Charlie (3 page)

‘Why hasn’t Dad phoned?’ Charlie asked herself, stopping for a moment to catch her breath and look at the view of the estuary over a garden wall. The last time he’d called was the evening of her concluding exam at school. He had been away for some time even then, but he’d telephoned every single night to ask how she’d got on at whatever exam had been that day. That night he’d told both her and her mother that he was on his way to Rotterdam to chase up a shipment of goods. He thought he would be back within a week to ten days. But four weeks had passed since then.

Just a few days ago Charlie had suggested they call the police, but to her astonishment her mother had laughed at her. She said that was ridiculous and that he’d turn up soon with one of his plausible excuses. The sarcasm in her mother’s voice had almost suggested she knew exactly where he really was. Charlie hadn’t dared bring up the subject since.

It was that sarcasm and a kind of darkness in her mother that made Charlie sometimes reluctant to be at home alone with her. On the face of it Sylvia Weish had absolutely everything a woman could want: a beautiful home, enough help around it so she didn’t need to lift a finger, money, jewellery and total freedom to do what she wanted. Considering the number of parties she threw and went to when Jin was home, she had enough friends to ask for some company if she was lonely. But all she did when Jin was away was stay at home. If it was cold or raining she sat in an armchair smoking and looking at a magazine. If it was sunny and hot she lay out in the garden. Nothing else – no hobbies, walks, chats on the telephone; she never even went shopping unless she was desperate for something.

Charlie wouldn’t have objected to this if Sylvia had been content. But most of the time she looked downright miserable. In fact Charlie could sense her mother’s mood the moment she opened the front door. It was like being enveloped in an invisible, cold fog. Even Mrs Brown, who came in three times a week to clean, had said she felt it too.

As Charlie approached ‘Windways’, she stood on tiptoe and looked over the wall down on to the side terrace, reminded that her father was always saying that one day it would be hers. Like most of the houses on the cliff edge it was remarkably unprepossessing from the road, but once you stepped in through the arched gateway and took the path around the side to look from the garden it was simply beautiful.

Built on three levels, each with its own terrace and huge windows, it was modern, yet timeless too. The outside was painted a soft cream almost yearly, with purple and blue clematis scrambling up as a vivid contrast. No wonder people constantly photographed it from their boats and glossy magazines often wished to feature it. But it was the spectacular view which had determined Jin Weish to buy it, back in 1956.

Charlie had no recollection of that time – she was only two – but she’d been told they lived in London, and while they were down in Devon on holiday, taking a leisurely walk towards the coastal path to Brixham, Jin had spotted the house. It wasn’t for sale, but Jin was so determined to get a better look that he climbed down the steep wooded cliff by the Beacon and made his way back to the house and looked over the garden walls. He said he was moved to tears by the majesty of the panoramic view of the estuary, the old Castle on the opposite side and the lush green of the wooded cliffs. He made up his mind there and then that he was going to own it. Charlie had often heard his friends joke that he was the sort of man who got everything he wanted.

‘I’m home!’ Charlie called as she let herself in. Thursday was one of Mrs Brown’s days, and she had clearly polished the parquet floor in the hall as the house smelled of lavender.

Charlie merely glanced into the drawing room; she didn’t expect her mother to be in there on such a hot afternoon. It was a lovely room, decorated in shades of green and pale blue, with sliding patio doors on to both the side terrace and the one at the back overlooking the garden and sea. The blue and white canopies were pulled down outside to shade the room, giving it a curious, almost underwater appearance.

She went down the stairs into the spacious modern kitchen, got herself a drink of orange squash from the fridge and a rock bun from the cake box, and went out through the back door. As she had expected, her mother was sunbathing on the lawn, tucked away down in her favourite corner between the small summer-house and the stone balustrading that ran along the cliff top, so that she couldn’t be seen by anyone able to peer over the eight-foot walls. She was stretched out face down on a blanket, wearing just the bottom half of her turquoise bikini and a matching towelling turban covering her blonde hair.

