Charlie

by Lesley Pearse

  Mrs Blake thanked her for the flowers, took her coat and ordered Andrew to take her bag upstairs, then led her into the dining room at the back of the house. ‘I do hope you like fish,’ she said. ‘We always have it on Fridays.’

  Charlie assured her she did and was asked to sit down. Mr Blake took the seat by the window, and Mrs Blake hurried off to bring in the food.

  ‘Smoked haddock! Great,’ Andrew said as he came in and took a chair opposite Charlie, grinning broadly at her. ‘Mum’s been indulging me with all my favourites since I came home. We’ve had treacle pudding and Spotted Dick.’

  ‘Well, you looked so thin,’ his mother retorted, and her eyes held a trace of lingering anxiety. But as if reminding herself it was advisable to forget the events of the previous weekend she smiled warmly at Charlie. ‘Still, I expected him to look worse. I can’t imagine what it must be like to go without food for so long.’

  The conversation during the meal was strained. Charlie had expected that they would immediately talk about the recent events, perhaps even air any grievances or ask for explanations, but they didn’t mention it. Mr Blake politely asked if the train had been crowded, his wife spoke of the last time they’d been to London when they’d had to stand the whole journey home. Andrew said nothing at all and it occurred to Charlie that he was every bit as ill at ease as she was.

  ‘You are a very good cook, Mrs Blake,’ Charlie said appreciatively as she finished up what seemed an enormous plate of delicious fish, mashed potato and runner beans. ‘Perhaps I ought to take some lessons from you, I can’t do much more than basics.’

  ‘Beryl said you couldn’t cook anything when you first went to stay with her,’ Mrs Blake replied, and although she smiled, there was a hint of sarcasm in her tone.

  Charlie thought for a moment before replying. It seemed likely to her that the recent events must have thrown a new and damaging slant on everything this couple had previously heard about her.

  ‘I couldn’t,’ she agreed ruefully. ‘To be truthful I couldn’t do anything much for myself. But I soon learned. Ivor Meeks and Beryl were great, sometimes I wonder how I would have coped with Mum without them.’ She paused for a moment, wondering if she was actually making things worse.

  ‘I know you must both be very apprehensive about me,’ she continued. ‘Especially after what Andrew went through. But please ask anything you want to know, about me or my parents. It’s only by bringing things out into the open that we can move on.’

  Andrew looked anxiously at his father when he cleared his throat. Charlie could sense the man’s disapproval of her, all the time she’d been speaking he’d studiously avoided looking at her.

  ‘Say what’s on your mind, Mr Blake,’ she said quietly. ‘I know it must be hard to bear your only son getting involved with a girl whom trouble seems to follow.’

  ‘It’s this court case,’ he blurted out, still not meeting his eyes. ‘I’m afraid it might affect Andrew’s career.’

  ‘Oh, Dad! Don’t be so ridiculous,’ Andrew exclaimed.

  ‘He isn’t being ridiculous,’ Charlie said quickly. ‘Only concerned for you.’

  Andrew grimaced. ‘He’s got the idea that your father is the main issue in the trial. I can’t make him see that unless the police find firm evidence that the Dexters killed Jin, or crippled Sylvia, he’ll hardly get a mention. I can’t imagine why Dad supposes anyone would pillory me for trying to help my girlfriend find out the truth about a crime that robbed her of both her parents.’

  ‘Nor I,’ Mrs Blake said, and she reached down the table to pat her son’s hand. ‘In my view my Andrew will be something of a hero, and I’m very proud of him.’

  Mr Blake made no further comment. His eyes were cold, his mouth set in a disapproving straight line. Charlie’s heart sank. If the man wasn’t prepared to talk over what was really troubling him, what on earth could she do or say to improve the situation?

  On Saturday morning Andrew took Charlie on a tour of Oxford. The sun was shining but it was very cold, and a strong wind shook the trees and sent down flurries of gold, brown and russet-coloured leaves to the pavements.

