight. Sorry, sorry. Shouldn’t you be getting up?’

  It has not been a restful night. She had brought her most country-house nightdress, green tartan brushed cotton from Marks & Spencer, but was so cold that she had to sleep in the brown tights and a cardigan too. Now she stinks of sweat.

  Also, there has been an incident: only a couple of hours ago, when the sun was coming up. The unnaturally loud birds of Wiltshire had woken her at 06.44 and as she lay on her back in her cool linen coffin, alert for footsteps outside her door, she slowly came to realize that nature was calling to her in other ways. She needed the loo.

  By the time she had risen, performed her five morning press-ups and tried every possible clothing combination, her need was urgent. She crept out into the corridor. She opened the lavatory door, tried to pull it shut, found that it stuck. There was no lock.

  In her distress she made what was meant to be a little groan but came out as something louder, more bodily, which could be misinterpreted. Self-consciousness bloomed in the quiet: she knew she should turn round and go back to bed, but she was more desperate than she had ever been before. She had been dismissing her faint stomach ache as nervousness, and hunger: now she realized that she needed to . . . to . . . empty her bowels. The loo itself was in the bathroom, which Rozsi would consider uncivilized, and the room looked as if Mrs Viney had forgotten to have it decorated. Its walls were made of planks like a boat; it had a green-stained bath in the middle of the room connected to the wall with wobbly pipes; a broken wicker chair with a cushion; a spooky old picture made of dried flowers behind spotty glass; and, for the greater magnification of noise, floorboards instead of carpet. Everything would be audible, to everyone. She sat down on the cold toilet, no, lavatory seat and saw herself reflected in the mottled mirror by the door, frowning like a gargoyle, her knickers by her ankles, her face the colour of shame.

  And, oh dear God, what to do about flushing?

  Since childhood she has known never to alert others to one’s night-time wee, let alone wake them, by using the chain. Never: not at home and certainly not anywhere else. One simply disguises it with extra paper, washes one’s hands silently, and scarpers.

  Here, now, this was not an option. The house lay in perfect silence. A passing Viney would hear her; thanks to the carpeted hallway she might not even hear them. She closed her eyes. A pipe gurgled; someone might think it was her.

  Then she realized that it was.

  Her stomach gave another gurgle, then a loud growl. She sat back sharply, whacking her elbow extraordinarily hard against a metal pipe which protruded from the wall. It was too dark to see but there must be blood; now she felt sick too. And meanwhile the noise in her stomach began again, more loudly than ever and nothing, not even prayer, or leaning forward to hold her ankles, could squash it into silence. The sweat smell grew stronger. Could she could find somewhere else to go, a downstairs bathroom, the woods?

  It was too late. Her need was pressing. Tears rolled down her cheeks as she gave in to her fate.

  Who could have slept after that? She thinks now, standing just inside the doorway of Guy’s fuggy bedroom, that she probably never will. If he refers to hearing sounds in the night, or, dear God, having gone in after her, she will pass out. But he is still only half awake, indistinct in the furry darkness. To the level of his strange boy-nipples, if not lower, he is bare.

  ‘Oi you, come here.’ he says.

  ‘I can’t. I, I have to ring my home.’

  ‘Get a grip.’

  ‘No, seriously. I do. They, I, honestly. Please. I can pay—’

  ‘They’ll be fine,’ he says irritably and, when she still resists him, sends her off with the vaguest of directions.

  Her jumper smells of wood smoke and armpits. The ground floor is cold; no one is about. She keeps looking over her shoulder as she searches for the telephone. There is a reassuring pile of logs outside the back door, innumerable spare wellingtons and woolly jumpers. Last night, it occurred to her that if a war began this weekend and the Vineys offered to give her family sanctuary, she’d have to explain all about them. She has spent so many hours thinking of how she’d save them during an unspecified apocalypse – which foods in the looted shops of Queensway might be more sustaining, for example, or whether they know anyone in Scotland. What if the coast is invaded by, well, invaders? It is bad enough in London, where they are at constant risk of kidnap, murder, accident, of junkies, muggers, stalkers, flashers, gropers, rape or worse, if there is worse. Of course Mrs Viney would welcome Rozsi and her mother and the others, but it would be awkward.

  A good, moral person would not think in this way. She deserves what she will get.

  By the time they answer, her teeth are chattering.

  ‘Ha-llo.’

  ‘It’s me,’ she says. ‘But I can’t really tal—’

  ‘Dar-link, von-darefool,’ says Zsuzsi, sounding faintly disappointed. ‘But how so early? No matter. Tell me all about those lovely boys.’

  Her breath stops. Then she understands: ‘Oh!’ she says. ‘You mean—’

  ‘The aristocrat Lord Charles, how is he?’

