Constance

by Rosie Thomas

  ‘She wanted so much to prove she was still strong enough to do some work, didn’t she?’

  ‘Not to me, or Noah, or you.’

  ‘To herself,’ Connie said, stating the obvious. ‘I’ll be there tomorrow,’ she promised.

  ‘Have you been away?’ Bill asked.

  ‘Just one night, in Suffolk. I took Noah’s Roxana, she wanted to see the sea and we ended up staying over. I’ll tell you about it.’

  ‘I’d like to hear.’

  His voice in her ear was as warm as ever, and as familiar, but there was also a note of imprecision in it.

  Everything else, all their history together, the joy and the long denial, now seemed compacted and whittled down to this single, brittle point of caring between them for Jeanette.

  ‘Tomorrow,’ Connie repeated softly.

  Jeanette was sitting in her chair with a shawl round her shoulders. She was looking out into the garden, a green and buff expanse of fading leaves and grass now, with the evening sunlight slanting on spiders’ webs. It was a moment before she sensed that Connie was there, but then she turned her head. Her eyes burned in their deep sockets.

  – I had to come home today after just two hours.

  ‘That must have been tough.’

  – I opened my files. I sat there. My head was useless. Everyone looked at me, then pretended not to. Full of sympathy. Embarrassed, as well. Other people’s weakness is embarrassing, isn’t it? I felt as if I was already dead.

  ‘No,’ Connie tried to soothe her. ‘You’ve just gone back there too early after the operation. Rest for another week or two, then see how you feel.’

  Jeanette lifted her hand again. Connie was almost surprised that the light didn’t shine through it.

  – Too early. Too late. They overlap, don’t they?

  There was a new, mordant edge to her anger at what was overtaking her.

  ‘Jeanette, try to be a bit patient. You’re too harsh on yourself.’

  Jeanette regarded her. Then she jerked her head.

  – I will have to do something else. I can’t just sit here. Waiting.

  Bill brought in a bottle of wine and some glasses. From the slope of his shoulders Connie could see his despair.

  ‘It’s not waiting, Jan. It’s being with us.’

  There was a pause.

  – Yes. Of course it is. You’re right. I’m sorry.

  Connie stared into the garden, not wanting to risk seeing the look that passed between the two of them. She felt her own spike of anger at the finality ahead.

  ‘Here.’

  Bill put a drink into her hand. Jeanette took hers, the finger of wine heavily diluted with water, and sipped at it. Her lipstick left a pink print on the rim of the glass, and Connie remembered the night before last with Roxana in the storm, when talking to another woman had seemed so easy.

  It still wasn’t easy to talk to Jeanette: their legacy still affected them.

  Change that. It’s not too late, Connie told herself.

  ‘I think we should have a holiday, instead of worrying about plant taxonomy,’ Bill said.

  A glorious idea delivered itself to Connie.

  ‘Why don’t you both come out and stay with me in Bali?’ As soon as the thought came to her she was longing to take Jeanette straight there, to the green wave. ‘It’s beautiful, and it’s always warm. My house is comfortable enough. There’s a view from the veranda you could look at for ever.’

  – For ever?

  She met her sister’s gaze.

  She guessed Jeanette would be wondering about moving from her own safe realm into Connie’s unknown one, and whether it would be risky to allow her sister and her husband to spend so much time together.

  Then, just as clearly, Connie saw her dismiss the questions. They didn’t matter any longer. Jeanette’s face changed completely, flowering into a beam of excitement. She held out her hand towards Connie, and they matched their palms together. Affection seemed to flow like a current between them.

  – I’d like that so much.

  Then she remembered how weak she had become and turned to Bill.

  – Can I? Can we? Those pictures Connie showed us, remember? They were wonderful.

  Bill said, ‘Of course we can. We’ll go as soon as you want.’

  It took a week to finalise the arrangements. Connie was to fly out first, to make the house ready, and Jeanette and Bill would follow her two days later.

  The night before she left London, she spoke to Angela.

  ‘Sounds a good idea, Connie. Bali will do your sister good.’

