Charity (42 page)

‘Have you been here before?’ Basil took Charity’s arm and led her across one of the bridges to the reserved table.

‘No, I haven’t. But it’s every bit as nice as I’d heard.’

In fact she couldn’t believe what she was seeing. There were real crocodiles in the pools; she thought they were plastic ones until someone prodded one and it swished its tail. People were drinking huge exotic cocktails embellished with fruit and umbrellas, and the meals were vast. She was sure she wasn’t fooling Basil with her portrayal of a sophisticated girl about town. She wanted to giggle and gawp, but Dorothy’s stern eye on her prevented it.

Basil was a nice man. He did have a pink face, his eyes were very small behind his thick glasses and he was podgy and white-haired enough to play the part of Santa Claus, but he had a lovely deep voice and a good sense of humour.

Rita had said that he was inordinately proud of his twin sons, but Charity had let him tell her all about them as if she had no idea about his background. He and Gerald, Dorothy’s date, were directors of a pet food company in Sheffield and they were down in London on a sales drive.

Gerald was obviously quite smitten with Dorothy. He had the well-rounded vowels of public school and the height and bearing of a military man. Charity was quite surprised by Dorothy’s behaviour tonight. In men’s company she was usually brittle and cold, or alternatively overly seductive, but with Gerald she was regally cool, yet listened to him speaking as if she was fascinated by every word he uttered.

A waitress in a grass skirt with a bare navel and a flower behind her ear came up with menus written on old parchment. ‘Look at that!’ Charity said, pointing to a storm coming up on the film on the wall. ‘It looks real, doesn’t it?’

If it hadn’t been for Rita telling her about this scene and explaining it was a film, she might have thought it
was
real. The wind was bowing the palm trees and whipping up the waves, the sky growing dark and forbidding.

‘When I was your age I wouldn’t even have known that was Hawaii,’ Basil smirked. ‘But then you girls have been brought up in a different world from me.’

Gerald and Dorothy were in a deep whispered conversation as Basil told Charity about his childhood in Scunthorpe.

‘I never had a new item of clothing until I started earning,’ he said without a trace of self-pity. ‘Even then I had to tip my wages up on a Friday night because Dad was out of work. Eight of us all crowded in that tiny house and often we went to bed hungry. But I tell you, Charity, poverty in childhood can be the making of a man. You girls with your nice clothes and posh voices don’t have that hunger to make something of yourselves.’

Charity was just about to retort that she knew exactly what poverty was like, when Dorothy kicked her foot under the table. She closed her mouth and caught her friend’s warning eye.

‘No, I suppose we don’t.’ She turned to Basil and smiled. ‘It must have been awful!’

It was an enjoyable evening. The meal was superb, the huge cocktails even better, and later they danced a little drunkenly.

‘Who would have thought that Arthur Braithwaite would ever go to places like this with a girl like a princess in his arms,’ Basil said later.

‘Who’s Arthur Braithwaite?’ Charity moved her head away from his too close lips and pushed him back from her slightly.

‘That’s me,’ he grinned, his small blue eyes twinkling behind his thick glasses. ‘I called myself Basil as it sounded more classy, and got a few elocution lessons. That’s how I met my Mary: she was having them too.’

‘Your wife?’

‘Yes, my wife,’ he sighed deeply. ‘She’d be mad if she could see me carrying on like this. “Basil,” she’d say, “those society lasses are no good to you, they give you ideas above your station.”’

As the girls went home in a taxi, Charity told Dorothy what Basil had said.

‘I don’t know how I kept a straight face,’ she giggled. ‘Fancy him seeing me as a “Society lass”!’

‘Well Gerald comes from a privileged background and you fooled him too.’ Dorothy tucked her hand into Charity’s arm. ‘So think on that tonight, little one, and a tenner on top for a night of eating and drinking in a swish nightclub. Now are you going to do it again?’

‘Why not?’ Charity laughed. ‘It beats flogging lipstick!’

Chapter Nineteen

‘Hullo love!’ Carmel said as Charity came into her office one wet afternoon in July. ‘What on earth’s the matter? You look like your dog just got run over.’

‘I’ve got the sack,’ Charity said.

