Charlie

by Lesley Pearse

  ‘You’d better explain them then,’ she said, but her smile was one of amusement, not dismay or annoyance. ‘Come on, the whole story!’

  Martha was very attentive as he explained, stopping him now and then to clarify a point, so that he found himself telling her everything even more fully than he’d intended. She seemed particularly shocked to hear Sylvia Weish had finally committed suicide.

  ‘So I’m sure you can understand why Charlie needs to know what happened to her father,’ he finished up. ‘If he did make a new life with DeeDee, I think she’ll accept it. But I’m inclined to believe he’s dead and that this woman knows about it. If we could find something, who she is, where she is, anything, we could go to the police and get them to start investigating again.’ He paused for a moment.

  ‘Charlie doesn’t actually know that I’ve started hunting around, we had a quarrel and I haven’t seen her for a month now. But she’s coming back to London tomorrow and I thought if I had something to tell her, anything, it might help put things right between us.’

  ‘Dear me, Andrew! What a sad story,’ she said, and patted his hand. ‘The poor girl! What a terrible time she’s had. I think you were very wise not to come right out and tell people your real interest, around Soho at least. The people there are always very cagey about talking about their own. But I’m quite different. I’m just an office girl now.’

  ‘But did you know Jin Weish back then?’ he asked. ‘Or Sylvia and DeeDee?’

  ‘I remember Jin and Sylvia well,’ she said.

  ‘You do?’ he gasped.

  Martha half smiled. ‘Yes. That’s why it gave me such a turn when you told me what had happened to them. They were a nice couple. Jin came in the Garrick and told us when his daughter was born. But I don’t recall DeeDee. Do you know what she looked like?’

  Andrew shook his head. ‘I’ve no real idea. Only that she was beautiful. Charlie has some old photographs, DeeDee may well be in them, but she didn’t find them until after Sylvia died. There isn’t anyone else she could ask about them.’

  ‘I’ve got a few old photos upstairs,’ Martha said. ‘I haven’t looked at them in years, but I’m almost certain there are some taken in the Lotus Club, you never know, looking at them together might jog my memory. Can you hang on while I go and try and find them?’

  Andrew beamed, he was in no hurry. He didn’t have to be back at the pub until eight. ‘If you don’t mind,’ he said. ‘Are you sure I’m not stopping you from doing anything more important?’

  ‘What could be more important than helping a young girl find out about her father?’ she said with a smile. ‘You put the kettle on, Andrew, and we’ll have another cup of coffee when I get back.’

  Martha wasn’t long. Andrew had put the kettle on and washed up their mugs in readiness when she came back in with a brown envelope in her hands. ‘There’s more than this somewhere,’ she said. ‘But they must be in one of the buried boxes. Still, we can search through those when I get back from my holiday, maybe Charlie could come with you then.’ She passed the envelope to Andrew, urged him to open it up and turned away to make the coffee.

  They were surprisingly good pictures for the period. The men were all very dapper with slicked-back hair and thin moustaches, either in dinner jackets or lounge suits, their women looking very dated in cocktail dresses with permed, stiff-looking hair.

  ‘I’ve found one of Jin!’ Andrew said jubilantly just as Martha was coming back to the table with the coffee. Even if he’d been surrounded by other Chinese, rather than a group of girls, and Andrew hadn’t seen several photographs of the man he would have known him, he looked so much like Charlie. ‘He was a handsome devil, wasn’t he?’

  ‘He certainly was,’ she laughed. ‘All the girls thought so, despite a natural prejudice against his race. Tall and slender, charming and always immaculately dressed. Now let me look at that one with you. Sylvia must be in there somewhere.’

  She leaned over him. ‘There she is.’ Martha pointed out a girl standing slightly behind two bigger girls, looking over their shoulders.

  Andrew had only ever seen pictures of Sylvia when she was over thirty, and although in those she’d always been so exquisitely dressed and unfailingly elegant, he’d always thought she looked cold and brittle. Yet in this picture he could see exactly why Jin had fallen for her rather than the other buxom girls in the group; she had an almost ethereal beauty, big eyes, a soft, childlike mouth, so very different to the only image he had imprinted on his mind of her.

