Charlie

by Lesley Pearse

  He smiled and stroked her cheek again. ‘That’s good. I’ve been so worried about you, Charlie. Afraid that you wouldn’t return to being the girl I first met, scared too that I’d built up an imaginary girl in my head, and when I saw you again it would be all wrong.’

  Charlie’s thoughts about him had run along similar lines.

  ‘Am I the same as the girl in your head?’ she asked.

  ‘Better,’ he smiled. ‘The Charlie I met back at Beryl’s was a bit cool, she didn’t give much away about herself. Then throughout that awful week before the funeral, you told me so much that it was like being with another quite different girl. Once I got back to London I couldn’t sort out in my head which was the real Charlie. My heart told me one thing, my head said another. So many times I wanted just to charge down there and have it out with you. Sometimes I was actually angry that you were holding a bit of my heart, yet you gave me nothing in return.’

  Charlie blushed. Looking back, she realized she was so hung up on her own problems and grief that she hadn’t considered how he might be feeling. She’d lapped up all his concern and support, but never for one moment thought of offering him some too.

  ‘June, that friend of mine you met at the funeral, always said I was selfish,’ she said sheepishly. ‘I believed I’d stopped being so, but I suppose it’s hard to change your real character. But in my defence, I was so mixed up, I couldn’t get my head round anything except my schoolwork.’

  ‘And now?’ he asked.

  His anxious expression moved her. He wasn’t an empty-headed waster like Guy. He might like rowdy parties, going out to get drunk and everything else that went with being a hare-brained student, but his consistency proved there was a great deal more to him.

  ‘I want to start all over again as if we’d just met,’ she said. ‘To have fun together and see where that takes us. Is that enough to be getting on with?’

  His lips quivered as if he wanted to laugh. ‘Do we have to start right at the beginning?’ he asked. ‘I rather thought we might be able to pick up from the day on the beach, you know, when the kisses were getting a bit hot.’

  Charlie giggled. ‘We could try,’ she said.

  His answering kiss stripped away the last three months. A sweet and warm exploratory kiss quickly led to bolder, more passionate ones. The sun grew cooler, people around them packed up their rugs and picnics, but they stayed on, locked in each other’s arms, shamelessly devouring one another.

  It was after seven before they walked hand in hand back to the pub to collect Andrew’s scooter. ‘Let’s go and have a meal to celebrate,’ Charlie suggested. ‘On me because I’m feeling rich.’

  ‘Now, why are you feeling rich?’ he asked, stopping to kiss her yet again.

  ‘Because I’m with you,’ she said.

  He laughed and hugged her to him. ‘I don’t normally have that effect on people.’

  ‘Well, you do on me,’ she laughed back. ‘I’m rich with tingles, rich with belief I’ll get that job tomorrow. London suddenly looks wonderful. Is that enough reasons to celebrate?’

  ‘More than enough,’ he said. ‘So where do we go? In the pub, or have you got something special in mind?’

  ‘Chinese,’ she said without any hesitation. ‘We always went to a Chinese restaurant when Dad had something he wanted to celebrate.’

  ‘Did I ever tell you it’s my favourite food?’ Andrew said, as he started up the scooter.

  ‘No!’ she said. ‘But there’s an awful lot I don’t know about you, and it’s my intention to start finding it out as soon as possible.’

  He didn’t reply to that, just squeezed her two hands clasped about his middle. As they drove down towards Hampstead Village, Charlie was suddenly aware she had never been this happy before in her entire life.

  At nine-thirty the following morning Charlie arrived at Haagman’s photographic laboratory in Endell Street, Holborn for her interview. It didn’t look very prepossessing, plain concrete steps from the street up to an equally dreary reception area furnished with a lone battered wooden bench and a dark-haired girl sitting behind a hatch which reminded Charlie of those in British Rail ticket offices. The girl slid back the glass partition only far enough to take Charlie’s name and hand her an application form to fill in, then she disappeared through a door beyond her cubby-hole and didn’t come back.

