Constance

by Rosie Thomas

  Breathless, Connie closed her fist on it. It was more precious than the biggest diamond in the world.

  ‘These things are mine. They belong to me.’ She stared into Jeanette’s eyes. ‘Why didn’t Hilda give them to me?’

  Jeanette shrugged.

  – I suppose because you didn’t need them. Mum gave you a home, a new family. Why would you want those things?

  ‘Why? Why? Because these are mine. This is my identity.’

  Angrily Connie shook the blanket at her.

  Jeanette looked incredulous.

  – An identity from someone who put you in a bag and left you under a hedge? You were lucky that Mum and Dad took you in. Even though you were what you were.

  Connie kept her fist tightly closed. ‘What I was?’ she asked, dangerously.

  – Not one of us.

  Not creamy-skinned, plump, blonde, like Hilda and Sadie and their three pretty daughters. Different. Unidentified. Unidentifiable.

  The divide had always been there.

  At Barlaston Road, where old Mrs McBride brewed up her prejudice like a witch with a cauldron.

  Inside the pin-neat rooms at Echo Street.

  Not spoken of, never, of course not. But scrawny little Constance Thorne had always been different, with her loud voice and her singing, her tight hair and her skin a shade darker than anyone else’s in the street or the school. Not different by very much, but just enough for her to have to stand up to the schoolyard bullies and the casual taunts of girls like Jackie and Elaine.

  Connie had learned to accept that she would never know her birth mother and father, or where they had come from or what their stories were.

  There were tests, of course, modern ones, that would indicate exactly what mixture of blood ran in her veins. But no test, however elaborate, would tell her who she really was.

  She folded the blanket, awkwardly because her hand was still closed on the earring. She tucked it and the cardigan away inside the bag.

  ‘“Lucky”,’ she said aloud.

  Jeanette stepped close, putting her face up against Connie’s.

  – Yes. Lucky.

  ‘Why did Hilda want to adopt a foundling?’

  Jeanette’s face suddenly blazed with fury. She grabbed Connie by the shoulders and shook her. The loose words tumbled out and spit flecked Connie’s face.

  – Why? Why do you think? Because of me. Deaf. Deaf. Deaf. They didn’t want another like me, did they? And with one deaf-and-dumb kid in the family, they weren’t going to get given a nice new pink baby. They were only going to get one like you.

  Connie breathed in sharply. It was like being children again, fighting and scratching, trying to damage each other by any means.

  ‘You are a bitch, Jeanette.’

  Jeanette ignored her. She was caught up in her own resentment.

  – And what did you do in return? Tried to take my husband.

  ‘I didn’t try to take Bill from you. I made the mistake of loving him. I regret what I did.’

  – If I am a bitch you are a liar.

  Connie pulled away from her. She had to get away, out of the room before one of them hit out. She snatched up the bag, made sure of its contents, and ran down the steep stairs past the gaping removals men.

  She heard Jeanette’s bellow.

  – ‘Running away.’

  The front door stood open. She ran out and slammed it behind her.

  Leaving Echo Street for the last time.

  She held the marcasite earring so tightly that the metal post dug deep into her palm.

  It was still raining. The waterspouts gurgled with the rush of water and the palm leaves dripped a few inches from where they sat.

  She glanced across at Jeanette.

  ‘Are you asleep?’ she whispered.

  Jeanette opened her eyes and licked her dry lips.

  – No.

  ‘Would you like some juice? A cup of tea?’

  – No. My back aches.

  It was an hour before she could take more of her drugs. ‘Shall I massage your feet again?’

  – Would you?

  Connie shifted her place, gently lifted her sister’s feet.

  – What’s the time?

  She told her and Jeanette smiled.

  – Bill will be back in a minute.

  THIRTEEN

  Noah stood aside in the kitchen to call Roxana on her new mobile. Andy went on unloading shopping from supermarket bags and flinging open the doors to cupboards.

  ‘Forgot the bloody bog roll,’ he shouted.

