Annie's Promise (41 page)

‘That’s not – ’ but his mouth was on hers, hard, savage, his arms about her, holding her. ‘They’re all a dead loss,’ he said at last, heating up hash for them both which she drew in deeply, wanting to ease the pain because at last she saw he had been speaking truth for all these months.

That evening she and Carl blew up one of the armchairs, taking turns, feeling their sides aching, their heads bursting
as they did so, and then they shared a joint, and kissed, hard, deep but all the time she listened for Davy.

Carl undid her buttons, and she his. Their naked bodies were against one another. She clutched at him, holding him close and still there was no Davy and anger rose in her from the dead coldness there had been since her mother left. She gripped Carl’s head between her hands, kissing him. He pulled back and kissed her breasts her belly, her thighs, her mouth again, then pulled her down on top of him, on top of the chair.

She pressed her body against him, then she was easing him inside her, moving with him, cursing the bloody chair. Then she eased herself away from him, pulling him to the bed, and lighting a joint. They smoked, and as her head began to float she crawled to the chair and pressed the butt into it, watching it shrivel and deflate beside her and now she laughed again until the laughter turned to tears.

That night she didn’t sleep but lay with Carl and thought of her mother who hadn’t eaten the meal she had cooked, who hadn’t come because she cared but because she’d wanted to use them. She thought of her shouting at her da, forcing him into the mine, who lived for her life for the factory and had been too busy to come pigeon-racing with her daughter and husband. Carl had been right all along and it was time she grew up and let them go.

Tom and Annie sat on the train, their feet throbbing, their heads aching.

‘What did you think, bonny lass?’ Tom asked.

Annie rubbed her eyes, pressing her fingers into her forehead. ‘If I lived in London I’d look pale and interesting too – I think they’re all right. They say you can smell pot. I didn’t smell anything.’

‘You didn’t eat much either, but you did well to get through as much as you did. Yes, I think they’re fine too. It was great, Annie, seeing that enthusiasm in their eyes. I mean, that salt technique is very interesting and I’d
forgotten. I’d also forgotten how hard I worked when Gracie and I were down. I painted murals to make extra money, d’you remember?’

She did. She remembered the Mickey Mouse gasmasks too, when Tom told her of his journey back up. ‘One little horror kept blowing raspberries with his, blimey I pity the family that got him.’

‘Did you like Carl?’ Annie asked Tom, looking at her hands, at the broken Ruby Red.

‘No, he reminded me of Don.’

Annie nodded, rubbing her finger. ‘I thought so too – so why does she love him, because she does you know?’

Tom shook his head. ‘Because he’s handsome, blond and she hasn’t been through everything we have. We might be wrong. We were wrong to panic over those designs – Georgie was right. Anyway, didn’t you ever make mistakes with your men?’

Annie blushed and looked at him. Oh no, Tom Ryan, you’re not going to hear about my mistakes. She laughed and shook her finger at him. ‘Just you make sure that you keep in touch with young Davy, not just Rob. You didn’t tell him you were going away to the conference with Rob, did you?’

Tom blushed. ‘I had to, he asked me to come down for an exhibition he was interested in seeing. I had to tell the truth.’

Sarah and Davy didn’t go home for Easter, but pleaded pressure of work, telling Tom and Annie that the cushions had a market but there were too many down here doing it already and the armchairs hadn’t taken off at all. She and Davy still sent samples because they were smoking as much pot and hash, taking LSD, and needed the money. But no coke, they promised one another.

Sarah had started driving lessons in February, and never smoked before them, though she often smoked afterwards as she made the others laugh about her kangaroo jumps, her back to front hand signals, her terror, but she did well and
loved the freedom of it all. Davy wouldn’t learn. ‘It’s too much hassle,’ he groaned. ‘And one lunatic on the road is enough.’

Sarah’s letters home were short, but she did write or they would be down again, taking them back, hauling them from this life they loved. There was no anger in her, just nothing and she didn’t bother to answer her mother’s query about the turmoil at the LSE. What did they understand about students up in Wassingham?

In May she took her test and passed and they celebrated with champagne and LSD. In June they played at even more gigs and she and Davy bought a Mini to share which they painted purple and decorated with sunflowers. Increasingly Davy could barely stand, let alone play at the gigs.

