At nearly five o’clock, Meg finally surfaced. Charlie was lying on her bed reading a magazine when she came in with two mugs of coffee.
‘Hi there,’ she said, yawned and handed one of the mugs to Charlie. She was wearing a yellow, very badly stained embroidered kimono, her dark hair was like a bird’s nest and she had rubbed the previous night’s mascara around her eyes. ‘Sorry to leave you to settle in alone, but we didn’t get to bed until five this morning. And you’re a real angel cleaning the kitchen. I’ve never seen it looking so spick and span.’
Charlie glowed. She knew she ought to make it clear she wasn’t going to do it all the time, but she couldn’t bring herself to be officious just yet.
Meg sat down on the bed beside her, tucking her legs under her kimono. ‘So come on then! Tell me all about yourself.’
Charlie was surprised and pleased by such a direct approach. Messy as Meg was, there was something very compelling about her. She had rather bulbous dark brown eyes and her gaze was intense and unwavering.
‘There’s not much to tell,’ Charlie said with a smile. ‘I’m eighteen, just escaped from school. My father is Chinese, mother English.’
‘There’s more,’ Meg said with a shake of her head. ‘I can read auras, and I knew the moment I answered the door to you that you’d recently come through a trauma.’
Charlie was very taken aback by this. She had read several articles in magazines about just this subject, and dismissed it as being even more far-fetched than palm reading or Tarot cards. Yet how else could Meg know about a trauma? Charlie hadn’t said a word the previous day about her background.
‘You might as well tell me,’ Meg said with a smile. ‘I’ll winkle it out of you before long anyway. Besides, we’re flatmates now, and for that to work well, we have to become friends.’
Charlie could see the sense in that, but her natural caution told her it wasn’t a good idea to tell a complete stranger too much. ‘My mother committed suicide three months ago,’ she said. ‘I expect it’s that you picked up on.’
Meg looked shattered. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she gasped, putting her hand over her mouth. ‘I didn’t mean to be nosy, only friendly.’
‘I know,’ Charlie said. ‘And I appreciate it. But I came to London to put it behind me, so do me a favour and drop the subject?’
Meg looked at Charlie hard for a moment or two. ‘You aren’t a typical Piscean,’ she said at length. ‘Mostly they blurt everything out, whether asked or not. And they kind of wallow in their hard luck. I shall have to do your chart. My guess is that you have Leo on the ascendant, you have a great deal of pride.’
Charlie half smiled. She didn’t believe in astrology any more than auras or ghosts. Her father, however, had believed in I Ching, and she knew quite a bit about that. She thought perhaps in a day or two when she knew Meg a little better, she might share it with her.
‘Have you got anything planned for tonight?’ Meg asked a bit later, after she’d looked at all Charlie’s clothes and tried some of them on.
‘No, I haven’t,’ Charlie replied, laughing as Meg held up a pink wool mini-dress against her. ‘And as that looks so hopelessly old-fashioned, I think I’d better sit here and consider what new clothes to buy with my first wage packet.’
‘No you won’t, you’ll come down The Fox with us,’ Meg said. ‘It’s just a pub really, but it has a late licence and a live band. All the tastiest fellas get in there. As for your clothes, some of yours are pretty neat. I love that blue velvet jacket. You could wear that with jeans.’
When Meg went off to have a bath, Charlie took out the velvet jacket and looked at it. It was odd that Meg should pick that out, for it had been Sylvia’s. Like all her clothes from before Jin disappeared it was an expensive one. Charlie had saved it and a few other classic items purely because she’d thought she might be able to sell them later on. Until now she hadn’t considered wearing any of them herself.
The big back room at The Fox was dark, smoky, sweaty and packed to capacity. On the stage, at the far end, a group who had clearly modelled themselves on T. Rex were playing ‘Ride a White Swan’ with more enthusiasm than talent.
Charlie had a pint of cider in her hand – her flatmates had told her she’d have to get used to drinking pints as it was too much trouble to keep queuing for drinks. She drank half of it quickly, partly to calm her nerves, partly so no one could spill it on her. She didn’t want to spoil her jacket.
