Camellia

by Lesley Pearse

  'Are you sure I look gorgeous?' she asked, fluffing out her blonde curls with one hand.

  'Definitely,' Camellia reassured her for the third time, though in fact she thought the red minidress Bee was wearing made her look brassy. 'Go on, clear off.'

  'Will you be all right?' Bee asked again. 'I'll go straight to the club I expect, so I won't be home till late,' she added with a blush.

  'I'm not your keeper or your mum,' Camellia reminded her. 'Give the girls my love and get some gossip will you?'

  'I'll do my best.' Bee picked up her handbag and made for the door. 'Mind you don't fall over!'

  As Bee reached the top of the steps to the street, Camellia could see her bottom half as she waited for a taxi. Her eyes might be deceiving her, but it looked as if Bee had lost some weight.

  Camellia sighed. Bee had seemed different the moment she got home: attentive, caring, but oddly secretive. There were stains on the carpet and scratches on the furniture as if Bee had held a party here in her absence, yet she hadn't mentioned one. She hadn't mentioned the girls at the club once either.

  After eighteen months of sharing everything, Bee's secrecy was sad. Had she realised too that their relationship had come to a crossroads? To the left lay the clubs, easy money and excitement. To the right, real jobs, less money and hard work. Camellia knew which way she intended to go. Was Bee afraid to admit she couldn't join her?

  Within an hour of Bee going out Camellia was bored. The days had passed slowly in the hospital too, but at least they were broken up by meals, visiting hours and doctors doing their rounds. Mike had telephoned her this morning to ask how she was coping and she sensed he was hoping she'd ask him to call round. She wanted to see him so badly, but not here, not amongst all the memories of her old life.

  The flat felt like a prison. Camellia could see tantalising glimpses of people walking past the railings on street level, but it would be some time before she'd mastered the art of getting up the steps on crutches, and until then she had to stay put.

  'Well, practise a bit,' she said aloud, reaching for the crutches and hoisting herself out of the chair. A few times up and down the passage to the bedrooms would make a good start.

  As she got to the end of the passage and saw Bee's bedroom, she smiled. It was an absolute pigsty. Bee had cleaned everything else for Camellia's arrival home, but she must have run out of steam.

  Pushing open the door Camellia went in. It wasn't just untidy, but very dirty. Clothes were strewn everywhere, drawers hanging open, the wardrobe almost empty. The dressing table had an inch of grey dust.

  Sitting on the bed, Camellia started with the clothes, hooking them up with her crutch, then separating clean and dirty in two piles. She put the dirty ones in the pillowslip and added filthy stained sheets from the bed which clearly hadn't been changed for weeks.

  It became a challenge to put everything right. She found a small shopping basket to carry unwashed china to the kitchen, then returned with it filled with cleaning materials. Camellia was surprised by just how much she could do. She pushed the dressing table stool with one of her crutches to where she wanted to tidy and clean, then sat on it.

  The same method worked with the vacuum cleaner too, and bit by bit the room began to look nice again.

  But as she pushed the machine under the bed a clonking noise alerted her something was there. Shuffling closer on the stool, she put one hand on the bed to steady herself, then lowered herself to the floor. She reached out for her crutch again, slid it under and nudged everything out. Two ashtrays, a gold earring Bee had lost months ago, a bracelet, some magazines and a handful of change came out with the first scoop. With the second came an old handbag and a large brown envelope. She put the china in her shopping basket and the rest on Bee's bedside cabinet, then hauled herself back onto the stool feeling very pleased with herself.

  It was hard to make the bed again with clean sheets while sitting on it. By the time she finally managed to replace the bedspread, she was tired and lay back for a breather.

  Idle curiosity made her look in the brown envelope. She wasn't in the habit of opening Bee's things. To her surprise it was a batch of glossy, professional photographs.

  The first one was of Bee in a black lace negligee. It was a good picture, capturing the essence of her character, the naughtiness and the sweetness all at once. She was pinning up a black stocking, showing cleavage and thigh.

  Camellia smiled. Bee was clearly serious about modelling. She studied it for awhile, then turned to the next.