  Andrew drank his coffee while Martha rattled off the names of those she could remember and some potted history. ‘This one,’ she said pointing at a woman almost bursting out of a glittery evening dress, ‘died a few years after this picture. Apparently she had an abortion that went tragically wrong. And that one,’ again she pointed to a blonde, ‘used to work as a nude model in one of those fake photographer’s places, where men pay to take pictures.’

  One by one Martha went through the pictures and the stories came thick and fast. ‘That’s Ruth Ellis,’ she said, drawing his attention to another blonde in a glittery evening dress. ‘You know, the last woman to be hanged. She shot her boyfriend. She worked the Little Club in Kensington, but she used to come over to Soho late at night to go dancing. She shouldn’t have been hanged, her whole trial was a farce. Somewhere in these pictures there must be one of her boss, Maury Conley, he was a slimy toad, I hated him.’

  Andrew found himself getting very sleepy. He thought it was because the kitchen was very stuffy. He kept jerking himself back to what Martha was saying, but each time it happened he felt he’d missed a bit.

  ‘Are you all right?’ he heard her say, but when he looked at her his eyes couldn’t focus on her face. ‘It is a bit stuffy in here. Why don’t you put your head down on the table for a moment and I’ll open the window.’

  Andrew tried very hard to fight it off, but he couldn’t. He had the strange feeling he was falling through space, and there was nothing else for it but to let himself go.

  Charlie arrived back at Rita’s flat just after ten-thirty that night.

  ‘You look much better,’ Rita exclaimed. ‘See, I said a holiday would do you good.’

  ‘Some holiday,’ Charlie grinned. ‘We were kept at it from nine in the morning until five. But the hotel was great, I ate like a pig.’

  ‘Let’s pop out and have a drink to celebrate your homecoming,’ Rita suggested. ‘There’s half an hour till closing time.’

  ‘Can I just phone Andrew?’ Charlie said. ‘I won’t be a minute. I only want to say I’ll see him tomorrow to talk.’

  Rita raised one eyebrow. ‘Absence does make the heart grow fonder then?’

  Charlie giggled. ‘I suppose so. I missed you too. You go on down to the pub and get the drinks in, I won’t be two minutes.’

  Rita picked up her bag and went out. Charlie dialled the number at Jack Straw’s Castle and came through to the bar. ‘Could I speak to Andrew Blake?’ she asked. The bar sounded very noisy.

  ‘He isn’t here tonight,’ the man said.

  ‘He doesn’t usually get Friday nights off, does he?’ Charlie asked. She didn’t like to ask who she was talking to, but she thought it was Stan, Carol’s husband.

  ‘He didn’t get tonight off,’ the man said stiffly. ‘He just didn’t turn up.’

  Charlie thought that was odd – to her knowledge Andrew had never bunked off work before. It was impossible to question the man further though; judging by the noise in the bar it was very busy. ‘Will you tell him Charlie called?’ she said. ‘I’ll come up tomorrow to see him.’

  The man said something about he wouldn’t have a job to come back to unless he had a good explanation and promptly put the phone down.

  Charlie went downstairs and into the pub a few doors further along the street. It too was very busy but Rita had got her a half pint of cider.

  ‘I expect he had a few drinks at lunchtime,’ Rita replied after Charlie explained Andrew had
n’t been there. ‘He’s probably at some mate’s flat sleeping it off. Now come on, tell me about this course.’

  Charlie was still talking when the pub closed, describing all the people she met and the places she’d been to.

  When they got back to the flat, Charlie excitedly pulled a present for her friend out of her suitcase.

  ‘You shouldn’t have wasted your money on me,’ Rita said, but her face lit up and Charlie knew she was touched. ‘Oh,’ she gasped as she unwrapped an emerald-green short-sleeved cotton jacket. ‘Charlie, it’s lovely. My favourite colour.’

  Rita had been on Charlie’s mind a great deal while she’d been away, and she had come to realize not only how much she owed her, but the full extent of her friend’s trauma at the hands of the Dexters. She knew she couldn’t wipe out what had happened with words, but she was determined to get Rita out and about more.

