The Consequences of Love

by Gavanndra Hodge

  I do not arrange to see someone to talk about Candy, even though I told Julia Samuel I would.

  6

  1984, London and the South Coast

  ‘Write him a letter,’ Mum said after another police raid. ‘Ask him to stop taking drugs. Ask him to do it for you.’

  I found a nice sheet of paper, thick and unlined. I wrote him a letter. I put my all into it, heart and soul, right there on the page. I told him how much I loved him, I told him that I didn’t want him to die or go to prison. I told him we needed him and that was why he had to stop taking drugs. Please, Daddy.

  I ended the letter with the signature that I had been practising.

  I folded the letter many times, knowing that the more something is folded the more powerful it is. I left the letter on his pillow. I didn’t see him read it, but the next day we went for a walk in the park, just the two of us. He wore a long coat and kicked at the grass even though the leaves had not yet fallen. His voice was thick when he finally spoke, the hard words sticking in his throat.

  ‘I’m going to do it, I’m going to stop taking drugs,’ he said.

  ‘Good,’ I said, and I didn’t cry because we were talking like grown-ups.

  ‘Not all drugs, obviously, just heroin, just my drug of choice, I’m never going to take that again,’ he said.

  ‘Of course, I understand.’

  I didn’t really understand. But I did understand that my words had made something important happen.

  Dad had to go away to stop taking drugs. After a month we went to visit him. Mum didn’t say much during the train journey; she just stared out of the window as the grey changed to green.

  When we arrived I discovered that the sea in England is not glittery blue like on holiday. The sea in England is the colour of hot chocolate and the sky is low with heavy clouds.

  ‘Go and tell that taxi driver where we are going,’ said Mum.

  I was so excited to see Dad again.

  The driver had the radio on, music playing loud, and Mum said, ‘Can you turn that down?’

  I saw the driver looking at Mum in the rear-view mirror.

  I knew what he saw. I saw it too. In the weeks since Mum had stopped drinking wine she had seemed sad and lifeless. Her hair was often greasy and there were spots of food on her baggy jumper. When she did wear make-up the mascara would soon slide off her eyelashes and stick to the skin under her eyes like broken spiders’ legs. I couldn’t understand where my funny, giggly Mum had gone, the one who, when we were in the park, would tell me that she wasn’t wearing any knickers under her wafty purple skirt because it made her feel free and daring.

  Mum made the driver take us all the way up the bumpy, crunchy gravel driveway to the entrance of the building. It looked like a boarding school, big and gloomy. I undid my seatbelt and got out of the car while she was paying. I wanted to run up the stairs, open the front door. I wanted to find him.

  ‘Hang on,’ Mum said.

  There were two people sitting on a bench outside the building: one held his head in his hands between his knees; the other was smoking a cigarette, tapping constantly even when there was no fresh ash to fall.

  We walked up the steps together. I pushed the door open – no need to knock or turn a handle. It had been painted white, but the paint was old and cracked. If I’d had a bit of time I could have peeled it all off.

  Dad!

  He was standing just inside, in the hallway, his hands in his pockets, looking at his feet.

  ‘Gavin,’ said Mum.

  He looked up. ‘Hello, gang,’ he said. He smiled, but it was not one of his proper smiles. His skin was flabby on his face and it looked as though his clothes didn’t belong to him. I wanted to hug him, to make him right.

  ‘Hi, Dad!’ I said.

  ‘My girls,’ he said, and he pulled me in for a cuddle, squashing my face into his belly. He reached out for Mum and pulled her in too. This was what we called a group hug, but Dad smelt funny, as if he had been using different soap or something, so I didn’t close my eyes.

  ‘Come and see everyone,’ he said.

  We followed him through a door into a large room with sofas and chairs. Tall windows looked out on to the gardens and there was a big blackboard with people’s names written in white chalk. Gavin, Michael, Catherine, Quentin. Next to the names were comments like ‘Needs to work on his temper’, ‘It’s OK to cry’ and ‘Talk to us’. Thin people in baggy clothes were gripping mugs of tea, reading books or writing on bits of paper. There was a table with a kettle and a couple of biscuit tins.

