Camellia

by Lesley Pearse

  She was shivering and burning up at the same time. Her whole being centred on the pain in her leg and on stopping herself from trying to lower it. Even so she saw his hand move to open his fly as he kneeled between her splayed open thighs.

  'Let's have a look at that pussy you wouldn't sell,' he said, reaching forward and snatching at her tights. The ripping of the nylon jarred her leg again, bringing a fresh wave of agony. Next came her panties, his fingers digging into soft flesh and yanking away the crutch. The cold breeze told her she was exposed, but that was nothing compared with the excruciating pain.

  He knelt before her, his face in shadow. His jerking elbow was silhouetted in the faint light from a street lamp beyond the garden wall. Why didn't someone come along? How could the people in the house sleep while this was going on right under their windows?

  He grunted, pausing for a moment, then the jerking movement started again.

  'You bitch,' he spat at her suddenly, the sound of his zipper like a wasp in the darkness. 'You've even robbed me of that.'

  She didn't see his leg move back as he jumped to his feet, just felt the blow as he kicked her with all his force right in the crutch.

  'I think someone's trying to break in.' Diana Wooton nudged her sleeping husband into wakefulness. 'Gordon, wake up, someone's down in the garden, I heard the gate squeak.'

  Gordon Wooton sat up, listened and scratched his head in the dark. He couldn't hear anything, but Diana would insist he checked.

  'Okay,' he sighed, reaching for the switch on the bedside light.

  'Don't put that on,' she whispered fearfully. 'If they see it they might hurt us. Just creep down in the dark and look. If there is someone there, call the police.'

  Gordon fumbled in the dark for his dressing gown. By day in his office he gave the orders, and his staff jumped. But at home, and particularly at night, he obeyed Diana to the letter.

  He crept into the sitting room first and opened the thick curtains just a crack. The arched wrought-iron gate was open, but there was no one in the garden. He went back into the kitchen and peered out of that window too.

  Nothing but the glimmer of white blossom against the dark of the lawn.

  'A drunk having a pee in the garden,' he muttered to himself, then groaned as he stubbed his bare toes against a box of wine he'd brought home the night before.

  The squeak of the front gate in the wind halted him just as he was about to go back upstairs. Diana would lie awake for the rest of the night if he left it like that.

  He walked cautiously down the brick path to the gate. Drunks had been known to do a great deal more than pee in their garden before now and his feet were still bare. He shut the gate securely, but as he turned he saw something white on the lawn, right up by the side of the house.

  For just a moment he thought it was a swan, curled up with its head beneath its wings. He blinked, then looked again, then hurrying back to the house he switched on the porch light.

  'Good God,' he gasped, hardly able to credit that what he was seeing was real. 'Diana,' he yelled at the top of his lungs. 'Call the police. And an ambulance.'

  Camellia felt light rather than saw it: a pinkish glow which wouldn't clear. She tried to raise her hand to rub her eyes, but it was too heavy to move.

  'Hullo,' a male voice spoke close to her. 'Can you hear me?'

  She couldn't answer. She could hear questions shaping in her mind, but her mouth couldn't form them. She managed a croak, but nothing more and lapsed back into sleep.

  The next thing she was aware of was a hand on her arm and the sound of pumping air.

  Opening her eyes she saw a nurse in a blue and white striped dress.

  'Welcome back,' she said. 'You've been out a long time. Are you feeling any pain?'

  Camellia couldn't say: she was confused even by the question. The band round her arm was tightening, and she looked to the nurse for explanation.

  'I'm just checking your blood pressure,' she said. 'Do you remember anything about last night?'

  Memory came back as she tried to move and speak. There was a rope round her neck and as her hand came up a loosen it, Hank's leering face came clearly into focus.

  As she tried to turn to one side to ease a throbbing in the lower part of her body, she felt a stab of pain in her legs. Her hands moved to soothe them and she found heavy plaster on one.

  'Hank Beckwith,' she managed to croak out.

