meant it. ‘It takes all sorts,’ she added, with a little pleased smile at her attempt at definition. ‘I don’t think they’d ever understand you don’t like the country.’
‘I hate it, hate it,’ Victoria said, violently, and got into the train that would carry her away - for ever, if she had her way.
Mary came home a few days later. Victoria saw the child’s bleak look around the little flat, criticising what Victoria had greeted with such relief: a bare sufficiency, and what there was, in its proper place. And then Mary stood at the window looking down, down, into the concrete vistas and Victoria did not have to ask what it was she missed.
Mary kept saying, rushing to embrace her mother ‘You’re my Ma and I’ll love you always.’ Bessie and Victoria exchanged grim-enough smiles, and then Mary forgot about it.
Thomas took Mary to concerts of African music, twice, but she thought they were too loud. Like her mother, she wanted things to be quiet and seemly.
Then Victoria was invited to an evening meal at the Staveney’s, ‘preferably without Mary - and anyway it will be too late for her, won’t it?’ This, from people who had her up to all hours in Dorset. ‘Without Dickson’ could be taken as read. Victoria put on her nicest outfit, and found herself with a full complement of Staveney’s, at the supper table. Undercurrents, some well understood by Victoria, others not at all, flowed about and around Jessy, Lionel, Edward, Alice and Thomas. Lionel at once opened with, ‘I wonder what you’d think if we suggested Mary went to a different school?’
This was Lionel, who had insisted on both his sons going through the ordeal of that bad school, Beowulf.
Victoria 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 Staveney’s 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 Staveney’s, would agree to Mary being sent off to the cold exile of hoarding school? Alice and Lionel.
