Annie's Promise (47 page)

The boat increased speed along the open avenue and Sarah sketched the
pali
, three, four, five to a bunch. She noted the electric lantern on one, the seagulls on another. They skirted the islet of San Giacomo in Palude and she sketched the trees choked with ivy.

They slackened speed and chugged down the wide canal of Mazzorbo, past ugly little modern houses with their varnished and glazed front doors, their varnished and glazed little families. She turned away.

They accelerated into Torcello.

Fred led the way, walking ahead of her along a towpath beside the stagnant green canal which smelt of drains and fish. She stopped and sketched the marshland either side, and some vineyards. It was flat like Holland. How was he?

She walked on, looking only to left and right, not thinking.

‘There’s honeysuckle and hawthorn in the summer,’ Fred called.

There had been honeysuckle in Cornwall.

They arrived at the cathedral. She sketched its plain brick façade, its six blind arches. They moved inside and Sarah sketched the simple, rich interior and the light which came through small circular panes on the south wall.

‘The wind’s too icy from the north,’ Fred said, looking over her shoulder. ‘There are some peacocks over there, on the inner
plutei.
They symbolise the Resurrection and the new life given by baptism.’

She moved along, drawing their long, stretched necks as they pecked at the grapes in a bowl. Did she have a new life? She ate, drank, breathed, talked, slept, loved. She looked at Fred. No, she didn’t make love, she just kept warm. No, this wasn’t life – but what was life? She didn’t know any more.

They ate lunch outside back to back, not talking, just eating, drinking. Afterwards Fred pointed to the campanile which stood a few yards from the east end of the cathedral. ‘We should climb that at twilight but now will do.’

They climbed it and she sketched the island spread out all around, and the sea, and she noted the colours with her crayons.

‘At twilight the Adriatic seems pale, to the south the lagoon can be purple or green, depending on the sky. It’s kinda nice.’

She looked at Fred, his beard, his loose shirt, his hands which drew competently, but not like Davy. She shut her mind, sketching Fred as he stood there. Was he nice? She supposed so.

They walked back along the towpath, caught the boat and now the wind was fresh and cool and the light was fading. Another day had passed, thank God.

They disembarked and walked silently from the boat, through a Venice sunk in shadow, the light behind the buildings turning them azure, lilac, violet, their shutters hard-edged and black. They turned into the courtyard, past the marble well-head, the empty flower urns standing on the moss-covered paving slabs, into the house where the sound of guitars and singing drifted from above.

Marco came, his apron greasy, his face worried. ‘There are men at the trattoria asking about a girl called Sarah Armstrong.’

That evening Fred took her to the station and put her on a train for Rome. ‘Let me stay,’ she said.

‘Look, Sarah, it’s been fun but I can’t have cops checking up on me. They’ll kick me out and I’ll be in Nam before I know what’s hit me. You’ll have to go. Use the money for a plane ticket. Just get the hell away from here.’

‘Please let me stay.’ She grabbed his arm.

‘Look, don’t cling, you’re a big girl, time you made it on your own. Don’t always need someone else, for Christ’s sake.’

Sarah stood at the window as the train drew out, waving, but Fred had turned and was walking away. He didn’t look back. She was alone, quite alone, and his words echoed round her mind.

Rome was like London, crowded, chaotic, noisy. She stayed in a small hotel that had bed bugs. She walked the streets, looking up at the Spanish Steps, at the stalls in the markets, at the artists, the students. She looked into the cafés but hadn’t the courage to go in alone and always Fred’s words echoed and that night she dreamt at last, of Carl, of Davy, and woke in the morning bathed in sweat.

She ate breakfast alone. She bought a map and toured the Colosseum, looking up as a pimp sidled up to her.

‘All alone? Come with me.’

She turned and walked away quickly, frightened, checking the map, going back to the hotel, lying on the bed. Don’t cling. Don’t cling. She didn’t eat that evening. She just lay on her bed, thinking. She lay awake all night, all the next day, hearing Fred’s voice, hearing Carl’s. ‘You only cured him so that you could cling to him.’ She heard her mother say years ago, ‘Let him decide. He might not want to go into art.’ Again and again she heard their voices until her head ached with the echoes of them all and in the morning she had travelled many miles and many years. She went out again to the Colosseum waiting as a pimp came up. ‘All alone? Come with me.’

