Constance (36 page)
And I did the same thing myself,
Connie remembered.
The only real difference was that there was nothing among her few possessions to appeal to me.
She felt her own colour rising.
Roxana nodded unhappily. ‘I wanted to be like you,’ she whispered.
Like me? And who is that?
‘You are yourself. Why do you want to be someone else? To be Constance, or anyone? Why not be proud of being Roxana?’
Roxana still stared, with a light kindling in her eyes that seemed to indicate that she had never properly explored this question. She had just made the assumption. She shrugged, unwillingly.
‘I have not always done good things.’
‘Maybe you haven’t always had the chance. You’ve had a hard life, up until now, haven’t you?’
Roxana shrugged again.
Connie said quickly, ‘You’re going to stay here in my flat, while I’m in Bali with Noah’s parents.’
‘Please, if I can. Perhaps now you don’t want…’
‘I don’t want to turn you out. I’ve got two homes, you have nowhere to live. But can I trust you, if you live here without me, to look after my home and respect my belongings?’
Roxana put out her hand, then drew it back again. ‘Yes, yes, I promise.’
There was a moment when Connie stepped forward and Roxana began to duck away, almost as if she expected to be struck. Instead Connie put her arms round the girl. As she hugged her she felt the wary set of her shoulders, the taut line of her neck.
‘All right,’ she murmured. ‘It’s all right.’
Roxana’s shoulders loosened. They held on to each other for another moment.
‘How old were you when your mother died?’ Connie asked.
‘Nine. Niki was eleven. We stayed with Leonid, my stepfather. This was not what we chose, you know, but we had no other place where we could go.’
‘Can you remember your mother?’
‘Not so well. A little.’
Connie could guess, just from the touch of her, that Roxana hadn’t known much mothering.
‘I don’t know who my real mother was.’
‘No,’ Roxana acknowledged.
The simplicity of her agreement reminded Connie: there it is. That’s the truth. Now and always will be.
She dropped her arms. ‘Oh, Lord. Look at the time. I’ve got to go or I’ll miss the flight.’
Roxana stood back at once.
‘Have a safe journey,’ she said. ‘I am sure it is very nice in Bali.’
‘There are beaches. White sand and palm trees, even.’
‘That will be good for Mrs Bunting. Myself, I prefer Suffolk.’
A tiny basket made from plaited coconut leaf and containing a few grains of red and white rice, a sliver of lime and a betel leaf lay on the veranda step. The thin white trail of smoke from a burning incense stick drifted in the still air.
Wayan Tupereme prayed for a moment after he had placed the offering. He waved his hand three times, to send the essence of the offering towards God, and then padded quietly down the path to his own house. The Englishwoman was back, and now she had guests staying with her. Putu, the taxi driver who had brought them up from Denpasar, was a relative of his wife’s and she had heard from Putu’s wife that the lady who had arrived was very sick.
Wayan was certain that a stay in his village would help to balance her again.
Connie had moved into the smaller bedroom in her house, to give Jeanette and Bill more space. When she woke up she had to open her eyes before she was able to work out where she was, and then the rooster in the nearest yard started crowing.
She got out of bed and wrapped herself in a sarong. The
heat of the coming day was gathered in the corners of the room, waiting to reach out and envelop her. She padded across the bare floorboards to fold back the window shutters and immediately the early sun gilded the bare walls.
At first glance the veranda looked deserted. But then a tiny movement caught her eye. Jeanette was sitting in the rocking chair watching a cat-sized yellow-green lizard that was splayed on a corner of the decking, half-hidden by a fan of pleated leaves.
Connie slid open the screen door and stepped outside. The lizard blinked once, then flowed over the edge of the deck and vanished. Jeanette turned her head. When she saw Connie she pointed to where it had been a second earlier, chopping a bookends gesture with her two hands to indicate its size.
‘I know. He’s a big one. He lives under the boards. If I feel like some company, I feed him. He particularly likes ham, and cocktail olives.’
Jeanette smiled.
‘How do you feel? Did you sleep?’
Connie was thinking that she looked a bit better than she had done yesterday, although that wasn’t saying very much. When she had met them at the airport, Bill was pushing Jeanette in an airline wheelchair. Her face looked the colour and texture of tissue paper and she had seemed to lack the strength even to lift up her head.
