Constance

by Rosie Thomas

  She felt rather than heard him draw in a breath, and they seemed poised on the edge of a great space through which they might fall or fly.

  Then he abruptly withdrew. He patted her hair with the flat of his hand as if he were her uncle, and at the same time pecked her on the cheek.

  He was suddenly so awkward, so unlike himself, that she knew he was trying to disguise feelings that were not avuncular at all. She was bewildered, and it was bewilderment that made her suddenly want to scowl and even punch him with her knuckles, as if she were nine years old again.

  She stared at him with reddened cheeks.

  ‘Drink your tea,’ Bill said gently, moving away from her and leaning back against the pock-marked old kitchen cupboard. ‘Put some sugar in it. Sugar’s good for shock.’

  Connie turned her back on him and began unpacking the picnic dishes that were smudgy with river water. There was a frond of weed trapped between the tines of a fork. Her racing heart slowed, and she began to breathe again.

  A little later Jeanette came downstairs. She was pink and shining from her bath, and her dressing gown didn’t quite cover her breasts. Her damp hair was pinned up on the top of her head, but tendrils escaped to frame her face. Hilda came too, having changed her clothes and dabbed some make-up on her face. They all sat down round the kitchen table and began to talk about the accident. Hilda reached across for Connie’s hand and squeezed it.

  ‘Don’t be too upset, love, will you?’

  Jeanette smiled at Connie too.

  – You were good. You ran for help. They came quite quickly, didn’t they?

  ‘It seemed a long time to me,’ Bill said.

  He and Jeanette kept glancing at each other, and even though they were talking about death, about how one person was dead and another might die, they couldn’t help covertly smiling. All of them knew how capable Bill and Jeanette had both shown themselves to be in the emergency. They were justified in feeling proud of themselves and even excited. Connie was thinking that she and Hilda had appeared in quite a different light.

  It was almost as if she were Hilda’s real daughter and not just the adopted one, which was another disorientating thought.

  Dry-mouthed, Connie looked down at her plate.

  Out of the corner of her eye she could see Jeanette’s left hand with the diamond ring lightly resting on Bill’s thigh. She knew with sudden and absolute certainty that she could not go on living at Echo Street. If she stayed here she would have to watch Bill and Jeanette touching and smiling and kissing each other. She wanted Bill to do those things to her. And Bill was her sister’s fiancé.

  I have to get out of this place. Just as soon as I can.

  Suddenly she stood up. ‘Do you feel sick, Connie? You’ve gone white.’

  ‘I’m okay. I’m going upstairs.’

  She closed her door and sat down on the bed. She tried to empty her head of sudden death at the roadside. She thought about Bill instead, guiltily and hungrily.

  The following Saturday, the day after Jeanette learned that she had gained a 2:1 in Biological Sciences, Connie turned sixteen. The planned family celebration was dinner with Uncle Geoff, Auntie Sadie, Elaine and Jackie in an Italian restaurant, the invariable festivity for each of their birthdays. Connie got up early, before either Hilda or Jeanette, and left a note on the kitchen table saying that she was going up to the West End to do some shopping and would be back in good time. By ten o’clock she was in Soho.

  She had no idea, back then, what a fluke it was to find the manager of GreenLeaf Studios in his chaotic office cubicle at any time on a Saturday. That her appearance at his door should coincide with his tired acknowledgement that they could do with a kid to help out, somebody who wouldn’t mind a bit of hard work and didn’t have too many ideas above his station, seemed no more than an average stroke of good luck. It was only when she was established in the business that she understood the scale of improbability. Once she had her foot inside his office, though, she had been determined not to give in.

  ‘I can do the job. Just let me try, and I’ll show you,’ Connie begged. Something had happened within Connie since witnessing the accident. She defined it approximately to herself as What have you got to lose? You could choose to be polite, you might feel that it wasn’t right to stand in a man’s office and insist, refusing to budge until you got what you wanted, but that would achieve nothing and nobody really cared about you being a nice, considerate person, did they?

  Bill found out that the motorcyclist had died in the ambulance on the way to hospital.

