Camellia (33 page)

At one time she couldn't look at it without crying, but now she knew why she'd always kept it with her despite the pain it brought. Bee's sweet plump face was a reminder of all the dangers out there. It had kept her straight, even in moments of extreme temptation. So often this summer she'd been teased for refusing joints, for not giving friends free drinks in the bar, for not stealing so much as an orange in the little shops. But those people who travelled with their battered copies of Jack Kerouac's
On the Road
and the
Prophet,
who scorned materialism and lived on their wits, dope and other people's half chewed over philosophy, had never lost anyone dear to them. They had that to come.

Four days after leaving Ibiza, some hundred kilometres from Calais and the ferry home, Camellia discovered she'd been robbed of her money belt.

A businessman had picked her up early that morning just outside Montpellier in his Citroen and brought her all the way through France, dropping her at a crossroads.

She went through her rucksack three times, taking each item out painstakingly. But it wasn't there. She had worn it constantly back in Ibiza: she'd seen too many other people losing their money through being careless or too trusting. But today she had removed it because it was irritating her skin on the long drive.

Camellia wanted to scream with rage, but there was no one to scream at. It seemed like the middle of nowhere: flat open fields on either side of a road lined with the inevitable avenue of plane trees. From where she stood she couldn't see even one house. But even if anyone appeared, and she managed to explain in French, she didn't think she'd get much sympathy. Hippies were notorious for their hard luck stories.

She sat down on the roadside, thinking. The man in the Citroen had only stopped once, at a large services where they had coffee and croissants. Camellia knew she had it then as she'd offered to pay. The man had refused and she put it back in her rucksack. She had gone to the lavatories before getting back into the car. There were a couple of Dutch girls waiting in a queue and they'd discussed how disgusting the traditional French hole-in-the-ground variety was. It was the friendliness of these girls that had prompted her to leave her rucksack with them while she went in. They weren't hippie hitchhikers, but smartly dressed office girls, touring with their boyfriends.

'You bitches,' she spat out viciously, visualising the two fresh-faced blondes gleefully sharing out all that money she'd worked so hard for. But yet she didn't cry. At the back of her mind a small voice was reminding her of all those people she'd robbed back in Piccadilly. Now she knew how it felt.

It was half an hour before a truck slowed down at her raised thumb. Camellia picked up her rucksack and ran towards it. She wished she'd thought to change out of her brief shorts and replace her tight tee shirt with a baggier one, but it was too late now.

'Parlez-vous anglais?'
she said haltingly, looking up at the man in the cab.

'I should think so, darlin',' he grinned broadly and tapped his arm on the outside of the truck door. 'What d'you think that is? Bloody Swahili?'

She was so relieved to hear an English voice, she could've hugged him.

'Are you going to the ferry at Calais?' she asked.

'Sure am, then on to London,' he said cheerfully. 'Hop in if you want a ride.'

He introduced himself as Reg, offered her one of his sandwiches and a can of beer, and listened to her story about the girls stealing her money belt.

'Well, you were a mug and no mistake,' he said. 'Me, I don't trust no one. But you're all right now with yer Uncle Reg. I'll get you home.'

As they drove on towards Calais, Camellia's spirits began to rise again. It was a beautiful afternoon, fields of ripe golden corn, speckled with scarlet poppies stretched for as far as she could see, and Reg, though a bit grubby and uncouth, was kindly. She had to be philosophical about her stolen money: it would've been much worse if it had happened when she was still back in Spain. She had about twenty pounds in the Post Office. As long as she could get to Denise's she'd be fine.

The sun was beginning to set as they drove into Calais docks.

'Give us yer passport,' Reg said gruffly as he gathered together his papers ready to go into the offices. 'I'll pass you off as my girlfriend. There shouldn't be any problem.'

Camellia watched Reg with some amusement as he walked away from her and his truck. He made her think of a male pigeon, chest all puffed out with importance, as if he thought people were admiring him. Perhaps he'd once had a good body: his shoulders were wide and his biceps huge. But at over forty he was sagging. His beer-belly quivered under his tight dirty white tee shirt, and his sandy hair was very thin on top. She hoped he wouldn't get any ideas about her. She wasn't entirely comfortable with him passing her off as his girlfriend.

