Charlie (2 page)

The girls rode across the road, and as they passed the boys, Charlie tinkled her bell and blew a kiss in their direction, then turned her head to make sure June was right behind her.

June was pedalling for all she was worth to keep up on her mother’s old black Raleigh with its big leather seat. Charlie’s bike was a sleek, drop-handlebar racing model, with white tyres and three gears. Before long, June was left way behind. Charlie liked to show off on her bike and rode like a mad thing, recklessly weaving in and out of the traffic. She was waiting by the wall at Warfleet Creek as June coasted down the hill, still panting from the steep climb up.

‘What kept you?’ Charlie asked with a trace of sarcasm. She looked as cool as when she’d set out this morning, there wasn’t even a bead of perspiration on her dainty nose. ‘You didn’t go back to check they were following us?’

‘No, I didn’t, my bike hasn’t got gears like yours, remember,’ June retorted. ‘Besides, why should I check? If you say they’ll follow us, they will, you’re always right, or so you keep telling me.’

Charlie just laughed at her friend’s barbed retort. That was as nasty as June could get, she wasn’t capable of real anger. ‘I’ll carry your bike down,’ she said in an unusual effort to appear big-hearted. ‘You look hot and mine’s a lot lighter.’

It was cool down in the woods at the edge of the Creek. As small girls they’d often come here with June’s parents for picnics, and it was still a favourite place to come to swim and sunbathe. They hid their bikes under a bush, then settled down on a conveniently well-placed fallen tree trunk to wait and watch the road above them.

‘If we had some binoculars we could probably see your mum in your garden,’ June said after a bit as she gazed out across the river estuary to Kingswear. They both lived there, in Beacon Road, but while June’s house was tucked away behind others, ‘Windways’, Charlie’s home, was ten minutes’ walk further on and right on the cliff edge, with a spectacular sea view that was the envy of everyone who visited the house.

Charlie didn’t need binoculars to know what her mother was doing. She’d be doing exactly what she did every hot, sunny day, lying like a starfish on the lawn, her cigarettes and magazines close to hand. But she didn’t say this. Her mother’s total idleness was something of an embarrassment to her.

Ten minutes passed, fifteen and then twenty, but still the boys hadn’t come along. ‘I thought you said they’d run all the way?’ June sniped.

‘Actually I’ll be very relieved if they don’t come.’ Charlie shrugged. ‘It just proves they really were mummy’s boys. Besides, they were foul.’

June knew that in fact Charlie was disappointed, not only because it suggested she wasn’t as alluring as she imagined, but also because there was nothing she liked better than a good laugh at someone else’s expense. By pretending she hoped they wouldn’t come, she saved face. That was all-important to her.

June didn’t feel any necessity to keep face, because she never really imagined any boy could fancy her. But then she didn’t have that inner confidence Charlie had. To her mind her friend was perfection, with her looks, height, slender body and superb legs. Even June’s own father had often remarked that Charlie Weish was a potential heart-breaker. On top of this she was effortlessly clever. June had revised for weeks before the exams and doubted she’d get more than one or two ’C’s. Charlie larked about and hardly ever did her homework, but she somehow managed to retain everything she’d been taught. It wasn’t fair really. Sometimes June felt she ought to hate the girl for showing her up.

But no one really hated Charlie. Most of the girls were a little jealous of her and often tried to put her down, but they still agreed she was fun. She made everyone laugh with her dry, often cynical wit. She charmed them with her bursts of generosity and enthusiasm; wilful, often callous, pampered and self-centred, yet still adorable. Right from the first day they’d met aged seven at Higham House Preparatory School, they’d been friends. June believed they always would be.

‘Maybe they ran into their parents,’ June said after another ten minutes had passed. ‘Let’s go home, Charlie. If we do bump into them before we get to the ferry we can just wave and make them sick they missed seeing us.’

Charlie agreed and got up to haul their bikes out of the bushes. As they struggled back up the steep steps carrying them, June asked if she could go home with Charlie to listen to her
Woodstock
album.

The three-day rock festival in America was one of Charlie’s passions, which was why she’d brought up the subject earlier that day. Although it had in fact taken place in August of the previous year, news of it had only really filtered down to Devon once the film of it and the album of the soundtrack were released.

