Camellia (20 page)

When Bee announced what she had done and admitted she had only ten pounds in the bank, Camellia thought she was crazy. She could see the attraction of it: the rent of the place was only ten pounds a week, and it had two bedrooms and central heating.

'But how on earth are we going to get two hundred pounds by the beginning of January?' she had asked, feeling almost faint at the thought.

But Bee had that worked out too. 'We'll get jobs as hostesses in a club,' she said. 'I know it will be hard, but we can make it. I know the right man to ask for a job. He fancies me and you'll blow his mind.'

Camellia had always assumed nightclub hostesses were really prostitutes, and said so.

'They aren't,' Bee said emphatically. 'They are just there to get men to drink more and they get ten pounds a night. It will be a doddle. It's coming up for Christmas. Every bloke stuck in London will be happy to hand over a few quid to drink with us. All we have to do is look pretty and make them feel important.'

There were setbacks: they didn't have the right kind of flashy dresses and it was a shock to discover they actually had to ask the customers for their ten-pound hostess fee. But they found a compromise. Camellia stole the dresses from a shop in Regent Street and Bee, who didn't find it so embarrassing to ask for money, asked Camellia's clients for her.

They were soon to discover it wasn't quite as much fun as they expected. The male customers were usually middle-aged and dull, and it was exhausting working all day in the cafe, then having to get dolled up to spend half the night, chatting brightly, dancing and encouraging businessmen to drink. They fell into bed at three or four in the morning, only to be up by eight and start all over again. But they stuck at it. They wanted the flat too badly to care about being tired.

Now they'd left the cafe they intended to continue as hostesses until something better turned up. As Bee had said at the outset, it was one of the easiest jobs going.

'How did you get the money for the legal fees,' Camellia asked as they swept into the flat arm-in-arm. They hadn't expected to have to pay a solicitor, and had been horrified when he asked for twenty-five pounds. Bee had said she'd see to it but until now Camellia hadn't got around to asking how.

'Don't ask,' Bee laughed, tossing back her hair and running around the empty lounge like a child.

Camellia looked at Bee sharply. She could guess how. Bee had gone out one Sunday night with a man she met in the club and she hadn't come back until Monday morning.

'Well don't ask how I got this then.' Camellia pulled a roll of notes from her pocket and tossed them to her friend. 'But it's just as well we were both naughty as there aren't any beds!'

Bee stopped in her tracks as she caught the money. She leafed through it and frowned. They had both confided all their past misdemeanours to one another. But Camellia had promised never to pick another pocket or steal clothes, and Bee had promised never to take money for sex.

'That drunk American when we left the club last night?' Her expression was a mixture of admiration and fear. 'You nicked his wallet while he was trying to chat you up?'

Camellia nodded. 'He was too far gone to remember what day of the week it was. Serves him right for fetching after young girls.'

'But there's almost two hundred pounds!'

'I hit the jackpot,' Camellia giggled. 'All right I know what you're thinking. I promise I won't do it again! As long as you don't go swanning off to any hotel rooms either.'

Everything was forgotten as they explored the flat.

'Isn't it just perfect?' Bee ran from room to room, opening gleaming white doors and touching windows. 'A bedroom each, a proper lounge where we can entertain.' She raised one eyebrow at Camellia.

'It's heaven.' Camellia sat down on the carpeted floor and pulled out her cigarettes. 'He's even left the curtains and cooker, bless him.'

Despite the grey January day outside, the whitewashed wall in the small yard beneath the street reflected light into the big windows of the lounge. A smart grey carpet covered all the floors, all the walls were painted white, and there were fitted wardrobes. All it needed to make it homely was a bit of furniture and some pictures on the plain walls.

'Ten measly quid a week!' Bee flung herself down on the floor by Camellia. 'Can you imagine saying to a taxi driver, "Oakley Street, Chelsea, by the river". They'll think we're bleedin' heiresses!'

'Shall we go and find some second-hand beds?' Camellia grinned. 'And a polished wood table to put your vase of daffodils on?'

