Camellia (32 page)

Finally there was a single letter from a woman, written on saxe-blue paper, from an address in Bayswater Road, London. It was undated and signed 'H'.

'Dearest Bonny, How are things back there? I'm getting through, somehow. My hair feels like steel wool, my voice like a foghorn from lack of practice, and I'm so flabby I've joined up for a few classes. Saw "M" yesterday, I found it hard to look him in the eye, but it seems everything's going to plan. Meanwhile, I've got a job as a cocktail waitress to keep my mind off things.

'Yes, of course, my heart's down there with you and Camellia, but you know that don't you? Reassure me we did the right thing! Sometimes late at night I have panic attacks, but I suppose that's understandable. You know what I want, all the little details. Write soon and tell me. Kiss Camellia for me, and give my love to
John.
You are all in my
thoughts, night and
day. Love H.'

Camellia read and reread this letter. Clearly the woman was another dancer, and although there were no references to the past, the cryptic, almost code-like way she wrote suggested a long-term close friendship. Who was she? Was the 'M' she mentioned Miles or Magnus? And why couldn't she look him in the eye? 'Reassure me
we
did the right thing!' Had they hatched up something together? Was this 'H' woman in on the plot to blackmail all three men?

There was a well-worn black-and-white photograph of Bonny and another showgirl, wearing spangled costumes and feathered head-dresses. Between them was a man in a dinner jacket. Was the other girl 'H'?

But if she and Bonny had been such close friends, why had Bonny never spoken of her?

The man in the photograph was handsome, though probably over forty, strong rugged features, with thick fair hair and a wide endearing smile. Camellia felt sure this was Magnus. Miles didn't sound the sort of man who'd smile like that!

It was an intriguing puzzle, she decided, and an incomplete one at that. Her mother was always so disorganised. When they left the house in Mermaid Street she chucked out hundreds of old letters without even glancing at them. So
why
had she kept
these
and stored them away so methodically?

When Camellia first came upon them, she had assumed Bonny had intended the police to find them to create further trouble for the men. Looking at the letters now she found that unlikely, they were all so old. Bonny would have needed something far more recent to create any real mischief.

It could be that Bonny had put them under the mattress for safe-keeping, then forgot them. But a far more likely explanation was that Bonny was still in contact with one or all of these men prior to her death, perhaps even working on a new scheme to turn the screws on them.

Camellia didn't like that thought at all. She put the letters back in the file and put them away. She would have to deal with it one day. But not now, not yet.

It was not until February 1971, six months after Bee's death, that Camellia learned that Jake had been convicted and sent to prison. Overnight a blanket of snow had fallen and when she got to the restaurant for the lunch-shift she found it was closed. Her employer, a Greek called Costa, had been infuriated recently by power cuts, which had become a regular afternoon trial. And now decimalisation had just started. No one seemed to understand the new money at all, least of all Costa. Everyone was asking 'But what's that in old money?' Costa must have decided the snow was the final straw and stayed at home.

Camellia rarely bought newspapers or went into coffee bars, but she took a seat by the window of the Wimpy Bar on Earls Court Road and waited to see if Costa turned up.

If Camellia hadn't had time to kill, she might never have discovered about Jake's sentence. The front page of the
Daily Express
was devoted to a jokey story of decimalisation and the problems people were encountering, the second and third to a follow-up story about some of the victims of the Ibrox Park disaster back in January, which had killed 66 people when the crowd barriers collapsed. Jake's trial took up only one column on the fourth page and if it hadn't been for a small picture of him she might have missed it. His real name was Timothy Reading: it sounded like a middle-class bank clerk, not the perverted animal she knew him to be.

A year ago she might have thought six years' imprisonment a harsh penalty for smuggling cannabis and distributing dirty pictures. Had it been Aiden Murphy or John Everton she might have argued they didn't deserve anything more than a fine. But for Jake she felt six years wasn't nearly long enough. She knew he'd killed Bee.