  She was confused for some time. Fragments of memory floated by–lighting a cigarette in Fulham Road, Denise pouring her a drink, a canopy of cherry blossom above her head–but her throat hurt too badly to ask the questions which might fill in the blanks.

  It was a policeman who helped the most.

  'You are in St Stephen's hospital.' His deep voice was soothing and for a moment or two she thought it was Bert Simmonds. 'You were attacked in Beaufort Street at some time between midnight and three in the morning when you were found in someone's garden. It's nine at night now and you have had an emergency operation on your knee. But we don't know who you are or where you live. You must try to tell me so we can find the man who did this to you.'

  Slowly Camellia managed to get the words out. Her fingers kept returning to her neck to try and ease the burning, constricting sensation. She was glad when a nurse came and injected her with something which made her sleepy again. She didn't want to be awake.

  The next morning Camellia woke to find her mind clearer, though she ached everywhere and the lower part of her body felt as if it was on fire. She was in a small private room, and she was told she'd be moved back to the main ward once the police had finished questioning her. Her right knee was badly injured, and they still had to do more tests on her to discover whether there was internal damage from the kick in her crutch. It would be weeks until she could walk again. But she was lucky to be alive: if the people in the house in Beaufort Street hadn't found her that night, the police would be heading a murder investigation.

  The American Embassy were searching their records for Hank Beckwith. All airlines had been alerted and a checking of London hotel registers was under way. An appeal had been put out for the cab driver who dropped Camellia off in Fulham Road. Late the previous night the police had called at the Don Juan to question Denise and the other girls.

  Bee arrived to see Camellia at eleven in the morning, and was allowed in after the police had been through the entire story with her yet again.

  Bee was distraught, her eyes pink-rimmed, her hair lank and bedraggled. 'Oh Mel,' she sobbed, even before the police were out of the room. 'This is like the worst nightmare. I can't believe anyone would do such a thing to you.'

  A little later once she'd calmed down, she explained how she'd found out. 'I didn't wake up till ten yesterday morning. When I found you hadn't come home I just thought you'd met someone nice. I never thought anything bad had happened to you. I waited in all day, then I began to get cross because you hadn't phoned me. Eventually at nine in the evening I rang the club to ask Denise if she knew anything. Once she told me about that man I had a nasty feeling. Soon after the police called round. You'd only just come round enough to give your name and address. They told me what that man did.'

  'It's over now,' Camellia said weakly. 'Try not to think about it, Bee, that's what I'm doing. I'll soon get better, you'll see.'

  'But you don't understand,' Bee sobbed. 'They think we are just a couple of prostitutes and you got what you deserved for leading a man on.'

  'Who thinks that?' Camellia asked.

  'It's all over the papers today,' Bee raised her overflowing eyes to Camellia's. 'The journalists are camping on our doorstep.'

  Camellia was in no fit state to even talk, much less think anything through.

  'Find someone to stay with till it blows over,' she managed to croak out. 'Don't come and visit me again. Just stay out of sight.'

  In the next few days, Camellia grew very glad that Bee didn't take her advice. She soon discovered she hadn't any other real friends.
Apart from a warm letter and flowers from Denise at the club, no one else contacted her. She had always believed Bee and herself to be two of the most popular girls in Chelsea. Now she saw that was just so much worthless window-dressing.

  The newspaper stories about her made her even more upset. Clearly someone from her past had been talking to them. Not only had they got an old photograph of her in an almost diaphanous blouse and no bra, but they'd dug up the story about her mother's death. It was pure sensationalism, the facts distorted, almost as if the editors had decided to use her as an example.

  After a few days Camellia was moved down to the main women's ward. It hurt to see the hostile looks from the other patients, and to hear them whispering about her. When her leg was put into traction it seemed as if every time someone passed her bed they knocked it purposely.

  But Bee's loyalty was unfailing. She was always the first visitor through the ward door, the last to leave. She made sure she sat in such a way that Camellia couldn't see herself being pointed out to the other women's visitors and did her best to soothe all Camellia's anxieties.