‘Piss off,’ she said, staring at him. ‘It’s time I was alone.’
He moved away and Sarah finished looking at the Colosseum, before eating at a café. She rang the Dutch clinic from the café. The doctor said Davy had gone home. So far, there had been no relapse.

She walked to the river and stood there, knowing she would never be the same again because she acknowledged now the fact that
she
had decided that they must cover up after Davy’s psychedelic pictures. She hadn’t asked him. It was
she
who had taken him to Cornwall. It was
she
who had changed from Newcastle to London to be with him. It was
she
who had not listened to Ravi as he warned her of the drugs. She hadn’t wanted to listen.

She had never asked Davy what he wanted. It was what she wanted that had mattered to her. He had wanted to go home and she hadn’t seen it, or if she had she had ignored it because she wanted to stay, and now she knew that he had once loved her, and that she had seen it, and used it. She was as much a user as her mother and the knowledge broke her heart because all along it was Davy that she had loved, she knew that now. It had never been Carl.

She stood until the sun went down and it was dark and there was just the sound of the city around her. She walked back to the hotel and packed her rucksack, heaving it on her back, and took a taxi to the airport, knowing at last where she was going.

Annie listened to the Italian, straining to understand his broken English, her heart sinking as she did. Sarah had left before the private detectives reached her. Her friends had no idea of her destination.

Sarah lay in the dormitory wondering how she could bear such heat for another moment. She rolled over and checked her watch. Midnight.

‘Lie still,’ the old woman in the next bed called out. ‘If you lie still the heat is not so bad.’

Sarah eased on to her back, feeling the sweat running off her, smelling India all around her, hearing its music, seeing the shadows the street lamps cast through the curtainless windows. Ravi had been right, the landscape as she had flown into Delhi looked like lichen on a stone but nothing had prepared her for the smell, the noise of the streets, the number of people, the bikes, rickshaws, tongas.

In the morning the old woman brushed her hair, twisted it up into a bun, her arms scrawny, her fleshless skin hanging, shaking.

‘I should have mine cut like yours. Have you had a broken love affair – my mother always said that those with broken hearts need to despoil themselves.’

Sarah looked out of the window at the people who were buying from hawkers, eating chapattis in the street, others were scrabbling for scraps in the gutters. Some were still sleeping in corners.

‘I need to get to this clinic,’ she said, digging Ravi’s address out of her bag, handing it to the woman.

‘Take a bus, number nine. It’ll get you there. I’m going the other way. Every year I come – it beats Worthing.’

Sarah stuffed her clothes into her rucksack.

‘So, you’re working at a clinic – atonement, is it?’ the woman asked.

Sarah heaved the rucksack on to her back.

‘Something like that.’ She left the room.

‘Boil your water, don’t eat food from the street stalls for the first week, then you’ll be immune,’ the old woman called. ‘Remember, broken hearts can mend.’

She walked out into the heat and the dust and the noise, joining the stream which ebbed and flowed, bright-coloured. Men hawked, spat betel juice. Street vendors called, children begged, pulling at her long cotton skirt, she kept walking. Past silk wallahs squatting cross-legged on the ground, past the derzie sitting on an old durrie sewing on a hand machine. She stopped to look but she had a bus to catch and sewing was of no interest to her now.

‘Carry your bag, missy?’

She shook her head.

An old Sikh in a white tunic and turban was weighing rice, lentils, flour, from baskets that stood on wooden planks. Their colours were good together. She should draw them but that was of no interest to her now either.

On past the betel leaf shop, the toddy shop, stalls where ghee and cooking oil were sold, on and on through the hot bodies, with the heat on her head, the heat beneath her feet, in her lungs – and everywhere there was the ordure of India.

Bikes were piled high on the roof of the bus, the seats were crowded, people stared but she turned from them as the driver lurched forward and eased into the sea of bikes, rickshaws, lorries. She looked out at the suburbs, peeling, shabby, dirty, the blacksmiths by their wagons, the VD clinic, the rickshaws which had died together like a farmer’s yard full of rusted equipment.

