Constance (34 page)

‘I want to say thank you for saving my life.’

The barman opened the wine for them and Connie raised her glass to Roxana.

‘I hauled you out of the water, no more than that. But here’s to life. Here’s to us.’
Whoever we both are…

‘To life and us,’ Roxana echoed in triumph. She was exuberant with relief and pleasure in being alive, and her elation rubbed off on Connie. The wine quickly disappeared, and Connie ordered a second bottle.

They ate dinner in the restaurant off the bar, which was decorated with nets and fishing floats.

Roxana kept shaking her head in wonderment. ‘That sea, my God. It was
not
blue and smooth as glass, and there was
no
white sand like there is in my picture. I could not see one single palm tree, only grey stones. And such cold. Like Siberia, I should think. I thought my breath would never come again.’

‘Your picture’s of Thailand. The sea can sometimes be blue in England in September – but not all that often, come to think of it. There are no palm trees here. Well, maybe there are in Bournemouth or Torquay, I’m not sure. I should have told you more beforehand, and most of all I should have warned you that the North Sea wasn’t going to look anything, nothing
at all
, like Koh Samui. I was so concerned with not spoiling the impact that I didn’t think hard enough. I’m sorry you were disappointed.’

Roxana’s eyes opened wider.

‘Disappointed? I was not, not one bit. That sea, it was like a wild monster. It was alive, roaring, coming to swallow
us up. I have never seen a sight like the waves coming, and to be caught by it like that, snatched up in its jaws and shaken, I could not ever have imagined such a thing. I have lived only in Uzbekistan, you know. The desert is a different animal. It lies coiled up like a snake, heavy, and only a very few times does it move. It is dangerous always, but not like your sea. I will never forget today, if I live for ever.’

‘No,’ Connie smiled. ‘I don’t think you will forget.’

It was only the very young and determined, she was thinking, who could conceive of living for ever.

Jeanette had been intending to return to work at the centre for taxonomic studies today. Connie found herself wondering how she had managed it.

‘You are the heroine,’ Roxana insisted.

‘No. Really. I’ve swum off this coast before, that’s all.’

‘To me, you are.’

‘You’d better not tell Noah I led you into trouble.’

Roxana nodded. ‘If you think that is best, I will not say a word to him.’

‘I didn’t mean you had to keep it a secret,’ Connie laughed.

The second bottle was empty and they had finished their dinner. They could hear the
whump
of waves driving against the sea wall. Spray hit the windows with a rattle like thrown gravel. In the bar the barman was polishing glasses, talking to a fisherman about the storm at sea.

‘Rough night,’ said the fisherman.

‘Good night, ladies,’ the barman called.

Connie went to bed and slept for three or four hours, then woke up again. For a few minutes she lay listening to the wind and the pounding waves. She waited to see if she was going to fall asleep again, but the roar of the surf swelled until it pressed inside the bones of her skull. She sat up, switched on the light and got out of bed. When she pulled aside the curtains, the streetlights on the sea front seemed
to flicker through the streaming rain and spray. As she pressed her forehead against the chilly glass she heard the floorboards creak in the next room. The storm had woken Roxana, too.

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 me 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.’