Read Online Almost English by Charlotte Mendelson - Free Book Online

Marina wants to ask Mrs Long if they were put together this term because they are equally unpopular, but fears the answer. Anyway, unlike Marina, even Heidi has friends.
    Guy saves her. Because she has a boy to visit, the West Street girls don’t mind if she misses Social, but their indulgent smile and references to ‘happy hour’ confuse her. ‘It’s not that ,’ she says, burning with shame and pride. Nevertheless, the next time she goes she wears her contact lenses and then just sits blinking on Guy’s beanbag, feeling like a fool.
    He is quite funny for a Fiver but not at all attractive: too pasty and puffy-haired for that. He likes explaining in detail why he fancies Amanda Stapleton, known as Knobule: her tennis shoulders, her long flicky hair. His maleness is irrelevant, like a dog’s. Later, in her room, she thinks about Simon Flowers just as much as before. Besides, she has work to do: an assessment of Hardy’s nature poetry, the respective properties of chlorophyll- a C 55 H 72 O 5 N 4 Mg and chlorophyll- b C 55 H 70 O 6 N 4 Mg. She writes on and on in brown-black ink, past midnight, past two, and although her backache is worse, and sometimes she doesn’t seem to be breathing properly, and her heart aches, she tries to keep her mind on the golden prize: Cambridge. Isn’t that the point of it all? Simon Flowers will be there too. They will punt, or bowl, or play croquet, in an intellectual yet passionate union, miles away from Combe.
    As she falls asleep she thinks of him chastely in bed in Stourpaine, and barely misses her mother. Or, rather, discovers that if she refuses to let herself, closes herself to even the possibility of pain, she can bear not to be with her. Besides, it is safer for the Farkases not to be thought about and, although forcing her mind away is like bending metal, she is Rozsi’s grandchild. She manages.
    Then everything changes.
    On Saturday nights they are allowed, Within Reason, their freedom. This means alcohol. The Combe Abbey rules about alcohol are perfectly clear: never before the sixth form and, if every term a Fiver stomach or two has to be pumped, there is no need to discuss it. On returning from dinner out (never just drinking) on a Saturday night, Combe pupils must report to their housemaster. Why the housemasters never notice that everyone is completely drunk is a mystery. It has happened to Marina twice already; she remembers nothing at all of the first time, and the second she insisted on walking in a straight line and broke a chair leg. There are always awful stories: paralytic staggerings into the arms of the headmaster’s wife, vomit in the Chapel, turds. Today is the birthday of Selina Knocker, the sweet but stupid child of the head of the navy who is, physically at least, in all Marina’s classes. This must be why Marina is invited, but Guy is a Fiver, too young to be in town after dark. So why is he allowed, even if their parents do know each other? She tries to ask, but he just grins and says, ‘Ve haff vays.’
    She is wearing contact lenses. Dust and drizzle and her own fringe keep blowing into her eyes as she walks along the dark East Combe Road, next to Selina’s cousin Gypsy. No one brings coats, let alone their great-aunt’s umbrella from Fenwick’s, so Marina’s teeth are chattering, which she is trying to disguise with conversation. Because this part of Dorset is so very flat and ringed by hillsides, she often has a feeling of being cut off from the rest of England, as if they are walking at the bottom of a meteor hole. If only, she thinks, I could see London from here, even just a bit of Esher, I would know they were safe.
    Gypsy, Jippo, is unfriendly but very beautiful, with long brown legs and big blinky blue eyes. Apparently she has just been skiing and seduced an instructor. Marina is struggling to find common ground.
    ‘Where are we going?’ she asks, after an awkward silence through which Jippo sails, serene. ‘I mean, I know the name,