Constance

by Rosie Thomas

  She returned to bed and picked up her book. She heard a soft knocking. Roxana was standing out in the corridor, wearing her jacket with big buttons over a long T-shirt.

  She said in a small voice, ‘I am afraid that the waves will knock this house down.’

  ‘No. It’s quite safe. Come in here.’

  Roxana followed her in. The room was small, and the only place to sit apart from on the double bed was the stool in front of the old-fashioned dressing table. They caught each other’s eyes and started laughing.

  Roxana raised her shoulders to her ears. ‘I don’t understand this sea of yours,’ she repeated.

  ‘I know. But this pub has probably been standing here for three hundred years, and the storm will have blown itself out by the morning.’

  Connie opened the minibar and took out a couple of miniatures. ‘Let’s see. Whisky? Or brandy?’

  ‘Either one.’

  ‘Sit on the bed. Might as well be comfortable if we’re going to have a small-hours drinks party.’

  They stretched out, side by side, and Roxana let her head fall back against the pillows. Companionably, they lay and listened to the sea.

  ‘Such waves. It is like…nothing I know, that’s the truth. I am trying to imagine. Maybe, let me think, this little room is like a ship. Maybe we are in a wreck. We have to cling on for our lives.’ She gripped the edge of the mattress as if she was about to be tossed into the depths. ‘I am lucky, and so are you, Connie. We are alive on our ship, and we are not going to drown. Not today. Maybe never.’

  Roxana reached for her glass and drank. The rim clinked against her teeth.

  ‘I wish my brother was on our ship with us.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But Niki is not lucky. Not at all. He did not travel to England, and he has not been into the sea, like me.’

  ‘Were you thinking about him, this afternoon in the café?’

  Roxana didn’t answer. Her chin was tipped forwards and she was staring at the tumbler balanced on her diaphragm.

  ‘You could talk about him, if you wanted,’ Connie gently prompted.

  The glass clinked again as Roxana drank.

  ‘I cried more for myself, if you want to know the truth,’ she said abruptly. ‘There is no point in tears for him, because he is dead. He did not have much life, and now it is over. Me, I am still here without him.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘Go on to what?’

  ‘Well. Let’s see. What happened to your brother? And to you? Why are you here, in this ship? And where are you sailing to?’

  ‘That is many questions, Connie.’

  ‘You don’t have to answer. You can tell me to shut up, if you like. Or you could take them one at a time.’

  There was a silence.

  ‘I will be needing more whisky, to talk so much.’

  ‘That can be arranged.’

  Connie slid off the bed and opened the minibar again.

  ‘My brother Niki, I told you about him, that time in the garden at Noah’s house. He was two years older than me. Even when times were very bad, he was funny, and brave, and always company. Then, because my friend Yakov helped me, I was able to go to Tashkent, away from our stepfather and from our home in Bokhara, to study the dance. Niki, when he grew older, became more serious. He went to the madrassah with his friends, he read the Koran and went to the mosque. But he was not angry; Niki was never an extreme person. He believed only in each person’s right to follow their beliefs, without threat from the government. But that is not easy to do, in our country.

  ‘When I was away Niki went with his friends to stay in Andijan, which is in the far east of Uzbekistan, in the Fergana Valley. This is a very poor place, very traditional. There was an uprising there, a protest because some men were arrested for religious crimes. I am not sure if this was right or wrong, but the protest grew in Andijan until thousands of people were gathered in the square before the government houses. Then soldiers came and sealed off the square, and they started shooting.

  ‘Many hundreds of men and women were killed. This was exactly one year and four months ago.’

  Connie waited.

  ‘I didn’t hear from my brother, not a word. I feared for two months, then I went by bus to Fergana and in Andijan at last I found one of his friends who was not in prison or already dead. This boy told me that he had seen Niki that day. It was raining, the stones of the square were shining with water. Then the tanks and soldiers came, and the bullets. People were running and screaming and falling down, and then the stones shone with blood. He said to me that when he saw Niki he was lying on the ground and people were tripping over him and he didn’t move. He was dead, this friend told me. I hope he did not suffer much.’

