Annie's Promise

by Margaret Graham

  He shrugged. ‘Because I wanted you, loved you and you wouldn’t leave him alone so we could get on with our lives.’

  She said again, bringing the case back, ready to smash the pane. ‘Why?’

  His face was ugly with anger now. ‘OK, you silly bitch. Because I had a contract to get you as a solo artist and would you listen? Oh no, “we must stay together,” ’ he mimicked. ‘So I gave him back the habit which you thought you’d cured, the big I am, eh? He was grateful the first time, more grateful the second. You only cured him so that you could still cling to him – never able to stand on your own two feet, were you?’

  She lowered the case now, walking past him, feeling him grab her. She slapped him hard across the face and his hand came up and hit her, jerking her head back. She was glad of the pain, it unleashed her thoughts. She moved quickly now, along the landing, down the stairs.

  ‘Going to phone, Mummy, are we? She won’t come. When did she ever come? Only when she can use you. Just as you used that poor little sod in there.’

  She dialled her mother’s number, resting her head on the wall. She heard Annie’s voice.

  ‘Mum,’ Sarah whispered.

  Annie said, ‘Thank God you’ve rung, when are you coming, we need you, it’s – ’

  ‘Mum,’ Sarah cut across her. ‘I need you here. You said you’d come if I ever needed you.’

  ‘But darling, we can’t come, we left a – ’

  Sarah put down the phone, feeling the anger surge again. Carl called over the banister. ‘Didn’t think she’d come, did you? Has she ever come? She rang earlier you see, some crisis with a strike. Can’t leave dear old Tom on his own. Wanted you to ring her.’

  Sarah ran up the stairs now, pushing past him, dragging out her rucksack, shoving in her clothes, pass book, passport, papers, money, address book. She rushed into Davy’s room, and packed his things, shaking him awake, slapping him, feeling the blood from her own swollen lip.

  She pushed him before her down the stairs, dragging the rucksacks, stopping, saying to Carl, ‘What’ll you do now you’ve got no solo singer, now you’ve messed up the life of a lovely boy?’ She was no longer quiet, she was shouting with rage, spittle spraying on to his shirt.

  Carl shrugged. ‘Doesn’t matter – I’ve made enough contacts through all this, and had a nice bit of sex.’

  She looked at him, her golden boy, and followed Davy who stood on the steps, arms hanging at his sides. She unlocked the car and pushed him into the front seat, the rucksacks into the back, and drove to the nearest phone box. She rang the police, giving them Carl’s name and address, but not giving her own.

  She started the car and left their area, her hands shaking. She stopped again, looked in her address book for the Dutch clinic that Deborah had told her about because she couldn’t do it alone again.

  ‘Davy, we’re going away. We’ve got to get far away. No one here can help us, no one cares enough. Mum wouldn’t come. Do you understand me? Mum wouldn’t come.’ She was shouting now, shaking his arm.

  ‘I’m fine, just fine,’ Davy said smiling at her. She put her head in her hands. I must think. The ferry. A map. Money. Customs. He’d need some heroin to last the journey but not enough to carry.

  ‘Davy, how much stuff have you got left?’

  He was lolling against the car door. ‘Davy,’ she shouted. ‘Where’s your fix?’

  He shook his head. ‘Carl’s got it, he’s very kind.’

  She gripped the steering wheel, letting the engine idle. ‘Look, we’ve got to get some more stuff, we’re going on a journey. Have you any money?’

  He had and so had she. ‘Where can I get some heroin?’ She kept her voice very calm.

  He smiled again, his eyes unfocused. ‘Davy,’ she shouted.

  ‘By the bridges, just by the bridges.’

  ‘Which bridges?’ she shouted again.

  ‘The workshop bridges. Carl showed me.’

  She knew now and put the car into gear, driving carefully, not wanting to be stopped, down to the bridges where the road was unmade with deep holes. She steered in between them to the end where the squatters had taken over the empty terraces.

  ‘Where, Davy?’

  He pointed to the one with shutters and she took him with her, knocking quietly on the door, smelling urine in the hall when it opened, buying one fix of heroin, a syringe, and one snort of cocaine. It was all they could afford.

