Camellia

by Lesley Pearse

  The thought of Nick kept her awake for a long time. She'd believed herself to be in love with him for so long, but now the barriers had been removed, she felt apprehensive. What if the feelings they thought they had for one another were just fantasy? And how could they step tentatively into a romance with everyone around them watching like hawks?

  Sleep came eventually, but with it nightmares. This time instead of seeing Edward's face, it was Nick chasing and cornering her. Drenched in sweat she woke with a start, relieved to find it was morning. Then Magnus came in with a cup of tea and told her that Helena would arrive at ten, and suddenly she was terrified all over again.

  It took some time to select the right clothes. Jeans were too casual, a pretty Laura Ashley dress with a frill round the hem was too milkmaidish, a suit much too formal. Finally she plumped for black flared trousers which would hide her scarred legs and a black wool tunic top with just a string of red beads round her neck to make it look less severe. She left her long hair loose as it seemed to be the only part of her undamaged, and added a pair of dangly red earrings to detract the eye from her face.

  A tap on her door at exactly ten made her jump. She hadn't heard a car on the gravel outside or any voices coming up the stairs.

  'Come in.' She sat back on her bed; there was no time now to check her face again.

  The door opened but Helena faltered in the doorway.

  Mel could only stare, her mouth dropping open. Even after Conrad's and Magnus's descriptions, the reality of Helena's beauty was awesome.

  Black hair in soft waves framed an ageless face, her skin the colour of clear honey. Her eyes were huge and dark, her wide soft mouth trembling as if she were a young girl on her way to punishment.

  It was her timidity which surprised Mel most. The perfectly manicured long nails, the understated elegance of the plain navy dress and matching shoes were predictable. But she had expected a boldness and confidence which were completely missing from Helena as she hovered at the door.

  'How are you, Camellia?' Her voice was a soft contralto, almost a caress.

  'Not so bad,' Mel said glibly. 'I look worse than I feel. Come in and sit down.'

  Helena shut the door and moved inside, but then just stood there, looking round her. 'When Magnus showed me this room I could imagine you here,' she said. 'It's a bit like seeing a painting back in the frame.'

  She took the small buttoned-back chair by the window. 'I don't know where to start, Mel,' she said, attempting a smile.

  'Well, Magnus said you were going to tell me what the secret was that made Edward try and bump me off. Start with that,' Mel said impatiently. If Helena thought she was going to treat her like a star, she was mistaken.

  'I want to, but I can't just launch into it,' she said, her voice shaking. 'You see when the police contacted me and told me what Edward had done, I felt destroyed, absolutely devastated.'

  'You don't need to go over all that.' Mel forced herself to smile. She was beginning to find Helena's nervousness infectious. She ran her finger over the bell and pushed on the side of her bed experimentally. 'Everything there is to say has already been said. I don't hold you responsible.'

  'But I am accountable,' she said, leaning forward in her chair as if to stress the point. 'I inadvertently provided the fuel for his rage. He's been like a brother to me for half my life, and I knew how jealous he can be. I should have known better than to trust him to pick up those letters from the newspaper.'

  'But I wasn't close to you,' Mel said evenly. 'Unless you suspected he'd killed Bonny, why should you think he'd want to harm me?'

  Helena was silent for some time, her eyes distant and troubled.

  'When Magnus told me about Bonny drowning and the possibility that it wasn't an accident, I never for one moment thought Edward might be responsible. But with hindsight, now other facts have come to light, I feel I ought to have.' She paused and took a deep breath.

  'Did Edward tell how he, Bonny and I all met up back in 1945?'

  Mel nodded. 'He was very dismissive of my mother,' she said crisply. 'In fact he described her as poisonous.'

  'He didn't think that of her in the beginning,' Helena said firmly. 'But let me explain how it was back then when we began rehearsing. It was the mood of the country, the hardships we'd all endured during the war, the hope for the future which set the tone of what was to come.