Bee's eyes welled-up with happy tears. She'd forgotten she'd told Camellia that dream. She couldn't begin to say how much it meant to her to have a real friend, a home and a new start. But then she was sure Camellia felt exactly the same way. 'With two hundred quid in the kitty we can have the table, daffodils, beds, and some booze to celebrate.' She reached out impulsively to hug her friend. 'But first let's get my record player plugged in, then it really will be home.'

Chapter Eight

1969

'We should get proper jobs.' Camellia's voice held little conviction. She lay back on the settee, dragging deeply on a large joint.

'Such as?' Bee asked from her position on the floor.

'I don't know,' Camellia let the inhaled smoke out slowly through her nose. 'Lavatory attendants?'

The girls had been living in Oakley Street, Chelsea for nearly eleven months. Bee had had her twentieth birthday that autumn, and Camellia's would be next month, just before Christmas.

Outside in the street it was cold and dark, even though it was only four in the afternoon. A strong wind was blowing leaves, bus tickets and sweet wrappers down into the basement area outside their front door, but inside it was snug. The central heating was on, Bobbie Gentry's hit single 'I'll Never Fall in Love Again' was on the record player and they were preparing for the night ahead.

Bee sat on a floor cushion, propped against the settee, wearing a fluffy pink dressing gown, rollers in her hair, flapping her nails as she waited for the shocking-pink varnish to dry. Camellia, still in jeans and a red jumper, was waiting for the water to heat again for her bath.

'I always fancied being a lavatory attendant when I was a kid.' Bee hugged her bare knees with her arms. 'I could see myself in one of those crossover pinnys, a little room of my own with a fire, a comfy chair and a couple of geraniums in pots, just nipping out now and then to check no one had laid a huge turd and forgotten to flush it.'

'But what if they'd laid it on the floor,' Camellia grimaced as she exhaled.

'I'd get a gadget made to scoop it up at arm's length!' Bee laughed, looking round at her friend lying behind her. 'Stop hogging that joint, I've hardly had any of it.'

Camellia passed it over, then lay back again, hands tucked behind her head, singing along with the record. They had only bought it yesterday and they'd played it incessantly.

Every month or so since they moved into the flat, they discussed the need to get real jobs, but they rarely got beyond opening an evening paper and ringing round a few vacancies. Aside from their lack of qualifications and the fact that they could only expect to earn around sixteen pounds a week in a regular job, compared with ten pounds a night at the Don Juan Club, they were trapped by the ease of their lives.

They were so happy in Oakley Street. Having a real home of their own had given them both the feeling of security they needed. Each piece of furniture had been chosen with care, haggled over in the second-hand shops in Portobello Road and transported home with pride. The green velvet Chesterfield Camellia lay on was the most expensive item, but they'd knocked the trader down to thirty-five pounds. The round Victorian supper table by the window had been a real bargain at ten pounds. It was badly scratched, but they'd found a man who did French polishing to restore it for the price of a couple of drinks.

There was little else of any real value. The wall unit which housed the stereo was cheap wood and badly scarred but the damage was hidden by books and bric-a-brac Camellia had re-covered the two odd easy chairs with remnants of jazzy materials. Studious studying of glossy magazines had been the inspiration behind a huge arrangement of beech leaves in a terracotta vase, a pile of yellow and green striped gourds in a basket and a collection of abstract posters in brilliant primary colours.

They rarely got up before noon. In hot weather they sunbathed in parks during the afternoon, went shopping or just lay around indoors when the weather was bad. Then off to the club in the evening. They had more than enough money to buy clothes, eat well and pay the bills. But now with Christmas just around the corner, Camellia's conscience was prickling yet again.

It wasn't so much the moral issue of whether it was ethical to earn a living by dolling themselves up and demanding a fee for keeping a man company while encouraging him to buy exorbitantly priced drinks. It was more that Camellia sensed the bubble had to burst one day. When it did, they might just be on the wrong side of the law. She never wanted to see Inspector Spencer or the inside of a police station again.

'What are you wearing tonight?' Bee's voice penetrated Camellia's train of thought.

'My red velvet.' Camellia was only too glad to be distracted. 'I always get someone tasty when I wear that,'

'Only because it hardly covers your bum,' Bee sniggered, wrapping her pink dressing gown more firmly round her. 'I think I'll wear my black one. With my tits and your legs on display, the other girls won't get a look in.'

