deputy headmaster’s rooms, Cordfield; Choral Society rehearsal (open), Divinity Hall, 7.30 p.m.
It is strange, Marina observes, that once you start noticing someone you see them everywhere; in the queue for tuna crumble, or hiding under the Praecentor’s Gate from a downpour of acid rain. Now as well as Simon Flowers, and various enemies, and Wilco the feral groundsman, she begins to spot Guy Viney all the time.
‘All right?’ he says when he sees her, even in public. The shame of talking to someone who has read all Jane Austen’s novels, even Lady Susan , doesn’t seem to occur to him; he clearly does not know that in lessons she is the only girl who puts up her hand. Or is it because he is younger? He is lucky that she acknowledges him at all.
‘ Minden jól ,’ which means ‘very good’, says Zsuzsi on Sunday morning, when Marina rings home. ‘How is that nice boy?’
At that moment Marina realizes that no one at school has referred to Guy’s visit to Westminster Court. Is it possible that he hasn’t told everyone, that they are not laughing and mocking behind her back?
Maybe he won’t ruin her. Maybe he is nice.
But that is all. They have nothing in common, whereas Simon Flowers, scientist with a soul, is a perfect match. If he boarded like Guy, they could talk all night; instead, he goes home to his family, about whom she knows not enough, except that his mother is a librarian, which warms her heart. She would pay all her money to visit his house for a single minute. Guy Viney must have a family too, but who cares?
That evening Alexia ‘Sexier’ Prior says, ‘Come with me, no one else is around,’ when she is getting ready to go to Percy to see her crush, Jim Finn, and so Marina goes. The staircase is rich with the smell of plimsolls and what she suspects is boys’ deodorant, sprayed in flammable quantities. Guy’s room, Percy IV, is next door, up in the roof. His door is open. ‘Hey,’ he says. ‘Want a chocolate biscuit?’
Percy IV has a romantically steep ceiling, a collapsing armchair, carved stone vines around the door and a glow-in-the-dark ‘Stairway to Heaven’ poster. For a Combe boy he is friendly, although the Fiver sitting on a beanbag, his roommate Tosser something, ignores her. At first Marina just smiles and nods as they talk about football; if she fails to look interested they will call her a ‘woman’, which is a grievous insult. But Guy keeps giving her biscuits, and doesn’t refer to having seen Westminster Court, or laugh when she says, ‘But who is Jim Morrison?’, and when his friend says, ‘WSK,’ which means West Street Knockers, he tells him to shut up. Guy doesn’t ask her questions either, but when, almost for something to say, she starts talking about Cambridge – mocks, predictions, UCCA forms, the masters’ frustrating lack of interest in helping her choose a college – he doesn’t look disgusted.
‘Oh, right,’ he says. ‘A brainy bird.’
‘Honestly not,’ she says. ‘It’s . . . actually, I’m really scared. I’m never going to make it.’
‘Bollocks,’ he says. ‘Just give it a whirl.’
When she gives up on Alexia Prior and starts to go, he says, ‘Come by any time,’ and, because he is not remotely a romantic option, she does. She has never been good at Social in the West Street television room, where combinations of Allegra and Isla and Ellie and Nicky and Alex and Fleur and Vix and Belinda and Antoinette ‘Toni, rhymes with Joni’ Collister and Daisy Chang and Annabelle ‘Pubic’ Tuft eat white toast and discuss either the First Eleven, or frequency-wash shampoo, or which boys they all know at Marlborough and Wellington, every single night.
Upstairs is worse because her bedroom contains Heidi Smith-Russell, her Hilary term room-mate, daughter of a millionaire poultry-feed manufacturer near Chichester. Heidi has a Filofax and buffs her nails twice a week; she claims that this is as important as washing your hair.
It is strange, Marina observes, that once you start noticing someone you see them everywhere; in the queue for tuna crumble, or hiding under the Praecentor’s Gate from a downpour of acid rain. Now as well as Simon Flowers, and various enemies, and Wilco the feral groundsman, she begins to spot Guy Viney all the time.
‘All right?’ he says when he sees her, even in public. The shame of talking to someone who has read all Jane Austen’s novels, even Lady Susan , doesn’t seem to occur to him; he clearly does not know that in lessons she is the only girl who puts up her hand. Or is it because he is younger? He is lucky that she acknowledges him at all.
‘ Minden jól ,’ which means ‘very good’, says Zsuzsi on Sunday morning, when Marina rings home. ‘How is that nice boy?’
At that moment Marina realizes that no one at school has referred to Guy’s visit to Westminster Court. Is it possible that he hasn’t told everyone, that they are not laughing and mocking behind her back?
Maybe he won’t ruin her. Maybe he is nice.
But that is all. They have nothing in common, whereas Simon Flowers, scientist with a soul, is a perfect match. If he boarded like Guy, they could talk all night; instead, he goes home to his family, about whom she knows not enough, except that his mother is a librarian, which warms her heart. She would pay all her money to visit his house for a single minute. Guy Viney must have a family too, but who cares?
That evening Alexia ‘Sexier’ Prior says, ‘Come with me, no one else is around,’ when she is getting ready to go to Percy to see her crush, Jim Finn, and so Marina goes. The staircase is rich with the smell of plimsolls and what she suspects is boys’ deodorant, sprayed in flammable quantities. Guy’s room, Percy IV, is next door, up in the roof. His door is open. ‘Hey,’ he says. ‘Want a chocolate biscuit?’
Percy IV has a romantically steep ceiling, a collapsing armchair, carved stone vines around the door and a glow-in-the-dark ‘Stairway to Heaven’ poster. For a Combe boy he is friendly, although the Fiver sitting on a beanbag, his roommate Tosser something, ignores her. At first Marina just smiles and nods as they talk about football; if she fails to look interested they will call her a ‘woman’, which is a grievous insult. But Guy keeps giving her biscuits, and doesn’t refer to having seen Westminster Court, or laugh when she says, ‘But who is Jim Morrison?’, and when his friend says, ‘WSK,’ which means West Street Knockers, he tells him to shut up. Guy doesn’t ask her questions either, but when, almost for something to say, she starts talking about Cambridge – mocks, predictions, UCCA forms, the masters’ frustrating lack of interest in helping her choose a college – he doesn’t look disgusted.
‘Oh, right,’ he says. ‘A brainy bird.’
‘Honestly not,’ she says. ‘It’s . . . actually, I’m really scared. I’m never going to make it.’
‘Bollocks,’ he says. ‘Just give it a whirl.’
When she gives up on Alexia Prior and starts to go, he says, ‘Come by any time,’ and, because he is not remotely a romantic option, she does. She has never been good at Social in the West Street television room, where combinations of Allegra and Isla and Ellie and Nicky and Alex and Fleur and Vix and Belinda and Antoinette ‘Toni, rhymes with Joni’ Collister and Daisy Chang and Annabelle ‘Pubic’ Tuft eat white toast and discuss either the First Eleven, or frequency-wash shampoo, or which boys they all know at Marlborough and Wellington, every single night.
Upstairs is worse because her bedroom contains Heidi Smith-Russell, her Hilary term room-mate, daughter of a millionaire poultry-feed manufacturer near Chichester. Heidi has a Filofax and buffs her nails twice a week; she claims that this is as important as washing your hair.
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