  'Just picture me, Mel! I was eighteen, I'd lost my mother in an air raid, and cleaned offices and waited at tables since before I was fourteen. I had absolutely nothing, not even a decent dress, then suddenly I go from singing a few songs in a seedy nightclub to getting my big chance on a West End stage. Bonny was just sixteen then – she'd been touring in a dance troupe for the past year. Edward had done a few bit parts in plays and revues, and he and I became friends immediately. He was very gentlemanly, very calming and we had a great deal in common. I didn't actually get to know Bonny until quite a bit later – the day we heard Hitler was dead and victory was imminent.

  'Bonny and I spent VE day together. We wore silly sailor caps, waved streamers, blew hooters and kissed servicemen, just like everyone else that day. That night we ended up at a party thrown by some American airmen. The events of that night and the things which followed in the next few weeks forged an indestructible bond between us. We were hungry for everything then – for nice clothes, for glamour, success, money and fame. And at that time we thought it was all just around the corner, ours for the taking.'

  'And Edward, where did he come into this?'

  'He thought he and I were going to become permanent stage partners,' she said with a faint smile. 'We were good in the comic sketch we did together – it always brought the house down. But fate conspired against all three of us. It's a long story which I'll tell you one day, but the end of it was that the three of us had to leave the show and find other work.

  'We landed up touring provincial theatres and seaside towns, and doing pantomimes. Bonny and I devised a singing and dancing double act, and Edward played the piano. It was only then that a certain friction between Edward and Bonny became apparent.

  'They were always sniping at one another. Edward thought Bonny was a bad influence on me, and she resented not having my exclusive friendship. I loved them both, for entirely different reasons, and as they rubbed each other up the wrong way, eventually I learned to keep the pair of them in separate compartments of my life.'

  'But you were mainly with Bonny?'

  'Oh yes. We were a real force together. She was a brilliant dancer, while I was only passable, but I could sing and together we were red hot. But what I want you to understand isn't our stage act, but the strength of our friendship. We were chums, sisters and at times mother and daughter. Few people are blessed with that kind of closeness. Whatever happened later, I'll always treasure those memories.'

  Mel thought of Bee and herself. She knew just what Helena meant. 'I wish Mum had told me about you,' she said. 'Why didn't she?'

  I'll come to that later,' Helena said. 'It's tough enough trying to explain why and where, without all the filling-in bits. Anyway, I continued to keep in touch with Bonny even after I went off to America, but later when Edward joined me I suppose I allowed him to think she'd dropped out of my life.' 'But she did anyway. So why should he kill her?' Helena hesitated. 'There are some things I still don't know the answer to,' she said eventually. 'You see the last time I came back here was when you were four. Bonny and I had a bitter fight, and quite honestly after that there was nothing left for me in England. But Edward came back every six months or so. My business associates back in Hollywood, prompted by the police inquiries here, have been checking through old diaries and papers to see whether one of his visits coincided with Bonny's death. So far they haven't turned anything up, but they did find an address in Rye – the one you were living at when she died. That leads me to suppose that Edward intercepted a letter from Bonny to me and took matters into his own hands.' 'Do you think it was a blackmail letter?' Helena s
hrugged. 'It could have been, or it might just have been a plea for help – but my guess is that she merely spoke of our secret.'

  'What is this secret?' Mel could contain herself no longer. 'For God's sake tell me who my father is and be done with it.'

  Helena shook visibly, and her eyes welled up with tears. 'He's not one of the men you've contacted. His name is Raymond Kennedy. He was the producer at the Little Theatre in Hampstead.'

  Mel was so staggered at hearing a name unknown to her that she barely noticed Helena get up and move over to the window.

  'A producer,' she said thoughtfully. 'The plot thickens. Did he promise to get her to Hollywood too? Or was that what your row was about? He pushed you and not Bonny?'

  When there was no reply Mel looked round. Helena was leaning her face against the window and her shoulders were heaving.

  'I'm sorry,' Mel said awkwardly. 'That was a bit callous wasn't it. But you see I'm so tired of half-truths and intrigue.'

  Helena turned round to face her, tears streaming down her face.