  She drove through the night to Harwich, stopping once for petrol, once so that Davy could snort cocaine, and she saw traces on his jumper, as though he’d been baking bread, and she remembered the farmer’s wife, the sunshine, the hope. It was on his lip too but he didn’t care, did he, because it was taking him away and she brushed him gently, kissed his cheek. ‘We’re on our own Davy, but I’ll look after you. I always have, always will.’

  She made the bank in Harwich phone their London bank and she withdrew all their money. She got a berth on the ferry, but before they drove on she pulled into a side street, looked both ways and handed him the syringe. ‘It’s got to do until we get there.’

  He nodded, his nose running, his eyes too. She squeezed his arm to fix his vein, unable to look as he inserted the needle, depressing the plunger, withdrawing. She wrapped the syringe in newspaper then put it in the box, wrapped the box in old newspaper and put it into a wastebin.

  Then they drove on to the ferry, and up the steps to the deck, leaning on the rail as they left harbour, and she wanted to see her mother running towards the quay, wanted her to see the boat leaving with her daughter on it, because she had left her alone in London for a strike.

  Annie sat in Sarah’s bedroom, watching Betsy’s shallow breathing, knowing that she would die before the night was out. She held her old friend’s hand. Ring again, Sarah, she begged inside. Ring again.

  She called softly to Georgie. ‘I should have told her it was Betsy straight away. I just didn’t want her to drive up here distraught. I should have told her. I tried but she put the phone down. Oh God what’s wrong with her?’

  Georgie stood in the doorway. ‘Nothing much. I’ve just rung Carl, they’ve had a tiff, he says, and she and Davy have gone off to a club, would you believe. Selfish little buggers.’

  Betsy died at dawn.

  CHAPTER 22

  The ferry rode the winter waves, rising and dipping, and they stood at the rail, their hair whipping their faces and Sarah was too cold for anger, for pain, too tired for thought.

  They drove off the ferry at The Hague and now there was no time for speech because she had to drive to the clinic, looking at the map on her knee, keeping to the left. She went the wrong way round a roundabout. Oh Christ. Took the right road, driving fast as the daylight faded.

  ‘The countryside’s so flat,’ she said, her voice tired.

  Davy said nothing as the sweat beaded his forehead. She gave him three joints. ‘Smoke these. Just two more miles.’

  ‘Are we nearly home?’ he murmured.

  The clinic was white-tiled, clean, with ochre chrysanthemums in a bowl at reception.

  Davy sat shivering on a grey leather chair.

  Sarah said she must see a doctor. She would not leave until she had. She knew Vanessa Morgan who had been treated here.

  A doctor came, his broad face tired, his smile calm. He took them into his office where a stove burned and delf tiles were set in the fireplace.

  ‘You know Vanessa?’ He spoke good English.

  Sarah shook her head. ‘I know of her. It’s Davy. He’s on heroin. I’ve tried to get him off, it seemed to work but it hasn’t. You’ve got to take him. He’s so important and I can’t bear it.’

  She looked at her hands on her lap, wet from the tears that were streaming down her face. ‘Please, help us.’

  He told her how much it would be and she nodded. She would sell the car.

  He called in Davy, and sat him in the chair next to Sarah whilst he propped himself on the edge of the desk.

  ‘So
, Davy, you want to be rid of this addiction?’ The doctor’s hands were clasped, his voice was casual, his eyes serious and fixed on Davy.

  Davy looked at him, at Sarah and then at the doctor. ‘Yes.’ That was all, but it was enough.

  ‘Please wait out in reception. You may wish for a coffee?’

  Sarah sat on the grey chair and drank the coffee and another, stirring in sugar this time, round and round, hearing the click of the spoon against cup, watching the spiralling bubbles, not thinking of anything, not feeling anything, not yet. There was no time.

  The doctor called her in again after an hour. Davy wasn’t there and now the doctor waved her to a settee in the bay window. He sat opposite.

  ‘He’s been taken to his room. You may go later. Now I have to tell you some of the things that I have told him. The first is that his addiction is recent, months not years. He is the same as many others. That I have also told him and it comes as a shock to the ego to learn that one is not unique.’

