Almost English (24 page)

‘You . . .’

‘I know what I am.’

She has a pressing desire to hit him. She is hugging herself already; now she grips herself more tightly, like a referee. ‘Do you? At last. Well, I don’t think that you have the faintest understanding of how—’

‘Irresponsible, selfish, blah, blah. OK, yeah. It’s completely true. And, thing is, I still am.’

‘Are you
proud
of it? Is that what they taught you? God. You are unbearable.’

‘I know,’ he says. ‘But being married, sorry, being a good son, a dad after what happened with, you know, my dad, all of that. I couldn’t do it. And the worse I got the more I hated— well, it’s obvious. So bailing just seemed the best— and then it got harder. Oh screw it. I got what I deserved. But, you know what? I still think it was better.’

A thrill of anger rolls up through her. ‘What?’

‘I know it’s been tight. But I’d have cocked you up some other way if I’d stayed. You . . . both.’

‘Hah.’

‘I meant to keep away from you. I shouldn’t have written.’

‘Right,’ says Laura. She thinks: I’ve had enough of this self-indulgent lunacy, this rooster of a man. She picks up her bag. Merely the thought of her pills in their dim bottles, the sugar coating, soothes her.

‘There’s one more thing,’ he says.

Another woman. Probably dozens. You fool, she thinks, returning from the land of the dead, to nothing. ‘What?’

‘Maybe not.’ He looks, by his standards, almost serious. ‘Tell you next time.’

‘There won’t
be
a next time. This is the worst, stupidest, thing I’ve ever done. I’m not just . . . I . . .’ She thinks: I could tell him how bad a mother I’ve been, and maybe he’d step in. How much worse could he be?

‘I’m not sure.’ He gives an awkward cough. ‘No, let’s leave it. Better not.’

‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ she says, ‘you’ve started.’ She wants to be alone with her hoard of misery. ‘Pete, enough drama. Just tell me.’

He pulls a strange downwards smile. ‘Bit of cancer,’ he says.

Part Two

24

The alumni of Combe have always been a disappointment. Thanks to its faintly liberal leanings, a modest endowment by a relative of fat Queen Anne, the notable ugliness of its original buildings and its belated introduction of everything from laboratories to girls, the school has never attracted pupils of quite the calibre of Rugby and Marlborough. The prospectus makes much of those Old Combeians it can claim: a spy, an unpopular post-war deputy prime minister; a racing driver expelled from the Remove; and, curiously, several authors of second-rate and now morally ambiguous children’s books.

Schools, however, need history. They need money even more. Three headmasters ago, the financially suspect Captain Porteous invented most of its ancient traditions, climaxing at the end of the Hilary term, close to his own birthday in mid-March, with Founder’s Day: a week-long spectacular of concerts, rugby matches, Evensong, fund-raising, feasts and, on the final day, an embarrassing pageant of Combe boys dressed as famous historical characters, processing around the Founder’s Lawn to a marching band. On Founder’s Day rests Combe’s reputation in the school guides as ‘tremendously arty’. ‘Participation is a hallowed Combe tradition,’ the pupils are frequently reminded; whether or not they can act or sing, they must join in. It is, the Uppers will tell you, an almighty snore. But the Lowers, Marina’s year, and the younger boys still have high hopes for Founder’s Day week, currently a month away. Their parents and godparents stay near by; it is a chance to show off. And there is, to an extent, misrule. Things might happen. Virginities might be lost.

Sunday, 12 February

Matins: Chapel, 9 a.m., the Rev. Jonathan Hitch, vicar of Melcombe, hymns: 285, 57, 297; half-term exeat begins

Marina is home at last. She has survived another half-term of Combe, despite being practically deranged with homesickness. Now she is ready to fall into her mother’s arms, climb inside her pocket, be swallowed alive like a baby catfish. I will, she vows, never be irritated with any of my family, or the burning radiators, or nosy Hungarians asking about my periods, ever again.

How long does that last? Ten minutes? Five?

On her very first evening home, the oldies start making suggestions: a haircut; tea at Lady Renate’s; coming in to Femina to be shown off. Everything makes her feel guilty; if one of them asks the slightest question about chemistry, she thinks, it will all come out.

But they do not ask.