  'Why cry?' Mel looked at the older woman in bewilderment. 'I'm nothing to you, just a girl with a fixation about her roots. There's no need to get emotional about it.'

  'I can't be anything but emotional about you,' Helena replied, dropping down to her knees by Mel. 'You see, I'm your mother.'

  There was absolute silence for a moment. Even the birds twittering outside in the garden seemed to hush.

  Mel sat like a statue, too stunned to speak. Helena's tears were making her mascara run and her wide mouth was slack and quivering.

  'You're mad,' Mel gasped. She felt she was in the middle of a weird Greek tragedy. 'How can you be my mother?'

  'I am,' Helena insisted. 1 planned to tell you so very gently, but I guess seeing you again after all these long years made me too hasty and blunt.'

  'Don't you think I've been through enough?' Mel leapt to her feet, forgetting her injured foot in the moment. A sharp pain caught her and made her scream out in agony.

  'You mustn't walk on it,' Helena exclaimed, catching hold of her and pushing her back onto the bed.

  Mel recoiled from her touch.

  'Get out you bitch. You're as crazy as Edward.'

  'I will go when I've made you understand.' Helena knelt down by Mel who continued to stare at the older woman in horror. 'Look at me, Mel, really look. My eyes are a different shape, but they are the same colour as yours. Our faces are both oval, the same cheek bones and skin-colouring. But it's our lips that give the game away. I can't understand why no one else has seen it.'

  Mel wriggled further up the bed away from Helena, but shocked and scared as she was, she didn't ring the panic button. There was no madness in Helena's dark eyes, only pain. She looked hard at her lips and saw for herself the irrefutable truth. So many men had remarked on the sensuality of her protruding lower lip. Now, as she looked at Helena's, she saw what they all meant.

  'You were my baby, but I never told a soul!' Helena whispered. 'I've carried the ache inside me all these years. Success and money couldn't banish it,' Helena's voice crackled. 'I made a pact with Bonny. For my silence, she would love and protect you. But if I had known that John died, and that Bonny ceased to be a loving mother, I would have been back a long time ago to reclaim you, no matter what happened to my career.'

  'I can't believe it.' Mel began to cry.

  'Then look at these!' Helena ordered, snatching up her handbag from the floor and pulling out some photographs. She glanced at them briefly, then thrust two of them into Mel's hands.

  Mel swallowed hard as she looked at them. One was of her when she was about four sitting in her father's big armchair, a plump, serious-faced little girl with long straight dark hair, in a smocked dress, white socks and patent leather bar shoes.

  The second picture was much older, creased and faded, but it looked like the same child. It was taken in an old-fashioned studio and the little girl stood before a fake flower-covered archway. She turned it over and saw a faded name and address on the back, it was 'Abraham's, Mile End Road, East London', dated December 1932.

  'This is you?' Mel asked, even though she could see for herself it was Helena.

  'Yes. I thought all pictures of me as a child were lost during the war,' Helena said. 'But fame has one advantage and that is that people send you things. Apparently my mother paid to have this picture taken by making the photographer two shirts. He sent me a copy when I made my first film. He knew my mother was killed in an air raid and I suppose he guessed all records of my childhood were gone.'

  She took out another picture and handed it to Mel. This time Helena was around nine or ten, much fatter and plainer than in the earlier picture, with a small slender woman with wavy hair and a sweet pretty face. 'He sent me this one too. That's my mother, Mel, Polly Forester. You see how fat I am? I've heard you were plump at that age too.'

  Mel felt as if the years had been stripped away. Helena looked exactly as she had at the same age, a roll of fat around her middle, chunky legs and the high cheek bones concealed beneath surplus flesh.

  'Bonny adopted me?'

  'No. There was nothing legal about what we did. I dare say it's actually criminal. It was certainly a crime in the moral sense. But in our foolish and reckless way we believed we were helping one another.'

  'I don't understand.'

