Almost English (26 page)

‘Hang on,’ says Marina. ‘Have you been poking round my stuff ?’

‘Of course not! No, not at all. I—’

‘What then?’

‘One of the others found it,’ Laura says. ‘I think there’s s—’

‘That’s my private property!’

‘Shh-shh. Yes, I know. But—’

‘Which one? It was Zsuzsi, wasn’t it?’

‘I don’t— Look, the thing is, where did it come from? I do need to know.’

With a great rush of falling blankets, Marina sits up. ‘Why do you care?’ she hisses. ‘It’s private, my private business. Why do I have to tell you everything?’

‘But—’

‘You have no idea,’ Marina says, beginning to cry, ‘what my life is like. You just do not know.’

‘Oh darling,’ Laura says, trying to pat her again, but the foot jerks away. ‘It’s not that. I just promised—’

‘What? Have you been talking about me?’

‘Just—’

‘Well, don’t.’

‘Please, sweetheart. They seem, it, I don’t know why they’re so worked up, to be honest,’ she says disloyally. ‘And I’m sure it’s nothing much. But the point is that they don’t like the book, or the author, you know we did talk about it, at school. This Alexander Viney—’

‘He’s a brilliant man.’

‘All right. Don’t push my hand away. Look, did you write to him? There’s nothing wrong with that. I once practically stalked Christopher Robin. I kept phoning his booksh—’

‘What do you mean, they don’t like him?’

‘Don’t be cross. And maybe it’s not a good idea, you know, getting into, well, correspondences with famous authors. Men. Though I’m not sure that’s it. Rozsi, I mean they just don’t approve . . . well. So better not. Or was it when you, when you met?’

‘I can’t believe,’ says Marina, ‘that you care about this. God. I can talk to who I like. I’m an adult! There’s no reason not to, so I will. I have enough problems without this.’

Laura feels her compassion falter. Has Marina truly not noticed, she wonders, that I look even worse than usual? Is this what becomes of the only child of an only child: self-absorption, the assumption that no one has anything else to think about or do? For almost the first time in their life together, she feels herself retract. ‘Darling—’

‘Look, can you just stop asking me things?’

So Laura does.

26

Saturday, 18 February

‘Milk?’

The situation is almost funny, in the way it might be if, for example, you were so afraid of sharks that you swam only in hotel pools, and then looked down and saw a fin.

On this, the last day of the half-term holiday, which Laura has largely spent battling the urge to ring Peter, Dr Alistair and Mitzi Sudgeon have come for coffee. The Farkases, on the way back from their end-of-holiday trip to the Dürer exhibition, met them at Bayswater Tube; they invited them back to Westminster Court. What a lovely surprise. Now Alistair is awkwardly reclining in the corner of the green sofa. Elegant Mitzi sits on one of the dining chairs. ‘I do not eat cake,’ she is saying, looking down at her little blue jacket, little high heels. ‘So rich. I am keeping my figure after so many children,
nem
?’

Laura presses her hands hard down on her thighs to contain her murderous urges. Killing Mitzi wouldn’t even be very difficult. She could just take her waist in both hands and snap her, like a wasp.

‘Ah,’ says Alistair Sudgeon. ‘Lowra, so kind.’ The great tragedy of his life is that he is not European. He pronounces her name like this in every possible circumstance. ‘Just a touch of cream, if I may.’

‘So.’ Mitzi turns over the saucer with her sensitive painter’s hands. She always makes Laura think of the Siege of Leningrad: she would sell you food, or eat you, with the same indifference. ‘It is like the Herend, the
Batthyány
pattern with the gold leafs, we had, my poor family, until—’ She shrugs. The eyes of the Farkases fill.

Alistair gazes upon Laura soulfully. She looks at her feet. She considers him, this person whose
membrum virile
, as he likes to call it, she has held, and thinks: if you try to have a word with me in the kitchen, I will run screaming from this flat.

‘By chance you have
svee
-tenair? Sugar, not so good. And young Marina is going to be a little doctor, I hear?
Yoy de édes
,’ says Mitzi. What I would give, thinks Laura, to know if she sounded this Hungarian when she arrived in London, or a little less.

‘
Von-
darefool. Is a noble profession.’

‘Yes, yes,’ says Ildi. ‘She is a good girl.
Nagyon édes
. A very sweet girl.’

