Almost English (21 page)

‘Yoga, too. Veggie. Worked on a farm in Wales, went pure. I’m a new man.’

Liar. If it were true, which it isn’t, he would have wept and prostrated himself. He would damn well have begged for forgiveness all night. And, by telling no one that he is alive and in London, she is now a co-conspirator.

She must tell them. She looks at the side of his face. She will do it as soon as she’s home.

‘Tube’s just down here,’ he says. She follows him down a short cobbled alleyway. At the other end, behind concrete bollards, flow buses and ambulances, a whirl of light. When we reach those, she tells herself, I’ll tell him to leave us alone for ever. That is what I will do.

‘What?’ he says over his shoulder.

Without meaning to, she has sat down on one of the bollards.

‘I . . .’ she says. ‘It’s just been . . . it’s been . . . When the hell
are
you going to tell them?’

Peter bends right down and looks her in the eye. Something seems to dislodge inside her, melt and fall away like an iceberg losing its grip on the land.

‘Christ,’ he says. ‘I know I . . . it’s just . . . not easy. Does she talk about me a lot?’

‘Your ego! Jesus.’ It is almost funny enough to stop her crying. ‘Sorry, are we talking about your abandoned child or your mother?’

‘Rozsi, I meant. God, I didn’t—’

‘No, if you must know, she hardly ever mentions you. Because then she’d cry. What did you expect? Think how humiliating it’s been for her, on top of everything else. Divorce is bad enough, but . . . but . . .’

‘Poor Rozsi,’ he says. ‘What a fucker I’ve been. And to you, old girl.’

Her last coverings of self-control and dignity disintegrate. Down she sinks into the seas of self-pity, bitter waves of misery whacking her on the head. She is alone.

No, she is not. From somewhere outside the shameful swamp, a hand appears. It approaches her face, reaches out a finger to unstick the strands of hair which have stuck attractively to her lip. She closes her eyes.

Then she opens them. What the hell is Peter doing? She lifts her head to tell him so, to say leave me alone, and how dare he even presume—

He kisses her.

20

Monday, 6 February

Netball v Southampton College: U18 VIIs (A), 3.15 p.m.; Fivers art history trip begins (Florence); careers talk by Hilary Burtenshaw, OC: ‘The Civil Service’, 6 p.m.

Marina gets up on Monday morning, world-weary after a torrid and confusing night, and finds a message from the matron:

FARKISS M. (Lwr):- ring Mother

She is almost too frightened to make the telephone work. It is the week of her birthday and she has been orphaned. When Zsuzsi answers, she says, ‘What is it? Who rang? What’s happened to Mum?’

‘Don’t be funny,’ says Zsuzsi.

‘So—’

But Zsuzsi has so many questions about Combe that some time passes before she reaches the point. ‘Your lovely Mrs Dobos lunch yesterday,’ she says, you do not tell us.’

‘Mrs— oh, God.’

‘Marinaka.’

‘But I said . . .’

‘Marina. I do not realize you are so stupid.’

Rozsi comes to the phone but is very quiet, which is worse. Marina’s mother is not even there – ‘She goes early to her surgery,’ Ildi tells her when she takes over, ‘she work so hard,’ – so when Zsuzsi comes back the phone to ask, ‘But
vy
must you go to silly science lunch?’ there is no one to help her. Should she tell them about the Oak, in case Mrs Dobos saw her? But if she didn’t?

‘I,’ she begins. ‘I—’

Zsuzsi lowers her voice; it buzzes in her ear. ‘
Dar
-link,’ she says. ‘I don’t believe it. Tell me, it is a boy?’

Alexander Viney’s kiss is still upon her, as real, or realer, than yesterday. She can’t keep it in. She suddenly says, ‘Remember Guy?’

‘Of course.’

‘Turns out he’s the son of someone famous.’

‘Really?
Von-
darefool. Very-good.’

‘It’s that historian,’ Marina persists. ‘Alexander Viney. Do you know of him—’

A pause. Then ‘
Hihetetlen
,’ says Zsuzsi in her fiercest whisper. ‘
Nem értem
. But this is not right.’

‘No, honestly,’ says Marina, but her voice wavers. ‘Why? It’s good. Isn’t it?’

Zsuzsi will not tell her. She won’t even stay on the phone. Afterwards, Marina decides that it must be one of their mad grudges, like the sisters’ lifelong refusal to listen to Brahms or visit Surrey.

