Camellia

by Lesley Pearse

  They were so happy in Oakley Street. Having a real home of their own had given them both the feeling of security they needed. Each piece of furniture had been chosen with care, haggled over in the second-hand shops in Portobello Road and transported home with pride. The green velvet Chesterfield Camellia lay on was the most expensive item, but they'd knocked the trader down to thirty-five pounds. The round Victorian supper table by the window had been a real bargain at ten pounds. It was badly scratched, but they'd found a man who did French polishing to restore it for the price of a couple of drinks.

  There was little else of any real value. The wall unit which housed the stereo was cheap wood and badly scarred but the damage was hidden by books and bric-a-brac Camellia had re-covered the two odd easy chairs with remnants of jazzy materials. Studious studying of glossy magazines had been the inspiration behind a huge arrangement of beech leaves in a terracotta vase, a pile of yellow and green striped gourds in a basket and a collection of abstract posters in brilliant primary colours.

  They rarely got up before noon. In hot weather they sunbathed in parks during the afternoon, went shopping or just lay around indoors when the weather was bad. Then off to the club in the evening. They had more than enough money to buy clothes, eat well and pay the bills. But now with Christmas just around the corner, Camellia's conscience was prickling yet again.

  It wasn't so much the moral issue of whether it was ethical to earn a living by dolling themselves up and demanding a fee for keeping a man company while encouraging him to buy exorbitantly priced drinks. It was more that Camellia sensed the bubble had to burst one day. When it did, they might just be on the wrong side of the law. She never wanted to see Inspector Spencer or the inside of a police station again.

  'What are you wearing tonight?' Bee's voice penetrated Camellia's train of thought.

  'My red velvet.' Camellia was only too glad to be distracted. 'I always get someone tasty when I wear that,'

  'Only because it hardly covers your bum,' Bee sniggered, wrapping her pink dressing gown more firmly round her. 'I think I'll wear my black one. With my tits and your legs on display, the other girls won't get a look in.'

  They had been lured away from the Top Hat Club in Soho to the Don Juan in Mayfair back in February. The Don Juan had a far more wealthy and prestigious clientele. In Soho, the men that used the club were invariably only in London for one night, and with no experience of club life they tended to think that the girls' hostess fee should include sex, particularly once they'd parted with twenty or thirty pounds for a few drinks.

  The Don Juan was far more sophisticated. Its elegant black and chrome decor, young and attractive hostesses and less exorbitantly priced drinks meant wealthy businessmen returned again and again without ever expecting more.

  A year of happiness and close friendship had brought changes to both girls, but the physical effects were far more noticeable in Bee. She had lost a stone in weight and tamed her frizzy hair into gleaming golden waves. Although still plumper than was fashionable she'd learned to buy well-cut clothes that distracted eyes away from her big bottom and thick legs towards her magnificent breasts and pretty face. The punters at the club fell over themselves to spend the evening with her. She was a heady mixture of child and sensual woman with her pink and white complexion, wide blue eyes, innocent mouth and her voluptuous curves. She liked men and they felt it. She made them laugh, flirted and teased, but she cared for them too. One regular customer called her 'His glass of champagne' and claimed he felt high just looking at her.

  The changes in Camellia were more subtle. She was glossy now, as perfectly dressed as a mannequin, chic rather than outrageous. Her dark hair was longer, reaching her shoulder blades, washed daily and trimmed regularly. She had mastered make-up so men were fooled into thinking there was none.

  She had true confidence now. Her body could stand close inspection: her legs were long and slender and when she walked in a room full of men she sensed the rise in temperature and she liked it. Alone at home with Bee she was Mel, baring her soul, enjoying girlish giggling and silliness. But at the club she was Camellia, a little haughty, cool and controlled.

  'Shall we go on to that party if we can get away from the club in time?' Camellia hauled herself up off the couch to run her bath. 'It might be a giggle.'

  'Is it really our scene though?' Bee began to take her rollers out, dropping them on the floor beside her. 'I mean they're a bit heavy, aren't they?'

  'We can handle them,' Camellia smiled. She liked men who were challenging, and Aiden Murphy was certainly that.

