Constance

by Rosie Thomas

  – Better for no one to know. That makes it more of an achievement. Anyway, I wouldn’t have heard them, would I?

  ‘You did well,’ Connie said simply.

  Jeanette suddenly laughed with pride.

  – I did, didn’t I?

  Hilda needed to change the film in the camera and Bill showed her how to do it. Jeanette took Connie’s arm and steered her to one side.

  – Are you coming back home?

  Connie shook her head.

  ‘No. I can’t.’

  The way she was living now was far harder than she had imagined it would be, and she was lonely, but she was not going back to Echo Street.

  – Can’t?

  ‘Won’t, then.’

  – Mum misses you.

  ‘Does she?’ Connie could not quite believe the transparency of this. It went with the family theorem, sunny for a day, for the camera’s benefit.

  – And I’m not going to be there. Not for ever.

  Jeanette and Bill were going camping in France. They were talking about moving in together, once Jeanette had started work.

  Connie looked back over her shoulder, at Bill with the body of the camera open in his hands, at Hilda in her summer dress, both of them dappled with sunlight. She felt the pull in too many directions, responsibility quartered with desire, selfishness shot through with an unwieldy sympathy. The only way to extricate herself seemed to be to move out of this magnetic field altogether.

  She found the self-interest to say what she really meant.

  ‘I want to live on my own.’

  Jeanette studied her. Don’t judge me, Connie thought hotly. I’m doing this for you as well as me.

  The ground between them was too complicated, too obscured, for her to map it out. It always had been.

  Hilda called out, ‘Bill’s done it. I want one more picture. Jeanette, come here.’

  She took a picture of the two of them, Jeanette standing in the circle of Bill’s arms, sun on their heads, both of them looking into the long lens of the future.

  This was the image that Connie took away with her.

  NINE

  Until she saw his parents’ house and its garden full of flowers, Roxana thought that Noah’s flat in Hammersmith was the most comfortable place in the world. Now Connie unlocked the door to her apartment on the top floor of a tall, anonymously modern building – not so very far, Roxana worked out, from the bad house where she had stayed with Dylan.

  ‘Come in,’ Connie said.

  Noah and Roxana shuffled in behind her.

  Their first impression was of a space that opened straight out into the sky, a smoky summer’s-evening London sky now fading from amethyst into horizontal bars of grey and rose-pink cloud over tower-blocks and trees and the spires of city churches. The wall facing the door was an almost complete run of plate glass.

  Noah looked about him. The family rift meant that he had never been here before.

  ‘Nice place, Auntie Con,’ he murmured.

  Worrying a little that she might be leaving dirty footprints, Roxana walked over to the huge window and looked out. To her right was the strange bulging tower that Noah referred to as the Gherkin, the domes of St Paul’s Cathedral bathed bronze by the floodlighting, and the arrow shape of a descending plane given definition by its winking lights. In the distance to her left was another group of towers, seeming to float in the purple twilight. Below her spread layers of rooftops bisected by orange-lit streets, the crowns of big trees – the jumble of London that she was beginning to know, smelling at ground level of dirt and fast food, clogged with traffic, and crackling with the jolts of human static electricity discharged through sudden snarling altercations – and yet which, from up in this eagle’s nest, looked serenely beautiful.

  The room itself was almost empty. There were no ornaments, hardly any furniture. A pair of sofas faced each other across a low table. A lamp hung on a swan’s neck of arched metal. In the distance, in the dimness, Roxana could see a countertop that looked as if it was made from some kind of stone, the glinting metal curve of a tap, some glass shelves.

  This emptiness struck her as immensely restful, as well as opulent.

  At home in Bokhara the ordinary places to live, her stepfather’s apartment among them, were in cheap Soviet-built blocks made of stained and crumbling concrete where the walls excluded no sound louder than a whisper and where the decoration consisted of pungent oilcloth table coverings, gaudy Chinese rugs, tin trays, and bulbous glass vases in shades of orange and purple bathed by the flickering light of the television screen. In the old city, down alleyways behind wooden doors, the old houses were kept dark against the heat, lined with ornamental plaster-work and painted into every cluttered crevice with brilliant patterns and colours. All of it was bright, in a monotonous desert landscape, but it was not restful.

