Camellia

by Lesley Pearse

  Somehow she doubted his misdeeds amounted to more than stealing a few sweets from Woolworths, but his chivalry touched her. There was nothing hidden in Con. When he was angry he roared it out, when he was happy he laughed. She knew whatever he had to say on the subject today would be his last word on it. 'Tell me what you really think?' she asked.

  He looked at her for a moment, his small face very boyish and innocent. 'I think how lucky I am to have you here working for me and being my friend,' he said at length. 'I think you've worn a hair shirt for too long and that you care far too much about others' opinions. There are people out there who do terrible really wicked things. You were just young, vulnerable and perhaps foolish, that's all.'

  'What do I do if someone does recognise me?' she asked. 'Should I be Amelia Corbett? Camellia stands out in people's minds.'

  He smiled at her affectionately. 'To me you are just Mel, and that's all anyone needs to know here. But I think you should revert to your real name officially for your own peace of mind. Hiding away behind a false one only brought you more trouble. What is most important though is that you stop worrying about the past. It's over and done with. Just laugh if someone recognises you – there's no need to even think of explaining or admitting anything.'

  'What about Magnus and Nick,' she said, tears springing to her eyes. 'I've tried to tell myself I've moved on, that I don't care anymore about them, but that's not true, Con. It still hurts and I feel it isn't ever going to go away.'

  Con lapsed into thought. He and Mel were both scarred by bad childhood memories. Even as young as four or five he knew his mother didn't like him the way she did his other brothers and sisters. Being loved by Great-aunt Bridget and his grandfather had made up for it to some extent, especially when his grandfather had made him his heir. Yet deep down he knew that he would rather have heard his mother say she loved him than have any amount of money.

  'You have to have faith,' he said eventually, sighing deeply. 'In God, fate or whatever. I personally believe everything is preordained and that we have as little control over our fate as we do over the weather. If you can believe that too and allow yourself to flow with the tide, one day it will turn and you'll find decisions are no longer necessary. Maybe that will mean that you see Magnus and Nick again and resolve everything; maybe you'll just wake up one day and find you really don't care anymore.' He smiled at her. 'Of course that's the easy, lazy Irish way, letting fate take you where it will, but it works for me.'

  'How did you get to be so wise?' she asked.

  'The same way as you,' Con grinned. 'Too much time spent alone as a child observing others, thinking I was out of step with the rest of the world. I like women very much, but I don't really fancy them. My Aunt Bridget said I should be a priest and perhaps she was right.'

  Mel took his hand and squeezed it. She didn't think he meant he was homosexual and she wasn't going to ask. His aunt had hit the nail right on the head: he would make a very good priest.

  'I've never had a male friend like you before,' she said very quietly. 'I think you are right too, about fate or whatever it is. That's what brought me here and I'm gladder about that than anything else.'

  Chapter Twenty-One

  'This is beginning to sound as improbable as one of those old Edgar Wallace mystery films,' Magnus said, leaning on his garden fork and smiling wryly at his son.

  It was June, six months since Nick went on his crusade to Littlehampton, Rye and London. Although for most of his time he had been working in London the mysteries surrounding Camellia's birth were still his major preoccupation. Today as he worked alongside his father in the garden he had been airing his theories about Sir Miles and his growing conviction that he'd had Bonny killed to shut her up.

  Nick dug his spade deep into the ground, then turned over the clump of soil, bending to pick out a clump of weeds. 'Don't humour me,' he said heatedly. 'Maybe I am getting carried away but we're stuck. You can't have a blood test without a sample of Mel's blood to test alongside it. And even if we hired a private detective to find her, I don't think she'd come back here unless we had some real evidence to show her.'

  'I think I'd better have a rest now,' Magnus said, taking off a battered old Panama hat and wiping his forehead with a handkerchief. 'My goodness it's hot.'

  All through May it had been cold and wet, but the sun had come out at the beginning of June and for the last three days it had grown steadily warmer. Today the temperature was up in the high seventies, and the view across the valley was serene and beautiful in the sunshine.