It never ceased to surprise Charlie that Sylvia had kept her figure even though she took no exercise. She was still the same 36–24-35 she had been in her wedding photographs. Her fortieth birthday had been back in May, but she had virtually no lines on her face, no wobbly bits on her thighs or bottom, and her stomach was as flat as an ironing board.

‘Hullo, Mum,’ Charlie said cheerily. ‘The tan’s going well, you’re catching up with me!’

Comparing sun-tans was a long-standing family joke. Both Jin and Charlie had only to sit out in the sun for a couple of hours and they turned brown. Sylvia, because of her fair skin, burned easily. Even if the sun shone non-stop for six weeks, she could never attain more than the light golden colour she was now.

Sylvia lifted her head and squinted up at her daughter. She had baby-blue eyes, framed by heavily mascara’d lashes. Even when she was alone she always wore mascara and lipstick, and her long nails were always varnished bright pink. ‘What time is it?’ she asked. ‘I must have fallen asleep.’

‘About fourish,’ Charlie said. ‘What are we having for tea?’

‘I’m not hungry.’ Sylvia fumbled beneath her for her bikini top and fastened it behind her back, arching her spine. She rolled over and sat up, adjusting the top more comfortably, then lit a cigarette. ‘But there’s some ham and salad in the fridge. You can get that yourself.’

Charlie knew that translated as ‘Go away and leave me alone.’ Sylvia didn’t eat or cook when she was in one of her moods. She didn’t ever eat much, but when she was normal she always made Charlie a good meal, even if she didn’t share it.

‘I’ll go and have a bath first, I’m all sticky,’ Charlie said. ‘Shall I make you some coffee?’

Charlie’s abilities in the kitchen didn’t stretch beyond making instant coffee and sandwiches. Mrs Brown often said it was a disgrace and that all girls should learn to cook, wash, iron and clean. Charlie often wished she could learn to bake cakes, that looked like fun, but her mother hadn’t the patience to teach her, Mrs Brown never had the time, and her school concentrated on academic achievements and sport.

Her mother lay down again, on her back this time, closed her eyes and took a deep drag on her cigarette. ‘No, I don’t think so,’ she said eventually.

For a moment or two Charlie just sat beside her mother on the grass. She had a strong desire to punch her, anything to get some sort of real response. She wanted to be asked what she’d been doing all day, to be given some evidence that the woman was aware her daughter had been away from her since ten that morning. She wondered how much longer they could go on living this way, no real conversation, no interest, no affection. It was miserable, like living with a robot.

Her father wasn’t like this. He wanted to know every last thing his daughter had done while he was away. He went out for walks with Charlie, looked at her homework, listened to her new records, asked about her friends. Yet for some unfathomable reason Charlie had never been able to discuss her mother’s horrible moods with him. It seemed disloyal. Sort of sneaky. So she always pretended everything had been fine while he’d been away.

‘I’ll go and have a bath then,’ Charlie said, getting up from the grass and looking down at her mother. She was tempted to try to ask what her problem was, but she didn’t quite dare. She had tried in the past, but she always got fobbed off with excuses like being tired or having a headache. If she persisted, her mother was likely to withdraw even further into herself. It was clear to Charlie that wherever Sylvia Weish’s mind was, she wasn’t anxious to share it with anyone.

Upstairs in her bedroom at the top of the house, Charlie stripped off her jeans and kicked them across her immaculately tidy room with a touch of spite. It was a beautiful room, none of her friends at school had a bedroom to touch it. Peach and cream striped walls, soft peach carpet, and wall-to-wall cupboards stuffed with fashionable clothes. The four-foot bed had cream lace drapes around it, there was a padded window seat so she could sit and look at the view of the sea, and she had the best Pioneer stereo money could buy. But it felt worthless and somehow insulting when the woman who’d chosen it all so carefully couldn’t even be bothered to talk to her.

She thought she would try to get a summer job in the next day or so – anything was better than putting up with this all day, every day, for eight weeks. June would be going up to Scotland with her family in a couple of weeks’ time, then there’d be absolutely nothing to do. If only her dad would come home!

Sylvia came to life when he walked in through the door. Suddenly there would be action, the radio playing, meals being prepared, chat and laughter. The telephone would begin to ring again, people ringing up to accept invitations to dinner, or to offer invitations to their house. There were the inevitable rows, of course, but even that was preferable to this stony silence.