  Charlie thought Oxford was the most beautiful city she’d ever seen. The mellow gold of the majestic university halls, the serene gardens, the wide meandering river with its many bridges and overhanging willows, all moved her. She was here at last in Andrew’s home town, seeing all the places he’d spoken of so often, yet even with his warm hand in hers, hearing the pride in his voice as he introduced her to old friends, she felt unbearably sad and forlorn. After supper the previous evening Mrs Blake had asked her friendly questions, showed her Andrew’s baby photographs and told her many family stories, yet his mother’s efforts to be welcoming were overshadowed by her husband’s continuing brooding silence.

  Andrew took the line that it didn’t matter what his father thought. He even joked that his mother ruled the roost and her approval was all that was necessary. But to Charlie, who had been brought up with the Chinese conviction that fathers were the foundation stone of the family, it did matter.

  ‘Breakfast’s ready,’ Mrs Blake called up the stairs on Sunday morning. ‘Hurry up or it’ll get cold.’

  Charlie came down a couple of minutes ahead of Andrew who was still shaving. Mrs Blake was already sitting down and pouring tea. The table was laid for only three.

  ‘Do start on your bacon and eggs,’ Mrs Blake said. ‘Edward’s had his already. He’s used to an early start, you see. Even on a Sunday he can’t lie in.’

  Andrew came into the room buttoning up his shirt, his hair still wet. He must have heard the last part of what his mother had said because he frowned at her.

  ‘Dad could have waited for us just for today. We haven’t got much more time together. Our train goes at twelve.’

  Mrs Blake looked embarrassed. ‘I’m sorry, Andrew. I did suggest it but you know how he can be when he’s in one of his moods! Anyway, I’d thought it would be nice, just the three of us.’

  ‘Miserable old sod,’ Andrew muttered, but sat down and began tucking into his breakfast as if he hadn’t eaten for a week.

  Charlie found she’d suddenly lost her appetite, even though just a few minutes ago she’d been ravenous, and excited about seeing Ivor and Beryl later in the day. It was bad enough that Mr Blake was avoiding her, but even worse to think her presence in this house was driving a wedge between him and his wife and son.

  Andrew launched into a description of a dream he’d had about circus horses. ‘What does that mean?’ he asked her.

  ‘I haven’t a clue.’ Charlie had to laugh. Andrew’s knack of finding bizarre topics to move conversations in a different direction always amused her. She thought he would make a good diplomat. ‘Maybe that you are about to start a new career as a ringmaster?’

  Mrs Blake said she thought it was a warning that someone was about to crack a whip to make him work harder, and changed the subject to one of their neighbours’ son who was emigrating to South Africa. But throughout the conversation she kept glancing out of the window. Charlie guessed that her husband was out there in his shed and that she was cross with him because of it. Later, while helping Mrs Blake to clear the table, Charlie asked if she thought it would be a good idea to go and speak to him.

  ‘I wouldn’t do that, dear,’ the older woman said with a disapproving cluck. ‘I’m afraid he can be quite disagreeable when he wants to be. Follow Andrew’s line and just ignore him.’

  ‘I can’t do that,’ Charlie said quietly. ‘His opinion matters to me. I can’t leave here without trying to find out exactly what it is that bothers him about me.’

  Mrs Blake rolled her eyes with some impatience. ‘If you think you can get anything out of him, try it by all means. I’ve never managed it.’

  Charlie almost lost her nerve as she went down the garden and Mr Blake pointedly shut the shed door as he saw her coming. But she took a deep breath and pushed it open again. ‘I know you don’t want to speak to me, Mr Blake,’
she said. ‘But I can’t go down to Salcombe without clearing the air.’

  He was standing at a workbench, potting up some plant cuttings. His sideways glance at her was chilling.

  ‘I understand why you don’t approve of me,’ she said, edging her way right into the shed. ‘I’m Chinese. My dad sounds like a rogue, and I got your son into danger. But I’m not leaving here until I’ve pointed out the good things which have come out of Andrew getting involved with me.’

  The man paused in his potting up and raised one eyebrow. For a brief moment Charlie saw a strong resemblance to his son. ‘Good things! Being exposed to seeing a suicide? Worrying himself about you when he should have been concerning himself with his exams? Preferring to work in a pub all summer instead of coming home here? Frightening his mother so badly I thought she might have a heart attack?’