Marina gives a sickly smile. She can’t still be grumpy about the history book, can she? The child’s infinite reserves of wounded pride are a marvel to Laura: a lesson in just how powerful, and one-sided, genetics can be.

‘I’ll just look for the saccharin,’ says Laura, and escapes.

Marina has had a revelation. She is justifiably furious with all of them, about the book, their prying into her life. She is curious too. Their obsession with Guy and his father seems beyond the usual oldies’ grudges; it seems, she thinks with a little excited mental gasp, more personal than that. Could it be something to do with the past? Lost in the mists? It could be anything: cruel jilting at an altar, land-girl love letters.

Or could it be something much more horrible than that?

I’d know, wouldn’t I, she thinks nervously, if it was to do with, well, the
war
?

It is remarkable how naïve, even in middle age, Laura can be. Escaping to the kitchen was never going to work, for long. She has underestimated Alistair.

‘Can I help you fill the kettle?’ he says from the doorway.

‘Thank you, but . . . there’s really no room.’

‘Nonsense,’ he says. ‘Allow me.’

She backs towards the Formica. He reaches across her, presses against her. He looks old and tired: a perfect match for Laura, if not his wife.

‘We must meet again soon,’ he whispers.

Laura shakes her head.

‘We have to talk,’ he hisses into her ear.

Jesus, she thinks: not the Dalmane. There is nothing between them and five pairs of Hungarian ears but vinyl tile-effect wallpaper, and a calendar of the masterpieces of Buckingham Palace.

‘Please, not now. But—’

‘It is important,’ he says. ‘Quickly, a word, if I may.’

His hands are clasped behind his back, like a television detective with horrors to reveal. She looks around for a receptacle into which to vomit or a surface on which to sit. She thinks: I’ll just confess, sack myself, and is opening her mouth to say so when he clears his throat.

‘Darling.’

‘What?’

‘Darl—’ he begins again.

‘No, I heard, but, Jesus, Alistair, she’s next door.’

He frowns. ‘Are you avoiding me?’ he says.

‘How could I?’

‘You know what I mean. What we had before. Stolen moments. Simple pleasures.’

‘I’ve just,’ she says stiffly, ‘been trying to do my work.’

‘That’s all well and good. But it’s been well over a fortnight since our conversation and—’

‘Which conversation?’

‘What? Laura, please. I must ask you not to toy with me.’

She has brought the crook of her arm up to her face and is sniffing it for comfort, like an idiot child. She tries to remember when, in the past weeks of grief and Peter, she and Alistair have talked about anything more rousing than cervical smears.

‘I telephoned you,’ he tells her. ‘Here, in your house.’

‘Flat. And it’s not my—’

‘Honestly, I’d have thought it would make more of an impact. I poured out my heart to you. I told you that—’

‘Oh, yes, then. Sorry.’

‘—that I couldn’t go on in this fashion. I was minded to do something hasty. I was considering, if you recall,’ he lowers his voice, but not quite enough, ‘leaving Mrs Sudgeon.’

‘Yes! Yes, I remember,’ she whispers, patting the air between them soothingly. ‘Oh, my God. Don’t tell me you have.’

‘Certainly not. I needed to be sure. But I had assumed that you were at least contemplating it.’

Laura takes a deep breath and sees the mess she is about to create. She has dreamed of saying: it is over. Or: Alistair, there is someone else. Stay with your wife. I never loved you. I want whatever I can have with Peter and after, or without, him I want no one at all. But how could she do it? He will fire her; he, or Mitzi. The Farkases will starve.

As she stands there, palpitating, something happens. A little spring of pragmatism rises through the London clay, past rusted pipes and oyster shells. It seeps through the foundations of Westminster Court, up into the concrete floor, the tired linoleum, until it touches her shoes, enters her skin. She realizes that if she simply says, ‘I will,’ she could change her fate entirely, make a home for Marina, be Peter’s ex-wife and supporter only, save her in-laws from sorrow and want. This is where she can take the saner, better choice.

He is waiting. That is what she should say. Her future pours from her fingers. Choose, say the Dalmane, the diaphragms, the scalpel blades.

27

Sunday, 19 February

Half-term exeat ends; boarders must report to their housemaster by 2 p.m.

