Charlie

by Lesley Pearse

  Sitting on the settee beside June (the two younger sisters were already in bed), Charlie told them about her mother’s condition, giving a little more detail than she had on the phone as to how it had all come about. But she said nothing about her father, other than that he was still away from home. She sensed that Mrs Melling had dozens more questions, and dreaded them, but thankfully her husband intervened.

  ‘Charlie’s had a tough time. I think she should have some hot milk and a sandwich and get off to bed,’ he said, patting her shoulder. ‘I put the camp-bed in June’s room for you.’

  Mrs Melling took Charlie out into her kitchen and began to rustle up food. June came too and perched on a stool at their rather elderly and rickety breakfast bar, her wide blue eyes full of unasked questions.

  ‘It was a good job you didn’t stay here this afternoon,’ she remarked. ‘Imagine if your mother had been lying all alone out in the garden until late tonight! I bet the burglars would have taken just about everything in your house if you hadn’t called out of the window to them.’

  Charlie was on the point of saying she didn’t think robbery had been the men’s motive, but she stifled it. Maybe it was best to let them think that.

  Mrs Melling put a ham sandwich, a banana and a glass of milk in front of Charlie. ‘I don’t suppose you feel much like eating, but try, dear,’ she said persuasively. ‘You’ll sleep better on a full tummy and tomorrow morning when we phone the hospital we might find your mother is a great deal better. There’s every chance the police might have managed to contact your father by then too. So eat up and then off to bed.’

  Charlie didn’t find it easier to sleep on a full tummy, in fact she felt sick most of the night. The camp-bed was uncomfortable, it wobbled every time she turned over, and her mind was stuck on what she’d seen those men do to her mother.

  Odd things, seemingly unrelated to the day’s events, kept popping into her head. Like her parents discussing the London gangland killers, the Krays. Their trial had been a couple of years ago. She remembered how both her parents had seemed obsessed with it, almost as if they had known the men. Looking back, her father had never shown much indignation about crime. He didn’t even get worked up about drugs the way her friends’ parents did. She had always prided herself that this was because her father was a very liberal man, but now she saw that it might well be because he was, or had been, something of a villain himself.

  Charlie tried to think back to when they lived in London. She vaguely remembered a small terraced house which she’d been told was in Hammersmith. She recalled that in those days Jin went out to work in the evenings. She had a distinct mental picture of him tucking her into bed and kissing her goodnight before he left. He always wore a bow-tie and his hair was slicked back with some kind of perfumed oil.

  So what did he do at night in those days? Neither of her parents had ever said.

  Charlie was glad the Mellings got up early. She might have fallen asleep for an hour or two, but the night had seemed endless. As soon as she heard Nicola and Susan talking to their parents downstairs, she got up too, washed, dressed and went down, without waking June.

  ‘Hullo, dear.’ Mrs Melling smiled brightly. ‘You’re up early. Couldn’t sleep?’

  Charlie nodded. She had a strong desire to fall into her friend’s mother’s arms and sob her heart out, but such displays of weakness went against the grain.

  ‘Well, sit yourself down here.’ Mrs Melling patted a stool. ‘Sue and Nicky have gone out to feed their rabbits and Herbert’s in the breakfast room reading the paper, so you can talk freely if you want to.’

  Charlie had already made up her mind that she wasn’t going to be drawn into any confidences. ‘I would like to say how kind it is of you to take me in,’ she said. ‘I’ll try very hard not to be a nuisance.’ She thought her father would approve of that, he had always said good manners were important. He had once told her that everything he knew, including his perfect English, he learned back in Hong Kong, from British naval officers. He said he had studied their manners, opening doors for ladies, walking on the outside of a pavement, how to hold a knife and fork correctly, and how to thank people graciously. He said that the Chinese were naturally polite, but their way was subservient. The British way was regal and he much preferred it.

  ‘My dear, how could you be a nuisance?’ Mrs Melling replied with a warm smile, even though she was a little surprised by the girl’s chilly response. ‘With all my children, one more won’t make any difference to me! Until your father gets back, this is where you’ll stay. Now, let’s have a cup of tea before we start the breakfast.’

  *

  Five days later, on Tuesday morning, Charlie was feeling desperate, sick with fear and foreboding. Her father still hadn’t turned up and down at the hospital the nursing staff were now very concerned about her mother’s state of mind. Although the operation on her knees had been successful, Sylvia was sinking daily into a deeper and deeper depression. She fluctuated between wild bouts of anger directed at her husband, irritation at Charlie and extreme self-pity because she was convinced she’d never walk again. Yet for all this she still stubbornly persisted in saying she didn’t know who her attackers were or why they came, and refused to tell either Charlie or the police anything about her husband which might help find him. Charlie was sure she knew quite a lot on both counts. So why wouldn’t she talk about it?

  Her life seemed to have turned upside down.

  Until this awful thing had happened, everything was so orderly and predictable. A freshly ironed school shirt miraculously turned up on a chair in her room every morning, breakfast was laid on the kitchen table, and her dinner money in an envelope placed each Monday morning by her school bag. When she returned from school, tea was on the table, she did her homework on a desk that had been tidied during the day. Two evenings during the week she was allowed out, but she had to be in by ten-thirty.

