Annie's Promise

by Margaret Graham

  Ravi was taking the glass from her hand. ‘Let me get you some more.’ He rose easily and she looked towards the door. Carl still hadn’t come, but he had rung, he had cared.

  Did her mother care about anyone, or did she just use them?

  She watched Davy staggering over by the far wall, hanging on to the picture frames. Just like she was, hanging on to the past, hanging on to her mother. She took out a joint then, lit it, inhaled deeply, holding it, longer, longer, and then exhaling, sucking in again, feeling the world slowing, her head floating. She arched her neck. But no, her mother loved her, she’d come to them when the strike had flared. Of course she loved her, she didn’t use her.

  Ravi said, ‘Do you use a great deal?’ He was nodding towards Davy who had sunk on to the floor.

  Sarah smiled. ‘No more than anyone else, we need it to break into another dimension, to experience and explore just as everyone else is doing.’

  Ravi handed her the glass. ‘By no means everyone, Sarah, and there are other, slower ways.’

  Sarah shrugged. ‘There’s no point in taking life slowly if you don’t have to is there?’

  The door opened and Carl came in, looking around, but she was already on her feet, moving away from Ravi, as he said, ‘But it leads to other things. Be careful, I beg you.’

  She didn’t look round, but went to Carl and held him. ‘I’m so sorry, my darling, there will always be room in my life for you, just as there is room in my mother’s life for me, there is no need to feel insecure. But I promise there will be less sewing, and that way I can help Davy practise too. We must make room for everything.’

  The next week she and Davy bought posters of benevolent gods, from Buddha to Brahma, from a shop near the British Museum and asked Annie and Tom for money from their account to buy sitars. For some weeks the music gave them no time to suck hash or trip. Ravi came on Fridays to teach them, sitting, smiling as he showed them, plucking the strings, telling them they needed to go into their own temple once a day for the benefit of the soul, that there was no haste, no need for short cuts.

  He took his hands from the sitar and tapped his head. ‘It is better than the chemicals you take. You should try to chant the mantra like our friend the monk did. Perhaps I should send you some japa mala, to finger while you chant. Perhaps you should come to visit me, return to the land your father once knew, my Sarah.’

  He guided Davy’s hands on the strings. ‘Perhaps,’ she said, looking from Davy to Carl. ‘Perhaps we could all go.’

  Ravi nodded. ‘You land at Delhi and you travel the whole country, staying at Gurdwaras, Sikh temples open to those of all faiths, that way you will sleep and eat with the people of my country, and we are very diverse – and then you come to us.’

  Sarah grinned at Carl’s face. ‘Bit different to Sam Davis’s pad?’

  Carl grimaced. ‘Too right.’ He paused. ‘Maybe one day Ravi, but not yet.’

  Sarah listened as Ravi played, then Davy repeated the sound and it was as gentle as his melodies. It was right for him. She said. ‘I think we should go, one day, when we’ve finished. We can get all sorts of design ideas, Davy, and there’s all that Indian cotton.’ She turned. ‘You’ve really got to get more work done, Carl, or you’ll end up without a degree. You just spend your time wheeling and dealing like Uncle Don.’

  Davy laughed. ‘Oh, Carl’s nothing like Uncle Don, don’t insult him.’

  They practised with Tim and Arnie and at the next college gig they played a number of Davy’s using a sitar, an Indian drum and two guitars and a hush fell on the dancers as they stopped and listened to the fragile melody easing out across the smoke-filled hall. There was silence when they finished and then applause and Sarah kissed her cousin, seeing the joy in his eyes, feeling the fullness in her own throat.

  She told Carl that night but he laughed and said, ‘That gig’s just amateur night. Trust me, and keep that stuff for yourselves, might save you having to go into your own temples too often.’

  Ravi left for India at the start of December and Carl brewed them all hash that night and the next he took Davy out for a drink and Sarah was grateful to him because Davy was fond of Ravi. ‘I’ll miss him, he understood what I was trying to say,’ he told her as they climbed the stairs after seeing him off.

  ‘I understand,’ Sarah said, ‘really I do,’ but Davy had just squeezed her arm.

