Charity

by Lesley Pearse

  All day she had told herself she had only agreed to go with Dorothy as an escort tonight because Rita had flu. Even a couple of hours ago under the drier in the hairdresser’s she had told herself it was only one date. But in the last hour as she’d sat here by the window she’d made up her mind. Maybe accepting money just for being a lonely man’s partner wasn’t an ideal, or moral, way to start the wheels of success rolling, but right now she couldn’t think of a better way.

  ‘Are you going to sit up or have I got to pour this soup up your nose?’ Charity joked as she went into Rita’s bedroom.

  Rita looked awful, her face white except for a bright red nose, her red hair lank and dull, tied into two bunches.

  ‘I don’t suppose I’ll be able to taste it.’ Rita slowly hauled herself up to a sitting position, her voice thick with cold. ‘I feel so bloody awful I’d be quite happy to die.’

  Charity placed the tray across her friend’s lap. Rita smelt ill, that peculiar sour, musty smell that evoked memories in Charity of her mother. She was wearing an old beige cardigan over her nightdress and her bedside table was littered with Vick, cough mixture, Beecham’s Powders and tissues.

  Rita was scatterbrained, noisy and vivacious, but the moment she felt ill she became morose, wallowing in neurotic self-pity. When she had merely a hangover she was convinced it was something more dramatic, like food poisoning. She would wrap herself in the most unbecoming garments, refuse to comb her hair or even wash her face. But perhaps this was all a cry for attention.

  ‘You’ll feel better tomorrow,’ Charity soothed her. ‘Would you like me to refill your hot-water bottle?’

  Rita dipped the spoon in the tomato soup and gingerly tried it. ‘You’re still going to take my place tonight?’ she asked.

  ‘I promised, didn’t I?’ Charity said. ‘Look, I’ve even had my hair done!’

  ‘It looks lovely.’ Rita sniffed. ‘I thought you might chicken out. You’re such a prude sometimes.’

  ‘I’m not a prude,’ she retorted. ‘I was only worried about you both.’

  ‘Are you feeling better about John now?’ Rita asked anxiously.

  Charity shrugged her shoulders.

  ‘I suppose so. Life goes on, doesn’t it?’

  She wasn’t going to admit she doubted she could ever love again, or that if John called her from outer Mongolia and asked her to join him, she’d swim there if necessary.

  ‘Before you came in I was thinking about us at Daleham Gardens,’ Rita said in a small voice. ‘Our babies will be having their first birthdays soon. How are we going to get through that?’

  Charity was surprised. By tacit agreement they’d drawn a curtain over that part of their lives. She sat down on the bed.

  ‘Same as we get through everything else,’ she said. ‘A bottle of wine, a few sad records, looking at their photographs and reminiscing.’

  ‘We all pretend we’ve forgotten, don’t we?’ Rita wiped away a stray tear. ‘Sometimes I even believe I have, then wallop, it comes back.’

  ‘I suspect it will never leave us,’ Charity said thoughtfully. ‘It’s the same with my brothers and sister. I want the feeling I have for them to fade, but it’s still just as sharp.’

  ‘I wish your uncle knew what a good person you are,’ Rita retorted, a spark of indignation in her eyes.

  ‘Not that good.’ Charity half smiled. ‘If he knew I was going out as an escort tonight, he’d claim he was right about me all along.’

  ‘So why did you suddenly change your mind?’

  ‘To make my fortune,’ Charity said lightly. ‘Nothing bad has happened to either you or Dottie. I’m fed up with staying home like the ugly sister while you two have fun. Is that good enough?’

  Charity opened the door to Rita’s room an hour later, and struck a model-like pose. ‘Will I do?’ she asked.

  Rita was propped up in the clean bed, a cardigan round her shoulders, reading Harold Robbins’s 79 Park Avenue. When she saw Charity she dropped it in surprise.

  ‘Will you do?’ she gasped. ‘You look sensational!’

  Charity was wearing the black dress John had bought her in Florence. Beneath the sheer billowing chiffon was a tightly fitting sheath that displayed her slender yet curvaceous body and cleavage. The sequinned choker collar gave her delicate features and blonde hair an ethereal look.