  To Roxana this pale apartment of Connie’s went with the glimpse of London that she had caught from the top deck of the bus. This huge city was a mass of contradictions, and of systems of possession and exclusion that she couldn’t fathom, but her hunger to be a part of it was steadily increasing. Noah’s family very obviously had their established place, which made her want even more to be accepted and included by them.

  From the little she knew of Noah’s auntie’s history, and seeing her apartment, she reckoned that Connie had launched herself onto this glittering, wide London river with notable success. She herself did not have the advantage of being a genuine English girl, but Roxana would find her own way.

  She breathed deeply, pushed her hands into the pockets of her denim jacket with the paper-coloured rose wilting in the buttonhole, rocked upwards on the balls of her feet and lengthened all the muscles of her back and her bare, dancer’s legs.

  She became aware that Noah and Connie were both looking at her. She quickly lowered her weight back onto her heels, extricated her hands and let them hang at her sides.

  ‘I’ll show you the spare room,’ Connie said, clicking on the swan-shaped lamp and creating a pool of pale gold light.

  Roxana followed her down a high, pale, empty corridor and they came to a flat door in the bare wall. Connie pushed it open.

  The room was unfurnished except for a small double bed framed by built-in cupboards and the air smelled unused, faintly stuffy. The window came higher up the wall, giving a slice of a different view. Connie nudged open an inner door and this time Roxana saw a small bathroom lined with some light-coloured stone. Glass and polished mirrors showed her reflection and Connie’s retreating into infinity, but otherwise it was completely bare. She frowned.

  ‘Where are your…things?’ she began, imagining that Connie’s talcum powders and face creams must be hidden away somewhere.

  ‘This would be yours. My bedroom’s at the other end of the flat, and so is my bathroom. The room’s almost self-contained, so I thought it might be good for you.’

  Awed, Roxana understood that this amazing apartment must have two bathrooms.

  She remembered briefly the alcove screened with a plastic curtain where she had washed when she was growing up, soaping her developing breasts and afterwards pulling on her clothes as quickly as she could, not always in time, before Leonid came and caught her. At Dylan’s house the bathroom was a reeking cave that she had avoided as far as possible, and even at Noah’s the basin was speckled with shaved bristles and the towels tended to accumulate in damp drifts against the bath’s side. Here, Roxana allowed herself to imagine that she might have hours to soak and dream, safely alone, with all these mirrors gently fogged with steam. There would certainly be hot water here, endless hot water, she was sure of that.

  ‘It’s very nice,’ she whispered.

  Noah hovered in the doorway. He didn’t look as pleased as Roxana expected. They filed back the way they had come.

  ‘What do you think?’ Connie asked. She moved into the distance, began opening concealed cupboards to reveal treasures of stacked white china, shining glassware, rows of bottles and j
ars.

  Roxana’s excitement was draining away. Even Noah seemed smaller, somehow scruffier in this setting.

  How could she possibly, even momentarily, have expected to be able to live here?

  ‘I don’t think,’ she sighed. Connie’s head turned, her fingers pinching the edge of a cupboard door. Their eyes met. ‘You see, I don’t think I will have money, enough money for rent.’ She remembered the Asian boy with the big shirt and the rental prices he had reeled off.

  Connie resumed her search in the cupboard.

  ‘I don’t really need rent. Not right now, anyway. If you wanted, you could just stay here while you’re getting used to London. Until you’re ready to decide exactly where you’d like to be.’ She spoke tentatively, almost as if Roxana were the one offering to do her the favour. Roxana glanced at Noah, lifted her shoulders interrogatively while Connie’s back was turned. Noah shrugged with a touch of sulkiness, miming Why not?

  ‘You are very kind,’ Roxana began.