  He crossed his legs, his white coat falling open. ‘There is a way to get off drugs, and stay off. That I have also told him but there must be a great need within that person to rid themselves. You see, heroin is stronger than anything. It takes so much of your life, so much time. You come off and then what do you do with that time? You need help to come off. You need help to stay off.’

  Sarah pulled out her cigarettes. He shook his head.

  ‘That is also an addiction. It is very hard to come off those for some people.’

  She put them away again. Her mother had come off, but then she had wanted to, because of the business. Always the business and now there was some feeling, but she shoved it away, deep inside. Not yet.

  The doctor smiled at her. ‘As long as an addict believes he has any control at all over drugs he will never come off. Davy has come to that knowledge, but you knew that, of course?’

  No, she didn’t know that and now she looked down at her lap. Somehow they hadn’t talked since Cornwall, somehow the days and weeks had passed and there had only been Carl, standing between them. But she couldn’t think of him. Not yet.

  The doctor spoke again. ‘Working together, Davy and I will get rid of this drug. We will take it from him, but what will we put in its place?’

  ‘I’ll help. I’ve always helped. I always will.’

  The doctor didn’t look at her. ‘You should speak to him, I think. He has been given methadone. He is coherent, able to make decisions. Do you understand me, Miss Armstrong?’ He was looking at her carefully.

  ‘Yes, your English is very good,’ she replied.

  He smiled gently.

  He led the way to a room which was carpeted, clean, bright, but the lights were low now and Davy smiled at her as she stood by the bed and held his hand. ‘We’ll kick it, together,’ she said.

  The doctor looked at Davy. ‘Shall I inform your parents?’

  Sarah shook her head. ‘No, there’s no need, we’ll handle this together.’

  The doctor just stood there and looked at Davy.

  He took his hand from Sarah and the smile was gone. ‘Yes, please. I want them here, and then I want to go home.’

  He looked at Sarah as she shook her head and clutched his hand. ‘But we can’t go home, I told you what she did. How can we go home? I’m here. I’ll look after you, I always have. You need me. We can do this together.’

  He withdrew his hand and leant back on the pillows. ‘I want to go home. I, Sarah, me. This is my mouth, not yours. You keep talking for me and I’ve let you, but I need to breathe, to think. It’s you that suffocates me, no one else until I don’t know anything any more and I’ve got to know my own mind, if I’m going to live. I’ve got to be free of you. Please, just go away.’

  She looked at the doctor whose face was grave but kind. ‘Now do you understand me?’ he asked again.

  Sarah nodded and turned to Davy. ‘I’ll go.’

  She left the room and didn’t look back. She slept that night in the Mini, then sold it the next day, taking the money back to the clinic, keeping half for herself.

  ‘Will you go home?’ the doctor asked as he walked with her to the door.

  ‘I have no home.’

  Tom had received the phone call at seven that morning. He couldn’t speak as he listened to the calm kind voice of the Dutch doctor. Then Gracie came and took the phone and it was she who spoke, taking down the details, thanking the doctor, telling him they would be there as soon as possible.

  It was Gracie who walked to Annie’s because Tom was hunched over Betsy’s table, wanting his mother’s arms around him as they had been when his cousin Davy had died.

  Gracie told Annie that the kids were at a drug rehabilitation unit in Holland, that Davy had been a heroin addict for some months, that Sarah was with him and now she couldn’t speak either but crumpled against Annie, who held her, holding her tightly against the horror of it all.

  Georgie stayed to arrange Bet’s funeral whilst they flew to Holland, then hired a car to take them to the clinic. The doctor ushered them into his room and told them that the treatment had begun, the methadone would be decreased, the withdrawal would begin but not before they had spoken to their child.

  Annie waited with the doctor as Tom and Gracie went into Davy’s room.

  ‘Where is Sarah?’ she asked, understanding now why her daughter had needed her, hating herself for denying her.

  ‘She’s gone, I’m afraid.’

  Annie looked at him, not understanding. ‘Gone where?’