  ‘I hope so. I think it will.’

  ‘Email me, let me know how she is, and how you are. By the way – did you know that your friend Roxana came into the office to see me?’

  ‘No, I didn’t know that.’ They had hardly seen each other in the past week. Connie had been working, but she’d had the impression that Roxana was tactfully absent so as not to intrude on her.

  ‘She turned up in reception and very politely but very insistently announced that she would wait there until I was free to see her.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I had her into my office and she sat down and told me exactly how she wanted to help me with setting up this shoot in Russia. I made the point that we work with the Russian Film Institute, and that I deal with difficult foreign locations every day. But she insisted that she could make herself useful in reading between the lines. With the Russians, you have to appreciate the nuance, she said. Nuance was the word she actually used. I was fairly impressed, I can tell you.’

  ‘That sounds like Roxana. So what’s the deal?’

  ‘I had to give in. I’m going to employ her informally for a few hours a week, on the phones, looking at the contracts, finding suppliers out there, that sort of thing. Twenty quid an hour, cash in hand.’

  ‘Informally or otherwise, that’s her entry into the film business. You know she’ll probably be running the show within a couple of months?’

  ‘Very likely,’ Angela agreed. ‘Who am I to stand in the way of ambition? Anyway, Rayner liked the look of her. There’s one other thing, Con…’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘When she came in she was wearing your Chloé suede jacket, or an identical version of it.’

  ‘I expect it looked better on her than on me?’

  ‘Oh, I wouldn’t say that.’

  They both laughed. ‘Thanks, Ange.’

  Connie was almost ready to leave for the airport when she heard Roxana moving about in her room. She opened her door as soon as Connie knocked, and beamed at her.

  ‘Are you all prepared to go?’

  ‘Yes, just about. I talked to Angela last night; I hear she’s offered you a part-time job.’

  ‘That’s right. I am very lucky.’ Roxana’s face glowed. She looked very young and beautiful, Connie thought. ‘And I owe thanks to you, Connie, yet another time.’

  ‘I’m glad about the work. That’s good news. But Angela also told me that when you went in to see her, you were wearing what looked like one of my jackets.’

  Roxana stared, and then drew her lower lip between her teeth. Colour flooded into her face.

  ‘I…I wanted very much not to – not to appear like a girl from Uzbekistan. I wanted to seem like a London girl.’

  ‘I understand that. But you went into my room, and looked through my cupboards?’

  And I did the same thing myself, Connie remembered. The only real difference was that there was nothing among her few possessions to appeal to me. She felt her own colour rising.

  Roxana nodded unhappily. ‘I wanted to be like you,’ she whispered.

  Like me? And who is that?

  ‘You are yourself. Why do you want to be someone else? To be Constance, or anyone? Why not be proud of being Roxana?’

  Roxana still stared, with a light kindling in her eyes that seemed to indicate that she had never properly explored this question. She had just made the assumption. She shrugged,
unwillingly.

  ‘I have not always done good things.’

  ‘Maybe you haven’t always had the chance. You’ve had a hard life, up until now, haven’t you?’

  Roxana shrugged again.

  Connie said quickly, ‘You’re going to stay here in my flat, while I’m in Bali with Noah’s parents.’

  ‘Please, if I can. Perhaps now you don’t want…’

  ‘I don’t want to turn you out. I’ve got two homes, you have nowhere to live. But can I trust you, if you live here without me, to look after my home and respect my belongings?’

  Roxana put out her hand, then drew it back again. ‘Yes, yes, I promise.’

  There was a moment when Connie stepped forward and Roxana began to duck away, almost as if she expected to be struck. Instead Connie put her arms round the girl. As she hugged her she felt the wary set of her shoulders, the taut line of her neck.

  ‘All right,’ she murmured. ‘It’s all right.’

  Roxana’s shoulders loosened. They held on to each other for another moment.

  ‘How old were you when your mother died?’ Connie asked.

  ‘Nine. Niki was eleven. We stayed with Leonid, my stepfather. This was not what we chose, you know, but we had no other place where we could go.’

  ‘Can you remember your mother?’

