Constance A Novel

FIVE

Echo Street, February 1974

On Saturday mornings Hilda had started taking Jeanette to a special audiology clinic for extra therapy sessions. Jeanette’s teacher at the Joseph Barnes School for the Deaf reported that she was an exceptional academic pupil, but she needed more help with her speech if she was to live up to her potential. Hilda’s first instinct was always to shield Jeanette from outside pressure, but she was impressed by Mrs Archer and pleased to have her own faith in Jeanette’s abilities so definitely confirmed.

‘Well, I really don’t know. Do you want to go?’ she asked Jeanette.

Jeanette was sixteen. It had become part of her philosophy to deny that she had any limitations.

– Yes.

So on Saturday mornings Connie went with Tony to the shop. She would sit in Hilda’s place in the front seat of the Austin Maxi and Tony would drive them there, turning to wink at her as they eased out of Echo Street and saying, ‘Just you and me, eh?’

Thorne’s on the Parade was a hardware shop in a row of similarly sized shops on a busy junction. As they searched for a place to leave the car Tony complained that there was too much traffic for anyone to get anywhere. Where could they all be going? People weren’t shopping, were they? The strikes meant there was no money in anyone’s pockets. But they were better off than some, he told Connie. He couldn’t sell enough candles for people to use during the power cuts, and there was a run on paraffin too because they were lighting up their old stoves and even lamps dragged out from their attics.

‘Who’d have thought the unions would take us back to the days of paraffin heaters, eh?’ he asked. ‘And when was the last time someone asked me for a new glass mantle for a pump-up lamp?’

When Tony had unlocked the shop door and rolled up the heavy shutter that protected the front, Connie helped him to carry out the street stock. Tony shifted the heavy items, the bags of coke, bundles of sticks and metal step-ladders, and Connie made a dozen journeys with bunches of galvanised mop buckets, bristly yard brushes and festoons of mop heads like scarecrow wigs. She nudged them into what she judged to be inviting arrangements while Tony put on his brown working coat with biro stains over the top pocket and wound down the old canopy for the day. It usually served more as a partial rain shield than to protect anything from the sun.

The interior of the shop was a cavern of shelves, with a range of goods from mousetraps to boxes of sugar soap and balls of tarry twine mounted on either side of a high wooden counter. Best of all, behind the counter were tiers of wooden drawers containing shiny screws, nails and tacks, and bolts with heads like thick silver threepenny bits. There was a specific, comforting smell of metal polish, paraffin and harsh yellow soap, and Connie had always loved everything about it.

If there were no customers waiting for them at opening-up time Tony would unfold the Daily Express that he had bought on the way in, via a carefully judged ritual exchange with the son of the Pakistani newsagent’s next-door-but-one, smooth it out on the counter and say to Connie, ‘What kind of assistant are you? Is that kettle not on yet?’

Connie would hurry round to the rear of the drawer tiers, into a cramped space where a cracked sink and draining board sagging away from the wall were almost cut off by baled packs of wire wool and bound slabs of abrasive sponges in sickly pastel shades, boil the kettle and make tea the way Tony liked it, in the brown pot with the tannin-enriched interior, two teabags (Tetleys), brewed until dark and then poured into the pair of mugs whose inner surfaces were marked with complex stains like annular rings. She would carry the mugs through and put them on the counter beside a packet of granulated sugar with a dug-in teaspoon, and they drank it accompanied by two fingers of KitKat each. They never discussed it, but they took their mutual pleasure in this sloppy behaviour because Hilda would never have allowed it at Echo Street. Connie would lick up the last crumbs of biscuit and chocolate and massage the silver foil with the side of her thumb until it was a smooth weightless sheet, then fold it into a wedding band.

There was only one stool behind the counter, a high wooden one with the seat polished slippery with use. When she wasn’t counting stock against lists in Tony’s neat handwriting (144 pkts Decors wire wool 00) or tidying shelves, or peering into the wooden drawers and daydreaming that the brass-headed tacks were ancient coins, Connie perched on the stool to read her book or draw pictures. Tony was always on his feet, fetching and wrapping and ringing-up sales. He hated it when a queue of sighing and shuffling customers built up. Every time the door opened to admit another, bringing in a gust of cold wet air and a hiss of traffic noise, his frown would deepen and he would try to work faster. As he searched the shelves he twisted the pencil that lived behind his ear.

‘Where’s that box of rawlplugs got to? Won’t keep you a minute, Des.’

‘I see you got your assistant in today,’ Des or whoever would remark, before lengthily searching his mind for the last item he needed while the queue grew increasingly restive behind him.

‘Can’t I serve, Dad?’ Connie begged.

‘Not really, love. Tell you what, though, I could drink another cup of tea.’

