Annie's Promise (42 page)

She checked the map, then drove on, missing the turning, reversing, driving down the track, bumping over the ruts, seeing honeysuckle in the high banks, smelling it through the open window.

‘It’s so beautiful, Davy. I’ll get you better, I promise.’

She stopped at the farmhouse. The farmer pointed out the field they could use.

‘You can stay in the house if you like, we’ve spare rooms.’

Sarah shook her head. ‘No, that’s fine, we love camping, we’re all-weather idiots but I’d like to buy some milk, please, and eggs and butter perhaps some tomatoes.’

The farmer’s wife bustled out smelling of newly baked bread. ‘You sure you don’t want a room?’

How could a drug addict take a room, how could he slump and sleep, and moan when the drug wore off, when there was no more and the cramps began? Sarah shook her head but bought the provisions, waving to them, glad that the far corner of the field was out of sight. That’s where they would pitch the tent, overlooking the sea but sheltered by hedges.

Davy sat in the car while she took the tent from the roof rack, put the aluminium frame together, banging in the pegs, tightening the guy ropes, cursing as the rain began, feeling it soaking into her back, dripping down her hair.

‘Blimey,’ she said to Davy as she urged him from the car to the tent. ‘Tim didn’t tell me it was the Ritz. Look, you can stand up. Here’s the cooker, and there’s the bedroom. Sorry you’ll have to share it with the staff.’

Davy said nothing, just sat cross-legged on the floor of the tent. She ran to the car, carrying back sleeping bags, loose sheets, boxes of plates, cups and food because soon, when the doses had decreased to nothing, they would not be leaving the tent for days on end.

The rain was pattering on the roof. She blew up the lilos and laid out the sleeping bags side by side. ‘Sorry, you’ll have to put up with me next to you,’ she said, setting up the camping stools, taking his arm, pulling him up, sitting him on the chair. ‘I don’t snore.’

She lit the petrol stove and heated milk in an old aluminium pan of Tim’s. She looked around. Everything was Tim’s and she had kissed him when he brought them round but he had said, ‘He should go home. You need more help.’

‘No we don’t,’ she’d replied. ‘He doesn’t want to go home because they won’t let him back but I’ll get him well, then keep an eye on him.’

She poured the milk on to the cocoa, stirring it, watching the blobs of cocoa rise to break on the surface.

‘One or two?’ she called above the rain.

Davy didn’t answer so she put in one and carried it to
him, watching as he took it in two hands. ‘Hold it tight.’ There was no ground sheet and she could smell the grass.

She cupped her own and sat next to him. ‘D’you remember putting the sheet over two sticks at the beck, there was the same smell.’

Davy said nothing, the mug was tipping over in his hand. She took it from him, emptied both drinks on to the grass. She poured water into the bowl.

‘Wash,’ she said.

He did.

She peeled his clothes from him and couldn’t bear the thinness of his body, the scarred veins of his arms, the scabs.

‘Into the sleeping bag,’ she murmured, standing at the opening to the inner tent until he was comfortable.

She washed, undressed and lay beside him, sleeping lightly, hearing the rain, Davy gasping beside her, turning, and with dawn there came the moans, the sweat on his forehead. She handed him a syringe with a decreased dose.

She cooked breakfast, bacon, eggs, tomatoes. He ate little. The rain was still strumming lightly on the tent.

‘More like a sitar than a guitar, sort of fragile, like your music. Would you like to play, shall I bring it in from the car?’

Davy shook his head, sitting in his sleeping bag, his plate on his lap, the bacon congealed.

‘Get dressed, Davy.’

He did.

The rain stopped and she tied back the tent opening, stepped barefoot into the wet grass. ‘Come out here, Davy.’

He came.

The sea was grey, the sky too and there were white tops, rolling and rolling to the shore. She looked towards the small bay to the left. ‘We’ll swim when you’re better.’ Polperro was to the right but too deep in the valley to be seen. She felt the wind lift her hair, tasted the salt on her lips, took Davy’s hand and held it tight. ‘Yes, we’ll swim.’

They wrote cards which she had bought at the pub – to Gracie and Tom, Georgie and Annie.

‘Write three, Davy.’ Deborah had said that while withdrawing all life stopped except survival. She’d post them when she could.

She lit a joint, counting the number she had in the sandalwood box. They would need them for withdrawal.