  They had met Aiden and John in Finch's, their local, a fortnight earlier. Bee described them as 'heavy', merely because they had plenty of money to splash around, yet neither man would say what exactly he did for a living. Camellia didn't care much: she fancied Aiden, the irreverent, blue-eyed, black-haired Irishman, and just thinking about him made her stomach jolt.

  They had been standing at the bar waiting to be served when they heard a man speak behind them. 'What'll you have, girls?' His musical Irish brogue made them both turn in surprise.

  The man was well over six foot, with thick black hair and bright, inquisitive blue eyes, maybe thirty-two or three. The broad shoulders and healthy glow suggested he worked outdoors, yet his expensive hand-tailored grey suit could hardly belong to a navvy.

  Camellia was thrown by his looks for a moment. A man as good-looking as this one was rare anywhere, but especially in Finch's where the men tended to be dropouts of one sort or another. She just stared at his laughing eyes and white teeth in surprise.

  'So what's it to be?' he said, one bushy dark brow raised quizzically. 'You'll need an anaesthetic if I'm going to fuck you tonight.'

  His approach was crude, yet it was original and very funny. In the circles she and Bee moved in, men rarely made them laugh.

  Aiden's side-kick was John Everton. Next to Aiden he was ordinary, perhaps five-eight and slender, his fair hair unfashionably short. He was a wiry man whose bony, raw face somehow reflected his upbringing on a Fulham council estate. Later that night she and Bee nicknamed him the 'Daytime Cowboy' because of his studded Levi jacket and carefully pressed jeans. Yet even though he didn't share Aiden's quick repartee or his sharp mind, he had a courteous, gentlemanly quality.

  The girls had intended to go to work that night, but the men bought them so many drinks they never made it. Later they all went to the Village Club in King's Road and stayed till it closed.

  'I can't fuck you tonight,' Aiden said to Camellia as they got out onto the street at three in the morning. 'But would you like a glimpse of the purple death?'

  Camellia was very drunk, holding onto lampposts for support. When he opened his fly and produced his huge, flaccid penis, she laughed so much she got a stitch.

  'You won't be laughing, m'girl, when I use it on you,' he said, dark blue eyes full of merriment. 'When he grows to his full size he'll come up the back of your throat to be sure!'

  It was the fun of that evening which stuck in both the girls' minds. These two men had danced, clowned, laughed and talked. They had alluded to sex countless times during the night, yet hadn't begun to try to get the girls into bed. They were aggressively masculine, and that came as a welcome change to the namby-pamby arty types in Chelsea and the fat cats with posh voices and soft hands at the club.

  Since then the girls had been back to Finch's on several occasions, but neither man had been there. They had just about given them up for good when they got home a few days ago to find a note stuck through the door.

  'Come to a party on Saturday night,' was all it said, with an address in South Kensington and a couple of pin-men drawings that could only be of Aiden and John.

  Life in Oakley Street was never dull. Everything, from going to the Launderette to a drink before work was an opportunity for adventure. Chelsea was the epicentre of 'Swinging London': boutiques full of wild clothes, wine bars, clubs and pubs overflowing with young people. The tourists went to Carna
by Street, but the King's Road was for the more 'switched-on'. Pop stars bought flats and houses there; Sloaney debutantes, ex-public school boys, aristocracy and models rubbed shoulders with Cockney nouveaux riches. That year, 1969, saw Neil Armstrong become the first man to step on the moon, but to the young it would be remembered for the free pop concerts in Hyde Park and, across the Atlantic, the Woodstock Festival. The catch phrase 'free love' was on everyone's lips. The wide use of the contraceptive pill might have made sex safer, but it was the widespread intake of marijuana which led to real permissiveness.

  At work in the club the girls portrayed themselves as a couple of sophisticates, with glitzy, slinky long dresses and diamante or cocktail-style minis. They flirted, flattered, danced and fluttered false eyelashes, yet always went home alone.