  ‘You don’t think I look too – well, brassy?’ Charity frowned. She was pleased to see that Rita had washed her hair. It was curling over her shoulders like a Pre-Raphaelite beauty, a sure sign she was on the mend.

  ‘Brassy! You!’ Rita cackled. ‘You couldn’t manage to look like a tart if you were wearing a red and black basque! You look utterly delectable. Poor old Pinky will probably drop dead with shock.’

  ‘You must stop calling him that,’ Charity reprimanded her. ‘I’ll forget his real name.’

  ‘It’s Basil,’ Rita reminded her. ‘But he is pink! Bright pink – and when he’s had a few he gets even pinker. But he’s a nice guy, a real gent and I doubt when he’s seen you he’ll ever want me as an escort again.’

  ‘How’s the invalid?’ Dorothy joined them, looking a dream in a cream crêpe dress with a cowl neckline, her hair up in a French roll.

  ‘A bit better now.’ Rita grinned. ‘Doesn’t Charity look the business?’

  ‘Devastating.’ Dorothy’s luscious lips curved into a seductive smile. ‘Don’t wait up for us!’

  Charity tried hard not to look too amazed at the Beachcomber Club. Even though she’d been told all about it many times by her flatmates, she was still staggered.

  It was decorated to look like a tropical island, and apart from the smoky atmosphere instead of sunshine it succeeded. Tables stood on small wooden platforms at different heights and angles, each one with a straw umbrella, and were linked by rustic wooden and bamboo bridges. From a waterfall at one end of the club, the water ran into many small streams under the bridges, and above the central tiny dance floor a Hawaiian band played with a couple of girls dancing seductively in grass skirts and shell beads.

  Beyond some realistic palm trees a film played on a blank wall, showing more palm trees, and turquoise sea breaking on white sand.

  ‘Have you been here before?’ Basil took Charity’s arm and led her across one of the bridges to the reserved table.

  ‘No, I haven’t. But it’s every bit as nice as I’d heard.’

  In fact she couldn’t believe what she was seeing. There were real crocodiles in the pools; she thought they were plastic ones until someone prodded one and it swished its tail. People were drinking huge exotic cocktails embellished with fruit and umbrellas, and the meals were vast. She was sure she wasn’t fooling Basil with her portrayal of a sophisticated girl about town. She wanted to giggle and gawp, but Dorothy’s stern eye on her prevented it.

  Basil was a nice man. He did have a pink face, his eyes were very small behind his thick glasses and he was podgy and white-haired enough to play the part of Santa Claus, but he had a lovely deep voice and a good sense of humour.

  Rita had said that he was inordinately proud of his twin sons, but Charity had let him tell her all about them as if she had no idea about his background. He and Gerald, Dorothy’s date, were directors of a pet food company in Sheffield and they were down in London on a sales drive.

  Gerald was obviously quite smitten with Dorothy. He had the well-rounded vowels of public school and the height and bearing of a military man. Charity was quite surprised by Dorothy’s behaviour tonight. In men’s company she was usually brittle and cold, or alternatively overly seductive, but with Gerald she was regally cool, yet listened to him speaking as if she was fascinated by every word he uttered.

  A waitress in a grass skirt with a bare navel and a flower behind her ear came up with menus written on old parchment. ‘Look at that!’ Charity said, pointing to a storm coming up on the film on the wall. ‘It looks real, doesn’t it?’

  If it hadn’t been for Rita telling her about this scene and
explaining it was a film, she might have thought it was real. The wind was bowing the palm trees and whipping up the waves, the sky growing dark and forbidding.

  ‘When I was your age I wouldn’t even have known that was Hawaii,’ Basil smirked. ‘But then you girls have been brought up in a different world from me.’

  Gerald and Dorothy were in a deep whispered conversation as Basil told Charity about his childhood in Scunthorpe.

  ‘I never had a new item of clothing until I started earning,’ he said without a trace of self-pity. ‘Even then I had to tip my wages up on a Friday night because Dad was out of work. Eight of us all crowded in that tiny house and often we went to bed hungry. But I tell you, Charity, poverty in childhood can be the making of a man. You girls with your nice clothes and posh voices don’t have that hunger to make something of yourselves.’

