Almost English

by Charlotte Mendelson

  ‘So it wasn’t actually to do with the war? The falling out. The . . . betrayal.’

  ‘Nope. Why would you think it was?’

  ‘I, I just assumed. Never mind. Oh, poor Zoltan.’

  ‘I know. And that’s not all, bec—’

  ‘Oh Christ,’ says Laura. ‘I forgot. They’re waiting for me upstairs.’

  35

  Marina, feeling bleak and black, has just entered the dark passageway between the War Memorial and the Science Block. The stone is overgrown with creepers, which bodes ill but, she is thinking, if she holds her breath she will be half-protected. So, for once in her life, she is not expecting an unexpected meeting.

  But here are Guy, and Mrs Viney.

  Marina lets out a breath. Her mouth is dry; she can’t think of anything worth saying, only frantic prayers: Dear God in Heaven, if Thou has not forsaken me due to unbelief, please keep my family far away at this moment. Her uniform grows itchy; she starts scratching her neck like a village idiot, then snatches her hand away and grips it behind her back. Now she looks like Prince Charles.

  ‘How nice,’ says Mrs Viney. She lowers her cheek to be kissed and, despite everything, a little flame of joy burns in Marina’s heart.

  ‘Oh,’ she says. ‘Golly.’

  Guy smirks at her. ‘Wotcha.’

  But this chance conversation, on which so many hopes are pinned, does not go well. Marina seems to be becoming more, not less, shy; every movement she makes disgusts her. Mrs Viney seems bored. Or is it annoyance? Is she about to reveal that the ornament Marina broke at Stoker has been discovered? Just when she is wondering whether to confess right now, Guy says, ‘Guess who’s doing Prize-Giving tomorrow? Dad! Oh look, isn’t that your mother?’

  And there she is, wandering happily through the Memorial Quad in her old brown coat. She kisses Marina, says a vague hello to Guy, says, ‘Pleased to meet you,’ in a frankly unfriendly tone to Mrs Viney. Guy is explaining how the person meant to be giving the prizes, a Commonwealth Games rowing champion who was in Bute House a million years ago yet was still taught by Pa Kendall, has had to cancel, so they asked his father at the very last minute.

  Marina can’t concentrate on what he is saying. Mrs Viney must be annoyed with her, but why? She is so polite; it is hard to tell. Marina takes a tentative step towards the mothers, one in beautiful brown leather boots, the other not.

  ‘Oh, sweetheart,’ says her mother. ‘Have you seen Rozsi and Co?’

  ‘Me?’ says Marina, making warning eye gestures. ‘No!’

  ‘They were going shopping,’ she says. ‘There’s that little boutique on the High Street and Zsuzsi—’

  ‘Mum—’

  ‘Don’t interrupt, sweetheart. Rozsi and Ildi and Zsuzsi: are you sure?’

  ‘Good Lord,’ says Mrs Viney. ‘What interesting n—’

  ‘Mum, you remember Guy, don’t you?’ says Marina. ‘Of course you do.’

  ‘Sorry,’ her mother says, frowning more than she needs to in the circumstances. A group of beefy men in Old Combeian blazers and long cricket jumpers stride past the entrance to the passage. ‘Yes, Guy, I do remember. Are you in Marina’s class too?’

  ‘Not really,’ says Marina. She is cold with sweat; her back feels oily.

  ‘You . . . you’re doing other A levels?’

  ‘If only,’ says Guy’s mother. ‘Actually Guy’s only a Fiver. Though revoltingly precocious. They do get like that, don’t they?’

  ‘We-ell,’ Laura says.

  ‘But despite the vast age gap we’ve come to know and love Marina, haven’t we, darling?’

  ‘Have you?’ asks Laura, frowning. ‘When?’

  ‘Oh!’ says Marina. ‘I’ve just remembered something. Pa Stenning. I mean, Daventry, Pa Daventry! He wanted to talk to you.’

  ‘We’ll let you get on,’ says Mrs Viney. ‘You sound terribly busy.’

  ‘Oh yes,’ says Laura offhandedly. She has, Marina realizes, no grasp of how to talk to these people. ‘We are.’

  ‘Of course you’ll be at Al’s speech tomorrow, won’t you. You must come. I unfortunately will miss it but, er . . .’

  ‘Laura,’ says Marina’s mother.

  ‘Of course. Laura. Anyway, you must be there.’

  ‘See ya later,’ says Guy. ‘Oh, by the way, wanna come out tonight?’