  Jeanette turned away in tears when he told them, but Connie just gazed back at him thinking that it could happen to her tomorrow, to him, to Jeanette, to anyone at all. The way it had happened to Tony. You might as well live the way you wanted while you were here and while you could. She was tired of waiting, and now there was the other reason as well. Sometimes, when she looked at Bill she found that he had been looking at her first. They would both turn away, sharply, and Connie felt her face burning.

  ‘Shall I start now? Look, I could make you some coffee and then I could clean up a bit,’ she persisted. The GreenLeaf Studios were a mess. There were dirty cups and full ashtrays and collapsed heaps of tapes, the waste bins overflowed and the kitchen cubicle smelled of sour milk.

  ‘We’ve got cleaners,’ Brian Luck said.

  ‘They’re not very good, are they?’ Connie rejoined.

  Brian laughed. ‘Go on, then. See those tapes? Check the label, or put them in the player there, find out what’s on ’em, work out a filing system. Can you do that?’

  ‘Yes.’

  She worked all day. At lunchtime, Brian went out for a sandwich and brought one back for her. While she ate it they talked about music. He knew a lot, but he also listened quite kindly to what she had to say about writing songs and singing with the band at school.

  By six o’clock, when Brian said he was locking up, Connie had catalogued the tapes and made space on shelves to store them.

  ‘I’ll come in on Monday morning, shall I?’

  Brian said he would have to consult his partners.

  ‘I’ll come anyway. They can’t decide without taking a look at me, can they?’

  There were still three weeks to go before the school year ended. But Connie already knew that she wouldn’t be going back.

  She was late getting home to Echo Street. Uncle Geoff’s new car was already parked outside when she jogged breathlessly up to the house. Geoff and Sadie were sitting with Hilda in the front room, Elaine had gone with Jeanette and Bill to the pub for half an hour while they all waited for Connie to reappear. Jackie wasn’t coming; she had been married for two years but whenever the name of her husband had been mentioned recently she sighed and looked up at the ceiling. Tonight it seemed that there was some kind of crisis. Sadie and Hilda had been discussing the situation in low voices while Geoff watched football on television.

  Hilda jumped up. ‘Connie! Where have you been all day? You’ve worried us half to death. Your auntie and uncle have been here since seven o’clock.’

  ‘Sorry. I told you, I went up west. There wasn’t a bus for ages.’

  Sadie was wearing tight cream trousers and a low-cut top. She checked her lipstick in her compact mirror then arched an eyebrow at Connie over the disc of gilt.

  ‘Happy birthday, love. Where’s your shopping? What did you buy?’

  ‘Thanks, Auntie Sadie. I didn’t really see anything I liked. Shall I just quickly run up and change, Mum?’

  ‘All right,’ Hilda sighed.

  When Connie came down again, Jeanette and Bill and Elaine were filing in through the front door. Blushing, Connie submitted to birthday wishes and kisses from everyone except Bill. Bill didn’t kiss her, he just gave her his curly-mouthed smile.

  When they were all crammed into the front room Uncle Geoff made a show of telling everyone to hush. Then from a carrier-bag he produced a package.

  ‘Now, young lady, this is from your Aun
tie Sadie and your cousins and me. Many happy returns.’

  Connie took the package, shook it and listened to it. She knew that Bill was watching her. Hilda sat on the edge of an armchair, smoothing the folds of her skirt over her knees. Jeanette and Elaine leaned against the closed piano keyboard, looking alike except that Elaine was the ‘before’ version and Jeanette the ‘after’, in some advert for a miracle beauty product perhaps.

  ‘What is it?’ Connie murmured.

  ‘That’s for you to find out,’ Uncle Geoff smiled.

  She undid the wrappings, and discovered a Sony Walkman.

  Uncle Geoff’s presents to the Thornes were always generous to the point of being slightly embarrassing, because they highlighted the difference between what the two families could afford. Personal cassette players had only just come on to the market and Connie was amazed to receive one.

  She went to Geoff and hugged him. ‘Thank you, Uncle Geoff.’

