Charity (41 page)

‘But Toby was always good at mixing with other boys,’ Charity said, her anxiety mounting.

‘He still is,’ Lou assured her. ‘He keeps up with his schoolwork, he’s very good at sport, but he’s had a great many changes in his life, dramatic ones. Moving from a terraced house in Greenwich to Studley Priory and discovering he’s to inherit it one day is enough to disturb any child. Your uncle overindulges him during the holidays and he’s constantly reminding the boy he has to excel.’

‘And I don’t suppose he gets any love or affection,’ Charity said, a lump coming up in her throat.

‘Oddly enough, from what I can see, I think Stephen has grown rather fond of him,’ Lou said. ‘He may not be the ideal guardian, and perhaps Toby needs more demonstrative affection, but they are quite close. Geoff and I are taking James there at Easter. We’re going to try and talk to the colonel then and to your grandmother. Maybe we can make him see sense about you.’

‘Me!’

‘You know both Geoff and I totally disapprove of him keeping you from the children,’ Lou said. ‘I hope we can make him see you might be able to help Toby.’

‘Do Toby and Prue talk about me?’ Charity asked. She couldn’t stop a tear trickling down her face, and her voice was breaking.

‘Yes, when they are alone with Geoff and me.’ Charity felt Lou was choosing her words carefully. ‘We’ve tried to make them understand that you had no choice but to take the job at Bowes Court. Unfortunately Stephen has managed to paint a rather different picture.’

‘They don’t think I abandoned them?’ Charity’s voice rose in alarm.

‘Not exactly,’ Lou said too quickly. ‘But they choose to believe you were given the opportunity to live at Studley too. Geoff and I have done our best to explain your side of it, but you must understand we’re in a difficult position. If Stephen was to think we were undermining or opposing him in any way, he could very well take James from us.’

After Charity had put the phone down she just sat there, overwhelmed by what she’d heard.

‘They think I deserted them,’ she said to herself.

Even in the blackest moments in the past three years this had never occurred to her. She had worried about them being ill treated, imagined every kind of horror from illness to neglect. But always she’d believed they had understood why she’d had to leave them.

She had thought Uncle Stephen had done his worst when he cut her off from the children, and the fear they would forget her had been the biggest worry. But now she saw that Stephen was even more vindictive than she supposed: he hadn’t been satisfied until he’d poisoned their minds against her too.

Everything was going so well – or so she’d thought until she phoned Lou. Today she’d been told her sales figures were the highest on the team. John was flying back from Hanover tomorrow and she’d just received her first commission cheque from Glamour Girl. But now all that happiness had been wiped out by one phone call.

Prue and Toby now had an enviable life with good schools and nice clothes. Toby was riding, Prue having dancing and piano lessons and Stephen had convinced them that she could have had the same. Who could blame them for reaching the conclusion that their elder sister had run out on them for selfish reasons?

Charity climbed into bed and lay there brooding. She wanted to think about John coming back tomorrow and what she was going to wear when he took her out to dinner. But all she could think of was how much she’d lost.

There was hardly a day when she didn’t think about Daniel, trying to imagine how big he was, how many teeth he had, whether he crawled, or shuffled around on his bottom as James did. Daniel was ten months old now, happily unaware there had ever been anyone else in his life but the woman who now fed and changed him. But her brothers and sister
did
remember her: she had been a major part of their lives from the moment they were born, and they carried that inside them. How could she let them know that her love for them was still just as strong and that the promises she’d made to find a home one day so they could all be together hadn’t been abandoned?

‘I’m going back to Africa, Charity,’ John said, his eyes on the tablecloth.

‘For how long?’ she asked, reaching out across the table to touch his hand.

‘For good.’

Charity knew by his expression and the finality of his words that he hadn’t come back from Germany for her.

‘You mean, that’s it?’

John shifted in his seat. He had chosen the restaurant in Queensway purposely. It was crowded with people of all nationalities, noisy and busy. He had let her eat her dinner, heard about her job and her worries about the children, how she’d painted her room pink and white and made new curtains. Now he knew he had to come to the point.

‘I wanted to say goodbye for good when we parted at the airport,’ he said in a low voice, ‘but I couldn’t do it. I thought of writing it in a letter, but that seemed cowardly.’