  ‘Yes!’ says Marina, glancing at her mother, who is now just standing there, not making conversation. ‘I’d love to. Brilliant.’ Her mother puts her hand on her arm. Marina pretends not to notice. ‘Defi— absolutely. If you’re sure? I mean, I’d love to. Yes, please. What time?’

  ‘Dunno. I’ll check. Crown and Mitre.’

  ‘Oh yes, do,’ says Mrs Viney, who clearly does not mean it.

  Marina’s heart thumps hard outside her body. The Crown and Mitre is a forbidden pub; where the House Sirs go, and masters. ‘Mum, Mummy. We’ll . . . we’d better find Pa Daventry. We can decide later. Really. Now.’

  ‘In a—’

  ‘No!’ says Marina. ‘And in fact I suddenly feel ill. Please. Sorry, um, sorry,’ she mumbles, barely able to look at Mrs Viney. ‘I, um—’ and she pulls at her mother’s arm like a rude child, a hunchback, a beast until, with the least possible grace and dignity, she leads her away.

  ‘But what about “All About Jazz”?’ asks Laura. She is irritable, and overwhelmed; what I need, she thinks, is a diagram of how everyone connects.

  ‘I don’t need to go to that, do I?’

  ‘Marina,’ Laura says, more sharply than she had intended, and they both look up, surprised. ‘Of course you do. We bought tickets. You can’t just . . . forget.’

  ‘Well, I did,’ says Marina petulantly. ‘And it’s too late now. I accepted.’

  Laura can feel herself frowning. She irons out her forehead and tries to sound nice.

  ‘Sweetheart,’ she says, ‘Rozsi will want you there. Don’t be silly. Oh, my love, why are you crying?’

  ‘I’m so embarrassed.’

  ‘Why? How? You’re so strange, pickle.’

  ‘Don’t say that!’

  ‘I didn’t mean—’

  ‘No, you’re right. I am. I am I am I am, and I just can’t—’

  ‘Oh no, you’re not. You’re wonderful.’

  ‘You have,’ sobs Marina, ‘no idea.’

  ‘Shh, darling.’

  ‘I can’t shh! I just wish I sodding— I wish I was dead.’

  Laura steps back. She takes her hand off her daughter’s shoulder. ‘You don’t mean it.’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘Don’t say that.’

  ‘Why not? I do! I mean, I don’t, but sometimes—’

  ‘Shh. Shh, my love. I know.’

  They stand for a moment below the War Memorial, awkwardly embracing. You have to tell her about her father, Laura commands herself, now. Right now. But how is poor Marina to deal with that? When she is clearly so . . .

  Unhappy. Now she sees it, unmistakably clear, as if a cloth has been whipped off a cage, revealing a poor suffering bird. As if she, Laura, had simply opened her eyes.

  Marina has ruined everything. Now that it is too late, she can see perfectly that giving up on chemistry and medicine and her future was an act of madness, and not admitting it to her family makes it so much worse. History has not brought her happiness. Before she at least knew what she wanted; now all that ambition has been replaced by fear.

  Yet if she tells her mother any of this, she’ll think that the Vineys were the problem, not a source of wisdom and hope. Even if they make Marina feel lowly, which they sometimes do, they have shown her how not to be base. They matter. The unhappiness is a sign that she’s improving and changing, like steel turning blue in a flame.

  ‘We could go out for tea,’ says Marina now, but neither of them can think of anywhere. It is almost a relief when she hears the familiar cry of ‘Dar-link!’ and turns to see three dressed-up old Hungarians noisily crossing the Quad towards them.

  It grows later an
d later, and the difficulty about this evening, the Crown and Mitre and all it entails, does not go away. Mrs Viney will be waiting for her, and Mr Viney, expecting to be amused. Only at the last conceivable moment, when her family are all in their seats in Divvers and Simon Flowers is probably about to come on stage to play ‘My Funny Valentine’, which Marina has always imagined him singing to her, does she manage to think of an excuse.

  ‘Um,’ she whispers to Rozsi, who is passing around a small bar of Swiss marzipan. Everyone else has packets of Revels from the stall in the foyer; in the raised seats on the platform along Divvers’ right-hand wall, where the less important masters sit in Assembly, several connected families are toasting each other with rosé in plastic goblets. ‘About later. The second half. There’s a bit of a problem.’