  He put his arm round her waist and kept it there. ‘Sixteen, eh? Big day. It doesn’t seem a minute since you brought in this little scrap of a black-haired thing to show us all, Hilda, does it?’

  There was a pause in which everyone seemed to be waiting for someone else to mention adoption, and at the same time willing them not to. Connie moved hastily to Sadie and hugged her too.

  ‘We’re all family, aren’t we?’ Sadie said, as if this point needed clearing up.

  Geoff began showing Connie how the Walkman worked (although she knew already what every function was) and telling her that she must handle it carefully.

  Bill said, ‘I’ve got a present for you, too.’

  He handed over two small rectangular packages and Connie opened them to find the new Police and Ian Dury albums in cassette form. This gift of music seemed to speak to her so personally that she couldn’t quite look at him in case she gave herself away. From beneath the veil of her hair she murmured, ‘How did you know about the Walkman?’

  ‘I heard,’ he said drily. This meant he had thought about her birthday, talked about it, and then gone to a record shop and made a choice just for her. He did it out of affection, nothing more, but she felt riven with love for him and with dismay at the impossibility of her situation.

  It’s all right, she reassured herself. You’re going to move out. You won’t be here any longer.

  ‘Thanks a lot,’ she muttered.

  To her relief Hilda and Sadie were getting ready to leave for the restaurant. Elaine went with Bill and Jeanette in Bill’s car, and Connie with Hilda in Uncle Geoff’s. His latest car was a silver-grey Jaguar that he parked right outside the window of La Osteria Antica, where he could keep an eye on it.

  ‘It’s this young lady’s sixteenth birthday today,’ Geoff announced to the maître d’. The man seized Connie’s hand and kissed it, murmuring bella, bella signora. By accident, Connie caught Bill’s eye. His mouth curled extravagantly and she knew that he was on the point of bursting into laughter. It would be so easy to laugh with Bill, she thought; there were so many ridiculous things. It would be as easy to laugh as to be serious.

  Once they were seated round the centre table and had ordered their various tagliatelles and saltimboccas, Uncle Geoff and the others wanted to hear all about the accident. Hilda covered her eyes with one hand and shuddered, so Bill gravely told the story again, with signed interventions from Jeanette. Next there was Jeanette’s degree to discuss. She was the first person in the family to graduate from university.

  ‘This is a double celebration,’ Uncle Geoff said. ‘We should drink to two fine young women.’

  These days Jeanette easily outshone her cousin, who worked in a bank. Elaine compressed her lips slightly but she drank the toast with everyone else. Uncle Geoff didn’t look for interventions from his wife and daughters.

  He was in his stride now. ‘So, Connie. You’ll be following in your sister’s footsteps, I expect. Which A levels are you going to choose?’

  Connie gazed at the red tablecloth and a slice of tiled floor. She was overtaken by an irresistible impulse not to be patronised by Uncle Geoff, not to do what was routinely expected of her, and most of all not to place herself next to Jeanette in Bill’s eyes.

  ‘I’ve got a job,’ she said quietly.

  ‘Holiday job? Very good. It’s important to get some practice in the real world. It’s a harsh climate out there. Nobody knows that better than I do.’ Uncle Geoff was chewing and pointing at her with his fork.

  Connie raised her voice. ‘It’s a real job. In the music business. I’m not going back to school next year.’

  Six faces stared at her.

  Hilda said sharply, ‘Don’t talk rubbish. You’re staying at school. While you’re under my roof, you…’

  ‘I start work on Monday morning. I’m leaving home.’

  Hilda laid down her knife. Elaine smiled.

  She hadn’t planned this, not in any way, but Connie’s head swam with sudden elation. The Osteria Antica was lit up with the insanely flickering glow of burning bridges. If she didn’t get a job at GreenLeaf Music, if Brian Luck and his colleagues decided they didn’t want her, she would find a different place to work. She saw that the door of Echo Street was opening and all she had to do was walk – run – out of it.

  The waiting was finally over.

  ‘What do you mean, leaving home? How do you think you’ll cope on your own, my girl?’