  Noah stuck a finger in his free ear. ‘Rox? Can you hear me? Where are you?’

  Roxana had just left the offices of Angela’s production company. She was out in the street, dodging the home-going crowds on her way to the bus stop. She rocked on the edge of the kerb, her bag hitched over her shoulder and her phone clamped to her ear, then dived confidently through the stream of buses and taxis.

  ‘What is that? I am in the street, Noah. I am going to work, I can’t be late.’

  She had done three hours on the telephone in Angela’s office, talking in Russian to unimportant officials in the Russian Film Institute who would eventually open the doors to conversations with the more senior officials who had the power to grant the production company the permits they needed to film in St Petersburg. Angela seemed pleased with her. Now she had to get to The Cosmos before Mr Shane noticed that she was late.

  ‘When can I see you?’ Noah asked.

  ‘I am not sure. On Saturday?’

  ‘That’s four days’ time.’

  ‘I know that. What can I do?’

  Roxana could see her bus, stalled in the traffic a hundred yards down the road. She attached herself to the crowd of people waiting at the stop, then began the process of slipping between them to bring herself closer to the point where she calculated the jaws of the bus would open up.

  Noah frowned. He admired Roxana’s capacity for work, but her availability as a girlfriend was severely limited by it.

  ‘You can let me pick you up from the club tonight.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I don’t want you to see me in that place. You don’t understand why, but I don’t want it.’

  ‘I do understand. Sort of,’ Noah sighed. ‘But…’

  ‘Noah, here is my bus. I will call you tomorrow.’ She chirped a kiss to him. She was at the front of the crowd now, and as the doors opened she skipped inside and inserted herself into a just-vacated seat.

  Roxana couldn’t help smiling. She kept counting them up, as if the wonders of her life might otherwise be snatched away. She had two jobs, one of them in the film business. She had an English boyfriend who called her more often than she needed to hear from him, a savings account, a mobile phone, an Oyster card, and a place to live that made her feel as if she was in a movie. She was a London girl.

  The bus lurched and a man fell against her. He took longer than necessary to get up again.

  ‘Sorry, love.’

  Roxana straightened her skirt over her thighs. ‘No worries,’ she said, as the production-company receptionist did about a hundred times a day.

  Noah helped Andy to put away the rest of the shopping. He balled up the empty bags and threw them into the cupboard where they kept the ironing board.

  ‘You okay, mate? Is everything all right with you two?’ Andy asked him.

  ‘Yeah. Sure. Well, in a way. Roxana seems full-on, but at the same time you know that she’s keeping quite a lot back. She’s protective of herself. I suppose that’s the way you have to be, where she comes from, and after what she’s been through. But I wish I could convince her she doesn’t have to be like that with me.’

  Andy eyed him. ‘You’re serious about her.’

  ‘It takes two to make a relationship serious, I find.’

  ‘Yeah. It does. I thought when you first brought her back here that she might turn out to be just a gold-digger. But she’s not like that.
What are you going to do?’

  ‘I’m going to see her tonight, for a start. I’ll pick her up and take her home from that pole-dancing club.’

  ‘Right. Need any help with that? You know, I could come with you, take a look round, see if any of her friends need to work on their self-revelation issues?’

  ‘Yes. No thanks, mate. I’ll manage.’

  ‘Sure?’

  ‘Certain.’

  It was a quiet night at The Cosmos, which was always harder than when it was busy. When there weren’t enough customers to fill the bar and the tables, even the low lighting couldn’t quite conceal the tatty fittings and grimy carpets. Roxana worked the pole as enthusiastically as she could, exaggerating every undulation of her body. She locked eyes with each of the men in turn but she couldn’t make a single one of them pay for a private dance. Towards the end of the interminable evening, Mr Shane sent for Roxana to come to his office. Scarlet, the girl who delivered the message, wiggled her hips and smirked.

  ‘Fuck off,’ Roxana hissed at her.

  Mr Shane took his cigar out of his mouth and exhaled a swirl of dirty blue smoke.

