Annie's Promise

by Margaret Graham

  ‘Little Sarah, come and sing for my friends.’

  Carl’s breath puffed her hair and she pulled away, looking for the others. Davy was drunk and so was Tim, leaning up against the wall, talking to two girls who were also drunk.

  ‘No, we can’t, not tonight. They’re past it.’

  Carl looked at her, kissed her mouth gently, softly, his tongue stroking her lip, and her limbs felt weak. ‘Then sing to us yourself,’ he murmured, his mouth still on hers.

  She drew back. ‘I told you I can’t. We’re a team.’

  ‘For God’s sake, Sarah, I’m not asking you to divorce him, just sing without him, and don’t shout, people will hear.’ Sarah looked around her now and saw a girl blowing a kiss at Carl, saw his answering smile. She said, ‘I should have come with a brown paper bag stuck over me head and a cork stuffed in me mouth, having dropped Davy off down a bloody drain, shouldn’t I, and I don’t care if people stare, bonny bloody lad.’

  She wrenched herself from him. ‘And I don’t cling.’

  She stormed to the door, looking for Davy, Tim or Arnie but they were all drinking, laughing, enjoying the night, and so she hailed a taxi, and used the money that she was saving for another gallon of paraffin to pay for it.

  ‘Damn you, damn you all,’ she cursed as she lay in bed, not knowing what to think or feel, not knowing what to do with the anger inside her, but then she leapt from bed and tore up the music she’d been writing. That was all over, she’d stick to what she knew, she’d just work, and work and work.

  She left the house early, took the samples to the station, rang the shop about sizes, and went back to lectures, her head aching, her hand aching from the notes she wrote because she must not think, she must not remember the feel of his hands, the unkindness of his words. She couldn’t eat her sandwiches at lunch and there were no lectures that afternoon so she cycled home, lugging her bike up the steps, seeing the headless chrysanthemums in the garden, shaking her head at the kids who had done this.

  The stairs seemed steep, her legs tired and then she stopped at the sight of Carl sitting on the top step, holding a bunch of chrysanthemums, Ma Tucker’s chrysanthemums, his face contrite.

  ‘I’m doing everything wrong, Sarah, but it’s just because you’re special to me. I get tense, the words come out back to front and I don’t mean them. I love your group, and I love Davy and I love your mother. Please forgive me.’

  He held out the flowers and their scent was heavy as she held them to her face, feeling the coldness of their petals, the dampness of their stems.

  ‘Will you come and walk in the park with me, please?’ he asked, holding out his hand.

  They walked all afternoon and he told her of his mother’s yacht, his mother’s life and how he had brought himself up, how she had been away, or busy, or both and how he longed for someone to love him, just him.

  ‘That’s why I feel so strongly that mothers should be with their children. That’s what I would want for my child.’ He squeezed her hand. ‘I’ve been waiting for someone special, Sarah, for the whole of my life.’

  She told him then about her parents, their life in the Army, the building of the business which was her mother’s dream, her father’s accident, the problems which seemed to have stopped two years ago, though she didn’t know why. She told him about Bet and Davy who was like a brother to her, as Uncle Tom had been to her mother.

  ‘So he’s no threat to any love I have,’ she said gently, feeling so sorry for this young man who had so much, but also had nothing.

  He kissed her then, holding her close, his mouth opening, his tongue seeking hers, his arms holding her up as her legs became weak and she wanted to stay like this for ever – in a park, with his mouth on hers and no space between them.

  Annie received the samples and called Tom and Georgie in, showing them Davy’s designs and Sarah’s pattern design and sample.

  Tom nodded. ‘Good for them. Yes, the design department can do that in two days, what about your side, Annie?’

  Annie ran her fingers through her hair. ‘Even if I have to sew them myself we’ll get it done. They’re keen and I think it’s important that we encourage them because things seem to be improving down there, they’re sounding so much more lively, so much keener about everything. I think we should try their designs in the showroom too, see how they do. Then cut them in on all profits.’

  Georgie laughed. ‘They’ll be buying electric guitars and hiring the Albert Hall for a gig next.’