‘Bad journey,’ Bill murmured.
‘It’s not far now,’ Connie rallied them.
She was shocked. Jeanette looked so weak and defeated, she was afraid that she was going to die there in the midst of the airport’s callous scramble of taxis and tour buses. She ordered their frightened driver to get them home, back to the village, as quickly and smoothly as he could.
And now, less than twenty hours later, Jeanette was up,
her hair was combed, and she had dressed in a shirt with kindly folds that hid her sharp bones.
–
Better. Thank you
, she answered. –
I was very tired
.
Connie could only admire the depth of her sister’s resolve. However much pain she was in, however exhausted, if she wanted to get up she would somehow do it. She pulled a stool across and sat down next to her. They gazed out at the view.
Veils of mist were drawn upwards from the bends of the river. Diaphanous layers silvered the opposite wall of greenery and where the sun touched them droplets of moisture trapped in the fingers of the leaves twinkled with tiny points of light, as if the branches were hung with jewels. The palms on the farthest ridge were pale grey feathers.
Without taking her eyes off the line of sunlight as it slid down the side of the gorge, Jeanette let her head fall back against the cushions. Her arms dangled over the sides of the chair as if her hands were heavy weights. Her bare feet were planted flat, toes turned out.
Connie could hear the warring dogs and the buzz of traffic, splashing water from the spring and the screeches and chuckings of the various birds, but all Jeanette had was the vast green intricacy of the view, and the gentle pressure of heat and humidity.
–
Look at it
, she said. –
It’s perfect. And it’s so hot.
Connie was solicitous at once. ‘A breeze gets up later. Come inside for now. It’s cooler. There’s air-con, I’ll turn it up.’
Jeanette shook her head. Her face and throat were lightly sheened with sweat.
– I like it. I’m usually cold.
‘If you’re sure.’
Connie thought that she must be all right. Jeanette’s body looked heavy, as if her sore bones were softening.
A long moment passed, comfortably silent.
– So many trees. I don’t know half of them.
‘Neither do I. We’ll get a book.’
– Good idea.
Another moment passed.
– Connie?
‘Yes.’
– I’m so happy we came.
‘I thought the journey was too much for you. I was angry with myself for having suggested you should come out here in the first place.’
Jeanette rolled her head and sighed.
– I threw up all the way. The shame. I hate Bill to see me like that.
Bill had told Connie that the motion of flight had disagreed with Jeanette almost from the moment of take-off. She hadn’t been able to keep down even sips of water. He had wanted to stop the journey at Singapore, but Jeanette had insisted on making the connecting flight. –
I want to see Bali
, she’d said, and kept saying it.
– But I’m all right now I’m here. In this place. It’s more beautiful than I imagined.
‘I’m glad you’re here,’ Connie said.
Jeanette shot her a sudden glance.
– It’s a long way from Echo Street.
The exotic walls of the gorge and the solid sunshine emphasised the physical distance, but Connie shook her head. ‘Only in miles. Sitting here with you, I feel as if we could be back there.’
The steep stairs rising from the narrow hallway, the residue of damp left by Hilda’s mopping, the piano and the line of photographs – Jeanette with Connie propped on her knee, Jeanette in her graduation gown – shapes, smells, ghosts. The architecture of these memories felt as real between them as the deck beneath their feet.
There was another glance.
– Bad or not bad?
Connie said, ‘Neither. Or both. It’s what connects us. Echo Street.’
The last time they had been there together, four years ago now, the rooms were being emptied. Two sweating men hoisted the piano onto a wheeled trolley and rolled it away. Dusty rectangles showed on the bare walls, and the living-room carpet was dimpled with brown-rimmed hollows where the same furniture had stood in the same places for more than thirty years.
That was the day they discovered the old cardboard box, the one with
Fray Bentos
printed on the sides in rubbed blue lettering and sealed with packing tape that had turned brittle with age.
That was the day when they had their last, seemingly irrevocable quarrel.
The last time they communicated with each other, until Jeanette emailed to tell her sister that she was dying.