  ‘Biscuits!’ I said, and I chose two chocolate bourbons, putting one into my pocket for later.

  In an armchair close to the table I saw Lady Sarah. She was wearing no make-up and had lots of spots. ‘Hi!’ I said, my mouth full of biscuit.

  She held my cheeks with her dry fingertips. Her breath smelt horrible. ‘Hello, darling, bit of a change of scene, isn’t it?’

  I was pleased when we left that room. We walked along corridors and up staircases.

  ‘Jamie was here last week,’ said Dad. ‘Was doing all right. But then he ran away, couldn’t take it any more, climbed over the bloody wall, can you believe it? Have you seen the size of it? Amazing!’

  There were lots of doors. Some were closed, some open; inside I saw beds and desks, people sitting at desks and people lying on beds. From behind the closed doors I could hear groans. My stomach felt strange and I decided to save my second biscuit for the train journey home.

  ‘This is me!’ said Dad, stopping outside a door.

  His room was small and rectangular. There was only one window, a narrow bed with a scratchy-looking brown blanket, a cupboard, a chest of drawers, a chair and desk with pens and pieces of paper covered with big, round handwriting. Mum went to the window and stared out of it, her back to us.

  ‘So, yeah, this is where it all happened, these four walls, sweating and shitting for days, worst cold turkey ever. There was one bit where I really believed that I had tiny insects living under my skin, ants, or caterpillars, something with loads of legs anyway. Hallucinating, the shakes, the lot. They just give you a plastic bucket and tell you to get on with it. Do it the hard way, so you won’t want to do it again, which is bullshit, of course.’

  He smiled at me. I was thinking of caterpillars and all their legs.

  ‘Gavin, please,’ said Mum, opening the window.

  And the funny thing was, it was only after Mum opened the window that I could smell the sick and the poo.

  ‘Why do they call it cold turkey?’ I asked.

  ‘I don’t know, my darling, but it’s not quite right because sometimes you’re hot and sometimes you’re cold and sometimes it’s both at the same time. But I’ve never puked so much in my life. I couldn’t believe there was that much crap in me. And then, at the end of it all, they make you clean up your room by yourself, when you are so weak you can barely lift a finger. That’s not much fun, is it?’

  ‘No!’ I said.

  Someone knocked at the door, not waiting for us to answer before coming in. He was a tall man wearing jeans, a brown jumper and plimsolls. He looked just like all the people that used to visit our flat late at night. He probably was one of them – there were so many towards the end. But he was someone important now; he was a therapist.

  ‘Hey, man,’ said Dad.

  ‘Hey, man. So this is your gang, I’ve heard so much about you all. I’m Jeff,’ he said.

  He looked at us, and when he saw me, he looked even harder.

  ‘I think we have a session now. Which is great.’

  I had to have therapy too. Mum had already explained this. She told me it was important. She didn’t want me repeating patterns, learning behaviour, holding on to negative emotions.

  ‘Good luck!’ said Dad.

  I didn’t want to go with Jeff.

  ‘How about here,’ said Jeff once we’d walked so far away from the building, across grass and under trees, that there was no way Mum
and Dad would have been able to hear me if I’d shouted for them.

  ‘OK,’ I said. I dropped to the ground, crossing my legs and patting my skirt down so he wouldn’t be able to see my pants.

  ‘So, how old are you?’

  ‘I just turned nine.’

  ‘Happy birthday!’

  ‘Thanks.’

  The ground was damp and it was too cold to be sitting outside like this.

  ‘So, do you know why you are here?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And do you know why your father is here?’

  ‘Because he doesn’t want to be a heroin addict any more.’

  Jeff sighed as though I’d said something stupid. This annoyed me because I knew that I was not stupid.

  ‘Your dad will be an addict until the day he dies. This disease doesn’t just disappear because you do the programme. It is like cancer, you know. You never really recover from cancer, there is always a chance it will come back, if you’re not careful.’