  This ordered life carried on even when her father was home. Charlie rarely saw how the house was run, it happened invisibly, just as she rarely saw cakes baked or shoes cleaned. They just were.

  But here in the Mellings’ home it was all noise and frantic activity. Before and after every meal there were rows. Who was going to lay the table? Whose turn was it to wash up? They argued about when the rabbits were last cleaned out, who had left a ring around the bath. Nothing in this house happened by magic.

  The police were in and out all the time with different questions relating to her father, and she sensed Mr and Mrs Melling were getting very irritated by that and by the publicity. Although the story about the attack was only a few lines on the inside pages of the national papers, the local press splattered it across the front page, and that had given rise to a great deal of gossip and speculation around the town. If her father had been English, maybe people would have been kinder, prepared to believe her parents were innocent victims. But because he was Chinese, wealthy and lived in one of the most envied homes in the area, it followed that there had to be something dubious about him. Judging by overheard conversations between Mr and Mrs Melling, Charlie guessed her father was being labelled as everything from a drugs baron to a member of the Triads.

  Yet the most distressing thing of all to Charlie was that her mother showed absolutely no concern about her. She didn’t ask if she minded being with the Mellings, or indeed if they minded having her there. She showed no sympathy when Charlie told her how the neighbours kept pestering her for information. Then when she asked if she could have some pocket money, her mother nearly bit her head off and said, ‘Don’t you think I’ve got enough on my plate already without you demanding money?’

  Charlie felt almost suffocated by people and their endless questions. Although in the past she had often envied June for being part of a big family, she had soon discovered they weren’t as happy as she’d always thought. Mr Melling roared like an ogre. Nicola and Susan seemed to fight all day. Mrs Melling was shocked that Charlie hadn’t the first idea how to make a be
d, iron a dress or even wash up. Several times she had pointedly remarked that she had no room for ornaments in her home.

  Even June, who she’d expected to be supportive and understanding, seemed sulky and cross. Charlie thought it was obvious why she couldn’t wander about town chatting up boys, or go swimming while all this was going on, but June implied her holiday was being spoiled. Perhaps it was just because she had always relied on Charlie to make fun things happen, and now she was bored she had to blame someone for her disappointment. But the strain of sharing a small room with someone who flounced around making barbed comments made Charlie withdraw even further into herself. She found herself aching for solitude.

  On Tuesday morning when Charlie woke to another fight between Nicola and Susan, she made up her mind she was going home if only for a few hours. The houseplants would need watering and she could sit peacefully in her own room.

  She had been allowed to go back to ‘Windways’ the day after the attack, to collect some clothes for herself and nighties and toiletries for Sylvia, but she had been accompanied by a policewoman. The fact that her front-door key hadn’t been returned to her made it clear she wasn’t supposed to return there, but as she’d helped herself to a spare key in the kitchen, no one would be any the wiser.

  She didn’t go straight to ‘Windways’; to do so might result in her being spotted by a neighbour. Instead she walked down the road, away from her home, then turned right up Ridley Hill and took a long and circuitous route to a footpath that brought her back to Beacon Road, far beyond ‘Windways’.

  Almost as soon as she set out she felt better, and when she got to a part of the footpath where she had a clear view of the sea, she sat down to look at it.

  It was utterly peaceful, the sun warm on her face, birds singing in the trees, insects buzzing in the under-growth. The sea far below was azure blue, calm as a mill-pond, broken only by one lone speedboat pulling a water-skier. As she sat there thinking how often she’d stopped in this exact same place with her father, it suddenly occurred to her how little she knew about his background, or her mother’s.

  Her father had told her he was born about 100 miles from Shanghai, and he had been twelve when the Japanese invaded in 1932. His father and his elder brother were killed. He saw their tiny house burned down by Japanese soldiers, and his mother moved herself and the three younger children in with a relative. They were all starving and his mother urged Jin to leave, to find work in a city, so he trekked all the way to Hong Kong.

  Until today that story had meant little to Charlie, but perhaps because for the first time in her life she was afraid and alone, it struck a chord. She wished now she had asked her father to tell her more about what happened when he got to Hong Kong, how he lived, how and when he got to England. Whether the rest of his family survived.

  She knew even less about her mother. She once said she was secretary to a barrister, and that she’d met Jin when he first arrived in England. But that was all. Charlie didn’t know where she was born, if she still had living parents or brothers and sisters.

  Charlie thought about this deeply, trying to analyse why she’d never asked questions. When the answer came to her, it shamed her.

  She was too self-centred.

  June had accused her just yesterday of being spoilt rotten, and although Charlie had vigorously denied it, she knew in her heart it was true. If she wanted something, be it a bike, roller-skates or new clothes, she got it. Other kids at school had to do paper rounds for their pocket money, she got hers dished out without any suggestion she should work for it. It was for much the same reason that she couldn’t cook, make a bed or even clean a bath properly. She’d never been made to do anything she didn’t want to. They had Mrs Brown who cleaned and washed. Charlie Weish was a little princess who didn’t need to be useful, because she was clever.