  Nick looked sharply at his father, checking for any signs that might indicate he'd been overdoing it. On the face of it he had made a full recovery from his stroke – he was walking again, albeit with a slight limp and he had regained full use of his left arm – but Nick was still anxious.

  It had been a great relief to him when Magnus took on a manageress back in January. Jayne Sullivan, a widow in her early forties, had vast experience in the hotel business. She was efficient, with an outgoing personality, all the staff liked her and she was happy to come to help out at Oaklands for a year or so until she'd decided where she wanted to settle permanently. Nick felt she was heaven sent. Her presence made it easier for Magnus to accept his semi-retirement. Since spring arrived he had spent most of his time pottering in the garden, and the fresh air and light exercise had brought back his old rugged appearance. Few guests realised the big broad-shouldered man with thick white hair, and skin the colour of mellow pine striding around the gardens, was in fact the owner of Oaklands.

  Magnus walked over to a garden seat in the shade, picked up a bottle of water he'd left there, took a long drink, then sat down.

  Nick continued to dig for a few minutes alone, thinking about his father. The garden had always been very dear to Magnus. But planting flowers and a little weeding was one thing; building a rockery, complete with waterfall was quite another. Nick sensed this sudden desire for a large gardening project was really an attempt to block out the anxiety his father felt for Camellia. Nick knew he couldn't deter him – Magnus was the most stubborn person in the world once he'd decided on something. All Nick could do was to make sure he didn't overture himself.

  It pleased Nick to look at his father. He was entirely at one with his surroundings: his worn checked shirt and faded khaki shorts suited his character better than bow ties and dinner jackets. Each deep line on his face, the broad nose, the wide mobile mouth, suggested a life well spent. Age might eventually thin that unruly mop of white hair, his firm straight body might succumb again to stiffness and frailty, but somehow he knew his father's mind would stay active till the last breath left him.

  Camellia's disappearance had brought them both anxiety and sorrow, yet it had also brought them far closer. Nick was certain that the reason Magnus had managed to walk again was tied up in his conviction that she would come back before long.

  'Let's try another advertisement,' Magnus called out. 'Not everyone reads the personal column in the Telegraph.' They had placed two advertisements pleading for her to get in touch, but there had been no response.

  Nick dug his spade firmly into the soil and walked over to his father, flopping down on the grass in front of him. 'I don't think she's in England,' he said, picking up the bottle of water. He was stripped down to just a pair of shorts, tanned even darker than his father, his hair bleached white-gold from the sun. He opened the bottle and drank from it. 'I bet she's gone back to Ibiza.'

  'She is in England,' Magnus replied with conviction. 'I know that person you all call "The Phantom" is her. She's just checking.'

  'You think it's Mel?'

  'Of course it is.' Magnus wiped his eyes almost angrily. 'Why else does she keep ringing until I answer it? I kept a log for a while and it proves my point. After she's heard my voice it doesn't start again for at least two weeks. She just likes to check I'm okay.'

  For a moment Nick just stared at his feet, idly picking some mud off his plimsolls. He trusted his father's i
ntuition. If he was right at least it showed Camellia still thought about them.

  'Well if you didn't pick up the phone at all,' he said thoughtfully, 'she might get so anxious she'd come here.'

  'I don't want you to use emotional blackmail,' Magnus said sternly. 'That's wrong under any circumstances. And you, my son, are becoming obsessive!'

  Nick knew his father was right. Reason told him that it wasn't normal for a man who hadn't had any sort of real relationship with a woman to be so intense about her. Magnus was concerned about her safety, and grieving because he missed her, but Nick was allowing it to dominate his whole life. He knew all those letters by heart now: he had spent hours and hours poring over them, looking for something new he might have overlooked. He had written copious notes on everything he had been told, then questioned each and every known incident.

  He was certain that Helena Forester was the person with the answers.

