Camellia

  Her weight continued to drop off and by Easter she was under nine stone. She no longer slunk by shop windows afraid of catching a glimpse of her reflection, but looked at herself and smiled. She was the embodiment of a dolly bird with her swinging hair, eyes accentuated with black liner, pale pouty lips and long slender legs. Who would have thought that plain fat girl who'd once been nicknamed Camel would be the first at Archway House daring enough to buy a miniskirt?

  Now and then Camellia found herself wishing Bonny could see how she'd changed. She would have liked her approval. Sometimes too she thought of going down to Rye. It would be sweet revenge to see the girls who'd teased her in the past reel back in amazement and envy. She didn't want to see Mrs Rowlands, but it would be so good to see Bert Simmonds again. He had been a true friend.

  But 1966 was too exciting a year to waste precious time visiting a place that had nothing but sad memories. Freddie Laker introduced cut price air fares to New York. The space race between the United States and Russia was neck and neck. In April the Russians orbited the moon, and in June the Americans retaliated by landing the first unmanned spacecraft right on it. Labour won a landslide victory in March. The Moors murderers Myra Hindley and Ian Brady were jailed for life in May. In the summer England won the World Cup at Wembley, beating Germany 4–2 in a thrilling final. Bobby Moore, the Charlton brothers, Geoff Hurst and Nobby Stiles were public heroes and thousands of fans invaded the pitch. But the excitement of the year was overshadowed in October by the tragic Aberfan disaster when two million tons of rock, mud and earth ploughed into a small Welsh junior school, killing 147 small children.

  Camellia wept as she read the shocking news of townsfolk, miners and firemen attempting to dig out the children with their bare hands until help arrived. All year she had been bursting with happiness, finding her feet with boys, going dancing and to parties. She'd even begun to make long-term plans to find a flat to share with Madeline and Rose in the new year. Suddenly she was reminded that joy and sadness were the two sides of the same coin.

  Celebrations began with Camellia's seventeenth birthday on 21 December and continued right through Christmas until New Year, even though she had to fit in working flat out by day. Miss Peet laid on a birthday cake and Camellia had cards and small presents from almost all the other girls. The eleven o'clock curfew was raised till one so they could all go to a dance at the Empire in Leicester Square that night. Camellia wore a red crepe minidress with a white feather boa slung round her neck. One of her friends must have told the MC that it was her birthday, for the next thing she knew she was being pushed up onto the stage to be kissed by the entire band as they played Roy Orbison's song 'Pretty Woman', dedicating it to her.

  Suzanne's parents, Mr and Mrs Connor, invited Camellia to spend Christmas with them in Hammersmith. Camellia had never met such a huge jolly family before. Suzanne was the youngest of four, and her two older brothers and sisters all had two or three children apiece. The house was in a three-storey terrace just off King Street and although Suzanne had told Camellia that her parents had been very poor while she was growing up, Mr Connor's building firm was now doing very well. The house reflected this sudden turn in the Connor family fortunes. They had an opulent orange three-piece suite, big enough for an airport, a twenty-four inch television and a tank full of tropical fish in their lounge, not to mention a seven-foot Christmas tree with flashing lights. Camellia loved all the flashy touches: a black and gilt bar in one corner, a mini-chandelier, carpets so deep they came over her shoes.

  Their dining room table was already vast, but they added another at one end, and with ten adults including Suzanne and Camellia, along with eight children, sitting down to eat a turkey as big as an ostrich, it was something of a squash.

  They played games in the afternoon, charades, Bingo and later when it grew dark, Murder. The children became more and more hysterical as the day wore on. The adults grew tiddly and told ruder and ruder jokes. The floor was littered with wrapping paper, toys, nut shells and selection boxes. Camellia felt as if she could live with this family for ever.

  As soon as she and Suzanne were back at work on 27 December, there was New Year's Eve to plan, and Miss Puckridge had to remind them on several occasions that they both had counters they belonged behind and preparations to make for the January sales, not to mention keeping an eye open for shoplifters, as it seemed a great deal of stock had gone missing in the past few months. The girls waited until Miss Puckridge had stalked away, her nose in the air, then looked at each other.