  By quarter past ten Charlie was on the point of leaving, when a portly, middle-aged woman with a jet-black beehive, wearing a red suit and a great deal of jewellery, came through the door. ‘Are you waiting for someone?’ she asked.

  Charlie stood up. ‘Yes, for Mrs Haagman. I had an interview with her at nine-thirty. My name is Charlie Weish.’

  ‘I’m Mrs Haagman,’ the woman replied. She neither smiled nor apologized for keeping her waiting so long, just took the application form from her hands. ‘Follow me!’

  She led the way into a large first-floor room. One side of it was filled with large machines, which Charlie assumed processed the films; in the middle was a series of light-boxes, over one of which the girl she’d seen earlier appeared to be studying negatives. The remainder of the space was taken up by benches at which perhaps ten or twelve people were sitting or standing doing a variety of different jobs. There was no talking or laughter, only the buzzing and clonking sounds of the machines.

  Although Charlie wasn’t given much chance to study the place, she noted that everyone in the room was young, a balance of male and female. A boy with long brown hair tied back in a pony-tail grinned at her, then made a face at Mrs Haagman’s back. Charlie had to assume that was some kind of warning.

  Mrs Haagman went straight into an office and sat down behind a large desk covered with packets of photographs. She ordered Charlie to shut the door behind her, then indicated with one podgy, beringed hand that she was to sit down. She didn’t speak again, but studied the application form.

  ‘What is Charlie short for?’ she asked without looking up.

  ‘Nothing, that’s it,’ Charlie replied. ‘It’s a Chinese name.’ She explained its origins. The only reply to that was a sniff.

  ‘So you’ve just left school after taking four “A” levels,’ the woman said after what seemed like at least ten minutes. ‘Are you planning to go to university?’

  ‘No,’ Charlie said. ‘I’ve just come to London to work.’

  ‘What makes you want to work here?’

  Charlie felt that was a trick question. She could hardly say she just wanted any job as long as it was well paid. ‘It sounded interesting,’ she said.

  ‘There’s nothing interesting about it,’ Mrs Haagman said with yet another disapproving sniff. ‘We process films quickly. The work is tedious and repetitive. But then I’m sure the agency told you that. So the truth. Why do you want to work here when you are clearly capable of something a lot more ambitious?’

  Charlie was once again tempted to get up and leave, she thought the woman was insufferably rude. But she needed a job, the money she had saved wouldn’t last long in London.

  ‘I only just arrived from Devon,’ she said. ‘I need time to think about what I want to do as a career, and I’m on my own, with rent to pay, so I need a job straight away. I was told I could earn good money here and I thought it would be a stop-gap until my exam results come through.’

  ‘That’s better,’ the woman said, but she still didn’t smile. ‘I do pay well for those prepared to work hard. I do not tolerate bad time-keeping or absenteeism. My staff have no set jobs, I move them around during the course of the day whenever one section gets behind. I will not stand for anyone complaining about this. Now do you want the job?’

  Charlie thought it would have been appropriate to show a prospective employee round before being asked that question. ‘Yes, please,’ she said anyway, thinking she could always leave if it was as awful as she feared.

  ‘Right then.’ The woman got up. ‘You can start right away. The basic pay is fifteen pounds. It’s a five-day week, from nin
e to five-thirty with half an hour for lunch. If I wish you to stay later or work on Saturday I will tell you by four in the afternoon. Have you got your insurance card with you?’

  Charlie took it out of her handbag and handed it over.

  Mrs Haagman didn’t even bother to take her out into the main room and introduce her to any of the staff, she just yelled, ‘Martin!’ through the door.

  Martin was the young man with the pony-tail. It seemed he could read minds because Mrs Haagman gave him no instructions, just announced, ‘This is Charlie,’ before retreating and shutting her office door dismissively.

  ‘Well, that’s it, Charlie,’ he said, nodding back at the closed door. ‘You are now one of the Hag’s drones, and I’m supposed to show you around and put you to work. In case you didn’t catch it, my name’s Martin, I’m what passes for the supervisor, but only because I’ve been here longer than anyone else. The Hag is also Queen Bee, she sits in her office all day and counts her money.’