‘I’m fine, bonny lass,’ he said when they played at the club behind their digs as heat beat down on the city at the end of June. His arms hung limp on stage, his eyes were glazed, the smell of beer was on his breath, the smell of pot on his clothes.

Tim hissed. ‘Get him off, Sarah.’

She called into the microphone, ‘Time for a break, kids,’ and guided Davy down the stairs, feeling the thinness of his arms, the brittleness of his ribs as she put her arm round him to steady him.

‘You mustn’t drink so much with the pot, Davy. Come and sit down,’ she said, shrugging at Carl.

She sat with them, watching Tim and Arnie threading their way through the tables, sweat dripping off them, staining their shirts. The air was thick with smoke and dark beneath the shaded lights.

She took Carl’s hand in hers, asked whether he’d caught up with his work yet and seen Sam’s phone message. ‘Have you rung him back?’

Carl nodded. ‘Just business, I’m seeing to it tomorrow. Could you write up the economic notes I’ve borrowed from Charles? I’ve a seminar on Monday.’

She smiled and nodded. Oh yes, she’d type up his notes,
wash his back, give him the time that her mother didn’t give, that she herself had been in danger of not giving. ‘Buy me another tonic and I’ll walk barefoot to India for you.’

Carl laughed. ‘That’s not likely to be necessary, thanks madam.’ He beckoned to the waiter and ordered.

‘We should go to India in the summer, Davy, and see Ravi. We could all go.’

Carl laughed, passing the tonic to her, beers to Tim and Arnie, and a lemonade to Davy. ‘I think he’s had more than enough booze tonight,’ he murmured, then raising his voice he said, ‘Summer’s a bit too hot for India, even if you head for Kathmandu like the rest of the weirdos.’

Sarah punched his arm lightly. ‘Well, thanks for that, it’s nice to think my boyfriend thinks I’m weird.’

Carl leant across and kissed her. ‘You’ll be an unemployed weirdo if you don’t get back on that stage, but leave Davy with me.’

They played well into the early hours of the morning and she waved as Carl took Davy back to their digs at midnight. He was so wonderful, so kind.

She worked on his notes the next day, then sorted out the designs for the wallpaper, sifting through Davy’s ideas while he slept, then their joint ones which were better, infinitely better. Sarah sat back, chewing her pencil, looking at the lines of Davy’s sketches. They were uncertain, and there was no core to the design, no theme, no skill or talent, no soul.

She brewed herself coffee, drinking it as morning turned to afternoon and still Davy didn’t get up, but then he seldom did now she realised and she wondered why she had not noticed before. She completed her notes, putting together the last of her end of term collection. She pressed the seams, wanting to show someone, wanting to send them to her mother, but there was no point, because they were not for the business. Annie wouldn’t be interested, and besides, there was no love in her for her mother any more, and no need either.

She looked again at Davy’s designs, walked to the window,
leaning her head on the pane, looking out at the plane trees in full leaf, the dusty road, and thought of the beck, so clean and clear, the black-eyed daisies, the meadow grass. She thought of the coke lines on the boulder. They had promised there would be no more coke.

She looked at her watch. It was six o’clock and still Davy slept and she walked quietly from her room into his, stepping over the sitar which lay on the floor, picking up his mug which he had dropped, seeing the coffee stains on the floor. It was so hot in here with no windows open, no curtains drawn. She pulled them back and opened the window. Davy lay sprawled on the bed and Sarah remembered how Tim had said he would be in trouble if he didn’t appear at lectures more often. She hadn’t registered.

The bed sank as she sat on the edge. He smelt of stale sweat and dirt. She hadn’t registered that either. Now he opened his eyes, so blue, so gentle, and he smiled and put up his hand to touch her long hair.

‘We promised to use no more coke. Have you, Davy? Have you used anything else?’ Sarah said softly.

‘I’m fine, bonny lass,’ he said, smiling at her, his eyes no longer seeing her, closing.

‘Roll up your sleeves, Davy,’ she said but he no longer heard her.

She took his arm, unbuttoned his sleeve, rolled it up and saw the needle marks she’d known would be there. She rolled down the sleeve again, buttoned it, stroked his hair and couldn’t see him any more for the tears were falling down her cheeks, staining his shirt. She bent and held him, and wondered how she could not have known before that this boy was now a heroin addict.

