A Proper Charlie

by Louise Wise

  Ben found himself snarling like an animal as he gave chase, leaving Melvin to kneel beside her body and gently cradle her head.

  *

  Every part of Charlie’s body felt numb, as if nothing belonged to her anymore. She groaned and rolled onto her side and gingerly opened her eyes. She’d expected to find herself in her own bed, with the noise of neighbours, near and distant, making their usual racket. Instead, the noise was inside her head. She had a raging headache that no amount of consumed Malibu, vodka or gin had managed before. And the bed wasn’t hers. It wasn’t even a bed.

  She sat up, and immediately covered her mouth with her hands as nausea invaded.

  ‘Are you all right?’

  She turned, and peered up at Melvin in confusion. ‘Mel?’

  A police car, its blue flashing light, added to her confusion as it drew up beside her. It was only then that she realised she was lying on the wet ground, and totally naked from the waist up.

  Melvin was taking off his T-shirt and pushed it over her head, and gently pulled her arms through the sleeves as if she were a small child.

  ‘Oh, no,’ she moaned. ‘What does the shh-shlogan say?’

  ‘As if that matters,’ Melvin said.

  She peered at him through a syrupy mist. He looked as if he had been crying. ‘Wassit a good night?’ she asked, her voice sounded slurred even to her ears. ‘Fink I drank too much.’ She giggled and then passed out.

  *

  Ben managed to evade the blade as Blither thrust it towards his belly, but slipped among the debris on the ground and fell heavily, his head making painful contact with a wooden pallet.

  Heavy footsteps pounded behind him, and shouts of, ‘Drop the weapon. On the floor; face down. Now!’ pierced into his over-charged head.

  Ben scrambled to his feet, helped by a young police officer. ‘Sir, let’s get the paramedics to check out that wound,’ the young man said. He had to shout; the helicopter was above them, Ben could feel the whoosh of the blades as it circled. He pushed at the policeman and turned towards Blither. But the man, was lying down, and had a plain-clothes officer sitting on his back, while another was cuffing and then searching him.

  Ben swung towards the police officer he had pushed. The chopper was hovering over a factory unit somewhere beyond the furniture warehouse, and blue flashing lights of patrol cars were below it.

  ‘It’s OK, sir,’ the police officer said, his hands outstretched towards Ben.

  Nodding absently, Ben turned from him to look over his shoulder at Charlie. A flashing ambulance was by her side, and two paramedics were crouched beside her. Melvin was sitting down, his head between his knees, as if he’d been instructed.

  Suddenly the adrenaline left him and Ben felt as if all bones had deserted his body. He sank to his knees, and the young officer, clearly panicked, yelled out to the paramedics.

  ‘I’m all right,’ Ben said. ‘Just… just…’ but he couldn’t describe what he felt. Yes, he could: immense horror that he had almost lost Charlie and knowing how much she’d come to mean to him.

  He looked at Blither who was hauled to his feet. Behind him, Ben noticed a car with two people standing by it. Two dark figures of police officers were standing with them. Ben peered into the darkness and knew at once a prostitute and her client had alerted the police towards Charlie’s plight.

  Blither, either becoming reckless or just arrogant, had used a typical haunt of vice women to bring her here.

  Ben shakily stood up and walked over towards Charlie. She was placed on a stretcher and she must have been conscious because she looked like she was clinging to Melvin’s hand.

  Melvin looked up and caught Ben’s eye. He smiled through a tear-stained face. ‘I’ll go with her to the hospital,’ he said.

  Ben nodded. He badly wanted to be with her, but somehow felt that Melvin should be the one to attend her. He was her brother, father and friend all rolled into one.

  ‘Ben.’

  Charlie’s voice was a mere croak. He stood beside her and took her other hand; slowly raised it and kissed the back of it. ‘I’m here, sweetheart,’ he said.

  She smiled, then the paramedics carried her into the ambulance with Melvin gripping her hand tightly. And Ben reluctantly let her go.

  The ambulance moved off, its lights flashing but sirens silent.

  FIFTY FIVE

  Ben arrived on Charlie’s ward, but was ushered away by a big bosomed nurse with matching hips. She indicated a side room, and as Ben entered, he found Melvin looking extremely uncomfortable but asleep in an armchair.

