Camellia

by Lesley Pearse

  Bonny was at the far end of the room lighting long green candles on the dining table, which was laid for dinner with silver, starched napkins and flowers. Behind it open windows gave a view of a small walled garden. To Bert, who was only used to canteens and transport cafes, it looked like something from a film set.

  Bonny turned to greet him, a little unsteady on her feet, as if she'd had a few drinks already. 'So we meet our baby's policeman friend at last! We didn't expect someone so young or handsome,' she said, making Bert blush with embarrassment. I hope she hasn't been pestering you, Mr Simmonds. She's a great deal like me, expecting everyone to adore her. Now can I get you a drink?'

  It would have been hard for any man not to adore Bonny Norton, especially the way she looked that night. She wore a floaty blue dress with full skirt, her bare arms golden from the sun. Her hair was piled up on top of her head, loose tendrils escaping from the pins curled around her neck and ears, and her cheeks were flushed with the heat.

  'I'm on duty,' he managed to get out, suddenly acutely aware of his rustic vowels. He'd heard rumours the Nortons entertained titled people. 'I'll just see Camellia's doll's house, then I'll get out of your way.'

  Camellia's bedroom was the prettiest Bert had ever seen: a white bed with a kind of canopy affair above it, dolls, teddy bears and books arranged on shelves, a thick carpet and a padded seat at the window, with a view over the rooftops and the marsh across to Winchelsea.

  Camellia bounded across the room towards the big Georgian-style doll's house. John smiled at Bert. 'I'm glad of this opportunity to thank you for taking an interest in Camellia,' he said, with genuine warmth and sincerity. 'I'm away from home so much and it's good to think she has a friend to share things with.'

  'She's a lovely kid.' Bert felt an immediate affinity with the man. 'She counts the days till you come home you know!'

  'Come on, Mr Simmonds,' Camellia said impatiently, beckoning him to join her at the house. "These are the new things I got today – the piano, the lady sitting at it and the maid with the tea trolley.'

  To a man of simple tastes like Bert, it wasn't a toy but a work of art. Everything was to scale like a real house. Little chintz-covered armchairs, table lamps, even plates of food on the dining table.

  Camellia took out the piano and placed it in Bert's hands. It must have cost a small fortune, a tiny replica of a real grand piano.

  'It even plays,' she said reverently, tinkling it with one small finger. 'Daddy finds me the best things in the whole world.'

  It was soon after that evening at the Nortons' house that Bert discovered Bonny was a tease. She sensed he had a crush on her and used it to her advantage.

  She would invite him in for a cup of tea and it would always transpire that she wanted some furniture moved, or some other little job. Bert didn't mind this one bit, but she often asked him very personal questions, and sometimes he had the feeling she was waiting for him to make a pass at her. One sunny afternoon when they'd taken their tea out into the garden, Bonny had stripped off her sundress. Beneath it she wore a minuscule bikini, the first Bert had ever seen other than in pin-up pictures in the newspapers.

  'Well?' she said with a provocative pout, lifting her hair and striking a model-like pose. 'Does it suit me?'

  He was aroused instantly. Dressed she was sensational enough, almost naked she was ravishing: a tiny waist, long slender legs and the pertest of rounded buttocks. He gulped down his tea and left hurriedly, with the flimsiest of excuses, then spent the next few days wishing he'd had the courage at least to compliment her. He didn't dare confide his growing passion for her to any of his friends at the station. Superintendent Willis was very chummy with John Norton and Bert knew if it got to his ears he'd be out of a job.

  When John joined the cricket team, Bert felt even more awkward. John was no longer a shadowy figure in the background, but a flesh and blood man who clearly wanted to be closely involved in the community. Bert liked the man's quiet humour, his intelligence and his total lack of snobbery, and if it hadn't been for his feelings for Bonny he knew they would have become very close friends. Sometimes over a couple of pints after a game, John would talk about both his wife and daughter, and it was clear they meant everything to him. He once confided that he had moved to Rye from Somerset because he had been afraid to leave his young wife alone in such an isolated place. He felt someone as vivacious as Bonny needed people around her, shops, cinemas and bustle. He was very anxious about being away on business so much, and Bert got the distinct impression John was asking him to keep an eye on his wife and daughter.

