Camellia

'I told you he left through the door,' Camellia managed a token of defiance. She swung her legs over the side of the bed and stood up, reaching for her jeans. 'If you listened to what I said instead of hassling me, you might learn something.'

  'Don't get lippy with me, girl,' the inspector snarled at her. 'And cover yourself up!'

  Dougie had dropped the fifteen or so feet to the roof below without a sound, but the young constable was like an elephant. He lowered himself awkwardly over the windowsill, then dropped down like a ton of bricks, smashing something en route.

  'Christ Almighty,' Camellia heard him say, his voice muffled. 'I've torn my strides.'

  Over two hours later they finally took her down to West Central Police Station in Bow Street. She sat shivering on a stool while they turned out every drawer and cupboard, groped down the side of chairs, turned the mattress upside down, and tipped out packets of sugar and cornflakes to check there was nothing inside.

  The most incriminating things they found were a few packets of red Rizla and the cardboard roach of an old joint in a wastepaper bin.

  Inspector Spencer kept on asking her where Dougie kept his stuff.

  'What stuff?' She kept up the display of complete ignorance. 'What are you looking for?'

  She had to hand it to Dougie, he knew how to keep his drugs in order. All those times she'd laughed at him for being so careful to place everything in one box right by the bed. Now she understood why. He must have snatched it up the moment he heard the heavy feet.

  When the policeman moved the rug by the window and found the loose floorboard, she had felt sick. Nausea quickly turned to anger when she discovered this hiding place was empty too. Their bank book, Dougie's passport and the wad of notes he'd put in there only days before were gone. Dougie must have expected a raid, yet he hadn't taken her into his confidence.

  Back in the flat it had been comparatively easy to portray herself as a naive yet somewhat rebellious teenager, but once in the station with the grim-faced Inspector Spencer questioning her, she found it far harder.

  'Let me spell it out to you,' he said. The hanging flesh under his eyes and the slack, wet mouth reminded her of a bloodhound she'd seen once. 'Your boyfriend is not only a drug dealer, he's little better than a murderer. Not content with making money bending kids' minds, he had to make more by cutting this LSD with a poison. Suppose it was your friend lying there in agony on a hospital bed, vomiting up blood! How would you feel?'

  It horrified Camellia to think of anyone in such a state, whether they were related to her or not. But as Spencer continued, he told her about other things Dougie had been involved in: burglaries in Essex where dogs had been thrown poisoned meat to silence them permanently; two old age pensioners in Islington who'd been robbed at knife point, then tied up while he ransacked their house.

  'I didn't know,' she cried. This time she was speaking the truth. 'He never told me anything. I can't believe he was that wicked.'

  The saddest thing was that in her heart of hearts she knew he was capable of all of it. He had no conscience and no respect for anyone. For most of the year he'd been out alone a great deal, and he'd become very secretive. It all added up.

  'How old are you, Camellia?' The inspector put his hand on her shoulder, in an almost fatherly gesture.

  'Eighteen. Nineteen in a few weeks,' she whispered.

  'And your parents, where do they live?'

  'They're both dead,' she replied.

  She saw a momentary flash of sympathy in his eyes. But his next remark made her blush with shame.

  'If I was to discover my daughter was living with a man like Douglas Green, I think it would break my heart,' he said. 'You couldn't have picked a worse man, Camellia, he's lower than a maggot.'

  'But he wasn't bad to me,' she said, so scared now she could almost hear prison gates shutting on her too. 'He looked after me when I hadn't got anyone else.'

  They left her alone for some time and she guessed they were checking up on her background. She hated to think they might speak to Sergeant Bert Simmonds in Rye. He would be so disappointed that she'd got herself into trouble.

  But apart from the shame she felt, there was also the fear that they would discover she was a thief.

  Supposing the security men at Fenwicks identified her as the girl who fainted in their store at approximately the same time four valuable furs were swiped from under their noses? Were there reports on file of a girl dipping into tourists' pockets around Piccadilly? So many people could tell the police that she was always with Dougie when he was out selling drugs in clubs and bars.