  Charlie couldn’t help but laugh. There was something so very surreal about this place, it put her in mind of weird Sixties films.

  ‘It’s not often people laugh in here,’ he said. ‘At least not when the Hag’s in.’

  Charlie managed to splutter out what she thought and Martin laughed too. ‘You’re right, it is a bit like that, a cross between an episode of The Prisoner and The Avengers. You couldn’t be an Emma Peel, could you? Sent here to free us?’

  Martin’s tour was very brief, and he didn’t bother to tell her anything about the film-processing machines because he said she would never be having anything to do with them. Instead he showed her a couple of girls in front of a small mountain of envelopes, taking the unprocessed films out, then moved on to other equally unskilled labour.

  ‘Cutting the negatives,’ he said, allowing her a glimpse of someone’s holiday snaps on a light-box. ‘That’s a cream job, because it’s the only one you get a whimsy of excitement from. Sometimes there’s a few “rudies”. Then there’s lots of gory operation ones from the hospitals.’

  ‘Do you really get rude pictures?’ she asked as he took her over to where a handful of people were working out the price of the finished prints.

  Martin nodded. ‘Oh yes, but the Hag makes us separate them from the others. She says it’s an offence to send pornography through the post. So if they want their dirty pictures they have to come to the office and collect them. But in our opinion she hangs on to them in the hope she might find someone she could blackmail.’

  Charlie thought Martin must be joking, but if he was, she didn’t know how he managed to keep such a deadpan face. But as he moved on to explain how the prices were worked out, and how to ensure that the right person received the right prints, she reminded herself to ask him again about that later.

  She soon saw that the work would be tedious, the vast majority of the staff were either unpacking, or packing the prints up to post back to the customer. She hoped she might get to do the invoices, that at least required some brainwork.

  Martin started her off with unpacking the unprocessed films, and showed the system of marking them. Some, it seemed, came direct from shops which collected the money directly from their customers; these were brought in daily by messenger boys, others came straight from the public, sent in special envelopes with a return address label.

  Charlie was put to work beside Rita and Jenny. Rita was a small redhead with a big bust, and a good bit older than the rest of the staff. Charlie wondered fleetingly why she chose to wear middle-aged woman’s clothes, no makeup and had her red hair tied back in such an unflattering way. With a bit of effort she could look very attractive, but instead she looked like a missionary.

  Jenny was a student, working there for the holidays. She was plain and thin with thick spectacles, and like almost everyone apart from Rita, she wore jeans and a tee-shirt.

  Rita spoke first. ‘Don’t look so glum,’ she said with a cheerful grin. ‘Once the Hag’s gone out it’s not so bad.’

  ‘Is she always so rude?’ Charlie whispered. She had already worked out for herself that noise and chatter weren’t approved of by the Hag.

  ‘You haven’t seen anything yet,’ Rita whispered back. ‘One blast of her breath would strip wallpaper.’

  Jenny giggled at this. ‘Rita’s the only one of us brave enough to stand up to her. The rest of us grovel. Martin will train you in that, he’s aiming at an honours degree in arse-licking and kow-towing.’

  Charlie felt heartened by both the girls’ sense of humour. Rita was particularly intriguing; her appearance was off-putting, but anyone who could make off-the-cuff, funny remarks and stand up to the boss, sounded worth getting to know better. She thought it might prove an interesting job after all.

  At twelve-thirty the Hag came out of her office. ‘Martin!’ she bellowed.

  Martin left his post at a light-box and hurried up to her. Charlie was too far away to hear what was being said, but when the woman came striding down the room, casting malevolent looks at anyone who dared so much as glance at her, Charlie saw Martin was grinning and surmised that meant the Hag was going out.

  There was a deathly hush for a few minutes after the door slammed behind her. Charlie wondered why. She was soon to discover the reason, however, for Martin crossed over to the window and looked out.

  ‘She’s getting in a taxi!’ he called out. ‘It’s pulling away!’

  Suddenly everything changed. The noise level went from utter silence to several decibels with chatter, laughter and chairs scraping on the tiled floor. Some of the staff picked up tiny catapults made from paper clips and rubber bands and began flicking scraps of paper around.