Looking around her, she felt she’d worn the right clothes. She was somewhere in between the girls who wore very dressy cocktail-type frocks, the glam-rock brigade with glittery jackets and enormously wide flares, and the more hippie element in their long flowing dresses, or tie-dyes and jeans.
The men were equally diversely dressed. Student types in denim or corduroy, Adam Ant look-a likes with painted faces, rockers in leather jackets, skinny hippies with tangled hair and beads, and a still larger proportion in smart suits, shirts and ties.
‘Watch out for “the Suits”,’ Beth whispered in her ear. ‘Most of them are villains. But they are always good for a few drinks, they’ve still got the old-fashioned idea that girls can’t buy their own.’
It soon became apparent that her new friends’ sole purpose in coming here was to pick up some men. All three had transformed themselves from how they looked a few hours earlier. Meg looked ravishing, like a gypsy dancer in a close-fitting long red swirly dress. Washed and left to dry naturally, her hair was a mass of corkscrew ringlets, with strategically placed glittery hair-slides. Beth looked like an angelic page-boy in tight velvet trousers, long boots and a man’s frilly dress shirt. Even Anne, who had less to build on to start with, looked good in a long black embroidered dress. It was slashed open to mid-thigh and she had surprisingly shapely legs. The girls didn’t stay in one place, but kept moving around the room, introducing Charlie to everyone they knew.
The music was so loud that it was impossible to hold a real conversation with anyone. Drinks seemed to appear from nowhere, and although a couple of years ago Charlie would have found a place like this absolute heaven and taken the opportunity to show off, now she wasn’t so sure she liked being the object of everyone’s attention.
She didn’t like the way men openly stared at her, or all the cracks she heard about her being ‘a Chink’. She felt incensed when one man pinched her buttocks and said something about ‘I’ll have the sweet and sour, with sauce.’ She wanted to enjoy herself, after all she’d had precious little fun in the past two years, but the truth was, she felt threatened and out of her depth.
‘Come on, pick out a man,’ Meg said, as she returned from a sortie across the room, bringing back a third pint of cider for Charlie. ‘Seen anyone you fancy?’
‘I’ve already got a boyfriend, and he’s coming round in the morning,’ Charlie said nervously. She had a strong feeling whoever the other girls picked on tonight would be coming home with them. She wanted to fit in with the girls, but she wasn’t prepared to sleep with a total stranger to do it.
‘That doesn’t have to stop you having a bit of fun tonight,’ Meg said archly. ‘Rob over there fancies you rotten. Come and meet him, he’s nice, and harmless.’
Charlie shuddered as she looked to where Meg was pointing and saw a gangly-looking chap with long dark hair staring at her. He had pockmarked skin from old acne, his denim jacket was too big for him, she thought he looked awful.
‘If I go and speak to him he’ll think I fancy him,’ she said.
‘Of course he will, but there’s no harm in you just stringing him along a bit,’ Meg replied with a persuasive, wicked grin. ‘We were all going on to a club later, so drink up and get in the party mood.’
‘I’m already half cut,’ Charlie said; she wasn’t used to drinking. ‘Look, it’s really nice of you all to want to show me a good time on my first night, but I’m really not up to it. Stop worrying about me, go and have a good time. I’ll find my own way home later.’
Meg gave her the o
ddest look, a mixture of disbelief and pique. ‘Well, if you’re absolutely sure,’ she said.
‘I am sure,’ Charlie reassured her. ‘Now go and enjoy yourself.’
Charlie slipped out while Beth and Meg were snogging a couple of men, and Anne was talking to someone else. Once away from the smoky pub and its loud music, she felt easier. It was a beautiful warm night, a million stars in the black velvet sky, and she was seeing Andrew tomorrow. Maybe in a week or two’s time when she’d found her feet in London, she’d enjoy nights out like this one. She hoped so, the other girls would think she was stuck up and strange if she didn’t join them.
Charlie was dressed and ready to go out when Andrew rang the door-bell at eleven the following morning. She picked up her shoulder-bag, and ran down the stairs eagerly.