  'They should pay us to stay on a permanent holiday.' Suzanne spluttered with laughter. That would solve the problem overnight.'

  'Shouldn't we give up nicking things for the New Year?' Camellia said. She'd had an attack of guilt over Christmas. She had so many clothes now and she had real friends. Sometimes she had a feeling it could all be snatched away, that she'd be right back where she started. 'I mean, they might catch on to us.'

  'They won't,' Suzanne said firmly. 'But remind me to wear something baggy to work tomorrow. I want to get one of those new Mary Quants for New Year's Eve.'

  1967 came in with Camellia locked in the arms of a boy wearing a collarless Beatle jacket and matching hairstyle. He told her his name was Tony Blackburn and that he was a DJ on Radio Caroline, the pirate radio station. He did sound like him, but she couldn't quite believe a man as famous as that would spend New Year's Eve at the Hammersmith Palais and smooch all night with an ordinary girl like her. He said he would phone her in a day or two and take her out to dinner in the restaurant on the top of the Post Office Tower.

  He never did, but that hardly mattered as she had plenty of other dates, both alone and with Madeline and Rose from the hostel. Each time they went to the pub up in Highgate they seemed to meet someone. January, February and March slipped by in a flash and still they discussed getting a flat together where they could have wild parties and stay out all night if they wanted to. but somehow they never got around to looking for anywhere.

  It was in April that Camellia first became interested in the underground scene in London. There had been a rally of 10,000 flower children in New York's Central Park in March, and their bizarre clothing, their protests about the American involvement in Vietnam and their ideology of peace and love struck a note with her. The vast media coverage on the subject and the reports that London was 'The Swinging City' all convinced her there was something important happening right under her nose.

  Around the same time Miss Puckridge issued an ultimatum that anyone arriving for work with a skirt less than twenty inches long would be forced to wear a nylon overall. As the majority of Camellia's skirts had, inch by inch, been shortened to less than sixteen, she knew she was a target and resented it. On top of this was a vague feeling of boredom with the girls at the hostel. She seemed to have outgrown them. Their only ambitions seemed centred on marriage, while Camellia wanted to experience life. Even Madeline who was the nearest thing to 'a raver' in Archway House, showed no enthusiasm for more adventurous nights out, like coffee bars and clubs in Soho. In fact when Camellia suggested they went to the Middle Earth, a new club which had opened in a cellar beneath Covent Garden market, she looked horrified.

  'It's full of drug addicts,' she said, pursing her lips in disapproval. 'I heard someone comes up and sticks a needle in your arm the moment you get there.'

  This seemed extremely unlikely, but Camellia decided to try Carol and Suzanne at work the next day.

  'It's only those loony flower children who go there,' Carol said dismissively. She was a little surprised to find Camellia had come so far out of herself. 'I like places with a bit of style, not cellars full of weirdos.'

  In the absence of anyone to go to the club with, Camellia had to resign herself to pubs and dance halls with the other girls, but it didn't stop her looking longingly at girls who wafted into the shop with bells and brightly coloured beads round their necks. She sensed their freedom, it wafted to her like the smell of their patchouli oil
scent. These girls didn't wear bras beneath their flimsy cheesecloth blouses, their hair was long and tousled. She knew they didn't have to be home by eleven and she was sure no one would ever dare measure the length of their skirts.

  But as summer arrived, at last Suzanne began to wake up to the idea that there was more to life and London than being bribed with a gin and orange by lads who wanted nothing more than to get their knickers off in the back seat of their Consul.

  'Do you still fancy going to the Middle Earth,' she asked one evening as they hurried towards the tube to go home.

  'Yes of course, more than ever,' Camellia said, feeling a surge of excitement. 'What makes you ask?'

  'I met a real tasty Australian the other night who goes there,' Suzanne grinned. 'He said it was "mind blowing". We could try it out once, just to see. I think Carol will come. She's fed up with the Palais too.'

  'Let's go there on Saturday,' Camellia suggested. 'But I'd have to tell Miss Peet I was staying at your house. Would your mum write me a note?'

