Smack

by Melvin Burgess

  Actually the comedown could have been worse. Like the nurse said, there was nowhere I could go and score. Well, that’s not strictly true. You can get any kind of drug in prison, it’s a user’s paradise, but of course I didn’t know that at the time. The thing was, I didn’t have that awful feeling—all I have to do…

  Then I was depressed. I never was so depressed. Not much to say about that except I got through it. That’s one thing about being inside, you get through it, whatever it is, because you don’t have any choice. Gemma came in to visit me and I didn’t tell her how I was feeling. I just said I was keeping my head down, getting on with it, doing the things you do.

  And then—like I say, I thought, Maybe it’s not so bad. Somehow my head popped up above water. I was getting through it. Look at it, after all—I’ve been clean for over three months now, for the first time in years. I might not have done it myself out of choice, but I am clean and that’s the important thing. It’s something to build on. I got a reasonable sentence. It was my second conviction, they could have given me a lot longer than eighteen months. With any luck I can be out in nine; that’s a third gone already. The other day one of the screws said to me as I was going past, “You’re doing well, David…keep it up.” He smiled and nodded at me.

  And I thought, Yeah…I am. I’m doing well. I was pretty pleased with myself. I’d been ill, I’d been depressed, now I’m doing all right. Some of the screws are okay. You get some horrific bastards, of course, but some are okay. And I was doing all right.

  I told Gemma. She must have seen how proud I was because she laughed and said, “Hostage syndrome.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Loving your jailer,” she told me, and I just smiled. She was right, I was proud I’d pleased a screw. It’s a bummer really, you feel grateful to them just for being human. But it helps and anything that helps is important.

  Gems is as big as a house! She got bigger and bigger every time she came in and now she’s about ready to pop. Next time she comes in she’ll bring the baby with her. It’s due in about a week. Last time she was sitting in her chair beaming away and patting her huge tum. We sit at these little tables, and I put my hand on it so I could feel it kicking.

  “He’s gonna be a footy fan, I reckon.”

  And she leaned back in her chair and slapped her big tum and pushed up her big tits and said, “And it’s all yours, boy…it’s all yours. You come out clean and it’s all there waiting for you.”

  Like I say, I keep my head down and my nose clean. I just think…it’s all there. All I’ve got to do is time.

  Gemma

  So what’s so interesting ’bout you-o

  Where’s the damage, where’s the fun?

  Think of all the things we done

  But we’ll never do ’em no more-o

  O never do no more-o

  LURKY

  I’m in my sitting room writing this.

  It’s a windy day, the house is draughty. I’ve got the gas fire on full and I can see the flames move when the wind gusts outside. When I look out nothing’s moving, even though the wind is so strong. In Bristol I could always see the trees swaying in the wind. I can see the sea from here. I mean, I could if it wasn’t so dark. The waves must be lashing up full of foam. I can’t see it but I can smell it, even in the house.

  Bloody Minely again. I like being near the sea, though.

  The baby’s on the settee. She’s not asleep, I just fed her. She has this toy my mum gave her—you wind it up and it plays a tune and casts pretty lights on the ceiling for her to watch. It’s dim in here; I’m probably doing my eyes in writing this. I can hear her cooing at the pretty lights. Her name’s Oona and I love her to bits. She saved my life, really.

  Tar’s in bed, asleep.

  He came this afternoon. They let him out at seven this morning. I was going to pick him up in the car, but it’s miles and miles to Meadowfield and he said no, because they give them a pass for the train. So I met him at the station at Gravenham instead.

  It was great, it was great. He was pale and grey from being locked up so long, but he was his old self—Tar, my Tar. He was shy. He got off the train and stood there with his little bag smiling at me as I walked up the station towards him. Then he saw Oona and he smiled even more. You could almost hear the skin stretching at the sides of his mouth.

