Camellia

by Lesley Pearse

  'I meant afterwards,' Nick said.

  'No, she didn't,' Bert shook his head. 'Now you come to mention it, she never said a word. Odd really, considering how she was always talking about the things they'd done together in the past and how she'd thrown up a part in a film herself to marry John.'

  Nick smiled. Bonny had created quite a legend for herself with her tall stories, but this was the first he'd heard of a film part! 'Why do you suppose she didn't talk about it?'

  Bert shrugged. 'Who knows! Maybe they fell out. I don't actually remember Bonny ever mentioning her again now I come to think about it. Helena certainly never came back to Rye. I'd remember if she had.'

  'I've been told by an old boyfriend she contacted that summer that she claimed her life was about to fall apart. Have you got any ideas about that?'

  Bert's clear blue eyes looked very knowing. 'She never said anything like that to me. Most women get a bit low sometimes for reasons us men can't fathom. Bonny liked to be centre stage, maybe Helena visiting made her feel a bit grey and dull.'

  Nick felt there must have been a far bigger reason for Bonny suddenly wanting attention that summer than feeling 'a bit grey' – but as Bert didn't seem able to expand on it, he moved on to ask about the later years after John died.

  'She just got wilder and wilder,' Bert said sadly. 'She spent money on clothes like she'd just won the Pools. She'd invite great parties of people in here to eat and footed the bills. Sometimes she took herself off to London and stayed in a posh hotel. Of course in those days we believed John had left her a fortune, but I found it strange that all the London friends she'd had while John was alive gradually dropped her. The rumours about her were rife – according to gossip no man was safe with her – and then the serious drinking began. I've seen her in here so drunk she couldn't stand. She used to joke that it was good she lived so close!'

  'Poor Camellia had to watch this happening then?'

  "That was the worst of it,' Bert sighed deeply. 'The poor kid grew fatter and fatter, more and more withdrawn. She had no friends – other mothers wouldn't allow their kids to play with her.'

  As Bert went on Nick felt sickened. It was all so much worse than Mel had implied to his father. He heard about the bailiffs coming in to take the furniture from the house in Mermaid Street; the seedy drunken parties in the squalid house in Fishmarket Street; the men who came and went. When Bert graphically described the night he'd found Camellia walking home from Hastings, Nick felt tears prickling his eyes.

  He felt ashamed too for the way he'd rebelled after his mother died. Magnus might have been distant for a time, and maybe he didn't attend every sportsday, but in comparison to what Mel had been through, his teenage years looked like one glorious picnic.

  'My mother befriended her after that,' Bert went on. 'She taught her a bit of cooking, how to iron things properly, sewing and knitting, the sort of things her own mother should've seen to. Camellia never complained about Bonny though, she just accepted that was the way Bonny was. The moment she was old enough she got a Saturday and holiday job at the bakery and it was that summer that Bonny died. When I said no one in Rye could recognise Camellia from that picture, I meant as she was then. She was grossly fat, Nick. I'd say at fifteen she weighed perhaps thirteen stone.'

  'Really?' Nick couldn't imagine Mel anyway but slim. Yet he remembered her encouraging one of the waitresses to diet, making a chart of her weight loss, and complimenting her at every lost pound. Now he understood why she took it so personally.

  'What do I do now?' he asked. 'I don't have a clue where to look for her.'

  'I wish I could offer some advice.' Bert looked glum. 'But it's been my experience that people who run away, stay hidden until they feel ready to be found, whatever lengths we go to. If I were you son, I'd go home, get on with your career and just wait.'

  Nick didn't think he could do that. 'Just tell me one thing more?' he asked. 'Was there ever any doubt in your mind that Bonny's death wasn't suicide?'