  ‘Yes, you’re right, Annie, cut them in.’

  ‘You write and tell them, Georgie,’ Annie said, knowing that he had been hurt when Sarah had put the phone down on him and this would be an opportunity for her daughter to write back to him.

  Sarah opened the letter, read it, called out to Davy to come in. Carl came too, standing in the doorway.

  ‘Da says we’re to have a cut of the profits, that Mum’s really pleased and so’s your da.’ She handed him the letter, feeling Carl’s kiss on her forehead, his hand on her back.

  Later he murmured that his mother had never had time to write either.

  Sarah said, ‘It’s not like that.’

  That evening he brought them pizza and strawberry ice cream to celebrate. She ate it, even though she hated it and as she did so she remembered how her mother had shouted at her father in the hospital, forcing him to eat the ice cream. Sarah put her hand to her forehead, rubbing her skin, forcing herself to eat. She remembered that the nurse had said that her mother was absolutely right, but why hadn’t she nursed in the first place, she remembered asking, then her da wouldn’t have been hurt?

  She finished the ice cream and accepted a joint, sucking deeply, welcoming the haze, the relaxation, the numbing of the senses, the deadening of an anger which had come. She drew more deeply, to blot out the memory.

  CHAPTER 17

  Annie and George decided that the take-up on the clothes had been enthusiastic enough for them to extend into the retail trade.

  ‘Just in Newcastle to see how it goes, and later in the local towns,’ Annie suggested and Tom agreed.

  Bill, the estate agent, scouted for premises and at the end of February, in good time for the spring season, they took on Jessica, a middle-aged woman who had been a shop manager in Surrey. Annie wrote to Sarah.

  So keep on sending up samples, darling and let’s see how it goes. Your dad has organised a few local advertisements but we’re hoping that word of mouth will do the trick. Tom’s decorated it in green and white and all of them will be the same. I say ‘all’ but it depends on how it goes. Brenda and the girls are right behind us. I hope you and Davy are pleased too.

  She handed the letter to Georgie to finish and took a cup of tea from Bet, stirring it because the milk was yesterday’s and cream floated on the top. She hated that, it was like the skin of custard – it stuck in her throat.

  ‘Have you heard from them this week?’ Bet asked, undoing the top button of her blouse and wiping her neck with her handkerchief. ‘Oh dear, I don’t know, I get so hot these days, must get some more pills from the doctor.’

  Annie smiled. ‘Well, it can’t be a hot flush, Bet, I’m getting all of those. Yes, you must go back, your blood pressure might be up again.’

  Bet nodded. ‘So have you heard?’

  ‘Yes, they’re back into the music again and want to go up to Scotland on what they call a chewing-gum tour. I gather this friend Carl has fixed up a lot of gigs, so they’re going there in early December, by coach, stopping off along the way.’

  Georgie was still writing, his head bent over the table. Bet poured more tea. ‘Are you letting her?’

  ‘How can I stop her? It’s always been so important to them – it just shows that they’re enjoying life, getting the most out of it. It’s better than them wanting to run away home.’

  Bet pursed her lips. ‘I don’t like it, you know, it’s not healthy the way kids today live, eating vegetables, all this s – e – x.’ Bet spelt out th
e letters. ‘There’s this pill now and all these other drugs, it’s in all the papers.’

  Georgie looked up. ‘I know, but you don’t want to believe all you read, that’s just a few of them. Ours are good kids, sensible and they’re together – and they eat meat, so perhaps the other is all right too.’ He smiled. ‘Oh, they’ll be all right, it’s like I said to Annie – look at my birds, give them a safe warm home and they’ll come back after they’ve felt the wind beneath their wings.’

  Annie walked to the sink and looked out of the window, wanting to shout at him to be quiet about his bloody birds, this was her daughter and she was growing up, growing away. Was it as wild as the papers said? And who the hell was this Carl that Davy had mentioned, but Sarah hadn’t?

  She added a postscript to the letter, asking Sarah to let them know their itinerary and they would come to support her if there was a show nearby.

  Sarah read the letter, passed to to Davy, not wanting Carl to see it but he did, and smiled at her. ‘So, the apron strings are being drawn a little tighter, are they?’