  ‘Shut the door. Come here.’

  Roxana took one small step forwards.

  ‘Here,’ he indicated with the butt of the cigar. ‘That’s better. Well, now. Hmm.’

  His manicured hands twitched her lace top away. He put the cigar back in his mouth, reached up and with a deft, insolent movement unhooked her bra.

  Roxana looked straight over his bald head. She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of reacting.

  Casually he fondled her. ‘You were late tonight, weren’t you? But you’re quite good, the punters like you. Do you enjoy your job here?’

  ‘It is a job.’

  ‘Like to keep it, would you?’

  Now his hands slid over her breasts and insinuatingly over her hips. There was no doubt what Mr Shane had in mind. The same thing as Leonid. Always the same. Hatred stabbed through her.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Take that thing off,’ he ordered. His legs splayed on either side of her. His lower lip was wet, glinting in the light.

  Roxana smiled down at him now. She reached behind her, undoing her miniskirt with deliberately slow movements as Mr Shane waited. The smoke from his cigar drifted into her face. She slid the skirt down over her hips, further down to her knees. Then she raised her leg, as if she was about to step out of the little garment. The man’s eyes travelled down the length of her thigh and calf, down to the stiletto heel of her shoe.

  Roxana let her skirt drop. She jack-knifed her knee to her chest, then used the momentum to stamp her foot hard into his crotch.

  There was a liquid gasp, like a bubble of air escaping from a blocked drain. As Mr Shane doubled up into his own lap, Roxana grabbed her skirt and ran for the door. Scarlet and one of the other girls were smoking in the corridor and they gaped at her as she pushed by. In the cubby-hole that the dancers used as a dressing room she collected up her belongings and stuffed them into her bag. She put on her outdoor coat and hurried up the customers’ stairs to the ground floor. A large group of flush-faced drunken men mobbed the entrance, trying to get into the club past the Maltese doorman who was barring the way and insisting that they must pay for membership first.

  Roxana knew that this was her last-ever moment inside The Cosmos Club.

  She felt no regrets.

  She elbowed her way out through the crowd before Mr Shane could send anyone to catch her and repay her for stamping on him.

  ‘Some guy was in here asking for you,’ the doorman shouted after her.

  Roxana ignored him. She let the heavy door swing shut. The night air tasted cool and fresh.

  Noah had been waiting only a few minutes. He saw her erupt from the club, the light briefly catching her blonde crop. He also saw that she was laughing. Roxana slowed her pace and strolled away down the street, her stilettos click-clicking and her bag swinging from her shoulder. He jumped out of the car and ran to catch up with her.

  Roxana heard the hurrying footsteps, and then an arm caught hers. She wheeled round, two hands grasping her bag with the intention of using it to batter her attacker rather than to secure it.

  ‘Hey. Hey, Roxana, it’s me.’

  ‘Noah, what are you doing here?’

  ‘Picking you up from work.’

  ‘I said not to.’

  ‘Not inside the club. Nothing wrong with waiting outside, is there?’

  ‘No, I suppose. Anyway, there is no argument. I won’t be going back there again. I don’t have a job any more.’

  ‘Why’s that?’

  ‘I kicked my boss in the testicles.’

  ‘What for?’

  Roxana shrugged. ‘The usual reason.’

  Noah shouted, ‘What? What did he do to you? I’m going to go in there and do worse than just kick him in the balls, I’ll tear them off and stuff them down his throat.’

  Roxana let herself briefly imagine what would happen if Noah tried to do anything of the kind, and what he would look like after Maltese Mike and Mr Shane’s driver had finished with him.

  ‘Thank you for the idea, but you don’t need to. I have looked after myself already.’

  Noah wound his arms round her and kissed her. She was tough, but she was vulnerable too and the combination seemed to him almost unbearably lovely.

  ‘That was why you were laughing, when you came out of there?’

  She kissed him back. ‘If you knew Mr Shane, you would be laughing too.’

