Constance (21 page)

Noah turned to his aunt. This was not the time to let the faintest wrinkle of uncertainty crease the smooth surface of goodwill. Noah gave her a generous hug and Connie embraced her nephew warmly in return.

‘Hello Auntie Con,’ Noah said. ‘How’ve you been?’

‘Noah. It’s so good to see you,’ she smiled. He had filled out and lost the accusatory glare of adolescence, and the resemblance to his father had deepened.

He introduced Roxana. Roxana’s hand was cool. She gave Connie a quick glance under mascara-heavy lashes.

‘You are Noah’s aunt, he told me.’

Connie was thinking how striking she was.

‘Yes. Jeanette and I are sisters.’ It sounded simple enough.

Jeanette stood up. She was the shortest of the group anyway, and so reduced now as to seem hardly bigger than a child, but she commanded attention. She took Roxana firmly by the arm.

‘I like your garden very much,’ Roxana told her politely, then glanced to Noah for confirmation that she was doing the right thing.

‘Mum can follow everything,’ Noah told her. ‘You’ll be surprised. It’s difficult for her when everyone speaks all at once, but otherwise it’s no problem. And she can talk. You’ll get the hang of it. It’s stopping her that’s the problem, half the time.’

He grinned and Jeanette shook her head at him. She held on to Roxana’s arm and pointed towards the length of the garden. With a sweep of a hand she encompassed her flowerbeds.

–
Come with us
, she beckoned Connie. Connie took her other side and they began a tour of the borders.

Bill and Noah watched them.

‘It’s okay that Connie’s here, then?’ Noah said in a low voice.

‘Yes. Your mum wants to see her. I’m glad of that.’

‘It still feels a bit weird to me.’

Bill put on an apron with
Natural Born Griller
printed on the front, another of Noah’s offerings.

‘Cool pinny, Dad. Suits you.’

‘Yes. Thank you. Everything about dying is weird, isn’t it?’

‘Yeah. How are you with it?’

‘Death?’ Bill used a pair of tongs to lift chicken portions out of a marinade, and laid the meat on the barbecue. Dripping juices caused the red coals to sizzle and spit. ‘I’m finding the inevitability, the non-negotiability, quite hard to accept. Just at the moment. I’ll probably get my mind round it.’

‘I know what you mean. I keep on thinking, look, this isn’t right. Surely we could do this, or that, and she’ll get better. Even though we know she won’t. I was asking more about Connie being here, though.’

‘I see. Well. Jeanette and Connie predate you, you know. They predate me as well. It’s right that they should come back together now, in spite of all the problems in their history. It’s important. It’s all that matters, in fact. I’m full of admiration for your mother, for having the will to make it happen. And I admire Connie too.’

Noah put an arm round his father’s shoulders. ‘You’re such a good, good person, Dad, you know?’

Bill laughed briefly. ‘You didn’t always think that.’

‘You know what kids are like.’

‘Righteous.’

‘A total pain. But I’m a grown man now, I’m not insisting on black or white. I can acknowledge grey. You know, Dad, I love you.’

‘Yes,’ Bill said, as composedly as he could. He turned a chicken portion, revealing a browned underside frilled with burned edges. ‘I love you too.’

They could say these things to each other now, whereas once it would have seemed impossible. Bill told himself that here was something to hold on to, at the very least. He slung the tongs over the rail at the side of the barbecue burner and wiped his palms over the
Griller
slogan. He nodded his head towards the three women, who were just reaching the end of the garden.

‘She looks like an interesting girl.’

Noah beamed. ‘Roxana is an
amazing
girl,’ he said. ‘I have never met anyone like her.’

‘That’s good to hear. I’m very pleased. I’m looking forward to getting to know her. Now, how are we doing with this food? Noah, will you go in the house for me and put the potatoes on? Just the spuds, not the peas yet, otherwise the peas’ll be…’

‘…Yeah, Dad, right. I’m not a total loser in the kitchen, as it happens.’

‘Just do it.’

‘Christ,’ Noah sighed.

Roxana gazed at the tall blue spires and the low misty-blue mounds and the clumps of grey velvet leaves. She had never been in a garden like this. She had no idea what the flowers were called, she had never even seen most of them. Noah’s mother and aunt were making a kind of duet out of telling her about them. They seemed to talk fluently, with only one of them speaking.