  ‘Roxana, I’m so sorry. Was there any compensation, or a trial, or an official inquiry?’

  She waved her hand. ‘This uprising was said to be a crime of extremist people who were unlawfully trying to create a state for Islam in Fergana. That is the way it is, in my country. It is sad, and life there is hard for many of us. But there are also beautiful places and good people, I have not forgotten that.

  ‘Without Niki, there was no reason left for me to stay. My stepfather Leonid is a bad man. But Yakov, who was my mother’s good friend, and who has some care for me too…he helped me to get a passport, and a visa from the British embassy to come to England for a tourist visit. So here I am, and now I will be a new Roxana. Since I have luckily not drowned in the sea, after all.’

  ‘Was it Yakov who helped you with the dance studies and taught you to speak English so well?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘He must be a good man. Is he still in Uzbekistan?’

  ‘In Bokhara. He is like men are, you know. Some good parts, some bad. I have not always done the best things in my life, Connie, but I have done what it seemed needful to do. And I am glad that you think my English is good. I try hard.’

  ‘Your English is excellent. You know – if I can do anything to help you, I will.’

  ‘You have let me stay in your home, that’s quite enough. I am saving all my money and soon I’ll have an apartment of my own.’

  ‘Soon you will be ruling the world,’ Connie murmured, only half-joking. She was wondering what Noah’s long-term chances were with this girl of his.

  ‘I hope so. So that’s my life,’ Roxana smiled. ‘Not much like yours. Your life is beautiful.’

  Connie considered. In most of the ways she could bring to mind, compared with what Roxana had actually described and the likely history behind that, it was true. Her life was enviable.

  ‘Yes,’ she agreed. ‘In some ways. Although like most people’s lives, probably, it feels different inside from the way it looks.’

  ‘Tell me one thing. Why do you not have a husband?’

  Connie took a mouthful of her drink. ‘Never met the right man,’ she said lightly.

  Roxana gave her a hard look. ‘How can that be right? You are pretty and you are rich, and you are a good person. If I was a man I would ask you to marry me right now.’

  ‘Thank you. But if you were a man, I would also have to want to marry you. It takes two to make that decision, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, you are right.’ There was a pause. ‘Noah told me, you and his mother are not real sisters.’

  ‘Oh yes, we’re sisters. Not by blood, but we’re sisters just the same. I am only just realising it, but our childhood together made us that. There are times in my life that only Jeanette remembers, and times in hers that only I do.’

  Connie was surprised by the speed and ease with which she made this admission, but there was no doubt in her mind that it was the truth. Even though she and Jeanette had never shared even a single hour of drink and talk like this one.

  ‘Me and Niki, too. When you lose that person, and your memories, it is like a death of part of you.’

  I should be with Jeanette right now, Connie thought. That’s where I belong.

  ‘Noah said to m
e that it is difficult in your family, for years you did not see him and Mr and Mrs Bunting.’

  ‘Did he say that? And did he tell you why?’

  ‘In about one word only.’

  ‘That was a bit indiscreet of him.’

  ‘Maybe. But,’ she puffed out a breath, ‘I’m a stranger. What do I matter?’

  ‘It all happened a long time ago,’ Connie mused. And it might just as well have been yesterday, she thought.

  She closed her eyes and let her mind wander. She was drowsy, and the din of the wind and waves had become soothing.

  ‘Shall we try to sleep for a bit?’ she murmured. When she turned her head on the pillow, she saw that Roxana had already drifted off.

  It was daylight when she woke again. Roxana was still asleep, lying on her side with the bunched pillow creasing her cheek. She looked very young. Connie slid out from under the bedclothes, taking care not to disturb her. With an awkward, motherly gesture she pulled the covers up over the girl’s shoulders.

  When she came out of the bathroom, showered and dressed, Roxana was up and gazing out of the window.

