was not afraid of Lionel – she was of Jessy – and did not find it hard to enquire, ‘Then, you’ve changed your mind about schools, is that it?’
At this Jessy let out a snort, of a connubial kind, meant to be noted, like putting up your hand at a meeting to register Nay.
‘You could say our father has changed his mind,’ said Thomas.
‘Yes, you could say that,’ said Edward.
‘I’m not saying I was wrong about you two,’ pronounced Lionel, flinging his silvery mane about while he speared roast potatoes judiciously on to his plate.
‘You wouldn’t ever admit it,’ said Jessy, confronting him, while the concentrated exasperation of years of disputation flared her nostrils. ‘When have you ever admitted you were wrong about anything?’
‘Isn’t it a bit late for this altercation?’ enquired Edward.
‘For better or worse,’ said Thomas. ‘But the birds in your nest couldn’t agree.’
‘Oh, worse, worse,’ said Jessy at once, ‘of course worse.’ But from her look at Thomas it could be seen that what she meant was her bitter acknowledgement that his highest ambition was to manage a pop group. ‘As for agreeing, no, we never agreed about that, never, never!
‘Okay,’ said Thomas, ‘I’ll accept your verdict. I am the worse and Edward is the better.’
‘At least the gap between you two was wide enough for you not to quarrel – that really would have been the last straw.’
This spat ended here, because Edward was pouring wine for Victoria, which she didn’t much like. She put her hand over the glass, and then, since a few drops had splashed, licked the back of her hand.
‘There,’ said Lionel. ‘You do like wine.’
‘You should have some, it does you good,’ said Jessy. ‘The Victorians knew their stuff. At the slightest hint of wasting away or brain fever or any of their ghastly diseases, out came the claret.’
‘Port,’ said Lionel.
‘Best Burgundy,’ said Edward. ‘Like this. Best is always best. If I had been asked – for after all I wasn’t given a choice, was I, father? – I’d have said no. I do not have pleasant memories of that school. It was your school, Victoria, I know …’
At this reminder to her that he did not remember the event which was so present and alive in her mind, tears came into Victoria’s eyes.
She made her voice steady, and said, ‘Yes, it’s not a good place. And it’s worse since I was there. Since we were there,’ she addressed Thomas.
‘There was a stabbing there last week,’ remarked Jessy, aiming this at her ex.
‘Which brings me to my point again,’ said Lionel, addressing Victoria. ‘Suppose we send Mary to a good school? I have to say that there is disagreement in the ranks …’
‘When is there not?’ said Jessy.
‘Some of us think – I, for one – that Mary could go to a boarding school.’
‘A boarding school?’ And now Victoria was shocked. She knew that people like the Staveneys did send their children, when they were still little, to boarding school. She thought it heartless.
‘I told you,’ said Thomas.’ Of course Victoria says no to a boarding school.’
‘Yes,’ Victoria bravely said, smiling gratefully at Thomas, who smiled back, ‘I say no to a boarding school.’ For a tiny moment the current between them was sweet and deep, and they remembered that for a whole summer they had felt two against the world.
Alice broke in with, ‘I was at boarding school and I loved it.’
‘Yes, but you were thirteen,’ said Edward.
Who then of the Staveneys, would agree to Mary being sent off to the cold exile of boarding school? Alice and Lionel.
‘Very well, then,’ said Edward. ‘No boarding school. Well, not yet. Meanwhile there’s a good girls’ school, not far, it would be a few stops on the Tube and a short walk.’
Victoria was thinking, She’ll have a bad time. She’ll be with girls who have money and the things the Staveneys have, and she’ll come home to … it would certainly ask a lot of Mary’s kind heart: two worlds, and she would have to fit in to both of them.
Victoria said to Lionel, who was the author of this plan, which in fact fulfilled her dreams for Mary, ‘I couldn’t say no, how could I? It will be such a big thing for Mary’ And now she dared to turn to Thomas, reminding them all that he was after all the child’s father. ‘What do you say, Thomas? It’s for you to say, too.’
‘Yeah,’ said Thomas. ‘Yeah. That’s exactly right.’ Here his belligerent look at his father, and his brother, told them that he was feeling – as usual – belittled. ‘Yeah, it is for me to say too. And I say, Victoria should have the deciding vote. Providing Mary doesn’t go to Beowulf, that’s the main thing.’
Victoria said, ‘If I say no, I could never forgive myself. But I’d like to talk it all over with – she’s not my sister, but I think of her as.’
Bessie heard what Victoria had to tell her, nodding and smiling I told you so. She said, ‘They’ll get Mary away from you, but that’s not how they’ll see it.’
A central fact was there, out in the open, still unvoiced, with its potentialities for pain and gain. Mary had spent a month with the Staveneys, and that experience had made it urgent for her to be rescued from her environment and be sent to a good school.
‘Well,’ said Bessie, ‘she’s going to come out the other end educated. Which is more than can be said about Beowulf.’
‘You went there and you do well enough,’ said Victoria.
‘You know what I mean.’
They were back at what was not being said. For one thing, it was Mary’s way of speaking, which was very far from the Staveneys’. Thomas might speak badly, his phoney American, or his cockney, as he called it, but she had never heard a cockney – who were they when they were at home? – talk like that. And the Staveneys spoke posh, and Thomas too, most of the time. Mary’s voice was ugly compared to theirs.
‘She’ll have a hard time of it,’ said Bessie. ‘There’s no pretending she won’t.’
‘I know,’ said Victoria, thinking that she had had a long hard time of it, and yet here she was, she had survived it. Bessie had had a better time, because of Phyllis being her mother, but she was having a hard enough time now – and she would survive it too.
She wrote to Thomas, asserting his rights, ‘Dear Thomas, I agree to your kind suggestion. Please tell your father and your mother thank you for me. It won’t be easy for Mary but I’ll try and explain it all to her.’
Explain what, exactly? And how?
Mary must be thinking