  Bert tried very hard to see Bonny as just the wife of a friend, but he couldn't. He would wake from vivid erotic dreams of her feeling deeply ashamed. His heart leapt even if he saw her in the distance, and he knew he was guilty of inventing excuses to call at the house in Mermaid Street.

  It was a bewildering and dangerous addiction, made worse by knowing she was totally aware of how he felt. She would fix him with her flirtatious turquoise eyes, her so-very-kissable lips pouting provocatively, and hold his hand just a little too long.

  There were occasions too when she went a little further to tempt him, fastening her suspenders in front of him, leaning over so he could see right down her cleavage, on one occasion opening the front door to him wearing only a towel wrapped round her. What really baffled Bert though was why she played with him as she did. When she had everything any woman could ask for.

  Bert knew the answer to that question now, some ten years later. Bonny Norton was a sensationalist who had to have a few admirers dangling on a string to satisfy her ego. Maybe if John hadn't died when he did, she might have grown out of it and come to realise how fortunate she really was. But John's death came unexpectedly. At twenty-seven Bonny was too young for widowhood and too giddy to cope with the pressures of bringing up a child alone.

  'Poor Camellia,' Bert murmured. 'As if you haven't been through enough already!'

  Chapter Two

  August 1965

  Sgt Simmonds jumped as WPC Carter spoke at his elbow.

  'A penny for them, Sarge,' Carter said. 'Wondering if you've posted your pools?'

  Wendy Carter had been in the force a few years, but less than a year in Rye. She was an excellent policewoman, compassionate, sharp-witted, with a dry sense of humour. Bert thought she would go far. But she didn't know the Norton family history, or his involvement with it.

  'Nothing so trivial,' he said. 'I was remembering Bonny as she once was. I wish it wasn't me who had to tell Melly.'

  Carter looked puzzled.

  'Melly! I thought her name was Camellia?'

  'Her father called her Melly,' he sighed. 'He'll be turning in his grave at this moment. He once entrusted me to look after his wife and little girl. I didn't make a very good job of it.'

  Carter studied the sergeant out of the corner of her eyes as they walked down East Street towards the High Street. Bert Simmonds was the kind of man she'd like to marry. Strong, dependable, good-natured and sensitive too. At thirty-six he was in his prime, with a firm muscular body and sun-streaked blond hair, just that little bit longer than the normal regulation cut. Not exactly handsome,but a good face, weathered by time and experience, his eyes grey-blue like the sea on a dull day. She thought Sandra Simmonds was very lucky. WPC Carter wouldn't mind being tucked up in bed with him.

  Carter didn't get many offers from men herself. She was a plain stocky girl of twenty-nine with mousy hair and a snub nose, who had to rely on her intelligence and her cheerful nature to make friends, and those qualities didn't seem to get her very far with men.

  Bonny Norton, on the other hand, had only to click her fingers and men came running. Carter had seen the woman many times, across a crowded bar, parading down the High Street, and like nearly everyone she had been fascinated by her. By all accounts Bonny was first with everything, the first woman to wear a bikini back in the fifties, the first adult to master the hula-hoop, and just recently the first woman of ove
r thirty to dare wear the new short skirts. Carter admired such bravado.

  Perhaps later tonight she'd discover if all the stories about Bonny Norton were true. Surely no woman of thirty-six could've done quite as much as she was credited with – turned down a Hollywood contract to marry John Norton, widowed six years later, then squandered half a million. Seduced half the male population, drank the pubs dry and finally ended it all by slinging herself in the river! Why stay in a sleepy little backwater like Rye if she was all she was cracked up to be?

  As they arrived at Rowlands Bakery, Bert felt his stomach tighten. He could see Camellia behind the counter, chatting as she served a customer with cakes. Somehow the contrast between this plain, fat girl and her beautiful, slender blonde mother seemed even more poignant now Bonny was lying in the mortuary.