  ‘Look,’ she said. Huge, glassy waves were driving against the sea wall and occasionally breaking over into the road. A delivery van crawled past, sending up grey plumes of seawater. It had stopped raining, and there were streaks of brightness showing in the fleecy sky. ‘Let’s go out.’

  ‘You want to risk it again?’

  ‘Of course I want to, before we have to go back to London.’

  The pub’s breakfast room was heavy with the smell of frying. Connie thought that when Roxana had seen enough of the sea they might try to find a coffee place. They went out into the salt air and ran along the road beside the sea wall, listening for the warning thump of the biggest waves and then dodging the spray that came over the wall. Roxana was radiant with exhilaration.

  Ahead of them stood the lifeboat station. There was a knot of cars beside it, men in orange oilskins and a scramble of other people. Connie pointed and shouted.

  ‘I think they might be going to launch the lifeboat.’

  ‘What is this?’

  In the shelter of a sea-front kiosk they stood to watch. There was a whine of power winches and the high prow of the boat emerged from the station and rocked above the short slipway. It dipped forwards, gathered momentum and crashed into the sea, sending up a double arc of water almost as high as the mast. It wallowed dangerously and then as the propellers bit the water it corkscrewed forwards. The orange blobs of the crewmen swarmed on the heaving deck.

  Roxana’s eyes were completely round.

  A man in chest-waders passed by. Connie asked him what was happening.

  ‘Trawler with engine trouble. They’re going to take the crew off.’

  ‘What?’ Roxana repeated. Connie told her what the lifeboat did and she shook her head in amazement.

  ‘I think these brave men must be paid a lot of money.’ The boat was breasting the huge waves, heading straight out to sea.

  ‘No, it’s voluntary. They do it for nothing.’

  ‘My God,’ Roxana breathed. ‘My God.’

  They watched it go.

  ‘I think I’m ready for a cup of coffee,’ Connie said firmly, once it was out at sea. She steered Roxana into the town. Shaking the drops of spray off their hair, they opened the door of a new coffee shop.

  There were only two other customers, sitting knee to knee at a corner table away from the big windows that overlooked the street. Connie glanced at them, and then stopped in her tracks.

  It was Angela with Rayner Ingram.

  There was no way that either pair could pretend not to notice the other, although Angela and Rayner would clearly have preferred it.

  ‘Ange, hello,’ Connie called, trying to inject sympathy and apology into her smile. Angela looked as if she might have been crying. It was clear that they had been arguing.

  ‘Connie? I mean, what are the chances of this happening? Rayner and I are…up here scouting locations for a shoot.’

  ‘Why don’t you join us?’ Rayner drawled. He hooked a chair forwards.

  Connie said, because there was no alternative, ‘Well, for a quick coffee. We’ve just been watching the lifeboat go out. This is Roxana, she’s my nephew’s girlfriend and she’s staying with me at the flat while she’s working in London.’

  ‘Hi,’ Roxana said. Rayner looked at her as she folded herself into a chair.

  They ordered breakfast. Angela put on a pair of glasses with tinted lenses and with her little finger surreptitiously smeared some coloured gloss on her lips. Chiming in together, Connie and Angela told Roxana about the Bali shoot. Adopting her enforced-contact-with-a-highly-contagious-disease face, Angela said she had been doing some more work with Tara. Rayner curled his arm over to reach the back of his head and raked his hair with his fingers.

  ‘You did well out there, working with that bunch,’ he told Angela, and her tense expression softened at the compliment. He added to Connie, ‘The commercials turned out a treat, considering the problems we had. The bank loved them. Blinding music, by the way. Awards material, no question.’

  ‘Thank you, Rayner.’

  Roxana watched and listened. Connie could feel the forcefield of her concentration on these new people.

  ‘What are you doing in London?’ Angela asked in her friendly way.

  Quickly Roxana answered, ‘I am going to study, English and business. I have some part-time work, not very interesting, and Connie is very kind to let me stay with her for now. I am from Uzbekistan.’