She sat still because the heat was too much and it was only nine in the morning. They were out now amongst short scrub grass and there were flat-roofed houses squatting beneath the sun. She closed her eyes, feeling the sweat bead
her forehead, then run into her eyes, her mouth. She felt the flies on her lips, everywhere, hearing them all around.

They drove and drove, stopping at midday for fuel at a broken-down shack. She shook her head at the food hawkers and just drank warm water from her bottle, standing beneath the shade of the awning, looking out across the plain which shimmered and danced and she could hardly breathe. It was only April.

They drove all afternoon and the woman who sat next to her, her body pressed too close, smelt of curry. They passed scrub, and the horizon danced as villagers squatted beside cow-pats kneading them.

‘To cook,’ the woman beside her said.

Sarah turned, surprised. ‘You speak English.’

‘Many do. I am having a little.’ She smiled, slight against Sarah’s European build. Ravi had made her feel coarse, huge. Would he remember her? Would he let her stay?

They drove past a fair. The bus stopped and everyone clambered off, buying food from the fly-specked stalls, and music blared from a loudspeaker tied to a tree. She ate nothing but thought of the fair in Whitley Bay, the cool east wind – Davy. Did broken hearts mend? She thought not and wanted to die, but that would be too easy.

They drove on until well after dark, when the driver stopped at the crossroads of a town.

‘Missy,’ he shouted above the chatter, standing up, pointing at Sarah.

She struggled through the people, murmuring, ‘So sorry, I’m sorry.’

They smiled or shrugged – all stared.

She took her rucksack from the driver and walked towards the bazaar where old natives were smoking pipes, fruit and vegetables were being sold and derzies were sewing. Did nothing alter? She hired a tonga and now it was cooler but the mosquitoes were biting. The horse was thin, his hooves kicked up dust, it was in her mouth, her nose. The moon was bright and she could see to the horizon. They turned off
the road, on to a track between fields until they came to the gates of a compound, the shapes of the buildings flat black against the moon.

She paid the tonga wallah, heaved her rucksack on to her back and walked through the gates, towards light which came from behind a building. She reached the entrance to the courtyard and stood looking at the women who sat on charpoys around a fire of cow-pats.

‘Ravi,’ she said into the silence that fell. ‘Is Ravi here?’ Did her voice sound as desperate as she felt? Did it sound raw with pain and despair?

He came to her, hurrying across the compound from a long low building. She stood, letting her rucksack fall to the ground, wanting to run to this man from her past but she didn’t need to because he was here, holding her, leading her away out of the circle of light, away from the silence and the stars, holding her hands in the soft light from the moon. ‘You came,’ he said. ‘I hoped you would. But you have come alone?’

‘Yes.’ That was all.

He looked at her and nodded. ‘You are tired, but you are also different. We will talk tomorrow.’

She held his arm. ‘No, I don’t want to talk, I want to work. I want you to. use me, please.’ There was the sound of cattle moving, lowing, the soft voices of the women, and Ravi’s eyes were gentle.

‘You need sleep, come with me. I will use you, but – forgive me – perhaps not yet in the clinic.’

‘I will do anything.’

Ravi nodded. ‘Come with me, you need sleep, my dear Sarah.’

She followed him to a room beyond the courtyard. She sat on the charpoy.

‘Wait here, I will be back.’ Ravi left her and Sarah lay back in the coolness of the windowless room. Tomorrow she would work in the heat, the dust, the dirt, with the flies, until
she dropped and at last there was a sort of peace within her and she closed her eyes and slept.

Ravi returned carrying chapattis and water. He stood over Sarah, seeing the exhaustion in her face, the shortness of her hair, hearing again the pain in her voice. Where was Davy, whom she had loved?

Davy stood in Annie’s office, waiting until she had finished the phone call. She was so drawn, so grey and though she smiled at him, at everyone, there was always agony in her eyes.

Annie put down the receiver. ‘Hi, how’s it going? Did the design work as well in practice as in theory?’

‘I think it did, Da’s looking at it now. May I sit down?’

Annie nodded, leaning back in her chair. There were daffodils on her desk.

‘I want to go and find her, Auntie Annie.’ Davy said. ‘I love her so much and it’s my fault. I’m better, fitter, I feel like I did before I went to London.’