Marion smoothed her skirt and rose from the chair. ‘I’ll leave you in peace.’
Once Marion’s history teacher, Miss Siebert, wrote an address on the green board. Miss Siebert – they called her Queen Victoria behind her back, because her hair went down to her bum and her skirts to her ankles – told the girls that this was a place that sold books. And she said the girls should go and visit it sometime, that this was a good idea. And she taught the lesson and every now and then throughout the class as she gave information – something about the Hottentots, something about the British – she would mention the books in the bookstore. And then at the very end, and the class was memorable because it would be the last Miss Siebert would ever teach at St Winifred’s, at the end Miss Siebert said in a higher voice than normal: ‘I don’t know if I’ve really made myself clear, girls. You should go. You should buy this book.’ And she hurriedly scribbled the name of a book on the board. ‘Because you see, this,’ she indicated the orange textbook she’d been teaching from, the one Marion would later cram to score an A, ‘this is not really history.’
Miss Siebert didn’t come back. One of the girls told that Miss Siebert was a communist who had sex with her garden boytjie. The girl boasted that the book Queen Victoria had written up on the board was a banned book, and that her father worked with the council and she’d done a good thing and told him. The school board shivered that such insubordination could take place at St Winifred’s. A more suitable history teacher was found for the girls.
Marion took her confusion home to her parents. She told them about what Miss Siebert had said, about the bookstore, about real history. Her questions were swatted away, dampened. She felt the incident ripple but there was no one to ask about what was real history and what was not. Her parents weren’t in the business of telling these two kinds of histories apart; they weren’t in the history business at all.
Marion’s knock again. God, that woman!
‘Come in!’ Hortensia shouted. ‘What now?’
‘Actually I forgot to mention just now: the thing is, I’ve been considering that stain.’
Hortensia arched an eyebrow. There was definitely something wrong with the woman. One minute blabbering, the next going on about a damned stain. Hortensia rolled her eyes. ‘What is it, Marion? What is it that you want?’
‘The stain, you see. I wondered if you’d allow me to … try something.’
‘What makes you think I haven’t already tried something? I just need to get someone in, that’s all. If I wasn’t flat on my back, many a thing would be handled.’
‘May I?’ Marion decided to ignore Hortensia’s protests.
Hortensia sighed. Marion went back into the hallway and returned with a white square of cotton fabric and a saucer with some liquid in it.
‘Now, Marion—’
‘Don’t worry, don’t worry. I know what I’m doing.’
She removed the portrait and set it down, on the nearby desk, with more care than Hortensia thought necessary. To her horror, Marion spoke while she worked.
‘See, it’s a bit complicated. Because of the wallpaper you’ve used. One of yours? Anyway, so I guessed it started out as a grease stain,’ she began to get out of breath. ‘And then someone, Bassey perhaps, had a go at removing it, smudged the dye and maybe used bleach – reasonable choice, you know, but … Ah, you see … The wall’s at an angle by the way, did you realise? … There, just a … All done.’
‘I won’t even ask what was in the saucer.’
‘Don’t.’
‘I can’t understand why you care.’
Marion shrugged. ‘What should I do with this?’
The picture had been taken in a studio. The photographer had been stern, but then had suddenly become animated, saying, ‘Kiss her, you fool! Right there on the cheek’ and then he’d pushed down on the button.
‘Give it to Bassey. Ask him to throw it away.’
Slowly small pieces of information materialised. Her name was Valerie. She was British. She came to Nigeria every year, staying for a few weeks, and then returned to England. Exactly what she was doing there remained unclear to Hortensia. But in the weeks when Valerie was in Ibadan, a routine was established and Hortensia trailed them.
Once, on a Friday evening, she followed them down a road. They parked outside a motel and Hortensia returned to the house. Peter came back from his conference late on the Sunday evening.