Free Almost English by Charlotte Mendelson Page B

learned to count to ten, and knows certain key words such as slippers and tomato; today in the kitchen, thinking, how hard can it be, Laura looked at a cookery book over Ildi’s shoulder:
    Borjúláb kirántva
    A borjúlábakat legelőbb megkoppasztjuk a következő módon: Veszünk sárga szurkot vagy 15–20 dekát és megtörjük egész porrá két vastag papír között. Aztán a lábakat egyenként mindenütt nagyon jól dörzsöljük be vele, fővő vízzel forrázzuk le és vegyük ki az asztalra vagy táblára és sietve gyorsan dörzsölve húzzuk . . .
    Papír : paper, she guessed, and felt quite satisfied.
    She has been polishing shoes: one of her manly jobs. Something about the ancient shoe-cleaning case, dusters made from Peter and Zoltan’s shirts, duplicate brushes bequeathed by the dead Károlyi sisters, poor Kitti and poor Franci, is weighing upon her. Marina has a new posh accent; Penelope Leach says this is perfectly normal. Maybe she is happy there, and Combe is good for her. Maybe.
    ‘I’m having a bath,’ she says eventually. ‘Unless . . . ?’
    ‘ Vot- apity that you don’t vant to sit with us,’ says Zsuzsi, addressing an envelope in loopy foreign-lady handwriting to one of her many dearest friends, Lady Renate Kennedy née Rivka Kroo, wife of Britain’s foremost importer of Czech crystal hedgehogs. She and her sisters do not like Sir James, formerly Jenő; they refer to him contemptuously as being ‘more English than the English’, although everyone knows that he was born in Hódmezövásárhely. Lady Renate, however, is an authority on most things, including the inadequacies of Laura Farkas. The very envelope itself seems to be looking down on her.
    ‘I’m sorry,’ Laura says. ‘I’m tired.’
    A look passes between Rozsi and Zsuzsi. Slowly, sadly, Laura runs four inches of scalding water into the chalky turquoise bathtub. She takes off her clothes. She stands, naked, in front of the mirror and looks at her forty-one-year-old body: vigorously used by one or two unmemorable boys in the small Birmingham suburbs, then at teacher training college; desired by Peter Farkas but evidently not enough; utilized occasionally by Dr Alistair Sudgeon. Is that it? If one discounts all that is wrong with her, her height, her face, elephantine knees and big red hands, is it possible that anyone could ever find some of the rest of her attractive again? Look harder. Squint through the steam. Her skin is soft. Her breasts are . . . well, breasts. Gingerly, she rubs her shoulder with her thumb, her collarbone. Her nipple. Darling, she whispers to herself, and looks away.
    She lowers herself into the water, back against the cold enamel, calves and thighs bright pink, the Requiem reaching an exciting climax two rooms away. Sadness seems to close around her. She thinks: I want more than this. I . . .
    ‘ Qui tollis ,’ she hears over the clanking of the hot-water pipes, ‘ peccata mundi, miserere nobis .’
    I cannot go on like this.
    ‘ Dona nobis pacem .’
    I cannot go on.
    Guy’s hand is on Marina’s school blouse, but he doesn’t seem to know what to do with it. It floats above her sturdy bra, a Courtauld Damask Touch in oyster, which she begged Rozsi not to make her bring to Combe, while he kisses her. Her skin awaits him. Daringly she sticks out her chest a little further: still nothing. What is she doing wrong?
    When Laura emerges from her bath, hot and sore-eyed and modestly belted into her towelling dressing gown, pongyola , with a cardigan on top, everything has changed. She does not know this. She is thinking, Oh God, not Last Year in Marienbad now, I want to go to bed, do I actually have to sit on the sofa and pretend to be interested or could I— when Ildi hands her her post. It is nothing, only a bank statement for £53.32, and a manila envelope with blocky biro capitals: the council about dustbins, or the library with Ildi’s new card. She will deal with it later. First, she has a