  Camellia was tall, perhaps five foot seven, and at least twelve stone. A pale moon face, with dark almond eyes almost concealed by greasy flesh. Her lank dark brown hair was pinned back unflatteringly with a hair slide, advertising a big forehead. Her pink-and-white checked overall did her no favours either. It was too tight and there were bulges of flesh wherever it clung.

  Camellia's face broke into a wide, warm smile as he came in the door. She was always pleased to see Bert. She'd continued to see him as a special friend throughout her childhood, but today her welcome cut him to the quick.

  'Hullo, Mr Simmonds. What's it to be today? We've got some lovely chicken pies, just out of the oven.'

  It was fair play to the girl that she tried to rise above her mother's reputation. She worked hard, she was always cheerful and according to Mrs Rowlands she was very honest too. That seemed to surprise the baker's wife more than anything.

  'Nothing thanks.' Bert blushed. Until this moment he hadn't considered how he would get her away in private. 'Is Mrs Rowlands about?'

  As he spoke, Enid Rowlands came through from the bakery wiping floury hands on her white apron. She fitted her job perfectly, as fat and round as one of her own doughnuts, a permanently flushed face surrounded by grey curly hair.

  'Hullo, Bert,' she said, bright shoe-button eyes lighting up at the prospect of a gossip. 'What's been going on down at the river this morning? I've been hearing all kinds of rumours.'

  Enid thrived on gossip. Nothing happened in Rye without her knowing the intimate details. Bert couldn't help suspecting she'd only taken Camellia on for the summer holidays in the hopes she might get some inside information about Bonny.

  'Actually I want a word with Camellia,' he said, lowering his voice and praying that she would catch on it was something delicate. 'Could I take her out the back. WPC Carter will explain.'

  Enid's eyes were instantly suspicious. She glanced across at her employee filling a box of cakes for a customer, then looked back at Bert. 'What's she done?' she mouthed.

  Bert put his finger up to his lips, his eyes entreating Mrs Rowlands to use some tact.

  Enid looked puzzled, but she stepped over towards the girl and took the cake box from her hands. 'I'll finish that off. Mr Simmonds wants a word with you, take your break now and go out in the yard.'

  Camellia clearly didn't suspect anything, smiling at Bert for rescuing her from the stifling shop. She led the way, up a couple of steps, through the big, hot kitchen, and out through a side door into the yard.

  'It's so good to get out of there,' she gasped, flopping down onto a small wooden bench in the shade and fanned herself with her hand. 'Do you know it's eighty-five already and I've been working since seven this morning.'

  Looking at her now with a heart full of sympathy, Bert could see beyond the overweight body. She had a certain poise which even the humiliation her mother had dumped on her hadn't weakened. If someone could just get hold of her, make her lose that puppy fat, buy her some decent clothes she could do all right. She was bright, with a lovely smile, and she even spoke well. All she needed was taking in hand.

  'No wonder Mrs Rowlands couldn't find anyone else to work in her shop this summer,' she laughed, showing small very white teeth. 'I was so pleased to get a job I never considered why no one else wanted it.'

  Bert was used to people looking nervous when he wanted to speak to them. At any other time he would've found her open manner heartening. 'You're good in the shop,' he said, to reassure her she was there on merit alone. 'I'm sure Mrs Rowlands picked you because she knew you'd work hard.'

  There was a moment's pause. Camellia continued to fan herself. Bert stared at a piled-up heap of bread trays and wished Carter would join him and help.

  'What did you want me for, Mr Simmonds?' she asked suddenly.

  Bert took a deep breath. All his experience of breaking news of death was to older people. He didn't know what to say. 'It's about your mum.'

  Her face clouded over. Her expression was that of a mother with a troublesome child, expecting the worst as soon as its name was mentioned. 'What's she done now?'

  Bert felt like screaming for Carter to come and help him out. She should be right here at his side to give the sort of comfort only a woman could give. But he knew she was staying in the shop purposely, believing him capable of breaking it more gently than they could together.

  Bert got up from the bench, then crouched down on his haunches in front of her and took Camellia's hands in his.

  'I'm sorry, Melly,' he said. 'There isn't an easy way to tell you, so I'll just have to come right out with it.' He paused, his mouth was dry, his stomach churning. 'Your Mum's dead, sweetheart. I'm so sorry.'