  Connie turned back to face them again. ‘I’d be glad of some company now and again,’ she smiled, as if all this was unremarkable to her. Perhaps it was, Roxana reflected. ‘What do you think?’

  Roxana smiled back. ‘So I would like to. Thank you.’

  Noah said he could drive her over with her suitcase, if she wanted, but not before the next weekend because their work hours didn’t allow any time off in common.

  ‘I think for Andy, maybe it will be better if I come by myself before that. I don’t need to bring everything.’

  Noah frowned again. Connie went away and came back with a pair of keys on a metal ring. These she dropped casually into Roxana’s pocket, adding, ‘We’re fixed, then. Come when you’re ready. What about a drink now, to celebrate? Or would you like something to eat? I’m just having a look to see what there is.’

  The kitchen area somehow didn’t have the appearance of being much used.

  Noah said quickly, ‘Thanks, Auntie Con, but we’ll be on our way. Work in the morning and all that.’ He kissed his aunt lightly on the cheek. ‘It’s been really good to see you again. And thank you for coming to see Mum. It’ll make a difference to her.’

  ‘I’m here. I want to be.’

  Connie and Roxana said a quick goodbye, hardly looking at each other. They were already flatmates; it was almost as if they were conspirators, Noah thought. He was silent in the car as he and Roxana headed west.

  They were on the elevated section of the route through London when Roxana asked him, ‘Are you angry with something, Noah?’

  ‘No. Why?’

  ‘Maybe it was rude, saying we would not like to stay to have something to drink and eat?’

  ‘That’s your culture. Not necessarily ours. You’re going to be living there, anyway. You’ll have plenty of time with Connie.’ Noah had seen Roxana’s hypnotised expression as she followed Connie round her apartment, and his normal equanimity was shadowed with jealousy. He didn’t want to have to share Roxana with anyone, let alone his aunt. There was too much history here, peering over their shoulders.

  He sighed. ‘Sorry. I’m sounding a bit pissed off, aren’t I? I’m really glad you’ve got somewhere decent to stay, you deserve it, and I know you can’t go on staying with me and Andy. It’s just that for years Auntie Con hasn’t been popular in my family and I’m getting my head round thinking differently about her. And I’m also wondering when you and I are ever going to see each other. I mean, you work every night.’

  Roxana’s hand slid across the handbrake and rounded itself on his thigh. Her little finger stroked a tiny circle, making him shift on his haunches and wish that they could get home a bit faster.

  ‘I am here now,’ she reminded him.

  ‘Mm. So you are. Rox, do you have to work every night?’

  She turned her face to him. Streetlights and oncoming cars swept light across it and he glimpsed her set expression.

  ‘Yes. I need money. I need it to make myself into somebody,’ she said.

  He couldn’t disagree with her absolute determination. It seemed familiar to him, surprisingly and closely connected to his own being even though he judged himself as slightly lazy, and he loved her for it.

  ‘But you are already somebody.’

  Roxana didn’t answer.

  Andy was already at home, occupying his usual end of the sofa, with the television turned up loud. There was an empty pizza box at his feet.

  ‘Hey, you guys. Had a good day?’ Remembering Jeanette he added quickly, ‘How’s your mum, mate?’

  ‘She’s about the same, thanks. She was pretty cheerful today, her sister was there. Actually, Roxana’s got a room over at her place. We’ve just been there to take a look at it.’

  ‘A room at your mum’s?’

  ‘No. My Auntie Con’s.’

  ‘It is beautiful,’ Roxana put in.

  ‘Ah. Oh. Well, cool. That’s really great.’ His gaze slid back to the television. Noah put his hands on Roxana’s hips and steered her briskly across to his bedroom. Once they were inside with the door closed he hooked his knee behind hers and tipped her expertly onto the bed, as he had been wanting to do ever since they had left his parents’ house. They rolled together, giggling and wrestling until Noah found a way to pin her down and kiss her. He caught the hem of her tiny skirt and edged it higher.

  ‘God, you’re beautiful.’

  ‘And you, Mr Noah Bunting, are a very kind man.’

