Camellia (19 page)

'Come on, love, it can't be that bad.' Bee put her hand over Camellia's. 'It's only a fine for possession. Is that what they charged you with or are you upset because Doug did a runner?'

Camellia had to talk, even at the risk of it all being repeated and embellished later. She told everything, encouraged by the kindly hand on hers.

Bee was a good listener, only stopping Camellia now and again to clarify a point. The nickname, Cream Puff, Dougie had given her was apt. The blonde curls, the sweet, pretty face and her plumpness were reminiscent of cream oozing out of a sweet, sticky bun. But there was something more to her than being a sympathetic ear, something Camellia identified with, yet couldn't put her finger on.

'I suppose you think I'm an idiot for trusting him?' Camellia said as she finished.

Bee shrugged her shoulders and dragged on her cigarette. 'I expect I would have too,' she said. 'But good-looking blokes like Dougie don't bother with girls like me, that's about the only advantage there is to being fat.'

The honesty in the remark jarred Camellia. She had once made such disparaging remarks about herself. 'But you've got a beautiful face,' she said. It was true: Bee's face was lovely, kind of angelic with baby-soft lips that curved sweetly into a warm smile and dimples in both cheeks. 'You can lose weight, but I don't think you ever lose the label of being a mug.'

'Does it matter if wasters call you a mug?' Bee looked round towards the door, checking there were no customers about to come in, then sank back into the seat. 'I wouldn't lose any sleep about the opinions of Dougie's cronies. If I was you, I'd be thinking about making a new start.'

'Easier said than done,' Camellia tried to smile. 'How do you get a job when you can't explain what you've done for a year and a half?'

'There's one going here.' Bee drew deeply on her cigarette. 'The owners don't look too closely. I could say you'd been working abroad or something.'

A few weeks earlier Camellia would have laughed at the idea of making sandwiches and cooking egg and chips, but she was desperate now. 'Really? They'd take me on?'

The Black and White was close to being the seediest of the West End's cafes. Its black and white decor was a product of the late fifties contemporary style with spindly-legged tables and chairs. All the white was now yellow and much of the plastic padding along the counter and on the seats was cracked open. But it had a reputation for good cheap food and it was usually busy.

'Don't look so thrilled,' Bee chuckled, her double chin quivering. 'It's bloody hard work in the lunch hour, but the money's not bad and you get your food thrown in. I'll have to ask the boss when he phones later, but I could say you were just helping out as a casual until he gets a chance to see how you shape up.'

It was like being thrown a lifeline. 'Okay,' Camellia smiled weakly. 'You're a life-saver. All I need now is somewhere to crash, I don't suppose you've got any bright ideas about that?'

For a moment Bee didn't reply. Camellia could almost see the girl wondering if she'd landed herself with a liability.

'You can kip down with me upstairs for a day or two,' she sighed as if she felt compelled to make the offer. 'But only a day or two, that's all.'

'I don't want to lumber you.' Camellia was embarrassed that the girl might think she was being railroaded. 'I appreciate your kindness. I'm not like Dougie. I won't take advantage.'

'You won't think I'm kind when you see the room,' Bee laughed, but her cheeks turned bright pink as if embarrassed. 'It's a slum. I only offered 'cos I can see you're breaking up inside. Besides, I get a bit lonely.'

At seven that same evening, once the cafe closed, Bee helped Camellia carry her suitcases up to her room on the first floor. Even though Camellia had been warned about it and was grateful for a bed anywhere, she was still shocked.

Clothes lay everywhere, and there were dirty dishes on the floor, some with half-eaten food congealed to them. Every drawer hung open; even the single bed was unmade. There were attempts at making it home: a few pop star posters, a green plant in the window and fluffy rug by the bed. But it looked what it was, a place a lonely teenage girl crawled into at night, a place that saw no visitors. It was almost as sad as the flat Camellia had vacated earlier in the day.

Below in Charing Cross Road the traffic roared incessantly. The smell of fried food trapped in the small grubby room made her feel slightly nauseous and she was swaying on her feet with exhaustion. Her feet were sore, her hands reddened with washing dishes. She had never worked so hard, not even in the sales at Peter Robinson's.