  Charity was just about to retort that she knew exactly what poverty was like, when Dorothy kicked her foot under the table. She closed her mouth and caught her friend’s warning eye.

  ‘No, I suppose we don’t.’ She turned to Basil and smiled. ‘It must have been awful!’

  It was an enjoyable evening. The meal was superb, the huge cocktails even better, and later they danced a little drunkenly.

  ‘Who would have thought that Arthur Braithwaite would ever go to places like this with a girl like a princess in his arms,’ Basil said later.

  ‘Who’s Arthur Braithwaite?’ Charity moved her head away from his too close lips and pushed him back from her slightly.

  ‘That’s me,’ he grinned, his small blue eyes twinkling behind his thick glasses. ‘I called myself Basil as it sounded more classy, and got a few elocution lessons. That’s how I met my Mary: she was having them too.’

  ‘Your wife?’

  ‘Yes, my wife,’ he sighed deeply. ‘She’d be mad if she could see me carrying on like this. “Basil,” she’d say, “those society lasses are no good to you, they give you ideas above your station.”’

  As the girls went home in a taxi, Charity told Dorothy what Basil had said.

  ‘I don’t know how I kept a straight face,’ she giggled. ‘Fancy him seeing me as a “Society lass”!’

  ‘Well Gerald comes from a privileged background and you fooled him too.’ Dorothy tucked her hand into Charity’s arm. ‘So think on that tonight, little one, and a tenner on top for a night of eating and drinking in a swish nightclub. Now are you going to do it again?’

  ‘Why not?’ Charity laughed. ‘It beats flogging lipstick!’

  Chapter Nineteen

  ‘Hullo love!’ Carmel said as Charity came into her office one wet afternoon in July. ‘What on earth’s the matter? You look like your dog just got run over.’

  ‘I’ve got the sack,’ Charity said.

  Few people passing Carmel’s tiny office in the Fulham Road would even notice there was activity behind the windows partially covered in brown paper. Sandwiched between a delicatessen and a dry cleaner’s close to the ABC Cinema, the office displayed a small sign that only the most observant would spot: INTRODUCTIONS WITH A VIEW TO MARRIAGE. ALL ENQUIRIES TREATED WITH THE UTMOST CONFIDENTIALITY.

  Charity had laughed on seeing it for the first time, assuming people would need to be desperate to step into such a seedy place. But now she knew Carmel used it only as a base, a store-room for hundreds of index card files, and to make arrangements by telephone. Interviews with clients took place either in Carmel’s own home or over afternoon tea at Harrods. But then this warm-hearted woman was motivated more by helping people and making them happy than by financial gain.

  Carmel’s striking and smart appearance was at odds with her office. The floor hadn’t been swept for years, ancient, browning wallpaper flapped in places and cobwebs hung from a central naked light bulb. Charity often wondered how she could bear to work in such squalor.

  ‘You’ve got the sack? But you were doing so well.’ Carmel got up from her seat and gave Charity a comforting hug. ‘Sit down and tell me all about it. I’ll make us some tea.’

  ‘It isn’t just me.’ Charity removed some bulging files from the only chair and sat down. ‘It’s all the girls. Glamour Girl are doing so well they don’t need a promotion any longer.’

  ‘Well that’s not so bad,’ Carmel said as she filled up a kettle and plugged it in at the back of the office. ‘What did your boss at the agency say?’

  ‘Oh they’ve got loads of other jobs we can do. I just liked being a beautician so much.’

  Charity often popped in to see Carmel, on her day off or in her lunch hour. It wasn’t just to see what escort jobs she had, but because she liked Carmel. She was funny, kind-hearted and very wise about things. Charity once told her all about John and Carmel had made her see that he was right, their relationship couldn’t have worked for long.

  The marriage bureau fascinated Charity too. Occasionally Carmel would show her photographs of some of her clients and she had been surprised to discover that few of them were ancient or actually desperate. In the main they were widows and widowers, often wealthy and well connected. Carmel’s explanation as to how she paired off people with common interests and backgrounds made further sense of why it wouldn’t have worked with John.