  ‘Right. Is kind as far as it goes?’

  She pretended to think. ‘You are, um, pushing for a compliment, I think?’

  ‘Fishing. It’s fishing for compliments. Quite an old-fashioned expression. Your English isn’t perfect yet, my Uzbek girl. Although it’s pretty damn good, come to mention it. You never told me how you learned.’

  ‘I had a teacher called Yakov. He knows a lot of languages. And I worked hard at it.’ He waited for her to expand, but she did not.

  In the end he said, ‘Yes, I bet you did. I love you, Rox.’

  Her expression lightened, and they were connected again. She touched her mouth to his. ‘Good. I am pleased to hear.’

  She never said I love you back to him. But there was time, Noah thought. She would in the end.

  It was a few days before Roxana stopped feeling like an intruder at Limbeck House, which was the name of the building crowned by Connie’s apartment. She half-expected, as she tapped the security code into the panel at the street door and then rode up in the hushed lift, that some security official would seize her by the shoulder and march her outside again.

  But, gradually, she became accustomed to the place. She hung up her few clothes in the cupboard, and stuck her beach postcard right next to the side of the bed. She liked to see the picture when she opened her eyes, although it no longer represented her only idea of Paradise. Where she now found herself came quite close to that.

  By the time Roxana got up Connie had usually gone out, and when she came back from The Cosmos her flatmate was always asleep. Roxana didn’t mind at all being alone in the apartment. She unfurled, slowly, like a new leaf.

  At first she stayed in her room, watching the clouds and the planes passing her window. She took long, hot baths and stared at herself in the misted mirrors, not quite recognising the scrubbed, leisurely person who looked back at her.

  Then she acquainted herself with the other rooms. The daylight in the big living area changed with the hour, and according to the weather. One afternoon there was a storm, and she watched the rain sweeping towards her like fine scratches over the city towers.

  She looked in the cupboards in the kitchen and in the huge fridge. There wasn’t much food, and anyway she didn’t think she should help herself to what there was. She left the flat in the middle of the day and went back to the Best Little Internet Café. The owner greeted her warmly, and served her a plate of souvlaki and salad. The fatty meat and chopped salad and the flat bread served with them reminded her of the food at home in Bokhara.

 
After she had eaten, she checked the email account that the Asian student boy had helped her to set up. There was the latest email from Fatima, responding to Roxana’s news that she now had an English boyfriend as well as a job.

  Fatima said she was glad that Roxana was having such a good time. You struck lucky, all right!

  Fatima was working in the travel industry in Tashkent, mostly with the Turkish biznez men who came to invest in the new post-Soviet developments. It was okay, she wrote. You know.

  Roxana rattled off a euphoric description of her new home. When they were little girls, she and Fatima had played with pebbles and pieces of stick in the shade of crumbling walls. It gave Roxana great satisfaction to think what different circumstances they found themselves in now.

  The café owner called a friendly goodbye to her as she left, and that made her happy too. She was a regular customer, recognised and valued.

  She called in at the grocer’s store on the corner of the street and bought milk, tomatoes, bread and cheese to take home to Limbeck House. She put the food in the fridge, seeing how lost it looked in the cavernous interior, and wondered what Connie liked to eat and whether she should cook something for her. She didn’t, in the end, but that was because she didn’t really know how to cook anything that would be good enough.

  In the early evenings she went out to The Cosmos, and after the cool neutral air of Limbeck House it was like breathing in a toxic compound of smoke, sweat, alcohol and men’s lust. But she was rested now, feeling almost dizzy with the lifting of anxiety, and she was able to work much better. More punters wanted private dances and they paid more money for them, perhaps because her smile was convincing. She earned good money and she didn’t even have to worry about keeping the thickening wad of notes safe. It lay in an envelope, on a shelf within one of the cupboards in her sanctuary.

  She came home at three thirty in the morning, her clothes and hair stinking of The Cosmos, and found a note from Connie on the kitchen counter.

  I helped myself to milk and bread, etc. Hope you don’t mind. C.