Constance Read Online Free PDF Page B

very dark lipstick), a photograph of Jeanette as a newborn asleep in layers of pink knitwear, and one of Connie as an older baby, propped up in Jeanette’s lap.
    As soon as she was old enough to lift the gleaming curved lid for herself, Connie had claimed the piano for her own. When she perched on the stool her legs were too short to reach the pedals, but she loved the commanding position and the way the ivory and black notes extended invitingly on either side. She splayed her hands over the keys, linking sequences of notes or hammering out crashing discords. She could sit for an hour at a time, absorbed in her own compositions or in picking out the tunes she heard on the radio. To Connie’s ear these first musical experiments sounded festive in the quiet house.
    In time, music and musical composition became Connie’s profession.
    Success came early, almost by accident, with the theme music she wrote for a confectionery commercial.
    The Boom chocolate-bar tune turned into one of those rare hits that passed out of the realm of mere advertising and drilled straight into the collective consciousness. For a time the few bars turned into a shorthand trill for anything that was new and saucy and self-indulgent. Builders whistled it from scaffolding, children drummed it out on cans in city playgrounds, comedians referenced it in their acts. The confectionery company used it not only for Boom, but in a variety of mixes for their other products so that it becametheir worldwide aural signature. The royalties poured in and Connie’s small musical world acknowledged her as Boom Girl.
    Nowadays the money from her early work had slowed to a trickle, but Connie still earned enough to live on. When she needed more it was possible to make a rapid sortie from Bali to London and put in some calls to old friends like Angela. Quite often, she could bring the bacon of commissions home to Bali and work on them there.
    She had no idea how long this arrangement would remain possible, but Connie didn’t think about the future very much.
    The past was much more difficult to evade: it was there in her dreams, and the long bones and ridged tendons of it lay always just under the skin of consciousness, but in her quiet daily life among the villagers and the gamelan musicians she could easily contain it.
    Now Angela and all the people with her had landed like a spaceship on Connie’s remote planet, and they brought London and memories leaking out of the airlocks and into this untainted atmosphere.
    Not that her old friend was a taint, Connie hastily corrected herself, nor were her colleagues, or the business that had provided her with a living for more than twenty-five years. But their company, the banter and the jostling for position and the surge of adrenalin that came with them, caused her to examine her life more critically than she would otherwise have done. As she sat in the warm, scented night she was asking herself unaccustomed questions.
    Is this a useful way to live?
    Is this what I want?
    These questions seemed unanswerable.
    She shifted in her rattan chair and it creaked accommodatingly beneath her weight. She let her head fall back againstthe cushions and listened to the rustling of leaves and the throaty frogs.
    And am I happy?
    That was the hardest question of all. In this beautiful place, living comfortably among friends and making music with them, she had no reason for unhappiness.
    Except that this island life – for all its sunshine and scent and richness – did not have Bill in it.
    Connie had learned to live without him, because there was no alternative. But happiness – that simple resonance with the world that came from being with the man she loved – she didn’t have that, and never would.
    The thought of him, as always, sent an electric shock deep into the core of her being.
    Connie leapt from the chair and paced to the edge of the veranda. The invisible wave of leaves and branches rolled away beneath her feet, all the