Camellia

by Lesley Pearse

  There was a garage right across the street from the station, but there was no name on the sign. It was a ramshackle wooden building with a corrugated iron roof, set back from the rank of small shops. Camellia spotted a man in a protective mask spraying a car just inside the door and went over to him.

  'Excuse me,' she said in a loud voice to attract his attention.

  The man looked round, halted his spraying and removed the mask from his face. He was around the same age as herself, with swarthy dark skin.

  'Could you tell me who owns this garage?' she asked.

  The man looked quizzically at her. 'Mr Stan Wells,' he said. 'Why d'you wanna know?'

  'I thought a Jack Easton owned it,' she said. 'I was trying to find him.'

  'In the market for a new car then?' His dark eyes ran up and down her, then paused on her breasts.

  'Oh no,' she said quickly. 'I'm just looking for Mr Easton.'

  'He did own this place once, donkey's years ago.'

  Her heart sank. 'D'you know where he is now?' she asked. 'Does he have another garage?'

  The man gave her the oddest look. 'Not a garage.' He grinned suddenly, showing surprisingly good teeth. 'But he's got a posh car showroom. It's up the Arundel Road a piece.'

  Arundel Road started just around the corner, but after walking for fifteen minutes away from the town centre, Camellia wished she'd asked exactly how far 'a piece' meant.

  As she came to a sign marked Wick, she saw the showrooms and all at once her confidence left her. No petrol pumps, greasy inspection pits and men in overalls, but a two-storey building with plate-glass windows, a showroom floor so shiny it looked like glass and gleaming new Mercedes on raised stands. Outside above a rank of equally gleaming second-hand cars a blue illuminated sign said 'Jack Easton Cars'.

  She was scared, her palms sticky and her heart pounding. Although she knew she looked good with her tan and shiny hair, she wasn't sure jeans were appropriate for calling in such a place. The man might not want reminders of his past – and what if he remembered all that sordid stuff in the papers and slammed the door in her face?

  She walked past the showrooms once, building up her courage to go in. There were two men inside, typical car salesmen types in sharp suits and highly polished shoes. But they were both in their early thirties, too young to be Jack. Stopping out of sight, she checked her face in a small mirror, ran a comb through her hair and put on some fresh lipstick. Then taking a deep breath she walked back to the doors and straight in.

  'Good morning, madam.' One of the men almost bounded across the floor towards her. 'Can I help you?'

  'I'd like to have a word with Mr Easton please,' she said, forcing a bright smile. 'Is he available?'

  The man's face instantly became suspicious. 'Mr Easton doesn't see anyone without an appointment.' He looked down at Camellia's jeans and plimsolls. 'Are you selling something?'

  Camellia did her best to disarm the man. 'Do I look like I'm selling something?' she laughed. 'No, I've just popped in on the off-chance of seeing him. I'm the daughter of an old friend of his.'

  'Tell me your name and I'll see if he's free,' the man said, as his colleague came forward to find out what was going on.

  'It will spoil the surprise,' she said quickly. 'Can't you just let me go up and catch him unawares.' She could see a staircase through glass doors behind the cars. She guessed his office was up there.

  'Mr Easton doesn't like surprises,' the first man said flatly. 'Neither is he keen on interruptions.'

  'Oh go on,' she urged them both. While they thought about it she wondered what she'd do if they refused. She didn't want to give her name: Jack Easton might refuse to speak to her out of hand. A false name was no good either. If he was hard to get to, he wouldn't be lured by a name which meant nothing. 'Look, suppose I tell him I nipped up the stairs while you were busy with a customer.'

  The two men looked at each other reluctantly. As if fate had decided to give her a helping hand, the showroom door opened and in walked a couple who most definitely looked like potential Mercedes drivers.

  'You didn't see me,' she said softly, and before they could stop her she was off through the glass doors and up the stairs.

  Standing in the corridor outside a door with the plaque 'Jack Easton Director', Camellia was overcome by fright. Further along the corridor a door was open and she could hear two women talking and the sound of a typewriter. It would be so humiliating to be thrown out.

