She prayed each day until his results came. When John won his place at Oxford all four of them were, for once, united in celebration. Dad took them out to dinner at Axendale Golf Club. They ate beef Wellington washed down with real champagne. During the meal they made bets about where John’s brilliant future might take him. No one dared suggest he take over the family business. As a verified intellectual, he couldn’t be expected to concern himself with things so mundane as nylon mesh, rayon, and twill. Mother decided John would become a politician, maybe chancellor of the exchequer, because he was good with numbers. Dad disagreed, politicians were a bunch of crooks and liars, he should become a scientist and make some great discovery.
“Find a cure for the common cold, that’s what people want, or, better still, for baldness,” announced Dad, picking beef Wellington out of his teeth with a toothpick, then pointing it at his audience for emphasis. “I’d invest money in a scheme like that.”
Marion hoped whatever he did, her brother would become famous. She saw him traveling all over the world meeting presidents and kings of exotic lands. People would write books about him and perhaps even ask her what it was like to be the sister of a great man. One day he would be knighted by the queen. Sir John Zetland. No one ever suggested what Marion might become, her future was of no importance whatsoever, but she was more than happy to let her brother have the limelight.
Marion drank two full glasses of champagne during the dinner; then, as they were about to leave, she felt horribly sick. She clasped her hands to her mouth, but a small amount of yellowy broth slipped through her fingers and dripped onto the regal-red carpet of the clubhouse foyer.
While she emptied the remaining contents of her treacherous stomach in the ladies’ toilets, Mother stood guard outside the door.
“You had to ruin his day, didn’t you?” she muttered. This seemed to be addressed not to Marion, but herself, as if in fact she were at fault by giving birth to a daughter who would eventually grow up to spoil a superior child’s success by vomiting.
? ? ?
JUST BEFORE THE beginning of his first term at Oxford, John took his sister to the Dish of the Day on the promenade. It was rare for John to take her out for a treat like this, and as they walked into the café together and asked for a table, Marion felt tipsy with happiness.
The waitress came to take their order. John knew right away that he wanted steak pudding, chips, gravy, and peas, but Marion couldn’t decide between fish and chips or chicken in the basket; she liked both yet it was vital to choose the perfect meal to accompany the precious time she was spending with her brother.
“Marion, just decide what you want, or you get nothing,” said John, snatching the large plastic menu from her hand.
“Scampi,” said Marion.
As the waitress walked away, Marion almost cried out that she had changed her mind, she wanted the chicken instead, but if she did, John would get mad at her. How perfect chicken in the basket would have been, so golden and tasty nestled in its sweet little wicker basket. Why had she said scampi? She hated scampi, those nasty chewy fishy things. The funny little word had just jumped out of her mouth like a frog before she could stop it. Then her spirits crumbled entirely when John got out a book from his jacket pocket. On the cover was printed a title that Marion didn’t know how to pronounce and a picture of a man standing on top of a mountain. She would have swapped any meal for him to pay her just a little bit of attention. Didn’t he know how much it would mean for him to talk to her instead of reading?
You should be satisfied a brilliant person like your brother has been nice enough to waste his time taking a dummy like you out to lunch, said Mother’s voice in her head. So she made do with sitting there, looking around the café, trying to enjoy just being out and in his company.
Even though it was a warm day, her brother was wearing a tweed jacket and his brand-new college scarf. Marion thought he looked very much like an Oxford student already. Perhaps when he was living in college, he would invite her to stay with him from time to time. She might even be introduced to some of his brilliant friends. Marion imagined him having a friend called something like Toby or Peter. He would have thick blond hair swept to one side and speak with an upper-class accent like Anthony Andrews, the star of Brideshead Revisited, her favorite television show. He would wear those beige slacks with a nice blue shirt open at the collar or navy blazer for more formal occasions.
She imagined meeting Toby/Peter for the first time in John’s rooms. They would be in some old stone building overlooking one of those courtyards with funny names. Quadrangles; that was what they were called. Everyone would be drinking sherry, she might be sat in a window seat, perhaps John had forgotten to introduce her to his friends because John could be forgetful like that sometimes, and Toby/Peter would ask who she was. “That’s just Marion, my silly little sister,” John would say.
But Toby/Peter would be intrigued by the thoughtful way she looked out at the quadrangle and the “mysterious air” that Marion felt sure she had become expert at assuming. He would ask her out to go punting followed by a picnic. She would be his partner at the end-of-term college ball, then one day John would be best man at their wedding.
Her daydream was interrupted by the waitress bringing their order. With a glistening plate of gravy-covered food before him, John put his book down on the Formica tabletop.
“Freederick Neetchee. Is it any good?” said the waitress, twisting her neck to read the title of the book.
“Nietzsche says that God is dead, and it’s okay to murder people if you feel like it,” John said, shaking the vinegar bottle vigorously over his chips.
“I like Harold Robbins myself,” said the waitress, then drifted away to serve another table.
Marion cut into a piece of scampi. The yellow crust fell away, leaving a slimy gray thing, like a blind eyeball, staring up at her from the plate.
“What do you mean by that, John? That it’s all right to murder people?” asked Marion.
“This bloke Nietzsche says that there isn’t a god, so there aren’t any rules about morality and stuff, you have to make them up for yourself, and then you become like superman.”
He took a slurp of Coke up through his blue-and-white-striped straw and followed it with a burp.
After their meal, John wanted to see the Museum of Wax. When Marion visited it with Aunt Agnes, she felt the waxworks were staring at her and became convinced they moved around when no one was looking. But she didn’t tell John she thought the place was creepy; the important thing was that they were spending time together. At the entrance of the museum was a wizened little old man in a red gilt-trimmed uniform, who Marion thought looked like one of those toy monkeys that play the cymbals. When John paid the money, the monkey man put his cigarette behind his ear to count out the change.