  But in Chelsea, on their home ground, they were out for fun and dressed outrageously, in everything from Chelsea market antique dresses, to revealing crocheted minis, flared loons and diaphanous voile shirts. Here they selected their partners not by the amount of money in their pockets, but by their play value. Men who got serious were soon abandoned. Time was too short for complicated, long-term relationships.

  They rarely discussed their pasts now. Their friendship was based on knowing everything about each other and loving one another because of it. Each new experience tightened the bond between them. They shared everything: food, clothes, records, and sometimes even men. Camellia cleaned, and Bee cooked. They were all the family they wanted or needed.

  'Join me for a late supper?' Duncan, a big Scot, covered Camellia's hand with his, his pale-brown eyes huge behind thick glasses.

  It was sometime after twelve and Camellia had been keeping an eye on the time all evening as she entertained this businessman. Bee had already packed off her partner and was waiting at the bar. She kept looking across to Camellia. It was time she wound up the evening if they were to get to the party before it was over.

  'I'd love to, but I can't.' Camellia returned the squeeze of Duncan's hand. 'I've got to drive down to Sussex now, my grandmother's ill.'

  If it wasn't for the party she might have been tempted by Duncan's offer. He was nice – a real gentleman, even if he was close to forty.

  'You've been such good company,' he smiled, his full mouth very appealing. 'I hope I haven't bored you, going on about my family.'

  'Not at all, Duncan.' Just this once she was entirely sincere; the time had flown talking to him. 'Your wife's a lucky lady.'

  He got up with her, towering over her as he bent down to brush her cheek with his lips. 'Goodnight Camellia. Maybe next time I come to London?'

  Camellia joined Bee at the bar for a quick, real drink before they left.

  'What was old four-eyes going on about?' Bee asked.

  The club was quieter than normal for a Saturday night. A quartet was playing gentle old standards while a few couples snuffled around on the minute dance floor. Four other hostesses were still working, encouraging their partners to drink, tucked away in the more intimate, black and cream plush booths.

  'I want to marry someone like that one day,' Camellia said wistfully, looking back towards the door which was still swinging from his departure. 'And don't take the piss, he was lovely.'

  'More than mine was then.' Bee looked gloomily into her glass. 'He was a fucking rep, chronic halitosis and terminally boring.'

  'The night is still young.' Camellia brightened up as the large vodka slipped down her throat. She was ready now for a party. 'I hope you've got your best knickers on?'

  I'll probably take them off the minute I meet someone tasty,' Bee grinned, downing the last of her drink in one gulp. 'I've been so randy all night I expect I'd even have let that boring bastard grope me if his breath hadn't been so bad.'

  Camellia smiled. Bee needed sex like Camellia needed fresh air and sunshine.

  It was freezing and foggy outside in the street. Camellia hugged her white rabbit maxicoat tightly round her as they ran down towards Oxford Street for a cab. She had bought it to replace the one Dougie had stolen for her, then sold when they were short of cash. This one was far nicer though, it had cost almost a hundred pounds, and she felt it was worth every penny. All men raved about a glimpse of long slender leg under a full-length fur and just putting it on made her feel sexy.

  'Suppose they've got a couple of girls already?' Bee said as they got into a taxi. She took a mirror out of her handbag, put on a thick coat of fresh glossy lipstick, and ran a comb through her blonde waves. Then opening her coat she sprayed Je Revien down into her cleavage.

  "Then we make sure they drop them,' Camellia replied confidently. She knew she looked good tonight. With her short red velvet dress, knee-length platform boots and the coat, how could Aiden resist her?

  They heard the party even before they got out of the cab in Brompton Road. The Beatles' 'Why Don't We Do It in the Road' was blaring out at full volume.

  Bee looked up at the house in approval as Camellia paid the driver.

  Number 241 was smarter than most of the others in the long terrace. Its railings, doors and windows were freshly painted, the stone work recently cleaned. An uncurtained window on the first floor had fairy lights all round it and they could see silhouettes of dancers.

  'It's looking good,' Bee remarked, sliding her hands under her coat and hitching up her black sheer tights.

  The front door was open. As they walked up the stairs to the first floor, a cacophony of music, laughter and revelry wafted down to them.

  'Should we have brought a bottle?' Bee asked as they approached the polished wood door.

