Charlie

by Lesley Pearse

Sylvia just groaned. ‘Terrible, I think I’ve got food poisoning.’

  Charlie looked hard at her mother. Her colour was normal, the same putty shade as always. She hadn’t been sick. She was definitely making it up. ‘The nurse will be in around twelve and she might have something she can give you,’ she said in a crisp voice. ‘Is there anything you need before I go?’

  ‘No, you go. I wouldn’t want you to miss your bus.’

  ‘Beryl’s telephone number is on the pad by the phone,’ Charlie said. ‘You can call me there in an emergency, but I’ll phone you each night anyway.’

  ‘I’d have to be dying before I’d spoil your holiday,’ Sylvia said and a tear rolled down her cheek.

  Charlie took a deep breath, leaned over and kissed her. ‘If the tummy ache stops later why don’t you sit outside in the sunshine for a bit? It’s lovely out by the back door.’

  She left then, but it was hard to walk away leaving her mother crying.

  To Charlie’s surprise, there was no frantic phone call that evening. She rang her anyway. Sylvia claimed she still had the stomach ache and she didn’t feel like eating, but she seemed resigned to being alone and even said she hoped Charlie would enjoy herself.

  It was so good to be back in the bar with Beryl and Ivor that first evening. Beryl looked very glamorous with her new blonde hair, and she glowed with delight when Charlie told her so. In no time at all it was as if she’d never been away, laughing, gossiping and teasing. Many of the locals had virtually ignored her last summer, but now they acted as if she had been bred and born in Salcombe. When she finally fell into her little bed at nearly one in the morning, it was wonderful to know she didn’t have to get up early.

  She and Ivor spent the following day together. It was too early in the year for him to open the shack, anyone who needed something just banged on his cottage door. They took Minnie for a walk in the morning and in the afternoon they went out in the MaryAnn. To know she had a few days’ release from cooking, cleaning and schoolwork was all Charlie needed to bring back her sense of humour. It seemed as if she was laughing all day at Ivor’s tales. The smell of the sea, the stiff breeze and the watery sunshine brought the colour back to her cheeks, and for the first time in months she had worked up a real appetite. Ivor had made her his special fish stew and she ate two large bowlfuls of it, relishing every delicious mouthful.

  ‘That’s better,’ he said approvingly when she almost staggered to an armchair and Minnie climbed up on her lap. ‘You look like my old first mate again. And to welcome you back you’re excused washing-up duties.’

  On the second day, Ivor drove her in Beryl’s car to Exeter to meet Mr Craig the valuer. All the way there, despite Ivor’s insistence there was nothing to be frightened of, Charlie felt very nervous. After all, Ivor had never met him, he’d only got his name and telephone number from an acquaintance. She imagined him to be a snooty, aristocratic type in an elegant showroom and she was uneasy about the story Ivor had told the man about how she’d been left these things by her grandmother.

  Suppose those miniatures hadn’t been bought fair and square by her father, but stolen from someone? She’d read in the newspapers that people did get caught sometimes when they tried to sell such things on. Surely if they were her grandmother’s she’d know the background about them, like how old they were, who the women painted were?

  The last thing she needed now was to be caught with stolen property.

  Her fears turned out to be groundless. Mr D. F. Craig turned out to be a rather wizened little man of over seventy who had now retired from his position as valuer for a major auction rooms. The address he’d given Ivor was his own home, a charming old cottage crammed with antiques, just outside Exeter.

  Over tea and cake he studied each of the items carefully. The miniatures, he assured her, were fine ones, he dated them at around 1820, and he thought that if they were put into a suitable auction they would collectively raise at least £5000, maybe more. As for the jade animals, the complete collection was worth in the region of another £1000, though he advised Charlie to seek out a specialist in jade to have this confirmed. He was less enthusiastic about the jewellery – he thought the stones were excellent but the settings a little too ornate. Yet he still valued all the pieces at over £3000. As Charlie had suspected, the other odds and ends, although pretty, weren’t very valuable.

