Annie's Promise

by Margaret Graham

  Tim hissed. ‘Get him off, Sarah.’

  She called into the microphone, ‘Time for a break, kids,’ and guided Davy down the stairs, feeling the thinness of his arms, the brittleness of his ribs as she put her arm round him to steady him.

  ‘You mustn’t drink so much with the pot, Davy. Come and sit down,’ she said, shrugging at Carl.

  She sat with them, watching Tim and Arnie threading their way through the tables, sweat dripping off them, staining their shirts. The air was thick with smoke and dark beneath the shaded lights.

  She took Carl’s hand in hers, asked whether he’d caught up with his work yet and seen Sam’s phone message. ‘Have you rung him back?’

  Carl nodded. ‘Just business, I’m seeing to it tomorrow. Could you write up the economic notes I’ve borrowed from Charles? I’ve a seminar on Monday.’

  She smiled and nodded. Oh yes, she’d type up his notes, wash his back, give him the time that her mother didn’t give, that she herself had been in danger of not giving. ‘Buy me another tonic and I’ll walk barefoot to India for you.’

  Carl laughed. ‘That’s not likely to be necessary, thanks madam.’ He beckoned to the waiter and ordered.

  ‘We should go to India in the summer, Davy, and see Ravi. We could all go.’

  Carl laughed, passing the tonic to her, beers to Tim and Arnie, and a lemonade to Davy. ‘I think he’s had more than enough booze tonight,’ he murmured, then raising his voice he said, ‘Summer’s a bit too hot for India, even if you head for Kathmandu like the rest of the weirdos.’

  Sarah punched his arm lightly. ‘Well, thanks for that, it’s nice to think my boyfriend thinks I’m weird.’

  Carl leant across and kissed her. ‘You’ll be an unemployed weirdo if you don’t get back on that stage, but leave Davy with me.’

  They played well into the early hours of the morning and she waved as Carl took Davy back to their digs at midnight. He was so wonderful, so kind.

  She worked on his notes the next day, then sorted out the designs for the wallpaper, sifting through Davy’s ideas while he slept, then their joint ones which were better, infinitely better. Sarah sat back, chewing her pencil, looking at the lines of Davy’s sketches. They were uncertain, and there was no core to the design, no theme, no skill or talent, no soul.

  She brewed herself coffee, drinking it as morning turned to afternoon and still Davy didn’t get up, but then he seldom did now she realised and she wondered why she had not noticed before. She completed her notes, putting together the last of her end of term collection. She pressed the seams, wanting to show someone, wanting to send them to her mother, but there was no point, because they were not for the business. Annie wouldn’t be interested, and besides, there was no love in her for her mother any more, and no need either.

  She looked again at Davy’s designs, walked to the window, leaning her head on the pane, looking out at the plane trees in full leaf, the dusty road, and thought of the beck, so clean and clear, the black-eyed daisies, the meadow grass. She thought of the coke lines on the boulder. They had promised there would be no more coke.

  She looked at her watch. It was six o’clock and still Davy slept and she walked quietly from her room into his, stepping over the sitar which lay on the floor, picking up his mug which he had dropped, seeing the coffee stains on the floor. It was so hot in here with no windows open, no curtains drawn. She pulled them back and opened the window. Davy lay sprawled on the bed and Sarah remembered how Tim had said he would be in trouble if he didn’t appear at lectures more often. She hadn’t registered.

  The bed sank as she sat on the edge. He smelt of stale sweat and dirt. She hadn’t registered that either. Now he opened his eyes, so blue, so gentle, and he smiled and put up his hand to touch her long hair.

  ‘We promised to use no more coke. Have you, Davy? Have you used anything else?’ Sarah said softly.

  ‘I’m fine, bonny lass,’ he said, smiling at her, his eyes no longer seeing her, closing.

  ‘Roll up your sleeves, Davy,’ she said but he no longer heard her.

  She took his arm, unbuttoned his sleeve, rolled it up and saw the needle marks she’d known would be there. She rolled down the sleeve again, buttoned it, stroked his hair and couldn’t see him any more for the tears were falling down her cheeks, staining his shirt. She bent and held him, and wondered how she could not have known before that this boy was now a heroin addict.