  ‘Melvin.’ Ben shook him awake.

  Melvin jumped, instantly alert. ‘Doc?’ he asked. When he saw it was Ben, he grumbled something and glared at him. ‘You took your time getting here!’

  Ben stroked the back of his neck. ‘I’ve been at the police station. How’s Charlie? They won’t let me see her.’

  ‘Well, of course not. It’s,’ he checked his watch, ‘four in the morning. They have wards here in the NHS, not single rooms with room service in the private hospital you attend. She’s fine,’ he added. ‘Sleeping off the Roofies that that bastard made her drink.’

  ‘Roofies?’

  ‘Rohypnol,’ Melvin said. ‘Roofies, is its slang. Something your sort are definitely not familiar with.’

  Ben let that go. ‘They found the other missing women,’ he said. ‘Blither had moved them from his cellar to a room in a disused factory unit, the one the chopper was hovering over. And you were right, Andrea Dillies was in the boot of the crashed car. He moved her to another car, and was taking both her and Charlie to this factory unit.’

  ‘No way!’ Melvin was wide-awake now. ‘And they are OK? All the women, I mean?’

  Ben shrugged. ‘As well as you can be after being kidnapped and tied up for months, I suppose.’

  ‘Shit. So, he was heading to the factory to add Charlie and this Andrea woman to his harem?’

  ‘You could say.’ Ben ran a hand through his hair. ‘I need to see Charlie.’

  ‘Good luck,’ Melvin said. He yawned, and picked up the blanket that had fallen to the floor and covered himself with it. He closed his eyes.

  Ben peeked around the door for the big-bosomed nurse. She was nowhere in sight, so he tiptoed up the corridor and through the double doors. He found himself in a large ward with male and female sections either side. The nurses’ station was unmanned, and Ben guessed it was the big-bosomed nurse that should have been there and wasn’t and thanked her for her inefficiency.

  Charlie was easily recognisable by her red curls. Ben crossed the aisle and looked down at the small form beneath the bedclothes. She was rolled onto her side; foetal style as if seeking a safe place to hide. Ben lingered, staring at Charlie’s pallid face. He watched the rise and fall of her chest, and once satisfied that it wouldn’t stop moving, he returned back to the shabby visitors’ room.

  Pushing open the door he noticed Melvin’s eyes close as he faked sleep.

  ‘Why don’t you like me?’ Ben stood over him. It was a spontaneous question, and one that’d been on Ben’s mind for some time.

  ‘You’ll hurt her,’ said Melvin, opening his eyes and staring back at Ben. ‘Your sort stick to your own. Why Charlie if it isn’t to use her?’

  Ben was slightly taken-aback with the integrity in Melvin’s eyes – or eye. One of his eyes was still slightly closed from the punch he’d received from Andy.

  Ben turned away, he had half expected a full-blown queenie strop at his question, and was now lost for words. He paid particular attention to a line of old battered books, which had probably been there since the outbreak of Black Death in the 19th century by the state of them. He fingered one, and immediately worried that it would crumble beneath his touch.

  ‘I’m not the type of person you obviously think I am,’ he said turning back to Melvin. ‘In all honesty I think it’s the other way round.’

  Melvin laughed humourlessly. ‘What bollocks! You have such a
high regard for Ben Middleton and zilch for Charlie, don’t you?’

  Ben stopped himself from replying knowing it would get him nowhere. He wasn’t very good at expressing his feelings, and doubted Melvin would take them seriously anyway.

  ‘How long have you known Charlie?’ he asked, feeling on less prickly ground.

  ‘Years. We were in the same children’s home.’

  ‘An orphanage!’ Ben was astonished. ‘I never knew, I’m so sorry.’

  ‘They’re called children’s homes, now. Not exactly Oliver Twist these days,’ he said.

  ‘How long were you in the orphan, er, home?’

  ‘Charlie spent her entire childhood there; I was there from aged nine. Charlie’s mum was a drug addict and she OD’d when Charlie was a baby. You could say Charlie was born an addict.’ Ben felt Melvin looking at him, to watch for any unsavoury reaction on his part, he thought. ‘The RSPCA were called over reports of a cat in distress. They found Charlie instead.’

  ‘My God.’