  Her smile vanished as coy girlie pictures turned to pornography: one picture of Bee holding up her naked breasts, a lewd expression on her face, another of her astride a chair showing everything. By the time Camellia got to the last of the twelve, in which a man's hand was examining her intimately, she felt sick.

  Closer inspection showed the photographs were taken here in the flat. The couch Bee lay on was theirs, draped with a leopard skin rug. The upright chair she sat astride was one from the kitchen. But worst of all were Bee's eyes. A stranger might assume the glassy vacant look, the dilated pupils were the throes of ecstasy, but Camellia knew better. Bee was drugged.

  Camellia left the pictures on the bed and hobbled painfully back to the lounge. It was no good telling herself that she'd seen far worse than those pictures in magazines on sale at every newsagents. This was her dearest friend, her family.

  Now she understood Bee's secrecy, the unexplained stains on the carpet, that tarty red dress. Someone was using her. While Camellia lay in hospital planning to start a new life, Bee had met someone whose influence was stronger, and she'd taken a couple of steps even further down the ladder.

  When Bee finally came home it was after one in the morning. Camellia was wide awake, still with her bedside light on. She heard the click of the front door, the sound of shoes being kicked off in the lounge, then soft padding as Bee came down the corridor.

  'Can't you sleep?' Bee asked, putting her head round Camellia's bedroom door. Her hair was tousled, and her make-up smeared. She looked as if she'd just got out of bed with someone.

  'No,' Camellia replied. She had been crying for most of the evening and she turned her face away from Bee's so she wouldn't see her puffy eyes. 'My leg hurts.'

  'I'll just get out of these clothes,' Bee said. "Then I'll bring you some hot milk and a couple of aspirin.'

  Camellia sighed. She had left the photographs out on Bee's bed. Would she be angry? Or would she try and convince Camellia that porno-modelling was an even better number than being a nightclub hostess?

  She didn't have to wait long. Bee came back just a few moments later. She'd taken off her dress and replaced it with her pink dressing gown.

  'You've been poking around,' she said accusingly.

  'I didn't poke,' Camellia said stiffly. 'I just went in your room to clean it. I found them under the bed.'

  'Is that what you've been crying about?' Bee asked. She folded her arms and looked defiant. 'I can't see why. There's no harm in it.'

  'No harm in it?' Camellia hauled herself up to a sitting position. 'It's disgusting.'

  'It's easy for you to say that, you didn't have to find a way to pay the telephone bill, the electric and gas.'

  'But the club?' Camellia asked. 'You didn't need -' She faltered as she saw Bee's face crumple.

  'I got the sack,' Bee said in a small voice. 'I didn't tell you because I didn't want you to worry. Don't be angry with me.'

  'Who put you up to it, Bee?' Camellia said more gently, holding out her arms. Bee instantly flung herself into them and began to cry. 'Tell me everything.'

  Bee was sacked because police and journalists kept coming into the club to ask questions after Camellia's attack. Denise felt that if Bee was no longer working there, they'd have no excuse for calling in. This seemed callous to Camellia but perhaps Denise was ordered to.

  After a couple of weeks with no money coming in, Bee was getting desperate. She saw a small advertisement in a newspaper as
king for models which said 'no experience necessary' and made an appointment to see a businessman called Jake.

  As Camellia listened to Bee's explanation her heart went out to her friend. Jake had clearly flattered her, spun a story that she could earn a fortune and offered to take the initial pictures himself.

  'I didn't really want to do it,' Bee sobbed. 'I knew you wouldn't like it. But Jake said I could tell you they were pictures for catalogues. He said the photographs of me would only be in magazines in Germany and Holland, not here.'

  'But I don't understand how you could bear it,' Camellia said. 'He gave you drugs, didn't he?'

  'Just a bit of coke,' Bee whispered against her shoulder. 'But it didn't seem so bad. By the time he took the pictures I'd slept with him a couple of times. I love him and he loves me.'

  'But he can't love you if he makes you do things like that!' Camellia stroked her friend's hair. This man sounded frightening.