  'I'm working every night now, so don't worry about the rent,' she said. 'I'm trying to save some money too so when you get out of here we can have a holiday somewhere.'

  'You shouldn't be working there now,' Camellia said again and again. She worried about her friend every night, imagining that all the men there were like Hank. 'What if someone attacked you?'

  'I'm quite safe,' Bee insisted. 'One of the bouncers sees all us girls into cabs now. Besides that Yank would never dare go in there again, would he?'

  'They haven't caught him yet.' Camellia groaned as she tried to move into a more comfortable position. 'The police seem to think he gave me a false name. He's probably back in the States now.'

  Bee saw Camellia wince as she moved. 'Does it hurt terribly?'

  'The leg or knowing the world thinks I'm a tart who got her comeuppance?' Camellia tried to laugh but it was hollow.

  'Your leg, silly.' Bee laid her head on Camellia's arm. She thought her friend was the bravest person she'd ever met.

  'The leg isn't too bad,' Camellia said. 'As long as no one jogs the bed. It's the bruised fanny that's really doing me in, especially when they give me a bedpan. Why couldn't I find a nice straightforward rapist?'

  Making jokes about her ordeal was the only way she could cope with it. The black looks from other patients, the journalists who kept asking to interview her, the anxiety and the question marks over her future were bad enough. But added to this was the constant physical pain and the mental torture, and combined they conspired to push her towards the deepest, darkest depression. Perhaps it was a little sick to joke about something so serious, but it was preferable to sobbing.

  As Camellia's body slowly began to mend, it was Sergeant Rodgers, rather than Bee who showed her a way out of the dark morass her mind kept sinking back into.

  He was the policeman who'd told her where she was when she first came round from the anaesthetic, the man whom she had mistaken for a moment for Bert Simmonds. Like Bert, he was a policeman of the old school, a man of integrity, committed to maintaining law and order, yet retaining compassion for those weaker than himself.

  At first his visits were purely official. He took her statement and called in repeatedly for more information and to keep her abreast with the police inquiries. Gradually she found herself trusting this plain-speaking sergeant and opening up to him.

  Camellia had been in hospital for almost a fortnight when he called late one evening to ask her to look at some photographs of men. Camellia had been crying nearly all day. She hated having to lie still in bed, forced to ask for everything from a bedpan to a glass of water. Outside the sun was shining. Hank Beckwith was out there somewhere, free as a bird, while she was still in pain. She'd become infamous overnight. Her past shamed her and she could see no future.

  Sergeant Rodgers stood for a moment by her bed looking down at her, as if sensing exactly where her mind was.

  'It will get better, Miss Norton,' he said gently. 'Your body will heal, the memory of that night will fade. You think now that this is the end of everything, but in fact it's a new beginning. Try to keep that in mind, you'll find it helps.'

  He pulled up a chair beside her bed, and instead of launching into questions or insisting she looked at his photographs, he talked just as a friend would. He said he would arrange for someone from National Assistance to come and see her so she could pay her share of the rent at the flat. Camellia almost forgot he was a policeman.

  Although later she found herself wondering if he was merely befriending her in the hopes she might be of some use later, that night she found solace by unburdening some of her fears.

  Official reasons for calling on her had now all but dried up, but still Mike Rodgers kept coming. Sometimes he pulled a few sweets or an apple from his pocket, at other times he only had jokes to cheer her, but he always made her feel better.

  'You are a very beautiful girl,' he said on perhaps his sixth unofficial visit. A nurse had managed to wash her hair for her today and it had lifted her spirits enough for her to put on a little lipstick too.

  'Fat lot of use that is,' she joked, but she felt warmed by his flattery. 'I'll need more than a nice face to get a decent job when I get out of here.'

  Mike looked at her thoughtfully. During his many visits and from his knowledge of her background, he'd gleaned more about her character than she realised. She was a good person at heart, a little easily led, but intelligent, brave and independent.

  'You say you haven't skills, but you just aren't looking at them from far enough away,' he said.