It is peculiar, though.

Laura’s mind is thick with death. When she wakes up, she knows exactly what she must do.

On Monday mornings the surgery is closed, in order for Alistair to catch up on paperwork in the tiny back room where they keep the old scales and the records of the dead. This gives Laura and Marg, the senior receptionist, what Alistair calls ‘ample time for administrative necessities’, all of which must be completed weekly, without fail. This week Laura is even more behind than usual. Marg is not speaking to her because, as well as having forgotten to clean the toilet two days in a row, Laura accidentally ordered thirty-six non-returnable executive desk tidies in tortoiseshell plastic. If Laura asks her for help, Marg will not answer. Her immense purple-flowered back is turned away as she flirts simultaneously with the couriers and scratches her thigh with a biro. She does no work, despite her quasi-medical omniscience; why does Alistair not fire her? Fear, sexual thrall, blackmail, or his own, greater, ignorance?

So, while she listens to Marg giving pensioners made-up advice about granular ulcers, Laura types letters, quickly and inaccurately (on applying for this job she had pretended she could touch-type), to brave widows and harried fathers, giving them terrible news. She fails to obtain a replacement for the faulty ear thermometer; she telephones a specialist in parasitic diseases and is told that he is on compassionate leave, due to the death of his pregnant wife.

By eleven o’clock she has had enough. She stares in hopelessness at the last word she typed, ‘Sudgerorn’, and thinks: I am beyond Tippex, even retyping. She pushes back her chair. She needs to stop thinking about Peter for a start.

Maybe if she has a quick think about him first, she will succeed. She goes to the loo and is sitting, knickers round her ankles for authenticity, resting her head against the toilet paper, breathing in the perfume of old men’s urine, when into her mind drifts the solution to all of this, clear as truth. She does not need a river, or an Underground train. It could be done more easily, more ambiguously and before she can do any further damage. She should do it soon.

Quickly and fairly quietly, she creeps back to reception. Marg is still on the telephone and so does not notice Laura approaching the metal cabinet where they keep bulldog clips and document ties and finger protectors and sliding open the drawer.

There is the key.

As soon as she holds it in her palm, she feels calmer. Still, she holds her breath as she walks out into the corridor and stands before the door of Alistair’s office. She does not dare look back at Marg, who is saying, ‘So I said, “I hope it
was
a mango.”’ At any moment, Alistair could come out of the back room seeking tea. Mitzi could drop in for a tidy. Act quickly, Laura instructs herself, like a commander of men. She turns the handle of his office door, closes it behind her and stands alone in the Elastoplast-scented air.

It is like being inside his skull. The light is dim; he always keeps the blinds closed, as if his framed certificates and National Trust castle plans need protection. Her ears crackle with the effort of listening. She runs a trembly finger along his windowsill, over the end of the examination couch and down the cubbyholes. Marg alone is authorized to refill them with fresh surgical tweezers; wooden tongue-depressors; KY Jelly; a fat roll of condoms; small-to-medium disposable gloves. She feels oddly sexy. She wants to steal them. What has she become?

She knows his little cupboard well; she has never been permitted to unlock it, merely to stand by while Marg does. It is, like most of their equipment, not in a state of which the General Medical Council would approve. She could jemmy it open with Alistair’s Tudor paper knife. Nevertheless, the key is here, waiting to be used.

She unlocks the cupboard. Two narrow metal shelves; three rows of brown bottles. They must have been inventoried; she had not thought of that. Would Alistair, or Marg, be less likely to notice if different kinds were missing? Would just one type of pill be, well, more effective? Quicker? Or might it be better to take several, to eliminate the possibility of doubt? She dithers, picks up a bottle, puts it back in such a way that it knocks all its fellows out of line. Maybe—

There is a sound in the corridor. Quickly, clumsily, she grabs three bottles of Dalmane from the top shelf, slams the cupboard shut and, stuffing the bottles up her top, runs for the door.

21

Tuesday,
7
February

Netball v Queen’s School, Taunton, 1st and 2nd VIIs (H), 4.30 p.m.; Combe Abbey Rifle Corps Annual Dinner: Guest of Honour Lt Col Stevens DSO of the Welsh Guards, SCR, Basil Pilkington Room, 8 p.m.