Reg spat noisily out the window several times as they waited in the truck for their turn to drive onto the ferry. It turned Camellia's stomach and she found herself noticing other unpleasant things about him. He smelled of stale sweat, his neck and hands were ingrained with dirt and he had tufts of hair coming out of his ears.

'Why aren't there any cars?' she asked, looking out the window as a uniformed man indicated the spot he was to drive into.

'Well, it's a freighter, love,' Reg replied. 'It's only lorries come on it. You get good food too–none of the fancy prices they charge on the regular ferry. You look as if you could do with a bit of grub.'

The moment they set foot in the bar upstairs Reg was greeting the other drivers. 'Whatcha think of my new girl?' he bawled out across the bar to one of them, at the same time putting his hand on her bottom and squeezing it.

Camellia blushed scarlet with embarrassment. Her long brown legs in brief shorts hadn't raised an eyebrow all through Spain and France, but now she was painfully aware of every man's eyes on them. Foolishly she'd left her rucksack in the cab, but she wouldn't be allowed back down to the hold to get it and change. It was almost dusk and growing colder.

Reg insisted on buying her a meal. Camellia was a little dubious about putting herself further in his debt, but she was so hungry she lost her qualms at the sight of steak and kidney pie. Although his coarse banter with the other drivers and the way he sat protectively close to her was a little unnerving, he seemed genuinely concerned about her.

'You'd better get your head down in my bunk when we gets to Dover,' he said. 'I'll drop you off by Waterloo station, you'll be safer to hang around in there till the trains start running. Don't you go roaming around the streets till it gets light.'

It began to rain soon after the ferry left Calais. As the harbour lights of Dover came into view it turned into a full-blown storm. Camellia was freezing.

'You can get changed into something warmer in the bogs in the customs hall,' Reg said solicitously. 'Just hope they don't hold me up tonight. I wanna get home and into bed.'

An hour later Camellia was slipping off to sleep in Reg's bunk. She had changed into jeans and a sweater in the toilets in Dover, and the sound of the radio playing softly, the swish of the windscreen wipers and the warmth of the blankets had lulled her into a sense of security.

She woke with a start as the truck stopped.

'We're here, sweetheart,' Reg said, turning in his seat to look at her.

Camellia sat up. It was still dark, and the road they were in was badly lit. 'Where are we?' she asked fearfully.

'It's okay,' he laughed at her expression. 'Waterloo Bridge is just up ahead. I ain't taken you to Timbuktu while you were sleeping. The station is just around the corner, but mind you stay there until it's light.'

Camellia climbed into the passenger seat, put her plimsolls on and fastened up her rucksack.

'Here,' Reg held out a couple of pound notes. 'Take this for your fare home.'

Camellia looked at his kindly weather-beaten face and felt ashamed she'd been wary of him earlier.

'That's very kind of you,' she said weakly. She wanted to kiss his cheek but the smell of his stale sweat deterred her. 'Give me your address and I'll send it back to you.'

To her surprise he laughed.

'What! The old woman'd throttle me if she knew I'd picked up a young girl,' he said. 'You just keep it and welcome. But be a bit more careful who you take lifts off in future. There's plenty of truckers who ain't got no respect for women.'

At eight in the morning Camellia was outside 34 Ladbroke Square. Mercifully it had stopped raining while she waited over a cup of tea at Waterloo for a more respectable hour. But she felt cold and very grubby.

She rang Denise's bell, bracing herself for a telling off for arriving so early in the morning. But she was excited too: she had so much to tell Denise.

By the time she'd rung three times and got no reply, Camellia felt vaguely sick. It hadn't even occurred to her that Denise might not be in. She rang the ground-floor flat.

'I'm so sorry to disturb you,' she said as a middle-aged woman in her dressing gown answered the door. 'I've been ringing Mrs Tra-herne's flat and there's no reply. Do you know where she is?'

'Off in Italy,' the older woman said curtly, clearly irritated at the intrusion. 'She left two days ago.'