  Tears sprang into her eyes. In the last few days in the Mellings’ household she had become aware that being clever at school, being pretty and having good manners wasn’t enough. What if her mother’s knees didn’t get better and she became a cripple? Who would look after her? Her father? But what if he never came back?

  She began to sob. Yesterday she’d had to back down from being Carnival Queen because Mrs Melling said she didn’t think it was an appropriate role to play when her mother was in hospital. The summer holidays were ruined. Now it looked as if every plan she’d ever made was going to be dashed to pieces.

  It was an hour or so later when Charlie approached ‘Windways’. She paused by the steep wooded cliff with the navigational beacon on the rocks below and considered whether it might be better to enter her garden that way, however dangerous, to avoid being seen.

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ she told herself, walking on, holding her head high. ‘It’s your home, you have a perfect right to go in there.’

  She stopped short as she rounded the bend and saw two cars parked by the garage. One was a new dark blue Rover which looked vaguely familiar, the other was a dark green Morris Minor. Obviously the owners were in the house. A sudden surge of irrational anger rose up inside her. The police had got her mother’s permission to go in there the day after her attack, but Charlie didn’t think they had any cause to return. And even if they had, surely they would have informed her of it?

  Full of indignation, she opened the gate, marched up to the front door and let herself in with her key. To her astonishment the house was clearly in the process of being thoroughly searched. The bookshelves in the small sitting room to the left of the front door were bare, the books lying in piles on the floor. In the drawing room to the right, the bureau was open and letters and bills had clearly been leafed through. Only her parents’ bedroom appeared untouched, and male voices were coming from upstairs.

  Charlie faltered for a moment, afraid it might be the men who hurt her mother, but her anger was much stronger than her fear. Pinpointing the voices as coming from her father’s study, which was next to her bedroom, she picked up the cast-iron doorstop and crept up the stairs, then kicked the closed door open, brandishing the doorstop.

  Two men were bent over the filing cabinet. ‘What do you think you’re doing in my house?’ she shouted.

  They both looked up. One was so surprised he dropped the batch of letters in his hands. She was relieved they weren’t the same men who hurt her mother, they were much too small and old.

  Before they could reply, the door partly closed again, then to her surprise James Wyatt appeared from behind it. ‘Charlie!’ he exclaimed. ‘What on earth are you doing here?’

  James Wyatt was a friend of her parents, she had met him at several parties here at the house. Now she remembered that the new blue Rover was his. ‘I just came to water the houseplants,’ she said, feeling a trifle foolish. ‘This is my home, remember! What are these men doing?’

  ‘We’re police officers. CID,’ the smaller and older of the two men said, his face cold and clearly irritated by the interruption. ‘We do have a search warrant and Mr Wyatt is accompanying us because he is your father’s lawyer.’

  Charlie’s stomach lurched. The man’s curt manner implied he was searching for evidence of a crime and she had no business to be here.

  ‘I thought you said Miss Weish had been informed about the search?’ Wyatt said to the men. He came right out of the room and took the doorstop from Charlie’s hand, putting his arm around her shoulders in a protective gesture.

  ‘We thought she had been too, must have been a slip-up,’ the policeman shrugged. He managed a tight smile. ‘We’re almost through here anyway, miss.’

  ‘But what are you looking for?’ Charlie asked.

  The other man picked up the papers he had dropped, not even glancing in her direction. The older one gave a sort of shrug and looked at Wyatt as if expecting him to explain.

  ‘Come downstairs with me, Charlie,’ Wyatt said. ‘We’ll make some tea and have a chat while they finish up.’

  Down in the kitchen the blinds were drawn and the table was stre
wn with the contents of a drawer Sylvia used for odds and ends. There were letters, odd bills and receipts, rubber bands and pieces of string.

  Mr Wyatt let the blind up at the window and put the kettle on. Charlie looked at him curiously. He was dressed in a dark pin-striped suit with a stiff collar on his shirt. On all the other occasions she’d met him he had been casually dressed and she hadn’t known what his profession was. He was a tall, well-built man with a hearty voice and a face to match. She remembered he shared her love of tennis; the last time he’d called at the house they had talked about Wimbledon.

  She didn’t know him very well, any more than she did most of her parents’ friends, but the impression she’d got of him on several meetings was favourable – he wasn’t snooty and he’d always been nice to talk to. Charlie thought she could trust him because her father obviously had.

  ‘I’m very sorry you had to walk in and find all this,’ Wyatt said, scooping up the contents of the drawer and putting it back where it belonged. ‘After all you’ve been through already, this must seem appalling. I was intending to call at the Mellings’ this evening to talk to you, after I’d seen your mother again. But maybe it’s best that you are here now, at least we’ll have some privacy.’

  He turned away for a moment to make the tea. When he got milk from the fridge he sniffed it to make sure it hadn’t gone off.

  ‘Good old Mrs Brown’s been in,’ he said with a boyish grin. ‘It’s as fresh as a daisy. I shall have to pop up to see her too today. It’s not fair on her to be so unsure about her position here.’