  I looked at the grass, felt it beneath my hand; there were whole civilizations of bugs and worms down there. I loved lawns, loved grass. Sometimes I would go to Battersea Park by myself just so I could lie on the grass.

  ‘Right,’ said Jeff. ‘Let’s get started.’

  He opened his folder, letting some documents fall to the ground, finding what he was looking for. He crossed his legs and held a piece of paper, reading from it as if this was the first time he had ever seen it.

  ‘Can you remember when you first became aware that your dad was using?’

  Creeping into the sitting room late at night, the sweet smell of cooking heroin, balls of rolled-up silver foil, beige powder and money being handed over. This has been happening all my life.

  ‘No.’

  ‘OK,’ said Jeff. He paused before he asked the next question.

  ‘Does your dad often break promises?’

  Dad has promised to take me to the zoo. It is a Sunday morning. The time pulses away on the LED displays of the video recorders – we have VHS and Betamax. I am ready, coat on, shoes on, breakfast eaten. I sit on the sofa waiting. Every so often I go to his bedroom door, stand outside, say ‘Dad’ softly. I know he must be tired but it is getting late and we are meant to be going to the zoo, not the little one in Battersea Park, but the big one in Regent’s Park. Someone told me that there was a huge cage with monkeys in it, loads of them, and that they swing about and groom each other just like they do on the TV.

  ‘Dad,’ I whisper.

  Then I say it louder, and louder again. I am getting annoyed. I really want to go to the zoo and he promised.

  I push open the door, walk into the sweaty, shadowy room. The bed is a mattress on the floor; the duvet is knotted around his legs.

  ‘Dad,’ I say, walking towards him. He is just in his pants and there is white scum at the corners of his mouth. He is holding his head with both hands.

  ‘My head, it is broken, it is broken in half, my head,’ he says, and I realize that he is trying to hold his head together with his hands, to stop his brains spilling out all over the pillow. I run to him, kneel next to him. I daren’t touch him, but I look closely.

  ‘Dad, are you OK, do you need a doctor?’

  I can’t see blood or bone or brain. I can’t see the bit where his head is broken.

  ‘My head is broken in two,’ he goes on, as though he hasn’t heard me, as though he doesn’t know that I am there. And I realize that he hasn’t heard me, that he doesn’t know I am there, and that his head is not broken.

  I walk out. I close the door. I take off my coat.

  ‘Does your dad often break promises?’

  ‘No.’

  Jeff looked through his papers, twiddling his blue biro.

  ‘You really don’t want to talk, do you?’ he said eventually.

  This time I didn’t even reply. So he would get the message.

  ‘OK. Let’s try something different.’ Jeff handed me a packet of used felt-tip pens, a piece of plain A4 paper and a clipboard. ‘Draw a picture, anything you like. It would be great if it had something to do with how you feel about your dad’s using, but it doesn’t matter if it doesn’t, just draw whatever you fancy, whatever comes to mind.’

  ‘And what are you going to do?’ I asked.

  ‘I’m going to smoke a cigarette,’ he said, getting out a packet of Rothmans, lighting one, lying on his back and blowing smoke up into the low, grey sky.

  I was not very good at drawing, but I decided to give it a go so that I would have something to show Mum. It was tricky. I was better at the building than the people. It took me a long time, but in the end I was pleased with what I’d done. It sort of looked like I wanted it to.

  Jeff had conked out.

  I poked him with a pen. ‘I’ve finished,’ I said.

  ‘OK, great, right,’ he said, flustered, trying to pretend he hadn’t been asleep.

  I handed him the piece of paper. He looked at it for a moment, squinting to show that he was concentrating.

  ‘So, this is you, right, sitting outside the pub, and the two people we can see inside, the two heads, these are your parents?’

  ‘That’s right,’ I said.

  ‘And did this happen to you often, them going to the pub and leaving you outside?’

  ‘All the time.’

  ‘That must have been really tough. And did they get very drunk when they were in the pub?’

