Charlie (25 page)

Ivor smiled, but his heart was a little heavy. He had every faith in Charlie, but he wasn’t so sure her mother was as deeply committed. He hoped he would be proved wrong.

Chapter Eight

Charlie staggered into the tiny hall with two large bags of shopping, pushed the door shut behind her with one foot, put the bags down, kicked off her wet shoes and then removed her dripping raincoat.

It was ten o’clock at night, March 1971, and she and Sylvia had been living in Mayflower Close for six months. Charlie had left home before eight that morning, bought the shopping after school, then gone straight to the Royal Castle Hotel on the harbour where she had a part-time job in the kitchens. She’d missed the bus and she’d had to walk all the way home up a steep hill in heavy rain carrying the shopping. She was exhausted.

The television was blaring out, and Charlie took a deep breath before opening the door to the living room. She knew exactly what to expect, an overheated room full of cigarette smoke, the remains of a Meals on Wheels dinner still sitting on the coffee table and her mother slumped sullenly in front of the television.

Although Charlie had embarked on living with her mother again with hope and determination that they would have a happy life together, Sylvia hadn’t shared her commitment. She showed no appreciation for anything Charlie did for her. She grumbled incessantly and made no attempt to do anything for herself. Last month it had been Charlie’s seventeenth birthday. Sylvia hadn’t even remembered. The only greeting that morning had been a complaint that Charlie had forgotten to pick up her prescription for sleeping pills.

‘Hullo, Mum.’ Charlie forced herself to smile as she humped the shopping in. Everything was exactly as she expected, the mess, heat and smoke. ‘Sorry I’m late, I missed the bus.’

Sylvia had given up on her appearance soon after she settled into her new home. Charlie’s memory of painted nails, carefully set hair and makeup was so distant nowadays that she rarely even tried to persuade Sylvia to make an effort any more.

Sylvia tied her blonde hair back with an elastic band, and her skin was yellowy and puckered through lack of fresh air and too many cigarettes. As she ate much more now she had put on weight too, and she always wore baggy trousers to hide the scars on her knees. She looked old and slovenly.

She didn’t even turn her head towards her daughter, just kept her eyes firmly on the television. ‘There wasn’t any bread left and I couldn’t reach the crackers,’ she said in a dull monotone.

Charlie bit her tongue. She had become a master at this for it was the only way to avoid ugly scenes. ‘I’ve got some now,’ she said, going on through to the kitchen. ‘Would you like a sandwich? I bought some ham too.’

‘I’m not hungry any more. Did you get my cigarettes?’

‘Do I ever forget them?’ Charlie replied. She pulled them out of one of the bags and took them over to her mother. ‘But you must cut down, Mum, we can’t afford so many in a week. Since this decimalization came in they are putting pennies on everything, thinking we don’t notice. This week’s shopping was over fifty pence more than it used to be. That’s ten shillings in old money.’

Sylvia got through over forty cigarettes a day now. Back at ‘Windways’ she had limited herself to about twenty, and never smoked in her bedroom. But now Charlie often woke in the middle of the night to hear her mother coughing and she’d be sitting up in bed with a cigarette. Charlie hated it, her own clothes and hair stank of them, the walls and ceiling were turning brown, and she was worried in case her mother accidentally started a fire.

‘It’s the only pleasure I get, surely you aren’t going to deny me that now?’ Sylvia whined.

Charlie didn’t bother to reply and just got on with unpacking the shopping. If she allowed herself to be drawn into an argument she’d never get to bed tonight.

The kitchen was messy, but then it always was. Sylvia could walk a little now with the aid of a walking frame, so she could go to the toilet alone, and take a bath just with help getting in. In fact there was nothing to stop her leading a fairly normal life, as all the doors were wide enough for her to get about in her wheelchair if her legs grew tired. But although she made tea and snacks for herself during the day, she never attempted jobs like washing up or wiping the work surfaces. She treated Charlie as if she was a servant.

One day a week she was collected in an ambulance and taken to the hospital for physiotherapy, but even though she was always urged to walk and stand more, she ignored the advice. Charlie suspected that if she didn’t leave her any cigarettes she could make it to the shop around the corner without too much difficulty. But she hadn’t found the courage to be that ruthless yet.