  As the hours ticked by in the interview room, fright was replaced by despair. She wanted to cry. She'd spent eighteen months loving Dougie blindly, following his lead as if she had no mind of her own.

  How often had she heard him justify selling drugs by saying 'If they don't get them from me it will be someone else'. He'd made her believe drugs were as essential to people's happiness as sunshine and love. And somehow she'd come to think shoplifting and pickpocketing weren't crimes, but a bit of a lark, a redistribution of wealth.

  But it was wrong. She saw that now. By aiding and abetting Dougie she'd made him even worse. She should have got out after that night in the Mayfair hotel, when his real nature was revealed. Why hadn't she?

  It wasn't even as if she'd been having fun with Dougie. All the drugs dried up for a time in February, and he'd begun to get morose and violent back then, yet she still foolishly thought she could handle him. No cannabis was coming through and the police found one acid laboratory after another. The Middle Earth was busted on three successive weekends and under threat of permanent closure.

  Dougie got scared when plain-clothes policemen began mingling with the hippies around Soho, picking off the dealers one by one. Shoplifting had been almost a game until then, a 'V sign to the capitalists. Now it became a livelihood and Dougie made her take bigger and bigger risks. 'Just till we've got enough money to split,' he would say. 'We'll take off to Morocco and live like spaced-out kings.'

  But where was he when the store detective chased her up Kensington High Street? Would he have cared if she was caught dipping tourists' pockets? Where was he now with all that money she'd helped him make?

  'Did Dougie give you that bruise on your arm?' the woman police officer left sitting with her in the interview room asked. They had already checked her for needle marks and found nothing, but clearly this fresh-faced blonde hoped sympathy would encourage Camellia to tell them everything she knew.

  'No,' Camellia lied. 'I fell on the stairs a couple of days ago.'

  'It looks like finger marks to me.' The policewoman got up from her seat and came closer, cupping Camellia's chin and lifting her face so she could look right into her eyes. 'How did an intelligent pretty girl like you get mixed up with someone like him?'

  Camellia wanted to blurt it all out. Being Dougie's girl was like being Queen of Soho. She was pointed out, looked-up to. Could someone who'd never experienced being a reject, possibly understand how that felt? She wanted to sob out that he needed her. Deep down, she knew that she endured being hit and sworn at because she felt that was what she deserved.

  Even his old friends had urged her to leave him in the past few months. But how could she leave a man who shook so badly that sometimes he couldn't hold a cup or shave himself? His paranoia, his nightmares, all convinced her it was her duty to stand by him.

  'I was just a kid up from Sussex with no family. He was so handsome and he knew everyone,' Camellia said at last, hoping this woman would understand. 'He looked after me. He made me feel I was somebody.'

  The policewoman shook her head, an expression of bewilderment on her plump youthful face. 'But surely you must have guessed he was involved in something shady once you were living with him?' She ran her fingers through short blonde hair. 'Didn't you wonder where his money came from?'

  'He told me he was a partner in the printers under his flat.' Camellia whispered the lie she had invented in rea
diness for this occasion. 'I thought he made deals for them. Mr Tharrup didn't charge us rent, so it seemed plausible.'

  In all the time Camellia had known Dougie, the belief that he needed her and in his own way loved her was like a guiding star. She had been convinced that once they were away together, seeing the world, he would change for the better.

  But now as she sat in this bare, brightly lit interview room, without anything to distract her from the truth, she saw things as they really were.

  Dougie had never ached to see the Taj Mahal, or Niagara Falls. He didn't want the comfort and security of a nice home. All he wanted was to be stoned constantly, to live in a twilight world of idleness. The only reason he suggested India or Morocco was because drugs were readily available there and his money would last longer. Now faced with the organised way he had made his departure, making sure he had his drugs and money, but leaving her behind to take the flak, she couldn't even hang on to the idea that he needed her.

  Inspector Spencer came back into the interview room a couple of hours later and patted her on the shoulder waking her from an exhausted sleep. 'I'm going to let you go,' he said.

  'Go?' She stared at him stupidly.