  'A great deal of doubt,' Bert sighed deeply. His blue eyes were a little glazed now with the whisky, but there was something very resolute in them. 'If she was going to kill herself in my view she would have staged it like Marilyn Monroe's death, naked on silk sheets wearing nothing but Chanel No 5. She'd even have had her hair done that morning. But I dug and dug at the time. I went over that house in Fishmarket Street painstakingly. I read every last letter, studied every scrap of paper and I didn't find anything. I'm sure there was a man, somewhere. Camellia told me herself she'd heard Bonny talking on the phone to someone late at night and she said she had been excitable for several weeks, as if expecting something good to happen any day. Someone brought Bonny back to Rye that night and even falling down drunk, I don't believe she'd go walking by the river, much less jump in. It just wasn't her way. But I was a lone voice, saying things no one else wanted to hear. If I could've found one real clue it might've been different, but I didn't.'

  Nick went out into the street with Bert at closing time. They were both a little unsteady on their feet but the long and intimate talk had created a bond between them.

  Mermaid Street looked enchanting under its thick blanket of snow. Nick had to resist a childish urge to run down it making footprints.

  'That was her house,' Bert said pointing out number twelve almost opposite. There was a light just inside the lattice window and Nick could see enough to get a picture of how it had been when John Norton was alive. 'Camellia used to sit on those steps on summer's evenings playing with her dolls.'

  'Take it easy going home.' Nick grasped the older man's shoulder. 'Don't go falling in the snow.'

  'I've got real policeman's feet,' Bert grinned. 'I might wobble but I won't fall down. Mind you I might get a rolling pin over the head when I get in, I said I wouldn't be more than an hour.'

  A current passed between them, an unspoken message of mutual gratitude, understanding and even affection.

  'Thanks,' Nick said gruffly.

  Bert turned and moved away, but he stopped after a few yards to look back, big and burly in his sheepskin coat. 'Let me know how things turn out,' he called back. 'And if you find her, give her my love.'

  It was two nights later in a guest house in Fulham that Nick finally gave way to dejection. There was nothing really wrong with the room he'd been given, aside from it being very cold. It was small and box-like, with an orange candlewick bedspread, an ugly central light with three imitation candles and a print on the wall of Looe in Cornwall. He wondered if Mel was in a similar room somewhere in London, sitting there reflecting bitterly on the past, as depressed and lonely as he felt himself.

  Nick had so much background information about her now, thanks to Bert. By tramping around Rye in the snow the following day, with the help of the landmarks he'd been given, he'd recreated her childhood and adolescence. Perhaps if it had been warm and sunny, the images which came to him might have been less wretched, but walking from her pretty first home in Mermaid Street, down to the second in Fishmarket Street with icy slush under his feet and a chilling wind nipping at his ears, he could well imagine her desolation at being ejected from her beautiful childhood home and transplanted somewhere so grim.

  Number twenty-two was as desolate-looking as Bert had described: its windows filthy, its paint peeling. Heavy traffic thundered past, splattering the narrow pavement, doorsteps and even windows with slush and grit. Nick walked on down to the secondary modern a little further on, imagining Mel as a fat, friendless teenager, going home to an empty house.

  Later he climbed the steep steps up to the High Street and bought a sausage roll from the bakery. He wondered whether the plump rosy faced woman behind the counter with iron-grey hair was Mrs Rowlands. He didn't attempt to engage her in conversation, it was enough just to get a glimpse of the kitchens behind the shop and imagine Mel working there.

  Finally before driving back to London, he went down to the quay and looked across the water towards where Bert said he found Bonny's body. I
t was high tide, the river brown and swollen. Seagulls were circling overhead, their squawking as plaintive as the grey sky. Nick was glad to get back in his car. Rye might be one of the prettiest towns on the south coast, but he'd immersed himself so deeply in Mel's sad and lonely childhood years that he never wanted to return. He was sure she wouldn't either.

  When he got to London that evening he'd hoped to make an appointment to see Sir Miles Hamilton for the next morning, then spend the afternoon in the newspaper archives before driving on home to Bath. Instead Sir Miles couldn't see him for a day, which meant staying in London for two nights. There was far too much time for him to sit and brood, not only on Mel's past, but on his own.