  Zsuzsi is obsessed with the Hon. Charlie: a sweet dullard in Bute who was polite to her on Marina’s first day. Bute is, nominally, Marina’s house; she sees him several times a week there at House Prayers and House Meeting and Ronald and Jonquil (‘Ron and Jon’) Daventry’s weekly teas. He has a special bond with Pa Daventry. Thanks to his floppy fringe and noble profile, for a week or two Marina had imagined they might be friends, or possibly marry.

  ‘Charlie’s fine,’ she says. ‘I think. Actually, could I—
’

  ‘Or that young boy, for example. Gay.’

  ‘Guy.’

  ‘Yes, yes. So good-looking. He is not a lord?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Nev-airmind. To me, he is so romantic. A girl has to live a little. Igen. Wait one second, dar-link. Rozsi speaks.’

  ‘But . . . hello, Rozsi,’ says Marina, pressing her dramatically bruised elbow against the wall. ‘Yes. Yes. No. Not at all. How pleased? I think . . . Yes, always, very hard. Yes, the top, or near. OK, the top. Yes, honestly, you don’t need to . . . every night. Yes, plenty. And I’m in the Current Affairs Society now, did I tell you? The only girl, and mostly younger boys but . . . No, Thursday. Yes, lots of friends. In fact,’ she says, clenching her jaw to control her shivering, ‘actually I’m ringing because . . . well, you know the pay phone at West Street? It’s sadly broken.’

  ‘Tair-ible. You must tell your master that he will help you. It is ri-dicoolos.’ Rozsi switches into Hungarian: ongy-bongy, ongy-bongy, explaining to the others Marina’s little lie.

  There is a stack of cards and paper by the telephone: The Old Rectory, Stoker, West Knoyle, nr Shaftesbury. They are engraved, she is certain, not thermographed, which is reassuring. New red pencils too; unlike the little green crocodile stumps at home, the wood dark with frugality, this is unbitten, rubber-less, a smooth cylinder with a perfect point: the Platonic ideal of pencils. The gulf, she thinks, between us is unbridgeable.

  Then Rozsi is back. ‘How can the little children telephone?’

  ‘We’re not little, exactly,’ she says. ‘Someone in my English class is eighteen.’

  ‘Well, he must be a very stupid boy.’

  ‘Yes, he is.’

  ‘There we are. So what do they do with this bloomy phone?’

  ‘Oh,’ says Marina vaguely. ‘Improve it probably. Something digital.’

  ‘Digital? Very good.’

  ‘So . . . the thing is, you see, I had to go to one of the other phones and ring for our Sunday chat, but I d—’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘The New Lodge. Actually near the Buttery. That’s why it’s so quiet. Don’t worry.’ She doesn’t quite know how to stop. ‘There’s nothing to worry about.’

  ‘And you are being good?’

  ‘Sorry? Oh, right, sorry, yes, right. Sorry.’

  ‘Dar-link, please, I must talk to your houseman, master, put him on.’

  ‘But that’s not . . . I, you can’t. He’s teaching. Rozsi, I’ve really got to go.’

  ‘I worry, dar-link,’ Rozsi says.

  ‘Oh. Do you?’

  ‘Yes. Of course. Soon Fenyvesi Ernö and Bözsi are here, we go for little walk, so we talk about it later. I send money.’

  ‘No, no. No need. I’ve got lots. Honestly.’

  ‘I send food then. Easy-peasy. We see you soon. Now I fetch your mother. Be good, dar-link.’

  ‘I just, it was easier to ring early,’ Laura hears her daughter say. ‘Today. Or did you not want me to?’

  ‘Of course I did. It’s— Sweetheart, where are you?’ Her heart is still thumping; an early-morning phone call is never good news. ‘You’re all echoey. Was that a dog’s bark?’

  ‘Oh. Yes. I’m, I’m at school, obviously – obviously! – but not actually . . . not in West Street. I’m in, in, you know that corridor between the Undercroft and the Praecentor’s—’

  ‘So early,’ comments Rozsi at Laura’s elbow, as if the phone is permeable. ‘Why, tell us?’

  ‘Is the West Street one not working?’ asks Laura, closing her eyes. She can’t even visualize where her daughter is standing. Why has she allowed her to live two hours away? How, she would like to know, can anyone stand motherhood? Do other women not live as she does, trying to ready themselves for the phone call which will bring their life to an end?

  I can’t go on like this, she thinks, with the sudden clarity of the half-awake. Even apart from bloody Peter, this is unendurable. All this worrying has to stop.

  ‘Yes,’ Marina is saying. ‘I mean, no, no, it’s completely broken. That’s why—’

  ‘Are you sure,’ says Laura, sounding strict to keep the wobble out of her voice, ‘that everything’s OK?’

  ‘Yes. I said.’

  ‘There’s that dog again. It does sound very close. You hate dogs, sweetheart, ever since Mrs Kroo’s—’

  ‘I don’t. I mean, I don’t now. You can’t just assume—’

  And that is how their conversation ends, with Marina an inch or two further away, and Laura not having dared to say, ‘Come home. I want you. I miss you. I can’t wait another hour.’