  'He's an artist–he's different from the kind of men we usually meet.' Bee sat up, wiping her tears away with the sleeve of her dressing gown. 'He said my body is beautiful and I should be proud to show it off. It's not like I was letting a total stranger leer at me.'

  Camellia sighed. 'You must stop it now,' she said gently. 'Look what happened to me through working at the club? You're in even worse danger doing something like this. I'm going to try and go straight, no more drugs, men or anything. If you can't go straight with me, then I'll have to go and live somewhere else.'

  'Please don't leave me,' Bee began to cry again. 'I was so lonely while you were in hospital, I wouldn't have done it if you were here.'

  Chapter Ten

  Three days after Camellia found the photographs of Bee, she met Jake for the first time.

  She was sitting in the lounge, reading, while Bee went shopping. It was hot and Bee had left the front door open to let in a breeze.

  Camellia neither heard Jake come down the steps to the basement nor saw him walk in. He just appeared in front of her, making her almost jump out of her skin.

  'Hi, I'm Jake,' he said, dropping into a chair as if it was his own flat. 'You must be Mel.'

  He was every bit as handsome as Bee claimed: perhaps five feet eleven, with shoulder-length blond hair and a beaded Red Indian band round his forehead. A deep golden tan enhanced bright blue eyes and perfect white teeth. He looked around twenty-five, broad shouldered and slim hipped. His white voile shirt and washed-out pale jeans were spotlessly clean and neatly pressed. But despite his unexpectedly attractive appearance Camellia felt uneasy.

  'How's the leg?' he asked. 'Tried having a screw yet?'

  Camellia might've laughed if an old friend had asked her that. But given the circumstances of her injuries, and the fact that she'd never met this man before, she bristled. "The break's healing,' she said curtly. 'Screwing, as you put it, is the last thing on my mind.'

  She realised now he was older than she'd thought, possibly even in his thirties. As she looked close she saw too that the hippie image was contrived. His hair was too well cut, his jeans and shirt too expensive.

  'Bee said you'd be snotty with me,' he said in pique. 'Could we be jealous she's doing some modelling?'

  'I'd be snotty with any stranger who walked in uninvited and asked crude personal questions,' she snapped. 'But just for the record I'd hardly call the photographs I saw modelling.'

  'So, you're a prude as well as stuck up,' he sneered, pulling a tobacco tin from his back pocket. 'Odd, considering you don't mind selling your fanny, that you don't approve of pictures of it?'

  Her worst fears about this man were realised. 'I've never sold my body,' she retorted angrily. 'And I think men that get off on leering at dirty pictures are sick.'

  Jake smirked and began to roll a joint. 'Well, you're more of a fool than I took you for. Porn's a growth industry. Bee can make enough to retire in a couple of years. Big knockers like hers are just what the punters want.'

  'Bee thinks you love her,' Camellia flung at him. 'What sort of a louse exploits someone like that?'

  'A businessman,' he shot back, rolling up the joint and licking the paper to stick it down. 'It's not so different to the way you led on those suckers in the club. Don't get snotty with me, you silly bitch. Bee gets a real kick out of it.'

  Camellia smarted, not only at being called a silly bitch, but because she saw there was some truth in what he said. She couldn't retort that Bee was like an enthusiastic puppy, only too ready to lick the hand of anyone who appeared to love her. To admit that might give him even more ideas of ways to use her friend.

  Her forebodings grew as she watched Jake lie back on the couch to smoke his joint. She had an awful feeling that he was going to become a permanent fixture around here unless she put her foot down firmly.

  Bee arrived back from the shops minutes later, looking like a school girl in a pink gingham sundress. Her hair was tied up in two bunches and she was hot and sweaty.

  'Jake!' she exclaimed, her face lighting up. 'What a lovely surprise.' She rushed over where he lay and went to kiss him.

  But to Camellia's disgust, he pushed her away scornfully.

  'What the fuck do you look like?' he said, his fleshy lips curling in scorn. 'You stink of BO too. Get in the bath and do yourself up. I wouldn't be seen dead with you looking like that!'