They had been lured away from the Top Hat Club in Soho to the Don Juan in Mayfair back in February. The Don Juan had a far more wealthy and prestigious clientele. In Soho, the men that used the club were invariably only in London for one night, and with no experience of club life they tended to think that the girls' hostess fee should include sex, particularly once they'd parted with twenty or thirty pounds for a few drinks.

The Don Juan was far more sophisticated. Its elegant black and chrome decor, young and attractive hostesses and less exorbitantly priced drinks meant wealthy businessmen returned again and again without ever expecting more.

A year of happiness and close friendship had brought changes to both girls, but the physical effects were far more noticeable in Bee. She had lost a stone in weight and tamed her frizzy hair into gleaming golden waves. Although still plumper than was fashionable she'd learned to buy well-cut clothes that distracted eyes away from her big bottom and thick legs towards her magnificent breasts and pretty face. The punters at the club fell over themselves to spend the evening with her. She was a heady mixture of child and sensual woman with her pink and white complexion, wide blue eyes, innocent mouth and her voluptuous curves. She liked men and they felt it. She made them laugh, flirted and teased, but she cared for them too. One regular customer called her 'His glass of champagne' and claimed he felt high just looking at her.

The changes in Camellia were more subtle. She was glossy now, as perfectly dressed as a mannequin, chic rather than outrageous. Her dark hair was longer, reaching her shoulder blades, washed daily and trimmed regularly. She had mastered make-up so men were fooled into thinking there was none.

She had true confidence now. Her body could stand close inspection: her legs were long and slender and when she walked in a room full of men she sensed the rise in temperature and she liked it. Alone at home with Bee she was Mel, baring her soul, enjoying girlish giggling and silliness. But at the club she was Camellia, a little haughty, cool and controlled.

'Shall we go on to that party if we can get away from the club in time?' Camellia hauled herself up off the couch to run her bath. 'It might be a giggle.'

'Is it really our scene though?' Bee began to take her rollers out, dropping them on the floor beside her. 'I mean they're a bit heavy, aren't they?'

'We can handle them,' Camellia smiled. She liked men who were challenging, and Aiden Murphy was certainly that.

They had met Aiden and John in Finch's, their local, a fortnight earlier. Bee described them as 'heavy', merely because they had plenty of money to splash around, yet neither man would say what exactly he did for a living. Camellia didn't care much: she fancied Aiden, the irreverent, blue-eyed, black-haired Irishman, and just thinking about him made her stomach jolt.

They had been standing at the bar waiting to be served when they heard a man speak behind them. 'What'll you have, girls?' His musical Irish brogue made them both turn in surprise.

The man was well over six foot, with thick black hair and bright, inquisitive blue eyes, maybe thirty-two or three. The broad shoulders and healthy glow suggested he worked outdoors, yet his expensive hand-tailored grey suit could hardly belong to a navvy.

Camellia was thrown by his looks for a moment. A man as good-looking as this one was rare anywhere, but especially in Finch's where the men tended to be dropouts of one sort or another. She just stared at his laughing eyes and white teeth in surprise.

'So what's it to be?' he said, one bushy dark brow raised quizzically. 'You'll need an anaesthetic if I'm going to fuck you tonight.'

His approach was crude, yet it was original and very funny. In the circles she and Bee moved in, men rarely made them laugh.

Aiden's side-kick was John Everton. Next to Aiden he was ordinary, perhaps five-eight and slender, his fair hair unfashionably short. He was a wiry man whose bony, raw face somehow reflected his upbringing on a Fulham council estate. Later that night she and Bee nicknamed him the 'Daytime Cowboy' because of his studded Levi jacket and carefully pressed jeans. Yet even though he didn't share Aiden's quick repartee or his sharp mind, he had a courteous, gentlemanly quality.

The girls had intended to go to work that night, but the men bought them so many drinks they never made it. Later they all went to the Village Club in King's Road and stayed till it closed.

'I can't fuck you tonight,' Aiden said to Camellia as they got out onto the street at three in the morning. 'But would you like a glimpse of the purple death?'