'I'm a slob, aren't I?' Bee said cheerfully. 'I did intend to nip up here and clear it up before you saw it but there wasn't time. Still you'd soon find out about my slutty ways. Better to face it immediately.'

Camellia liked the fact that Bee didn't put on a false front. Neither, Camellia realised, did she sit in judgement on anyone. Bee probably knew and understood the West End better than she did. She'd worked in the cafe for four years, and although she was only a few months older than Camellia, she knew all the thieves, prostitutes, pimps, and drug dealers, along with club owners and businessmen. She talked to them, heard all their gossip, yet remained aloof.

'I don't care what it looks like,' Camellia said. 'While I'm here I'll help both downstairs and up here. I'm just grateful for a roof over my head and a job.'

'You're an odd bird,' Bee said reflectively. 'I got the idea when you used to come in with Dougie that you were a spoiled rich kid, know what I mean?'

Camellia sniggered. 'I could tell you some stories about me and my mother that would soon scotch that idea,' she said. 'But we've talked about me and my problems all day nearly. Tell me about your dreams and hopes?'

'The past is pretty shitty,' Bee admitted, but then laughed as if she intended to turn it into pantomime anyway. 'As for the hopes and dreams, well they're all about getting out of this hell-hole.' She found a tray, scooped the pile of dirty crockery from Camellia's hands and dumped them on it, then whisked it out the door.

She returned in just a few minutes and began to pick up clothes. 'All I really want is a nice flat and a job where I don't eat all day and stink of chips. I don't think much about knights on white chargers, or men festooning my fat neck with diamonds. Know what my favourite fantasy is?'

'A librarian who'll woo you with poetry?' Camellia joked.

'It isn't even a man. It's a room that's all white, with sun pouring in the windows and a single vase of daffodils on a polished wood table.'

Camellia didn't say anything for a moment. She was stunned not only by the simplicity of the fantasy, but her affinity with it.

Later as they curled up together on the bed with a cup of coffee each, Bee told Camellia her story, and as she listened Camellia felt she'd found more than a new friend, but a soul mate.

Bee was an only child. Her father had been a colour-sergeant in the army and her childhood had been spent in many different countries, including several years in Singapore. Until she was twelve and her father left the service she'd thought all children lived the way she did.

Her father was engrossed in his job, her mother in the army social life. There was a maid who saw to Bee's meals and cleaned the house.

'It was great,' she smiled. 'Mum was always off playing tennis or at whist-drives, there were loads of other kids to play with. The army organised everything, schools, housing, the lot. Dad was always strict, but then I hardly saw him or Mum really. It was only when they bought the house in Eltham and Dad went to work for the post office that I discovered what the real world was like.'

From twelve onwards Bee's life took a dramatic downward turn. She found it hard to adjust to a big London comprehensive school, and she was bullied both there and at home. 'I didn't understand why my Mum suddenly became a ratbag when Dad left the army. She'd always been so elegant and cool, and suddenly she was in a tizz about everything. She never stopped moaning from morning till night. She couldn't cope with the simplest things like doing the washing or cooking. Then Dad came home from work and had a go at both of us.'

Camellia's heart went out to Bee as she heard more. A father, who after a lifetime of bullying men, started taking out his frustrations on his wife and daughter. A spoiled weak mother who resented having her life of ease snatched from her. A couple so wrapped up in their own selfishness and disappointment that they rounded on their only child and used her as a scapegoat for their own inadequacies.

'It was hell,' Bee said, tears springing to her eyes as she remembered. 'Mum expected me to do just about everything, as well as go to school and cope with homework. I'd never learned to cook, or wash clothes and of course I made a mess of it. Mum would scream at me, then tell Dad what I'd done when he got home. He thrashed me so often I could barely sit down. I was jeered at at school, I was tubby even then and I spoke differently. I got behind with my work and they stuck me in a dumbo's class. That made Dad even madder. I felt so alone, Camellia, can you understand that?'

'Oh yes,' Camellia sighed. 'I used to hope I'd get seriously ill just so someone would look after me.'

'I found out how to get attention when I was fourteen,' Bee admitted. She smiled, but there was a bleak look in her eyes. 1 started going with men. Not boys, they didn't fancy me because I was fat, but I used to let the man in the sweet shop near our house grope me in his stock-room.'

