Read Online Almost English by Charlotte Mendelson - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Charlotte Mendelson
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and jagged pressing leaves, the distant footsteps, are horrible. Their curfew is eleven; breaking it is punished with rustication, like sex. She smiles nervously, consolingly. He is just a Fiver, showing off. ‘Shall we—’
He moves closer: not exactly a friend. Although he has never shown the slightest sign of interest, indeed has discussed further his inexplicable desire for Knobule Stapleton, an atmosphere is developing which even she cannot miss. It fills her with sadness; she had such high hopes. In all these long years when nobody has wanted to kiss her, she has been ready, memorizing Stevie Smith’s ‘I like to get off with people’ and e.e. cummings’s ‘may i feel?’ until she and Ursula knew them, literally, backwards. She understood passion and desire, and how they would feel when they found her.
But boys like him, she realizes, about to hatch, must need girlfriends too. And if they can’t have Knobule Stapleton they will aim lower, and lower, until they end up with her.
7
Many miles away, in west London, Marina’s mother sits at the dining table, making notes on the index cards she keeps in a folder labelled
LAURA’S WORK
Laura is a receptionist. Not even a good one, as Alistair, in his capacity as her employer, makes perfectly clear. She spends her working day in a morass of shame and minor disasters, not putting telephone calls through, hiding substandard photocopies, worrying that she has forgotten to tell someone that they are pregnant, dying, both. Her job has, however, three advantages: a constant supply of memo pads and ball point pens labelled CYNOSTEX FOR CYSTITIS AND AGROLAST: THE LARGER HERNIA PATCH ; proximity to Alistair, which is, she reminds herself often, the enabler and not the sole cause of their passion; and, most importantly, patient confidentiality. Even Zsuzsi respects this; most of Laura’s paperwork is about verrucas, or mump vaccinations, or any of the many areas of human suffering in which she has no interest. Consequently, every day Laura lugs home a pile of non-exciting correspondence, and in the margins, in light pencil, she expresses herself:
Oh God rescue me. A: won’t you ring? Marina Marina Marina God I can’t stand this.
What choice does she have? Here in her candlewick sarcophagus, space is limited. Her bedding lives in a suitcase beside the bookshelves; forty years’ worth of childhood books and over-exposed Polaroids tangle in her mother-in-law’s spare drawer. If Laura kept a diary under the sofa cushions, someone would find it, yet there is much in her mind which needs an outlet. Such as, for example, her feelings about the fourth great advantage of her job: a little drawer, a little key, a cupboard in Dr Sudgeon’s office containing Tramadol, Valium, Temazepam, of whose comforting existence she has been thinking more and more. Would, she wonders now, purely theoretically, twenty be enough?
This is how it begins: an ordinary teenage love story. He never, obviously, contravenes the Six Inch Rule by touching her in public, or is affectionate in private, or acknowledges their intimacy where others could hear. It is better this way, given that he is in the year below. However, everyone, from children in the Freshers to the head boy and captain of rugby, Thomas ‘Tom’ Thomson, seems to find her less freakish now. It’s like being married. They have a routine. Girls are not allowed in boys’ rooms after Hall, but luckily Guy is helping the Freshers build a feathered gondola for The Merchant of Venice , in which Marina has a humiliatingly small part. Drama at Combe Abbey is spectacularly lavish, like its sport. Participation, the pupils are frequently told, ‘is what makes a well-rounded Combe Man’, although most of them stick to rugby. Guy, however, has been roped in by his housemaster, Pa Stenning, to help with the props. And so, three or four times a week, Marina accompanies him beneath the stage of Divinity Hall.
Although the handsome
He moves closer: not exactly a friend. Although he has never shown the slightest sign of interest, indeed has discussed further his inexplicable desire for Knobule Stapleton, an atmosphere is developing which even she cannot miss. It fills her with sadness; she had such high hopes. In all these long years when nobody has wanted to kiss her, she has been ready, memorizing Stevie Smith’s ‘I like to get off with people’ and e.e. cummings’s ‘may i feel?’ until she and Ursula knew them, literally, backwards. She understood passion and desire, and how they would feel when they found her.
But boys like him, she realizes, about to hatch, must need girlfriends too. And if they can’t have Knobule Stapleton they will aim lower, and lower, until they end up with her.
7
Many miles away, in west London, Marina’s mother sits at the dining table, making notes on the index cards she keeps in a folder labelled
LAURA’S WORK
Laura is a receptionist. Not even a good one, as Alistair, in his capacity as her employer, makes perfectly clear. She spends her working day in a morass of shame and minor disasters, not putting telephone calls through, hiding substandard photocopies, worrying that she has forgotten to tell someone that they are pregnant, dying, both. Her job has, however, three advantages: a constant supply of memo pads and ball point pens labelled CYNOSTEX FOR CYSTITIS AND AGROLAST: THE LARGER HERNIA PATCH ; proximity to Alistair, which is, she reminds herself often, the enabler and not the sole cause of their passion; and, most importantly, patient confidentiality. Even Zsuzsi respects this; most of Laura’s paperwork is about verrucas, or mump vaccinations, or any of the many areas of human suffering in which she has no interest. Consequently, every day Laura lugs home a pile of non-exciting correspondence, and in the margins, in light pencil, she expresses herself:
Oh God rescue me. A: won’t you ring? Marina Marina Marina God I can’t stand this.
What choice does she have? Here in her candlewick sarcophagus, space is limited. Her bedding lives in a suitcase beside the bookshelves; forty years’ worth of childhood books and over-exposed Polaroids tangle in her mother-in-law’s spare drawer. If Laura kept a diary under the sofa cushions, someone would find it, yet there is much in her mind which needs an outlet. Such as, for example, her feelings about the fourth great advantage of her job: a little drawer, a little key, a cupboard in Dr Sudgeon’s office containing Tramadol, Valium, Temazepam, of whose comforting existence she has been thinking more and more. Would, she wonders now, purely theoretically, twenty be enough?
This is how it begins: an ordinary teenage love story. He never, obviously, contravenes the Six Inch Rule by touching her in public, or is affectionate in private, or acknowledges their intimacy where others could hear. It is better this way, given that he is in the year below. However, everyone, from children in the Freshers to the head boy and captain of rugby, Thomas ‘Tom’ Thomson, seems to find her less freakish now. It’s like being married. They have a routine. Girls are not allowed in boys’ rooms after Hall, but luckily Guy is helping the Freshers build a feathered gondola for The Merchant of Venice , in which Marina has a humiliatingly small part. Drama at Combe Abbey is spectacularly lavish, like its sport. Participation, the pupils are frequently told, ‘is what makes a well-rounded Combe Man’, although most of them stick to rugby. Guy, however, has been roped in by his housemaster, Pa Stenning, to help with the props. And so, three or four times a week, Marina accompanies him beneath the stage of Divinity Hall.
Although the handsome
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