‘Charlie!’ he exclaimed as she opened the door. For a moment he just stood there looking at her. She was wearing her old white mini-dress, somehow she didn’t think he’d care if it was old-fashioned, it was after all a hot, sunny day and she wanted to improve her sun-tan. ‘You look even more gorgeous than I remembered.’
‘And so do you,’ she smiled. He was wearing a short-sleeved, open-necked shirt and jeans. His face and forearms were already deeply sun-tanned and his blue eyes were twice as vivid as the ones in her memory.
‘Can I come in then, and inspect your new pad?’
Charlie blushed. ‘I think we’d better do that bit later. The other girls are still in bed.’ She didn’t want to tell him that each of them had a man with them. Charlie had been woken around half past two by them coming in, they were all quite drunk and she’d felt intimidated by the rough male voices. They put a Rolling Stones record on very loud, and both Meg and Beth kept screaming with laughter about something. Fortunately it didn’t last very long. Meg and Beth must have taken their men off to bed first, and Anne stayed in the living room with hers, turning the music down low.
Charlie had tiptoed through the living room this morning to go to the kitchen and bathroom. Anne was asleep on one of the mattresses, a fair-haired man with tattoos on his arms lying flat on his back beside her, snoring loudly. The whole room stank of stale sweat and it sickened her.
‘Okay then, where shall we go?’ Andrew asked. ‘It’s nice up on Hampstead Heath. I could take you to the pub at lunchtime so you can meet everyone.’
‘That sounds super,’ she said, and impulsively hugged him. His arms locked right round her, and his lips found hers.
His kiss took her right back to the day at Slapton Sands, before her mother’s death. It was sweet and tender, re-awakening all those feelings she’d put aside and thought she’d lost forever.
‘So where’s this scooter?’ she asked, once he finally let her go. She felt suddenly light-headed and deliriously happy. This was what she’d come to London for.
Charlie had never ridden pillion before, and she was just a bit scared as Andrew set off towards Highgate, but holding on tight round his waist she soon got over it.
‘You don’t have to worry about me doing a ton,’ he shouted back to her. ‘This is just about its top speed. We’ll probably have a struggle getting up Whittington Hill.’
Charlie hadn’t been to Highgate before, nor did she know that the hill up to it was named after Dick Whittington. But Andrew was a mine of information, pointing out landmarks like the cemetery where Karl Marx was buried, and slowing right down so she could see all the pretty cottages in the Village.
He drove to Jack Straw’s Castle where he worked and left the scooter in the car park, then they went for a walk across the Heath to see the Ponds. Charlie was amazed to find dozens of people were swimming in one of them.
‘I should have thought of this yesterday,’ Andrew said looking wistfully at a group of teenagers having a water fight. ‘We could have brought our cossies and had a picnic.’
‘Never mind,’ Charlie said, sitting down on the grass. ‘It’s nice just to watch.’
Andrew sat down beside her and pointed out a clump of trees in the distance. ‘There’s a Ladies Only pool tucked away in those bushes,’ he grinned. ‘The other night some of us lads from the pub went swimming in there. It was great, as warm as bathwater. But the police turned up and we had to leg it, dressing as we went. John, one of my mates, lost his shoe. He came back the next day to look for it, but he never did find it.’
As Andrew launched into several more tales about the lads from the pub and his old flatmates who’d now gone off to France hitchhiking, Charlie became very aware of how isolated she’d been for the past months. She had no funny stories to tell him, she had lost touch with world news, fashion and pop music. Even if she was to tell him a couple of amusing incidents that had happened in the course of selling off the furniture at Mayflower Close, she felt that would only draw attention to how bleak her life had been.
Fortunately Andrew seemed unaware that she wasn’t reciprocating with any anecdotes, and he moved on to talk about his parents’ annoyance that he wasn’t prepared to come home to Oxford for the summer. ‘My folks are cool in some ways,’ he said. ‘But as soon as I’m back there Mum treats me like a little boy and Dad badgers me to swot and stuff. It was a real drag getting thrown out of the flat, all three of us were intending to get labouring work on a building site for a few weeks so we could make enough money to pay the rent and save enough for a holiday later on. I hoped I could take you away somewhere. But I’m not really earning enough for that now. And I’ve got the drag of finding another place for us all in September.’