  'I'll have to backtrack again. Bear with me, honey, if it seems part of this is irrelevant, because I have to let you see the full picture. It starts with Bonny falling in love with Magnus in 1946. If it hadn't been for that we might have ended up in Hollywood together, but when she met him her ambition flew out of the window. All she wanted was marriage, a home and children.'

  'So she really did love him?'

  'Oh yes. Bonny played with many men, as I'm sure you know, but she truly loved Magnus. But he was married and I know you've heard his side of all that already.'

  Mel nodded.

  'Then you know too how she came to get involved with John Norton?'

  Again Mel nodded. 'Did she love him too?' She hated to think that the kind loving man she remembered had been used.

  Helena must have picked up her feelings because she took Mel's hand in hers and squeezed it. 'I can't say truthfully that she loved him at the outset, and she did trick him into marrying her. But I promise you as God is my judge, on the day they took their vows in church, Bonny had fallen deeply in love with him. But I'm getting ahead of myself because I haven't yet told you why this marriage took place, and what was happening to me.'

  Helena paused for a moment to go and get herself a drink of water from the bathroom. She came back again and sat down on the bed beside Mel.

  'When Magnus parted from Bonny she took it very hard and went home to her parents in Dagenham for a while. I joined a pantomime in Hampstead, which is where I met Raymond Kennedy, your father. Ray and I had an affair, for a few months, a light-hearted jolly one, which as it turned out, should have ended finally when I went back to touring provincial towns with Bonny. Anyway, the upshot of it was that Bonny had been seeing John occasionally during these months we had apart, and she'd decided that come hell or high water, she was going to marry him. Towards the end of our tour together we had a long weekend in London. Bonny went off to meet John. I went to Hampstead to see Ray again. That weekend was a turning point for both of us. Bonny became engaged to John and I got a lead part in the stage version of Oklahoma. A few weeks later I discovered that I was pregnant.'

  'Was Bonny pregnant too?' Mel felt so confused.

  'No she wasn't, but perhaps because of my predicament, and the fact we couldn't perform together again, she told John she was. To this day I don't really understand why she made up such a stupid lie. She said it was because John wanted to wait a couple of years before marrying her and Bonny could never wait patiently for anything. So there we were. I'm really pregnant and desperate not to be. Bonny wishing she was. John wouldn't go ahead with wedding plans without proof of her pregnancy. Somehow Bon
ny talked me into posing as her for a test in Harley Street. She said she'd pretend to have a miscarriage right after her wedding.'

  Mel stared open-mouthed. It was too bizarre. Yet she remembered only too well how adept Bonny was at getting what she wanted, at any cost.

  'The wedding went ahead and I was their bridesmaid,' Helena added. 'They moved to John's house, The Chestnuts in Somerset.'

  'But what about you?' Mel asked. 'I mean what were you doing meanwhile?'

  Helena sighed deeply. 'I was in Oklahoma. I tried to have an abortion, but I couldn't go through with it. I carried on with the show, wearing a tight corset, hoping for a miracle.'

  'But what about Ray?'

  'I didn't want to tell him, for various long-winded reasons which I can tell you another time. In the meantime Bonny was my lifeline. She was the only person I could share my predicament with. In those days to be having a baby outside marriage was still considered terrible and shameful. I wrote to her every few days, and she wrote back long sympathetic letters always saying she would help me when the time came. I decided I would stay in the show until October, then I planned to move to somewhere nearer her, like Bristol, get a cheap room and then get help with having you adopted.'

  'But Bonny took me?'

  'Well, it wasn't quite as straightforward as that, honey. You see when I got down to Bonny's house in October, John was away in America and she admitted he still believed she was pregnant. She had always been hare-brained, but this time she'd dug a deep grave for herself. I tried to persuade her to sit down and write and tell him the truth, but there was a good reason why she felt she couldn't do that.'

  'Why?' Mel asked.

  Helena sighed. 'I didn't intend to tell you this just now, but I guess I'll have to. You see Bonny had a backstreet abortion back in 1945. She got a bad infection afterwards, and she'd had problems ever since. After she married John she went to see a specialist. He told her she couldn't ever have children.'