Murder by Illusion

by Giles Ekins

  She vacuumed and then washed the bathroom floor with Flash and then carried out a thorough inspection on her hands and knees to make sure that every last little sliver of glass had been picked up, no way do you want one of these splinters in your foot and despite the sweeping and brushing and washing, still managed to find more than twenty minute slivers. She swept and washed the floor again before finally being satisfied that the floor was safe.

  The bending down to examine the floor had ratcheted her hangover headache up again and so she took a couple more aspirins and laid down on the bed with a wet flannel over her forehead until the pounding had subsided a little, hugging her childhood one-eyed teddy bear Hugo to her breast.

  ‘Charlie, Charlie, Charlie, what have you done to me?’ Life with Charlie had always been full of dramas, high and lows; the only consistent thing about him was his inconsistency, life with Charlie was just too uncertain, mercurial and so, so stressful. He could make her laugh and the sun to shine, or he could make her cry and bring about the darkest days of her life .He made money, good money sometimes but it never seemed enough. He would spend it freely but never able to account as to where it had gone. He was generous when he had money, the life and soul of whatever party they went to, never saved for the future, live for the day because tomorrow never comes was his attitude but the days when there was no money to pay the rent or the mortal embarrassment when the bailiffs came knocking on their door to take away the latest model television he had bought because has not kept up the payments became just too much. Living with Charlie was just too much to live with.

  And then his infidelities, she never knew exactly how many, even one was too many of course, but it seemed as though there was always some young assistant in his act, (one time he actually had two assistants) or some showgirl or groupie, some singer or back stage girl ready to leap into his bed. She had been his assistant at the beginning of his solo stage career, when they first got wed, but she had tired of the life and preferred to stay at home and in time they drifted apart. ‘Partially my fault,’ she chided , addressing herself to Hugo, not being with him, but that’s no excuse, no excuse at all for him to sleep with any girl who flutters her mascara laden eyelids at him, the bastard, as Hugo nodded sagely in agreement.

  Their separation had been amicable enough, they had simply drifted further and further apart, they never divorced, her Catholic upbringing could not allow that (even though she blamed her mother for that) and Charlie never pushed it, he had no intention of ever marrying again, heaven help any poor girl if he did marry but Charlie is simply not the marrying or the faithful kind, he is not a domesticated animal, he is not house trained.

  She thought she had got him out of her system, but deep, deep in her heart she knew she still had some love for him, always had loved him but also, in another compartment of her heart, she knew she hated him for what he had done to her and that she could not, would not through all that again. ‘Why Charlie, why did you have to come back and stir up all those long since buried emotions again?

  She loved Dennis in her way, but it had never been the overpowering adoration and passion she had felt for Charlie. Dennis was safe and secure, solid, boring even, but that was what she needed, a solid foundation to her life. Charlie’s foundations were built on shifting sands, liable to sink into the mire at any moment – and frequently did.

  When she felt a bit better, Doreen got up, washed her face in cold water, made a late breakfast or early lunch of three pieces of dry toast, her stomach could not face anything else and two cups of the strongest coffee she could drink, hoping that the caffeine boost would help sooth her headache which still nagged away at her sinuses and forehead.

  Charlie’s shirt and socks which had been hurriedly discarded when they had come to bed were still scattered on the bedroom floor, she picked them intending to put in the washing machine and then decided ‘sod it’ let him do his own laundry, stuffed them into a plastic bag and then into his suitcase which was open on bedroom floor from when he taken out a clean shirt to wear, a rather nice blue and white striped shirt with a button down collar. Doreen closed the suitcase, spun the combination to lock it and carried it to the front door. Charlie would have to go as soon as he returned. No matter how much he pleaded, he was not staying another night. No way. Absolutely no way whatsoever, let hell freeze over, let the skies crumble and fall, let Atlantis rise from the seas again and mammoths roam the earth once more before I ever let Charlie back into my life.

  ELEVEN

  Clarrie’s hometown, the same day…maybe.