  I was going to do the ol’ “Wow! you’re the greatest, wow wow wow!” trick on him that I did when I went to Bristol that time, but I thought better of it. I was talking to Sally on the phone. She’s off junk now, she’s on a methadone script but I don’t know if she’ll hold out. And she said, “Don’t come on too strong, remember he’s been inside.” My mum said the same thing. So I didn’t go mad, I just ran up and I gave him a big, long, slow, hard hug. I squeezed him so hard, and I buried my face in his neck and then I went, “Whooo!” I couldn’t help it, I felt so glad. Then I gave him the baby. And he was beaming away like…like Tar on a good day, holding his baby girl.

  Ah, Tar. And he was clean. He’d been off junk for over a month before he went inside on a methadone script, and he was off that in Meadowfield, so he was as clean as a whistle. And I was so pleased to see him.

  I had a bit of a party back at the house for him. None of the old crowd—I didn’t want any of that. I invited Richard and Vonny, that’s all—and a few old schoolfriends and some people I’ve met since. Nice food, loads to drink, a bit of hash going round. Music. We had an hour or two at home just to get him acclimatised, then people started turning up. Everyone was making a fuss of him. He was like—like Sally said—you know, you’ve spent all that time without ever opening a door, being locked up all the time, the screws watching you, all those hard cases, and then suddenly there you are, you can go where you want and do what you want and it’s all a bit of a shock.

  Richard was funny. He had a tee-shirt on with a dandelion on it he’d had screened from one of Tar’s pictures, and those green boots Tar’d painted flowers on all that time ago—all cracked and faded now.

  “How was the holiday camp?” he said, and he beamed at the door over Tar’s shoulder.

  It felt good. There were some of his old friends there as well. I’d been keeping my eyes open for people. I had Barry, who put us up in his dad’s garage, and a few others—some of the beach crowd, people from school. Afterwards, we went for a walk on the seafront with Oona, and Richard took us out for a meal. I was feeling a bit jittery by then but I put it down to all the excitement and not seeing him for so long. I thought it was maybe because I was a bit fishy about the junk. I’d said he had to be clean before he came to live with us and he was, but only by being locked up. But…you gotta give him a chance. He knew—first whiff of junk—out you go.

  In the evening we went out for a few drinks with Richard and Vonny, while this friend of mine babysat. Down my local. It was a Wednesday night so it was quiet. Tar looked exhausted, totally exhausted.

  Vonny said, “Do you want to go back?”

  “I’m all right.”

  Richard said, “I’m feeling a bit tired myself,” and got up, which was his way of giving Tar a way out.

  I put Richard and Vonny in the baby’s room. Well, she doesn’t sleep there yet, she sleeps in her cot next to my bed. Then we went to bed.

  I felt really weird about it. I mean, I hadn’t done it for so long. We both hopped into bed starkers—it was all very exciting. Then he kissed me and stroked me and touched me and I just went…aaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh…

  It was horrible. I just…I did not want to be there with him. I didn’t want him to touch me or lie on top of me or next to me, I didn’t want to be anywhere near him. It was awful. I couldn’t believe it. I’d been looking forward to him for so long and missing him and loving him and then as soon as he touches me I feel like I can’t stand him touching me.

  I must have stiffened up. He said, “Are you all right?”

  “Yeah, I’m all right, I’m all right. I’m all right,” I sai
d. I tried to relax and get into it and that was horrible too because I had to put on an act. I mean, I’ve done that before…But this was Tar.

  I didn’t know what to do. I mean, I’d been waiting there; the house, Oona, me, all safe and waiting for him, no more junk, nice little family, everything’s going to be great. And he’s my Tar and he’s taken the rap for me twice, and he’s been through all this shit…the detox, youth custody, all for me, and he’d probably never even have become a junkie if it wasn’t for me—and then…bang!

  We did it in the end. It wasn’t easy. I was so shocked I was as dry as yer dad’s handkerchief, but I managed to concentrate and get down to it, and it was all right in the end. I told him I was just nervous. I don’t know if he believed me.