She would immediately slide off the stool to make it, but as often as not the tea would go cold under a strange brown skin while Tony worked. Saturday mornings were always busy, as men glumly equipped themselves for a weekend’s odd-jobbing and decorating. If there were no customers, there was always something to be done to maintain the unruly bulwarks of stock.

At two o’clock, Connie would turn the sign that hung in the glass half of the door from Open to Closed and they would reverse the morning’s procedure with the outside goods.

‘That’s it then. Until Monday morning,’ Tony always said as the shutter unrolled with a shriek of tortured metal.

Connie remembered these uncomplicated hours in the shop with Tony as the very happiest times of her entire childhood.





Then in the darkest week of that bad winter of 1974, came the opportunity of piano lessons.

Jeanette’s inspiring teacher was by that time becoming an advisor to the whole Thorne family in her efforts to help an unusually able deaf child. Hilda despairingly confided to Mrs Archer that Connie was disruptive at home, aggressive towards her sister, a poor sleeper and was becoming a problem at her mainstream school. Mrs Archer mildly suggested that Hilda might try to make Connie feel that she was special in some way as well as Jeanette, and what was she good at? Did she enjoy maths and biology, like her sister?

‘Not at all. She likes music and singing,’ Hilda eventually acknowledged. ‘She’s good at making a lot of noise, at any rate.’

‘What about channelling that into learning to play an instrument, perhaps?’

‘Our family doesn’t go in for music lessons,’ Hilda said stiffly. After a glance from Mrs Archer she added, ‘We’ve got a piano.’

‘Piano? Good idea. I’ll see if I can come up with a teacher in your area, shall I?’

Not long afterwards, Hilda answered a telephone call that wasn’t from her sister Sadie or Tony’s brother in South Wales, who were the only people apart from Jeanette’s various therapists who normally rang them. It was Mrs Polanski, the piano teacher. She had one spare weekly slot, on Saturday mornings. Next term, maybe, the little girl could come on a Tuesday or Thursday evening.

Connie had protested at first that she preferred going to the shop with Tony on Saturdays. But in the end, because she liked the idea of learning to play the piano, sheagreed.

‘I’ll do without my assistant for a few weeks. It’ll be difficult, but I’ll manage,’ Tony told her.

Connie remembered thinking that Tony sometimes spoke to her as if she was younger than ten, turning eleven this summer. She was a thin, small child. Perhaps he simply forgot she was getting older. Or perhaps, she thought shrewdly, he didn’t want her to stop being like herself and start being like Jeanette, who wore a bra, and hideous fashionable shoes with thick platforms, and who – with the encouragement of Jackie and Elaine, their cousins who were the daughters of Auntie Sadie and well-off Uncle Geoff – was now experimenting with make-up.

Piano lessons with Mrs Polanski were a success. Connie was allowed to catch the 274 bus to her house and back, the first time she had been trusted to go anywhere except school all by herself, and Hilda even gave her a door key to Echo Street because she and Jeanette had to go quite a long way to the speech therapist’s and were not always back before Connie came home. Hilda didn’t drive, so they had a Saturday bus journey too.

Mrs Polanski was Polish. Her house smelled strange and there were gloomy religious pictures on the walls and a plaster statue of the Virgin Mary on the mantelpiece, but Mrs Polanski herself was fat and laughed a lot. Connie knew immediately and instinctively that she was a good teacher. She made everything fun, even C major and D major scales and finger exercises.

‘And one, two, three, play, my girl,’ she would trill as Connie launched into her piece, and she sang the notes to keep her in time and slid her ringed fingers over the backs of Connie’s hands to show her the proper positions. Connie practised eagerly every afternoon after school, racing through all the exercises that Mrs Polanski gave her in order to win even more of her liberal praise.

‘Well done, Constance. We will make a concert artiste of you, wait and see.’





It was early in March. Constance had been learning the piano for two months and she could already play the right-hand part of Für Elise with the proper fingering. She would never have believed that a whole hour could pass so quickly.

Mrs Polanski said, ‘Very good this week. Maybe I speak to your mother about some more teaching.’

On the way home Connie sat happily in the front seat on the top deck of the bus and peered through sharp rain into bedroom windows and the unmasked upper regions of small shops. The route was familiar now. She flexed her fingers as she had seen Mrs Polanski do and thought about becoming a concert artiste. She was sure that it would involve a glittering dress with perhaps a gathered train that she would sweep aside with a flourish before taking her seat at the grand piano.

She hurried through the rain from the bus stop to Echo Street, checking that the front-door key was securely in its place in the inner pocket of her blue zipper jacket. As she slid the key into the lock she heard the telephone ringing in the front room. This was unusual enough to make her fumble to turn the key more quickly and almost trip over the doormat as she catapulted herself inside, but the ringing stopped just as the door caught in a gust of wind and slammed shut behind her. Connie hung up her jacket on the hall stand and went into the kitchen. She knew that she was clumsy because Hilda was always telling her so, but she made herself a glass of orange squash without spilling a single drop of sticky concentrate. She shook droplets of water out of her hair and drank her squash. Hilda and Jeanette would be back soon. She rinsed the glass and upturned it on the draining board.