  ‘And, Charlie Chilton, the only true friend I have in the entire world, is about as reliable as a chocolate teapot’

  ‘ALL MEN ARE BASTARDS. CLARISSA,’ her mother said, (her mother always called Clarrie by her full name, a name she had always hated) ‘surely you know that by now, just look at your father.’

  Well, she certainly agreed with that assessment of her father, he had left the marital home to go and live with another woman when Clarrie had been fourteen years old and she had been glad to see him go, for her entire life with him, she had been a major disappointment.

  She had been born a girl.

  The more she tried to make him love her, the more he pushed her away, even more so when her brother Courtenay was born. He lavished whatever love he was capable of on him, excluding Clarrie to an even greater extent, she got table scraps from him whereas for Courtenay he laid on a full banquet and the sense of isolation from him grew year by year until by the time he left he had managed to squeeze out every ounce of love and feelings for him. ‘I should not hate my father,’ she told herself and even though he was never physically cruel to her, never hit her or abused her in any physical sense; he just completely denied her any existence in his life, starving her of love and affection as cruelly as though he had starved her of food. She always wondered whether it was her fault, that she was simply unlovable as a daughter, unworthy of his affection so that whatever self-esteem she had just seeped away.

  And whatever self-confidence she might have had, he picked away at it, slowly peeling it away like the layers of an onion, he made her feel worthless, second rate and although she did well at school and got consistently high marks in her exams, yet not one word of praise or encouragement did he ever grant her, he would not even read her term reports. The harder she tried, the further away he pushed her so that in the end she had nothing left of herself to offer and so she reached the point where she told herself that if he does not consider me to be his daughter, I can no longer consider him as my father and when he finally left home, all she could feel was relief. By then she no longer thought of him as her father and simply thought of him as ‘That Man.’

  All men are bastards, her mother had said, bitter in her denunciation of her husband’s betrayal, for some reason blaming Clarrie for ‘driving him away,’ and the failure of Clarrie’s own marriage only served to fuel her mother’s resentments.

  ‘You know I never really took to Frank,’ her mother continued, ‘never thought he was good enough for you, you had so much potential and look what you have done with your life Nothing to be proud of, that’s for sure’ Clarrie might have known she would not get a sympathetic ear from her mother, but where else could she have gone when she stormed out of the house, not even picking up her suitcase and tote bag, taking only her handbag, and even that had been an afterthought, had been halfway out of the door before she thought to pick it up from where it hung on the staircase newel.

  ‘To think that Phillip Bishop, you remember Phillip, dear boy, you were sweet on him once, doing so well now, he’s just opened a fourth branch of his estate agency,’ her mother prattled on,’ he drives a new Jaguar every year, just think every year a new Jaguar and Jennifer, his wife, she drives a new Audi…just think…blah blah blah …could have been you’

  ‘Don’t think so,’ Clarrie thought, she remembered Phillip Bishop all right and she could not fail to see his For Sale or Sold signs all around town, his logo
a pair of black bishop chess pieces and his slogan ‘ Bishop’s - The Best Move You Can Make.’ She had gone out with him a few times in her teens, his mother and hers were ‘friends’ although it always seemed to Clarrie to be a one way affair, her mother wishing to ingratiate herself with the wealthy Hester Bishop (Hester Rhodes-Bishop she styled herself, although her husband and children abjured the double-barrelled name). At that time Phillip Bishop drove an open top Morgan 4/4, a present from his father on his eighteenth birthday; he drove it fast and flashily, thought he was irresistible to girls just because his father was wealthy and he drove a fast car and had money in his pocket.

  Clarrie thought him immature, pompous, selfish, opinionated, boorish, and crude with more hands than seemed humanly possible and to the immense chagrin of her mother, stopped seeing him. ‘I knew it was mistake when you married Frank,’ she heard her mother carry on, not really listening to her, ‘I mean, a clerk at the council… devious eyes ,I always thought he had devious eyes and he never looked you squarely in the face, shifty…untrustworthy… what can you expect from people with that sort of background…?’