  Back in February Nick had joined a repertory company in Bromley in Kent and found himself a tiny flat in Hither Green in South London. It was a great deal easier in London, especially while working in a theatre, to get information about Helena Forester. Posing as an admiring fan and would-be biographer he had collected up scores of press-cuttings, reviews, articles and pictures of her. He knew her favourite perfume, which actors and actresses she admired; he even had pictures of her Spanish-style home in Hollywood. But she was a very private person, almost reclusively so. She rarely gave interviews, she didn't mix with the super rich jet set and she hadn't been back to England for at least twelve years. Considering what a big star she'd been during the fifties and early sixties, she had almost faded from the public eye now. Her last film, in 1967, had been a box office flop. The more he discovered about her the less approachable she seemed.

  In one rare in-depth interview way back in 1958, she had talked about her childhood in Stepney before she was evacuated to Suffolk. Her descriptions of the narrow dark streets, the two small rooms she shared with her widowed mother, the colourful neighbours and the appalling poverty were all so vivid, Nick could see, smell and hear the East End. But however bleak her mother's struggle to survive on the meagre wages she got as a theatre dresser sounded – picking up bruised fruit and vegetables in Covent Garden market on her way home, unpicking cast-off clothes to remake them into dresses for her daughter – Helena had clearly been a happy, dearly loved child. She spoke almost nostalgically of day trips to Southend and Epping Forest with her mother and her aunt, of street parties, picnics in the park and the closeness of the slum community.

  Nick had trawled through theatre archives until he managed to find some old faded photographs and programmes of the revue at the Phoenix theatre in which she had appeared as the war ended. He found one picture of a very young Helena dressed in a maid's costume, doing a comic sketch with her friend Edward Manning. There was also an article and photograph of Ambrose Dingle, the producer who had almost ruined Magnus's night at the Savoy, along with a picture of 'The Dingle Belles' his dancing troupe. One of these leggy showgirls was Bonny.

  Helena's career seemed to have taken a step backwards after this point. He wondered why Helena, Edward and Bonny had left the West End stage together to tour provincial towns. Magnus remembered Bonny claiming that Ambrose Dingle had sacked her when she got food poisoning and that the other two had walked out in sympathy. Yet Nick felt there must have been more to it than that.

  The stage version of Oklahoma which Helena joined in 1949 was well documented. The critics proclaimed her performance as 'Brilliant, feisty, and unforgettable' – yet she only stayed in it for a few months, leaving in October of 1949. The filming began for Soho in February 1950. It was interesting to discover that Sir Miles Hamilton's company had been involved in the backing of both productions.

  A lucky find of old Hollywood magazines from the fifties in Portobello Road market, turned up a reference to Helena as aloof, mysterious and shy – in direct contrast to what Magnus had said about her. Much of the gossip about her in these magazines revolved around Edward Manning, who had joined her in Hollywood. Both Edward and Helena strenuously denied being lovers.

  There were a great many articles and photographs devoted to Edward, far more than to Helena. He was startlingly handsome, with the kind of blond, bronzed and blue-eyed charm which ought to have made him a matinee idol overnight. But as far as Nick could ascertain the man never got more than the odd walk-on role in a couple of obscure films. He was photographed posing on a diving board in skimpy swimming trunks, in dark glasses and open-necked shirt behind the wheel of his Cadillac, and resplendent in a white tuxedo with a glass of champagne in his hands.

  It struck Nick as odd that Helena never once referred to Bonny when she described the early years back in England. Surely even when they'd fallen out there would have been times when it was natural to mention an old dancing partner, even if only in vague terms.

  But the strangest thing of all about Helena, was her apparent reluctance to behave like a star. From that first film Soho, through all the Hollywood musicals, there were countless studio pictures taken in costume on the set, and many of her caught unawares by press photographers, but there were none of her at glittering parties, premieres or holidaying in exotic places.

  As Nick studied the old photographs, he was staggered by her beauty: those huge dark eyes full of fire and passion, that sensual wide mouth and delicate bone structure. Her nose and chin were small but well-defined, as though created to draw attention back to her glorious eyes. With each passing year she appeared to gain rather than lose beauty. Even in the latest one he'd managed to find, in which she'd passed forty, Helena was perfection.

