Charity

by Lesley Pearse

  ‘It was Toby.’ Jaquintha smiled as all the girls did when her brother was mentioned. He charmed all of them, he had only to walk in and they were fluttering their eyelashes and offering him coffee. ‘You can’t phone him back. He’s out on manoeuvres on Salisbury Plain. He just asked me to give you the message that he’d be up tonight.’

  Charity frowned. She hadn’t got anything on tonight, but it annoyed her the way Toby just presumed she would be free. He hadn’t rung her to ask about her holiday, even though she’d been back a few days, and his insensitivity brought back last night’s thoughts.

  Toby let himself in with his key just after seven that evening. Charity had changed out of her suit into jeans and a sweater and was just about to make herself something to eat.

  ‘Hallo,’ she smiled, reaching up to kiss his cheek. ‘I’m just going to cook something. What would you like?’

  She thought Toby looked tired and drawn and although he was clean and tidy in jeans and a sweatshirt, he needed a shave. Remembering that he’d been out on Salisbury Plain all day, followed by a long drive to London, she felt sympathetic.

  ‘A sandwich will do,’ Toby said, dumping a small holdall on the floor. ‘I’m going out later.’

  Her sympathy vanished.

  ‘This isn’t a hotel, Toby,’ she said sharply. ‘Don’t you think it’s a bit nude to just turn up here, then go out again? How about spending an evening with me for a change?’

  Toby just flopped down on the settee and lit up a cigarette.

  There were many times when Charity looked at Toby and marvelled at his physical perfection. He was an Adonis with his blond hair, classic features and his clear peachy skin. Yet now she saw a slyness in his eyes and petulance in his sensual lips; it was like seeing a beautiful flower with blight.

  ‘Come on, sis.’ His tone was jocular. ‘You’re the one who always said we must stick close to one another. I could easily stay with someone else. I thought you liked to see me?’

  ‘I do,’ she agreed. ‘But I don’t like being used.’

  ‘Who’s using you?’ His blue eyes, so like her own, looked entirely innocent. ‘What have I done to deserve the third degree?’

  ‘I’m not cross-examining you,’ Charity said as she went back into the kitchen. ‘Just try being a little less arrogant.’

  She made him a cup of tea and a sandwich and listened while he discussed his forthcoming posting to Celle in north Germany. This posting pleased her: if he was getting in with unsavoury characters in London, this might nip it in the bud. But he kept looking at his watch and she guessed he was waiting to make a phone call.

  She ate her lasagne while they watched TV, but as the clock moved closer to eight she could feel the tension.

  ‘I’m just going to sort out some urgent papers in the bedroom,’ she said casually. ‘I shan’t be long.’

  At exactly eight he picked up the receiver and began to dial. The moment she heard the sound, she picked up the bedside extension.

  ‘Jim?’ she heard Toby say. ‘It’s Strat!’

  ‘The game’s on.’ The man’s voice sounded gruff, certainly not the kind of voice she would expect from one of Toby’s friends. ‘OK your end?’

  ‘Fine,’ Toby replied. ‘Usual stake?’

  ‘Yup,’ the gruff voice said. ‘When can you get here?’

  ‘Twenty minutes, half an hour. That OK?’

  Charity carefully put the phone down just as her brother did. Toby stuck his head round the door and grinned at her.

  ‘I’m just nipping over to a friend’s. I won’t be long.’

  ‘Does that mean you won’t be back till tomorrow?’ Charity said sarcastically, tempted to warn him she wouldn’t lend him another penny if he was gambling.

  ‘No, sis.’ Again he grinned disarmingly. ‘Not tonight. I’ll pick up a bottle of something on the way back and we can have a drink.’

  She didn’t really expect him to come back, so when she heard his key in the lock soon after nine, she was shocked.

  ‘There you go.’ Toby almost bounced in with a bottle of vodka in one hand and a bunch of rather wilted flowers in the other. ‘They were all I could get at this time of night. But they’re meant as an apology.’

  A couple of drinks later Charity began to wonder if she’d misread Toby. He seemed totally relaxed, lying on the settee, chatting about Uncle Stephen with a warmth she hadn’t felt in him for some time.