  ‘Your grandmother left you a nice little nest-egg,’ he said, looking at Charlie over his glasses. ‘If you’ll take the advice of an old man, I suggest you hang on to them for a few years. Interest is mounting in miniatures, as in jade, but the economy is a little shaky right now, unemployment is at its highest since 1940, and it’s my experience that to sell at such a time is always a mistake. Five, even ten years on, they might be worth double what you’d get for them now. As for the jewellery, women’s tastes have changed since these large, ostentatious pieces were made, small and delicate is now more in vogue, but there will come a time when they’ll be fashionable again, be assured of that.’

  He asked for only £5, his standard fee for people requiring a valuation for insurance purposes, and then with the business over, he proudly showed Charlie some fine water-colours he’d painted himself.

  ‘I’ve spent my entire life dealing with other people’s family treasures,’ he said, ‘and a great part of it also collecting things myself, but discovering I could paint has given me more pleasure than anything else. Just you remember that, my dear, and if you have a talent, make use of it now while you are young. It’s more important to be happy and creative than it is to amass a fortune.’

  *

  Ivor took Charlie to a bank in Exeter afterwards. She opened a deposit account with the £200 which had been with the treasures, using his address. When she asked about placing some items with them for security, she found all she had to do was fill out a brief form, pay a nominal fee, and she was ushered down some stairs into the vault to lock her things in herself.

  It was an odd feeling looking around this secure room with its hundreds of tiny numbered drawers, knowing that the others probably contained far more valuable things than hers did. She had seen similar rooms in films about bank raids. She hoped bank robbers didn’t come to places like Exeter.

  ‘Well, that’s all sorted,’ Ivor said cheerfully as she came back up into the bank where he was waiting. ‘It wasn’t so bad, was it?’

  ‘Are you sure I’ve done the right thing?’ she asked as they went back along the street to find a café to have some lunch.

  ‘Of course you have,’ he insisted. ‘Any time things get tough, or your mother needs something, you can get those things out. It’s like an umbrella, my dear. Always handy to have on a rainy day.’

  The last two days of her stay flew by. On one she went out mackerel fishing with Ivor and a party of men down from London. They didn’t leer at her like that first fishing party she’d met, but then she was wearing oilskins and Ivor spoke to her as if she was his regular crew. Once out into deep water some of the men turned green, and she felt proud of herself that she could bait hooks, haul in lines and take the helm like a real fisherman, while these city men floundered about like silly schoolboys.

  ‘To think I was apprehensive about taking you on as help last year,’ Ivor said thoughtfully as he was watching her later gutting the fish they’d caught. ‘I think you could do anything you set your mind to, Charlie. I’ve never met anyone so determined.’

  Charlie laughed. A year ago she wouldn’t have wanted even to touch a fish, let alone gut it and cook it. ‘I don’t think I would have turned out the same without all the trouble. I suppose that’s what people mean when they say, “Every cloud has a silver lining.” ’

  Ivor had lit a fire in the kitchen and the warmth of its glow softened the stark whitewashed walls and the Spartan furnishings. Outside the wind had got up and the sea was rough, pounding noisily on to the slipway just a dozen or so yards away. Charlie had come to love this little cottage; it was here she had learned a
ll her most valuable lessons and found new strength to live with all the hurts and disappointments.

  ‘Do you still think about your father as much?’ Ivor asked a few moments later. He was sitting by the fire, filling his pipe. He felt it was an appropriate time to ask this question for he sensed Charlie was in a reflective mood.

  ‘Yes, all the time,’ she said and there was a slight crack in her voice. ‘It’s like a sore place which won’t heal, Ivor. People in Dartmouth don’t ever speak about him any more, at least not to me.’ She turned towards Ivor and he saw pain in her eyes. ‘I wish they would, really. It would get it out in the open, wouldn’t it?’

  Ivor nodded.

  ‘Sometimes I don’t even know what to think about him,’ she said sorrowfully. ‘Was he really the strong good man I believed in? Or was he as cruel and selfish as Mum would have me believe when she’s having a bad day? If I knew why he’d gone, and where, or even that he was dead, maybe I could put it aside for good. But there’s this sort of little candle of hope burning inside me. Do you know what I mean?’