The woman was already moving to shut the door, but Camellia moved forward. 'I'm in a tight spot,' she said, then quickly went on to explain about her clothes and money being stored by Denise.

'I can't help that,' the woman shrugged her shoulders, her face cold. 'I haven't got a key to her flat, and even if I had I wouldn't dream of letting a stranger in there. You'd better go to the police.'

By five in the afternoon Camellia was close to breaking down in tears. She had spent nearly the whole day at Charles House, the National Assistance Board in Kensington High Street, but all they'd given her was
75
pence, the daily subsistence allowance they doled out to vagrants. Until she had an address they couldn't give her more. But how could she get an address without advance rent?

She had begged tearfully, then got angry when they wouldn't listen. When she said she had twenty pounds in a Post Office, with which she could repay any loan once she got her book back from Denise, they merely pointed out she could try asking at a Post Office to see what they could do.

Everything was against her. In jeans and a sweater she looked travel worn and grubby, and her hair needed washing. Was it any wonder that she'd been turned away from her old student hostel in Earls Court with a flea in her ear? Was anyone going to trust a girl who had all her entire worldly possessions in a rucksack on her back?

Over another cup of tea in a cafe, she counted out her money. £1.48 was all she had left. She was sorely tempted to go to the West End and steal a wallet.

'No,' she whispered to herself, cupping her hands around the mug of tea and trying to ignore the growl of hunger in her stomach. 'There has to be another way.'

Thinking back to her days with Dougie she found it ironic that at that time any self-respecting hippie would offer a stranger shelter for the night, even if it was only on the floor. But the tide had turned, 'Love is all you need' had no meaning now in the 70s. People had become suspicious and self-protective.

By eight that evening Camellia was desperate and very cold. She'd walked from Charles House down to Hammersmith to see her old friend Suzanne, but found she and her family had moved to Watford two years earlier. Perhaps if she'd been a better friend and kept in touch she would have known that. Pride precluded even attempting to go out to Archway House, instinctively she knew she would get no sympathy from Miss Peet and any other addresses and telephone numbers of old acquaintances were all locked in Denise's flat with the rest of her belongings.

It was as she stood at Hammersmith Broadway that Miles, one of her mother's old lovers, came to her mind. Holland Park wasn't that far away.

She had intended to have a good job, a decent home and be looking stunningly well dressed before she embarked on presenting herself to any of these men, but she was frantic enough to try anything.

It was a long shot. But this man had said he had great respect for her father and presumably he'd met her as a small child. She had nothing much to lose: the worst he could do was slam the door in her face. With luck he might offer her tea and a sandwich. If he was pleasant she might even be able to admit her predicament and get a bed for the night.

Camellia knew that Holland Park was an area inhabited by the rich. Miles's house was small in comparison to its neighbours. But as she peered through the arched wrought iron gate she felt her courage seeping away.

It was so very smart. A light over the front door illuminated the heavy brass knocker, glossy dark green paint and two bay trees in tubs. She almost turned tail and ran. A sixth sense told her she would get no welcome here, but perversely she opened the gate and walked up to the front door.

A bell echoed through the house. She saw a light come on in the hall and then heard the shuffling of old feet coming towards the door.

The door opened and a small, wizened man in a dark suit looked her up and down. 'Yes?'

'Miles?' she asked. 'I'm sorry, I don't know your surname.'

The man's lips curled scornfully. "This is Sir Miles Hamilton's London residence.'

For a moment Camellia could only gape stupidly at the old man. Never in her wildest imaginings had she considered that the letters came from someone titled. This old man, looking at her so scornfully, must be a butler or manservant. She knew she had blown it. She should've done some homework before coming here.

'I didn't,' Camellia stopped short, racking her brain for a sensible way of introducing herself. 'I mean, I'm sorry to call without contacting Sir Hamilton first, but I've just got back from the continent and I wanted to have a word with him. Is it possible for me to see him?'

'Sir Miles is away at present,' the man replied sharply. 'If you would like to leave your visiting card, I will give it to him on his return.'