  ‘She wears her heart on her sleeve,’ Melvin continued. He sniffed and pulled the blanket up around his shoulders. ‘And I don’t like, or trust, your intentions with her. She’s had a lot of knock-backs in her life, and I seriously don’t think she could take anymore.’

  Ben felt like Melvin had doused him in cold water. As he floundered for something to say Melvin flung off the blanket.

  ‘I’m going to get a coffee,’ he said.

  Ben didn’t believe he’d get one. He sat on a soft backed chair suddenly feeling weary. The adrenaline had long left him and his bones felt like they were filled with sand. He leaned back against the headrest and closed his eyes. They felt sore.

  He must have dozed off for when he woke he noticed Melvin was back in the chair and asleep. Ben glanced at himself in the mirrored walls – he looked a mess. His hair was all over the place, and there was a smudge on his cheek and chin. He had a plaster on his forehead where he had struck his head, and blood was congealing around its edges.

  His gaze dropped to his hands; his knuckles on one was scuffed and bloodied from where he had hit Blither. As soon as he started thinking about the man, his heart raced. He reminded himself that Charlie was safe.

  He glanced at the clock and clock-watched until the hands finally clicked to seven a.m., and the wards began to drift into activity.

  FIFTY SIX

  ‘I hate hospitals.’

  ‘I know, you’ve told me,’ the doctor said. He looked at Charlie’s medical notes. ‘How do you feel?’

  ‘I don’t mean to sound ungrateful,’ she said, picking at her bed sheet. ‘I just hate order and routine and all that.’

  ‘Any dizziness?’

  ‘I was always made to come to places like this when I was a child. I was a “problem child”,’ she made rabbit ears with her fingers as she grimaced, ‘and had to see several psychiatrists to find out what was wrong with me.’

  ‘Do you feel sick at all?’

  She sighed, ‘You know Doc, all I needed was an understanding, kind adult to listen and love me. But no, I was prodded and spoken about – often in my earshot – as if I were something from an exhibition.’ She grinned. ‘Still, my teen years were a blast! Boy, I bet no kid had the time I did!’

  The doctor smiled back. ‘You’re a lucky woman, in more ways than one,’ he said. ‘You’ve two young gentlemen waiting for you in the visitors’ room –’

  ‘Two? Bloody hell! I wait for one guy, and then two come all at once!’ Her bright smile ebbed a fraction and if the doctor had understood her more, would have noticed how insecure and fragile she really was – as usual; her animated chatter was a mask.

  The doctor checked his watch. ‘It’s too early to allow visitors on the ward yet, but you can go and see them. I should think you’ll be going home today, anyway.’

  Charlie was already swinging her legs out of the bed. She wore the regimented hospital gown that opened at the back, and all she was wearing underneath was a pair of yellow Marks and Spencer’s pants.

  ‘Er, Charlie?’

  She turned to look at the doctor. ‘I know the rules,’ she said. ‘I’ll be careful.’

  ‘But –’

  ‘Thanks, Doc, I appreciate all you’ve done for me.’ She gave him a final smile then slipped up the aisle, but stopped sharply by a bed in shock. ‘Sally?’

  She stopped herself from whipping off the covers and checking for certain that the gaunt woman beneath the bedcovers was Sally Readman.

  ‘Sally, is that really you?’

  ‘Bleeding hell, it’s Julia Roberts,’ Sally said. She pulled the covers up over her head and turned on her side. ‘Piss off Jules. Ain’t no Richard Gere in real life, you know.’

  Charlie rested a hand on a skinny shoulder peeking out from the regimented blanket. ‘Good to see you’re OK.’

  The shoulder shrugged her hand off, but smiling Charlie turned away and pushed through the heavy doors towards the corridor outside her ward. She slowed as she reached the visitors’ room. She was a distance away, but already could hear a full-blown row going on from behind the door.

  ‘You’re jealous! There is no other word for it.’

  That was Ben’s voice, and Charlie crept forward to unashamedly listen.

  ‘I am not jealous! That’s insane,’ came back Melvin’s voice to Ben’s accusation. ‘Charlie is a very good friend of mine, and I care about her deeply. And she doesn’t need men like you in her life.’