Connie bowed her head. The arches of her sister’s feet were netted with blue veins and the five tendons fanned out like sash cords. The toes were absolutely white, bloodless, the nails as chalky as if they belonged already to a dead woman. She pulled her stool closer and lifted the feet into her lap. She began to massage them, running her thumbs over the ridges and feeling them slide away from the pressure, cupping the heels and squeezing the tired ligaments, as if she could rub the life back just by the force of her will and the warmth of her own flesh.
After a moment Jeanette sighed, and her eyes closed.
That was how Bill found them, Jeanette fallen into a doze with her mouth slightly open and Connie with her head down, stroking her feet.
–
What do you do here?
Jeanette asked later. –
Every day?
Connie had brought out a bowl of salad and a dish of mango and guava and they ate the simple meal at the table drawn into the deepest shade at the back of the veranda, from where the afternoon sun striking two yards away was as powerful as a blow.
Bill sat in the rattan chair next to Jeanette’s rocker, checking her from time to time with a glance, but otherwise he was almost silent. Connie had read from the lines in his face precisely how exhausted with nursing and perpetual anxiety he was. To be so close to him, to know his whereabouts and what he was doing every hour, made her skin feel slightly raw. Even in the heat, goose bumps prickled on her arms.
She answered brightly, ‘What do I do with my time? You wouldn’t believe how busy it can be here. And that’s when I’m not working. When I’ve got a commission I have to lock myself away or it would never get done. There’s my orchestra, for instance. That’s Tuesdays, for rehearsal. Sometimes we put on a performance. There are other
gamelan
concerts, and shadow plays and temple festivals to go to. On a normal day if I just call in to the market in the village, it can take half a morning by the time I’ve greeted everyone I know and asked after the children and grandchildren. I visit my neighbours, the Balinese ones, and they visit me, on a strict turn-by-turn basis. That’s not to mention the Europeans, their drinks parties and swimming-pool barbecues and gallery openings…’
Bill said, ‘That’s busy.’
Connie thought, Yes. I am busy, because I need to be. It’s the life I’ve made for myself.
She smiled at him. She wanted him to know she had her place in the village. She was not an object for concern, and she was certainly not to be pitied.
‘Take today. There’s an invitation to go to my neighbour’s house, just over here.’ She pointed to the thick palm hedge that separated her garden from Wayan Tupereme’s house compound. ‘Wayan and his family have a big celebration coming soon, and today’s party is in preparation for that. All his relatives, the women especially, are coming to the house to help to prepare offerings for the ceremony. The men will be starting to build a roof to provide shade on the day itself. There’s a lot of work to be done, but it’s a social event too.’
Connie wondered if now was the right time to explain that the big event that was being so elaborately prepared for was the cremation of Wayan’s father. The old man had died more than a year ago and was buried in the village cemetery. The most auspicious day had been fixed on months ago, giving the best possible circumstances for the dead man’s
atman
, his immortal soul, to continue on its journey to heaven.
She added quickly, ‘You’re both invited too, of course, as my family. Wayan made a special call, to insist on that. But you are tired…’
Jeanette sat up.
– I would like to go to the party. Very much.
Her eagerness had a feverish glitter. Bill leaned forward to touch her arm, but she waved off the restraint.
– Why not? We are here. If you will take us, Connie?
Connie nodded. ‘Of course. And they will all want to meet you. They are very curious, always, about new people.’
Jeanette touched her fingers to her mouth in a question, and Connie wondered how she should answer it.
She picked an orchid flower from the vase on the table and placed it in a triangle with her water glass and a spoon. This was a difficult concept to sign, but she would do the best she could.
‘In Bali, everything is a matter of balance. Each living or inanimate thing is part of an ordered universe, each stands in relation to every other. This is called
dharma
, and our personal actions or
karma
must harmonise with our duty to
dharma.
To do this, Balinese Hindus try always to look at the world with regard for others, not themselves. To be old here is a matter for reverence. A new baby is pure and treated almost as a god. For a person to be deaf, or lame, or a stranger, this is also part of the balance of the universe. If a Balinese does not accept these differences, and acknowledge the grace in them, he causes disorder. Or
adharma.
’