  He had used to like reading sensational stories about famous personalities or even strangers in newspapers, but earlier today he'd discovered how painful it was to read such things about someone he loved. With the official details Bert had given Nick already, the story of Mel's ordeal with her American attacker took on a whole new sickening and harrowing perspective. But as he moved on to read about her friend Beatrice Jarret's death, his eyes had swum with tears of sympathy. To the journalists who'd bled the story dry, she was yet another casualty of the sixties, to be joined soon by Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison and Brian Jones. But whereas these famous people had been portrayed sympathetically as folk heroes, who'd just lived too hard and fast, Beatrice, and by association, Camellia, were portrayed as an affront to public morality, a symbol of a sick society.

  Nick stripped down to a tee shirt and underpants and got into bed. He wished he had a stiff drink to warm him inside, because he knew sleep wasn't going to come easily. His mind was too full of vivid and painful images.

  It was ironic to think that he and Mel could easily have met four or five years earlier. While she was living in Oakley Street, he had been less than ten minutes' walk away in Onslow Square. Had he met her and Bee then in 1969, no doubt he would have looked down at them as a pair of common dolly birds. In those days he felt he was very much part of the youthful Chelsea aristocracy, the beautiful jet set people who numbered rock stars, actors and high-bred rich kids in their decadent clan.

  'Honky Tonk Woman' by the Rolling Stones was the song which seemed to epitomise those heady days. Nick had been at parties then with Mick Jagger, Marianne Faithfull, Brian Jones, Paul Getty and so many more famous people. All his clothes came from King's Road boutiques, ruffled silk shirts, velvet flares, tapestry jackets like a Regency dandy.

  Chelsea and drugs were inseparable: they were as much part of being cool as handmade boots from the Chelsea Cobbler, antique lace dresses from Kensington Market, Harrod's trays of hors d'oeuvres and the sounds of Smokey Robinson, Otis Redding and The Cream at the many parties. Hand-mirrors left lying around held traces of snorted coke, the punch was as likely as not laced with acid and no number of lighted joss sticks hid the smell of cannabis.

  Yet it wasn't the drugs Nick did in those days, or the pompous way he'd swaggered around Chelsea, which embarrassed and concerned him now, so much as the callous way he'd treated Belinda, the moment he thought he'd made it.

  He had met her in 1966 when he was eighteen. She worked in the SKR, a café by South Kensington tube station, which was much loved by the bedsit dwellers in the area. Nick was then in a tiny room on the Fulham Road, living a hand-to-mouth existence with a bit of bar work while he auditioned for acting jobs. Belinda must have guessed he was hungry and broke that day when he came up to the counter for only tea and toast, because she passed over a free full breakfast with an understanding wink.

  She was the prettiest girl he'd ever seen, small, blonde and blue-eyed with the added attraction of big breasts. The next time he went into the SKR he was feeling flush as he'd just finished some extra work and as the café was quiet, he invited her to join him for a cup of tea and a bacon sandwich.

  Belinda was seventeen and lived at home with her working-class parents in Fulham, only streets away from the guest house he was in tonight. From that first cup of tea they were instantly attracted to each other. Nick couldn't claim he took her out, he rarely had the money, but Belinda would come to his bedsitter after work with a ready-cooked meal for them to share, or they'd have a drink in the Elm and then on to the ABC cinema.

  Belinda was a virgin, with strong ideas about remaining so until she married, but she lost her inhibitions when they fell in love and Nick promised they'd get married as soon as he got a decent part in a play or film. He had meant it too: she was the centre of his world, and he would go to meet her at the café hardly able to contain his passion for her until they got back to his room. They were more than lovers, they were friends and soul-mates too. Nick could talk to her in a way he'd never managed with other girls and felt she alone truly understood him. Belinda would wash and iron his clothes for him, offering him loving encouragement when he went to auditions, commiserating when he didn't get parts, sharing his joy when he got the odd advertisement or walk-on part, and giving him money when he had none of his own. All he really gave her in return was a head full of dreams about the wonderful life they'd share once he became a big star.

  Nick pulled the bedclothes round him tighter and tried his usual trick to make himself sleep, imagining waves pounding on the seashore. But tonight it wouldn't work. His mind slipped back to June 1969. He was in his new spacious flat at Onslow Gardens. He could see himself sitting on the bare boards of the still unfurnished, undecorated lounge, talking on the telephone, when Belinda came bounding in from work.