  Each night now, Carl took Davy out, sometimes with her, sometimes not and they came home too late for love. She missed Carl in her bed but at least she had written up Davy’s notes for him, and sorted out his project into some sort of order and sucked hash to help her sleep.

  She and Davy travelled to Wassingham for Christmas, and as the train rumbled and rocked towards the north she closed her eyes and thought of the passion of Carl’s lovemaking last night and wondered how she would last for a month without him.

  There was the same smell of coal in the air, the same bitter wind, the same small kitchen in which she and Davy worked, bringing their projects up to date, sketching new ideas for next term, hoping to run them up on Annie’s machine.

  ‘It’ll give us more time for music if we do it now, Davy. She needn’t know, I’ll put them in my case and send them up every two weeks or so.’

  On Christmas Eve she cleaned out the pigeons for Georgie and cursed at the smell, the echoes of a childhood which seemed miles away now and so dull.

  She watched as they had their afternoon flight, trying to pick out Buttons’ great-grandson, unable to, though she pretended to Georgie that she could.

  On Christmas Day they opened presents in Betsy’s kitchen, drinking sherry and wanting a joint, Christ, she wanted a joint. She picked up Teresa’s present to her, and peeled off the paper, to find slippers, the same as Bet’s.

  She looked at Annie and grimaced, then laughed as she did. It was the first time she had laughed since she had come home. She put them on, then stood by Betsy. ‘I reckon you and I should start a chorus line then, Grandma, how about it?’

  She felt Bet’s arm come round her, hold her tightly. ‘If I were a few years younger I’d take you up on that, my love.’

  They shuffled their feet, lifted their left leg, their right leg, and shuffled it all about.

  ‘Steady, Mam,’ Tom called. ‘Remember what the doc said, not too much excitement until we’ve got that blood pressure down.’ He grinned as he picked up Teresa’s psychedelic wrapping paper. ‘So I’d better put this away or you’ll end up blowing the top of your head off. Blimey, if you two ever send me up anything like this I’ll be down like a shot to see what’s going on in that den of vice.’

  Sarah laughed and helped Bet back to her chair. ‘If only it were a den of vice. It’s just like here, but bigger.’

  They had turkey, plum pudding, and mince pies, but Davy left most of his.

  ‘I’m just tired,’ he said to his mother, picking at his napkin, his fingers restless, his eyes active and Sarah felt the same. She wanted a joint.

  They sat on over brandies. ‘Bad for the voice,’ Sarah told her father, leaning forward, listening as Annie talked of the wallpaper they were thinking of introducing into their shops, and the wholesalers.

  ‘We thought we’d reproduce the design of the curtains so that there is a matching effect,’ she told Sarah.

  Davy put down his brandy goblet, turning it round and round, saying slowly, ‘Wouldn’t it be better to invert the design, have the curtains the reverse of the paper. I think the same would all be a bit too much.’

  Annie thought for a moment, then nodded, calling out to Tom. ‘Tom, will you and Rob stop talking about the Americans in Vietnam or whatever it is, and listen to your son for a moment. He’s come up with a brilliant idea.’ She was smiling but her voice was sharp. ‘Say that again, Davy.’

  He did so and Tom turned in his chair, putting his arm on the back of Davy’s chair. ‘That is so simple, but so good. Yes, we’ll do that. Now tell us more about your term.’

  Davy told
them how much he liked silk painting because the light could shine through the silk and create brilliant transparent effects.

  ‘You see, you can achieve subtle nuances of colour with colour blending, it gives a feeling of other-worldliness, or of something quite unique. I feel it could be incorporated into the business, though I’m not too sure in what way.’

  Tom was looking at his son, at his tired face, his hollow cheeks. He’d been working too hard, he’d immersed himself in the world of design, just as Tom had done as a student, and he felt immeasurably relieved because they had all been so worried at the look of him, and Sarah too.