  ‘Not so well. A little.’

  Connie could guess, just from the touch of her, that Roxana hadn’t known much mothering.

  ‘I don’t know who my real mother was.’

  ‘No,’ Roxana acknowledged.

  The simplicity of her agreement reminded Connie: there it is. That’s the truth. Now and always will be.

  She dropped her arms. ‘Oh, Lord. Look at the time. I’ve got to go or I’ll miss the flight.’

  Roxana stood back at once.

  ‘Have a safe journey,’ she said. ‘I am sure it is very nice in Bali.’

  ‘There are beaches. White sand and palm trees, even.’

  ‘That will be good for Mrs Bunting. Myself, I prefer Suffolk.’

  TWELVE

  A tiny basket made from plaited coconut leaf and containing a few grains of red and white rice, a sliver of lime and a betel leaf lay on the veranda step. The thin white trail of smoke from a burning incense stick drifted in the still air.

  Wayan Tupereme prayed for a moment after he had placed the offering. He waved his hand three times, to send the essence of the offering towards God, and then padded quietly down the path to his own house. The Englishwoman was back, and now she had guests staying with her. Putu, the taxi driver who had brought them up from Denpasar, was a relative of his wife’s and she had heard from Putu’s wife that the lady who had arrived was very sick.

  Wayan was certain that a stay in his village would help to balance her again.

  Connie had moved into the smaller bedroom in her house, to give Jeanette and Bill more space. When she woke up she had to open her eyes before she was able to work out where she was, and then the rooster in the nearest yard started crowing.

  She got out of bed and wrapped herself in a sarong. The heat of the coming day was gathered in the corners of the room, waiting to reach out and envelop her. She padded across the bare floorboards to fold back the window shutters and immediately the early sun gilded the bare walls.

  At first glance the veranda looked deserted. But then a tiny movement caught her eye. Jeanette was sitting in the rocking chair watching a cat-sized yellow-green lizard that was splayed on a corner of the decking, half-hidden by a fan of pleated leaves.

  Connie slid open the screen door and stepped outside. The lizard blinked once, then flowed over the edge of the deck and vanished. Jeanette turned her head. When she saw Connie she pointed to where it had been a second earlier, chopping a bookends gesture with her two hands to indicate its size.

  ‘I know. He’s a big one. He lives under the boards. If I feel like some company, I feed him. He particularly likes ham, and cocktail olives.’

  Jeanette smiled.

  ‘How do you feel? Did you sleep?’

  Connie was thinking that she looked a bit better than she had done yesterday, although that wasn’t saying very much. When she had met them at the airport, Bill was pushing Jeanette in an airline wheelchair. Her face looked the colour and texture of tissue paper and she had seemed to lack the strength even to lift up her head.

  ‘Bad journey,’ Bill murmured.

  ‘It’s not far now,’ Connie rallied them.

  She was shocked. Jeanette looked so weak and defeated, she was afraid that she was going to die there in the midst of the airport’s callous scramble of taxis and tour buses. She ordered their frightened driver to get them home, back to the village, as quickly and smoothly as he could.

  And now, less than twenty hours later, Jeanette was up, her hair was combed, and she had dressed in a shirt with kindly folds that hid her sharp bones.

  – Better. Thank you, she answered. – I was very tired.

  Connie could only admire the depth of her sister’s resolve. However much pain she was in, however exhausted, if she wanted to get up she would somehow do it. She pulled a stool across and sat down next to her. They gazed out at the view.

  Veils of mist were drawn upwards from the bends of the river. Diaphanous layers silvered the opposite wall of greenery and where the sun touched them droplets of moisture trapped in the fingers of the leaves twinkled with tiny points of light, as if the branches were hung with jewels. The palms on the farthest ridge were pale grey feathers.

  Without taking her eyes off the line of sunlight as it slid down the side of the gorge, Jeanette let her head fall back against the cushions. Her arms dangled over the sides of the chair as if her hands were heavy weights. Her bare feet were planted flat, toes turned out.