  There was no reaction at first. Her fat pale face was entirely expressionless, as bland as one of the iced buns in the shop window.

  'She can't be. She's in London.' She put her head on one side, looking right into his eyes, then dropped them to look at his hands holding hers.

  'She died here, in Rye,' Bert said, wanting to blurt out everything in one big breath. 'She drowned here in the river, early this morning.'

  To Bert's astonishment she laughed, her double chin quivering. 'Don't be silly, Mr Simmonds,' she said, showing all her teeth. 'You've got the wrong person. She wouldn't go near any river. She's in London.'

  Bert had heard of people going into denial when faced with something they didn't want to hear, but he hadn't expected it from Camellia. 'Melly, it was me who pulled her out. Don't you believe I know her well enough to identify her?'

  Silence. Not a word or even a flicker of movement from her. Her eyes were focused on something above his head, blank and unblinking. He hoped she was remembering their close friendship when she was just a little girl, the cricket matches when she and Bonny came to watch, clapping him and John equally. But it was more likely she was remembering the times she saw her mother flirting drunkenly with him, or the times he called in an official capacity to get her to turn her music down. He wished she would say something, anything. He didn't know if it had sunk in.

  Slowly her face began to crumple. Her wide mouth drooped first, her eyes closed, then tears crept out from under her lashes. As Bert watched, they formed into tiny diamond-bright droplets on her oily cheeks, rolling down one at a time.

  'Who did it?' she croaked. 'Who did this to her?'

  All Bert could do was take her in his arms, hold her against his chest and hope he could find the right words. "We don't think anyone was involved/ he whispered into her hair. 'We believe she jumped in, sweetheart, because she was unhappy. No one had hurt her, she wasn't forced in there.'

  'You're wrong.' She shook her head violently, pushing back against his chest. 'Mummy was happy when she went to London and she was afraid of water. She wouldn't jump in a river, not for any reason.'

  Bonny had been very fond of speaking about the time she nearly drowned as a child. Bert had heard the story from her himself. He could visualise the wide, icy, swollen river in Sussex and the heroic rescue by her childhood sweetheart. Bert had put her fear of water to the police doctor as a reason why she wouldn't end her life that way. The doctor had disagreed, saying it was a further pointer to he
r depressed state of mind.

  'People sometimes snap suddenly.' Bert tried to explain what the doctor had told him. He was aware that Carter had come out through the kitchen door, but he didn't turn to look at her. 'Sometimes lots of little worries build up together and make one huge problem that they can't solve.'

  Camellia leaned against him sobbing into the front of his shirt and he just held her, signalling for Carter to tell her all those other details he couldn't manage.

  Bert winced as Carter gently spelled out all they knew. The time of Bonny's death had been set at around two in the morning, at high tide. Her suitcase and shoes had been found under a bush. Camellia didn't react to hearing she would have to go to the mortuary to formally identify her mother, but when Carter mentioned a post mortem, she reared up, eyes wide with shock.

  'You mean they cut her open? They can't do that!'

  'There isn't any other way.' Carter came closer, putting one hand on the girl's shoulder soothingly. 'You see, they have to look for drugs, for drink, anything to build up a picture of what happened.'

  As Bert held Camellia in his arms in that quiet little backyard, he shared her grief. Bonny to him was as much part of life in Rye as the old-world tearooms, the Napoleonic prison, and the quayside. Tomorrow he might feel anger that she didn't consider what her death might do to her child, but today he would just mourn an old, troubled friend.

  Carter brought them tea a little later. Mrs Rowlands peered anxiously round the door, wanting to come out and offer some words of consolation, but like Bert she couldn't find the right words.

  'Have you got a friend you'd like to have with you?' Carter asked. She looked very hot, sweat stains on her white shirt and her short fair hair sticking damply to her head. 'I' could call them for you.'

  Camellia drew herself up, wiped her damp eyes with the back of her hand and looked right into the well-intentioned policewoman's eyes. 'I don't have any friends,' she said, a new hard look in her dark eyes. 'Didn't you know? I'm like a leper. Mum saw to that.'