  She had no idea, but already she was improvising temporary solutions. Ideas cascaded through her head. Her one-time boyfriend Davy’s parents had just gone away on holiday to Spain for two weeks, so she could almost certainly sleep round there for a few nights. She had a little money saved from her Saturday job, so she’d get a room somewhere. She had never experienced such a moment of euphoria. She was sharply aware of Bill, across the table, and it was only later that she wondered if she had correctly read admiration in his eyes. Jeanette turned her head between them and the bell of hair swung round her jaw.

  Uncle Geoff’s eyes bulged. ‘Don’t you think, young lady, that after all she has done for you in sixteen years, from the moment she took you in, you owe your mother a debt of gratitude?’

  The clamour in the restaurant seemed to die away.

  ‘I will find a way to repay my debts,’ Connie said.

  Then she stood up and weaved between trolleys and waiters to the cloakroom.

  When she came out of the cubicle, breathing more calmly and with the elation already draining away like water into sand, leaving her feeling cold and shaken, she found Jeanette standing by the basins.

  – Did you mean all that? Jeanette asked.

  There was a smell of liquid soap and air freshener, and an echo of dripping taps.

  ‘Yes.’

  Their reflections glanced back out of the peach-tinted mirror. Connie caught a glimpse of how different they looked, angel and demon.

  – Why do you really want to leave home?

  She could hardly tell her sister what had actually precipitated the decision.

  ‘It’s time. I want to find out who I really am.’

  Jeanette raised an eyebrow.

  ‘Well, I don’t know, do I?’

  – No, Jeanette agreed. She turned to wash her hands, carefully soaping around her diamond ring. Connie stared at her bent back, wanting to fight her as much as she had done when she was six, and at the same time thinking that love and hate were so close as to be nearly the same thing. Like sisters.

  Jeanette stood upright again and shook water from her hands.

  – You’ve spoiled your own birthday.

  ‘Yes,’ Connie agreed. There was something definitively Thorne family about the disintegration of the evening. They tottered against the clanking roller-towel holder as laughter swept over them.

  ‘Have I got to go back in there?’ Connie murmured, when she could speak once more.

  – Definitely.

  ‘I’ll go if you come.’

  They went. At the table Hilda was smoking one of Sadie�
��s cigarettes, looking as tragic as if she was bereaved all over again. Geoff was telling Bill that when he was his age, he already owned his own business and didn’t owe a penny to a soul.

  Hilda always maintained afterwards that Connie left home just like that, walked out on them on the day she was sixteen and never came back.

  It was true that she left Echo Street quietly the following morning, with a rucksack containing her clothes and Uncle Geoff’s Walkman, and went to stay at Davy’s house. The job at GreenLeaf Music paid twenty-eight pounds a week, and she managed to live on that when she moved to her room in Perivale. The only times she ever went back to Echo Street were for Sunday lunches. A square meal was welcome, for one thing.

  Three weeks after the birthday evening, she and Hilda and Bill went to Jeanette’s graduation ceremony. The hall was packed with hundreds of parents. Before Jeanette’s turn a blind boy, led by his guide dog, crossed the platform to shake the hand of the Vice-Chancellor and collect his degree. The dutiful, bored applause from the audience rose into a wave of cheering and foot-stamping in acknowledgement of his achievement.

  When Jeanette came up in her dusty black academic gown and rabbit-fur hood, she looked the same as all the other young women in her group. There was no extra volume of clapping as she took her scroll and descended the steps from the stage to take her seat again.

  Afterwards they emerged into the July sunshine. Hilda had brought her camera and she made them all pose in every possible permutation with Jeanette, who smiled serenely from beneath the tilted edge of her mortarboard. It was one of those family-album, framed-photograph days. Connie knew that these pictures would always be with them, capturing a momentary theorem of family life that reality constantly disproved.

  ‘If only Tony could see you today,’ Hilda sighed.

  Connie protested, ‘Nobody knew you were deaf. You should have had all the extra clapping and cheering, like that blind guy did.’

  Jeanette took off the mortarboard and slipped the gown down her shoulders.