  I waited until he looked like he was asleep, then I picked up Oona and crept out of the room. I just had to have a little space and try to think. What does it mean? What on earth does it mean?

  I was sitting out there for ages. I must have drunk about a gallon of tea. Then to make it even worse, he came out to see if I was okay. He couldn’t sleep either. I tried to make out I was just upset and nervous. It seemed reasonable enough. He sat next to me and we had a cuddle. I just tried to think of him as my Tar, my little boy who’d had a really hard time and needed to be comforted, and that made it all right.

  I told my mum about it. She was good. It’s been quite a shock to find I can talk to my mum. Dad’s…well, I don’t think anyone manages to talk to him about that sort of thing, not even Mum. But Mum’s not bad. She said, “Give it six months.” She knows we’ve been through all this stuff together; she’d like to see us split up, I expect. But she lets me make my own mind up. Tar’s the father—I suppose that makes a big difference in her book.

  Six months. I really, really hope it gets better. It’s just not fair, is it? I end up with the life: he ends up with nothing. It ought to work, oughtn’t it? It ought to work.

  He’s doing really well. He wants to go to art college, but he needs to get the O-levels and A-levels first. He’s going to start at the Tech College, but that doesn’t begin till the autumn and it’s only May, so he’s doing night school in the meantime. And he’s got a little job behind the bar—off the cards or they’d take it off the Social. He does two nights and I do two nights. Well, just because you want to be clean doesn’t mean you have to turn into something out of Neighbours, does it? And he’s a great mate but…

  It’s just gone. Where’d it go? Funny thing. I was going to give him the elbow just before I met Lily and Rob. Funny thing. I just feel so bad about it.

  I was on the phone to Sal the other day. She keeps wanting to come and visit but I put her off; it’s too early. She’s not clean, she’s on methadone but she slips up from time to time. She’s got this new boyfriend, Mick, and they’re going to go to Amsterdam together and live over there for a while. Yeah, she’s bound to stay clean over there in the Drug Capital of Europe, as my dad likes to call it. To be fair to Sally, she doesn’t make much of a pretence that she’s going straight. But she’ll be all right, if anyone is. Sal’s one of those people who can go on forever.

  I envy her. I’d like to go but I know what’d happen. Me, I don’t even dare go back to Bristol for a visit. So I’m stuck here in sodding Minely for the rest of my natural. Well, for a bit anyway.

  But she said a lot of interesting things, Sal. She said, maybe it was some sort of comeback for being on the game. You know, maybe it put me off sex. That’s an interesting one. I try to think it’s that. I asked her, What about you?

  “Oh, no, oh, no,” she said. “You know me…”

  I can’t tell because I never slept with anyone while Tar was away. But I don’t think so. I mean, it’s not the thought that turns me off. Just, not with Tar any more…

  And she said, “You’ve got to give it a chance, Gems.” Everyone says that. And she said this: “You’ve gotta do what you feel in the end.” That’s what my mum says, too. And that’s what everyone says. But I don’t wanna do what I feel. I wanna do all right by Tar.

  I just feel so sick about it, it’s so unfair. He could do with a break, Tar, and I thought—I suppose I always thought—that I was the break. And then I think, what good have I ever done for him? He’d never have got in with Lily and Rob and junk if it wasn’t for me; he’d have stuck at the squat with Vonny and Richard.

  Actually my mum disagrees with that. She says he’d have found his way there on his own in the end. Maybe…he was a bigger junkie than I was. I don’t mean he took more; I was up there with the best of them while I did it. But when I came here, I did my cold turkey and that was it. I just didn’t want to know; I didn’t want to go near the stuff ever again. But Tar…he’d hitchhike halfway round the country to score. In fact he did, several times. So maybe my mum’s right. But it’s still not fair, is it?

  He loves Oona so much.

  Give it six months. I just wish…

  I just wish he didn’t want to sleep with me.

  Tar’s dad

  It wasn’t a love story.

  That seems a hard thing to say, but one of the things you learn is to look facts straight in the eye. Not necessarily without flinching.