  After lunch they didn’t go to the football field, but into the stables where Tom kept the old silk-screen he had made and they stood around Davy as he blended paints while Tom cut a length of silk. He placed it on the table, running inside to bring water for dampening the silk, as Davy laid two intermediate colours next to each other, standing back while his father rubbed the silk under more water, looking at Davy.

  ‘Go on, a bit more, the shading’s not quite right.’

  Sarah saw him blend more blues, saw the look of concentration on his face, the expertise with which he added more colour. She had never seen him at work like this before.

  He brushed on more colours, one above the other, working with Tom, their faces both with the same expression, the same intensity, the same love of the medium.

  By five it was finished, a landscape in tones of blue, in which the lines and contours had been created simply by colour displacement. It reminded Sarah of his sitar compositions and she knew that her cousin had the soul of an artist.

  They talked all evening about its application. ‘It’ll just have to wait until you have time to set up a branch line to handle it,’ Tom said finally. ‘It’s your interest, it should be you that develops it. We’ll talk about it more tomorrow.’

  Annie sat up in bed with Georgie, her glasses slipping down her nose as she read her letter from Prue.

  Thanks for the biscuits – wonderful to have good old England tucked away in a tin. Are you any less worried about Sarah? Do remember ourselves at her age and today life’s so much more exciting, demanding. They’ll make mistakes, but we’ve all had to do that. Just help them pick up the pieces afterwards. This Carl may not be such a bad lot, you know, just because he didn’t write to your daughter. And remember, she and Davy have one another.

  Annie took off her glasses, passing the letter to Georgie, reassured not so much from the letter as from this evening.

  The next day Tom didn’t talk to Davy about painting or design, because he and Rob were off before the others rose to plan a demonstration about the American build-up in Vietnam.

  ‘On Boxing Day, for God’s sake,’ Davy said to Sarah as they walked by themselves to the beck.

  ‘I’ll do some silk-screen painting with you,’ she panted as they walked quickly beneath the frosted branches of the lane. ‘Slow down a bit.’

  Davy shook his head. ‘No, I don’t want to, it’s boring, it’s all boring.’ His head was down, his hands in his pockets, his breath cloudy in the sharp air. There were traces of snow on the ground, frost hardened in the ruts. There was snow in the meadow and ice at the edge of the beck and the willow hung lifeless and still.

  ‘So damned boring,’ he repeated as they stood there watching the water pass beneath the ice. ‘You know, I’d be all right if I drew silk paintings of Trotsky.’

  Sarah took his arm. ‘Remember he loves you.’

  ‘I know,’ Davy said, his face as white as the snow on the rocks near the willow. ‘So everyone says. I’d have gone with them, but they never asked. They never do. They never even said they were going. If they had, I could have butted in and invited myself.’

  He looked at her and his eyes were dark, then he smiled. ‘Life’s too short, Sarah, it’s too damned short to be feeling sad. Come here, this is my Christmas present to you, something a very good friend introduced me to.’ He took her arm, led her across to the rock, took out a polythene packet and laid a line of cocaine near snow which lay in rivulets.

  He handed her a straw and together they snorted the coke and she felt the euphoric delights immediately, sitting with him on the ground, not feeling the cold, only hearing Davy as he said, ‘The road to excess leads to the palace of wisdom. Do you think they know that Balke said that, bonny lass?’

  She didn’t know and she didn’t care because it was the first time she’d tried coke and it was wonderful.

  They played and sang for Annie that night, sitting in front of the fire, smelling wintergreen, still floating, still dreaming, playing Afternoon Curry with the new hard edge.

  ‘I don’t like it as much, it seems so hard, almost like the Rolling Stones. Davy’s songs were always so fragile, so delicate, like his silk painting.’

  Sarah looked at her mother as Davy fingered the strings, his eyes heavy-lidded. ‘Don’t be absurd, Mother. This is what the punters want. You’re always saying that we shouldn’t allow our personal preferences to come between us and the market.’

  ‘This is different, isn’t it? This is Davy’s soul. Who’s altered you so much?’

  Sarah sat back. ‘You don’t know anything about it. Music isn’t a roll of bloody wallpaper or a pair of pants.’ Sarah took out a cigarette, tapped it on the pack, lit it, inhaled.

