‘Let’s walk for a bit,’ said Nigel. ‘Is that OK, Mum? We won’t get lost.’
Mollie looked at Steff. She usually left family decisions to him.
‘Don’t see why not,’ he said. ‘Difficult to get lost in a place this size. If in doubt ask for the University, and when you’re there, look for the British contingent.’
So Nigel and Letta jumped down and waited while the coach took the stench of its exhaust slowly away, and then followed up the street. It was slow going, as every few yards somebody would stop them and ask where they were from. Letta realized they must be obviously not native Varinians with their Marks & Spencer clothes and their pale northern skins. It had been a terrific summer back home, but their tans still looked washy beside those of the people who lived all the time under these southern skies.
‘Where are you from?’ they were asked, time and again, and when they answered, ‘England,’ the next question, almost always, was, ‘Has Restaur Vax come with you?’
‘Not with us,’ Letta told them. ‘We came out on a coach, but he’s a bit old for that, so he’s flying to Bucharest. He’s supposed to be here tomorrow.’
Next, people wanted to know about England, and to try out the English they’d learnt in school, and just be friendly. They didn’t seem to find it odd, either, that Letta could rattle away in Field or that Nigel couldn’t, but there was something about their smiles which gave Letta a feeling that they thought the way she spoke was a bit peculiar. Or perhaps they were simply amused by her eagerness and excitement, which she certainly felt. Being in a country where everybody spoke Field, as the normal thing, was wonderful. She felt like a bird released into the air.
Nigel was tugging at her sleeve. She looked ahead. The coaches were out of sight.
‘Come on,’ he said. ‘I don’t want Mum worrying.’
(Typical Nigel. He was the worrier, not Mollie.)
So they hurried as best they could, until they found the road blocked almost from side to side by a scrum of people milling round a centre where a man was being hoisted into the air, amid cheers which mingled with hoots and laughter as he was dropped and then hoisted again, to sit on his bearers’ shoulders, waving both arms overhead in triumphant greeting.
‘Hey! It’s Uncle Van!’ said Nigel.
It was, too. He’d had his back to them, but the churn of the crowd turned him until Letta could see her brother’s long, normally moody face, now smiling and excited.
‘What’s he think he’s doing?’ said Nigel. ‘This isn’t The Prisoner of Zenda. Bet you he’s told them who his grandad is.’
Letta found Van interesting, and thought she might have liked him if she’d known him better, but Nigel, naturally enough, had picked up Steff’s attitude. And certainly Van didn’t just look like the star of some old sword-play romance. He seemed to feel like that too, the True Heir come back to his oppressed people. They’d be storming the castle next, while he held twenty men-at-arms at bay on the stairway to the young queen’s bedroom.
‘Who do they cheer?’ said a woman crushed against the wall beside her.
‘His name’s Van Ozolins,’ said Letta. ‘He’s just come on the coach from Scotland.’
‘Scotland?’ said the woman, impressed. ‘Still he is one of us. He has the face of our men.’
Letta knew what she was talking about. She’d already seen dozens of versions of it on the streets of Potok. Grandad had it, too. He used to joke about it and quote a poem by the other Restaur Vax about Varinian men which started off, ‘Combative, wiry, hound-faced, crazed with honour . . .’ Yes, that was Van all right.
They broke through at last and jostled on up the street. When Letta asked for the University, the woman she’d chosen insisted on guiding them all the way.
The University had one lovely old building, stone as yellow as honey, with a pillared front and three red-tiled domes. Bishop Pango had built it, their guide said, but everything else had been pulled down by the Communists and rebuilt with modern blocks. These were like grimy vast shoe-boxes set on end. Despite their size they were depressingly mean and dingy.
The coaches had unloaded and Mollie was sorting things out. The British contingent had been promised a hundred and ninety beds, and there were fewer than half that for them, but from what the earlier visitors had told her she’d guessed something like this might happen, so now it was a matter of putting the contingency plans into action, seeing that the elderly got first pick, and the families with small children had what they needed and so on. In theory her principal helpers knew what to do, though of course there were some of them who were ditherers or botherers and kept running back with problems for her to sort out, which she did, coolly, never looking irritated or blaming anyone. (A rumour went round the party that evening that one of the local Varinians had watched Mollie in action for a bit and then turned and asked – seriously, according to the story – ‘This is your Mrs Thatcher, then?’ For the rest of the trip everyone, including the local Varinians, called Mollie ‘Maggie’, which as a passionate Liberal Democrat she found trying. That was later, of course.)
It was obviously going to take hours to get it all sorted out, so Letta decided the best thing she could do to help was to take charge of Donna, who was tired enough by now to be sleepy, but too cross to sleep. She read her Asterix and the Goths for the umpteenth time until she dropped off, and then she put her in the push-chair and found her way round to the official campsite, which was on the other side of the river, spread out along the hillside below the ruined monastery. Letta had arranged to share a tent with a girl from her coach, a couple of years younger than herself, called Janine, who had a Varinian mother and a Welsh father, and a tiny baby brother, who was why Janine was delighted to have Letta to share with. Steff was going to come and put their tent up for them, but he was still helping Mollie, so Letta found herself a narrow patch of shade beneath an old wall and settled down to wait.
She felt dreamy, dazed, but not sleepy, though she should have been exhausted after the long journey, and the hold-ups, and the night on the hard ground. Her whole body brimmed with happiness. The wall was part of the ruins, and the sun must just have left it, so that the old stones still breathed out warmth in a caressing, welcoming waft. People moved between the mass of tents, calling and laughing. There were transistors going, and what sounded like live music, twangy ethno-rock, down by the river, which she could sometimes hear muttering over its boulders, though it was shallow and skimpy now. She guessed it must be a real torrent during the snow-melt.
Over to her right lay the town, all tiles and domes, with a few harsh concrete towers as a reminder of what the Communists had done. From there, too, came a steady muttering, almost too faint to be heard except when some of the thousands of voices that made it burst into cheering or laughter. The smells of the south floated on the hot and golden air, sun-baked dust, dung that dried before it could rot, wild aromatic bushes on the slopes. The whole steep valley purred with her contentment.
Two boys, fifteenish, came by on the new-worn path below where she sat, walking with that self-conscious swagger boys use when they want to look older than they are. The difference from English boys was that they made a good job of the swagger, despite the fact that they were holding hands. They glanced at Letta, checking her out, then away, either because of Donna or because they thought she was too young for them, and then back with a different look, having registered through some slower mind-channel that she didn’t belong. They stopped.