  In the days that followed Camellia was to hear Jake insult Bee far more brutally. His vocabulary didn't seem to extend to words like beautiful, pretty or gorgeous, only ugly words that made Bee blush with unjustified shame. He found fault with her hair, her make-up, clothes and body, and only when she'd followed his instructions to the letter and turned herself into a sort of vacuous-looking Barbie doll, would he finally say she looked okay or passable.

  At first Camellia did her best to find something to like about him, to understand why Bee was so besotted by him. But there was nothing to like, not a shred of decency or even humour. He had no conversation; it was all bravado, swagger and taking the rise out of others.

  He quickly became a wedge between her and Bee. Bee was so mesmerised by him that everything she did or said was for his benefit. Stuck indoors, Camellia had little else to occupy her mind but the changes in her friend's personality, and within a few days she realised many of them were caused by the speed Jake was feeding her.

  Bee was restless, overly talkative and had lost her once hearty appetite. Camellia woke at dawn one morning to hear her opening and closing drawers in her room. Thinking that perhaps she was packing up to leave, Camellia got up and hobbled out on her crutches.

  To her amazement Bee was wearing nothing but the briefest pair of lacy panties and her bed was piled high with clothes.

  'What on earth are you doing?' Camellia asked from the doorway. Although she'd been aware Bee had lost some weight recently, it was only now, seeing her naked that she realised how much. She was almost skinny!

  'All my clothes are too big now,' Bee explained. 'I thought I'd sort out the things I like enough to get altered.'

  'At this time of the morning?' Camellia saw it was just after four. Bee had come home around twelve. But the time was hardly important. She saw immediately that her friend's pupils were very dilated, that her hands were trembling, and her breathing seemed laboured. 'What have you been taking?'

  'Just a couple of Bennies,' Bee shrugged and pulled on the black minidress she'd worn the night of the Arabs' party. 'Look at this Mel! Remember how tight it was?'

  Camellia remembered only too well how the dress had once looked. Bee's breasts used to almost tumble out of it, and it clung to her hips like a second skin. Now it was loose all over.

  Having been fat herself Camellia could understand that Bee was excited to find herself losing weight. But to lose so much, so quickly was risky, especially when it was caused by dangerous, addictive amphetamines.

  'Bee, you've got to stop this,' Camellia implored her. 'I'm worried sick about you. Jake's turning you into a different person.'

  Bee turned to Camellia
and curled her lips in scorn. 'Jake's right about you, Mel,' she said, shaking her head. 'You're jealous, bitter and you're becoming a real drag.'

  'Jealous?' Camellia snorted. 'Of you having a man who humiliates you, feeds you drugs and walks all over you! Grow up, Bee, and look at him for what he really is.'

  'He only snaps at me because he's worried about things at the moment,' Bee retorted. 'If he could give up his studio and do his work here, he'd be fine.'

  Camellia's stomach turned over. 'Never!' she said firmly. 'You let him in here, Bee, then I'm out the door for good. That's a promise.'

  There were two songs in the charts during this time that seemed to capture Camellia's feelings. Mungo Jerry's 'In the Summertime' was a reminder that everyone else in London was out enjoying the hot weather while she was incarcerated indoors. The other was the Beatles' last and most poignant single "The Long and Winding Road'.

  She too had been on a long and winding road, only to discover it was the wrong one. But on good days, when Mike telephoned to ask how she was feeling, she felt the road might yet eventually lead to him and true happiness. Sometimes when Bee went off somewhere with Jake, Camellia took a blanket and a few cushions outside into the small yard by the front door, to read books he'd recommended and dream daydreams of what might come later when her leg was better, when she'd found a job and Bee became disenchanted with Jake.

  But there was no sign yet of him losing his hold over her. Instead his influence grew stronger daily. He took her shopping in King's Road and bought her diaphanous shirts, tight leather miniskirts with big studded belts and kinky long boots. Not even her hair escaped his attention. Jake got it permed in an Afro style, and now it stood out like a fuzzy blonde halo. She'd lost her wholesome pink and white prettiness, her warmth and her sense of humour. She looked like a blue-movie star, but acted like a robot, programmed only to please her master.