‘It means nostril,’ Letta said.
Biddie had been drinking tooth-rot, and choked on it. By the time they’d cleaned her up, Angel was away on something else.
Anyway, Letta had once asked Mr Jaunis how many Varinians there actually were in the British Isles.
‘According to our records, seven hundred and eighty-three,’ he’d said. ‘And six hundred and ninety of them are members of VIBI, a figure which we believe speaks highly of our commitment to our homeland.’
When Letta went up to St Albans just after Easter, as usual, to stay for a few days with Steff and Mollie and Nigel and Donna, she found that almost all seven hundred and eighty-three seemed to be wanting to make it out to Potok for the festival of culture at the beginning of August, though it still wasn’t anything like certain that it was going to happen, or if it did that the Romanians would let them in. Even so, everybody was behaving as if it was all fixed.
Letta spent most of her time answering the telephone and putting brochures in envelopes and helping to keep the lists up to date on Mollie’s PC. Using the telephone was thrilling, because she got to talk to real Varinians in Varina. Mollie’s Field was nothing like up to that yet, and nor was Nigel’s, and Steff was out at work all day, so they really needed Letta. It wasn’t easy. The line kept breaking, and the voices when they came through were crackly and distorted, and besides that, things seemed to be in pretty good chaos at the far end. There were only two hotels in Potok, so the festival organizers were borrowing the students’ rooms at the University, but they were overflowing already, as more and more people kept wanting to come from all over the world. Some Varinians could speak a bit of English, but with the lines so bad it was much easier to be sure about things if the speakers at both ends were using a language they were comfortable with, so now Letta found herself talking Varinian – which, except with Grandad, had always been a sort of extra in her life, something she could perfectly well do without but which she kept going because it was a habit and felt right, though she didn’t know if she’d talk it with her own children – anyway, she found herself talking Varinian because she had to, talking to an unseen voice in Varina, all that way over those terrible lines – and it was real. The first time she put the receiver down she found she was crying.
Mollie thought Letta must be upset because of the anxiety, at her age. She didn’t really understand when Letta explained. But Letta rang Grandad that evening and told him, and he knew. Anyway, Mollie found her so useful that she asked her to stay on till the day before the new term started, and by then Letta was so accustomed to saying ‘Oyu?’ when she picked up the phone that when she got home she had to remind herself to say ‘Hello?’
She went up again for half-term, and by then everyone was almost sure that the festival really was going to take place. In fact the return of the exiles now seemed like water flowing towards the sea, something that’s got to happen. It will get there somehow in the end. There’d been an election in Romania but Mr Kronin’s brother was still high up in the Ministry of Culture and could pull the right strings. It was he who’d managed to wangle Grandad his visa. There was still a chance that the new government would turn tough. They seemed to be mostly ex-Communists who’d managed to stop supporting Ceauşescu in time, and they’d won the election by some fairly dirty tricks, including getting the miners to come out and beat up the opposition – at least that’s what the opposition said. But they were going to land themselves in a fair-sized international row if they tried turning the exiles back at the last moment. There were too many of them for that, and from too many places, from every country in Europe, for a start, from the USA and Canada, from New Zealand and Australia – a lot of Varinians had settled out there – and a dozen other countries round the world.
The second half of the term lasted a century. It would have seemed slow and pointless anyway, because the end of the school year is always a drag, and next term Angel would be living up in Yorkshire and Biddie would be at a boarding school for gifted children to which her parents had decided to send her. All that added to the dreary sense of things ending. At least there was the festival to look forward to.
By now Mollie had found a good Field-speaker to help her, so Letta stayed at home for the first week of the holidays, getting herself sorted out, and then went up to St Albans. It was a typical Mollie exercise, only on a larger scale than usual. There were eleven coaches coming from all over Britain and joining up at the ferry. There were also two trucks of stores and camping equipment. The organizers in Potok were still bouncing with excitement and confidence, and full of assurances that there were going to be food and beds for everyone, but Mr Jaunis – largely to put a spoke in Mr Orestes’ wheel – had kept shaking his head and wanting to send a VIBI delegation out to Potok to check up. Mollie, despite being so thick with Mr Orestes, had backed him up. The delegation came back pretty gloomy. Most of the temporary accommodation wasn’t yet built and didn’t look as if it was going to be; there was very little to buy in the shops; inflation was several hundred per cent; you could buy things on the black market, for dollars or marks, but that was illegal; and so on.
So Mollie’s PC had clicked into action, fizzing off letters to everyone, explaining the problem and asking for a bit more money and the loan of good tents, and the last of the answers were still coming in when Letta arrived. Everybody paid up. Not one person grumbled. People volunteered to drive hundreds of miles getting the tents together. An exile who was manager of a Safeway’s outside Coventry called and said, ‘Don’t worry about the stores. Just send me the truck and the cheque and I’ll do the rest.’ There was, unbelievably, a whole two days with nothing left to arrange before the coaches moved off.
It was five o’clock in the morning and drizzling gently when the taxi took them over to Luton. Each coach had two coach-captains, to check the lists and solve problems. Donna, who’d slept all the way from St Albans, had woken up at last and Mollie was giving her her breakfast when one of the coach-captains, a skinny, fussed-looking woman called Anne, pushed past some people who were still stowing their hand luggage and said, ‘They keep asking if Restaur Vax is really going to be there.’
Letta sensed others in earshot craning to listen.
‘He’s flying out in two days’ time with his daughter and son-in-law,’ said Mollie. ‘He’ll be there.’
Somebody behind Letta sighed with relief, or content. The coach-captain worked her way back up the aisle, repeating the news. Letta caught Nigel’s eye. He gave his head a little shake and she nodded agreement. They’d already settled that they weren’t going to tell anyone that Restaur Vax was their grandad, unless they were asked. It was lovely that everyone wanted him there so much, but that wasn’t anything to do with them. They were just a couple of young Varinians, no different from any of the others.
They sang most of the way to Dover, and waved their Varinian flags (purple and black and white, courtesy of VIBI) at anyone who was looking whenever they came to a halt. The M25 was jammed at the Thames tunnel, which meant an anxious fifty-minute wait, but Mollie’s schedules allowed for that sort of thing and they made it to Dover with time to spare. So did the two trucks and the other ten coaches, though the one from Liverpool only just. Van was supposed to be on the Edinburgh coach, but he didn’t come and say hello so Letta and Nigel went to look for him. They found him in one of the bars with a group of friends. He raised a hand and came over.