Free Almost English by Charlotte Mendelson

bachelor Pa Stenning is the head of drama, he never checks on Guy and his little shivering team of Removes and Freshers, tapping away in the cold. Guy says Pa Stenning trusts him. He smokes cigarettes, cupped in his hand like a workman, and issues instructions. Marina pokes among the smelly costumes, practising her formulae and the laws of chemical combination, waiting for him like his French lieutenant’s woman, trying to think of conversational topics which might interest him without boring her to despair. Then they go round the corner to ‘check the rig’ and clinch under the cables: Guy’s shirt sleeves around Marina’s soft body, the smell of hot dust and sweat. She likes the way his veins stand out in his forearms, the size of his wrist bones despite his youth, and this encourages her; she is not dead to his attractions. Yet when his Doc Martens nudge her penny loafers she edges away, as she would never have done from Simon Flowers.
    Perhaps because he still fancies Amanda Stapleton – he talks about her and then gets off with Marina, as if she is a spittoon – he is less pressing than she had expected. She is still splashing her bust with cool water, experimenting in private with scrunchies, regularly applying lip balm. Nothing helps. Should she be stoking his ardour? Shouldn’t he be trying to ravish her? So she does nothing but let herself be kissed, and sometimes she can almost feel herself tipping over into excitement when they kiss particularly hotly, their bodies cores of fire wrapped around with cold.
    When does petting start?
    She is not, whatever his friends think, a prude. She has been waiting for someone to touch her breasts since she was eleven. Sex, she has always known, will be wonderful. Maybe, she thinks now, exhausted yet wide awake at three in the morning, looking across to where Heidi sleeps in a haze of vaginal deodorant and body spray, she was wrong.
    ‘You’re Mrs Farkas, aren’t you?’ says a voice.
    Laura is shopping in Fritz Continental on the Edgware Road for the particular brand of blueberry jam the aunts-in-law prefer. It is a guilt present; this week she had hoped to buy herself a magazine, but she feels she should be making up to them.
    She turns. The woman beside her, frowning at crisp-bread, is tallish too, worried-looking too, distantly familiar. ‘Oh,’ says Laura. ‘School – I mean, Ealing. Aren’t you—’
    ‘I taught Marina history. Bridget Tyce.’
    ‘Sorry. I’m an idiot. Miles away.’
    ‘Mm, I’m the same.’ They look at each other. ‘I have a Russian mother-in-law,’ she tells Laura, ‘with specific crisp-bread needs. Do you happen to know—’
    ‘That one. They like the seeds. I thought . . . Aren’t you Miss Tyce?’
    ‘Well, not a legal mother-in-law. Teachers have sex too, though, you know,’ she says and smiles.
    Laura smiles back; there is a pause as they both consider the sex Miss Tyce has been having.
    ‘How is Marina?’ Miss Tyce asks.
    ‘Well—’
    ‘We miss her, you know. Bright girl. I do hope she’s happy.’
    Laura’s face says it. She means to come out with the usual reassurances, opportunity and facilities and privilege, but the words will not form. She feels her bottom lip beginning to betray her, and coughs. ‘Well.’
    ‘She isn’t?’
    ‘It’s, well, to be honest, it’s a shock. I mean, not just for me! But, but she’ll settle, I’m sure. We’re all very proud.’
    ‘Boarding school and Marina: it’s hard to imagine. Not one to suffer fools, is she? No. Well, we’d have her back in a second.’
    Laura nods. A cloud of unknowing sinks upon her, blotting out decisions, feelings, the future. She wants to lie down and sleep.
    ‘If you did, if she did change her mind,’ she hears, ‘we could discuss it. Definitely possible. But don’t leave it, or it’ll be too late.’
    When Marina rings home on Sunday morning, the ten pences hot and damp in her palm, she has decided to mention, just by the by, the fact