  ‘I couldn’t help it that Andrew happened to be with me when we found Mum,’ Charlie said with some indignation. ‘Without him I’d have gone to pieces. You should be proud of the way he coped.’

  He shrugged and pursed his lips. ‘I suppose so. But he might have neglected his work.’

  ‘But he didn’t, did he? He went back to university. His support with letters and phone calls helped me cope with going back to school and sitting my exams. He didn’t bunk off to come and see me, not once, nor did I try to make him do so. As for not coming home for the summer, wasn’t it better that he worked and kept himself rather than sponging off you two?’

  ‘But it was you who set him off on this mission to find your father,’ he spat out. ‘If you only knew the half of what he put us through!’

  ‘You think I don’t know!’ she exclaimed, her voice rising at the man’s narrow and intolerant view. ‘I was away in York when he hatched up his plan. I came back to find him missing. But I didn’t sit there wringing my hands and crying. I went to find him. Because I love him more than anything or anyone. But there’s no point now in recriminations, or dwelling on what might have happened, it’s the good which came out of it which is important.’

  ‘I can’t see one good thing,’ he said stubbornly and bent over his pots.

  ‘Oh, can’t you?’ She stood up, hands on hips, angry now because he was so stubborn. ‘While Andrew was in that cellar he spent most of his time thinking about all the sacrifices you and his mother made for him. He was terribly sad because he didn’t think he’d shown you enough appreciation. He made up his mind if he got out of there to work harder and get a first-class degree to make it up to you. Isn’t that a good thing?’

  When the man stood up straight with a stunned expression on his lined face, she saw Andrew hadn’t told his father any of this. She knew why. The man wouldn’t listen.

  ‘Look at you!’ she snapped. ‘Have you once sat down with him since he got back here and asked him about it? No, you haven’t, have you? You were far more interested in putting him off a girl who might hold back his career. Never mind that he loves her, and she him. All you can see is my slanty eyes, the colour of my skin. You’re afraid of me.’

  ‘I am not,’ he said, but he couldn’t meet her eyes, not even now.

  ‘You are, and that hurts more than anything,’ she said, her anger suddenly fading and being replaced by despair. ‘You see, I found all the qualities I most admire in Andrew. He’s courageous, warm, compassionate, sensitive, clever and ambitious. I expected he’d got them all from his father. You see, to us Chinese, fathers are revered. That’s why it was so important to me to find out what really happened to mine. And why I care so much about your opinion of me.’

  She slumped back on to a box and burst into tears.

  Edward Blake was not an emotional man. He had been brought up to believe a man’s role was to provide and protect. Discussing feelings and suchlike was a female thing. When the police called to tell him his son had gone missing and there was a possibility he’d been abducted, he’d been terrified. For the first time in his life, he’d felt like sobbing. Yet he didn’t give into it, crying was for women.

  Throughout that endless Sunday and Monday as he’d helplessly watched his wife breaking down, convinced it was only a matter of time before Andrew was found dead, he’d found it soothing to put all the blame on this girl. He put all the information he had about her together, and before long he’d built her into a kind of she-devil who had purposely set out to entrap his son.

  But now, stung by the truth in the girl’s angry words, and seeing her tears, he felt chastened. The policeman who had informed them when Andrew was found had praised her courage and determination. Dora had expressed the view only this morning that he should open up his eyes, recognize that she wasn’t some empty-headed floozy, but a bright, well brought-up girl who had managed to keep her integrity despite everything life had thrown at her. Perhaps he had allowed his imagination to get the better of him.

  ‘Don’t cry,’ he said in a gentler tone. ‘You’re probably right in saying I’m afraid of you, but not because you’re Chinese. That doesn’t matter to me.’

  ‘Well, why then?’ she sniffed.

  ‘Perhaps it’s because I’m afraid you are going to take Andrew away from me and his mother,’ he said awkwardly. ‘He’s been everything to us, I suppose you could say without him we have nothing else.’

  ‘Why do you imagine I’d take him from you?’ Charlie’s sympathies were aroused at that bleak statement. ‘I have no family of my own left. The truth is I’d kind of hoped I’d become part of yours.’