‘Why?’ she asked. She was begging him with her eyes to say he didn’t mean it. ‘We’re so good together.’

‘We might be now,’ he said gently. ‘But in another ten years it will be different. I’m too old for you, Charity. You need a young man who can give you children. Not a rootless wanderer like me.’

All the time he’d been in Germany his mind had been in turmoil. So many times he’d been tempted to let his love for her override caution, to come back and sweep her off with him. But it was madness to think that way. She had the job she wanted now, her flat and her friends; he couldn’t offer her a secure home with his lifestyle.

‘Without you I don’t have anything,’ she said, wiping a tear from her cheek.

‘That’s not so.’ He took her hand and squeezed it. ‘You’ve got far more here than I could give you. You’ve got a career now, you’re young and beautiful and the world is at your feet. Trust Geoff and Lou to help you get to see your brothers and sister. Toby and Prue are teenagers now and your uncle can’t keep them away from you for ever. Find a young man to love and one day soon you’ll look back on this and be glad I left you.’

‘I’ll never, ever love anyone but you.’ She held on to his hand tightly. ‘You don’t know how I feel inside.’

‘I do,’ he said, his eyes full of understanding. ‘But I know it will fade.’

He poured Charity another glass of wine. Everything he felt was mirrored in her eyes and the pain inside him was so intense he had to look away. He wanted to run, to get to the airport and catch the first plane out of London – anything but see the heartbreak in her face.

Charity pushed her chair back and stood up, trembling and white-faced. ‘I think you’re cruel, selfish and cowardly. Go back to Africa, John. But if you think I’m going to say I hope you’ll be happy, then you’re mistaken. I hope you’ll be as miserable as you’ve made me.’

She turned and ran out of the restaurant. People looked up in surprise as she passed.

Charity sat by the open window painting her nails bright red. It was her day off, she’d just arrived back from the hairdresser’s and the afternoon sun was warm on her face.

It was a month since John left for good and until today the weather had been as miserable as she’d felt. Strong winds and rain, fog, ice and even snow. Rushing off to work in gloom, arriving home in darkness, Sundays spent hugging the fire or staying in bed, continually thinking of John. One moment she was sobbing because she wanted him so much, the next she was angry and bitter.

He was too old. He didn’t really want children. Maybe she’d only been a substitute for his daughter Susie … However many excuses she offered, it didn’t make it stop hurting. She began to think that if she couldn’t manage to make a relationship work for love she might as well do it for money.

But today she’d woken to April sunshine, and as she looked down at the garden in the square the sudden change from winter to spring seemed reassuringly symbolic.

An almond tree was in blossom; beneath it a massed choir of daffodils opening their golden trumpets as if to herald the arrival of spring. The grass glistened, a couple of pigeons perched companionably on a bare branch and a lone blackbird kept a vigil for worms.

All day she had told herself she had only agreed to go with Dorothy as an escort tonight because Rita had flu. Even a couple of hours ago under the drier in the hairdresser’s she had told herself it was only one date. But in the last hour as she’d sat here by the window she’d made up her mind. Maybe accepting money just for being a lonely man’s partner wasn’t an ideal, or moral, way to start the wheels of success rolling, but right now she couldn’t think of a better way.

‘Are you going to sit up or have I got to pour this soup up your nose?’ Charity joked as she went into Rita’s bedroom.

Rita looked awful, her face white except for a bright red nose, her red hair lank and dull, tied into two bunches.

‘I don’t suppose I’ll be able to taste it.’ Rita slowly hauled herself up to a sitting position, her voice thick with cold. ‘I feel so bloody awful I’d be quite happy to die.’

Charity placed the tray across her friend’s lap. Rita smelt ill, that peculiar sour, musty smell that evoked memories in Charity of her mother. She was wearing an old beige cardigan over her nightdress and her bedside table was littered with Vick, cough mixture, Beecham’s Powders and tissues.

Rita was scatterbrained, noisy and vivacious, but the moment she felt ill she became morose, wallowing in neurotic self-pity. When she had merely a hangover she was convinced it was something more dramatic, like food poisoning. She would wrap herself in the most unbecoming garments, refuse to comb her hair or even wash her face. But perhaps this was all a cry for attention.

‘You’ll feel better tomorrow,’ Charity soothed her. ‘Would you like me to refill your hot-water bottle?’