Marina’s needs are few. All she has hoped for is an
Officer and a Gentleman-
style rescue from Chapel by Mr Viney, or a friendly letter from his wife. But although, in the daytime, her desires are all quite straightforward, the moment she is horizontal they seem to shift, sliding out of her brain like marbles, rearranging themselves in perplexing combinations.

This may be partly a question of caffeine. The kitchen is out of bounds once prep has started, so she survives on instant coffee made with water from the hot tap, liquorice, dried apricots. She cannot endure being watched so she reads until Heidi turns off her desk light, then starts to work. Or not only work. She is becoming more alert to signs. Her family is scathing about superstition; at home she tries to force it away from herself like a dog but lately, at Combe, it has been creeping back. So even as she learns the properties of liquefied gases and writes her essay on irony in
Othello
, she is constantly on the alert for indications of imminent tragedy.

This term she has discovered that, with the help of the two-volume
Shorter Oxford English Dictionary
given by her proud relatives, she can control, or at least guess, the future. Random words are full of meaning, mostly about health or illness in Westminster Court, or other clues: what Mrs Viney thinks of her; if she’ll get into Cambridge; whether she will ever be invited to join the netball team, even the B team. Even the Cs.

Once started, it is difficult to stop. She makes it an additional rule to check the etymology of every four-syllable word, then three, then a few of the twos and, as almost every Greek or Anglo-Saxon word can mean something bad, if you look at it a certain way, she then has to find others to counteract it.

This evening it has gone on for even longer than usual. When at last she makes herself close the dictionary, stiff and cold and scared at two o’clock, she cannot sleep. She wants to be at home. She wants her mother. Her skin aches for her. She thinks: let me come back.

Then she catches her breath. In the rosy darkness of her room in West Street, Mr Viney has just materialized before her, saying ‘a little life’. Is that what she wants? Laboratories? Hospital beds? In his voice was an implication – no, more than that – that science is somehow . . . unseemly. Base. Maybe he’s right. If she thinks of the smells of formaldehyde and the ugly textbooks, even the pictures in the Cambridge medicine prospectus, do they excite her? Or does her heart skip instead at the thought of the panelled history classroom at Combe, Mr Viney giving her extra help with the Tudors? If he could really help her change—

But she can’t drop biology; Pa Pond won’t allow it.

Chemistry?

She thinks: you don’t even like it. Pa Kendall is practically dead. Imagine doing Elizabeth I instead of nuclear fission, being part of that world, the Vineys’ world, where everything is old and beautiful. What are you now? Small and ugly and cheap. And Pa Stenning—

Her heart seems to stop, then start again, more urgently. Pa Stenning, head of history: the Vineys’, Mrs Viney’s, friend.

Laura has been extraordinarily lucky. No one has noticed her theft. Every day she has waited for Marg’s face to show more than the usual combination of bored contempt, mild digestive discomfort and irritation at the many demands of the seriously sick upon the well.

‘If only,’ she is fond of saying, ‘they’d bloody listen to an expert,’ and Laura nods and smiles and wonders what Marg’s advice would be to her.

Soon, Laura reassures herself, looking abstractedly at Marg’s neck hump, you could be beyond guilt, let alone punishment. Nevertheless, every time Marg stands up – she is a great fan of tea-breaks – Laura’s heart judders to a halt. She sweats, and frets, and fidgets, like a normal person who wants to carry on living, unincarcerated. At least she is definitely not thinking about Peter, who has not contacted her again. Not remotely. He is absolutely the last person on her mind.

How do people find the time or privacy in which to kill themselves? This cannot go on. I, Laura thinks, cannot. Tomorrow, Thursday, she has the day off work to go with the family to Combe; it is Marina’s birthday. And then it is half-term, when they will be together. Perhaps after that, time could be found.

On Wednesday evening, when she is wrapping Marina’s presents, Zsuzsi,
pongyola
-ed, appears.

‘Darling,’ she whispers hoarsely. ‘We must talk.’

Laura takes a deep breath. ‘Actually,’ she says. ‘I was thinking . . . those clip-on earrings are lovely, but I don’t know . . . I mean, they might hurt her—’

‘Don’t be
rid
-iculos,’ says Zsuzsi. ‘No, it is the boy.’

Her arms are folded. She is frowning fiercely, but there is something else in her expression: triumph? Interest?

‘Boy?’ says Laura. ‘Which one?’