  ‘I do,’ Ivor said sorrowfully as he lit his pipe. ‘I wouldn’t wish grief for a loved one on anyone, but it is a healing process and it does eventually fade. You’re stuck in a void, Charlie, a kind of purgatory of unanswered questions.’

  ‘One day I’ll find out the truth, she said firmly, turning back to the fish. ‘Perhaps Mum might start talking. I know there is a whole lot more she could tell me, but every time I try to prompt her, she just clams up and makes out she can’t remember. It’s very frustrating. Even the police seem to have given up now. I bet they wouldn’t have if he’d robbed a bank or something!’

  Ivor’s heart swelled with sympathy as he looked at her backview, a slender little girl in jeans and a worn-looking sweater, her black hair gleaming in the soft light, the way the sea did at night. She had grown into an adult since she moved back with her mother – laudable perhaps, yet it made him sad to think her girlhood had been cut so short.

  ‘It will come right,’ he assured her. ‘You are too brave and strong for it not to.’

  ‘You are too,’ she said softly, turning her head to look at him. ‘I don’t know what I would have done if I hadn’t met you. You are so special and so very wise.’

  Ivor chuckled. ‘You wouldn’t have said that in my fighting and drinking days! What you see now is an old man who only gained the little wisdom he has from his own near self-destruction.’

  Finally on Good Friday Charlie had to go home. ‘You’re to come regularly in future,’ Beryl said firmly as she kissed her goodbye at the door of the pub. ‘So don’t you go making excuses. As for that mother of yours, be firm with her. Make her walk, insist she does a few chores, maybe even find out if there’s any clubs she could join to make some new friends.’

  Charlie felt so much stronger after her short holiday that she even believed she might be able to do this.

  ‘Thank you for having me,’ she said, hugging the older woman. ‘I’ve had such a good time.’

  Ivor and Minnie saw her off on to the bus. ‘Happy Easter,’ Ivor said as it came along. ‘Just remember you’ve only got this one term to get through before the summer holiday. It’s only really one more year until you’ll be through with school for good.’

  He hugged her then, and Charlie knew he felt as sad to be parting as she did. Just as she was about to get on the bus he pulled a chocolate Easter bunny from his coat pocket. ‘I’ve been waiting a long time to find someone special enough to buy another one of these,’ he said, looking shy.

  As the bus drove away towards Kingsbridge Charlie looked down at the chocolate rabbit in her lap and knew that the last time he bought one was for his daughter.

  Easter was later the following year, in April instead of March, but so cold it might still have been the middle of winter. Charlie was eighteen now and after the holidays she had only her final exams to do and then she could look for a job.

  Yet a year hadn’t brought much change to her life. Her mother could walk a little better, at times she made an effort with her appearance too. Some days she was just the way she’d been when Charlie was younger, chatty, giggly and interested in everything. Yet as if to balance these improvements, her bouts of severe depression were worse. At these times she was hell to live with, she stayed in bed most of the day, then stayed up watching television until it closed down. If Charlie ever asked her to turn it down, she turned nasty, shouting, throwing things and crying endlessly. She was on tranquillizers, but Charlie felt they were making her worse long-term rather than better.

  Charlie had had a boyfriend back before Christmas; his name was Simon and she’d met him in the bar at work. He was an articled clerk with a firm of solicitors in Dartmouth and for a few short weeks Charlie thought he was pretty special. She never found out what his real reason was for packing her in. His excuse at the time was that he didn’t want to get serious. She knew that wasn’t true. But whether it was because she’d taken him home to meet her mother, because of her father, or just that she refused to sleep with him, she didn’t know. Maybe it was all three.

  Visits to Salcombe were the high spots of the year, although except for a whole two weeks in August when a local charity took her mother away to Cornwall, they were only weekends. The holiday in August was the best time she had ever known. She sailed almost every day with anyone who wanted a crew, went fishing with Ivor, even had a little light-hearted romance with a sweet young waiter who worked in one of the restaurants.

