Almost English (35 page)

Standing now at the War Memorial in the drizzle, watching Combe’s young soldiers stamping and shouting and waving presumably plastic bayonets, she can imagine herself grabbing a weapon from a boy and running riot. How dare that man, that family, take advantage of Marina’s ignorance? Poor Zoltan cheated, denied of his inheritance and then, and then—

She looks at her daughter, just as Marina turns and stares back. She seems very flushed: tonsillitis, probably, which would explain her oddness yesterday. Maybe the only wise thing I’ve done so far, she thinks, was not to have told Peter that the Viney son, grandson, is at Combe. I may have made my life as complicated and unmanageable as possible by failing to tell anyone that Pete is alive, but at least he won’t be blundering onto the lawn at Combe, drunk and shaven-headed, to accuse the Viney father of embezzlement.

Isn’t that Marina’s housemaster, bellowing at the little boys? I can’t ask Marina about last night, Laura decides; she’s barely speaking today. Must I tell her off about going to the pub? I suppose I should, and at least then I can stop wondering who those people at the Crown and Mitre with her were, the man who was standing up, facing the window. He could be any respectable adult – a teacher, a parent – but, still, should Marina have been there, unsupervised, with him?

She tells herself this, but she knows the truth.

The last quill-waving Elizabethan poet and bowing courtier and merrie minstrel have passed. The historical pageantry is over, at least for this year. Marina has taken two Pro Plus, which was a mistake on top of instant coffee. Her brain feels tangled up in an enormous knot; her heart is fluttering but the rest of her is still half asleep. Everyone at school now will have heard her family’s accents, and seen their shabby suitcases propped beside them while the CCF marched past. When she comes back next term she might have a nickname, a horrible one.

She thinks: how can I come back?

Except of course she can, and will; she has had that thought countless times since starting at Combe, yet here she is, still a coward. Everyone is congregating on the Founder’s Lawn, although the champagne reception isn’t for a couple of hours, and then it will be Prize-Giving, with A Special Guest. All this time she has not let herself look at Mrs Viney, who is frankly beautiful in a greenish suit with a long straight skirt, but she can resist no longer. Everything about her, her hair, her skin, her figure, her smile, makes Marina want to cry. She should catch Mrs Viney’s eye, give her a wave or a smile before she drives off to Stoker, but Mrs Viney does not look at her once.

So Marina kisses Rozsi and the others goodbye; she tells them that she has to go and talk to a master, which even her mother believes. Her legs feel stiff; her bottom lip is trembling. Off she goes.

Laura, at the first possible moment, is going to do something about those Vineys. But what? She needs guidance, but no one can give it other than her mother-in-law and the aunts, whom she is escorting towards Garthgate and last night’s taxi rank. How can it be so difficult to ask any of them what happened? Laura’s mother liked nothing more than an ailment or a crisis, but the in-laws’ refusal to discuss painful matters has grown upon Laura like a shell. Upsetting poor Ildi still further, even approaching Rozsi, whom she is hurting so much already, would feel like a criminal act.

‘
Dar
-link’ she hears behind her and obediently she turns. She is already carrying both big suitcases, but now Zsuzsi is standing in the middle of the pavement, oblivious to passers-by, holding out her handbag for her niece-in-law to take.

‘It is
ri-
diculos,’ says Zsuzsi. ‘I do not lift. I am old lady.’ Rozsi and Ildi, crossing Upper Garth Street arm in arm, are talking, their old heads close together. She sees Rozsi shrug. This morning, with her sunglasses and lipstick, Zsuzsi is wearing a short silver-fox jacket borrowed from Perlmutter Sári, her black ‘
sol-
opette-troo-sair,
vair-
y smart’, a silky blooze in silver and black, silver wedge-heeled sling-backs and a great gold ‘necklet’ like a medal. Her perfume is stunningly powerful. Instead of taking her bag, Laura puts a hand on her arm.

‘I need to ask you something,’ she says.

39

Marina is tearing in half a term’s worth of artistic postcards. She can’t bring them home to Westminster Court, with Combe’s polluting address upon them; nor can she throw out all these sweet family messages. This seems the logical solution. What should she do with her uniform? It feels like folding up plague-infested cloth to bring into the flat. She is behind schedule already. West Street girls are supposed to have finished packing last night.

She is just watching Heidi lock her vanity case when someone knocks on the door.

‘Hello, Hel, Heidi. Heidi. Marina sweetheart,’ says her mother. ‘What are you doing?’