  ‘Would that be before or after I ripped his balls off? Come on, let’s go. I’m taking you back to Auntie Con’s place.’

  With their arms round each other and Roxana’s head tipped on Noah’s shoulder, they retraced their steps to the car. A few late-night pedestrians passed by, and Roxana remembered the night when she was leaving The Cosmos and had seen a boy and girl together, just like she and Noah were now, and how lonely she had felt because all the world seemed to be made of couples hurrying home to bed together. To anyone looking at her it would seem that she had joined the lucky people, and yet now she was here she knew the world was still a precarious place where you could lose your job in a flash of anger.

  Even so, she was glad she had kicked Mr Shane where it really hurt.

  Roxana noticed that the man was there again, waiting in reception with his laptop case.

  He sat with one leg crossed over the other, the shiny toe of his loafer gently tapping the air. Once he turned back the immaculate blue cuff of his shirt with his little finger and glanced at his thin gold watch. He caught Roxana’s eye again through the glass door of the office where she was working, raised one eyebrow by a millimetre, and flashed a smile back at her. This was his second visit to Oyster Films, and Roxana had been aware of him right from the start because he kept looking at her. He would smile and not seem at all embarrassed to be caught staring.

  He was very good-looking. He looked rich, too. She wondered who he was.

  ‘Mr Antonelli?’

  The unfriendly girl who was the boss’s PA had come downstairs. The man got up and followed her out of Roxana’s sight.

  Roxana went back to work. Angela had asked her to obtain the details of several Russian companies who might supply catering on location in St Petersburg, and to compare their quotes. In the back of her mind, as she tallied the boring figures, was worry about money and finding a new job. Working a few hours a week for Oyster Films was fine, better even than fine, but it paid next to nothing. Money was what counted, in the end.

  Roxana did everything that Angela might possibly want, but at half past six there was nothing left to deal with. Noah was playing football tonight for his office team, and the prospect of an empty evening ahead of her was unfamiliar and slightly unwelcome. She put on her jacket with the buttons and went out into reception. Zoe had already chirped no worries for the last time that day, switched the phones to the night answering service and gone home. Then the lift doors slid open an
d Mr Antonelli emerged.

  ‘Hello,’ he smiled. ‘Finished for today?’

  He held open the street door, and when she began walking he fell into step beside her.

  ‘How long have you been working at the company?’ he asked in a companionable way, as if they already knew and liked each other.

  ‘Not so long. But it is a good job, I like it very much.’ She wasn’t going to let on quite how menial or how temporary her role was.

  He gave her a glance. ‘Are you a producer?’

  ‘No, in fact. I am, er, a translator.’

  He looked impressed. ‘Is that so? What languages?’

  ‘I am working in Russian. I am from Uzbekistan, but now I live in London.’

  ‘Of course.’ Mr Antonelli nodded, as if something had fallen into place. They reached the end of the street and he glanced at his thin gold watch again. ‘I have an hour before my next appointment. Would you like maybe to have a drink?’

  Roxana considered. Mr Antonelli was obviously important. Maybe he could be a useful person to know.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘That would be very nice.’

  He seemed to know his way around. He briskly steered her towards a place she had often passed but never thought of going into. Even this early in the evening, a big man wearing a black suit and a headset was guarding the doorway.

  ‘Good evening, sir; good evening, madam,’ he said, as they swept past.

  The bar was flooded with soft golden light. The low furniture was all made of brown leather, wall mirrors reflected the backs of the women’s smooth blonde heads and the shoulders of men in City suits. There were waitresses in black uniforms, and low music playing. Mr Antonelli steered them to a table in a little alcove. Roxana blinked as a glass of champagne materialised in front of her. When she went out with Noah it was to pubs, or to indie music gigs in underground venues in Camden Town.

  ‘I am Cesare Antonelli.’ He took a card from his wallet and slid it across to her. Underneath his name it said Film Director, with an address in Rome. Roxana sat up. This was exactly the sort of person she needed to meet.