  It was just a few weeks before the first episode of Hunnicroft Estate was shown on television. Belinda had been his loyal, supportive girlfriend for almost three years and Nick had money at last. As Belinda's parents frowned on 'living in sin' she couldn't move in with him, but they planned to get engaged on the launch of the series and married within the year. Nick bought a double bed, a wardrobe and a cooker, but as he was off filming a great deal of the time, he hadn't got around to doing anything more to the flat.

  Belinda dropped her shopping bag at the door, kicked off her white high-heeled shoes and ran across the room to him, smothering him in a hug that smelled of fried food, regardless that he was talking to someone. He sensed by her flushed face and her excitement that she intended to step up the pressure on him in some way.

  Nick cut his call short and put the phone down.

  'I've been into Peter Jones today,' she said in a rush. 'I've got lots of brochures to show you. I thought we'd have a cream carpet and a big coffee-coloured three-piece, then we could have one of those teak wall units all along that wall.'

  Nick wasn't really listening to her, his mind was elsewhere. Everything had changed for him since he started filming. Other actors and actresses who'd barely acknowledged him before, suddenly wanted to befriend him, inviting him to dinners and parties. Suddenly he was aware there was a far racier, more glamorous world out there than the small cosy one he'd been sharing until now with Belinda. He began to have doubts about getting engaged, and even about Belinda's suitability as a girlfriend.

  'I'll make some big cushions, and we'll have plants everywhere,' Belinda went on.

  Nick had been out to lunch with his agent and aside from a couple of bottles of wine there, he'd also smoked three joints since getting home, another habit he'd picked up since starting filming. He resented Belinda steaming in with plans for his flat, and all the little things which had been irritating him about her for several weeks, suddenly erupted to the surface.

  'Can't you just see it?' She danced round the room in her bare feet, oblivious to his surly silence. 'My brother and his mate will come and paint it for us at the weekend. I've got the paint samples in my bag, we'll choose them tonight and as it's my day off tomorrow we can get everything then and arrange for the furniture to be delivered on Monday.'

  Nick could only stare at her. She looked common. Her pink minidress was too tight, emphasising her big breasts and showing the line of her knickers beneath it. Her long straight hair needed a w
ash, and she hadn't got the right kind of legs for short skirts. They were like milk bottles. He didn't like the way she drew starry eyelashes beneath her eyes either. It might look all right on Twiggy, but on her it looked cheap. But it was her voice that got him down the most: its high pitch and that awful London accent. He might be able to dress her up in something sensational to go to premieres and smart cocktail parties, but the moment she opened her mouth she gave the game away.

  'Let's go to bed?' he said as a stalling tactic. He felt that in another moment she'd be pulling out brochures and paint charts from that huge plastic handbag, and he couldn't bear it.

  'I was going to cook you some tea,' she said, her pale blue eyes clouding over. 'I got some sausages from work.'

  If it had been steak and salad he just might not have lost his temper – he was hungry after all – but sausages left over from her crummy café were a further reminder of the ever widening divide between them.

  'I don't want any fucking sausages,' he snapped. 'And it's dinner in the evening, not tea!'

  Her face crumpled. 'Oh Nicky,' she said, holding out her arms like a small child. 'Don't be like this with me. I'm tired and hungry. I've been at work since six this morning.'

  He held her from force of habit, smoothing her hair and making comforting noises, but inside the irritation was growing stronger. He didn't really want to hurt Belinda, but he couldn't help thinking of Lauren, the tall, slinky model he'd met a few days ago. She would be in the Village Gate club in King's Road tonight and he was hoping that Belinda would go home early enough for him to nip out later.

  Belinda lifted her face up to his and kissed him, pressing her big tits against his chest. Despite everything Nick felt himself responding.

  'Take me to bed.' she whispered. 'Never mind the food.'

  Lovemaking with Belinda had always been wonderful; it had sustained him in the days when he thought he'd never get a break, and added extra joy to the good times. Before Nick met her there had been several other girls, but none of them had been as responsive, sensuous or giving as Belinda. Even tonight when his heart wasn't entirely in it, she still made him feel good.