‘I think I will have a sandwich after all,’ Sylvia called out, after Charlie had tidied up the kitchen. ‘And a cup of coffee.’

Charlie gritted her teeth. It was tempting to tell her to make it herself, but she’d just make another mess.

She took it into her mother a few minutes later. ‘I’m going to my room to do my homework,’ she said. ‘Is there anything else you need before I settle down?’

‘No,’ Sylvia said and looked up at her daughter with reproachful eyes. ‘But I would have liked you to watch television with me.’

‘Mum, I can’t,’ Charlie said in despair. ‘I’ve got two hours of English to do and it’s got to be in tomorrow.’

‘Oh, please,’ Sylvia pleaded, patting the seat beside her. ‘There’s a weepy film on and we can snuggle up here together the way we used to.’

Charlie was tempted, not so much by the film itself as by the good memories her mother’s words brought back. They had spent a great many happy hours together that way once. She had almost forgotten how emotional her mother had been at sad films; perhaps it would take her out of her own problems for a while.

But she couldn’t spare the time. The homework had to be done. ‘I can’t, Mum, not tonight,’ she said.

‘All you think of is work,’ Sylvia said sulkily. ‘I’m alone all day and I want a bit of company when you come home.’

Charlie closed her eyes and counted to ten. She wanted to say that if her mother was to sort the laundry and put it in the machine, even sit and do the ironing or clean the kitchen, she’d have several free hours in a week to spend watching television. She also felt like adding that if Sylvia read books from the library instead of insisting on buying expensive magazines, cut down on smoking and didn’t put the fire on full, Charlie wouldn’t need to work so many evenings to make ends meet. But she’d said these things before and it always ended in Sylvia taking to her bed and playing ill. She couldn’t face that right now.

‘I’m not working tomorrow night, I’ll sit with you then,’ she said instead. ‘And on Saturday morning, if it’s fine, I’ll take you down into the town in the wheelchair so you can look in the shops.’

It was hell taking her mother out. On the way down the hill it took all Charlie’s strength not to let the chair run away with itself. Coming home was even worse because it was so heavy. But she was prepared to do it if it cheered her mother.

‘What’s the point? I can’t afford to buy anything,’ Sylvia retorted sulkily. ‘Oh, go on and do your homework! You think more of that school than you do of me.’

Charlie sat at her small desk and tried to blot out the sound of the television. She had an essay on
Hamlet
to write and although she’d planned it all mentally while she was working in the hotel kitchen that evening, now her mind was fuzzy with weariness.

She had no time for herself now. It was just school, work, and looking after her mother.

It had all looked so rosy at first. She had been welcomed back at school by both the other girls and the teachers as if she’d just returned a little late from the summer holidays. Apart from an occasional curious question no one mentioned her father’s disappearance, the attack on her mother, or even her old home.

She and June had picked up their old friendship, they even met every morning to travel together on the train. At first June used to urge her to come out dancing, she sometimes used to come round to the flat on a Saturday to play records too. But Charlie couldn’t go out dancing, she had to work Saturday nights. Now June had a boyfriend and she spent all her spare time with him. They were still friends at school, on a superficial level, but in reality they had little in common any more.

Charlie hardly ever visited Ivor in Salcombe either. On the few Sundays she’d been over there, her mother invariably sulked for days afterwards. Ivor understood, so sometimes he borrowed Beryl’s car and met Charlie in Dartmouth after school. They’d have a cup of coffee and chat, then he’d drop her home.

Last November he called at the flat quite regularly. At that time Sylvia welcomed him – he was handy for putting up shelves, moving furniture and other odd jobs. She even flirted a little with him the way she had done with men in the past. But by Christmas she was claiming he smelled funny, that he was uncouth and peculiar, and she was so offhand with him that Ivor suggested he met Charlie elsewhere.

It was very tempting to tell her mother that she smelled too. Except for the day she went to the hospital she didn’t seem to care much about her own personal hygiene any more. Charlie had hinted about it, but Sylvia didn’t respond to hints.

If it hadn’t been for school, Charlie felt she might crack. There at least she had a strong purpose. While her classmates saw the sixth form as a continuation of their social life, she saw the ’A’ levels at the end of it as a firm goal. Gone were the days she larked about, she knew her future career depended on good exam results, so she took every lesson and every piece of homework seriously.