  But taking courage in both hands she knocked on his door.

  'Come in,' a deep voice replied.

  Jack's appearance threw her. His hair was fiery red and spiky, his features almost thug-like. Had he been wearing overalls, and she'd had to speak to him while he serviced a car, she would have felt quite comfortable. But he was wearing a snowy white shirt and striped tie, sitting behind a vast black and chrome desk. She knew immediately that for an uneducated man, with such an unprepossessing appearance to have done so well for himself, he had to be as tough as he looked.

  'I'm sorry to disturb you,' she said in a small voice. 'Please don't be angry that I came up here without asking first, but I had to see you.'

  'Are you from the school?' he asked, getting to his feet. 'Has Amanda been up to something again?'

  He was only marginally taller than herself, but his stocky build gave an impression of iron-hard muscle. His voice had a Sussex burr, yet with Cockney undertones.

  'No, it's nothing like that,' she said coming right in and closing the door. 'You see, I'm Camellia Norton.'

  For a moment there was absolute silence. He looked stunned, his mouth slightly agape.

  'Bonny's daughter,' she said, taking another step towards him. 'I know you were friends years ago, I hoped you might be able to shed some light on something. You see Mum died a few years back.'

  'She's dead?' His eyes opened very wide: they were light brown with flecks of amber, surprisingly expressive for such a tough-looking man. 'We were friends, as children,' he added, then paused as if wondering where to go from there. 'We were both evacuated here from London. But I haven't had any contact with her for years.'

  Outwardly he appeared unruffled, but when he invited her to sit down and offered her a glass of whisky Camellia guessed it was more because he was shaken by the news than out of real hospitality.

  She accepted the whisky gratefully to stop herself trembling, then launched into the story of Bonny's death.

  Jack interrupted her as soon as she mentioned the river. 'Drowned! She hated water, never went near it,'

  To another person that remark might have sounded aggressively dismissive. But to Camellia it proved just how close he had been to Bonny. She had reacted in exactly the same way when Bert Simmonds broke the news to her.

  'The verdict at the inquest was death by misadventure,' Camellia explained. "The police thought it was suicide. But I never quite believed that.'

  Jack shook his head. 'She was terrified of water. She fell in the river at Amberley once and nearly drowned. We became friends because of it – it was me who rescued her.'

  Camellia smiled.

  'Why the smile?' Jack said brusquely.

  'Because Mum told me that story so many times. She gave you a very heroic role. It's good to find it's true and put a name and face to you. She told me very little about her life before I was born you see, it's like having a blank page filled in at last.'

  Again he stared at her. It was unnerving: she couldn't gauge what he was thinking. But he obviously hadn't read anything about her in the newspapers, or he would surely have said something about it by now. That was a relief. Perhaps her fears that people would remember her name were groundless.

  'I'm sorry, I'm not thinking straight,' he said eventually. He ran his fingers through his hair and his tongue flickered over his lips. 'I should have said I'm sorry she died. You must think me very rude.'

  'I didn't come here to gain sympathy and I don't think you are rude at all,' Camellia said evenly. 'My reason for c
oming is that I found a hidden batch of letters just after she died. I was only fifteen then and in shock, I kept them rather than giving them to the police, because everything I found in them disturbed me.'

  His jaw clenched as she spoke, and his eyes grew harder.

  'I assume you are about to tell me that some of the letters came from me?' His voice was suddenly icy. 'I just hope you aren't leading up to some sort of proposition?'

  'Now you are being rude,' she said. 'My mother may have resorted to blackmail, but nothing is further from my mind. So kindly let me finish!'

  He heard her out without interrupting.

  'I was only a kid when I found those letters. It was bad enough losing my mother, but to suddenly find John wasn't my real father too, that was terrible. I adored him: he was the best father anyone could have, and the only thing I had to be proud of. It was the cruellest thing Mum ever did to me and for a long time I hated her because of it. But I've gone way beyond that now. I just want to get at the truth. Tell me, Mr Easton, just between ourselves. Could you be my father?'