There is nothing to do. The Ealing Girls’ half-term isn’t until next week. Toiling beside her mother in the tiny kitchen, every single maternal feature – her floury hair, her sugary hands, her parsleyed apron – is unbearable. She looks at the back of her head, looks at the frying pan, sighs regretfully. Her hopes for a correspondence with Guy’s mother have been fruitless but, she thinks, I could write again. She might invite me. Maybe she’s already decided that she will.

‘Are you sure,’ Marina asks, ‘that no one has rung for me?’

‘No, sweetheart.’

‘Because I’m expecting, um, someone, a friend, to ring about homework. Just a friend. She’s called Nancy.’

She knows that she sounds ridiculous, that she is stirring the pan of tomato sauce much too quickly. But her mother seems satisfied. Really, anyone would think she wanted to be deceived.

On Monday her mother and grandmother go to work. Ildi is off to the library; Zsuzsi is meeting Perlmutter Sári at the swimming pool: ‘Marinaka, don’t you vant to get slim?’ They have left her bean-and-sausage soup, meatloaf and sliced-up oranges for lunch, money for the new Picasso exhibition and the instruction to stop biting her lip, ‘because,’ Rozsi says, ‘it make you look like mad girl.’ And, most horribly of all, tomorrow is Valentine’s Day. Is it possible that someone could be at a mixed, in fact largely a boys’, school, and receive nothing? She fears it is. She never has had a real one. If Guy’s mother or sister asks what she had this year, she is going to lie.

Waiting for the post, in case a card has come early, is maddening. She has a furtive look at Hungary in her atlas, but instead of Pálaszlany in the Carpathian mountains, where Mr Viney said, she can only find somewhere called Polslav in Russia. What if they ask her back to Stoker and he mentions it again?

What is Mr Viney doing right now? And Mrs Viney? Are they thinking of her?

Many doctors nowadays believe that an informed patient is a happy patient. They have helpful charts and anatomical models, purchased from the pharmaceutical reps. It isn’t hard to do.

But Alistair is not one of these.

How then can Laura find out what she needs to know? Marina’s biology textbooks have told her nothing; they seem to edit disease from them, as if it is more important to understand pond weed than human weakness. Somewhere in this surgery may be information which could save Peter, or at least answer the questions she did not dare to ask.

So Laura leafs furtively through out-of-date drugs manuals. She pays more attention than usual to the ailments of patients waiting to be seen. At last, as the surgery is about to close, she finds a small plastic model of the human torso at the back of a filing cabinet.

‘You finished the referral yet for Mrs Trent?’ calls Marg. ‘Only He’s asking.’

‘Hold on,’ says Laura. ‘I’m just . . . I . . .’

After all these years, how can she be so confused about organs? These little red beans must be kidneys. She touches one with her finger; in truth, she strokes it. If only, Laura thinks, one could simply stare at them, like those metal hearts and legs in Mexican churches, and they would heal. In desperate circumstances it should be possible; but what if you did, and it used up your miracle allowance, and then your child needed healing too?

On the bus home she gives herself a talking-to. You can’t spend five weeks longing for half-term, then spend the whole time in a daze, dreading the day your daughter goes back but trying to avoid her. Did you fill up on her last night, while you had the chance? Were you patient, indulgent, gripped by all those stories of tedious Pa Kendall and cruel Pa Pond? You were not.

It is only when she is walking down Moscow Road that she realizes that she has failed to send Marina a Valentine’s card. She has never forgotten before, through all those years when simple mother love, and embossed kittens, were all her daughter needed; through teenagerhood, agonizing about how, with a simple signature, to convey faith in future romance without giving false hope that it was either from some spotty Ealing boy or, worse still, her father. But this year, Laura senses, her usual unsatisfactory compromise:

?
[Mum]

will not do. It is so easy to outrage Marina; she is becoming more, not less, prickly with age. Well, Laura thinks, letting herself in through the flat door; too late. I can’t start faking postmarks now.

‘Hello,’ she calls.

Then she sees the flowers.

There is a bunch of roses on the dining table: at least ten, big fat creamy ones. She breathes in sweetness. Marina is looking at her over the top of them, like a suspicious hare. Laura’s mouth is dry; she hardly dares to ask.

‘What are these?’

Marina swallows audibly, then flushes. ‘I don’t . . . I, do you know it’s Valentine’s Day tomorrow?’

Laura nods.

‘But I ran after the man from the florist,’ Marina says. ‘And he just smirked. It was so
rude
, as if I didn’t need to know. I, you didn’t, um, expect something?’