  Anyway, how could she have said it? There was no way, with Rozsi right here, to raise the subject of leaving Combe. It has to be private, and Westminster Court is never private.

  She thinks to herself: you could write to her and ask.

  But after a term of scouring the emotions out of her postcards, could Laura send a letter like that?

  The only way to live apart from one’s child is to shut up one’s heart in a metal box with chains and rust and padlocks, and not open it. She cannot bear to. She has no picture of Marina on her desk. She cannot breathe when she thinks of her.

  If Marina is homesick, Laura’s heart will break open. So she cannot entertain the idea. If Marina wants to leave Combe, surely she will say so.

  Marina goes into breakfast. Her throat aches as an orphan’s might. She rubs her frozen hands together and smiles shyly at the other guests, at Guy’s sister.

  ‘Um . . .’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Sorry. I . . . is there any coffee?’

  There is a short silence, solid, like a pineapple cube. ‘We have tea,’ says Lucy Viney. ‘We don’t bother Evelyn for other things.’

  ‘Oh. Sorry,’ says Marina.

  ‘Anyway, this is the perfect breakfast. Though, actually, do you mind, the fresh orange juice is Daddy’s.’

  ‘Sorry.’ Biting her lip, she inspects the alien foodstuffs: porridge on a little burner; thick Salisbury honey and Dorset butter; marmalade in a bowl. If, she thinks, anyone mentions the loo last night, anything, sounds, or . . . odours, I will have to bolt. Or die.

  ‘Shut the door, can’t you,’ says the politician. ‘Were you born in a barn?’

  Marina sits with salty porridge and milky tea, resisting the tears which are forcing themselves down her nostrils. She looks out of the window and imagines being shown around the garden in summer, the bee-loud glades thick with honeysuckle and what her grandmother calls fuk-sio, tall spinach waving in the breeze, all planted by someone with whom she has a bond. Does Mrs Viney’s beauty conceal a secret sadness? Is she out there now, wandering alone?

  I’ll ask Guy about her on the train, she thinks. Though, please, God, don’t let him come downstairs yet. Something else happened last night, after dinner, before the other . . . the toilet incident and the wounding, which she has been trying even harder to forget. But Guy will not have forgotten. It concerned, in part, his manhood.

  It was quite interesting: an uncomfortable-feeling gristly knobble. Having never seen a real one, except once on a drunk man peeing behind a phone box near Regent’s Park, Marina has only imagined penises dimly, almost dutifully. Simon Flowers seemed unlikely to have one, the masters too old, boys her age too young. Besides, no one has properly explained the hydraulics: how something soft enough to need the protection of a cricket box can become hard and presumably beautiful, an object of desire. And surely something that sticks out at right angles can’t enter something, well, vertical? She could not imagine what to expect.

  Yet here one was, separated from her by the thinnest layer of chino. Guy was moving his lips silently. She listened to his breathing, her hand exactly where he put it, on his loins.

  ‘Sit down?’ he said in a frightened voice.

  ‘All right.’ Was it growing? Isn’t that what they do? She must be excited, she told herself, only less than she had expected; more as a scientist might be, in the field. I
f anything she felt almost motherly towards him, puzzled, as if he was a problem to be solved.

  She pressed down a millimetre further. In the nick of time she remembered something she heard in the West Street kitchen; apparently if a stiffened member is bent for any reason at all, it will be terribly damaged. Blood vessels burst. Poor boys, to be so vulnerable. Minutely, she lifted her hand.

  ‘Nnnm,’ said Guy. They stared at each other, owl eyes in the darkness. Her ignorance crouched behind her on the bed. ‘Please,’ he said. She put her hand back down.

  Now, like a coordination exercise, they were kissing too, while she kept her fingertips lightly on his manhood. This was not how she had imagined the beginning of sex, the swoon of joyous reciprocal love in, ideally, an Italian meadow. Guy Viney’s tongue was in her mouth, but her mind kept drifting from his trousers and back to the adults downstairs. Why wasn’t she enjoying this more? Although there definitely was something delicious about this womanly feeling of control; she was thinking she might even slightly increase the pressure, experimentally, when his hand bumped against hers. Then it bumped again.

  There was a crackling, sliding sound. He was unzipped.

  Could she pretend not to have noticed? It is dangerous, apparently, as well as morally wrong, to deny them release. And she was curious, and in danger of being officially frigid, despite spending every single night of her adolescence hot and restless and full of desire. She looked down carefully, past his neck, shirt buttons, belt, to where, in his lap, floated something pale.

  She had tried to do the correct thing. She really had. He felt silky, like a toy as she began, cautiously, to investigate and, although her fingers were shaking, it was at least experience. Then there was a noise.

  ‘Christ.’

  She jerked her hand away. He gave a little grunt. There was a strange doughy smell, wetness warm as blood. What had she done? ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry.’ He would not look at her. ‘Are you OK?’