  She rang her mother that night and told her that she and Davy would not be coming home that holiday, they were going camping in Cornwall.

  ‘Just the two of you?’ her mother asked.

  ‘Yes, Mother, just the two of us, you’re quite safe, Carl is not coming with us.’

  ‘I didn’t mean that, Sarah, really I didn’t.’

  But she did, Annie told Georgie that night. ‘I’m just so glad they’re going away together, getting some fresh air in their lungs, spending time with one another as they used to. Perhaps the relationship with Carl is weakening.’

  Georgie looked at her as he put Buttons’ great-grandson in his basket. ‘If that’s the truth, perhaps it is.’

  ‘Oh, Georgie, that’s so unlike you. Of course it’s the truth, she’s never lied to us, ever.’

  Sarah sat in the dark that evening and when Carl came in she told him that she was taking Davy away because he was main-lining.

  She watched the shock on his face.

  ‘I don’t know where he got it from or how he can afford it, and I don’t know why, that’s the worst thing. Why? Why? But I’ll make him stop. Deborah’s old schoolfriend was taken to a Scottish island by her parents and they cured her. She was new to it and he must be. He was clean at Christmas. Will you come?’

  Carl squatted in front of her, taking her hands. ‘How can I, I’m going to Morocco with my mother but anyway he needs proper treatment – you don’t know enough. He needs to go home.’

  Sarah shook her head. ‘No, he won’t want to go home. He’ll want to stay with me. I do know enough, I talked to Deborah about it tonight, I know what those other people did. I wish you were coming.’

  Carl kissed her hands. ‘Poor little bugger, what was he thinking of? Where did he get it? Has there been any talk?’

  ‘No, there’s nothing. Tim doesn’t know and I can’t find Arnie but none of that matters, it’s just Davy that’s important.’

  Carl kissed her and held her gently and she needed the strength of his love at that moment more than she had ever needed it from anyone.

  CHAPTER 20

  Sarah drove through Somerset and Devon, then over the Tamar Bridge into Cornwall, heading always onwards, wanting to put as much space behind them as possible.

  ‘We need to be as far from London as we can. Deborah said we need a different environment,’ she told Davy, who sat with beads of sweat on his forehead, his nose running, his eyes too, his mouth opening and shutting in prolonged yawns. They stopped on the moor and she looked away as he rolled up his sleeve, tightened the fixing belt round his upper arm to pop his veins, and inserted the needle. He pushed the plunger, withdrew the needle and passed it to her.

  She bleached it and put it in the box he kept at his feet, seeing the blood trickling down his arm, the haze coming into his eyes. She looked at her watch, five o’clock, they’d be at Polperro in an hour. Deborah had rung her farmer friend and he expected them by six. The sun was still hot and the shadows were long. Please God make it stay fine, if only to put the tent up.

  ‘Don’t tell him why you’re there, for God’s sake,’ Deborah had said. ‘Just remember, weaker and weaker doses, and then cold turkey. God help you. It’ll take weeks before he’s ready to come back.’

  They drove on but she stopped at a pub for lemonade and pasties, bringing it outside to one of the tables, wanting Davy to eat. ‘Not hungry,’ he murmured, leaning back on the bench, his head loose, his limbs too.

  ‘You must eat,’ she insisted, breaking his pasty in half, holding out a piece on her napk
in. ‘Please, for me.’

  ‘For you?’ he queried and then opened his mouth.

  She pushed it in and saw the family at the next table looking at them. ‘Come on, Davy, do it yourself.’

  She broke off another piece and put it in his hand which lay limp on his lap. The pasty fell to the floor and she wanted to shout at him. She didn’t. She broke off another piece and fed him herself – what did it matter what people thought? She stared back until they looked away.

  They drank their lemonade and she walked with him to the lavatory. ‘You must go in there, Davy. We’re camping, let’s have our last taste of luxury.’

  He looked at her. ‘A pub lavatory – we’ve come a long way, bonny lass.’ His grin was the old grin, his eyes sparkled. She laughed and left him.

  He was waiting by the car, leaning against it, his hands in his pockets, his shoulders so thin under his shirt. The sun was being overtaken by clouds, there was a chill in the air and he was shivering.

  She unlocked the car, leant in and brought out his pullover, put her own on. ‘Rain is all we need,’ she groaned.

