He was a laugh. He always played up to it, posing like a model in the magazines. He had this really silly shirt, with a picture of a dragon on the front of it, all picked out in tiny little fairy lights. Sometimes if it was getting dark he’d turn the shirt on and sit there with his head flung back, like Erik the Viking, and this stupid shirt flashing on and off.
Helen was a frizzy blonde, quite pretty, with a turned-up little nose. She was from Birmingham, I think. She was quite lively, I didn’t really know why she was with Alan, because he was a bit thick. I think she just thought she had it made because he was so good looking, and he made quite a lot of money dealing.
Anyway, Rob had some sort of a deal with them, for some stuff. There was a shortage on. Me and Gems had a little bit but we didn’t want to share it because it was all we had, it was just a tiny little bit. It happened like this. They were out of town organising this stuff, and they rang Rob in the evening to tell him it was sorted and he could come and get his. He went round straight away to their place and the light was on, but he couldn’t get an answer. He banged on the door and shouted up…nothing. They were in Brook Road, just round the corner. He didn’t want to make too much fuss. It’s bad manners, you know, to make a fuss outside a dealer’s house, so he came back to wait at home.
“They only rang me up half an hour ago and they never said they were going anywhere. I told them I was coming round,” he said. He looked awful, sitting there chewing away at the skin round his nails.
“Maybe they got busted,” said Lily. She was sitting on the floor with her arms round her legs all wrapped up in a cardigan. They were both really going through it. I really felt for them. Yuk. It’s like, every little thing that happens is too much. It almost hurts sometimes, even when someone’s just saying hello.
He hung around for half an hour and then went back; same thing, no answer. We were getting a bit worried by this time. Alan and Helen never went anywhere. If they said they’d be in, they were in. Everyone was thinking the same thing. You see, it wasn’t all that likely they’d been busted because the police’d still have been round there half an hour after they rang up. On the other hand…well, we all knew people OD. You heard about it. But…
Rob was getting paranoid because he was scared to go round in case they had been busted and the place was being watched. I went and walked past to have a look for him but I didn’t dare knock. When I got back Lily was getting really pissy, blaming Rob and getting on at me and Gems just because we had some and they didn’t. She wanted someone to go round and bust in. There was a window open at the back, but it was up on the first floor; it would have meant shinning up the drainpipe.
“You do it, Tar, you’re all right,” said Rob.
“No way, it’s your stuff.”
“You’re all right, how’d you like to go breaking into someone’s place when you’re coming down?”
We started squabbling until Lily suddenly lost her temper.
“Just bloody someone go round and sort it out, okay?” she screamed, and she started walking round the place kicking things. She was getting really wound up. She started punching the doors and making a mess of her hands. So Rob and I looked at each other, and we decided to go together.
We didn’t have to climb in the window in the end. Gemma remembered that this other friend of ours who lived a few doors down from Alan and Helen had a key in case they got locked out. He didn’t want to give it to us at first, but once we’d explained to him, he handed it over.
“You can come in with us if you’d like to make sure it’s all straight,” said Rob. But funnily enough, the guy didn’t want to.
We just opened the door and walked in. It was like normal at first. They were just sitting next to each other on the sofa. Helen had slumped a little sideways on to him and he was just sitting there staring straight ahead as if he was thinking about something. It smelt a bit funny. She looked like she was asleep. His eyes were wide open.
Rob said, “Are you okay?” and I thought at first he was talking to me but he wasn’t. We both knew at once. They were blue. Then I saw the needles in their arms.
Rob looked at me. Then he went into the room and started creeping about opening drawers and looking on the shelves.
I went up close to have a look. I touched him on the arm and he was quite cold. Behind me Rob was rushing about, faster and faster. I think he was freaked out but I didn’t mind so much as him. They looked just like themselves but they weren’t moving. Alan was still gorgeous. She’d gone a bit thin lately, it didn’t suit her. So had he but it made him look even nicer if anything. I wanted to kiss her on the cheek because I knew she couldn’t wake up. It was like the Sleeping Beauty.
It was all so realistic. I kept waiting for him to move, and then for her to move and then for him to move, but they never did. I touched his cheek again. I thought of cold meat.
“Bloody get away from them and help me!” hissed Rob. We started pulling stuff out of the drawers and running about. He found it in the end—two bagsful, it must have been not far off an ounce.
That was a lot of junk. It was more than I’d ever seen.
“It’s probably dead pure as well,” said Rob, nodding at Alan and Helen. We giggled…you know, dead pure.
“What shall we do with it?”
“Well they’re not going to need it.”
I felt like we were stealing it even though they were both dead. I had this feeling they were waiting, that they were trying to trick us into stealing their stuff. I looked at them and shook the little bag at them as if to say, Is it all right? Then I noticed little details I’d missed the first time, like the sticky under their noses and in their eyes. Then I saw a fly walking across his face and I just flipped. I yelled and ran. Rob ran after me. We were down those stairs and out of the house in seconds.