She rang her mother that night and told her that she and Davy would not be coming home that holiday, they were going camping in Cornwall.

‘Just the two of you?’ her mother asked.

‘Yes, Mother, just the two of us, you’re quite safe, Carl is not coming with us.’

‘I didn’t mean that, Sarah, really I didn’t.’

But she did, Annie told Georgie that night. ‘I’m just so glad they’re going away together, getting some fresh air in their lungs, spending time with one another as they used to. Perhaps the relationship with Carl is weakening.’

Georgie looked at her as he put Buttons’ great-grandson in his basket. ‘If that’s the truth, perhaps it is.’

‘Oh, Georgie, that’s so unlike you. Of course it’s the truth, she’s never lied to us, ever.’

Sarah sat in the dark that evening and when Carl came in she told him that she was taking Davy away because he was main-lining.

She watched the shock on his face.

‘I don’t know where he got it from or how he can afford it, and I don’t know why, that’s the worst thing. Why? Why? But I’ll make him stop. Deborah’s old schoolfriend was taken to a Scottish island by her parents and they cured her. She was new to it and he must be. He was clean at Christmas. Will you come?’

Carl squatted in front of her, taking her hands. ‘How can I, I’m going to Morocco with my mother but anyway he needs proper treatment – you don’t know enough. He needs to go home.’

Sarah shook her head. ‘No, he won’t want to go home. He’ll want to stay with me. I do know enough, I talked to Deborah about it tonight, I know what those other people did. I wish you were coming.’

Carl kissed her hands. ‘Poor little bugger, what was he thinking of? Where did he get it? Has there been any talk?’

‘No, there’s nothing. Tim doesn’t know and I can’t find Arnie but none of that matters, it’s just Davy that’s important.’

Carl kissed her and held her gently and she needed the
strength of his love at that moment more than she had ever needed it from anyone.

Sarah drove through Somerset and Devon, then over the Tamar Bridge into Cornwall, heading always onwards, wanting to put as much space behind them as possible.

‘We need to be as far from London as we can. Deborah said we need a different environment,’ she told Davy, who sat with beads of sweat on his forehead, his nose running, his eyes too, his mouth opening and shutting in prolonged yawns. They stopped on the moor and she looked away as he rolled up his sleeve, tightened the fixing belt round his upper arm to pop his veins, and inserted the needle. He pushed the plunger, withdrew the needle and passed it to her.

She bleached it and put it in the box he kept at his feet, seeing the blood trickling down his arm, the haze coming into his eyes. She looked at her watch, five o’clock, they’d be at Polperro in an hour. Deborah had rung her farmer friend and he expected them by six. The sun was still hot and the shadows were long. Please God make it stay fine, if only to put the tent up.

‘Don’t tell him why you’re there, for God’s sake,’ Deborah had said. ‘Just remember, weaker and weaker doses, and then cold turkey. God help you. It’ll take weeks before he’s ready to come back.’

They drove on but she stopped at a pub for lemonade and pasties, bringing it outside to one of the tables, wanting Davy to eat. ‘Not hungry,’ he murmured, leaning back on the bench, his head loose, his limbs too.

‘You must eat,’ she insisted, breaking his pasty in half, holding out a piece on her napkin. ‘Please, for me.’

‘For you?’ he queried and then opened his mouth.

She pushed it in and saw the family at the next table looking at them. ‘Come on, Davy, do it yourself.’

She broke off another piece and put it in his hand which lay limp on his lap. The pasty fell to the floor and she wanted to shout at him. She didn’t. She broke off another piece and fed him herself – what did it matter what people thought? She stared back until they looked away.

They drank their lemonade and she walked with him to the lavatory. ‘You must go in there, Davy. We’re camping, let’s have our last taste of luxury.’

He looked at her. ‘A pub lavatory – we’ve come a long way, bonny lass.’ His grin was the old grin, his eyes sparkled. She laughed and left him.

He was waiting by the car, leaning against it, his hands in his pockets, his shoulders so thin under his shirt. The sun was being overtaken by clouds, there was a chill in the air and he was shivering.

She unlocked the car, leant in and brought out his pullover, put her own on. ‘Rain is all we need,’ she groaned.

She looked at him but the sparkle had gone, there was just the haze. ‘Come on, in you get. We’ve still half an hour to go.’