  She didn’t send her mother the itinerary and boarded the coach with the boys and Carl, sitting with the other acts as they drove through pouring rain to Northampton, unpacking their luggage, sleeping in a boarding house that Carl had arranged, playing that night to a half-empty drill hall, moving on the next morning to Newcastle.

  It was still raining but much colder and Carl helped her drag her case from the luggage hold, saying that they’d have to go straight to the club, they were late.

  They played and Davy caught her eye. ‘We should have told them,’ he said, as they eased back for Arnie’s break, listening, moving in time.

  ‘I know, but it just seemed easier for them, they’ll be so busy with the spring season coming up and the shop’s doing well. They’ve got more than enough to do without traipsing through the rain to sit in amongst all this smoke and these drop-outs.’ She nodded at the audience who were drinking and talking, doing anything but listening.

  ‘Yes, you’re right, bonny lass.’ His smile was gentle, but became a grin as Arnie wiggled his hips and the waitresses screamed, but momentarily Sarah lost her rhythm because she had felt such a wave of guilt. She listened, skipped a few bars, came in again concentrating on the music because Carl was right, they must grow up. Tim’s mother hadn’t asked for an itinerary, or Arnie’s, just hers and Davy’s and it was no excuse that they were touring the north, not the south where the others came from. It was ridiculous.

  They drove on up to Scotland and now they knew the others well, and had jam sessions on the coach, leaping off at garages to use their lavatories since there were none on the coach. Sarah was the only girl but she was with Carl and so no one pinched her bum, or spoke sweet nothings and she was proud of him as he extolled the Beatles and their experimentation, their anticipation of future tastes, their originality, their foresight in putting in the sixth chords into their numbers.

  ‘So simple,’ he said, ‘and it’s the simple things that work.’

  Her mother said that too, but she didn’t tell him that, just watched his lips, his hands as they touched her knee, his mouth as he laughed.

  He left them in Glasgow, flying down to London to meet some business friends who were taking a skiing lodge, waving to her, grinning. ‘See you after Easter, my sweet little Sarah. Look after her, Davy. I’ll talk to them about you all.’

  The gigs in Chester and Wales were dull, the hours dragged, the music seemed flat and slow, like the train which took them from London to Newcastle at the end of term.

  They worked hard during the day, catching up on the notes which Deborah’s and Davy’s friend had copied for them, and played together in the evening in the packaging room, and Annie stood and listened.

  ‘The tour was a good idea,’ she said on Good Friday as she took Sarah hot chocolate in bed. ‘You’re sounding more solid, more substantial, you’re looking well too, my darling. Was it better this term?’

  Sarah held the cocoa between her hands, feeling the steam on her face. ‘Yes, much better. The sun seems to be out, if you know what I mean. There’s so much to do, it’s all so interesting.’

  She didn’t mention Carl, somehow she couldn’t and she didn’t know why. She looked at her mother’s hands on the quilt, her nails were dirty. Carl never had dirty nails. Annie saw her looking and shrugged her shoulders. ‘Bet and I have been putting the potatoes in.’

  Sarah nodded. Yes, that’s what they always did on Good Friday, it was all so predictable.

  Annie lay awake that night, knowing that her daughter was growing away from her as she had done from Sarah. She eased herself against Georgie, wanting the warmth of his body, the comfort of his familiar shape, wishing she had asked Sarah why she had not told them that the group were appearing in Newcastle, why she had to read it in the newspaper. But she knew she mustn’t ask, that she must let go. In the morning she checked that the cutting was safely hidden from Georgie, because he must not know.

  In the summer term life was wonderful, Sarah felt the sun warming her, the wine in the evenings loosening her. She bought pan-stick, eye liner and mascara and talked at parties about the extension of consciousness and the limitlessness of life as it now was, and heard Davy do likewise though they failed to understand their own words.

  They went to a Rolling Stones concert and found themselves twenty feet from Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, blown away by the music, blinded by the lights, surrounded by hot jostling bodies.