‘Those are delphiniums. Those, I don’t know – Jeanette? Oh yes, it’s nepeta.’

Jeanette made a low sound and Connie added, ‘Catmint, yes.’

‘These, um, roses, what a nice colour. I have never seen one like this. What kind are they?’

At least she knew roses. Roxana was trying hard. Her jaw muscles strained with politeness, and all the time Noah’s mother was looking at her with inquisitive eyes.

The two women conferred. Noah’s aunt was quite tall, and interesting to look at. Her plain white shirt with rolled-up sleeves set off her beautiful skin and she was wearing a very thin gold bracelet around her right wrist. Roxana thought she looked very
chic
, so much so that she made Roxana want to tug at the hem of her own skirt and straighten out the creases in her jacket. It was difficult to make the same sort of appraisal of Noah’s mother, and Roxana knew that that was because she was very ill. Her face had an ageless look to it, so that she might have been sixteen or sixty, with too-big eyes and faded hair as thin and tufty as a young child’s. She and Noah must once have looked quite alike, with similar mouths and cheekbones, but now Noah was more like his father. They had the same fair, faintly reddish tinge to their skin and the same amused quietness in their manner that still expected to be heard.

‘It’s called Buff Beauty,’ Connie said.

Jeanette released their arms and leaned into the flowerbed. She broke off one of the blooms and put it into Roxana’s hands. The outer petals were pale cream, the colour of elegant, expensive paper, but in the tight centre they were apricot gold. Noah’s mother’s scrutiny made her feel exposed, and she felt uncertain with these two women and their family party and this big house with about fifteen windows blinking at them, and the scented depths of their flower garden.

Whenever Roxana had thought or dreamed of England, it was London in her mind’s eye. She had never even considered that there would be places like this, set behind hedges and buried in trees. There were houses quite close at hand
because she had seen them as she passed by with Noah, but from here she could see nothing but the birds. Only a week ago she had felt her place in the rich city streets, and now she was where Noah belonged and she was out of her depth all over again. It was quite likely, she thought, that she would never be able to fathom what Englishness meant. It would keep evading her, and then where would she be?

‘It’s nice,’ she said flatly, turning the rose in her fingers.

Connie took it from her and twisted the stem in the buttonhole of Roxana’s denim jacket.

‘There. That looks good,’ she smiled and lightly touched her shoulder.

Jeanette nodded her approval. They began to walk again, slowly. Leaves brushed against Roxana’s ankles, releasing aromatic scents.

At the far end of the garden, partly screened by tall bushes and backed by trees, they came to a little green-painted structure with a low door and a pitched roof.

Both of the women stopped walking.

Connie said, ‘Do you know what I remember?’

Jeanette made a little roof shape by placing her fingers together and then moved her bunched fingertips to her lips and on upwards in an extravagant arc. She was laughing. Connie was laughing too.

‘Yes, yes.’

They had forgotten Roxana. There was a ladder leaning against the trunk of one of the trees. Connie ran forwards and seized it, propped it against the side of the hut and clambered up. She balanced in a duck-walk, arms outstretched. She perched unsteadily, feet on either side of the roof ridge, struck a pose and then began singing. In a high, loud voice. About a prince, and when he would come to carry her away.

Roxana gaped, thinking that the two of them had perhaps been drinking. She peered back towards the house and saw
Noah carrying plates out to the round wooden table, and his father shaking out the folds of a big umbrella.

Jeanette was leaning back against the trunk of a tree, laughing so much that she seemed hardly able to stand, so much that Roxana wondered if she ought to try to help her. But Connie slithered down the roof and vaulted back down to the grass. She ran to Jeanette and the two of them fell into each other’s arms. The noise Jeanette made was loud, a hoo-hoo sound against Connie’s lighter, normal laughter. Then there was a point when they both took a breath and looked into each other’s faces.

They weren’t laughing any more.

Connie touched her sister’s cheek, and then Jeanette’s head slowly came forwards until it rested against her shoulder. They stood there, swaying a little, arms round each other.