She made the story funny, describing him as a weasel. But Camellia couldn't laugh: the man sounded like the worst kind of pervert. Bee would go into his shop after school, still wearing her uniform and the Weasel would make her open her blouse and take off her knickers and get her to pose for him while he masturbated.

'He gave me ten shillings each time,' she said. 'He used to call me "his princess". But even though it was seedy and I knew I should be ashamed of myself, at least he really liked me, he used to talk to me afterwards and give me a cuddle.'

She went on to playing truant from school to spend the day with a travelling salesman she'd met in a cafe, or for sex in the afternoons with a milkman whose wife was out at work.

'I wasn't allowed out at night, not even to a youth club. I had no friends. So I turned to sex,' she said candidly, turning bright blue eyes on Camellia with such honesty it made her giggle. 'I used to seriously think about becoming a call girl when I left school. It was the only thing I was good at.'

'Did you run away from home then?'

'I didn't run. I limped away after Dad gave me a pasting. The milkman's wife found out about me, and confronted my parents with it. All hell broke loose then. Dad cracked two of my ribs, then flung me out.'

'How old were you?'

'Fifteen,' Bee shrugged. 'How could anyone throw a girl of that age out the house knowing she had no money or anywhere to go? I got the train up West and I ended up here in the cafe. I was in a terrible state, black eyes, the lot. I ended up telling Cyril the cafe owner all about it, just like you did to me. He offered me a job and a room on a trial basis until I got on my feet, and I never left.'

'Have you seen your parents since?'

'No,' Bee's eyes fell. 'I did write to Mum once. I tried to explain how I felt, but she never answered it. She sends me a Christmas card each year, but there's never a letter. I'm over them now anyway. I just don't care any more.'

Camellia suspected this was the first lie she'd heard all day. Someone as warm as Bee couldn't possibly not care about her parents, even if they were awful to her.

'Do you – well you know, with Cyril?'

Bee burst into laughter. 'Hell no,' she said quivering like a blancmange. 'He's a good man, and a straight one, happily married with five kids. If I'd let him into my drawers his wife would've had me in the bacon slicer without a second thought. I was just so grateful for being given a chance and treated like a human being, I've worked like a slave for him ever since. But gratitude runs its course in three years. I want something better now.'

When they undressed later for bed, Camellia saw why men would be drawn to Bee. Naked she was voluptuous rather than fat, her flesh silky and firm like the women in Rubens' paintings. The combination of her angelic face, fluffy blonde hair and such bountiful curves was womanly and very sexy.

Even though Camellia was exhausted, she lay awake in the sleeping bag long after Bee had fallen asleep in her bed. Anger at Dougie had replaced the smarting pain she felt earlier in the day and with it came the need for revenge.

'I'll show him,' she told herself. 'One day he'll come back to London and I'll have it all. I'll cut him dead and walk away and he'll regret everything.'

On 6 January, the girls paid off a taxi at 14 Oakley Street in Chelsea and, in fits of high-spirited giggles, proceeded to carry their belongings down the steps to the basement flat.

It was a raw, grey day, the wind coming right off the Thames with an icy force that lifted their coats and blew their hair every which way.

'This is the moment.' Bee put down the last of the boxes and cases outside, blew a trumpet like fanfare on her fist, then took out the key, waving it in front of Camellia. 'Now which of us is going to carry the other over the threshold.'

'Well, I'm not carrying you,' Camellia retorted. 'Let's just go in together!'

They had left the cafe for good. Just seven long weeks since the day they had met, they had the flat of their dreams.

It had come about from Bee overhearing a conversation between two men in the cafe. One was the tenant of this flat, tied by a long lease, and he wanted to get out of it quickly because he'd been offered a job abroad by the other man.

They were discussing putting an advertisement in the evening paper. As Bee listened she heard the tenant say he wouldn't ask for much key money as that would make it quicker.

Camellia had known Bee for less than a fortnight at that point and she'd already been surprised at how quick on the uptake the other girl was. But the speed she acted on that overheard conversation was phenomenal. Somehow Bee managed to approach the man, admit she'd been listening and ask him if she could have the flat. Within half an hour the man had agreed to let her have it for two hundred pounds, providing she could supply the right references to his landlords.