  She looked at him but the sparkle had gone, there was just the haze. ‘Come on, in you get. We’ve still half an hour to go.’

  She checked the map, then drove on, missing the turning, reversing, driving down the track, bumping over the ruts, seeing honeysuckle in the high banks, smelling it through the open window.

  ‘It’s so beautiful, Davy. I’ll get you better, I promise.’

  She stopped at the farmhouse. The farmer pointed out the field they could use.

  ‘You can stay in the house if you like, we’ve spare rooms.’

  Sarah shook her head. ‘No, that’s fine, we love camping, we’re all-weather idiots but I’d like to buy some milk, please, and eggs and butter perhaps some tomatoes.’

  The farmer’s wife bustled out smelling of newly baked bread. ‘You sure you don’t want a room?’

  How could a drug addict take a room, how could he slump and sleep, and moan when the drug wore off, when there was no more and the cramps began? Sarah shook her head but bought the provisions, waving to them, glad that the far corner of the field was out of sight. That’s where they would pitch the tent, overlooking the sea but sheltered by hedges.

  Davy sat in the car while she took the tent from the roof rack, put the aluminium frame together, banging in the pegs, tightening the guy ropes, cursing as the rain began, feeling it soaking into her back, dripping down her hair.

  ‘Blimey,’ she said to Davy as she urged him from the car to the tent. ‘Tim didn’t tell me it was the Ritz. Look, you can stand up. Here’s the cooker, and there’s the bedroom. Sorry you’ll have to share it with the staff.’

  Davy said nothing, just sat cross-legged on the floor of the tent. She ran to the car, carrying back sleeping bags, loose sheets, boxes of plates, cups and food because soon, when the doses had decreased to nothing, they would not be leaving the tent for days on end.

  The rain was pattering on the roof. She blew up the lilos and laid out the sleeping bags side by side. ‘Sorry, you’ll have to put up with me next to you,’ she said, setting up the camping stools, taking his arm, pulling him up, sitting him on the chair. ‘I don’t snore.’

  She lit the petrol stove and heated milk in an old aluminium pan of Tim’s. She looked around. Everything was Tim’s and she had kissed him when he brought them round but he had said, ‘He should go home. You need more help.’

  ‘No we don’t,’ she’d replied. ‘He doesn’t want to go home because they won’t let him back but I’ll get him well, then keep an eye on him.’

  She poured the milk on to the cocoa, stirring it, watching the blobs of cocoa rise to break on the surface.

  ‘One or two?’ she called above the rain.

  Davy didn’t answer so she put in one and carried it to him, watching as he took it in two hands. ‘Hold it tight.’ There was no ground sheet and she could smell the grass.

  She cupped her own and sat next to him. ‘D’you remember putting the sheet over two sticks at the beck, there was the same smell.’

  Davy said nothing, the mug was tipping over in his hand. She took it from him, emptied both drinks on to the grass. She poured water into the bowl.

  ‘Wash,’ she said.

  He did.

  She peeled his clothes from him and couldn’t bear the thinness of his body, the scarred veins of his arms, the scabs.

  ‘Into the sleeping bag,’ she murmured, standing at the opening to the inner tent until he was comfortable.

  She washed, undressed and lay beside him, sleeping lightly, hearing the rain, Davy gasping beside her, turning, and with dawn there came the moans, the sweat on his forehead. She handed him a syringe with a decreased dose.

  She cooked breakfast, bacon, eggs, tomatoes. He ate little. The rain was still strumming lightly on the tent.

  ‘More like a sitar than a guitar, sort of fragile, like your music. Would you like to play, shall I bring it in from the car?’

  Davy shook his head, sitting in his sleeping bag, his plate on his lap, the bacon congealed.

  ‘Get dressed, Davy.’

  He did.

  The rain stopped and she tied back the tent opening, stepped barefoot into the wet grass. ‘Come out here, Davy.’

  He came.

  The sea was grey, the sky too and there were white tops, rolling and rolling to the shore. She looked towards the small bay to the left. ‘We’ll swim when you’re better.’ Polperro was to the right but too deep in the valley to be seen. She felt the wind lift her hair, tasted the salt on her lips, took Davy’s hand and held it tight. ‘Yes, we’ll swim.’