Roxana walked a few steps onwards, not wanting to intrude on this, and stared over at Noah. He was wiping cutlery and laying it on the checked cloth that had been spread over the table. He looked up and saw her watching him, gave her a wave and then blew a kiss.

After a minute or two the women rejoined her.

Connie said, ‘We were just remembering when we were little. We used to have a shed at home, quite like that one. I used to…sing.’ They were both shaking with laughter again, and Roxana wondered if they were perhaps not drunk but a little bit crazy.

With an effort, Jeanette composed herself. She put her hands together and inclined her head, making such an eloquent apology that Roxana was disarmed. She fell into step when Jeanette indicated that they were to traverse the opposite side of the garden.

This was the shadier half, and here there were big dark leaves splashed with silver, and wiry stems that held up bronze leaves shaped like hearts. Noah’s mother made some
more of her quick gestures and his aunt translated them into words.

‘What do you think of England?’

‘I like it very much,’ Roxana answered, choosing the obvious response. She added carefully, ‘And Noah has been kind. Now I am looking for a flat to share. There is a room in, what is it, North Ealing? Noah says he will come with me to look at it. London is a big city, and it’s very expensive, but I have a job. Perhaps Noah will have told you what work I do?’

Both women casually nodded, careful not to place too much emphasis on knowing about it.

‘Are you going to stay in London? Don’t you miss home?’

‘Not so much. Uzbekistan is a poor country. People work hard, there is some discontent, little freedom to speak. We don’t have too much of anything, except cotton fields and policemen.’

Jeanette smiled, but Noah was right, his mother didn’t miss anything. She signed again, and Connie spoke for her. ‘Noah told us about your brother. I’m sorry.’

‘Thank you,’ Roxana said.

She did not want to think about Niki now, although the memories of the Friday Massacre, the images of the main square in Andijan under a rain-heavy sky and the armoured trucks full of men with guns were seldom far from her mind. She added, because it seemed that she ought to say something more, ‘Niki was a good boy. A Muslim boy, and he believed in certain things. Me, however, I am not so good.’

To underline her point she did a couple of little dance steps and the folds of her short skirt swung around her thighs. ‘And now I am here in England,’ she finished.

–
That’s good
, Jeanette indicated.

Noah’s family were kind, like him, Roxana decided.

Noah’s mother wanted to find out about his girlfriend.
That was all right, Roxana thought philosophically. Any boy’s mother would want to know things about her, she had arrived from nowhere, that was natural. She wished she had a family of her own exactly like this one. But at least she was here, included in the lunch party, just as if she were an English girl. Suddenly she smiled, basking all over again in the white light of freedom and opportunity.

Connie saw the smile. She was thinking, This girl is quite formidable.

Jeanette pointed. Bill was waving the barbecue tongs, beckoning them.

‘Lunch,’ Connie said.

They all sat down under the shade of the big parasol. Jeanette supervised the seating. She put Roxana opposite her where she could see her face more clearly, and there followed an interval of drink-pouring and complicated passing of various dishes of food. Roxana watched covertly to see what Noah did and then copied him. He glanced across and winked at her.

When they all had some of everything, Bill filled Jeanette’s glass with wine and Jeanette raised it in Roxana’s direction.

‘Cheers,’ the other three all said.

Roxana put her hand over her heart. ‘
Za vashe zdorovye
.’

Jeanette ate hardly anything, but she sipped some of her wine and she followed the conversation. The others seemed to orbit around her, and whenever she broke in with her signing or the occasional unformed, liquid syllables that they seemed to understand perfectly well, they all stopped to listen. For all her physical fragility, her strength was evident.

‘How’s the music biz, Auntie Con?’ Noah asked after a while. ‘Connie writes music for films and commercials, Roxana. Very big-time.’

Roxana liked Noah’s mother and father, but it was Connie
who increasingly drew her attention. She seemed different from the others, and not just in her appearance. Roxana was very interested to hear what she did.

‘Really? What is the work like?’

Connie raised her hands now, laughing and twisting back her dark hair. ‘It’s a circus. Always has been. I was at the EMMAs in the week. That’s the Electronic Music Marketing Awards,’ she said for Roxana’s benefit. ‘The ad industry is one of the best there is for awarding itself awards.’