  'We'll get Green, I have no doubt about that.' His voice was low and stern. 'But I'm just as convinced that he won't come back for you.'

  Camellia knew it too. Dougie was probably halfway to Amsterdam by now.

  'But the kids in hospital?' she asked. 'How are they?'

  'Fortunately for them, recovering,' he said icily.

  Camellia felt a surge of relief and stood up.

  'There's just a few things I want to point out,' he said, his eyes like flint. 'I know perfectly well that you aren't as innocent as you would like me to believe. But unless I'm very badly mistaken, the events of tonight have shaken you up enough for you to take stock of your life.'

  Camellia nodded. She couldn't trust herself to speak.

  'I'll be watching.' He waved a warning finger at her. 'If I get so much of a whisper that you're up to your old tricks again, I'll come down on you so hard you'll regret it for the rest of your life.'

  He knew everything. Camellia could see it in his face. She hadn't fooled him for one minute.

  "That slum of a flat will be boarded up by tonight,' he went on. 'A WPC will go with you now to get your things. Take a word of advice from me, Camellia. Find yourself a decent job, make something of yourself. Don't ever make me regret my lenience with you.'

  There was more shame as the policewoman watched her pack her clothes. No one would have believed that Camellia had once kept the flat clean and tidy. Now after the raid it looked like a derelict building a few tramps had slept in. The big settee stripped of its bright Indian bedspread had stuffing oozing out of it. The mattress had huge brown stains, the shower Dougie took such pride in building was just an old cracked sink embedded in cement. In a few weeks' time even the daisies she'd stencilled on the walls in the kitchen would be crumbling away with damp.

  'Where will you go, Camellia?'

  Camellia looked up from her packing at the question. The day before she would have been insolent, but she was beyond that now. The policewoman's plump face held real concern.

  'I'm not quite sure right now,' she said honestly. 'I think I might move right out of London. But I need time to get my head together.'

  As Camellia fastened the first suitcase she felt the bump in the lid-pocket made by her mother's file of old letters. Her entire life had been shaped by lies.

  'Have you got any money?'

  This time the question was almost maternal. Camellia saw the woman's hand move towards her pocket in a humanitarian gesture. Not all police were bastards, as Dougie had taught her, there was Bert Simmonds and now this one.

  'Enough till I get a job.' Pride was all she had left, she couldn't take a handout. 'I'll manage.'

  'Good luck then.' The policewoman held out her hand when Camellia was finished, her grey-blue eyes gentle now. 'Don't be too hard on yourself Camellia.'

  It was only later in a cafe in Charing Cross Road that the full implications hit her. She was homeless, jobless and apart from about two pounds in her purse, broke and alone.

  It was ten in the morning, a cold, dark, grey day. She needed to wash and clean her teeth, even her hair was tangled. She looked like a tramp. If only she hadn't left Archway House so hastily she might have been able to fall back on Miss Peet. But that was out of the question, so were Suzanne and Carol as she hadn't once tried to contact them before. What on earth was she going to do?

  She cupped her cold hands round the cup of coffee to warm them, wondering if she dared spend a little of her money on a bacon sandwich. The only two other customers left, a blast of more cold air coming in as they opened the door.

  'What's up?' A voice made her look up. It was the fat blonde waitress Dougie called 'Cream Puff, but her bright blue eyes were kindly.

  'A touch of the blues.' Camellia tried to smile but her lips quivered.

  The girl cleared the table where the two men had been and stacked the plates on the counter. She was wearing a tight blue nylon overall and where her black slip ended beneath it a bulge of fat quivered. She turned back to Camellia and asked if she could join her.

  Camellia nodded.

  'Dougie done a bunk?' The girl slid into the seat opposite and pulled a pack of cigarettes out of her overall pocket, taking one herself and offering one to Camellia.

  For a moment Camellia was so surprised she could only stare at the plump pink and white face in front of her, framed by a mop of blonde frizzy hair. 'You know Dougie?'

  The girl sniggered. 'Everyone knows Dougie Green.'

  'Has he been in this morning?' Camellia's heart leapt for a moment.