  ‘I thought it was less frumpy than a cardigan, and it will look sensational with your hair,’ Charlie said as she tried it on. ‘If it’s the last thing I do while I’m staying here with you, I’m going to make you glamorous again.’

  It was raining heavily again and quite cold, so Rita drew the curtains, lit the gas fire and opened up a bottle of cider. They sat drinking and talking for a couple of hours.

  ‘I’m so glad to have you back here with me, I really missed you,’ Rita said as they eventually got up to go to bed. ‘And I’m really glad I told you about myself now. It’s kind of pulled me together. I’ve been having all sorts of positive ideas for the future these last two weeks.’

  Charlie hugged her friend joyfully, so very glad they’d helped one another and they were both on the road to recovery. She knew there wasn’t any point in telling Rita that a man could love her even with a scarred body, she wouldn’t believe it. But Charlie knew it was true and she hoped it would be proved before long.

  Charlie woke the next morning to find it was still raining. She was very disappointed as she’d hoped she and Andrew could maybe walk on the Heath. But by the time she’d had a bath, washed her hair and dressed in a new black and pink maxi-dress, the sky looked a bit brighter.

  ‘Now, just don’t go rushing headlong back to him,’ Rita said sternly when Charlie said goodbye to her. ‘Try and be a bit cool, and don’t make any rash promises.’

  ‘What are you going to do today?’ Charlie asked.

  ‘I thought I’d do some shopping, get a joint in for tomorrow in case you want to invite Andrew over for lunch. Then later I’ll go and see Paul and my parents. I won’t be back until about ten. So the coast will be clear if you want to get up to some hanky-panky.’

  ‘You said I wasn’t to go rushing back to him,’ Charlie giggled. ‘What’s sex during the day if it isn’t rushing?’

  ‘I know what human nature is,’ Rita grinned. ‘And quite often sex is the best healer of all.’

  It was half past ten when Charlie arrived at Jack Straw’s Castle and raining hard, despite her earlier hopes it might clear up. The saloon door was open, and she could hear someone vacuuming. She went in hesitantly. Carol, the landlady, was behind the bar polishing glasses.

  Before Charlie had a chance to speak, Carol bawled out at her, ‘If you’ve come to tell me Andrew’s ill and can’t get in tonight either, then you can pack up his stuff right now and take it back to him.’

  Charlie was very taken aback. ‘I just came to see him. Isn’t he here?’

  ‘Of course he isn’t. Would I be grumbling to you if he was?’

  Charlie just stood there, not knowing what to say. Carol was quite a formidable woman, even when she was in a good mood.

  ‘I’m very sorry,’ Charlie said nervously. ‘But I’ve been away in York for two weeks and I haven’t actually seen Andrew for a month. I don’t know anything, other than that my friend told me he was expecting me to phone here last night. Do you mean he hasn’t come home at all?’

  Perhaps the woman knew why Andrew hadn’t seen her for so long, and maybe she picked up the slight shake in Charlie’s voice at the implications about him not coming home. Whatever the reason, her big face softened. She put down the glasses in her hands and came round the bar to Charlie.

  ‘I’m sorry, dear, I knew you were away, but when he didn’t turn up for work last night I just assumed he’d met you on your return and was skiving off with you. He wouldn’t be with another girl, love, he was looking forward too much to you coming back. So I can’t imagine where else he could be. He hasn’t ever stayed out all night since you had your quarrel, and it’s not like him to be unreliable. He’s the best barman we’ve had in some time.’

  Charlie asked when Carol had last seen him. She told her he’d left just after lunchtime closing, and that he hadn’t said where he was going.

  ‘Could I wait and see if he turns up?’ she asked. ‘I could do some jobs for you?’

  Carol smiled with a great deal more warmth. ‘That’s not necessary. You just sit in the corner out the way and read the paper. I expect he’ll come tearing in any minute with some excuse.’

  An hour passed and he still didn’t come. At twelve the bar was opened and Charlie bought a lemonade and went back to her seat. She stayed there till one when Carol came over to her.

  ‘I’ve just been in Andrew’s room,’ she said. ‘I went to look and see if I could find his mother’s telephone number. I thought maybe he’d gone home. I couldn’t find it, but I did pick this up off the table. Does it mean anything to you?’