  Jack Easton gulped. He was not a man who was easily intimidated. His early childhood in a slum in South London had made him tough and self-reliant, and as a young man he'd had to work hard and fight every step of the way to achieve his ambitions. Bonny was the only person who had ever made him lose control and he often looked back at himself with loathing. She had manipulated him so often. This felt like one last try from the grave.

  But there was nothing to remind him of Bonny in this young girl. She wasn't saucy, blonde or blue-eyed. He didn't think she'd inherited her mother's guile either.

  He got up, walked round the desk, took both Camellia's hands in his and led her over to a mirror on the wall.

  'Look,' he said, putting his face beside hers to make the comparison. 'Could I have produced an offspring as lovely as you?'

  There was something comic about their two faces together. Hers was oval and olive-skinned with a perfect straight nose and almond-shaped eyes. Jack with his red hair, pale eyes and upturned nose bore no similarity to her at all. Camellia was forced to smile.

  'I'm married to a woman with hair almost as dark as yours,' he added, as if to push his point home. 'But all my three kids have some red in their hair. They are all small and stocky and though Amanda has brown eyes, they are round, not like yours. Do you really believe Bonny and I, with our fair skins and hair, could possibly have made a child as dark as you?' He paused, taking a deep breath. 'Camellia, you are John Norton's daughter. Don't ever think otherwise.'

  'But why did she say it then? You must have seen her around the time I was conceived?'

  Jack faltered for a moment. He didn't want to admit anything which might incriminate him, but on the other hand he sensed nothing but the complete truth would satisfy this girl. "There was one night only,' he admitted. 'But for my family's sake I'm trusting you to keep that under your hat. Bonny came back to Sussex in May to make her wedding plans with her Aunt Lydia. I drove her back to London because she'd missed the train. Things got a bit out of hand.'

  'In May?' Camellia repeated.

  'Yes, May. Ginny was away at her mother's,' Jack looked at her oddly.

  Camellia made a fast mental calculation. Bonny had always claimed she was born prematurely. When she discovered after Bonny died that her parents had married in early June, she had assumed the claim of premature birth was a smoke screen so people wouldn't realise she'd been pregnant on her wedding day. A baby might have survived being one month early back in 1949, but somehow she doubted that back then a baby could be two months early and live. She guessed Bonny was pregnant before she had her last fling with Jack.

  'I don't understand why a woman would do something like that when she was about to get married?' Camellia looked hard at Jack. 'Did she realise she still loved you?'

  1 know why I allowed myself to be led,' he said quietly, blushing a little. 'But as to Bonny's motives, I can't say. With hindsight I suspect she knew she was pregnant even then and that's why her wedding was so rushed. You've got to understand something about your mother, Camellia. She was devious and cunning, she liked to have power over men. She wrapped me up that night in her silken web, why I don't know. Maybe she had one last shot at all her old lovers around the same time.'

  Camellia saw deep hurt in his eyes. She guessed that he'd paid for that one night of love with a great deal of guilt and sorrow.

  'None of your letters were dated,' she said gently. 'Can you remember what year it was when she wrote and said she wanted to see you?'

  Jack sat down again at his desk. He frowned as if thinking hard. 'It was the summer holidays. April, my eldest, was just about to start school so it must have been 1954, I think. I got in a panic when I got the first one because I thought Bonny might just turn up at the garage and April was often there with me.'

  '1954 again,' Camellia said thoughtfully. 1 wish I knew what happened to her that summer. But you forgave her later when you wrote after John died? Was that because she apologised?'

  Jack laughed, a rich warm sound. 'Bonny apologise! She never went in for apologies about anything. She just didn't write again, or visit, thank heavens. As for me writing when your dad died, well I had to, didn't I? We were old friends.'

  Camellia sensed that Jack had had enough of personal questions. She decided to ask about the others before he got tired of the conversation and asked her to leave.

  'Do you know anything about Sir Miles Hamilton?' she asked.

  Jack grimaced and shrugged his shoulders. 'Not really. He was a guest at your parents' wedding, an old friend of John's, I think.'

  'And Magnus Osbourne?' she asked. 'What do you know about him?'