‘What are
you
?’ says Marina. ‘You’re meant to wait outside. I said. Will we manage all my stuff ?’ She is sounding unwelcoming; she is past the point of self-control.

‘Lovely to see you, Mrs Farkas,’ says Heidi, the creep. She starts saying things like ‘Could you possibly tell me if my valise is going to close?’ and ‘I don’t know how to get the Blu-Tack off’.

Marina waits for Heidi to go, unable even to look at her any longer. She needs to start touching home-related objects. Her hands twitch with the effort of keeping them to her sides. She pretends to be straightening her mattress; it looks like a hospital bed after somebody has died.

‘I must dash,’ Heidi says at last. ‘My father’s here. I heard his Jag pull up.’

Now they are alone, looking at each other. There is a strange warm heavy silence.

Marina says, ‘Actually I don’t feel very well.’

Her mother sits down on the edge of the mattress of death. She says, ‘I need to talk to you,’ and Marina falls to the floor.

Laura thinks: she’s dead. I have to die.

Then Marina blinks. ‘What happened?’ She sits up. ‘Am I all right?’

‘Oh, thank God, I don’t know. What did happen? I think you fainted, my poor love. Do you feel bad?’

‘Did I?’ says Marina. ‘Really?’

‘Are you feeling sick at all?’

‘No. Actually, yes. Well, a bit weird.’

‘Look, sit, no, like this, your head . . . that’s right.’

‘Like in a book,’ says Marina, muffled, but it sounds as if she is smiling.

‘Haven’t you fainted before? I should know that, if you have, but—’

‘Never. I’m just tired,’ and, briefly, she leans her forehead like a pet against Laura’s upper arm. Laura stiffens. Her desire to seize Marina and hold her is so strong but she has learned this, at least, from motherhood: do not react to love, or it will go.

‘Are you sure?’ she asks in an unnatural voice.

‘Sure.’ Marina takes her head away, gives a little smile, brushes her hair from her face. Then she says: ‘Mum, I need to— Look. There’s a thing.’

So this is it, thinks Laura with the benefit of foresight: she has found out about Peter. I have to confess everything and then we will be permanently estranged.

Tell her, says what remains of her conscience.

Where should she begin? She can’t just come out with: ‘Your father is alive but maybe not for long and is sorry and wants to see you and by the way I want him all over again.’

‘Look, Mum . . .’

But, if she tells Marina, in the crying and blaming which will follow the story about the grandparents, and Mr Viney, will be lost. Isn’t that more urgent? What if they bump into each other and have a hideous two-family brawl on bloody Garthgate? Prioritize, Laura tells herself, but she is scared to. She knows that she must tell the old story first but not how to make herself say the words.

‘Sweetheart,’ she says quietly, ‘just let me . . . I need to think.’ She grips her left hand with her right: go on, she urges herself, viciously.

‘Mum— Mummy. Mum. I—’

And what happens if—

‘
Mum
.’

Marina is looking at her: her dear pale face. ‘I have something to tell you,’ Laura says bravely.

‘No,’ says Marina. ‘There’s something I’ve got to tell
you
.’

Two seconds before, Marina swore herself to secrecy. But Mr Viney keeps bursting into her brain; she hadn’t meant to say anything, but now she has begun. This is a desperate situation. Her mother looks worried. What if, thinks Marina, I tell her and she goes on the rampage? Shouts at Mr Viney?
Mrs
Viney? Oh God.

She clears her throat. ‘Look, will you concentrate? It’s really important. I . . . I can’t deal with it by myself. I need you.’

‘I’m listening,’ says her mother.

‘I did a mad thing.’

‘How mad? Oh Christ. Marina, not now.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘What have you done? Hell, no, no, don’t cry, my . . . don’t use your sleeve, love, hang on, there’s one in my bag. But tell me quickly, you know I hate—’

‘I . . . I can’t be a doctor any more.’

‘What? Of course you can.’

Now she has started down the wrong route, how can she go back? ‘I . . . I really can’t.’

‘Why?’

‘I can’t say.’

‘Marina. Don’t be silly. Say.’

‘I, I dropped chemistry. For history.’

‘Hang on,’ says her mother. ‘I don’t . . . you . . . sorry, what?’

‘I know,’ Marina says, blowing her nose. ‘It makes no sense.’

‘But how did you, what did you—’

‘It was so awful, not telling you. Don’t be cross.’