‘Of course not,’ her mother says a little sharply.

Would it be strange to touch them? Their petals are curved like tiny breasts. When she first saw them and thought ‘Peter’, she was being stupid; she can see that now. What she has to do is refuse to think of him.

‘Come on, sweetheart,’ she says, brightly ridiculous. ‘You must know who sent them to you.’

Marina’s face cracks into an enormous smile. She looks down. ‘So you think they’re for me?’ she says.

‘Who else could they be for?’

‘Well, no one,’ says Marina.

Laura pretends to look delighted. ‘Well, how fantastic,’ she says. ‘But it’s that chap, Guy, surely?’

‘Oh, do you think?’ Marina looks oddly downcast.

‘Well, darling, who else could it be, if they’re for you? Although, well, let’s see before we worry about that.’

‘I don’t—’

‘Wait a minute. Wasn’t there a card?’

‘A what?’

‘You mad girl,’ Laura says. ‘Look, that little white envelope.’

‘Oh, that,’ Marina says, ‘I thought that was the bill,’ and grabs it. Her hands seem slippery; she has to tear it with her teeth. ‘Hang on,’ she says. Then her face falls further. ‘Oh.’

Laura looks away, to preserve her modesty, but can it truthfully be said that, in her own heart, a tiny spark of hope does not sputter back into life? Let us assume not; she is a mother. She takes the card.

Édes Zsuzsi,

she reads.

Virág virágnak.

Imré.

Behind her, Marina’s bedroom door slams shut. Laura simply closes up her heart.

25

Tuesday, 14 February

Nothing from Peter. He said that he would be in touch when he had news, which could mean anything. Laura’s imaginings grow more fanciful: ghostly messages during the
Six O’Clock News,
envelopes dropped by passing doves on to her typewriter keys. She decides to go back to the boat, or write a letter, hundreds of times a day. In the meantime he is always with her, breathing into her ear as she strap-hangs on the bus to Baker Street, or squashed beside her in the bath, sweat and steam on his forehead, their sternums together, mouth to mouth.

Yet every morning, when she wakes on her sofa, itching with the dust of ages, she is coshed again on the head by the fact of his disease. Or is it a fact? Could there be a mistake, or a chance of salvation? It is impossible to concentrate at work, what with the constant flow of rival medical crises: consultants’ details, urology reports, investigations into cataclysmic tumours of the bowel and larynx and tongue, about which once she would have shed private tears, and now is almost immune.

Can kidney cancer really be so much better? Peter said it is. Remission: in his case is that permanent, or merely retreating? She could hardly have asked Peter himself. He says that, now that they have removed ‘the bugger’, he will be fine, ‘if they got all of it,’ which any day his surgeon will reveal.

And how in God’s name does she tell Rozsi and the others about this?

For almost the first time in her life she cannot eat. She is distracted, even with Marina. Mitzi Sudgeon comes to work with nourishing beef and barley soup for her husband and Laura cannot even be bothered to hate her. Soon she will be fired, in any case, for poor administration if not for the pills, and then how will the family manage?

Marina is standing in the phone box outside Queensway Tube, trying to summon her nerve to dial. It has not been easy to escape. Rozsi has been increasingly determined to take her out with Mrs Dobos and the Dobos grandchild; Marina has only just managed to postpone it until this afternoon.

She has planned this for days. Her shaking fingers hold a bus ticket on which she has listed some conversational subjects in case Mr Viney answers, or Mrs.

However, by the time Guy answers the phone, Marina has forgotten even the most basic pleasantries. ‘Christ,’ he says. ‘You’re always so stroppy.’

‘I’m
not
,’ says Marina. ‘It’s just how my voice comes out.’ But she can’t talk to him any more; since the kissing she has forgotten how. She has gone socially backwards. When she hangs up, the chill wind of splitting up is whistling around the telephone booth. Please, no, she thinks. Don’t chuck me. How will I ever see your parents again?

‘It’s Laura,’ Laura is saying into the surgery telephone, with an eye on the door. ‘Peter’s, well, his— I really do need him to ring.’

‘I do not know,’ says Suze, Jensen’s girlfriend. She has the kind of American accent favoured by beautiful Scandinavians with relaxed attitudes towards sex. ‘I will see him later. Maybe you will try then.’