Charlie could at least relate to this, and described some of the awful flats she’d seen. ‘They want so much money too,’ she said indignantly. ‘I don’t know how they have the cheek to expect people to live in such damp, dirty places.’
‘Nigel said before he left for France that he’s got an uncle who might let us his house in Brent,’ Andrew said, looking at her thoughtfully. ‘That’s part of Golders Green. His uncle’s a Rabbi, and he’s moving up to Newcastle, so he’s going to let out his old home furnished. Nigel did say he might look on us more kindly if we had a girl sharing with us; apparently he believes girls are likely to create a little more order around the place.’
‘Me, do you mean?’ Charlie asked.
‘Well, yes,’ he shrugged. ‘Does the thought appal you?’
Charlie giggled. ‘No, not exactly, it’s just a bit unexpected, that’s all.’
A silence fell between them. Charlie wondered if he meant just sharing the house, or his bed.
‘You think I’m being a bit previous, don’t you?’ Andrew said after a few minutes. ‘I didn’t really mean – oh hell, I’ve put my foot in it.’
‘You haven’t,’ she said. ‘It’s just that we haven’t had any time yet to see how things will work out between us.’
‘I didn’t really intend to sound as if I expected us to be, well, you know,’ he said, blushing furiously. ‘I was more thinking along the lines that all four of us would be friends, with our own rooms. Anyway, that’s all in the future. Nigel won’t be back for at least a month and his uncle isn’t moving until September anyway.’
Andrew dropped the subject and moved on to ask about her flat and the other girls. Charlie explained a little about them, omitting that she suspected they slept with a different man every weekend. ‘They are a bit wacky,’ she said. ‘But then they’re art students. I’ll just have to play it by ear and see how it goes.’
‘Have the girls got summer jobs?’ he asked a bit later.
‘I don’t know,’ Charlie said thoughtfully. None of them had mentioned work, but then the subject hadn’t come up. In fact she hadn’t spoken of her interview tomorrow either. ‘Why?’
‘Just wondered,’ he said. ‘But it will probably be hell for you if they haven’t. They’ll be larking around half the night when you want to go to bed. I’ve had some of that in the past, it can be a real pain.’
*
Charlie must have fallen asleep lying on the grass in the afternoon, as she woke t
o find Andrew leaning over her, gently stroking her cheek.
‘What time is it?’ she asked. They had been to Jack Straw’s at lunchtime to meet his employers and friends. By the time they came out at closing time, Charlie was a bit tiddly and they’d found a quiet place to lie down.
‘Fourish,’ he said, kissing her nose. ‘You fell asleep on me almost as soon as we got here.’
‘I’m sorry,’ she said, sliding her arms around him and pulling him closer. ‘It must have been those drinks. Were you really cheesed off?’
‘No, I dropped off too,’ he said. ‘It’s so nice just relaxing in the sun. I don’t get much chance normally because even in the afternoons, the other guys pester me.’
‘In what way?’ She arched her eyebrows suggestively.
Andrew sniggered. ‘Not that kind of pestering. I meant wanting to chat, play records, you know the stuff. At heart I’m a bit of a loner. I like to just lie about and think about things. Do you?’
Charlie nodded. ‘Yes, I suppose I do. Though if you’d met me two years ago, you wouldn’t have thought I was capable of thought. I was the original butterfly brain then.’
He gently kissed her lips, then drew back slightly, leaning up over her on one elbow, looking down at her. ‘Tell me how it is now,’ he asked. ‘I mean, about your mum.’
She had glimpsed several new sides of Andrew today. The devil-may-care student bent only on enjoying himself with the lads, a slick and charming barman, and the working-class boy who felt pressured to make good. But now as he leaned over her, his eyes showing his deep concern for her, she saw just Beryl’s nephew, the sensitive boy who had put aside a budding romance, comforted and cheered her without any thought for himself.
‘The pain has gone,’ she said, looking up at him. ‘Just a little dull ache inside, but I can live with that. This morning when I opened the door to you I felt as if I’d just come out the end of a long, dark tunnel.’
Charlie Page 26