There were seagulls circling, screeching, blackberry flowers in the hedge. ‘Draw this, Davy.’

He couldn’t. He just sat in the sun until the stomach ache came again and sweat beaded his forehead and this time she wouldn’t let him have another fix immediately.

‘Not yet.’

‘I want it,’ he moaned.

‘Not yet, we’ve got to do it like this.’

He stood up and grabbed her arms. ‘I want it.’

‘No.’

He turned from her, his hands to his eyes. ‘I need it, my eyes hurt, my belly hurts. Give me some.’

He was stumbling from her into the tent, lying down on the sleeping bag.

‘Soon,’ she said, sitting in the entrance, knowing that he watched her every breath, her every move. She looked at her watch. Another hour – just another hour. This is how the girl’s parents had done it, but there’d been two of them. She put her face in her hands. Carl, couldn’t you have told your mother to go alone?

Davy was quiet, lying with his face to the tent wall, his hair deep copper against the lilo, his sweat staining dark beneath his head. He turned. ‘Please, give it to me.’

His eyes were dark, desperate, in pain, his skin sunk blue. ‘For Christ’s sake, you bitch, give it to me.’

She rose and said, ‘Another half an hour.’ He stood, then fell as the lilo shifted beneath him. He crawled towards her, on the ground, grabbing for her leg. ‘Give it to me.’

She shook her head, prising his fingers from her. He
grabbed her hair then, pulling it, his lips thin, twisting his fingers in it, pulling again and again. ‘Give it to me.’

She pushed him back and he fell and didn’t rise, just lay there with his legs pulled up. Deborah had said this would happen too but the tears were falling because of the pain in her scalp and the sight of her cousin in ruins at her feet.

Annie read their card the next week, sitting in the kitchen with the door open on to the yard.

‘It looks so lovely,’ she called to Georgie, turning it over, looking at the fishing village, the crowded cottages, the small harbour. ‘They say they’re having a lovely time – mixed weather, lots of swimming when the sun comes out, lots of pasties.’

‘Just what they need,’ Georgie called back. ‘Any chance of a beer, it’s hot out here with me head stuck up a pigeon loft.’

Annie laughed, made herself a coffee and poured Georgie a beer, carrying them out, handing him the card as well.

He said, ‘You’re right, it’s a canny place. Makes me wish we were there.’

Annie sat on the back step as Georgie perched on the old stool. ‘Could we, do you think? I mean we could take a week off, drive down, surprise them.’

Georgie was looking at the froth on his beer, holding it up to the sun. ‘Bye, you’ve got a head on this, Annie, what’d you do, give the bottle a good shake before you poured it?’

‘That’s the problem isn’t it, my love, you can’t get the staff these days, can you? You’ll just have to sack me.’

He was laughing, scooping the froth off with his fingers and shaking it on to the ground, then drinking, lifting his face to the sun. ‘It’s an idea though. We could drive down in two days, find Polperro and then try and locate them.’

Annie reached for the card. ‘They don’t say where they’re staying. How big is Cornwall?’

‘Big, when you’re trying to find two kids.’

Annie stretched out her legs, kicked off her shoes. ‘I wonder
whether they’d want us, they sound so happy, so well – perhaps we’d be interfering – perhaps we’d better leave them to it.’ She wanted to go, to spend time with her daughter to laze in the sun, swim, eat pasties in pubs and talk of nothing very much, just be there, but it was crazy. Two cousins had just taken off, dusting the city from their heels, they didn’t want parents popping up at every available opportunity. ‘Yes, we’d better leave them but if they can be by the sea so can we. Come on, I’m packing a picnic. Finish the birds and we’ll take Bet to the coast.’

Tom and Gracie came too and they parked behind the dunes, walked across sand which was hot beneath their bare feet, spreading rugs, propping up thermos flasks, beer.

Gracie and Annie walked with Bet to the sea, standing in it, cold against their hot skin, their words fighting against the breeze which swept their hair from their faces, laughing as children ran past, splashing them, taking the breath from them as it hit their bellies.

‘Little devils,’ Annie said, thinking of Sarah at that age, always with Davy, back with Davy now.

‘They seem happier,’ Gracie said. ‘Their letters have been so short, they’ve been busy but if they’re having a breeze like this it’ll blow a thousand cobwebs away, do them so much good. I remember feeling as though I could never get a good lungful of air in London.’