She was sitting at the piano, about to start practising her new scales, when the telephone started to ring again. It made her jump.

She told the woman caller that Mrs Thorne wasn’t at home. This was her daughter. Yes, Mrs Thorne would be back soon. Yes, she would get her to call this number as soon as she came in. The woman was very insistent that Connie fetched a pen and wrote it down. She made Connie read it back to her, to make sure that she had noted it correctly. Mrs Thorne was to ask for Sister Evans. As soon as she came home, because it was urgent.

Connie replaced the receiver and went back to the piano.

The front door slammed again.

Hilda and Jeanette bundled down the hallway. Hilda’s umbrella rustled into the recess in the hall stand. Connie let her hands fall into her lap, then stood up and followed her mother and sister into the kitchen.

‘There was a telephone call,’ she began.

Hilda was unpicking the knot in the ties of her plastic rain hood.

‘Let me get in the house, Connie.’

‘It’s urgent.’

Hilda’s eyes flicked to her. ‘Well, what is it?’

Connie gave her the number she had written on the cover of the Radio Times. Ignoring Connie, Jeanette filled the kettle and put out two mugs and a jar of Nescafé. Hilda went into the front room to make the call, closing the door behind her.

Jeanette poured boiling water, clinked a spoon, unscrewed the lid of the biscuit jar. She sat down at the table and began to read a magazine. Hilda’s coffee mug stood on the kitchen counter waiting for her to come back.

Connie stared out of the window into the damp passage that separated their house from the next in the terrace. As the minutes passed she slowly became aware of a silence that drew all the oxygen out of the air. Her lungs felt tight with the change in pressure and she could hear the slow surge of blood in her ears. The only movement in Echo Street was Jeanette turning the pages of Woman’s Own.

After what seemed a long time, Connie followed Hilda. At the closed door to the front room she cupped her fist over the doorknob and turned it, listening for the familiar click of the metal tongue. She pushed the door open and looked in.

Hilda was sitting in the armchair next to the telephone table. She was white, dry-eyed, frozen. Her eyes moved, settled on Connie as if she had never seen her before.

‘Mum?’

Hilda’s hands lifted as if to ward her off. Her tongue passed slowly over her lips.

‘Tony’s gone. He’s left us.’

Connie frowned. She knew this wasn’t possible. Tony was at the shop, just like always. ‘Gone where?’

‘Gone,’ Hilda repeated.

The telephone began shrilling again. With a shocking, uncoordinated lunge, Hilda launched herself at it. The white mask of her face suddenly split, broke up into teeth and tongue and twisted lips.

‘Sadie? Sadie, he’s dead.’

She was gripping the receiver with two hands but she was shaking so much that she could hardly hold it in place.

‘Tony’s dead.’

Connie took two steps backwards. She reached behind her with the flat of her hands, pressed herself against the wall and tried to retreat further as fragments and then huge chunks of her world began to rain down around her.

Hilda kept on repeating these two inconceivable words, louder and louder, while her sister on the other end of the line tried to make herself heard.

Suddenly Jeanette was there, in the doorway. Hilda was sobbing and coughing. Connie shrank, knowing instinctively that she couldn’t run to her mother. Jeanette’s head turned from one to the other. She couldn’t hear, even though Hilda’s voice was rising to a shriek.

Jeanette’s fingers came up to her lips.

– Speak, she signed.

Connie stuttered. Her mouth wouldn’t form any words. Isolated in silence and incomprehension, Jeanette turned wild with bewilderment and terror.

– Speak, speak.

She dug fingers like claws into Connie’s arms and shook her until Connie’s head banged against the wall.

‘It’s Dad,’ Connie screamed into her contorted face.





The funeral service was held at the crematorium near Thorne’s on the Parade. Tony’s brother and his wife came from Newport, Sadie’s husband Geoff took the day off from his garage business and drove his wife and daughters in from their detached house in Loughton, Mrs McBride came from Barlaston Road, and some of Tony’s old friends and shop owners and customers from the Parade gathered in the colourless room. Hilda and Jeanette and Connie sat in the front row of chairs and listened to a stranger telling the mourners what a devoted husband and loving father Anthony Thorne had been. Connie gazed at the plain coffin under its purple cloth and tried to believe that her father was lying inside it.