  ‘Yes, very.’

  ‘And how did all this make you feel?’

  I paused, had a think. How did this make me feel?

  ‘Upset, I suppose, sad, lonely, afraid, all those sorts of things.’

  ‘This is really good, Amanda. It’s really good to talk like this; you’ll feel so much better for it, I promise. So, back to the pub. Can you remember the first time this happened?’

  I didn’t tell him that my name was not Amanda.

  Jeff let me take the drawing. I handed it to Mum and Dad as if it was a prize certificate. They looked at it, standing next to each other in the entrance area. It was nearly time to go.

  ‘But this never happened,’ said Mum. ‘We never left you sitting outside the pub.’

  ‘I know!’ I said.

  Dad was the first one to see the joke. I knew he would get it. That was why I had done it.

  ‘You little tinker!’ he said, laughing.

  Then Mum got it too and laughed for the first time in months. And we were all happy, in that place, laughing about the thing that never happened, laughing because I had tricked Jeff, laughing because at least it wasn’t bad in that way. It was bad in ways that I didn’t know how to say, how to draw, how to write.

  7

  2014, Yorkshire

  I have booked myself on to a week-long course called ‘Writing for Children and Young Adults’. I want to finish the novel I have been working on. It is about a troubled teenaged girl whose mother is a high-class prostitute, whose father is mentally disturbed and who has magic powers that enable her to harness the conscious energy of the universe. In one scene an ancient being takes her on a mind-bending journey to the moon. The book is quite good, I think, if a little niche.

  I’m anxious on the journey north to Hebden Bridge. I’m leaving my children for the first time since Minna was born. Every train I’m meant to catch is cancelled, my subconscious fears somehow impacting the physical world. But I’m happy when I finally arrive and am shown my pretty first-floor room overlooking fields and forests. I unpack and arrange all my stationery and cosmetics in neat lines on the desk and the dressing table before going downstairs for ‘welcome cake’. The other students are mostly middle-aged women, many of them teachers, most of whom have done these sorts of courses many times before. We gather in a little room crammed with too many chairs, our cups of tea and plates of cake balanced on our knees. I wedge myself into a corner and watch, not speaking.

  I feel less self-conscious that evening, after dinner and a couple of glasses of wine. We are in the ba
rn next to the main house. Sofas are arranged in a large semi-circle. We all have our notebooks and pens. One of the teachers asks us to write about something that happened to us when we were young.

  ‘Really think about how you felt in your body, transport yourself back to that time,’ she says.

  I begin to write, really trying to transport myself, really trying to feel it in my body.

  I write about visiting my dad when he was in a rehabilitation centre. I try to remember how it felt to be that girl, so excited to see her dad, so anxious about her mum, trying to hold them all together, but never quite managing it. As I write I find that there is so much that I can recall. Details from the past pop into my mind as though I have summoned them: the blackboard with Dad’s name written in chalk letters, the sugar crumble texture of the chocolate biscuit, the cold grass against my skin during the session with Jeff.

  It’s like going back in time. It’s like magic.

  I close my notebook. My breath is coming fast. The other students share what they have written. I do not.

  The next morning, in my room overlooking fields and forests, I reread what I have written. I like it. I think it might even be better than the story about the girl who travels to the moon. But there is something about this evocation of my past that bothers me.

  Where is Candy? She would have been about four when Dad went into rehab, and would surely have come with us to the centre. The act of writing has allowed my mind to retrieve so much. But not Candy.

  So I try again. I try to write the story with her in it, imagining the three of us on the train, me making it fun for Candy by telling her that we were going to the seaside, us in the back of the cab singing along to the music on the radio, Dad hugging all three of us to him, his girls, me fetching Candy chocolate bourbons from the biscuit tin, her bouncing on Dad’s single bed as I go for my session. I make the story as rich and detailed as I can.

  I know even as I am doing it that I am making it up, inventing her and inventing myself in relation to her. The invention feels flimsy, as if she is made of air, without weight, not even a ghost.