  Connie could hear the warring dogs and the buzz of traffic, splashing water from the spring and the screeches and chuckings of the various birds, but all Jeanette had was the vast green intricacy of the view, and the gentle pressure of heat and humidity.

  – Look at it, she said. – It’s perfect. And it’s so hot.

  Connie was solicitous at once. ‘A breeze gets up later. Come inside for now. It’s cooler. There’s air-con, I’ll turn it up.’

  Jeanette shook her head. Her face and throat were lightly sheened with sweat.

  – I like it. I’m usually cold.

  ‘If you’re sure.’

  Connie thought that she must be all right. Jeanette’s body looked heavy, as if her sore bones were softening.

  A long moment passed, comfortably silent.

  – So many trees. I don’t know half of them.

  ‘Neither do I. We’ll get a book.’

  – Good idea.

  Another moment passed.

  – Connie?

  ‘Yes.’

  – I’m so happy we came.

  ‘I thought the journey was too much for you. I was angry with myself for having suggested you should come out here in the first place.’

  Jeanette rolled her head and sighed.

  – I threw up all the way. The shame. I hate Bill to see me like that.

  Bill had told Connie that the motion of flight had disagreed with Jeanette almost from the moment of take-off. She hadn’t been able to keep down even sips of water. He had wanted to stop the journey at Singapore, but Jeanette had insisted on making the connecting flight. – I want to see Bali, she’d said, and kept saying it.

  – But I’m all right now I’m here. In this place. It’s more beautiful than I imagined.

  ‘I’m glad you’re here,’ Connie said.

  Jeanette shot her a sudden glance.

  – It’s a long way from Echo Street.

  The exotic walls of the gorge and the solid sunshine emphasised the physical distance, but Connie shook her head. ‘Only in miles. Sitting here with you, I feel as if we could be back there.’

  The steep stairs rising from the narrow hallway, the residue of damp left by Hilda’s mopping, the piano and
the line of photographs – Jeanette with Connie propped on her knee, Jeanette in her graduation gown – shapes, smells, ghosts. The architecture of these memories felt as real between them as the deck beneath their feet.

  There was another glance.

  – Bad or not bad?

  Connie said, ‘Neither. Or both. It’s what connects us. Echo Street.’

  The last time they had been there together, four years ago now, the rooms were being emptied. Two sweating men hoisted the piano onto a wheeled trolley and rolled it away. Dusty rectangles showed on the bare walls, and the living-room carpet was dimpled with brown-rimmed hollows where the same furniture had stood in the same places for more than thirty years.

  That was the day they discovered the old cardboard box, the one with Fray Bentos printed on the sides in rubbed blue lettering and sealed with packing tape that had turned brittle with age.

  That was the day when they had their last, seemingly irrevocable quarrel.

  The last time they communicated with each other, until Jeanette emailed to tell her sister that she was dying.

  Connie bowed her head. The arches of her sister’s feet were netted with blue veins and the five tendons fanned out like sash cords. The toes were absolutely white, bloodless, the nails as chalky as if they belonged already to a dead woman. She pulled her stool closer and lifted the feet into her lap. She began to massage them, running her thumbs over the ridges and feeling them slide away from the pressure, cupping the heels and squeezing the tired ligaments, as if she could rub the life back just by the force of her will and the warmth of her own flesh.

  After a moment Jeanette sighed, and her eyes closed.

  That was how Bill found them, Jeanette fallen into a doze with her mouth slightly open and Connie with her head down, stroking her feet.

  – What do you do here? Jeanette asked later. – Every day?

  Connie had brought out a bowl of salad and a dish of mango and guava and they ate the simple meal at the table drawn into the deepest shade at the back of the veranda, from where the afternoon sun striking two yards away was as powerful as a blow.

  Bill sat in the rattan chair next to Jeanette’s rocker, checking her from time to time with a glance, but otherwise he was almost silent. Connie had read from the lines in his face precisely how exhausted with nursing and perpetual anxiety he was. To be so close to him, to know his whereabouts and what he was doing every hour, made her skin feel slightly raw. Even in the heat, goose bumps prickled on her arms.