  Since her eighteenth birthday back in March she’d progressed to being a waitress at the Royal Castle with a little more money and good tips on top. She was guarding this job carefully, not only for the money, or because the few vacancies that ever came up were always highly sought after, but because she liked the people who came to stay at the hotel, and the other staff. Their company was the nearest thing she had to a social life.

  But now it was Easter again and she was off to Salcombe for another four days. Like last year she had tried to anticipate everything her mother would need in advance. And just the same again, she was playing ill.

  ‘Charlie!’

  She gritted her teeth at the whining cry. ‘Yes, Mum,’ she called back from her bedroom.

  ‘There isn’t any toilet paper!’

  ‘There is, it’s down beneath the cistern,’ Charlie called back. This time Sylvia’s complaint was chronic diarrhoea, and it was hard to prove she didn’t have it without marching into the bathroom.

  Sylvia had got quite clever at inventing new complaints; once she frightened Charlie with a high temperature. It turned out she’d put the thermometer on her hot-water bottle. She’d drunk salt water to make herself sick, taken an overdose of aspirin once, and both these last occasions had made sure Charlie couldn’t go to Salcombe for a couple of days as she’d planned.

  But this time Charlie was determined to go. She arranged four days off from work, Beryl and Ivor were expecting her. The doctor had called that morning and said Sylvia was fine. Nothing was going to stop her.

  ‘Are you going to come out of there and say goodbye?’ Charlie called through the locked door. ‘I have to go now or I’ll miss the bus.’

  ‘I can’t,’ the plaintive voice came back. ‘Go on, have a good time. Don’t worry about me.’

  Charlie leaned her head against the doorpost dejectedly. The woman was impossible, so utterly selfish it defied belief. Last year when she’d gone away to Cornwall with the charity, apparently she’d been the life and soul of the party for the whole fortnight. She’d charmed the helpers, joined in every game and sing-song with enthusiasm, and what’s more she’d dressed up every day in some of her old glamorous clothes and given everyone the impression she was like that all the time.

  The minute she got back here, she reverted to her old self. One of the helpers had called one day unexpectedly and was so shocked by Sylvia’s slovenly appearance she’d scolded Charlie the moment she got back from school. It turned out Sylvia had tol
d everyone on that holiday that her daughter cared nothing for her. And they’d believed her!

  ‘Okay, I’m going then,’ Charlie called back. ‘I’ll phone you later to see how you are.’ She left then, slamming the door behind her.

  This time she didn’t go straight off to the bus, but stepped on to the paved area at the side of the living room window. She didn’t feel she could walk away while her mother was still stuck in the bathroom.

  A couple of minutes passed, and then she heard the bathroom door open and her mother come out. Peeping through a gap in the net curtains, Charlie could see her clearly. She wasn’t using her walking aid.

  To Charlie’s absolute amazement she walked entirely unaided across the room. She was stiff and slow, but she wasn’t even holding on to the settee for support. She then sat down, first grabbing the bunch of grapes from the fruit bowl, and swung her legs up on the settee, gobbling down the grapes like a greedy child with sweets.

  Charlie’s blood almost boiled with anger. She was on the point of going back in to have it out with her, but she stopped herself. At least it was proof her mother wasn’t really ill. No one with a bad stomach would eat grapes like that.

  She turned and hurried down the street towards the bus stop. For some time now she had suspected her mother could walk better and stand for longer than she let on. If she got out of bed during the night, Charlie rarely heard the clonk of that walking aid. On several occasions she’d made it to the local shop for cigarettes too, claiming later it nearly killed her.

  If she could walk that well it was something to rejoice about, not hide. What sort of woman was she that she chose to pretend to be a cripple to get attention?

  Charlie was still angry when she got to Salcombe, and as Ivor was waiting for her in the Victoria Inn, she blurted it out immediately to both him and Beryl. They exchanged knowing glances.

  ‘Oh dear,’ Beryl sighed. ‘I suspected as much. Twice recently I’ve called there to see her and she’s got to the door a bit too quickly. I noticed too that she never has the walking frame near her; most people do when they really need it. I didn’t say anything to you when we talked on the phone because I thought you might be wanting to surprise us with the good news.’