  ‘He’s changed so much,’ he insisted. ‘He’s lost all that weight. He does exercises to make his arms strong and he can haul himself in and out of bed alone now. I haven’t heard him yell at anyone in a long time, he trundles himself around the grounds, he’s quite a happy man these days.’

  ‘Are you happy in the army?’ Charity ventured. ‘Sometimes you seem so tense.’

  ‘I suppose I’ve accepted it now,’ he grinned. ‘What else could I do really, sis? I’m not cut out for a job in the City. I haven’t got the brains James has.’

  ‘You would tell me if there was anything troubling you?’ Charity said wistfully. His face looked softer tonight and she wished she dared be completely honest and tell him she’d listened in on his conversation. ‘You’ve always been the brother I worry about, Toby.’

  For just a second she thought she saw a tender expression in his eyes, and he looked the way he used to look when he was small and Charity helped hide his misdemeanours from their parents.

  ‘You’re a worryguts, sis.’ He laughed. ‘You ought to get married and have some kids of your own. I’m a grown man now, not your responsibility any longer.’

  To Charity’s surprise Toby was asleep on the settee the next morning and there was no sign that he’d slipped out during the night. They had breakfast together, then he showered and said he was going out for a paper.

  ‘Anything you want?’ he asked. ‘I’ll have to go about three but that leaves us time for lunch together, doesn’t it?’

  Charity asked him to get some more milk and he was gone, leaving the jacket he’d been wearing the night before on the back of a chair.

  Charity hated going through his pockets and when she found nothing to alarm her she felt very guilty. She went into the bathroom to clean the basin. Finding his razor, she took it back to the lounge to add it to his washing things in his holdall.

  A quick flick through showed nothing but the shirt and underclothes he’d worn yesterday, an Ian Fleming paperback and his toilet bag. She unzipped it and popped in the razor on top of his face flannel without really looking. It was only as she started to zip it up again that she noticed how bulky the bag was and delved under the flannel.

  Charity’s fingers touched something odd. It felt almost like beans in a bean bag. Pulling out the flannel, she gasped.

  Beneath it were two plastic bags, full of red and black capsules.

  In horror she pulled one bag out. Even at a guess she thought it must hold well over a hundred pills.

  Dimly she heard Toby’s feet coming up the stairs, but she made no attempt to put the bag back.

  ‘Snooping?’ Toby’s voice held a menacing note.

  Charity dropped the bag, spilling the contents all over the floor, and turned to her brother in dismay. She felt faint with shock. Imagining him taking a few pills himself had been one thing, but finding this amount of amphetamines had to mean he was selling them.

  ‘Why, Toby?’ she asked.

  ‘Money, my sweet, innocent sister.’ Toby’s eyes were terrifyingly cold.

  ‘Get them out of my flat, and you with them,’ she hissed. ‘I’ve put up with a lot from you, but I won’t tolerate drugs.’

  ‘Don’t come all that high and mighty stuff with me,’ Toby said as he leaned down almost casually to pick up the dropped pills. ‘You didn’t get where you are without sailing a bit close to the wind.’

  Charity stared at him in amazement.

  ‘Don’t look at me like that.’ He looked up at her and smirked. ‘You know what I mean. I worked out how you got those nice
clothes and your precious agency. Tell me, which is worse – to sell your body, or flog a few pills?’

  She could feel herself growing hot and her stomach turned over.

  ‘What?’

  ‘You heard. I said selling your body!’

  ‘I didn’t sell my body,’ Charity said.

  ‘Come off it.’ He stood up and sneered at her. ‘I was only a kid but I knew what was going on when you lived in Earls Court with those two other tarts. That old guy John Marshall must have chucked you hundreds over the years.’

  ‘I was in love with John.’ Charity trembled with anger. The trouble was, Toby was partly right. ‘Anything I did, I did because I had no choice.’

  Toby gave a hollow, disbelieving laugh.

  ‘You make me sick. I’ve had it with your lectures, the mealy-mouthed martyr bit. You make out Prue is strange with her snobby ways, but she’s a darn sight more honest than you. Uncle Stephen is the only person aside from me who can see through that innocent façade. You’re a whore, Charity, that’s all and you’ve got no right to tell me I can’t sell a few pills to make some money.’