  It was frustrating to know she held the key to all those secrets, and yet be unable to reach her. Even if he was to go out to Hollywood, it was extremely unlikely that she'd agree to talk to him. Letters to a studio would end up in sacks of fan mail, his phone calls would be ignored. And if Bonny had hurt her too, it was unlikely that she would want to hear anything about Mel.

  *

  'Look, son,' Magnus laid one big hand on Nick's bare leg. 'I'm not suggesting we forget Mel, but I am going to insist you pull yourself together. You are an actor, or so you've been telling me for years. Put all your energy into this new role.'

  Nick knew this was an order. When his father insisted on something, he felt he had to obey him. But there was also a sense of relief in being taken in hand. He knew he couldn't go on dwelling on this mystery for ever.

  He had left the Bromley repertory company two weeks ago and was waiting to start filming Delinquents in the Lake District in a few days' time. He had high hopes for this screenplay: it was the kind of role he'd dreamed of for years. He was to play the part of an Outward Bound instructor, teaching young offenders. Daniel McKinley, a much talked about young actor, was cast in the lead role of the brutish tearaway in his charge, and doubtless he would get all the acclaim. But Nick was impressed by the script. It had a fast-moving plot and realistic hard-hitting dialogue, funny, yet inspiring. He felt this might well be a breakthrough in his career.

  Looking at his father, Nick felt a surge of love for this man who had stood by him through thick and thin.

  'Could you try and contact Helena?' he pleaded.

  Magnus gave a wry grin. 'Okay, I'll try. But don't start building up your hopes Nick, she must get a ton of fan mail every day and she might not appreciate hearing from me anyway. Now let's get back to work. I want the rocks in place before the day's out.'

  A month later Nick was standing on the shore of Lake Windermere, watching the film crew stow their equipment into a launch. The sky was a menacing black, and a brisk wind was making the lake choppy. In a few moments he would have to dispense with his warm sweater and dive from a rowing boat into the icy water to rescue Dan. Behind him the rest of the cast clustered around the warmth of the mobile canteen, drinking coffee and smoking. He could hear their laughter and guessed the jokes today were based on bets as to how many takes would be necessary f
or this particular scene. He fervently hoped he could do it right first time: it was too cold to face plunging in more than once today. Yet despite his nervousness, he was happy. His role in Delinquents was the most satisfying part he'd ever played.

  Dan, who played Gary, the seventeen-year-old Glaswegian lout he was to rescue, reminded Nick of himself a few years earlier – an arrogant kid, who when he wasn't bragging about his acting talent, was either rolling up a joint or chatting up some young girl who was watching the action. Yet perhaps because of Nick's understanding of Dan's character, a bond had already formed between the pair of them.

  In the script Gary has only one ambition in life: to be a bigger, tougher villain than any he'd encountered in several years of approved schools. Nick, as Alan, the committed sportsman-cum-social worker, puts Gary and a group of other equally troubled teenagers, all serving Borstal sentences, through a series of exhausting activities, with the intention of showing them how to use their toughness and courage to a more useful end.

  'Ready?' Tim Hargreaves, the director, asked in a gruff voice, touching Nick's elbow. Normally he expected the cast to be ready the moment he bellowed at them, but there was a hint of concern on his big face today.

  'As ready as I'll ever be,' Nick grinned. 'I hope Dan's a better swimmer than I am a life-saver!'

  'Just make it look good.' Tim pulled up the hood of his anorak and adjusted the life jacket round his wide girth more securely, then stepped into the motorboat with the camera men. 'Rather you than me!'

  Dan was already sitting in his rowing boat, wearing only shorts and a sleeveless singlet, bare arms rippling with muscle, the only person in the company not shivering. 'Do I really have to look such a prat?' he said sourly to Nick as he gingerly climbed into another small boat alongside him. 'I bloody well rowed for my school.'