  'I'd have to get up close with a magnifying glass to see any,' she giggled, more from shame than amusement. 'I can't type or drive. I left school without any qualifications.'

  'You've got a great understanding of people and a good personality,' he said dryly. 'Those are more valuable than exam results. I can think of many fields where those and your looks would be appreciated.'

  'Such as?' Camellia raised one eyebrow.

  'Personnel, welfare work, receptionist,' he came back with. 'You'd make a good probation officer too.'

  As Mike's visits became more frequent, Camellia realised there was more than mere friendship between them. She found herself putting on lipstick and mascara, her ears constantly pricked for the sound of his firm step out in the corridor. She no longer spent time wondering what Bee was doing during the day, it was Mike she thought about. When he walked into the ward, his big face broke into the warmest of smiles, and she knew without him saying anything that she was as much on his mind, as he was on hers.

  In her time at the Don Juan she'd become an expert at chatting up men and making them desire her. But she didn't dare try to use any of her old wiles to ensnare him. She just wasn't good enough for a man like Mike Rodgers.

  When she asked whether he had a wife he laughingly replied that he was married only to his job. She knew he played rugby, that his favourite comedy show was Monty Python's Flying Circus, that he had a small flat in Acton. But it wasn't enough. She wanted to know everything about him: what he liked to eat, where he grew up, how old he was when he had his first kiss. Who the woman was who had let him down so badly, because somehow she knew he had been hurt.

  But she didn't ask these questions. She merely soaked up little things about him to hold onto in the hours when she was alone. The way his lower lip curled petulantly when he disapproved of something, the dimple in his right cheek, the tiny chip in a front tooth and the light in his eyes which she knew was for her.

  It was during the long, sleepless nights that Camellia did most of her thinking. She closed her eyes and tried to shut out the night-time sounds of the ward. The old lady in the end bed's wheezing breath, the faint scratching of a pen as the night nurse did her paperwork in the centre of the ward.

  Influential people from her past paraded through her mind. Each and every character flitting by like a trailer for a film. H
er mother in a backless blue dress, blonde hair waving over golden brown shoulders. Bert Simmonds in his uniform, Miss Peet in her shabby tweed skirt and hand knitted jumpers, doling out the evening meal at Archway House. Dougie in his long snakeskin boots, tight velvet trousers and a frilly shirt. Other less important characters came too, Mrs Rowlands, Suzanne, Carol and Miss Puckridge.

  Camellia knew now that no one in this cast was responsible for her failings, even if she had thought some of them were at times. Her mother hadn't been the best of examples, Suzanne and Carol had tempted her to steal, Dougie had introduced her to sex and drugs. But it was she, Camellia, who'd chosen to follow their leads and ignore her conscience. She alone conceived the idea of picking pockets and she'd never considered how her victims felt. Then there were all the men she'd slept with since Dougie. She couldn't even remember some of their names. What happened to the girl who once priced love above everything?

  How could she even hope for romance with Mike? Setting aside her notoriety, which would harm his career and make him a joke in the force, there were all the dark shadows in the past of which he was unaware. She had breathed corrupt air for so long. She had no right to taint him with it.

  Late in June, after six weeks at St Stephen's, the doctors told Camellia she could go home. Her knee had healed enough for her to have been taken out of traction the week before, and as she'd proved to be quite confident for short spells on crutches, there was no further need for her to be hospitalised.

  Mike came in at seven that evening and found her practising hobbling along.

  Camellia told him her news.

  'I'm so excited,' she said breathlessly. 'I thought I was never going to get out of here. The summer's arrived and I hardly noticed.'

  'Can I come and see you sometimes?' he asked. He looked faintly embarrassed.

  'Let me try and get myself together first,' she said. 'There's more to mend than just my leg.'

  Bee hovered in the doorway looking apprehensively at Camellia as she sat in an armchair, her plastered leg up on a stool. She had been home for two days and Bee had fussed round her constantly like a mother hen. She had arranged to do some modelling for a photographer this afternoon, but now she was nervous about it.