  Zsuzsi leans forward interestedly. The scarf she is wearing was a gift from Mrs Dobos: turquoise zebras cavorting on a mustard-yellow tundra: ‘Ja-jare,’ she confides frequently which, after a surreptitious look at the label, Laura translates as Jaeger. She is also wearing what she calls her ‘ev-ening-troo-sair’, bronze-coloured slip-on shoes and a very long gilt and green-glass necklace. ‘Vot is this problem?’ she asks, with no attempt to lower her voice. ‘You menstruate?’

  ‘No,’ hisses Marina.

  ‘Vot? Vot?’

  ‘I’ve got . . . to go to this thing,’ she says. ‘A . . . a concert.’

  ‘Ve are at a concert, dar-link,’ says Rozsi. ‘Vot a silly.’

  ‘No, it’s more classical. Classical music. Do you, I mean, sorry, I know it’s a bit odd. I mean, in the interval,’ she adds. ‘About then. Really. I was inv— I mean, asked to help. They need help, just round the back. In the wings.’

  There is, isn’t there, a slight possibility that Simon Flowers, gazing wistfully out over the audience as he plucks his jazz guitar, will look for her? Will he abandon his secret plan to woo her once he sees that she has gone?

  They sit through ‘In a Groovin’ Mood’ and ‘Mello Madness’ in awful silence. Laura fixes her eyes on the velvet Alice band worn by a woman in the next row until the woman’s husband, with the radar of the sexually undiscerning, turns around and smiles. She is going to have to speak to Marina; this is unavoidable. Could she lead her outside?

  She doesn’t dare. Ten minutes later they are still trapped.

  Zsuzsi leans across her.

  ‘What do you say is programme of your little concert?’

  Marina rips at her cuticle with her teeth. ‘I can’t remember. Maybe . . . Liszt?’ Blood is seeping through the culvert. Laura, to stop herself from gripping Marina’s hand, sits on her own.

  ‘Better you wait until this concert finish,’ says Zsuzsi firmly. ‘Then we go together.’

  ‘But,’ whispers Marina, ‘I have to run back to, to change. Into work clothes. It’ll be dusty,’ she says, giving her mother a desperate look.

  ‘Peh,’ says Zsuzsi.

  A better mother would make Marina stay. Laura is too busy; she is thinking of the enormous gaps in what Peter told her, the story of his parents. Would Ildi explain, if shown the photographs?

  So when, in the interval, Marina says, ‘Sorry, sorry,’ already on her feet, her eyes wet, what can Laura do but move her knees aside to let her pass?

  ‘Tair-ible,’ says Rozsi, shaking her head.

  Laura touches her hand: veiny, vulnerable. She has never stood up to her in-laws but now she says, ‘Could we maybe let her go, just this once?’

  36

  Now that Marina has escaped, she should be triumphant, not ridiculously nervous. She rushes into the Ladies’ toilet and instructs herself to be calm.

  With a shaking hand, she takes her first-ever lipstick, Barely Berry, from her coat and begins to apply it using her reflection in the toilet-paper dispenser. Is the colour meant to be that dark? She needs to check in a normal mirror but people’s mothers are talking outside now, and girls whose voices she knows. She cannot face them. And she is already late for the Crown and Mitre.

  She dashes out of the cubicle, head down, sidesteps clumsily around the queue and realizes a little too late that she has come face to face with Zsuzsi, weakly pushing open the doors with her Harrods handbag.

  ‘Oh my God,’ she says.

  Zsuzsi lifts both her eyebrows. She lowers her handbag. This should be the moment when her great-aunt, always such a fan of romance, twinkles at her and sends her on her way.

  But her face is stony, like a pharaoh. ‘So,’ she says. ‘Lipstick you are wearing.’

  ‘I—’

  ‘Where do you go?’ Zsuzsi asks.

  Marina lowers her eyes. Combe girls, some from West Street itself, are staring, and Zsuzsi’s voice is not at all muffled by the sounds of banging doors and flushing.

  ‘No,’ she begins, ‘really—’

  ‘Nev-airmind,’ Zsuzsi says, waving her hand dismissively: a pope granting a day’s reprieve. ‘Tomorrow you tell us the story.’

  Laura, after a fruitless search for yet another pay phone, hurries back across the courtyard to Divinity Hall just as the interval bell is ringing. However, there seems to have been a misunderstanding. Rozsi, Ildi and Zsuzsi are waiting impatiently in the foyer, whispering noisily in Hungarian. From inside the hall comes a taste of what they are missing: an electric guitar solo loosely tethered to ‘Young, Gifted and Black’.

