Charis (5 page)

So he’d undressed and put on a pair of sweats and a t-shirt, hung up
his suit and put his shirt, socks and underwear into the laundry bag (knowing
that Ravi's staff would have them cleaned and returned to him tomorrow), gone into
the bathroom, brushed his teeth and washed his hands and face. When he returned
to the bedroom Charis was standing where he’d left her, eyes filled with tears
and struggling with the ribbons on the robe.

“I'm sorry,” she said. “It's in a knot and I can't undo it.”

Ben took her into his arms and felt her trembling. He stroked her
hair, kissed her forehead and whispered, “It’s okay…it's okay. Here, let me do
it for you.” He untied the knot, but instead of slipping the robe off her
shoulders, he wrapped it tightly around her and re-tied the ribbons. “You are
not ready for this Charis. Your first experience should definitely not be like
this.”

“No, no,” she said with tears in her eyes. “It must be now, it must
be here with you. Please,” she begged him. 

“But why?” he asked. “I don't understand. Tell me. Trust me, please.
Maybe I can help you.”

“I'm sorry. I just can't,” she whispered and looked up at him. Then
with a quick, firm movement untied the ribbon and slipped the robe to the
floor.

“Oh, Charis,” he whispered gazing at her naked body. “You shouldn't
have done that. You know you just passed the point of no return?” When she
nodded, he picked her up in his arms and carried her to the bed, climbed up
beside her and as he looked at her, spoke to her in Arabic again.

“That's what you said before,” she told him.

“Did I?” he questioned.

“When I said I couldn't understand you.”

“Oh yes…so I did.”

“What does it mean?” she asked.

Smiling at her, Ben said, “Well, if I was saying it in English it
would be something like ‘you are so incredibly beautiful’ but a more literal
translation would be ‘your beauty is beyond words to describe’.”

Charis, in a surprised and almost shocked voice, responded, “But I'm
not beautiful!”

“You are without doubt the loveliest girl I have ever seen,” he told
her.

“No one has ever told me that I'm beautiful! Well, maybe my dad did
when I was little but no one that I remember.”

Ben smiled. “You don't ever look in the mirror?” he asked.

“Of course I do,” she replied.

“What do you see?”

“Just…me!”

“Beautiful you! No boyfriend has ever told you that you're
beautiful?”

“I've never had a boyfriend.”

Ben was shocked. “Never?”

“No.”

“What's wrong with all the young men you know?”

“I don't know many young men.”

“So, no boyfriends – and no kisses?” he questioned.

“No, no kisses.”

Slowly Ben leaned over her. He touched her face with his fingers,
then put his hand under her chin and turned her face to his. His head bent to
kiss her slowly and tenderly. Her lips were soft and sweet so he kissed her
again...and again...and again.

*****

Ben woke suddenly and looked at the clock - 1a.m. He'd been asleep
for less than an hour. He hadn't allowed himself to drift off until Charis had
fallen asleep, cradled in his arms, but now she was gone. He waited a few
minutes for her to return, thinking she'd just gone to the bathroom and as he
lay there he thought back over the events of the evening and how, just before she’d
drifted off to sleep, she’d put her hand up to his cheek and said, “Thank you, Ben,”
in her soft voice. “I'm so glad it was you.”

She was so sweet, so innocent, so beautiful, but as time passed he
became worried.
Where is she?
He got up, put his sweats and t-shirt back
on and went to look for her. He checked the dressing room but it was empty. He quietly
entered the bathroom. It was dark and at first he thought that it too was empty,
but at the quietest sound, maybe a muffled sob, he realised Charis was curled
up in the corner between the bath and the vanity, wrapped in her robe, crying
silently as if her heart was breaking. He sat on the floor beside her, pulled
her into his arms and onto his lap, and she clung to him as if he were a life
saver. He gently rocked her back and forth, stroked her hair and whispered
softly to her, comforting her as if she were a small child.

“It's alright. It's okay. Please don't cry – tell me what's wrong,” until
finally she stopped crying and he was able to talk to her. “What's wrong my
love?” He was shocked by her answer.

“Oh Ben, I just want to die!”

Distraught, he answered, “No Charis, please no. I am so sorry. I
knew I should have left you alone.”

“Don't say that, Ben,” she managed to whisper. “It's not because of
you. As soon as you came into the room I knew I was safe with you, and you’ve
been so kind.”

“But if it's not because of me, what’s wrong?” When Charis just
shook her head and refused to speak, he asked again, “Charis, what is it
sweetheart?”

The tears began again. “Oh Ben, I just can't…”

“Can't what?” Again she didn't answer so he said in a more forceful
voice, “Tell me!”

After a minute or two she asked, “What will they do with me when
you're gone?”

Ben was puzzled. “I'm sorry, what do you mean?”

“What will happen to me when you leave here?”

“What do you want to happen?” he asked.

“I want to go home.”

“Then you’ll go home,” he told her.

“But what if they won't let me go?”

“I’ll take you home. If that’s what you want, I promise, I'll take
you home.”

“They may not let you,” she insisted.

“That’s one of the perks of being a prince. I can do whatever I
like.”  He paused for a moment then asked, “Charis, who is this
they
you
keep referring to?”

There was another pause before she answered him and in a small voice
said, “The man who bought me.”

Ben was devastated. He knew, of course, that buying and selling of
young girls for sex went on but had never considered it could happen to well
brought up and educated English girls which Charis obviously was. And he
realised, too late, that he’d allowed his physical desires to override his common
sense and concern for her, and hated himself for it. 

