Camellia (30 page)

It wasn't just her guarded expression. She looked entirely different, almost as if she'd attempted to wipe out her blonde cocktail barmaid image. Instead of the customary flicked-up bouffant hair style, she had combed it flat and tied it back with a velvet bow at the nape of her neck and she wore a softly draped cream silk dress.

'I shouldn't have asked you,' Camellia blurted out, trying hard not to burst into tears again. 'But there wasn't anyone else.'

'Come on in.' Denise reached out and took Camellia's small suitcase from her. 'We can't discuss anything at the door. I'm still in a state of shock at the news, so you must bear with me.'

Denise went on ahead up to the first floor. As she looked back at Camellia hauling herself up with difficulty with her walking stick, her face softened. 'I bet that knee is giving you gyp,' she said. 'You've had a day of it and no mistake.'

Once they were inside the flat, Denise helped Camellia over to a settee and pulled a padded stool closer.

'Put your leg up,' she said, lifting it for Camellia and removing her shoe. 'I'll make a cup of tea, then we'll talk.'

Denise went out into her kitchen and Camellia sat looking around at the coffee and cream elegant decor. She had always thought that this flat with its thick pile carpets, soft lighting and reproduction antique furniture was the height of luxury. But now faced with Denise's cool manner and her changed appearance, she realised her friend was scared.

Picking up a large framed picture of Philip, Denise's son, from the coffee table, Camellia studied it. Just a very ordinary thirteen-year-old, with sticking-out ears and slicked-down hair. Camellia slept in his room when she stayed here, but had never met him herself. He had always been away at school. Perhaps Denise was worried this might get back to him somehow?

She looked up as Denise came back into the room with two cups of tea.

'You aren't implicated in any way,' she said. 'It's been ages since Bee worked at the Don Juan, and the police will only ask you to verify I was staying here for the past two nights.'

'You can be terribly naive sometimes,' Denise replied as she sat down opposite Camellia. She smoothed her skirt down over her knees rather nervously. Her green eyes looked very hard. 'When something like this happens they turn over every last stone, poke in every corner. If it isn't the police, it's the journalists. If I'd had time to collect my thoughts when you rang, I'd have suggested you went straight to a guest house or something. As it is, you can stay here tonight–I'll phone the club and say I can't come in. Tomorrow I'll find you somewhere else. Now, tell me exactly what happened?'

Denise didn't move closer to comfort Camellia as she recounted the entire story, nor did she show any emotion. But she listened carefully, as if weighing up all the evidence.

'I know I must appear hard,' she said eventually.

'I'm really sorry about Bee, heartsick, please don't think otherwise. I'm also very concerned about you, because I know what a terrible shock you've had. But I can't let you stay here after tonight.'

Camellia's lips quivered. Denise had been so sympathetic in the past.

Denise sighed deeply. She wanted to move over to Camellia and comfort her, but she knew if her instincts got the better of her she'd find herself up to her neck in the whole business.

When Camellia had confided in her on previous visits, Denise had known she ought to tip off the police herself about Jake, while Camellia was out of the flat.

But she'd done nothing about it. Camellia looked up to her, thinking she was astute and upright. But Camellia didn't know that she hadn't always been so. She might have changed her name and shut the door on her own past, but some things never quite got erased–not memories, not police records.

At the age of eighteen Frances Duckworth left Buxton for London, intending to become a secretary. Within a year she was calling herself Frankie and had been sucked into the Soho drinking clubs in search of easy money, in much the same way as Camellia and Bee were. But unlike Camellia, Frankie had to work on herself to get noticed. Her mousy hair was bleached blonde, her bra padded out with handkerchiefs, and she listened carefully to everything the older club girls told her.

Two years later she was turning tricks like a seasoned professional.

There was so much Denise was deeply ashamed of: all that sordid sex, the spell in Holloway prison, the decision to marry a man purely for his money. She had been down into a deep, dark sewer that few people ever crawl out of. There was only one thing in her life of which she was proud, and that was her son.