She was cold. She had felt either cold or hot ever since last Saturday when Auntie Sadie and Uncle Geoff had arrived at Echo Street and immediately called the doctor. While he was upstairs with Hilda, their auntie and uncle told Jeanette and Connie that their father had suffered a huge heart attack while he was carrying out the pavement stock. The son of the Pakistani newsagent had called an ambulance and Tony had been taken to the East London Hospital, but he had not survived the journey.

By the end of the stiff little funeral ceremony Connie felt as if she were frozen. Her jaw and neck seemed to be made of some splintery material that was nothing to do with her own flesh and bone, and her eyes were dry as she watched the curtains briefly part and Tony’s coffin slide out of sight.

Jeanette was crying. Silent tears ran down her pale cheeks and Hilda’s arm protectively circled her shoulders, although it might equally have been that Hilda was using Jeanette to support herself.

After the cremation, and the inspection of the flowers laid out in the chilly wind with no grave to make sad sense of them, the mourners were invited back to Echo Street.

Mrs McBride and another neighbour from Barlaston Road had made sandwiches and finger rolls and Uncle Geoff had unloaded two heavy, clinking cardboard cartons from the back of his Jaguar. The front room and the hallway and even the kitchen filled up with sombre people in dark clothes who quickly held out their tumblers to a shopkeeper from the Parade as he circulated on Geoff’s instructions with a bottle of sherry in one hand and a bottle of whisky in the other.

Hilda sat in the front room, bright spots of colour showing high on her cheeks, and gravely accepted condolences. The cousins, Jackie and Elaine, were seventeen and fifteen. Jackie was already working as a hairdresser, and her fair hair was done to lie very smooth and flat over the top of her head and then to spring out around her ears in a flurry of sausage-shaped curls. Elaine would soon be leaving school to go to secretarial college, and like her sister she was accorded semi-adult status. The two girls sometimes called their parents by their first names. Geoff had given them a glass of sherry each without any questions asked, and somehow Jeanette had taken one too.

The level of talk rose perceptibly as an hour passed. Connie sat awkwardly on the piano stool, holding a glass of orange squash. The people who nudged up against her ruffled her hair, or patted her shoulders with hands that seemed to grow hotter and heavier.

‘All right, my love?’ someone asked her.

‘Yes, thank you,’ Connie mechanically replied.

After a time Connie noticed that Jeanette and the cousins were missing, and guessed that they had gone upstairs together.

The door to Jeanette’s bedroom stood ajar. Jeanette was sitting on her green satin-covered eiderdown with Elaine holding her hand. Jackie was standing in front of her, combing out her hair with long, gentle strokes. Fine silvery-blonde feathers floated upwards, following the teeth of the comb, and Jeanette’s eyes were closed with the luxury of this tender grooming. Three sticky, empty glasses with nipped-in waists stood on the dressing table.

Connie edged into the room. The cousins glanced over their shoulders at her, then at each other. Nobody spoke.

‘Do my hair as well?’ Connie asked. Her voice sounded loud in her own ears. She hadn’t spoken much in the last few days.

‘Yours?’ Jackie said. Connie’s scalp immediately prickled, her dark hair seeming to spiral more tightly and thickly.

‘Yes. Will you?’

Jackie sighed, glancing again at Elaine.

‘I don’t think I can do much with it.’

Suddenly, Connie was angry. From feeling shivery with cold a flash of heat ran through her, making her face burn.

‘You know, you ought to be nice to me as well as Jeanette. My dad’s dead, too.’

Elaine’s face was flushed and her eyes looked strange. Her thumb massaged the back of Jeanette’s hand, moving in slow circles.

‘He wasn’t your dad.’

Connie saw that Jeanette’s eyes were open now. They were wide, and as blue as the sea.

‘What do you mean?’

Jackie shook her head in warning and the comb dropped from her hand.

Elaine’s flushed face turned darker, meaner.

‘You’re adopted, aren’t you?’

Connie looked from one to the other.

She understood in that moment a mystery that had always been there, nagging like an invisible bruise under the eventless skin of her life, and she also knew with perfect certainty that it had been a mystery to her alone.

She bent her head and saw the pale brown of her wrists emerging from the knitted cuffs of her jersey. She felt the dusty twists of her hair, and the narrowness of her shoulders and hips, and then she looked with her dark eyes back at Jeanette, and Jackie and Elaine. They all had pale fine hair, like their mothers’, and they had full breasts and hips and round blue eyes.

Jackie had drawn her lower lip between her teeth and Elaine looked hot and angry. Only Jeanette’s expression was unchanged; she had heard none of those words of Elaine’s that could never be withdrawn or unsaid, but she hadn’t needed to. She looked like an angel in a painting.

Connie turned and left the room.

She went into her bedroom, closed the door behind her and sank to the floor with her back against the wall. She took up the position out of habit, because it was as far as she could get from the cupboard and whatever lurked within it.

There was a roaring in her ears, like surf in a storm.