  ‘Not rich enough, you mean, and he comes from the council estate at Greenhill and what the hell is wrong with that, you overbearing snob.’ But there was nowhere else she could have gone except back to her mother. Her transient lifestyle meant she had little opportunity to make friends except those in the business and they were equally transitory, all right for a drink and a laugh whilst on the road or during the season but never any permanent relationships. The girls she knew when growing up had all moved on, married or moved away, in any case, what could she have common with them anymore, what could they talk about, babies and nappies and the price of teething rings? Think not! And if she tried to tell them about her life, they would think she was boasting. She remembered one time when she did go for a drink with Sally Moon, a girl, woman, with whom she had briefly been best friends at school and who contacted her on ‘Friends United.’

  She had tried to tell Sally about her time with ‘Five Girls, Ten Legs, One Voice’ an all-girl dance and singing group which had broken up in great acrimony whilst in the middle of a European tour and of a show with Charlie in Leicester that had gone badly wrong (although not because of Charlie’s drinking) and the awful digs there that stank of cats and Sally had said, with all seriousness. ‘But Clarrie, nobody made you go, it was your own choice, so don’t come bleating and moaning now about it.’ But she wasn’t moaning. Or boasting, just trying to tell her what she had been up to with her life since leaving school.

  If her brother Courtney had still been alive, she could have gone to him, she thought sadly, missing him still. They had always been close, like twins almost, only a year difference in age, she the elder. His mother wanted to call him Clarence, to resonate with Clarissa, but ’That Man’ objected, said it sounded like a pooftah’s name and he wasn’t having that, (so he told them) but had to finally agree to Courtney, Courtney James Manners. Clarrie called him Cort and loved him dearly. Even though he was the younger of the two, he was her protector, comforting her when she was teased and bullied at school. Up until her mid-teens she had been thin and ungainly, so thin the other girls called her Matchstick or Skeleton Girl and so dreadfully unhappy, her self-esteem destroyed by the teasing and by the denial of her existence by ‘That Man’ and only Cort was able to console her and give her confidence a boost. ’Ignore them, Clarrie, forget about them, they’re just jealous of you, that’s all.’ ‘Jealous? Of me? What for?’ ‘Cos you’ve got me for a brother.’ Tears always came to her eyes whenever she remembered that.

  Courtney loved motorbikes, always wanted a motorbike, even as a small boy he knew the make of every bike on the road. He saved his pocket money, did a butcher’s delivery round on a Saturday morning and when he was sixteen, overriding his mother’s objections he left school and went to work in the showroom and garage at Riley’s Motorcycles. Hours were long and wages low but he loved every minute of it. Clarrie had never seen him so happy and was so happy for him. With his savings and wages he bought a second hand Honda NX250 from Jim Riley, his pride and joy.

  By now, just like the Ugly Duckling, Clarrie had grown into a beauty. For so long derided for having no bust when her contemporaries were sprouting breasts at a rapid rate and flouting them in front of her, when overnight it seemed, she suddenly had breasts, superb breasts, breasts perfect in shape and size, her legs lost their matchstick skinniness so that she had the best legs of anyone she knew, she had perfect high cheek bones, full lips and a fine mane of rich auburn hair, no longer could they call her Matchstick or Skeleton Girl, this time the other girls were raddled with jealousy– and with good reason.

  Then, just 17 days after his eighteenth birthday Courtney was killed on his beloved Honda, driving too fast around a rain soaked bend he lost control, fell and slid under the wheels of an oncoming lorry. He was killed outright and Clarrie’s world fell apart.

  At the time she had been in Edinburgh with ‘The Pretty Little Things,’ another girl group, further disappointing her mother by becoming a professional dancer rather than marrying ‘somebody with substance,’ i.e. Phillip the human octopus Bishop.’ Well she knew plenty of ‘somebodies with substance,’ only not the type of substance that her mother had in mind –cocaine, heroin ,crack, marijuana, amphetamines, ecstasy, you name your illegal drug of choice and she knew somebody who could supply. She occasionally smoked a joint herself, but never scored heroin, cocaine or any of the other drugs, unlike ’Pretty Little Things’ Lizzie Harrison – stage name Angel Delight – who was a hard user of heroin and always wore long sleeved tops to hide the needle marks.