  Rage rose up in Charity like hot bubbling tar.

  ‘You evil swine!’ she shouted. ‘I’ve never claimed to be perfect, but I’m not a whore and I worked my fingers to the bone to get where I am. Ever since our parents died in that fire I’ve done everything I could for you three. Not because I was a martyr, but because I loved you.’

  Toby smiled at her anger. A ridiculous thought flashed through her mind that he looked like an SS officer in an old Nazi war film.

  ‘Father was fucking you, wasn’t he? Is that how you learned to be a whore? I knew what was going on. I heard him creeping up the stairs on Friday nights, and don’t tell me you didn’t like it. You never even called out for help.’

  Charity felt she was tumbling from a clifftop. To be confronted by something she’d buried years ago was bad enough. But to hear it from her own brother’s lips!

  He was gone before she could think of a reply. He snatched up his bag and his jacket and slammed the door behind him.

  She cried then, bitter angry tears that scalded her cheeks, and her heart felt as if it had been shattered into a thousand pieces.

  She drank a little brandy later to try and pull herself together, but instead of numbing the pain it burned her throat and made her nauseous. Somehow she managed to crawl to the bathroom and knelt in front of the toilet vomiting until there was nothing left but green bile. The smell of brandy was everywhere, like the ghost of her father come back to haunt her, and she wished she could die.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  ‘Charity, whatever’s the matter with you?’ Rita put her hands on Charity’s shoulders as she sat slumped at her desk. ‘You’ve been getting stranger and stranger for weeks. Please tell me.’

  ‘It’s nothing.’ Charity sat up straight and opened the file Rita had brought her, but the words and figures were meaningless. ‘I think I need a tonic, that’s all.’

  Rita caught hold of Charity’s chair and swivelled it round so she could see her friend’s face.

  It was very pale, with mauve circles beneath dull eyes, and thinner as if she’d lost weight. Although her makeup and hair would pass as normal to anyone else, Rita could tell that the usual care hadn’t been taken with them.

  ‘I know you almost as well as myself,’ Rita said as she pulled another chair close and caught hold of her friend’s hands. ‘We’ve shared everything. The loss of our babies, building this business. I was there when John left you. You’ve heard my innermost thoughts about the men I loved. Surely you can tell me about this?’

  ‘I can’t explain because I don’t know myself,’ Charity said in a weary voice.

  Rita didn’t want to bring up how distant Charity had been with clients, the missed appointments or the days she hadn’t come in at all; her only concern was for her friend.

  ‘Well I believe you’re heading for a nervous breakdown,’ Rita said gently. ‘You need help, and quickly. Now why don’t you go home, call your doctor? I can cope with everything here.’

  Charity knew she needed help. She’d been this way before, after Daniel’s adoption. She was in a dark world where even old friends like Rita couldn’t break through. Nothing mattered to her any more: not the business, not friends, not herself.

  ‘There’s Martin’s promotion to sort out,’ Charity said bleakly. ‘I just can’t seem to get my head round that.’

  ‘The girls and I can handle it,’ Rita said firmly. ‘You’re just making yourself worse by trying too hard.’

  ‘OK.’ Charity got up from her chair. She knew if she stayed in the office Rita would keep on digging. She didn’t want to be at home either, but solitude was preferable to questions. ‘Maybe a couple of days in bed will sort me out.’

  ‘The doctor first,’ Rita reminded her. ‘Now put the business out of your mind and just rest. I’ll pop round after work tomorrow to see how you are.’

  Rita sat with Charity’s address book in front of her. Charity wouldn’t approve of her worrying Prue, but in Rita’s view she was the right person to help.

  Rita had quietened down a great deal in the past few years, in both appearance and personality. In working hours her curly hair was tied back, she favoured smart dark suits rather than the vivid minidresses she once loved. Deep down within her she knew the conscientious and committed way she handled her job was due to Charity’s influence. Without her friend’s affectionate support over the years she had no doubt she would’ve gone off the rails, and for that she would always be deeply grateful. But now Charity needed help and Rita intended to see that she got it.