Annie held Bet’s arm and they walked a little deeper, feeling the waves slowly breaking against their legs, the sand running away beneath their toes.

Bet growled. ‘They needed to get away, relax, paint, talk. Perhaps it’ll see that Carl off.’

Gracie laughed. ‘You’ve never even met him.’

‘I heard what Tom and Annie said and that’s enough for me. I think he’s on the way out, or they would all have gone together.’

Annie was silent, looking out to the horizon. God, she hoped so.

They joined the men for lunch, cracking and peeling hard
boiled eggs and talked of the holiday they would have next year.

‘Wonder who’s doing the cooking in Polperro?’ Gracie said.

Annie laughed. ‘No one, they’ll be having sandwiches and eating at the pub, makes me wish I was young and carefree.’

It was the end of the second week and today there had been no more heroin, just a boy who cried out to her, swore at her, hit her or who lay still while she bathed his body free of cold sweat and wiped his chin of the saliva he dribbled, and the mucus which ran from his nose and eyes.

That night the stomach cramps clawed at his guts, his limbs jerked and kicked and she was bruised, but never felt the pain, just sat and watched and waited, and longed to do more, but there was nothing more she could do.

She bathed him in the morning but he pushed her from him. ‘It hurts. It hurts,’ he gasped. ‘Please give me some. Please.’

‘No, I’m going to get you well.’

He lay back and she lit him a joint, which he sucked, again and again, and another, and then he slept but it was so hot, for God’s sake, Sarah thought, as she fanned his naked body, kissed his forehead, touched his hand.

She threw back the tent flaps, and undid the windows. At last there was a breeze. She took the basin out into the sun, pouring water over the flannels, washing, wringing, but they still smelt. She dragged the cooker from the tent and pumped up the petrol stove, putting them on to boil.

She tore off her shirt, feeling the sun on her back, pouring water over her body, dragging on a T-shirt, shorts, hurrying to the farmhouse for more water, asking if they would post the cards for them as they were shopping, feeling her shoulders straining as she lugged the water back, rushing to check on Davy. He was still there, lying motionless but the flannels had burned, for God’s sake. She’d forgotten and they’d burned. She dragged her fingers through her hair, knocked
the pan off the stove, kicked it across the grass. She wanted her mother, wanted Bet, anyone.

‘Sarah,’ Davy called. ‘Sarah, help me, please.’

She looked across the field, to the sea, to the birds which wheeled above her. Oh God.

By night time the tent was fetid from his vomit and she sat outside under the awning, watching him in the moonlight because he could bear no light, not even the glimmer from the hurricane lamp. She rested her head on her knees, her sleeping bag unzipped and wrapped around her for comfort, there was no need of warmth on a night such as this.

All night she sat, or bathed him with towels she had ripped apart, took his slaps, his despair, his rage, his calm and knew that she must have slept because time had passed for which she could not account.

The next day was the same but this time she didn’t burn the cloths, but boiled them properly, wrung them out, hung them on the guy ropes, drank coffee, but she didn’t smoke a joint, because she mustn’t sleep, she must only doze. She must eat. She cut bread, opened a tin of corned beef. He called her. She went.

‘No,’ she said. ‘Hang on Davy, just a while longer. Hang on.’ She lit a joint for him, stayed while he smoked it, left when he was asleep. There were flies in the corned beef. She just ate the bread and was surprised at the tears which ran into her mouth.

The next day she gave him a book on silk-screen painting to read.

‘They’re jumping,’ he said. ‘The words are ants scrambling, jumping.’ He threw it at her. ‘You bitch.’

She took the book and sat outside in the sun, reading it, listening to him rage, watching him crawl to the entrance, then curl into a ball as the cramps came again.

She sketched the honeysuckle the next day and the birds which called and wheeled, and wondered how she could survive for another seven days.

On the sixth day she talked to him of the beck, of the
cool water, the soft willow fronds, of the honeysuckle which surrounded them here, in this field, of her sketches which were not as fine as his.

‘We’ll sketch soon, both of us. Not long now Davy.’

He rolled over and looked at her then. ‘I want to die. I need it or I shall die.’

She shook her head and looked into those violet eyes which were not the eyes of Davy, but of someone she didn’t know. ‘You’ll die if you do take it.’