  As Saturday came closer Camellia was dizzy with excitement. In return for helping a friend of Suzanne's fill a shopping bag with clothes in the changing room, Camellia had an outfit so wild she could hardly believe she had the nerve to wear it: a red crushed-velvet tunic, with little shorts underneath and a huge studded belt to put round her hips. She spent almost a week's wages on some white, tight, long boots to wear with it. It was all packed in an overnight bag down with Wilf the security man. She was going home with Suzanne for tea and to change, and the Connors didn't have any kind of curfew in their house – in fact Suzanne had casually said they probably wouldn't be back until the tubes started running on Sunday morning.

  The Middle Earth didn't open until after half past ten and when the girls arrived soon after eleven The Cream's 'Strange Brew' was blasting out with such force it almost singed their ears. As they'd been told, it was just a huge cavern like a cellar stretching right under Covent Garden market, the only seating planks on scaffolding in tiers, but to Camellia it was everything she'd expected and more. The walls were whitewashed, but transformed with coloured light shows. Strange shapes oozed and blobbed in time to the beat, each wall a slightly different image.

  'To think I was worried I looked weird!' Suzanne giggled.

  She was dressed like a Red Indian squaw, in a chamois-leather minidress with fringing and beads, more beads round her forehead and long brown boots.

  I've never felt more normal,' Carol sniggered. She had taken some persuading to abandon her normal dolly-bird image for a Victorian cream lace dress of her grandmother's she looked stunning in. 'I think I'll have to raid Gran's wardrobe more often.'

  It was like walking in on a film set or a fancy-dress party. Hundreds of people, reflecting almost every period and style: girls in twenties and thirties evening dresses, still more in flowing diaphanous cheesecloth smocks, jeans, miniskirts and wild patterned loons; saris, gypsy skirts, even one girl like a belly dancer with a glittering girdle of gold chains. The men were every bit as remarkable: not a dark suit in the entire club and hair almost as long as the girls. Velvet trousers, brocade jackets, beaded Red Indian leather shirts and jeans. One man wore nothing but a pair of bright yellow hipster trousers, his bare feet and chest tanned a deep golden brown and his curly hair like a halo round his face.

  "He must be a ballet dancer,' Suzanne said as he pirouetted and leapt into the air. A black girl joined him on roller skates, her buttocks undulating beneath a long red tube dress, flowers painted on her cheeks. Joss sticks burned everywhere, little bells around necks tinkled; it was somewhere between a fun fair and a carnival, a pleasure house for the young.

  To Camellia's disappointment Carol and Suzanne seemed bored. 'There's no booze,' they kept saying. 'All the blokes are a bit weird. The music's too loud, maybe we should have gone down the Palais.'

  The music wasn't loud, it was deafening. To Camellia it was like finally being dropped into the centre of all those happenings she'd read about. 'Don't be spoil-sports,' she implored them. 'Look, everyone else is enjoying themselves/

  "They're all on drugs,' Suzanne pouted. 'Now if we could get some Purple Hearts we'd be able to get into it.'

  Camellia didn't need anything to make her high. But if some pills would keep Suzanne and Carol happy enough to stay, she intended to go along with it.

  She perched on one of the platforms, with Carol just below her, and watched Suzanne walk towards a tall dark man in a long brocade jacket. He was very slender, with black curly hair as long as her own. He turned as Suzanne spoke to him and Camellia felt the hair on the back of her neck rise. A pirate out of a kids' book, was her first impression: a long olive face with thick eyebrows and a wide, flashing smile.

  She was at least twenty yards from him, but when Suzanne pointed towards them he smiled and Camellia felt a quickening of her pulse.

  He was at least six foot, judging from the way he bent down to listen to what Suzanne was saying to him. He wore a ruffled shirt under his jacket and velvet trousers tucked into long snakeskin boots.

  Camellia put her hand down and touched Carol's shoulder, indicating the man. 'He's beautiful,' she whispered.

  'He looks dangerous to me,' Carol sniffed. 'But then so does everyone. I don't know why we agreed to come here with you.'

  Camellia took no notice of Carol's terse remark. Suzanne was walking back towards them, the dark man at her side.