Charlie had been aware for over a year that there was something exciting and revolutionary going on elsewhere, in London, Amsterdam and America. She went to great lengths to find copies of
International Times, Private Eye
and any other underground publication which talked straight about Flower Children, rock culture and drugs. Although she wished she could have been one of those 400,000 people who had flocked to see Jimi Hendrix, Jefferson Airplane and all the other great rock bands at Woodstock, her interest wasn’t merely as a frustrated groupie. It was something much deeper, and she was terribly afraid that by living here in such a staid little town she was missing out.

She knew there were conclaves of hippies moving out of London, setting up communes in Glastonbury in Somerset, or going on down to Cornwall. A few of them had taken root as close as Totnes, but they bypassed Dartmouth. Whether that was because they knew they wouldn’t get a rapturous welcome in such a middle-class town, or just that it didn’t happen to be on a ley-line, something which appeared to be part of the culture, Charlie didn’t know. But apart from a few hippie beads and tie-dyed tee-shirts appearing in Dartmouth’s one and only trendy boutique, Flower Power was not in evidence anywhere here. Charlie was frustrated by this. She had another two years of school to go and it was awful to think something so momentous might be over before she got a chance to experience any of it.

‘Did you hear what I said?’ June asked when they reached the top of the steps. They were both panting with the exertion and she thought this was why her friend hadn’t answered her question. ‘Could I come home with you?’

‘I don’t think you’d better. Mum was in one of her funny moods this morning,’ Charlie replied hesitantly, pushing her bike up the hill as it was too steep to attempt to ride immediately.

June made no comment. Although Charlie rarely spoke about either of her parents, she had known for some time that Mrs Weish wasn’t quite right. On several occasions she’d called round for Charlie to find her mother just sitting in a chair, chain-smoking and looking sullen. June’s own mother offered the opinion that the woman didn’t have enough to occupy her mind; her father said Sylvia Weish was neglected by her husband.

June wasn’t convinced that either of these views was correct. It was true her own mother was unusually energetic, always rushing around to PTA meetings, Women’s Institute, baking cakes or redecorating one of the rooms, but then she was ordinary, plump and mumsy, and perhaps a little jealous of glamorous women like Mrs Weish. As for her father’s opinion, well, every time June saw Mr Weish he seemed to make a great deal more fuss of his wife and daughter than ever her father did of his wife and family.

Charlie realized June was waiting for some sort of an explanation. ‘I think she’s worried because Dad’s been away so long. He hasn’t phoned or written for ages, which is a bit odd.’

June’s blue eyes widened. If her father was away for just one night he always telephoned, sometimes more than once. She paused in pushing her bike, very out of breath. ‘Maybe he’s gone somewhere remote where there aren’t any phones,’ she said quickly. ‘He can’t possibly find all those lovely things he sells in big cities.’

Jin Weish’s real Chinese name was Jin Wing Wei Shi, but he’d adopted the abbreviated version when he arrived in England in 1949. He was an importer of Oriental antiquities and rugs. ‘Windways’ was entirely furnished with such things.

‘That’s what I keep telling Mum, but I think she imagines he’s got another woman,’ Charlie said with a tight little laugh as if such a thought was utterly ridiculous. ‘After all, if he did have a mistress somewhere, he’d be doubly sure to phone home, wouldn’t he?’

June had learned to her cost that it was wiser to agree with Charlie, even when she sounded as if she wanted an honest opinion. ‘Of course he would. Besides, he loves your mum dearly, anyone can see that. She’s the prettiest woman in Dartmouth and Dad always says how much fun she is at parties too.’

Once at the top of the hill, the girls coasted down towards the ferry at Bayards Cove. It wasn’t until they had reached the Kingswear side of the river and were once again having to push their bikes up the hill that they spoke again. June suggested that if the weather held out till tomorrow they could take a picnic and ride their bikes to Blackpool Sands.

‘Okay,’ Charlie agreed. ‘Are you going to wear your new bikini?’

‘I don’t know if I dare,’ June giggled. She always felt like a carthorse next to her slender friend. ‘My tummy’s a bit fat!’

‘It’s not,’ Charlie replied. Although she was somewhat smug in private about her own body, she always made a point of hiding this from her friend. ‘I wish I was a bit more womanly and curvy like you.’