  They wrote cards which she had bought at the pub – to Gracie and Tom, Georgie and Annie.

  ‘Write three, Davy.’ Deborah had said that while withdrawing all life stopped except survival. She’d post them when she could.

  She lit a joint, counting the number she had in the sandalwood box. They would need them for withdrawal.

  There were seagulls circling, screeching, blackberry flowers in the hedge. ‘Draw this, Davy.’

  He couldn’t. He just sat in the sun until the stomach ache came again and sweat beaded his forehead and this time she wouldn’t let him have another fix immediately.

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘I want it,’ he moaned.

  ‘Not yet, we’ve got to do it like this.’

  He stood up and grabbed her arms. ‘I want it.’

  ‘No.’

  He turned from her, his hands to his eyes. ‘I need it, my eyes hurt, my belly hurts. Give me some.’

  He was stumbling from her into the tent, lying down on the sleeping bag.

  ‘Soon,’ she said, sitting in the entrance, knowing that he watched her every breath, her every move. She looked at her watch. Another hour – just another hour. This is how the girl’s parents had done it, but there’d been two of them. She put her face in her hands. Carl, couldn’t you have told your mother to go alone?

  Davy was quiet, lying with his face to the tent wall, his hair deep copper against the lilo, his sweat staining dark beneath his head. He turned. ‘Please, give it to me.’

  His eyes were dark, desperate, in pain, his skin sunk blue. ‘For Christ’s sake, you bitch, give it to me.’

  She rose and said, ‘Another half an hour.’ He stood, then fell as the lilo shifted beneath him. He crawled towards her, on the ground, grabbing for her leg. ‘Give it to me.’

  She shook her head, prising his fingers from her. He grabbed her hair then, pulling it, his lips thin, twisting his fingers in it, pulling again and again. ‘Give it to me.’

  She pushed him back and he fell and didn’t rise, just lay there with his legs pulled up. Deborah had said this would happen too but the tears were falling because of the pain in her scalp and the sight of her cousin in ruins at her feet.

  Annie read their card the next week, sitting in the kitchen with the door open on to the yard.

  ‘It looks so
lovely,’ she called to Georgie, turning it over, looking at the fishing village, the crowded cottages, the small harbour. ‘They say they’re having a lovely time – mixed weather, lots of swimming when the sun comes out, lots of pasties.’

  ‘Just what they need,’ Georgie called back. ‘Any chance of a beer, it’s hot out here with me head stuck up a pigeon loft.’

  Annie laughed, made herself a coffee and poured Georgie a beer, carrying them out, handing him the card as well.

  He said, ‘You’re right, it’s a canny place. Makes me wish we were there.’

  Annie sat on the back step as Georgie perched on the old stool. ‘Could we, do you think? I mean we could take a week off, drive down, surprise them.’

  Georgie was looking at the froth on his beer, holding it up to the sun. ‘Bye, you’ve got a head on this, Annie, what’d you do, give the bottle a good shake before you poured it?’

  ‘That’s the problem isn’t it, my love, you can’t get the staff these days, can you? You’ll just have to sack me.’

  He was laughing, scooping the froth off with his fingers and shaking it on to the ground, then drinking, lifting his face to the sun. ‘It’s an idea though. We could drive down in two days, find Polperro and then try and locate them.’

  Annie reached for the card. ‘They don’t say where they’re staying. How big is Cornwall?’

  ‘Big, when you’re trying to find two kids.’

  Annie stretched out her legs, kicked off her shoes. ‘I wonder whether they’d want us, they sound so happy, so well – perhaps we’d be interfering – perhaps we’d better leave them to it.’ She wanted to go, to spend time with her daughter to laze in the sun, swim, eat pasties in pubs and talk of nothing very much, just be there, but it was crazy. Two cousins had just taken off, dusting the city from their heels, they didn’t want parents popping up at every available opportunity. ‘Yes, we’d better leave them but if they can be by the sea so can we. Come on, I’m packing a picnic. Finish the birds and we’ll take Bet to the coast.’

  Tom and Gracie came too and they parked behind the dunes, walked across sand which was hot beneath their bare feet, spreading rugs, propping up thermos flasks, beer.