  The doctor shook his head. ‘I don’t know. You must talk to Davy.’

  Tom called her in some time later and she sat with her nephew, her brother and his wife and listened to Davy tell them of Carl and the drugs, of the psychedelic pictures he had painted and the cover-up they had carried out, of Cornwall, of the phone call, how Carl had said that Annie wouldn’t come because there was another strike. How she and Tom had only come down after the pictures because they wanted them to carry out market research. How Teresa had slept with Carl and Sarah had found them.

  Tom raged at Carl, standing at the window, banging his fist on the sill while Gracie held her son’s hand and Annie sat silent, thinking of their trip down, the inflatable chairs.

  ‘Where is she now?’

  Davy ran his fingers through his hair. ‘I sent her away. I wanted to go home, I wanted me family here. I wanted time to think. I just wanted her away from me. I didn’t mean her to go for ever.’

  Annie said, ‘Do you believe we didn’t care?’

  ‘I did for a while, but then I didn’t know what to think, or feel. And there was Carl, you see, always talking. We didn’t know anything by the end. She doesn’t even now. She’s on her own out there and she’s frightened of being on her own. I sent her away because I had to be alone. I’m sorry, Auntie Annie. I’m just so sorry.’

  Annie walked in the garden of the clinic, looking up at the windows which were yellow in the low light of winter. The trees were leafless. Sarah, how could you use this boy as you did? she raged, anger tearing at her, you selfish little brat. How could you keep him down in London, in Cornwall when we could have helped? Davy’s right, he needs to be on his own without you. She turned from the sun and looked out across the miles of marsh, her arms folded tight, until the anger died and then she wept, the sound harsh and loud because her daughter was out there, all alone and neither of those kids from Wassingham had stood a chance against Carl. And finally she wept because over all the years she must have failed her daughter.

  Sarah walked along the busy road, her rucksack rubbing on her shoulders. She didn’t know where she was going, she was just putting one foot in front of the other, walking away from them all, hating them all for the love she had given them, when they had given her none.

  She walked until dusk and then a red van with huge marigolds painted on its sides stopped.

  ‘D’you want a lift?’ the young man drawled. He wore a band on his forehead, his hair was long, his sm
ile lazy.

  Why not?

  The rear doors opened and hands pulled her in.

  Tom stayed on at the clinic when Gracie and Annie returned for the funeral. He wouldn’t leave his son, and it was right that he shouldn’t, Annie thought. Betsy would have approved.

  The days were dark and Christmas came and went. Sarah’s sitar stood in her bedroom, waiting for her return. Annie and Georgie alerted all their export contacts, sending photographs of their daughter, telling police who said there was very little they could do, but what could be done, would be.

  It didn’t help, nothing helped their anguish, the sense of loss, the sense of self-blame, and so they worked. What else was there, Georgie said. ‘Do we drive all over Europe, looking?’

  ‘Yes,’ Annie said, hunched by the fire.

  ‘No, she could come here and find us gone.’

  ‘Gracie would tell us.’

  They took the ferry and spent a month driving round looking, thinking they had found her, stopping girls who were not her, ringing home to see if she had phoned.

  In February Gracie said, ‘There’s a card here from her. She read it out to them. “I’m alive. Don’t look for me, I’m with friends.” ’

  They drove home, read the card, Italy. They alerted their contacts but Gracie was needed in Holland and so they stayed, installing an answering machine in the house, and one at the office for when they were not there. They hired detectives in Italy and then they waited but there was no lifting of the darkness.

  Tom brought Davy home in the second week of February. Annie held him in her arms, smiling, hating him for being home, for being safe, but only for a moment, knowing that she loved this boy as if he were her own son.

  They set up a silk printing division in the factory and it was this that filled Davy’s hours, the hours that were empty now that heroin had left him. And Davy knew, as he lay at night in his room, or talked to others at Narcotics Anonymous in Newcastle that he loved Sarah, always had, always would, but that he had needed the time without her to understand that. But could he ever forgive himself for sending her away? Would she ever come back?

  Sarah sat in the front seat with Fred, the US draft dodger, as they drove into Venice, smoking the joint the others had made up in the back.