Once we got the stuff back home we were all scared stiff of using it. Then someone heard the police give a warning on the radio to all the junkies that there was some extrastrong stuff about that was killing people. You get used to taking your usual hit, see, and so people were ODing. Wow! We had a party for Alan and Helen. That bag lasted for ages. It took the police a week to get round there and knock the door down.
I ring up my mum sometimes.
I do it when I’m alone. It’s private. I don’t know why I do it, they’ve got nothing to do with me any more. Just to see if she’s all right, or what they’re up to, or just checking that they’re still there. Or maybe I do it because I want to show myself that I can take it. I can deal with her these days. Sometimes I have to remind myself that I can.
I’m usually walking down the road and I decide to do it just like that. I just walk into the phone box and pick up the phone and dial and there she is. Suddenly. Like she was at my elbow the whole time but I never saw her, all these months.
She has this way of answering the phone. She drawls. Maybe it’s the booze, but I think she’s watching herself in the mirror above the sofa in the lounge where the phone is, and she’s thinking how cool she looks with her fag in her hand and her lipstick smeared off her lips and her dress hanging off her shoulder. Really—she thinks she looks cool. She’s lost her whole personality to that poison and she thinks it makes her look cool.
“Heeeeeeeellllooo,” she says, like she’s on a film. My heart starts going like a fire engine.
“Hi, Mum.”
And straight away, she changes. I can feel her moving quickly, I can hear her put her drink down and sit up. Then there’s this pause. She’s waiting for me, letting me dangle. She used to scare the shit out of me like that. These days, I let her dangle, too. I wait for her to speak.
Off she goes. Am I all right, how dare I not get in touch before, do I need help, how much she’s missing me, do I have somewhere to stay? How she keeps hearing about kids sleeping out on the streets and she prays every night it isn’t me.
What god would possibly want to listen to her?
“No, Mum, I’ve got it sorted out, thanks.”
“But, darling, is there anything you need?”
“I was just ringing up to see how you were. You haven’t left him, then?”
“He’s your father, David.” Pause. “Darling, tell me about it.”
Pause.
“Tell you about what?”
“Everything.”
For a minute I start getting confused. Then I hear her drink clinking on her teeth, and I think, Oh, yeah. I know what’s she’s up to.
It’s pathetic, really. She only has this one trick and she plays it over and over again. And yet she nearly gets me with it still. It’s the same thing—dangling, you see. Asks you some twisted question, or makes these remarks which aren’t quite right. And you get nervous with the long silences, so you end up babbling away and all you can hear is her sucking her fag or sipping her drink, so you end up saying anything, promising her anything on earth, just to get her to acknowledge you.
And then when you’re just about begging her to say something, to say anything, she launches a rocket at you. Like, “He beats me up, darling.” Or, “I think I might have cancer.” Or, “I want to leave him but I have to have someone to help me.”
So when I hear her teeth clinking on the glass and her sucking her fag and waiting for me to start falling at her feet, I just keep quiet and then I say, “I haven’t got anything to tell you.”
She says, “David,” in an injured voice. Then she gives me the rocket anyway. “He’s been beating me again.”
Maybe. Maybe not. I just keep my mouth shut and let her have a taste of what she tried on me. And it works, too, that’s the amazing thing. She starts blabbing and blabbing and blabbing and then the blabbing turns to blubbing
“I can’t help you, Mum. You have to help yourself. You have to leave Dad and pack in the booze. No one can help you until you do that. Can’t you see that, Mum? I tell you what,” I say, “I’ll come back if you do that.”
Of course I know she never will.
Sometimes my dad’s there. He takes the phone.
“David? David? Are you all right, David?”
I haven’t got anything to say to him. I just breathe down the phone, “Hurrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr,” very softly but loud enough for him to hear. Just like I used to hear her breathe when she was letting me dangle and breathing out her fag smoke.
“David, is this some sort of joke?”
I listen a bit more, but I really have got nothing to say to my dad. So I put the phone down, carry on my way. I don’t know if I’ll bother doing it again.
I always think that, but I always do.
Gemma
When someone tempts you you can’t refuse
It’s getting colder and you know you’ve got nothing to lose
You need it
No you got nothing to lose
You need it
THE ONLY ONES
Lily was in her pyjamas. She almost never goes out these days, so she doesn’t need to get dressed. She was looking at herself in the mirror. Then she turned round to watch Sally push down the needle and smiled that big Lily smile.
“Yeah! Sal?”
“Better,” sighed Sally. She took the needle out of her arm. She wiped it carefully on the tissue and put it down. Sally is always so neat and delicate.
We always use separate needles ever since we started work. You’ve got to be sensible. We used to share because it was only with each other. These days I only ever share with Tar. If I got something like AIDS, he’d get it anyway.
Then Lily said this thing right out of the blue. She said, “I’m going to have a baby.”
Christ!
“Oh, my God! What are you going to do, what are you going to do?”
“Oh, Lils,” said Sally sadly.
It was so awful. Sally was pregnant a while ago and she had an abortion and she felt dreadful for ages after.
I said, “Have you told the doctor yet? Has he given you a date?”