  Prue answered the phone breathlessly, as if she’d just run down the stairs.

  ‘Hallo Prudence.’ Rita felt a little awkward. She had met the girl perhaps nine or ten times in all, but they’d never established any real rapport. She was a cold fish, quite unlike the boys and Charity. ‘It’s Rita Simpson, Charity’s friend. I hope I’m not interrupting anything important, but I felt I must speak to you about your sister.’

  Prue’s guarded tones made it difficult. She wasn’t an easy person to talk to at any time, but as Rita launched into an explanation, she could almost hear the girl bristling.

  ‘I don’t know what you expect me to do,’ she said coldly. ‘I have a job too, you know.’

  ‘I understand that.’ Rita felt a cold shudder go down her spine, remembering how Charity had skimped herself to give this girl a deposit for a house as a wedding present, even though she wasn’t welcome at the ceremony because of that monstrous uncle. ‘But Charity would take time off her work for any one of you.’

  ‘I don’t feel I have to explain myself to you,’ Prue said in an icy voice. ‘This is family business.’

  Rita knew she couldn’t continue this conversation without becoming rude.

  ‘I’ll leave the ball in your court,’ she said crisply. ‘I shall go and see her tomorrow of course, but perhaps you’d like to pass on the message to Toby if he contacts you.’

  ‘Toby’s in Germany,’ Prue snapped back. ‘But I will tell him if he calls.’

  Rita put the phone down, her hands trembling. In her mind’s eye she could see Charity’s face some seven years earlier when Prue called from Studley for help. She remembered too all those Christmases when Charity came staggering through the office doors laden with presents for the children. Weekends given up willingly for them.

  ‘You don’t deserve a sister like her,’ Rita said between clenched teeth. ‘I hope one day you’re in serious trouble and that she turns her back on you.’

  ‘Was it Toby?’ Stephen pushed his way into the drawing room, his face bright with expectancy. ‘Is he coming home?’

  He had heard the phone ring while he was outside. Nurse Giles had just put the receiver down and as she stood at the window the morning sun through the leaded panes made a criss-cross pattern on her pale, round face. Her striped uniform and starched white cap suited her bu
xom shape, giving her an air of confidence she didn’t appear to have in her off-duty clothes.

  ‘No Stephen, it was Charity.’ She paused just long enough for this to sink in, then smiled. ‘It’s more than you deserve. But she’s coming down tonight.’

  Disappointment flooded Stephen’s face. He had been waiting for word from Toby for some time – not a letter or phone call in six or eight weeks.

  Stephen could pass for a forty-year-old now. He was three stone lighter, and a new diet and long hours spent outdoors had turned his face brown. Dawn was responsible for his new appearance. Her arm exercises had made him strong enough to lift himself, giving him a degree of independence. Her company made the days fly by, but it was their sexual relationship that made him feel like a real man again.

  Stephen wasn’t ashamed to look in a mirror now. No huge belly flopping over his trousers. His chin was clearly defined. Dawn trimmed his hair herself and it had lost that wild bushy look. But perhaps the most startling feature now was his eyes: losing so much weight meant that they were no longer embedded in flesh and they shone out like blue glass marbles, making him look almost handsome.

  Stephen no longer spent hours in his study playing with his soldiers and reading. He trundled his chair out into the grounds, and he’d discovered many tasks he could manage there: pruning roses, weeding the raised flowerbeds in the walled garden, even a bit of hedge trimming.

  With stronger arm muscles he could even get up the stairs occasionally to look around. It was a slow, laborious job, hauling himself up on his bottom, but worth it when he explored rooms he hadn’t seen in nearly thirty years.

  ‘Why didn’t you call me to speak to her? I was only outside.’

  ‘I was afraid you’d put her off,’ Dawn retorted. For a big woman her voice was unexpectedly soft, but then Stephen knew only too well there were many inconsistencies in Dawn Giles. Those big muscular arms which could easily support him gave the impression of masculinity, yet she favoured frilly underwear. She maintained an air of starchy sternness in her professional role, yet when alone she often had all the warmth and gaiety of a chorus girl. ‘So I said how pleased you’d be to see her, how much happier you are now, and how nice it will be for me to have a night off.’