They stopped to chat for a moment outside June’s house. It was a tall, narrow Victorian semi-detached, perched high on the hill with a long flight of steps up to it: one of the oldest houses in Beacon Road, and the least commanding. Mr Melling, who was a professor at Exeter University, had inherited it from his grandmother, and for years he’d been talking of selling it and moving to something modern, easily reached on a flat road. But he still hadn’t put it up for sale, the steeply sloping garden at the side was like a jungle and the house hadn’t had a lick of paint outside in decades.

‘If Mum’s okay when I get back I’ll ask her if you can come up and stay the night,’ Charlie said, leaning on her bike. ‘I’ll phone you and let you know. If she is still miserable, I suppose I’d better stay home this evening. I don’t want her flying off the handle and grounding me.’

June sat on the steps as they made their plans for the next day. She wanted to invite her friend in, but only that morning her mother had warned her and her two younger sisters that she wasn’t going to put up with the usual houseful of other people’s children throughout the holiday.

Charlie pushed her bike the rest of the way home – it was too hot to make the effort to ride it. It was only four in the afternoon, and she dawdled, partly out of reluctance to get home early, partly to look at other people’s homes and compare them with her own.

Every one was different: tiny quaint cottages squeezed up close to each other, then, here and there, an ultra-modern one with huge picture windows and glimpses of almost Hollywood interiors. There were several grand mansion-style houses with superb terraced gardens too, and when these came on the market they were always quickly snapped up by the very wealthy.

The most interesting thing about Kingswear, though, was that all the houses but the tiny old cottages faced the sea, and in the case of those which were perched on the cliff edge, like ‘Windways’, they could only really be appreciated from a boat down in the estuary. From the road they were mainly hidden by old stone walls and high fences.

It was said that ‘Windways’ had been built by a millionaire, but once they had moved in his wife became a nervous wreck because the huge expanse of sea from all the windows frightened her. Somehow Charlie doubted this. She couldn’t imagine anyone not delighting in the view. Maybe it was a little bit scary in the winter storms, but you could shut that out with thick curtains.

She knew that one of the reasons June envied her so much was because her own home wasn’t a bit luxurious. The Mellings weren’t rich and what money they had was spent on their children’s education rather than updating their home. Yet Charlie thought her friend would be amazed if she was to admit how often she wished her parents were as comfortingly ordinary as June’s, and that she’d happily give up luxury if it would make her mother as happy and content as Mrs Melling.

But Charlie would never stoop to admitting such a thing. She was in many ways very Chinese – she believed in the necessity of keeping face, and tried to emulate her father’s inscrutable manner. He had once made her look ‘inscrutable’ up in a dictionary, so she knew its real meaning.
That which cannot be penetrated. Wholly mysterious
. He claimed that cultivating such an image was to gain an invisible coat of armour, so that no one could wound you. Although Charlie hadn’t always known what it was about her father that made him so different from other men, since she was a small child she had been taught and shown by both her parents’ example that in public her behaviour must be unquestionably dignified, calm and polite.

She saw this at work when her parents hosted their many lavish parties, warm, gracious, totally charming and interested in their guests. No one would ever guess that when alone together they could be cruel, mean-spirited and swear at each other like troopers. Charlie had sometimes witnessed terrible rows, plates and pots being thrown, insults hurled, less than an hour before the start of a party. But the moment the doorbell rang and the first guest stepped over the threshold, they would be greeted with happy, welcoming smiles. Her parents could keep up this loving togetherness all evening, bandying tender little endearments to each other, praising one another, and doing it so effortlessly and sincerely that they were perceived as being on one long, loving honeymoon. But the moment the last guest had gone home, the fight would recommence and sometimes last for days.

Charlie had never been able to work out if there was a single serious underlying problem between her parents that caused these distressing rows. Sometimes they started over something as simple as her mother putting on a dress her father didn’t like, or the wine merchant omitting to supply the expected number of bottles of gin. Charlie always fled to her bedroom when they started and vicious remarks overheard during the ensuing fights rarely made any sense to her. She comforted herself with the idea that perhaps all married couples were the same, but she didn’t really believe it. June told her almost every last thing that went on in her house, including overhearing her parents making love, but she’d never mentioned any bitter rows.