He felt sick to his stomach at what he’d done…how he’d treated this
beautiful girl. He’d been raised in a home where women were treated with
respect, as equals, and yet he’d used her for his own pleasure. He vowed that
somehow he would make it up to her. He hoped that one day she might forgive him
but he knew he’d never forgive himself. Charis had described the men involved
as degenerates, lecherous and debauched. He agreed with her and felt the description
fitted him, too, he who was supposed to care for women.

Ben wiped away the tears of anger and disgust that he felt, at
himself, at the situation and the heinous practice of selling girls for sex.
Surely there must be a way for someone to do something about it.

“Oh, God, oh no, oh Charis I’m so sorry. I should’ve known. I should
have thought. How could I have been so stupid, so dense?” Then after a pause he
added, “I'll kill him!”

“Do you know him then?” she asked.

“Oh yes! I know him alright. It's my cousin Ravi, the owner of this
place. He'll think it's all a big joke. How dare he? I'll kill him,” he said
again. “But if he bought you, who sold you? Do you know?”

“It would’ve been Henry,” she answered him. “And I should’ve known
not to trust him. I should have known not to come.”

“Who is Henry? And why would he sell you?”

“It'll be because of the house – he always thought it was going to
be his.”

“What house?”

“My house, my home, Meadow Lea Hall. It's in Wiltshire and it's such
a long story.”

“Then tell me, but first can we go back to bed? This floor is
getting very hard on my backside.”

*****

For the second time that night, Ben carried her to the bed, this
time making sure the robe was securely tied and wrapped around her. He lay
beside her and held her in his arms and Charis felt safe in the knowledge that
Ben would be taking her home and she wouldn’t be passed around from man to man
for their sexual gratification.

She started to talk, a little diffidently at first, but with Ben's
encouragement she managed to tell him her story. She told him the history of
the house and how beautiful it was and about the Beresford and de Sellé
families. He could tell how much she loved her home and how proud she was of
her family history. She told him of her grandfather, William, and the death of
his wife when her mother had been born and how William eventually re-married so
his Elizabeth could have a mother. How Mildred and Henry had come to live at
Meadow Lea Hall and made everyone so unhappy. He learned about Elizabeth's
death, another death in childbirth, and also about Charis' idyllic childhood
with her father, until the day he’d died. How at her father's funeral, only
James' swift action in grabbing her had stopped her from throwing herself onto
his coffin as it was lowered into the grave. She was sobbing, inconsolable in
her grief, and as she confided in him, he knew she was crying at the memory. So
he held her and whispered softly to her until she was able to continue and
learned about her banishment to school but how it had eventually become her
refuge. About Mildred locking her in the shed and how for years afterwards she
had nightmares that someone was coming to kill her, and how she was
still
afraid of the dark. How after school was done she’d taken care of Mildred until
she died and then of Henry's insistent e-mails inviting her to visit him.

“I think that Henry was furious that none of the Meadow Lea Hall
money came to him. Mildred had allowed, encouraged him to think it would all be
his one day and then not only did my grandfather make no provision for him in
his will, but his mother had nothing to leave him either. The allowance she
received from the estate was very generous and she always managed to give quite
a lot of it to Henry but it stopped when she died so his money tree died, too! He
did ask me for money once but it had to go through James and James gave an
unequivocal no. I think he's been scheming for years how to get his own back
and some money out of me. I suppose he got used to the easy money and expected
it to continue.”

“How old is he?” Ben asked

“He's fifty now.”

“Well James was right!  At fifty years old he should be able to
support himself. So what did he do then?”

“He kept e-mailing me and I finally ran out of excuses. My house was
finished…my exams were over. On Monday the ticket arrived and after discussing
it with James and Helen I decided to come.”

“But Charis, how did you get
here
? To Ravi's house?  You
couldn't have walked up to the door and said, ‘Here I am - your latest sex
slave’?”

“But, oh Ben, that's exactly what I did!”

“Not exactly, surely?”

“As good as.” She paused while she tried to gather her thoughts, how
to explain it all to him. Finally she managed to tell him how Henry had told
her he would meet her in Cairo, how he was sorry he'd been held up but would
join her within the hour. Of course, he never came and then she found out what
she was really doing there…how Henry had sold her in exchange for continued
rights to the site. He couldn't get the house so he'd snatched her instead. She’d
tried to tell them there was a mistake and when that hadn't worked she'd
screamed and fought but it didn’t do any good.  She'd demanded to see the
British Ambassador but they just laughed at her so she had to give in…there was
no alternative. They brought her up to this room, shoved her in and slammed and
locked the door.

“And then you came,” she said. “And I felt safe.”

“What happened before I came?” he asked.

“That's it! You came,” she insisted.

“No,” Ben replied. “Something else happened.”

“I've told you everything.”

“No, Charis. When I arrived the door was open. You said they slammed
it shut. What happened in between? Did those men do anything to you?”

Charis managed to shake her head and then whispered, “No.”

Ben insisted again. “Then what happened?”

Still Charis couldn't speak. His voice held real authority when he
said, “Charis, tell me!”

Very softly, and slowly at first, she told him how when they pushed
her into the room they were so rough that she fell on her face on the floor. She
lay there for several minutes before she dared to even move. Finally she'd
looked up and all she could see was the bed and she knew she couldn't do it, so
she’d decided to kill herself. Her first thought was to use pills but she
couldn't find any in the room and her bags were in the hall, and besides, she
didn't have enough anyway. Then she thought she could have a bath and drop an
electrical appliance in the water but none of the appliances had long enough cords.
Her final thought was to cut her wrists while in the bath, but she couldn’t
find anything sharp enough to do it so she tried to break the glass in the
window but it wouldn't break. By this time she was panicking so she'd banged
harder on the window. They'd heard her and thought she was trying to escape so
they kept the door open and watched her to make sure she didn’t leave.