  ‘I am tired,’ says Rozsi, looking thunderous. ‘It is tair-ible. We go,’ and, before Laura can appease her, she finds herself being herded back down the stairs. It is only when they are standing on the tarmac outside Divinity Hall that Rozsi announces their real motive. They are going to look for Marina. Marina is missing; she has lied.

  Combe, mildly picturesque by day, becomes at night a labyrinth of dark terraces, Chinese fish-and-chip shops, boarded-up old buildings papered with advertisements for Thin Lizzy tribute acts and the World Wrestling Federation. Laura marches ahead, trying to give the impression of firmness, questions nipping at the edges of her worry. Arm in arm, the others mutter incomprehensibly behind her.

  ‘Isn’t she just, you know,’ begins Laura, ‘doing what she said? Helping at a concert? With, maybe, friends?’

  ‘Friends,’ scoffs Rozsi. ‘Don’t be funny.’

  They send her into the Indian restaurant on the High Street, full of flocking and copper urns and Combe families demanding poppadums. Then a wine bar, 42nd Street, although Marina doesn’t drink so could not possibly be there, and an Italian restaurant apparently trapped in the Fifties, where spaghetti is served with lamb chops and steak, like a vegetable.

  ‘Would it not be easier just to go back and ask at that place, West Street?’ she says, trying to think even more quickly than Rozsi.

  ‘Hihetetlen,’ she hears behind her, which is never a good sign.

  She turns. Zsuzsi and Rozsi are arguing in Hungarian. Ildi, helpfully in English, says, ‘Dar-link. Rozsi think we go back toward the what-you-call-it, cot-edrol, maybe we see her then.’

  ‘There isn’t a cath— oh, you mean the ruins?’ says Laura.

  ‘We are looking halfway towards London for this concert,’ says Zsuzsi, ‘but no. Tair-ible, what she do to us.’

  ‘Oh. Well, can’t we just— you could go back to the bed and breakfast,’ Laura says, ‘and I’ll keep looking for her. She can’t be far.’

  ‘Don’t be rid-iculos,’ says Zsuzsi. ‘You do not have my sharp eyes.’

  ‘Well, true. Aren’t you hungry? We could go into town for a baked potato.’ Rozsi loves baked potatoes. ‘There’s a vegetarian café, it looked quite cheap,’ Laura says and, as she glances over Zsuzsi’s shoulder, trying to remember where they passed it, she sees a pub over the road, a big glass window, a sign swinging in the cold Combe wind: the Crown and Mitre. She had forgotten.

  Marina’s evening in the Crown is not quite as she had imagined. Mrs Viney is not at the pub after all. No one talks to her. She finishes her first half of cider very quickly. Two beer-mats are lying in peeled layers in front of her,
and several crushed crisps; she accidentally knocked most of them on the floor, which made everyone groan in disgust. Simon Vass, a Dene House Upper with enormous rugby shoulders, has bought another round of beers and, for Marina, a vodka and lime. Guy, talking football, ignores her.

  The evening she had in mind had featured red wine and intellectual conversation, a certain relaxing of sexual mores. Cornucopiae. And if she is, well, bored, shouldn’t she be doing something better with her time, such as applying her historian’s mind to the mysterious Farkas–Viney connection? Like the young Queen Elizabeth on the eve of accession, she is willing to take up a hallowed burden. She wants to start.

  God, what if it is to do with the war?

  She can see herself quite clearly, on the watered-silk sofa in the drawing room at Stoker, leafing through a photo album and spotting Guy’s parents at a Mosley garden party, or marching on Belgium. Could she ask Mr Viney about it? Perhaps, if she can dare herself. She reaches for her now empty glass and, as she does so, Mr Viney changes seats.

  ‘So, young Hun,’ he says. ‘We meet again, again. How nice.’

  ‘Yes,’ says Marina, her resolve evaporating. His eyes are so pale that you can’t help staring at them and then you’re trapped there, gazing into his soul. I need alcohol, she thinks. There should be a way of buying a drink just for yourself and a specified other: a half-round. A crescent.

  ‘What are you smiling about?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘You are.’

  ‘I’m not. I— you shouldn’t be on that stool,’ she says. ‘Don’t you want the bench?’ and she shuffles up.

  ‘You’re very kind,’ he says.

  ‘I’m just being polite,’ she explains. ‘I believe in it for old, I mean—’

  ‘I see,’ and, as he stands, something over her shoulder seems to catch his eye. He goes still. Marina, hoping for bank robbers, twists round to look at the street outside. A little group of people is standing on the opposite kerb. She turns away, only ninety degrees, then turns back.