  ‘But that’s my point, you’re treating it as though it is, or is it someone else who’s treating it like that?’

  ‘Why don’t you just come out and say it’s Carl? You don’t like him, do you?’

  Annie reached forward, held her hand. ‘Darling, I’m not saying that, I don’t even know the boy.’

  ‘He’s not a boy, he’s a man, I’m a woman, Davy’s a bloody man and music’s our world. We know it, we understand it, you don’t.’

  Annie said nothing for a moment, just looked at her daughter who looked almost as pale and thin as Davy. It was nearly 1967 and Sarah was nineteen – did that make her a woman? Dear God, she was fifty-two and she still felt like a child in the face of this changing world.

  ‘You’re right of course, I don’t understand it, but I do love you and I’m proud of you, you’ve achieved so much but don’t get too tired, you both look so exhausted.’

  Sarah and Davy left on 29 December when Carl phoned with news of a New Year’s gig. Tom and Annie took them to Newcastle and asked if they would like to send up some up-to-the-minute wallpaper designs. ‘As you say, darling,’ Annie said as she held Sarah on the station, ‘I don’t understand your world so you must lead us, but only if you have time. We don’t want you getting tired.’

  They fell into their bedsits, laughing and calling out to Carl, heating the hash, lying on cushions on the floor, hearing of his skiing, groaning at his falls, laughing as they told him of the beck, of the white of the coke alongside the snow. That night she and Carl made love for hours, drifting in and out of the night, heating more hash, snorting coke in the morning, playing at the gig in the evening, just the two of them, without Tim and Arnie and it didn’t matter that Davy’s errors left them little applause, nothing mattered in the world they were swimming in.

  They drifted from party to party and it was so much better than Wassingham, than pigeons, than slippers and chorus lines. In the second week of January Annie rang, asking if they would like to send up any designs. Sarah left a note for Davy as she left with Carl for a party at Sam Davis’s London pad.

  In the morning she crawled from bed, shrugged into her dressing gown, pulling it round her as she slapped to the bathroom, seeing the ice on the windows, feeling the cold water on her body, rushing back to her room, a room without Carl who had stayed on with Sam to work out more business.

  She lit the paraffin stove, made tea, sat at the table drinking it, feeling the pounding in her head from the LSD of the night before, lighting a cigarette with trembling hands, watching a match fall, still alight on to the papers on the table.

  She doused it with the palm of her hand and bru
shed it to the floor, seeing Davy’s designs for the first time, holding them, not believing that he could have done this off-the-page psychedelic design for their parents, the fool.

  She dropped it, ran to his room, banging on the door, opening it knowing it wouldn’t be locked. He was sitting on the bed, tripping. She shook him. ‘For God’s sake, what have you done? They’ll be down, you fool. Oh Davy. What the hell are we going to do? They’ll take us back.’

  Davy watched her leave the room, still feeling her hands on him, her lovely warm hands and then he wept, because at last his father would come and take them back.

  CHAPTER 19

  Annie took Tom’s phone call two days later and rushed straight round, in through the yard and into the kitchen, snatching the designs from Tom.

  She looked at him and Gracie. ‘It could mean nothing.’

  Tom nodded. ‘I know but then on the other hand …’

  Annie let the designs fall on to the table. ‘I’ve left a message at the club for Georgie, he’ll be round any minute. Oh God, I just don’t know. They seemed so different, so thin, so difficult when they came up, or Sarah was.’

  Gracie took the tea that Bet put on the table before easing herself into her carver chair. ‘Davy wasn’t difficult, he was just too quiet, so different.’

  Bet took out her handkerchief and patted her top lip. ‘I don’t know what to think about the bairns. I don’t understand this world any more.’ Her lips were trembling and Annie patted her hand. ‘It’ll be all right. I mean, these designs are all the rage, it doesn’t mean they’re into drugs and things, we’d know, surely we’d know. Look at all the work they brought back, all the parties they go to, I mean the kids of today never rest, it’s no wonder they get frayed. I mean, I’ve never seen them with anything, well, any drugs, have you?’