  'What are you after girls?' he said as he came closer. He looked up at Camellia and winked, almost as if he knew she'd been studying him.

  'Purple Hearts or Blues?' Suzanne asked.

  He dug in his pocket and pulled out a small envelope. 'All I've got is a few Bennies, want a couple each?'

  'How much are they?' Suzanne had that cool, snooty expression she used when she wasn't entirely sure about something.

  'Would I charge three tasty chicks?' he smiled. 'Have them on me.'

  He hesitated before moving on. His gaze flickered up to Camellia and all she could do was stare back. His eyes were the darkest she'd ever seen, slanty with heavy lids and long black lashes, his skin tight and shiny smooth over protruding cheekbones. Maleness seeped out of every pore, drawing attention to his tight trousers and the suggestion of an iron body under the dainty shirt. Even his hair, which at a distance had looked like wild curls, was in fact made of tightly coiled spring-like ringlets.

  'Wake up,' Carol nudged Camellia. 'He's gone now.'

  'Was he really that beautiful?' Camellia smiled.

  'Yeah,' Carol handed her a coke to wash the pills down with. 'But you can bet all the other girls think so too. So forget him.'

  There were strange things going on all around her. A whey-faced, dirty-looking girl sat in the corner tightening a leather belt round her upper arm and to Camellia's horror she injected herself with something. In another dark corner a couple were making love just as if they were alone. Others mumbled to themselves, stumbling about with glazed eyes. On the dance floor couples jumped, swayed and writhed to the loud music, making her feel as if she had landed on a bizarre, alien planet. But despite all this decadence Camellia's eyes were drawn back constantly to the man who'd given them the pills.

  Everyone knew him and tried to stop him as he passed by, but he didn't pause for more than a moment or two with anyone. Camellia wondered if in fact he owned the club. It was nice of him to share his pills with them.

  She barely noticed first Carol, then Suzanne go off to dance, content just to sit and watch from her position up on the scaffolding, legs dangling in space, arms resting on another bar. Her friends had claimed to be so stoned they could barely sit still, but Camellia felt nothing more than a slight flush of excitement.

  'Left you all alone have they?'

  It was the man again, his voice deep and husky as if he smoked a hundred cigarettes a day.

  'It's okay,' smiled. 'I like watching.'

  He jumped up the six feet to her as effortlessly and gracefully as a cat and sat down besid
e her. 'I haven't seen you and your mates before,' he said. 'Where are you from?'

  'They live in Hammersmith,' Camellia replied. 'I come from Highgate.'

  'I'm Dougie,' he said. 'And you?'

  'Camellia.'

  It was the first time she could remember giving her real name willingly. For some odd reason she felt like a Camellia tonight.

  'A pretty name,' he smiled. 'It suits you. I think you've got the best legs I ever saw.'

  Camellia blushed and giggled, instinctively pulling the little shorts down further.

  'Don't do that.' He took her hand in his and smacked it. 'If you've got the nerve to buy something outrageous, wear it with pride and don't go getting embarrassed.'

  Camellia had a surprisingly easy manner with men, compared with most of the girls she knew. She still didn't expect them to fancy her, somehow, so she didn't try too hard. As a result they tended to single her out to talk to. Working in a busy store had helped her still more, since she'd learned to respond with interest to anything customers might say. She'd also discovered that making an outrageous remark right at the beginning of a conversation, took people by surprise and kept their interest.

  'I didn't buy it,' she grinned. 'I nicked it. I nick all my clothes.'

  For a moment he just looked at her. It was difficult to gauge whether he was shocked or thought she was crazy. But his mouth curved into a wide grin and his eyes sparkled. 'Well!' he said. 'A girl after my own heart.'

  It was only as she began to chat to Dougie that she became aware the pills were affecting her. As Suzanne had claimed, they made you chat a lot, made you feel powerful. She found she was projecting an image of herself that was entirely new, steering him to believe she was far more worldly and zany than she really was.

  He asked her down to dance and though Camellia had a moment's trepidation that she would make a complete fool of herself, she found to her delight that she was swept away by the music.