  ‘I thought you might be Russian,’ Rayner put in. He stirred his coffee and raised one eyebrow as he drank.

  ‘My father was from Novosibirsk, my mother from Bokhara, where I was born. I speak Russian, of course.’

  ‘We’re just setting up some work in St Petersburg. It’s not the easiest location to shoot in,’ Rayner sighed.

  ‘You have to know the people,’ Roxana smiled. ‘I do not mean the people individually, of course, but I think no one from the West knows how a Russian thinks. The only person who does is another Russian.’

  Connie waited, wondering if Roxana was now going to ask for a job, and if so how she would go about it. But all she did was bite into a triangle of toast and smile again. ‘It is more interesting to be in England. Yesterday, for example, was the first time in my life I saw the sea. And I almost drowned. Connie saved me.’

  Rayner’s eyebrow flicked again. Angela wanted to hear what had happened so Connie told them, relating it as a comedy rather than a drama. Roxana kept chipping in with contradictions, making it sound as though Connie had hauled her from the jaws of death. Angela laughed. She was enjoying herself enough to remove the shield of her glasses.

  ‘Is this actually the same day you’re both talking about?’

  ‘Oh, yes. I was there,’ Roxana insisted.

  Rayner turned his chair a little aside to take a call on his BlackBerry, then began checking his messages. Breakfast was clearly over.

  ‘We’re heading back to London today,’ Connie said.

  ‘But I would like to know first that the lifeship has not sunk.’

  Angela corrected Roxana, ‘It’s lifeboat. That’s the first slip I’ve heard you make, though. Is your Russian as good as your English?’

  ‘Much better. Russian and Uzbek, these are my own languages.’

  Angela nodded thoughtfully. Rayner put away his mobile and looked at his watch.

  ‘We’re going to have to make a move. We’ve got a couple more locations to check out,’ Angela said at once. She gathered up the papers and notes she had piled on the table. Connie wished she didn’t always jump with such alacrity to do what Rayner wanted. ‘Amazing to bump into you like this. I’ll call you, Con. We’ll have that movie night together.’

  Rayner was ready to leave. He raised one hand in an allpurpose salute and settled his sunglasses on his nose. Angela was looking through her wallet. She found a card and handed it to Roxana.
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  ‘All set, Angie?’ Rayner asked, as if she was keeping him waiting.

  ‘Bye,’ Angela said to both of them.

  After they had gone, Roxana tucked the card away in her plastic zipper purse. ‘Your film people are very interesting, I think.’

  Back on the sea front beside the lifeboat station, they learned from the onlookers that the trawlermen had all been taken off. Connie said she didn’t think they had time to stay to watch the boat come in again.

  ‘I know,’ Roxana sighed. ‘We have work. Always the same story.’

  But as they drove up the small hill that led out of the town, she begged Connie to stop for a moment. She scrambled out of the car and stood looking at the sea. In the distance the lifeboat could just be seen, pitching through the waves on the way back to the shore. Roxana stared at it, and sucked in a great gulp of the salt air, as if she were trying to fill her eyes and lungs and carry the coast away with her.

  Once they were finally out of sight and sound of it, and the nacreous light was fading into flat grey over the fields, she shook her head and gave a deep sigh.

  ‘Amazing. Totally amazing,’ she sighed. ‘Thank you for showing it to me.’

  Connie noticed that she gave the pronouncement exactly the same upwards inflection as Angela would have done.

  ‘I enjoyed myself more than I’ve done for ages,’ Connie said with a smile, and it was the truth.

  ‘How is Jeanette tonight?’ Connie asked Bill on the phone that evening, once Roxana had gone off to work.

  ‘Not very good,’ he told her. ‘She was practically transparent with exhaustion when I got her home. She went straight up to bed. I couldn’t persuade her even to try to eat something. I don’t see how she can go back tomorrow, although she insists that she will.’