  For example…I’m a sad old man. You try it, at the age of fifty-five. Your only child hates you, your wife hates you, your colleagues—ex-colleagues—despise you. All for good reasons. Everything you worked for is gone and there you are. It doesn’t feel like standing at the threshold of a new dawn, I can tell you. I don’t feel sorry for myself…well, that’s not true, of course I feel bloody sorry for myself. I mean to say, I know that it’s my fault.

  Jane and I, that was a love story. We fell in love when we were young—deeply, deeply in love. It went wrong later on. You can say all sorts of things about why—she wasn’t who I thought she was, I don’t suppose I was what she thought I was. In the end though there’s only one answer—booze, booze and booze. I like a drink, I used to say. Not any more. Bit late in the day. The funny thing about it is that we both ended up on the bottle. Isn’t that odd? Neither of us was at it to start with, it just seemed to happen. Makes you wonder.

  When David came back to Minely, I was scared silly. But I hoped. My son, after all. It was hard because he saw through me a long time before I saw through myself. Your son, your little boy who thinks you’re the whole world and you have to stand in front of him and say, “Here I am, I ballsed it up for you. Will you have a relationship with me? I don’t blame you if you don’t…”

  “You shouldn’t have left her,” he told me.

  “David, I couldn’t even look after myself, let alone your bloody mother.”

  It all fell to bits pretty quickly after he left. I thought I was holding the whole thing together. Apparently he thought it was him. People hang on to situations. You think you are the situation. Then when the whole bloody thing falls apart…you are still there.

  But there wasn’t any reason to hold it together after he left us. No matter how hard things got I always thought, I have to stay here for the boy, I have to keep going for his sake, I can’t leave David here at the mercy of his mother. He didn’t make it any easier, though. Interfering all the time. Trying to take care of her. Doing the housework for her. Taking away her self-respect—taking away the only things she had to keep her going. It’s the worst thing you can do for an alcoholic. Your self-respect is low enough to start off with. How she must have felt about herself, having her son doing her job for her! I tried to tell him. “Your mother has a problem, David, we have to help her get on top of it…” But he just carried on, trying to run her life for her.

  I suppose what I should have done was to say, “Your father has a problem, I need help.” But the need for self-deception in a situation of dependency is quite staggering. I never even knew I was an alcoholic until everything had already gone.

  For example, I’d come back and the whole house would stink of gin and perfume. “You stink of alcohol,” I’d yell.

  “YOU stink of
alcohol!” she’d shriek back. But I knew she was lying. Funny, isn’t it? There was no way she could smell me because I was too clever for her…ha ha ha! I drank vodka and wore aftershave. She was only saying that to get off the fact that she’d been on the gin all day.

  I must have stunk like a skunk.

  I used to hit them. I expect you knew. No hiding place, eh? I wish he could forgive me but it’s asking a lot. No, I haven’t and never will ask for forgiveness from my son. But if he offered it, that’d be different. I’d accept in all humility.

  Jane lives in the old place; I don’t see her very often but when I do, there’s this smell long-term alcoholics have. A sort of warm urinous smell, tinged with a bit of spirit. And they don’t know it. You splash on the Tasker aftershave or the perfume and you think, Aren’t I clever, ha ha ha.

  I lost my job about a year after David left home. I wonder how I got away with it for so long. The smell, apart from anything. That humiliates me to this day—the thought that I smelt. My final humiliation came about during a meeting of Heads of Department. I fell asleep in my chair, dozed off. Not a unique experience. I woke up with someone shaking my arm—it was Tamla Williams. “Wake up, Mr. Lawson…I think you’ve had a bit of an accident…”

  It took a moment to dawn. The smell. Then the warmth on my lap turning cold.

  I said, “Excuse me,” and I got up and walked out. I picked up a copy of the school magazine from the table and held it in front of me and I walked as fast as I could to the car, saying to myself, “This is a dream. This is a dream. This is a dream.”