  At that last poignant statement, Edward looked at Charlie, really looked at her for the first time since she’d arrived on Friday night. All at once he felt ashamed for prejudging her. There was no guile in her eyes, just a plea for understanding. She was just a kid, a pretty, sweet and well-mannered one at that. It wasn’t right for him to assume she would corrupt his son, just because he believed her father was a crook and her mother crazy.

  ‘Maybe one day when you’ve got children of your own you’ll understand my fears,’ he said and half smiled.

  ‘I’d like you to explain them to me now,’ she said.

  Edward sighed and perched on the edge of his workbench looking at her. ‘Well, I was just like Andrew as a young man, full of fire and ambition. But times were hard then, and I found few doors opened to sons of farm labourers. I had to reconcile myself to doing my stint in the army during the war just like every other able-bodied man, then afterwards I ended up in Cowley Motors where I’ve worked ever since. It hasn’t been the kind of life I dreamed about as a boy, a mundane grind mostly. I wanted a great deal more for my boy.

  ‘That’s why I was so proud when he got a place at the grammar school. Even prouder when he went on to university. Can you understand what it’s like for a working man like me without one qualification to his name to imagine his son with letters after his?’

  Charlie got up from her box, wiped her eyes with the back of her hand and touched Mr Blake’s arm tentatively.

  ‘Yes, I can,’ she said, looking up into the lined face which seemed to portray all the hardships in his earlier life. ‘But Andrew is where he is, because of those dreams and all that support and love you and his mother gave him. He knows that too, and loves you for it.’

  ‘Does he?’ The man looked doubtful. ‘He’s so independent, so sure of himself. He laughs at Dora and myself, sometimes I feel we’re an embarrassment to him.’

  ‘He doesn’t,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘If he laughs at you sometimes, it’s only out of affection. He knows your true value.’

  Suddenly the man smiled, and all at once he looked so like Andrew it made Charlie smile too. His lips turned up at the corners just like Andrew’s did, and his eyes were the same bright blue, even the lines on his face seemed to disappear.

  ‘You should smile more often,’ she said teasingly, and impulsively smoothed his cheek. ‘It takes years off you, and makes you as handsome as Andrew.’

  He caught her hand in his and squeezed it, his smile growing wider still. ‘I’m beginni
ng to see why he fell for you.’

  ‘So are you going to come back in the house until we have to leave for Salcombe?’ she asked cheekily. ‘And do you think you might invite me here again?’

  He gave a rich belly laugh. ‘You know I’m fifty-five, Charlie. Not that old, but I look in the mirror these days and see a man that’s lost his looks, hair and some of his strength. But I didn’t know until just now that I’d also begun to lose some of my wits.’

  ‘Well, this is better,’ Mrs Blake said a little later as she came into the sitting room with a tray of tea and found her husband and son laughing at something Charlie was saying. ‘Are you going to let me in on what’s going on?’

  ‘Charlie was just telling us about the woman she works for,’ Mr Blake said. ‘She sounds like a cross between Attila the Hun and a pantomime dame.’

  ‘You can talk, dear!’ she retorted.

  Andrew spluttered with laughter and his father joined in. Charlie sat back in her chair and just smiled with happiness. Everything was going to be all right.

  On Friday evening later in the week, Beryl came into the bar where Ivor, Andrew and Charlie were, and said the phone call she’d just answered was for Charlie.

  The last few days in Salcombe had flown by. Although it had been cold, the sun had shone, they’d taken long walks, and been out each afternoon in the MaryAnn with Ivor. Evenings in the pub had been so jolly, playing card games and darts with the locals, listening to all the gossip and in turn relating the story of Andrew’s abduction to an eager audience. The story had taken on the light of an exciting adventure rather than a trauma, both Charlie and Andrew had portrayed the Dexter twins as a pair of bumbling fools rather than hardened criminals, their sister Daphne as a kind of Disney-like Cruella DeVille. They were both happily looking forward again, Andrew to his imminent move into the shared house and his last year at university, Charlie to taking up her new position at Haagman’s and enrolling for evening classes in business studies.