It was Philip she was concerned about now. When reporters came sniffing round the Don Juan after the assault on Camellia, she'd been terrified they would find out her past. But now a girl was dead, who'd worked at the same club. How long before an enthusiastic reporter with a nose for a story, discovered that one of the partners, Mrs Denise Traherne, was once Frankie Duckworth, call girl, blackmailer and thief?

'Camellia,' she said, bracing herself to tell the girl at least part of the truth. 'I'm not packing you off because I don't care what happens to you. But because I'm partly responsible for all this.'

Camellia frowned. 'You? What have you done?'

'I'm part of the set that corrupted you and Bee,' she said simply. 'Everything I have, this flat, clothes, furniture, jewellery has been acquired from men I've used. You must find good role models to look up to, not hard-faced bitches like me. Setting aside the fact that reporters will track you down, and I don't want any part of that, if you stayed around me, how long would it be before you got back into working clubs?'

'I wouldn't ever,' Camellia sniffed.

Denise shook her head, drop earrings jingling. 'You say that now and you mean it. But it would be a different story in a few weeks. I know, I've been there.'

Camellia was startled by the harshness in her voice. 'You haven't always lived like this then?'

Denise half smiled, but tears were glistening in her eyes. 'I've lived in places that would give you nightmares,' she said softly. 'I've met men who'd make Hank Beckwith look like a pussycat. All I've really got of value is my son, Mel. He means everything in the world to me. Please don't judge me too harshly. All I'm doing is trying to protect him.'

Denise found a room for Camellia the next morning and took her straight there in a taxi. It was in Nevern Place, Earls Court: a tiny, spartan room on the fourth floor of a student hostel.

'Just a place to lick your wounds,' Denise said, turning away to unpack a basket of a few essentials she brought for Camellia. She was riddled with guilt, afraid not only for herself now, but for Camellia's state of mind. She'd heard her crying in the night and this morning she looked close to a mental breakdown.

'Stay here till it all blows over. You can easily find a job, just about every restaurant needs a waitress. Phone me if you need to talk and I'll come round.'

Denise's carefully contrived coolness vanished as she said goodbye. She slipped a ten pound note into Camellia's hand, and then clasped her in her arms.

'I wish I could take away your grief,' she murmured into Camellia's neck, fighting to stop herself from crying too. 'Believe me, I do know how you feel.'

Later Camellia was to discover that Denise had paid a month's rent in advance for her and the unexpected and secretive kindness helped a little. But now, as she lay on the narrow single bed, she could hear laughter and chatter, the sound of girls rushing downstairs to the communal phone which rang almost constantly while she sobbed.

Losing her mother had been bad, but Camellia's bitterness and anger had balanced the grief. Bee left a scrapbook of glorious technicolor images nothing could fade: early morning bickering, afternoons of beautiful indolence, evenings filled with laughter. Sharing everything, from food, clothes and money, to dreams.

Now she felt like a Siamese twin, crudely separated from her sister. Alive, but unable to cope with the agony of being torn apart.

There were formalities to get through. The funeral, the inquest and cleaning out Oakley Street. But before any of these came the newspaper stories.

Camellia felt faint with shock as she read the lies and distortions. Beatrice Jarret was portrayed as England's queen of pornography, the flat in Oakley Street as a centre of vice and drugs. One tabloid had got hold of a picture of Bee and Camellia together and the headline read, 'Sleaze, sex and drugs'. The attack by Hank Beckwith was given a rerun.

But of all the painful things Camellia had to endure, meeting Bee's parents at the funeral was the most harrowing.

Bee had told her so many stories about them, that she'd turned them into caricatures. Camellia had imagined Mr Jarret as the old Raj type, with bristling moustache and riding breeches, his speech peppered with hearty 'jolly good's. As for Mrs Jarret, she had imagined her as languidly beautiful, the sort that had vapours.

In fact, they were so ordinarily middle-aged, they almost disappeared amongst the people waiting at the crematorium. Mr Jarret was thin faced, his hair fast receding, only his straight back and the knife-edge crease in his trousers indicating he was an ex-military man. His wife was short and dumpy, with skin as crumpled as a raisin.