Rita dipped the spoon in the tomato soup and gingerly tried it. ‘You’re still going to take my place tonight?’ she asked.

‘I promised, didn’t I?’ Charity said. ‘Look, I’ve even had my hair done!’

‘It looks lovely.’ Rita sniffed. ‘I thought you might chicken out. You’re such a prude sometimes.’

‘I’m not a prude,’ she retorted. ‘I was only worried about you both.’

‘Are you feeling better about John now?’ Rita asked anxiously.

Charity shrugged her shoulders.

‘I suppose so. Life goes on, doesn’t it?’

She wasn’t going to admit she doubted she could ever love again, or that if John called her from outer Mongolia and asked her to join him, she’d swim there if necessary.

‘Before you came in I was thinking about us at Daleham Gardens,’ Rita said in a small voice. ‘Our babies will be having their first birthdays soon. How are we going to get through that?’

Charity was surprised. By tacit agreement they’d drawn a curtain over that part of their lives. She sat down on the bed.

‘Same as we get through everything else,’ she said. ‘A bottle of wine, a few sad records, looking at their photographs and reminiscing.’

‘We all pretend we’ve forgotten, don’t we?’ Rita wiped away a stray tear. ‘Sometimes I even believe I have, then wallop, it comes back.’

‘I suspect it will never leave us,’ Charity said thoughtfully. ‘It’s the same with my brothers and sister. I want the feeling I have for them to fade, but it’s still just as sharp.’

‘I wish your uncle knew what a good person you are,’ Rita retorted, a spark of indignation in her eyes.

‘Not that good.’ Charity half smiled. ‘If he knew I was going out as an escort tonight, he’d claim he was right about me all along.’

‘So why did you suddenly change your mind?’

‘To make my fortune,’ Charity said lightly. ‘Nothing bad has happened to either you or Dottie. I’m fed up with staying home like the ugly sister while you two have fun. Is that good enough?’

Charity opened the door to Rita’s room an hour later, and struck a model-like pose. ‘Will I do?’ she asked.

Rita was propped up in the clean bed, a cardigan round her shoulders, reading Harold Robbins’s
79 Park Avenue
. When she saw Charity she dropped it in surprise.

‘Will you
do
?’ she gasped. ‘You look sensational!’

Charity was wearing the black dress John had bought her in Florence. Beneath the sheer billowing chiffon was a tightly fitting sheath that displayed her slender yet curvaceous body and cleavage. The sequinned choker collar gave her delicate features and blonde hair an ethereal look.

‘You don’t think I look too – well, brassy?’ Charity frowned. She was pleased to see that Rita had washed her hair. It was curling over her shoulders like a Pre-Raphaelite beauty, a sure sign she was on the mend.

‘Brassy! You!’ Rita cackled. ‘You couldn’t manage to look like a tart if you were wearing a red and black basque! You look utterly delectable. Poor old Pinky will probably drop dead with shock.’

‘You must stop calling him that,’ Charity reprimanded her. ‘I’ll forget his real name.’

‘It’s Basil,’ Rita reminded her. ‘But he is pink! Bright pink – and when he’s had a few he gets even pinker. But he’s a nice guy, a real gent and I doubt when he’s seen you he’ll ever want me as an escort again.’

‘How’s the invalid?’ Dorothy joined them, looking a dream in a cream crêpe dress with a cowl neckline, her hair up in a French roll.

‘A bit better now.’ Rita grinned. ‘Doesn’t Charity look the business?’

‘Devastating.’ Dorothy’s luscious lips curved into a seductive smile. ‘Don’t wait up for us!’

Charity tried hard not to look too amazed at the Beachcomber Club. Even though she’d been told all about it many times by her flatmates, she was still staggered.

It was decorated to look like a tropical island, and apart from the smoky atmosphere instead of sunshine it succeeded. Tables stood on small wooden platforms at different heights and angles, each one with a straw umbrella, and were linked by rustic wooden and bamboo bridges. From a waterfall at one end of the club, the water ran into many small streams under the bridges, and above the central tiny dance floor a Hawaiian band played with a couple of girls dancing seductively in grass skirts and shell beads.

Beyond some realistic palm trees a film played on a blank wall, showing more palm trees, and turquoise sea breaking on white sand.