  Receiving the dread news of Cort’s death, she caught the earliest rain home from Edinburgh and never went back to re-join ‘The Pretty Little Things,’ who broke up soon afterwards anyway. Her mother, bitter and resentful, seemed to blame Clarrie for Courtney’s death, ‘you should never have encouraged him to buy that motorbike, now look what you’ve gone and done .First it was your father you drove away, now this.’ At first, Clarrie took her mother’s remarks to be the result of shock and grief but rather than her bitterness receding over time, her comments became more and more hateful.

  Everything in Julia Manners life that had gone wrong was now the fault of Clarrie, added to her long list of grievances was embarrassment and disappointment at Clarrie’s choice of career, ‘a dancer, showing your legs like that, disgraceful, little better than a common street walker,’ one of the least hurtful of her barbs. However, if Clarrie had become a ballet dancer (she had taken ballet lessons as a girl) that would have been completely different story, her mother being the snob that she was, ‘Oh yes, Clarissa, she’s with the Royal Ballet, you know’ And come to that, Clarrie thought, a tutu shows off far more leg than any costume I ever wore on stage.

  Clarrie waited a decent interval following Cort’s death before deciding she could no longer stay with her mother and after two or three unsuccessful auditions for dancers in various clubs, answered an advert in ‘The Stage’ for dancer/singers for a new girl group being put together. Not really expecting to be chosen, she applied, sent off a photograph of herself in her ‘Pretty Little Things’ outfit and to her surprise was invited to audition in London. She could sing, had a pleasant enough voice, but would never call herself a singer but she was an excellent fluid dancer and Jake Danvers, a pop music agent who was putting the group together, was after the ‘look’ rather than the ‘voice.’ and liked what he saw of Clarrie and after calling her back to the audition stage a second and then a third time, invited her to join ‘Five girls, Ten Legs, One Voice.’

  ‘Five girls, Ten Legs, One Voice,’ the group that he intended to rival the Spice Girls, but sexier, racier, tartier, ‘Spicier Girls’ if you will, based on dance routines as well as songs.

  The ‘look’ that Jake Danvers was after was legs, long legs, stunning legs, shapely legs, sexy legs and Clarrie’s legs were all of that and more, among the best he had see
n. Her voice was good enough to be a backing singer and so she got the nod. Clarrie smiled to herself when she saw the costumes they were to wear –either black or white burlesque corsets cut high, very high on the hip, with matching suspenders and stockings with lace trimming around the bust and crotch, underwired bra to push up her breasts to overflowing point – a good strong sneeze and my boobs’ll pop out she thought ‘or maybe that’s the idea’ - together with a short bat-wing sleeved bolero in contrasting colour, i.e. black corset and white bolero or vice versa, ‘my mother would have kittens if she sees these, talk about showing my legs, not a lot left to the imagination here.’

  She moved to London and shared a flat with three of the other girls from the group, Mary Winstone, Jane Benson and Sara-Sue Saunders. Layla di Resta, who was to be the lead singer, moved in with Jake Danvers, somewhat to the surprise of his wife, who was not even aware he was putting a girl group together.

  Jake Danvers worked the girls hard, 12 hour a day in rehearsal, perfecting a series of dance routines to work around Layla di Resta (actually her real name) who sang like an angel with an astonishing range of voice, had the morals of an alley cat, spoke with a coarse, barely comprehensible Glaswegian accent, and was a competent enough dancer. She was to be the star of the group, the One Voice, Clarrie, Mary, Jane and Sara-Sue her backing group. If Layla wore the black corset, the other girls the white, after the interval it would be the opposite way round.

  Jake got them some gigs in clubs in and around London, they made some demo CD’s but he was unable to get them a recording contract but said ‘he was working on it’ and ‘any day now.’