Camellia approached them because Mrs Jarret looked so small and bewildered. She hoped to find that Bee had sensationalised their heartlessness and discover they had been waiting and hoping for Bee to contact them. But Bee hadn't exaggerated at all. Mr Jarret looked down his nose at her offered condolences, turning away as she tried to tell them how long she and Bee had lived together.

'She was always a difficult girl,' Mrs Jarret said spitefully, mopping at her eyes with a lace-edged hanky. 'She shamed us so many times, and now this.'

Camellia knew then Mrs Jarret's tears were all for herself, not for the daughter she'd cast out without a second thought.

There was nothing of Bee in these people. Was it possible that this starchy little woman with her mean mouth and crumpled face had brought such a warm loving person into the world?

Mr Jarret showed no emotion throughout the short service. He held his wife's arm, but never looked down at her. He proudly wore a military badge on the pocket of his blazer, but showed no love for his own flesh and blood. This was the man who had taken a stick to his daughter when she got bad marks at school, starved and locked her in her room because he saw a boy kissing her. A man who could not forgive his only daughter a couple of youthful indiscretions.

Camellia was jerked back mentally to her mother's funeral as she heard the soft whirr of the coffin slowly descending out of sight. She remembered it was at that point in the service that she became aware of the absolute finality of it all and the realisation from now on she had to be an adult. She had broken down then, crying for her mother, bitterness forgotten in her grief. Mrs Rowlands had cradled her in her plump arms to soothe her. Bert Simmonds had put an understanding hand on her shoulder.

Camellia's thoughts of both Bonny and Bee merged as the coffin finally disappeared and suddenly she was seeing parallels between them which she hadn't seen before. They had both shared the same exuberant sense of fun, the love of men and sex, both led disorganised lives, living for the moment. For the first time ever Camellia found herself standing back and looking completely objectively at Bonny, understanding her just as she did Bee. Tears rolled down her cheeks. But now they were both dead.

Camellia tried to speak to the Jarrets again later outside as they filed past the few floral tributes. She wanted to give them the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps they were as stunned and shocked as she was.

'That one's from Mr and Mrs Cyril Potter,' she said pointing out the largest, a beautiful arrangement of red roses. 'They owned the cafe where Bee worked when I first met her. You ought to take the card, they've written some lovely words. And that bouquet of delphiniums and carnations is from an old dear friend, Aiden.'

Mr Jarret caught hold of Camellia's arm, his strong grip quite intimidating. "There is nothing for us to be proud of here,' he hissed at her. 'How you've got the nerve to prattle on like this astounds me.'

'I'm so sorry,' she said starchily, looking into the man's cold eyes, 'but you see I loved her. For a moment or two, I thought you did too.'

Camellia took the little cards herself, then hurried away from the crematorium, through a barrage of ferreting journalists. When she looked back to check no one was following her, she saw Mr and Mrs Jarret having their pictures taken. She guessed in a day or two there would be more sob stories in the newspapers, this time centred on how Bee deliberately shamed her loving parents.

On her way home to Earls Court she went into a florists and bought a bunch of yellow chrysanthemums, in memory of Bee. It was the wrong season for daffodils. Back in her room she put them in an empty jam jar on the table by the window and reread the cards.

'Goodbye Bee,' Cyril from the cafe had written. 'We will always remember the sunshine you brought into the Black and White Cafe. Rest in peace, Cyril and Rose.'

Aiden's was short, written by someone else's hand. But the fact he'd wired flowers from wherever he was, was enough.

'Sweet memories never fade. Your old friend, Aiden.'

The simple posy of summer garden flowers that Camellia had given had gone on the coffin. She felt her heart had too.

Cleaning the flat and destroying anything that would bring further shame to Bee was all Camellia could do now. She separated seedy mementoes from more innocent ones. She buried her saucy underwear in the dustbin, sorted her clothes, the more outrageous items to go to a second-hand stall in Chelsea market, the quiet, ordinary ones folded neatly and put in the drawers.

She found an unfinished letter written by Bee in a maudlin moment's desire to be forgiven by her parents. Camellia tucked it into an address book so they would find it. She remembered Bee reading it to her, eyes filling with tears, then tossing it aside knowing she would never send it. It might soften their stony hearts–they wouldn't know it had been penned and forgotten months earlier.