When Costa didn't turn up to open the restaurant she went for a long walk, but it wasn't until she found herself in Kensington Gardens that she became aware of her surroundings. For months now she'd trudged through the days as if she was blinkered and her ears stuffed with cotton wool. Maybe it was just the beauty of the crisp snow underfoot, heavily laden trees glistening in the weak sunshine, but all at once she had an urge to run and even to smile at the rosy-faced children in their thick coats, bright woolly hats and mittens.

She stopped to watch a man and his children building a snow man, and dug into her pockets for two big black buttons to offer them as eyes. They'd come off weeks ago and she'd managed quite well without them all this time.

There was a holiday atmosphere everywhere in the park. Children were skipping school, businessmen disguised in sheepskin coats and Wellingtons. Dogs gambolling in the heavy drifts, mothers dragging small children on sledges. A group of students pelted one another with snowballs and for once even the usual background roar of traffic had ceased.

The icy lump inside her was thawing. She felt it enough to scoop up a snowball and throw it for a dog. She laughed aloud as he ran to catch it, then turned in bewilderment when he couldn't find it.

Camellia knew then that it was time to move on. London held nothing for her but ugly memories.

She would travel, see the world and try to find something to like about herself. Maybe then she'd be strong enough to approach each of those three men and find out who she really was.

Chapter Twelve

Ibiza, September 1972

Perspiration dripped down Camellia's sides and onto the grass mat. Lying face down her arms outstretched, wearing only the scrappiest of bikini bottoms, she was lost in the bliss of the sun's rays searing into her salt-flecked bronzed body and the sound of sea lapping just beyond her toes. The small beach was almost deserted and she was exquisitely happy.

'Inner peace,' Dozens of hippies arrived in Ibiza daily, chanting that phrase like a mantra. More often than not it eluded them, so they passed onto Morocco or even India. But Camellia had found it, without the aids of gurus or drugs, by looking deep into herself and recognising her failings and her abilities.

London, with all its bad memories seemed light years away. Even the scar on her knee had faded to just a thin pink line. But now she knew she must go back. Soon the bars and shops which relied on tourists would close for the winter. She was tempted to stay on, but she had plans and a career to find.

She sat up as she heard the sound of the ferryman's small motorboat coming in to the small rock-bound cove, slipped her bikini top back on and stood up. It was time to go.

A lump came up in her throat as she took a last look at
her
beach. The sand was almost white, the sea turquoise, so clear you could see right down to the bottom even in deep water. There were no amenities here, no toilets or even a bar. Just a few scrubby-looking cactus-type plants separating the beach from the olive grove behind it, but it was the closest place she'd found to heaven.

The ferryman rang a bell to warn her and the other few sun-worshippers his was the last boat today. Camellia picked up her loose cheesecloth dress, slipped it over her head, rolled up her mat and stuffed it into a string bag with her towel.

She sat in the bows of the boat on the return trip to Ibiza town. She didn't wish to get into conversation with anyone for fear of missing all the last sights. She wanted to photograph them clearly in her mind, so that if anytime in the future she felt she was losing her grip again, she could instantly recall it and the inner strength she found here.

Camellia had heard about Ibiza from other hitchhikers as she travelled down through France and Spain. They spoke effusively about it being a Mecca for hippies, with the freedom to sleep on beaches without hassle and its low police profile. She had caught a ferry from mainland Spain and, even before the boat docked, she was enchanted. A mediaeval fortress high on a hill dominated her view; clustered precariously round it was the old town. No modern bars or ugly concrete hotels spoiled the sleepy harbour, just small restaurants and bodegas offering a warm welcome.

Everything she saw that day delighted her: the narrow winding streets, the old ladies in long black dresses, the ragged but smiling children who ran after her begging for pesetas. The smell of the fish in the market took her back to when she was four or five, holding her father's hand on the quayside in Rye and watching the fishermen turn out their baskets of gleaming herring. But here there were so many other fish, small pinky red ones, huge fearsome speckled ones, squid, sprats, crab and lobster.