  'Sounds like they've got plenty.' Camellia bounded ahead, reaching behind her to drag her less enthusiastic friend up a little quicker.

  The smell of amyl nitrate made them gasp as they walked in on the party. A man was in the process of inhaling it just inside the door. They paused in fascination, watching his face turn almost purple, veins leaping out of his forehead, then almost immediately he was normal again.

  'A two-second hit,' he said, blue eyes bleary and unfocused, shaking the broken glass vial into a waste bin. 'But then you're supposed to snort it at the point of orgasm.'

  The girls were no strangers to wild parties, but this one was beyond anything they'd seen before. They lingered in the small hallway looking into the softly lit, crowded main room, glancing a little apprehensively at each other.

  The guests were two entirely different breeds: one group predominantly male Arabs, in sober dark suits, all over forty; the rest a mishmash of weird characters who looked as if they'd been picked up in one of London's sleazier pubs.

  Two girls, no older than sixteen, were doing some sort of nymphet dance wearing nothing but skin-coloured body stockings, waving green chiffon scarves in their hands. Another girl was standing by a wall, topless, her partner chatting to her as if she were fully dressed. A pretty-looking young man wearing only pink paisley loons, was kissing another male in full view of everyone. Hard-faced brassy women danced with longhaired hippies half their age. A Jimi Hendrix look-alike played an 'air' guitar in the corner.

  'I don't think this is our scene,' Camellia said, backing towards the door. She didn't mind the eccentricity. It was the Arabs she feared. They stood in small groups watching the proceedings with dark, brooding eyes, almost as if it was a cabaret.

  'Hullo me darlings,' Aiden's voice made Camellia's pulse quicken, even before he pushed himself through the crowd to greet them. 'I'd given up on you. What kept you?'

  'Work,' Camellia grinned at him. He looked like the Martini man in a dark suit, white shirt and a dickey bow. 'We're not sure this is really for us!'

  'To be sure it is, or my name's not Aiden Murphy, party-giver to the stars,' he grinned. He put an arm round each girl, drawing them close to him so he could whisper in their ears. 'The flat belongs to the towel-head over there.' He nodded his head towards the only man in Arabic robes. 'Obas is a prince with pots of money.'

  'Oh yeah?' Bee said sullenly, yet Camellia
saw a sparkle of interest in her eyes as she noted this man's comparative youth, his aquiline nose and sensuous full lips.

  ' 'Tis true,' Aiden gave her bottom a playful smack. 'And didn't he just tell me he adores blondes with big tits!'

  Closer inspection of the flat suggested it was a pied-a-terre, rather than anyone's home. Even in the dim light they could tell that the high-ceilinged lounge would be elegant when empty of all these strange people. Blue silky curtains with tasselled pelmets hung at the vast windows, though no one had bothered to draw them and the large semicircular settees were just a shade darker. Camellia wondered if the central chandelier was real, or plastic – with the light switched off it was hard to tell. A professional-looking sound system, complete with strobe lights was operated by another wild-looking hippie, his bare chest festooned with beads.

  'The prince must be pretty desperate for company to mix with people like this,' Camellia whispered to Aiden. 'They look like renta-crowd waiting for the pay-off!'

  Even as she spoke she saw she had inadvertently stumbled on the truth. The sober-looking men were all Obas's friends, the strange people invited purely as a floorshow. Aiden had engineered the whole thing!

  'Now will ye stop being a pair of Jonahs,' Aiden said, leading them towards the kitchen which was divided from the lounge by reeded glass doors, before they ran out on him. 'And get some grog into yous.'

  On one side of the long narrow kitchen a bar was set up, complete with spirits, mixers and a huge silver punch-bowl. On the other side was food: houmous, pitta bread, and great salvers of savoury rice and kebabs. The girls hadn't expected much in the way of food and the sight of it weakened their resistance.

  'Are you expecting us to perform in some way?' Camellia asked, helping herself to a large glass of punch and taking a kebab in the other hand.

  Aiden didn't reply. He leaned back on a split-level cooker with his arms folded, a wide naughty grin showing brilliant white teeth.