They sit on the train back to Combe, not speaking. It is grey outside and grey within. Laura, wiping up apple purée from an insufficiently closed pickle jar, tries to guess what Marina wants her to say. Neither of them has eaten the salami sandwiches lovingly made by Rozsi, the soft oranges and rejected chocolates, runts of the litter, pale with neglect. I want, thinks Laura, a ginger-nut. They race past rain-whipped climbing frames and buddleia, thickets of leafless silver birches, the sort of scruffy sidings where crimes are hidden. The thought of a child, a runaway lost out there, makes her want to cry. This is England, which the Farkases so love. She slides down a little further in her seat and watches the rails whizz by, wishing for a merciful accident. She thinks: I should have worn something different. She will be ashamed of me. She should be. I have to ask about Combe now but how can I, on the way? And after last night, when I did everything wrong. I can’t exactly ring Bridget Tyce and tell her I haven’t had the courage to say a thing, to any of them. It’s too late, isn’t it? I’ve left it all too late.

Marina is in a state of outrage. They treat me like a child, she thinks. I am old enough to have sex, and they try to confiscate my goods. Because even if
Threads of Gold: Tudor and Stuart Finance
is not strictly confiscated, the very fact that she has had to hide it in her holdall is proof of their practically criminal attitude to private property. How could any family which believes in culture not want her to read history books?

She looks out of the window, hoping to spot a rabbit but there is, as ever, nothing: no foxes, no wild boar. A badger would be good, she thinks, about to say so to her mother. Then she remembers: I am ignoring her.

If only I could have told her about chemistry. I should have said something over half-term.

And now it creeps upon her like terror: she has frittered the holidays away. The days felt wasted before they had even begun; it was impossible to wring enough intensity out of them. She had anticipated making many cups of coffee for the oldies and being kind; why has this not happened? In fact, her only attempt to be a good granddaughter involved squatting at the feet of Ildi, wishing for a convenient footstool and encouraging her to tell tales of her childhood. She had imagined taping her with her Sony Walkman but Ildi got the giggles while telling a story about Zsuzsi and a bicycle, and then the others came in.

They are in Dorset already; the train shoots through Blandford station. The sky is blue and crisp this morning, prospectus-worthy in the sunshine.

She is pretending to be asleep so that she can gaze on her mother, gorging herself on thoughts of imminent loss and crushing regret. Have her mother’s hands always looked so old?

And here they are already, back in West Street. Her mother says, ‘Shall I settle you in?’

‘No, no need,’ says Marina from inside her block of ice. Anyway, Heidi is watching, like a sperm whale trawling for plankton. The place is full of other people’s families: Liza Church’s mother in caramel leather, Ali’s pretty twin sisters, heading like sacrificial lambkins for Combe next year. So her mother leaves; she doesn’t seem to care one bit that Marina is suffering. Marina starts unpacking her clean nightie and tangerines and embarrassing tub of
körözött
and new contact lenses and bag of ten pences and, by the time she has changed her mind and run after her mother, it is too late and she has to stand there, watching her shrink to the size of her hand, then her thumb, then her fingernail, striding further and further away.

In Westminster Court time moves slowly. Ildi discovers decaffeinated coffee. Rozsi is invited by Mrs Dobos to see
La Fille mal gardée
at Sadler’s Wells and ends up paying for a taxi all the way home. However, beneath the surface a current of excitement is gaining strength. Founder’s Day is only twenty-one days away and the Farkases are making plans.

Laura tries to look interested. She longs to see Marina, of course she does, but Alistair is waiting for his answer. Mitzi keeps bringing him Thermoses of coffee and collecting him in the car after work. And, down in Chiswick, a little boat sways gently with the river, while Peter grows iller or stronger without her.

She tries to forget him, or drag her mind away, or focus on her own life, to which, arguably, she ought to be hanging on. It does not work. She resorts to torture.

Other people starve themselves or self-flagellate. Laura has London. At some point during most of her conversations with patients, they will refer to one of the many landmarks where, during her brief marriage to Peter Farkas, she was let down by him. She takes it out, this shame, inspects it, rolls it around in her mouth. She lets herself luxuriate in her own stupidity: a salutary lesson. You once fell in love with a prick; she tells herself this until it sounds like poetry. It sticks as a pop song might in other brains less at risk. Some people, the most depraved, come to love their punishment. She wallows in her humiliation and anger until she has remembered every detail of each shoddy betrayal, for which only a fool could forgive him.