  ‘Men like me? You’re some snob, Giles. Are you telling me you approved of that cocaine-sniffing twerp that she was involved with before?’

  Ben knew about Andy? Charlie bit her lip and edged closer to the door. She didn’t want to eavesdrop; yet the conversation was about her. She took a few more paces, and stood staring at the door as the raised voices continued behind.

  ‘I hated Andy. I always have done, but he isn’t like you! You’re –’ she could imagine Melvin looking at Ben up and down and then waving a dismissive hand at him. ‘You’re rich,’ he spat out the word.

  ‘And that means what, exactly?

  ‘I – I – I don’t know! You’re you, and people like you don’t date people like Charlie. You’ll want to use her. Play her and – and –’ a noise like a slap made Charlie jump. It sounded like Melvin had hit the wall with the open palm of his hand. At least she hoped it was the wall. ‘She’d cope with men like Andy dumping her, but you –’

  ‘So, you hate me for being successful and having money?’ Ben said.

  ‘It’s your father that’s successful and rich, you’re just the playboy son, born with a golden spoon in your gob.’

  ‘Oh Melly,’ Charlie muttered beneath her breath, ‘that’s out of order.’

  ‘Now, that’s out of order!’ Ben came back, and Charlie smiled. ‘I’ve never felt this way about a woman before – about anyone before, and your cheapening it like – like it’s something sordid.’

  ‘On your part it is sordid,’ Melvin interjected. ‘She’s all loved-up, dreaming of a white wedding, six kids around her ankles, and a pet dog and cat. You’re playing her, using the romantic vision she has of you to get her into bed.’

  ‘Six kids?’ she sniffed. ‘Who’s he kidding?’

  ‘Getting her into bed is the last thing on my mind!’ Ben sounded more hurt than angry. ‘I fell in love with her the moment she entered my office that first Monday when she told me her nephew was dying of varicose veins.’ He paused, and his voice thickened with emotion, ‘Or maybe it was when I saw her wearing the Union Flag dress at the party, o-or when she sat in my office and tried to guess my name.’

  Tears pricked at the back of her eyes. Ben really sounded like he loved her! She swallowed, and stared at the door. She reached for the door handle.

  ‘And what about your girlfriend?’

  Charlie’s hand fell away from the handle as if it sprouted prickles.

  ‘My girlfriend?’

  ‘Nicole something or other. The girlfriend that�
��s been arranged by your father. Donald always chooses your women; can’t be trusted to pick your own apparently because you choose innocent young girls from the typing pool!’ His voice had begun to rise until he was shouting towards the end of his accusation. The silence afterwards seemed to stretch – until Ben chuckled.

  ‘My father introduced me to certain ladies,’ Ben said eventually. ‘He thought they were suitable, but I thought they were boring. Nicole and I finished ages ago. While I dated her – and I use that word lightly – it kept my father off my back. Anything else you want to accuse me of? How about the forest fires in Australia? Or, closer to home, the airline strikes?’

  There was a long silence then, ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘What was that?’

  ‘I said, I’m sorry. What do you want, blood?’ snapped Melvin.

  ‘If I were closer you’d see blood, you muppet,’ Charlie muttered.

  ‘No, you were looking out for a friend and I admire that,’ Ben said.

  ‘She’s more to me than a friend.’

  ‘I’m in love with your sister, Melvin,’ Ben said. ‘What more can I say?’

  ‘Sister… yeah…’ There was a lot of sniffing going on behind the door, and Charlie suspected that Melvin was crying. ‘My little baby doll.’ He swore, cleared his throat and said with an embarrassed laugh, ‘I told myself I wouldn’t do this again in front of you!’

  Charlie didn’t notice her tears until she could taste them. Her bottom lip trembled.

  ‘Do you really, really love me, Ben?’ she asked softly to the door. ‘Or am I dreaming? Are the drugs still in my system?’

  ‘We nearly lost her,’ said Ben. ‘She thinks she’s all street-wise and savvy, but she isn’t. She’s –’ to Charlie’s own astonishment his voice cracked as well. ‘She’s my world now. I love her, she’s a crazy, maddening, beautiful –’ his voice softened – ‘wonderful person.’

  Charlie covered her mouth with her hands and stared at the door in front of her. If she opened it would they still be there?