Few people passing Carmel’s tiny office in the Fulham Road would even notice there was activity behind the windows partially covered in brown paper. Sandwiched between a delicatessen and a dry cleaner’s close to the ABC Cinema, the office displayed a small sign that only the most observant would spot: I
NTRODUCTIONS WITH A VIEW TO MARRIAGE
. A
LL ENQUIRIES TREATED WITH THE UTMOST CONFIDENTIALITY
.

Charity had laughed on seeing it for the first time, assuming people would need to be desperate to step into such a seedy place. But now she knew Carmel used it only as a base, a store-room for hundreds of index card files, and to make arrangements by telephone. Interviews with clients took place either in Carmel’s own home or over afternoon tea at Harrods. But then this warm-hearted woman was motivated more by helping people and making them happy than by financial gain.

Carmel’s striking and smart appearance was at odds with her office. The floor hadn’t been swept for years, ancient, browning wallpaper flapped in places and cobwebs hung from a central naked light bulb. Charity often wondered how she could bear to work in such squalor.

‘You’ve got the sack? But you were doing so well.’ Carmel got up from her seat and gave Charity a comforting hug. ‘Sit down and tell me all about it. I’ll make us some tea.’

‘It isn’t just me.’ Charity removed some bulging files from the only chair and sat down. ‘It’s all the girls. Glamour Girl are doing so well they don’t need a promotion any longer.’

‘Well that’s not so bad,’ Carmel said as she filled up a kettle and plugged it in at the back of the office. ‘What did your boss at the agency say?’

‘Oh they’ve got loads of other jobs we can do. I just liked being a beautician so much.’

Charity often popped in to see Carmel, on her day off or in her lunch hour. It wasn’t just to see what escort jobs she had, but because she liked Carmel. She was funny, kind-hearted and very wise about things. Charity once told her all about John and Carmel had made her see that he was right, their relationship couldn’t have worked for long.

The marriage bureau fascinated Charity too. Occasionally Carmel would show her photographs of some of her clients and she had been surprised to discover that few of them were ancient or actually desperate. In the main they were widows and widowers, often wealthy and well connected. Carmel’s explanation as to how she paired off people with common interests and backgrounds made further sense of why it wouldn’t have worked with John.

But the escort business provided Carmel’s main income. The men came to Carmel by discreet advertisements and personal recommendation and she took a twenty-pound fee from them in advance, of which she kept half. Although Carmel never admitted just how many ‘dates’ she fixed up, Charity and her two flatmates usually did three or four between them each week, and there were at least ten other girls, so it was obviously a lucrative business.

Carmel handed Charity a mug of tea and sat down again at her desk. Close up, Charity could see she was far older than the fifty years she claimed to be. Her makeup stuck to the lines round her eyes and her neck was crêpey. Dressed up to go out, she always wore strong corsets, but today she had several large rolls of fat billowing beneath a loose cotton dress. Yet even though she’d abandoned her glamour, her black bouffant hairstyle was perfection and the office was full of her Tweed perfume.

‘You mustn’t see this as an end, but a chance for further experience,’ Carmel said. ‘You’re good at selling. You’ll find it doesn’t matter a jot whether you’re selling lipstick, clothes or saucepans. You’ll still be meeting the public and the variety of products you work with can only enhance your career.’

Charity began to cheer up slightly.

‘They offered me a job for next week selling a kitchen gadget,’ she said. ‘But I’m scared, Carmel. I have to do a proper demonstration with it, get a crowd round the stand and everything.’

Carmel’s painted eyebrows rose into an inverted V.

‘So! That’s no different from hauling women up to have a facial. Central Promotions wouldn’t suggest you unless they thought you could do it.’

Charity smiled weakly. ‘You always make me feel better,’ she said. ‘I suppose I am being silly, and anyway I’ve got to go to the company tomorrow for a briefing. They’re bound to show me how to go about it.’

‘So what store are they sending you to?’

‘Whiteley’s in Queensway.’

‘I tell you what, I’ll pop in on Monday and pretend to be a customer,’ Carmel suggested. ‘Once you’ve got the patter going and a few people round you interested you’ll be selling those gadgets like hot cakes. Now, what about Dorothy and Rita?’

‘They’re both being sent to the motor show at Earls Court,’ Charity said. ‘I wish I was going with them.’

‘They won’t learn anything there, except how to flirt.’ Carmel chuckled. ‘They’ll be bored to tears with all those car-mad men and watching the clock. You’ll see I’m right.’