  Jack shrugged again. 'Never heard of him,' he said, and Camellia felt he was speaking the truth. 'But then she wouldn't tell me her lovers' names, would she?'

  'Then there's a letter from a woman who just signed herself "H",' Camellia went on. 'What about her?'

  Jack frowned. 'Can't think of anyone whose name began with "H". She had a girlfriend called Ellie, another dancer. I never met her though. She was Bonny's bridesmaid.'

  Camellia paused for a moment before asking any more questions. She thought she had seen all her parents' wedding photographs, but there had been no bridesmaid in them.

  They sat and talked for sometime. Jack gave her a few tantalising glimpses of Bonny as a young girl, the fun they had together, her early dancing shows. He spoke too of his heartbreak when she wrote and told him it was over, just before he came out the Army, and of how he continued to watch her career from a distance, until he married Ginny.

  'I wish I could find out why she kept those old letters from all of you,' Camellia said in bewilderment. 'I can understand anyone keeping old love letters, birthday cards and stuff like that. But why throw those out and keep the nasty ones?'

  'Nothing about your mum was straightforward,' Jack smiled ruefully. 'Logic wasn't exactly her strong suit. Or sticking to the truth.'

  Camellia hadn't wanted to recount the depths her mother sank to in her last few years, but she felt obligated to tell the truth too. She told him how Bonny squandered the family money after her father's death, and about losing their home, the drinking and the men.

  As Jack talked and listened to Camellia, he found himself impressed by her compassionate, yet sharp insight into people. It wasn't until he got around to asking what she did and where she lived that he sensed she'd been through some personal trauma quite recently. She was clearly reluctant to say how she'd lived since her mother died, passing off her present job in the holiday camp as a temporary measure. Then she swiftly moved on to inquire about Lydia.

  Jack was shocked to discover that Camellia was unaware of the role Lydia Wynter had played in Bonny's life. Lydia had been far more than a wartime foster mother. She had loved and cared for Bonny as if she was her own child. Thanks to Lydia, Bonny spent the war years without hardship. Lydia gave Bonny everything: adoration, confidence, elocution lessons, poise
. All the things she later used to entrap rich men.

  'Lydia's dead, love.' Jack's voice crackled with emotion. He had as much affection for Lydia as for Bert and Beryl Baker, his own old foster parents. 'She died of cancer back in 1961.'

  'Mum never said,' Camellia tried to think back. 'I don't remember her going to a funeral or anything.'

  'That's because I made sure she didn't know about it.' Jack's face contorted as if the memory hurt. 'You might as well face it, Camellia, your mother was the most greedy, self-centred and cruel bitch in the world sometimes. She knew for two years that Lydia was ill, but she never came to see her, never telephoned or wrote. Finally Lydia drove over to Rye one day, just before she was too ill to do anything. They had a tremendous row and when Lydia got back home she called me round to tell me about it. She was heartbroken: she loved your mother like she was her own child, and she thought of you as a granddaughter. When she died just a few weeks later, I decided not to inform Bonny. I couldn't face her swanning back to Amberley, all glamorous in a black dress, playing the part of the grieving daughter and upsetting everyone.'

  'I don't blame you,' Camellia said quietly. In view of what he'd told her about Lydia's relationship with Bonny, and his affection for the older woman, his bitterness was understandable. 'I just wish I could have met Lydia and talked to her.'

  Jack looked at the sad, lovely face in front of him and felt a pang of fatherly affection. He could almost touch the mental scars caused by her scheming bitch of a mother.

  'Will you take a bit of advice from an almost uncle,' he said, his face flushing at the sudden tug of his emotions.

  Camellia nodded.

  'Put your mother, your childhood and all this away,' he said gently. 'Tomorrows are what count, love, not yesterdays. I loved Bonny, so help me! There was a time when I'd have walked barefoot to the ends of the earth for her. But that's in the past now. Even dead Bonny's twitching our cords, the way she did in life. Don't let her, Camellia. Be true to yourself.'

  'Can I come to see you again before I leave Sussex?' Camellia asked. There was still so much more she wanted to know.