Lily glared at me. I could feel myself shuffle back on the bed a bit, because she really has a temper and she doesn’t often glare at me because we’re soul sisters.
She leaned across to me. “Listen, Mrs. Sister. You know what dead babies do. They come back and haunt you. They’re all over the place, I see ’em. Yeah—dead babies floating on the ceiling looking for their mums ’cause their mums had ’em scraped out and they never had a life…” She kept glancing across at Sal as she said all that stuff. I started remembering how when Sal had her abortion Lils was all quiet about it, just smiled and never said a thing. Now Sal was looking upset, and I thought, O-oh…
“I’m not gonna kill my baby. That’s my baby. No one’s gonna kill my baby.”
“I didn’t say kill it.”
“I said, I’m going to have a baby. I’m going to have it. There’s gonna be a baby. A baby, Gems…”
I glanced at Sally. Even though she looks so prim Sally’s got a terrible temper. She said, “You’re on the game and you’re a junkie, Lily. You ought to have an abortion.”
“Are you telling me to kill my baby? Are you telling me…”
“You ought to have an abortion for the sake of your baby.”
“You want to kill my baby? You wanna? You wanna kill it? Come on, come on, you kill it then, you do it now.”
“Your baby is a junkie. Your baby is inside you and it’s full of junk, same as you. You want to give birth to a junkie? Is that what you want? Is that how much you love your bloody baby?”
Lily’s eyes were absolutely bulging out of her head. “I’m a fucking junkie, are you telling me I’d be better off dead because I’m a junkie? Are you telling me that?”
“I’m telling you it’s not fair to your baby to be pregnant with it while you’re full of junk. What sort of a mother…”
She didn’t need to say any more. Lils was up off the bed walking up and down the room, poking herself on the chest and trying to find the words. I just held my breath. When those two start, you take cover. I was getting ready to disappear under the table.
Finally Lily got it out. “I can give it up any time I want…”
Sally just laughed. I mean, it wasn’t funny but under other circumstances it would’ve been. The number of times we’d tried to give up—I’d lost count. I dunno why. It used to be easy. Maybe the comedown’s worse when you’ve been using for a while. First you get the shivers. Then you get the aches, then the cramps start in your guts, then it’s the squits and you’re diving into the bog every five minutes. Then your teeth start aching, and your bones begin to hurt, and then you feel sick in the pit of your stomach and then you’re throwing up.
And all it takes is one little needle and Lady Heroin makes you feel…mmmmm. The days when you could say what Lily said—they were long gone.
I was gobsmacked. It never occurred to me she might want a baby. I mean, apart from the junk, well, it could be anyone’s.
Lily gave Sal this look. She looked…And Sal was sitting on the bed still and she started to get up because it looked as though Lils was going to land one on her…
Then Lily just turned round and walked out of the room.
It was awful.
Sal sat back down and lit up a fag. I just stood there. I said, “Let’s have one.” She gave me a fag and I paced up and down the room smoking, trying to get calm. Sal took a few more drags, then she said, “I think I better go.”
I said, “Don’t go, don’t go, it’ll be all right, it’ll be all right.” She’d gone white; she had a temper almost as bad as Lil’s. She didn’t run around screaming but she was just as bad. Next door, Lils put some music on—“Lurkying About”—feel-good music, our theme tune. The music was filling up the house; the feel-good wasn’t coming in through the bedroom door yet, but I could just imagine Lily jiving around the front room, getting herself back.
I said, “See? She’ll be okay.”
The track was about halfway through when the door opens and Lily comes back in. She was jiving about, glancing up at me and Sal, but jivin
g about like she was in her own space. She was singing along. “Lurkying, lurkying, lurkying about…”
She fiddled with some stuff on her dressing table. She started to smile her big Lily smile…then she came over and sat on the bed and put her arms around Sal.
“Okay, Sal? Okay?”
“Yeah, I’m okay.”
“All right, Sal, mates again. Soul sisters…”
“Yeah, soul sisters, eh?” Although Sal didn’t exactly sound convinced.
Lily got up and started walking up and down in the space between the bed and wall. “There’s gonna be a baby, right? It’s a fact. That’s just all there is to it. Right…a baby. Right? Think about it. I’m gonna be a mother. Everything’s gotta change. Right? Like Sal says, I can’t do junk if I’m a mother. See? I can’t. You can’t come round here smacked up when I’m gonna be a mother. See?”
I said, “Yeah, yeah,” just to keep things cool, really, at that point.
“There’s gonna be a baby, Sal, I’m gonna have a baby. I’m gonna be a mother and you’re gonna be its mother and so’s Gemma and we’re all gonna get clean and live the real life…”
She looked at us, just willing us to think like her. She said, “You’re not gonna come round here junked up, you’re not gonna give me smack when I’m pregnant…”
“No, right, no,” I said. Even Sally was nodding now.
“See?” Lils was grinning from ear to ear. And I began to feel it.
“Everything’s gotta change. You don’t do smack when there’s babies. It was good but now it’s on to something else…”
Smack Page 16