‘Windways’ even had a different smell when Jin was home – fried bacon, his aftershave, freshly ironed shirts and shoe polish. He wasn’t a big man, though tall for a Chinese, Charlie supposed, at five ten, but slender with small, delicate hands and feet. Yet he filled up the house somehow, made it a real home.

Charlie was in the bathroom running her bath when she heard a car pull up outside. The bathroom was on the side of the house, but because of its position and the high wall by the road, it was impossible to see anyone parking outside without leaning right out of the window. As she was naked this was out of the question, but she opened it wide and stuck her head out. As the car reversed into the space by the garage she saw the rear end of a dark blue car. She thought it was an old Consul or some similar model, but she didn’t recognize it.

She waited a few moments for the front-door bell to ring, but it didn’t. As she could hear the car engine still running, she thought it might be the gardener or his son perhaps dropping off some new plants or compost, so she got into the bath.

Some ten minutes later she realized the car engine was still ticking over, and curiosity made her get a move on. The gardener’s son was a bit of a dish, all bronzed biceps and shoulder-length blond hair, and if he was out in the garden chatting to her mother it might be a good opportunity to get to know him better.

She dried herself hurriedly and pulled on some clean underwear, then ran into her bedroom to get a pair of shorts and a tee-shirt. Glancing out of her window, she saw it wasn’t the gardener or his son, but two burly men talking to her mother as she sat on the rug.

From Charlie’s viewpoint, her mother was partially obscured by one of the men crouching over her. It seemed to her, although she couldn’t see properly, that he was holding her by the shoulders. The other man’s back was also towards her, and he was bending over Sylvia as if questioning her. Both men wore dark blue overalls, like mechanics, and their stance appeared rather threatening.

Curious as to what was going on, and a little concerned, Charlie snatched up her discarded jeans from the floor and jumped into them, but as she struggled to pull up the zip, she heard her mother scream. Yet even before she got back to the window the scream was abruptly cut off.

What she saw made her gasp with horror and her blood run cold. The man who she had felt was holding her mother before, was now forcing her back on to the grass and had one hand over her mouth. The other was holding a thick stick or rod across her knees, at first glance as if just to stop them thrashing about, but as Charlie watched, to her consternation he jumped heavily on to either end of it, clearly with the intention of breaking both her knees.

Charlie’s frenzied yell was involuntary. Much later she wished she’d kept silent and merely run to telephone the police, then found a safe place where she could view the men for identification purposes and take the car number or anything which might have helped in their capture. But her reaction was instinctively protective.

Both men turned in her direction. As they were some twenty-five yards away from the house, and the sun was in her eyes, Charlie couldn’t see them clearly enough to note their features, only that they were similar to each other, with close-cropped dark hair. Her mother was screaming again, this time in pure agony, and with that the men let her go and ran towards the house as if they were coming after Charlie.

She snatched up her top, raced along the landing and into her father’s study, locked herself in and dialled 999. Her heart was thumping like a steam-hammer, as she expected that any minute the men would break down the door and grab her too. Although it couldn’t have been more than a few seconds before her call was answered, it seemed like forever.

‘There’s two men hurting my mother,’ she managed to get out. But even as the woman on the other end of the line was asking her to give her name and address, she heard the car engine revving up outside and the sound of tyres spinning on the gravel, and she dropped the phone and ran to the spare bedroom which had a view of the road. She was too late to get the number or make of car, all she saw was its rear end shooting down narrow Beacon Road at high speed.

Going back to the phone, she hastily explained the situation and where she was. Then she fled down the stairs and out into the garden to her mother.

For one brief moment she thought the whole terrible scene had been the work of her imagination. Sylvia was lying there on the rug as silent and still as she had been thirty minutes earlier when Charlie arrived home. Her blue towelling turban was still in place, her sun-glasses and packet of cigarettes were lying untouched on the blanket beside her. Birds were still singing in the woods on the cliff at the side of the house. Only the iron rod lying abandoned on the lush green grass proved that what she’d seen had really happened.