‘How did you get to be so wise?’ Charity asked, her depression suddenly leaving her.

‘Through making a great many mistakes, my love,’ Carmel said. ‘Now what you’ve got to do is see every new job as a challenge and a learning process. Dorothy and Rita don’t see anything but a pay packet at the end of the week, but I know you want more than that. Keep your eyes and ears open and you may find one of these temporary jobs leads to something special.’

‘Have you got any dates for us this weekend?’ Charity asked.

Carmel smiled. ‘As it happens I’ve got a beaut lined up. All three of you for Saturday night. Three nice Yanks over here on a sales conference and they want to paint the town red. I met them at their hotel last night to check them out and they’re real Southern gentlemen.’

‘Rhett Butlers?’ Charity said hopefully.

Carmel laughed. ‘Not quite so dashing! A bit tubby and thin on top, but charming for all that. I suggested they book a table at Churchill’s as there’s always a cabaret on Saturday nights, so glam evening dresses, please.’

‘What are you doing?’ Dorothy asked as she came into the kitchen still in her nightdress on Sunday morning and found Charity cutting up a melon.

The date with the three Americans had been everything Carmel said it would be: dinner, champagne, dancing and such good fun the girls hadn’t come home until four that morning.

‘This is my gadget.’ Charity grinned. ‘Pretend you’re a customer who’s stopped to watch.’

Dorothy slumped on to a chair, yawning. She hadn’t taken her makeup off when they got in and now smeared mascara and eyeliner made her look like a tousle-haired panda.

Charity pushed the small, stainless-steel scoop into the melon and drew out a perfect ball the size of a marble. She dropped it into a sundae dish, then added another, and another.

‘Isn’t that pretty, madam?’ She giggled. ‘Instead of serving melon in the usual boring manner one can make an artistic statement. It also makes the melon go further and it’s a great deal easier to manage than slices.’

‘OK, I’m impressed.’ Dorothy yawned. She was half asleep but felt she had to humour Charity. ‘So how much is it going to cost me?’

‘The stainless-steel scoop is just nineteen and elevenpence,’ Charity said. ‘But today I’m prepared to offer you another amazing kitchen tool absolutely free.’ She picked up a plastic board with a wavy blade attached and proceeded to slice it down through a raw potato, making thin wavy slices.

‘Staggering!’ Dorothy said. ‘What am I supposed to do with those skinny chips?’

‘Lightly fry them in oil and you have wonderful homemade crisps, or you can slice cucumber or carrots for dinner parties. Both items are indispensable for a hostess. Can you manage without them?’

Dorothy scratched her head.

‘Very easily,’ she said, trying not to laugh. ‘I suppose we’ve got to have bloody melon balls for breakfast now and crisps for lunch?’

‘I haven’t got around to showing you how you can make fake new potatoes yet,’ Charity said. ‘You just hold the scoop against the potato firmly, push in and then twist your wrist.’

‘I’ll twist your wrist if you don’t shut up,’ Dorothy said. ‘Enthusiasm for work on a Sunday morning just isn’t on.’

‘Would you like a couple of wavy slices of cucumber to put over those bloodshot eyes?’ Charity said, deftly cutting two almost transparent slices. ‘You can lie on the settee with them and I’ll drop melon balls in your mouth.’

‘Balls to you too,’ Dorothy sniggered. ‘Now please can I have a cup of coffee?’

Whiteley’s department store was quiet on Monday morning. Charity stood behind her small stand in the kitchenware department, adding embellishments to her display. She was pleased to see that hers was the only demonstration; Rita had warned her that sometimes a store ran two or three at the same time and then they had to vie for sales.

Her central display was a large dish of tiny potatoes garnished with parsley in the centre, surrounded by wavy slices of cucumber and carrots. She had made coleslaw, cutting the cabbage with her gadget, and several sundae dishes were filled with various fruits from melon to peaches made into balls. Beneath her stand was a whole box of wasted fruit, but she hoped no one would ask what they would do with the odd bits of squashed fruit left over.

It was lunchtime before she managed to entice a crowd. So far she had sold only two tools and she’d had to work hard to persuade these two women to buy. As a group of middle-aged women shoppers came in, she began frantically slicing carrots.

‘Hallo,’ she said brightly. ‘I’m sure all of you are interested in items that help make cooking more interesting and fun?’