  They played at a Young Farmers gig and here there were no jostling bodies but restrained dancing until too much beer had been drunk and then raucous choruses and jiving shook up the whole room.

  She and Davy bought their own pot now, because Carl could not keep supplying them out of his own pocket, he said, his face red with embarrassment, neither could he pay for all their taxis to and from the parties, so they worked harder to design and sell clothes to their friends at college and to local market stalls.

  They auditioned for a college gig and were accepted. They also had more commissions from the students for shirts, dresses, skirts specifically for the gig and by June were working each morning, evening and lunchtime, copying notes when they could, eating when they could, remembering also to send up new samples to Annie from the shops they had gathered into the circle, until Sarah’s head was splitting and Davy looked drawn and pale.

  Carl took them to another party that week and they were too tired to smile and talk of Dr Timothy Leary, or the duty of the young to explore and push back the frontiers of the mind, or the brilliance of Bob Dylan. ‘I can’t understand his songs,’ Sarah said to the man who had spattered canapés in her wine and now had some on his beard. ‘I think he’s a pseudo-intellectual.’

  She felt Carl’s hand on her arm, saw Davy mouthing ‘ouch’, and didn’t care, she was too tired. She didn’t care that Carl pushed her out before him, that his voice was sharp in the taxi. ‘For God’s sake, you can’t afford to be tired, nobody can. If you do that once you’ve made it, it’ll be splashed all over the bloody newspapers and that’ll be that. And when did you last rehearse?’

  She laid her head back on the seat, her hands sore from cutting and sewing, knowing that Davy’s were too.

  ‘We haven’t time, for God’s sake. We’re running a business here and trying to get through college, then we did your tour, all the tour, not skiving off for a bit of skiing like some of us here.’

  ‘There’s no need to run a business.’

  ‘There’s every need if we’re to afford our lives, especially all this.’ She waved at the taxi, banged his cigarette case, shouting now. She leapt from the cab when it arrived at Ma Tucker’s, storming from him, slamming her bedroom door, locking it, just needing to sleep but she couldn’t and then she heard a scratching at the door.

  She opened it a crack. He pushed in a joint and whispered, ‘I’m sorry, I know you’re tired, have this to help you sleep.’ She rested her head on the door and wept for hi
s kindness.

  The next day she was up early sewing, cutting, pressing, then cycling to college, returning early and sewing again while Davy sat with her, checking, cutting, designing. Arnie and Tim came round to practise but there was no time tonight, Sarah said, jerking her head at the coffee. ‘But you can make us all a drink.’

  She lifted the mug with hands swollen from the scissors, refusing a joint because she couldn’t relax yet, shaking her head at Davy as he took one. He grimaced and put it back.

  ‘I’ll just breathe in deeply,’ he said, chasing Tim’s smoke across the room, making them all laugh. They worked again when the boys left, necks aching, heads pounding, not looking up when Carl knocked, just calling, ‘Come in.’

  Carl stood there. ‘Where’re the others, it’s rehearsal night, for God’s sake, not your mother’s bloody factory. This is no good, you’ve got to dump this and get on with the music.’

  Sarah pushed harder on the pedal, heard the machine whirr, listened to that as Davy said, ‘For God’s sake, Carl, it’s OK for you to work, I see you’ve got your briefcase as always, but it’s not OK for us – and that’s ridiculous because we need to do it. Anyway, we’ve nearly finished for tonight, we’ve just got the samples for Auntie Annie now.’

  Sarah looked up now, seeing Carl stare at the floor, then at her as he spoke slowly. ‘Oh yes, of course, the gig can go to hell, all my efforts too – but we must make sure Auntie Annie gets her pound of bloody flesh.’

  Sarah lifted her foot from the pedal. ‘Leave my mother out of this, we learn from it as well, don’t we? Davy’s right, you’re bloody well working, you always work, wherever we go. I’m sick to death of that case, of your friends, and of you.’

  Her head was pounding, nausea rose in her throat and she didn’t care as he stormed out, slamming the door. She just worked and then smoked with Davy, too tired to talk, too tired to ache at the thought of Carl’s anger, almost too tired to sleep when Davy stumbled from her room.