On that first day she had climbed up and up the narrow steep streets, drinking in the colour and beauty: purple bougainvillaea, scarlet hibiscus, brilliant against white painted walls, faded green shutters on ancient houses, terracotta tiles on roofs. She was panting when she finally got to the fortress, but it was worth the climb. Sitting on a low wall, she surveyed the town beneath her, with its backdrop of brilliant blue sea and sky, loving the higgledy-piggledy way the houses were crammed in on different levels, no two identical. It seemed to be telling her that there was room for her here too.

Work was accountable for much of her newfound happiness and pride in herself. All summer she had worked as hard as any of the lean Spanish waiters. She was given a small room in a hotel down by the harbour in return for making the other guests' beds and cleaning their rooms. At lunch-time she waited at tables in a cafe by the market. Then in the evenings she was back by the harbour, serving drinks to the throngs of sun-baked thirsty people who sat at tables outside watching the sun go down over the sea and the world go by. Afternoons were the time she had to herself. Mostly she took this small ferry alone to
her
beach, and read and dozed in the sun, letting the peace and beauty of the place heal and cleanse her.

As the small boat chugged into the harbour, Camellia leaned on the bow and silently said goodbye to the fortress. Tonight she would climb up there one last time to look down on the town, but it was from this angle coming in from the sea that its true Moorish magnificence should be seen.

The ferryman tied up the boat and held out a hand to help them step onto the quayside. The town was just waking up from its siesta now. Plump olive-skinned Spanish women hung flimsy garments up on hooks, wheeled out the postcard stands and the stacks of embroidered tablecloths.

Camellia could smell sardines cooking, and the acrid, smoky smell made her stomach rumble. She hadn't eaten anything all day except for a rather stale roll left from breakfast. Groups of hippies were gathering together, almost identical in their long hair, cut-off Levis and shapeless faded tee shirts. Some were arranging boards of handmade jewellery to sell, others unpacking tie-dyed tee shirts and sarongs, still more just smoking and chatting. Camellia had admired their fearless adventurous lives when she first arrived, but she'd turned a full circle now and decided they were merely aimless and lazy. She smiled as Pete Holt, a Nordic-looking six-footer from Birmingham gave her the peace sign, but although she liked him, she wasn't going to get embroiled with him, his chums or any large joints on her last night.

'Buenas tardes, senorita,'
Pedro one of the snake-hipped waiters called out as she passed by Diego's bodega. Camellia smiled and waved. Pedro was sweet on her and very handsome, but tangling with a Spaniard wasn't her scene. In fact tangling with any man wasn't her scene anymore. She'd discovered back in July after a briefly promising affair with Christian from Cornwall, that although sunshine, sea and cheap Spanish wine might make you think a man was a god, there was also a price to pay. In Christian's case pay was the operative word: he had expected her to earn the money for them both, while he spent all day and night getting stoned.

It was nearly one in the morning when Camellia crept into her tiny room on the top floor of El Tora after an evening of eating, drinking and saying goodbye to friends.

Although by day it was unbearably hot up here under the roof, a cool breeze was coming in off the sea now. Camellia had little to pack: she'd learned the wisdom of travelling light as soon as she discovered how heavy a rucksack could become after a couple of hours. She was down to mere essentials now–a pair of jeans, two pairs of shorts, underwear and a few tee shirts. She would donate her three cheesecloth sundresses to Michelle, the French girl who she'd worked alongside all summer. They wouldn't be much use back in London, but Michelle was going on to Morocco next week.

Sitting down on her narrow bed, she opened the window wide and lit a cigarette. She wasn't nervous about hitchhiking up through Spain and France alone, there was always someone to pal up with on the way and she'd learned the ropes coming here. Besides she had money from working all summer and living frugally. Once she got her pesetas changed up she reckoned on close to sixty pounds, enough to get a cheap bedsitter when she got back and tide her over till she found a job. All her belonging were at Denise's and she might offer her a bed for a few days anyway.

She turned to the small table by her bed and picked up a photograph of Bee and herself, taken in the Don Juan. Camellia was in white with a feather boa, Bee in black, her hair a golden storm of curls.