  The girl shook her head and lit both their cigarettes.

  'Camellia, isn't it?' she said. 'I've often heard him call you it. It's a lovely name.'

  Camellia didn't feel there was anything lovely about herself right now. 'I prefer Mel, especially when I look as rough as I do now,' she said. 'What's yours?'

  'I've got a posh one too,' the girl laughed. 'It's Beatrice, would you believe. But I'd rather be called Bee. Now what's up? And what's with the suitcases?'

  Camellia wanted to invent something, but she guessed by lunchtime the whole of Soho would know the truth anyway.

  'We got busted,' she blurted out. 'Dougie got away. I've been at the nick all night.'

  Bee didn't turn a hair. 'I can't say I'm surprised. I've been hearing whispers about Dougie for weeks, and all of them nasty ones. He's a louse to let you carry the can. Did they charge you with anything?'

  Camellia was wary. Most of the girls she knew in the West End thrived on others' misfortunes. She couldn't think of anyone who wouldn't be gloating once this got out. She so wanted to pour it all out to this friendly waitress in the absence of anyone she knew better. But somehow it brought home to her just how friendless she was and she began to cry.

  'Come on, love, it can't be that bad.' Bee put her hand over Camellia's. 'It's only a fine for possession. Is that what they charged you with or are you upset because Doug did a runner?'

  Camellia had to talk, even at the risk of it all being repeated and embellished later. She told everything, encouraged by the kindly hand on hers.

  Bee was a good listener, only stopping Camellia now and again to clarify a point. The nickname, Cream Puff, Dougie had given her was apt. The blonde curls, the sweet, pretty face and her plumpness were reminiscent of cream oozing out of a sweet, sticky bun. But there was something more to her than being a sympathetic ear, something Camellia identified with, yet couldn't put her finger on.

  'I suppose you think I'm an idiot for trusting him?' Camellia said as she finished.

  Bee shrugged her shoulders and dragged on her cigarette. 'I expect I would have too,' she said. 'But good-looking blokes like Dougie don't bother with girls like me, that's about the only advantage there is to being fat.'

  The honesty in the rema
rk jarred Camellia. She had once made such disparaging remarks about herself. 'But you've got a beautiful face,' she said. It was true: Bee's face was lovely, kind of angelic with baby-soft lips that curved sweetly into a warm smile and dimples in both cheeks. 'You can lose weight, but I don't think you ever lose the label of being a mug.'

  'Does it matter if wasters call you a mug?' Bee looked round towards the door, checking there were no customers about to come in, then sank back into the seat. 'I wouldn't lose any sleep about the opinions of Dougie's cronies. If I was you, I'd be thinking about making a new start.'

  'Easier said than done,' Camellia tried to smile. 'How do you get a job when you can't explain what you've done for a year and a half?'

  'There's one going here.' Bee drew deeply on her cigarette. 'The owners don't look too closely. I could say you'd been working abroad or something.'

  A few weeks earlier Camellia would have laughed at the idea of making sandwiches and cooking egg and chips, but she was desperate now. 'Really? They'd take me on?'

  The Black and White was close to being the seediest of the West End's cafes. Its black and white decor was a product of the late fifties contemporary style with spindly-legged tables and chairs. All the white was now yellow and much of the plastic padding along the counter and on the seats was cracked open. But it had a reputation for good cheap food and it was usually busy.

  'Don't look so thrilled,' Bee chuckled, her double chin quivering. 'It's bloody hard work in the lunch hour, but the money's not bad and you get your food thrown in. I'll have to ask the boss when he phones later, but I could say you were just helping out as a casual until he gets a chance to see how you shape up.'

  It was like being thrown a lifeline. 'Okay,' Camellia smiled weakly. 'You're a life-saver. All I need now is somewhere to crash, I don't suppose you've got any bright ideas about that?'

  For a moment Bee didn't reply. Camellia could almost see the girl wondering if she'd landed herself with a liability.

  'You can kip down with me upstairs for a day or two,' she sighed as if she felt compelled to make the offer. 'But only a day or two, that's all.'