‘I’m not cross,’ her mother says. ‘But . . . I’m completely confused. You can’t have. Why?’

‘I don’t even . . . it’s complicated,’ Marina says. Then she thinks of something which may help. ‘OK. You know that family I know? The, the Vineys?’

‘What?’

‘Guy’s, you know, Guy, my boyfriend, Guy?’

‘What about them?’

‘It was his father. No, don’t be— honestly. He’s an expert. He advised me. And I don’t even want to go to Cambridge any more. Don’t look like that. Please, Mum. Honestly, he’s . . .’ She has practised this speech so often; never mind that it is nonsense since last night. ‘I just want you to understand—’

Her mother reaches out her hand. She takes hold of Marina’s shoulder and gives it a little shake.

‘Darling,’ she says. ‘There’s something I need you to know.’

Of course Laura has to tell her. The Farkases are right; there are things children should never be told, but an emergency seems to be slowly unfurling. So she tries.

And, naturally, fails. Is this because she is distracted by Peter, or because she is a bad mother? At first Marina is only interested in defending the Viney family: their refinement, their style, their elegance. The way that they never drop their t’s.

‘
I
don’
t
,’ says Laura. ‘Do I?’

‘All the time,’ says Marina crossly. ‘I’m always trying to s— to help you remember. People would take you more seriously.’

With a supermaternal effort, Laura manages not to smite her child. She merely says, ‘Sweetheart, you’ve misunderstood. It’s because of your grandfather. It’s what they did to him.’

Marina looks blank. She knows nothing about this. Laura explains what she can: something financial, not once but twice, to do with the Viney grandparents’ business—

‘Oh, that’s Aston,’ Marina says airily. ‘They’re Aston. They told me. Have you heard of them, they’re very—’

‘That’s the one,’ Laura says. ‘So you knew all along. I can’t get over the idea that good old English Aston, all that Argyle check and leather at Harrods—’

‘Oh my God. So did we own it?’

‘No. No. We’d hardly . . . anyway, no. Actually, I’m not sure.’

Laboriously she explains what she can about the stolen estate, the friends, a tangle of disloyalty half a century ago, among cornfields and silver birches none of them will ever see. ‘I think,’ she says, ‘because they carried on being friends, even once they’d taken over Zoltan’s father’s estate and turned it into Aston, you know, made it this famous English name, they needed money again, at some point. In the Seventies.’

‘When I was alive?’

In her distress Marina is polishing and polishing her glasses. Laura thinks: I could tell her right now how much her contact-lens losing has cost us. No, of course I can’t. Poor child. ‘Yes,’ she says. ‘Very small, but yes.’

‘Guy’s grandparents, this is?’

‘Well, yes. His father too; that’s the problem. I think Zoltan, well, he lent them quite a chunk of money. Not that we want you to worry about money, my love, we’re fine, really. Fine. But Femina was doing well, in those days, and they were old friends, and . . .’

‘But,’ says Marina, ‘
why
would they carry on being friends, after—’

‘I know. I thought that. But, well, it was because of Rozsi. The Viney grandmother, Mag—
Mog-
dolna, Peggy, the founder of Aston, was—’

‘English?’

‘
No
. She was Rozsi’s best friend. So there were best friends, Zoltan and Tibor, hanging out at ski lodges together or something, and they each married woman friends, Rozsi and Mrs . . . this Magdolna. I asked Zsuzsi about this, you see, and she said, “Rozsi loved her,” and I said, “Why?” and she said, “Because she was beautiful.”’

Marina is frowning. ‘Are you sure?’

‘I know. But yes. Oh, and hang on, the Vineys were something else then, Sol, Szos . . . Doesn’t matter. And something went wrong.’

‘What went wrong?’

‘Szoll . . . something. I think. She didn’t say. Maybe one of Zoltan’s brothers—’

‘He didn’t have any brothers.’

‘Yes he did.’

‘No he . . . they’ve never even mentioned them. Oh,’ says Marina. ‘Oh, God, I see. So when did they— how many?’

‘Three, I think. Never mind. Don’t think about it now. Anyway, the point is that they, the Vineys, I think, they didn’t pay the money back. And so, well, it went wrong for Femina. And . . . and so Mrs Dobos took it over. She was connected too. To all of it, I think. She knew everyone.’ She should say about Zoltan’s death, the timing, the odd silence; no, not now. Marina looks washed out.

‘Hang on,’ she says feebly. ‘Were they all cousins too?’