  But the escort business provided Carmel’s main income. The men came to Carmel by discreet advertisements and personal recommendation and she took a twenty-pound fee from them in advance, of which she kept half. Although Carmel never admitted just how many ‘dates’ she fixed up, Charity and her two flatmates usually did three or four between them each week, and there were at least ten other girls, so it was obviously a lucrative business.

  Carmel handed Charity a mug of tea and sat down again at her desk. Close up, Charity could see she was far older than the fifty years she claimed to be. Her makeup stuck to the lines round her eyes and her neck was crêpey. Dressed up to go out, she always wore strong corsets, but today she had several large rolls of fat billowing beneath a loose cotton dress. Yet even though she’d abandoned her glamour, her black bouffant hairstyle was perfection and the office was full of her Tweed perfume.

  ‘You mustn’t see this as an end, but a chance for further experience,’ Carmel said. ‘You’re good at selling. You’ll find it doesn’t matter a jot whether you’re selling lipstick, clothes or saucepans. You’ll still be meeting the public and the variety of products you work with can only enhance your career.’

  Charity began to cheer up slightly.

  ‘They offered me a job for next week selling a kitchen gadget,’ she said. ‘But I’m scared, Carmel. I have to do a proper demonstration with it, get a crowd round the stand and everything.’

  Carmel’s painted eyebrows rose into an inverted V.

  ‘So! That’s no different from hauling women up to have a facial. Central Promotions wouldn’t suggest you unless they thought you could do it.’

  Charity smiled weakly. ‘You always make me feel better,’ she said. ‘I suppose I am being silly, and anyway I’ve got to go to the company tomorrow for a briefing. They’re bound to show me how to go about it.’

  ‘So what store are they sending you to?’

  ‘Whiteley’s in Queensway.’

  ‘I tell you what, I’ll pop in on Monday and pretend to be a customer,’ Carmel suggested. ‘Once you’ve got the patter going and a few people round you interested you’ll be selling those gadgets like hot cakes. Now, what about Dorothy and Rita?’

  ‘They’re both being sent to the motor show at Earls Court,’ Charity said. ‘I wish I was going with them.’

  ‘They won’t learn anything there, except how to flirt.’ Carmel chuckled. ‘They’ll be bored to tears with all those car-mad men and watching the clock. You’ll see I’m right.’

  ‘How did you get to be so wise?’ Charity asked, her depression suddenly leaving her.

  ‘Through making a great many mistakes, my love,’ Carmel said. ‘Now what you’ve got to do is see every new job as a challenge and a learning process. Dorothy and Rita don’t
see anything but a pay packet at the end of the week, but I know you want more than that. Keep your eyes and ears open and you may find one of these temporary jobs leads to something special.’

  ‘Have you got any dates for us this weekend?’ Charity asked.

  Carmel smiled. ‘As it happens I’ve got a beaut lined up. All three of you for Saturday night. Three nice Yanks over here on a sales conference and they want to paint the town red. I met them at their hotel last night to check them out and they’re real Southern gentlemen.’

  ‘Rhett Butlers?’ Charity said hopefully.

  Carmel laughed. ‘Not quite so dashing! A bit tubby and thin on top, but charming for all that. I suggested they book a table at Churchill’s as there’s always a cabaret on Saturday nights, so glam evening dresses, please.’

  ‘What are you doing?’ Dorothy asked as she came into the kitchen still in her nightdress on Sunday morning and found Charity cutting up a melon.

  The date with the three Americans had been everything Carmel said it would be: dinner, champagne, dancing and such good fun the girls hadn’t come home until four that morning.

  ‘This is my gadget.’ Charity grinned. ‘Pretend you’re a customer who’s stopped to watch.’

  Dorothy slumped on to a chair, yawning. She hadn’t taken her makeup off when they got in and now smeared mascara and eyeliner made her look like a tousle-haired panda.

  Charity pushed the small, stainless-steel scoop into the melon and drew out a perfect ball the size of a marble. She dropped it into a sundae dish, then added another, and another.

  ‘Isn’t that pretty, madam?’ She giggled. ‘Instead of serving melon in the usual boring manner one can make an artistic statement. It also makes the melon go further and it’s a great deal easier to manage than slices.’

  ‘OK, I’m impressed.’ Dorothy yawned. She was half asleep but felt she had to humour Charity. ‘So how much is it going to cost me?’