Occasionally she’d listen to her
Woodstock
album and remember how she’d once yearned to be part of the youth revolution, and her main preoccupation had been boys, records and clothes. But that all seemed so long ago now. She had no money for new clothes or records, Guy had made her wary of boys, and she no longer cared about being revolutionary.

When she had time to dream, it was only of freedom. Of living alone, waking up each morning without hearing her mother coughing her lungs up, to have a job she loved, time to make friends, and to return at night to a clean flat without having to see that sour, embittered face wreathed in cigarette smoke, or hear that grating, whining voice demanding attention.

Sometimes though it shamed her to think it, let alone voice it, she wished her mother would die. At those times she cursed her father for leaving her with this terrible burden which made her think such wicked thoughts.

*

‘I’ll be home about six,’ Charlie said the following morning as she was leaving for school. Sylvia was still in bed. She took sleeping pills every night and she was always groggy in the mornings. Charlie would make her tea and help her to the bathroom, then Sylvia went back to bed until eleven or so. ‘I’m meeting Ivor after school.’

‘What do you want to see that nasty old man for?’ Sylvia asked, her once pretty face full of spite. ‘There’s something wrong with you.’

‘But for that nasty old man I would have been jobless and homeless all summer. I might also have lain on those cliffs until I died of exposure,’ Charlie said tartly.

She didn’t wait for a reply, but closed her mother’s door and promptly left the flat. It was eight o’clock, but she’d been up for two hours already, finishing the homework she was too tired to do last night. Now she was a little late and she would have to run all the way down to the ferry, or she’d miss the train from the other side of the river.

Ivor was waiting for her as she came off the ferry in the afternoon. Even though it was a very cold, windy day he wasn’t wearing a coat, just a thick oiled sweater and corduroys. Just seeing his warm smile and his untidy red hair and beard cheered her. Ivor was as constant as the tide. A true friend and her only confidant.

‘Hullo, sweetheart,’ he said with his usual welcoming if somewhat fishy-smelling hug. ‘How was school today?’

‘Fine,’ she said. ‘Pretty good actually. Miss Endersleigh said my essay on
Hamlet
was first class.’

As they walked along towards the coffee bar in Foss Street, Ivor asked about her mother.

‘Much the same,’ Charlie said. She tried to avoid discussing her mother with him. If she told the whole truth it would only worry him, so she changed the subject as soon as they were sitting down.

Ivor told her all the Salcombe gossip, including how Beryl had become a blonde. ‘It suits her,’ he said with twinkly eyes. ‘She said she was tired of being taken for my younger sister. And before I forget, she asked if you’d like to come and stay for a few days at Easter.’

‘I’d love to.’ Charlie’s eyes lit up. ‘It would be heaven.’

But then she remembered her mother and her face fell. ‘But how can I, Ivor?’

‘You can, and you should,’ he said, reaching across the table to tweak her cheek. ‘Sylvia’s perfectly capable of looking after herself for a few days. She gets a dinner brought to her, and I’m sure if you spoke to her doctor he’d arrange for the district nurse to pop in just to check on her.’

‘She’ll play ill.’

‘Well, let her.’ He shrugged, his greeny-blue eyes sparking with indignation. ‘You and I both know you are going to leave one day. The sooner she gets used to being alone occasionally, the better she’ll cope then. Besides, if you don’t get a rest soon, you’ll get ill. And where would you be then?’

Ivor was always the voice of reason. Charlie knew he had a great deal of sympathy for Sylvia, but it was tempered with irritation that she made no effort to improve her situation. He understood and applauded Charlie’s sense of duty, but at the same time he felt it was time she stood up for herself.

‘I’ll speak to her about it,’ Charlie said.

Ivor could see she was exhausted and it twisted his stomach to see her like that. She was too thin, too pale, and there was dark circles beneath her eyes. She had lost that chic, polished look she’d once had, her hair was straggly, her school uniform hung on her. All through January and February she’d had a series of bad colds, and he suspected she didn’t eat properly. At times he wished he could storm in on her mother and tell her what he thought of her, but he knew Charlie wouldn’t like that.