  ‘Did she say how long she would be?’ Rita yelled out across the room to Martin.

  ‘She was her usual evasive self,’ he shouted back. ‘Said maybe an hour, but she’ll be a lot longer than that because she sprayed herself with perfume before she went. That means she’s off to get laid.’

  ‘Who on earth would want to screw her?’ a young lad with red hair working one of the processing machines yelled out. ‘I’d turn queer if she was the last woman left on earth.’

  Martin galloped across the room towards Charlie, caught hold of her hand and made her stand up. ‘Never mind who’s weird enough to fancy shagging the Hag, let’s all welcome Charlie, the latest Christian to be thrown to the lions.’

  Charlie could hardly believe what she was seeing and hearing. Everyone came crowding towards her, clapping their hands, stamping their feet and shouting things as diverse as ‘Poor cow’, ‘Tell us about yourself’ and ‘What a pretty girl like you doing here?’

  Martin rapped on the table with a pair of scissors for silence. ‘You have to speak. It’s tradition for newcomers,’ he said, looking at Charlie. ‘Don’t flunk it and giggle. We want to know a little bit about you.’

  Charlie felt as if she was blushing from her head right down to her toes, yet the warmth and camaraderie of this group touched her. ‘As you can see for yourselves I’m half Chinese,’ she said. ‘I’m eighteen, just up from Devon. I’m living in a flat in Hornsey with three other girls. My interests are drinking cider, Pink Floyd, and finding out where my father is.’

  She had no idea what made her say that about her father. It just sprang out from nowhere. On reflection later, she supposed it was perhaps the need to make herself sound interesting, and if that had been her aim, she was soon to find that it worked.

  Martin ordered everyone back to work after a few minutes, but the room didn’t return to silence. Jokes and gossip were shouted around the room, drowning the sounds of the machines. At first Charlie found it difficult to concentrate on marking the films while questions were fired at her from all directions, but when she saw everyone else was capable of working at their previous speed whilst talking, she soon made herself master it too.

  Rita was clearly interested by Charlie’s remark about her father, and insisted that she explained herself. Charlie kept the story as a simple
mystery, she didn’t mention the bankruptcy, or that her mother had since killed herself. Apart from being reluctant to discuss things she still found painful, she was determined that she wasn’t going to become an object of anyone’s pity again.

  ‘I haven’t actually got the first idea how to set about finding out the truth,’ she finished up, rather surprised to find Jenny and Rita were both hanging on her every word. ‘All I’ve got to go on is a newspaper cutting of one of Dad’s old clubs and the name of his mistress.’

  At half past one, Martin told Rita and Charlie to have their lunch break, leaving Jenny to finish unpacking the last few films.

  ‘What do you want to do?’ Rita asked Charlie as she got up. ‘I usually just go into the rest room for some coffee and a fag, but if you’re hungry we could buy a sandwich and sit outside and eat it in the sunshine.’

  Charlie was starving, she hadn’t even bothered with any breakfast that morning because the kitchen was such a mess again. They bought corned beef rolls and cans of Coke, then went into St Giles’s churchyard to eat them.

  ‘How long have you been at Haagman’s?’ Charlie asked. She had already observed that almost the entire staff were students. It seemed peculiar that Rita, who was so very different to them, fitted in so well.

  ‘Just three months,’ she said. ‘I was sent there by a temping agency, but I took a permanent job because the Hag offered me more money. I quite like it, we have a lot of laughs and there’s none of that backbiting stuff you get in most offices. You see, I don’t fit in many places.’

  There was absolutely no reason for Charlie to ask why. The reason was as plain as the nose on her face. But she asked anyway.

  Rita laughed. ‘You’ll understand when you know me better,’ she said. ‘You see, the inner me doesn’t match my clothes, and it makes some people very uncomfortable.’

  Charlie was puzzled. ‘Well, why wear them then?’

  To Charlie’s surprise Rita stood up in front of her, whisked the rubber band from her hair and ran her fingers through it. It was fiery and dramatic falling in waves over her shoulders. ‘Do you see now?’