  She handed over one of Andrew’s handouts. Charlie read it and looked back at Carol. ‘Yes, it does. It looks like he’s been trying to get some information about my father. You wouldn’t know who the address belongs to, would you?’

  Carol glanced at it again. ‘Oh yes, that’s John’s. You remember him, the rasher of bacon with glasses that used to work here too.’

  ‘I’ll go and ask him then,’ Charlie said. ‘If Andrew should come back while I’m gone, tell him to wait here for me, will you?’

  ‘I’ll have him hung, drawn and quartered by then,’ Carol joked. ‘If he is at John’s, make him phone me.’

  John came to the door in his pyjamas; he looked terrible and told Charlie he had a bad hangover. Andrew wasn’t there, and he hadn’t seen him since earlier in the week. ‘Come in, though,’ he said. ‘If you want to make a cup of coffee, I’ll put some clothes on.’

  Charlie was impressed by John’s flat, she’d always imagined all Andrew’s friends lived in squalor. When John re-emerged wearing jeans and a sweater, she handed him his coffee and asked about the handout.

  ‘He didn’t say much about it, just that it was to do with finding your father,’ he said. ‘Two replies came the other day. He said one was from a crank but the other sounded hopeful. All I know is that he was going to see someone in Shepherd’s Bush.’

  ‘When?’

  John shrugged. ‘He didn’t say. He didn’t even show me the letters.’

  Charlie asked if he knew of any other friends Andrew might be with. John shook his head. ‘It hit him very hard when you packed him in. So I couldn’t see him going off to a party and getting wasted knowing you were coming back this weekend. Is his scooter back at the pub?’

  ‘No. Carol said he went off on it after the lunchtime session yesterday.’

  ‘Well, that rules out him going home to his folks, or anywhere further than fifteen or so miles,’ John replied, scratching his head. ‘He’d go by train if it was further than that.’

  Charlie walked dejectedly back to the pub, she didn’t know what to think. One side of her mind was telling her he was with another girl, the other side said that was improbable given that both Carol and John had said he was eagerly awaiting her return. He couldn’t phone Rita because he didn’t know her number. What if he’d had an accident on his scooter and he was lying in hospital somewhere?

  Back in the pub Carol pooh-poohed the idea of an accident. ‘We’d have heard by now,’ she said. ‘I doubt very much that he’d go out without any identificati
on on him, he’s the type that has his cheque-book, student union card and the works on him. Why don’t you go up to his room and look around and see if you can find his diary or something? I don’t like to poke around myself, but I’m sure he wouldn’t mind you doing it.’

  Andrew’s room was exactly the way it was when Charlie last saw it over a month ago. Crumpled bedcovers, odd dirty socks lying on the floor along with his plimsolls, the poster from Easy Rider with Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper on their Harley Davidsons, still with one corner flapping in the breeze. Even the candle she’d stuck in a straw-covered Chianti bottle was still there.

  His collection of books stacked on the chest of drawers were a pointer to his diverse interests, everything from textbooks on electronics to steamy paperbacks, then Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye and a biography of Winston Churchill. A carefully arranged montage of photographs showed his affection for his family and old friends and his sentimentality about nights out he’d shared with her was apparent in a batch of programmes, ticket stubs and even beer coasters from various pubs.

  It was the narrow bed that sent a pang through her heart, remembering all the times they’d made love on it on Saturday afternoons. She could recall stiffening each time she heard footsteps outside on the landing and even Andrew’s assurances that the door was locked couldn’t quite allay her fears that someone might burst in. She could almost hear his whispered tender words as they lay entwined afterwards and his promises he would love her forever.

  One Sunday evening when he wasn’t working there had been a summer storm and they’d sat by the window and watched forked lightning illuminating the rain-lashed Heath opposite. This was the tiny, somewhat grubby sanctuary they withdrew to as often as possible. It was here he told her he loved her for the first time, here they made love for the first time, and here she had her first orgasm. She remembered so clearly how she felt after it, the rush of emotion, the wonder and the conviction she’d become a woman at last.