Swan River (25 page)

‘The Chelsea Drug Store is open.'

‘Yeah? Never been there.' She stared at me. ‘Anywhere. Please.' She turned away again. ‘I think I'm going to die otherwise.'

I wondered what would have happened if I hadn't come round. Would she have gone on sleeping and not wanted the drug? Would Chas have come back and gone to Piccadilly Circus at one o'clock in the morning? ‘All right.' I put the blanket over her. She had shut her eyes. On a whim, I kissed her forehead; it was cold and I could feel her sweat on my lips. I went down to the Chelsea Drug Store to get her prescription filled.

I got back just before midnight. I had stood for an hour in a slow-moving queue with other methadone users – or perhaps their friends – and a couple of men whose children needed cough medicine; the pharmacist had had to hand-write a label with detailed dosage instructions for every opaque brown bottle.

Deborah didn't seem to have moved but she was awake, blinking rapidly and clenching and unclenching her fingers on the sheet. She raised her head, said ‘thanks' very loudly and reached for the bottle. It was in a white paper bag.

‘I'll pour it for you in the kitchen.' I walked towards the door.

‘I can swig it. I know the dose.' She sat up.

‘No. I might as well make sure it's right.' I walked to the kitchen and rinsed a glass and a spoon. She came and stood beside me. She tapped on the draining board and I could see her shivering. I measured the liquid into the glass and put the cap back on the bottle.

‘That's not enough, David.' She frowned at me and stamped her feet. She was wearing just the black T-shirt and a pair of knickers; her legs were long and too thin.

‘It's what it says on the label, which is what your doctor wrote on the prescription.' I tried to sound unconcerned and held out the glass.

She took it, drank the methadone straight down and stood with her eyes raised to the ceiling and the glass in her hand. I put the bottle in my pocket. ‘OK. Thanks.' She swilled out the glass in the sink and walked quickly from the room. ‘I'll be back in a minute.' I put the bottle in a cupboard beside a jar of Marmite and filled the kettle.

As I sipped scalding instant coffee, I could hear her running a bath. I sat down and looked idly at a three-day-old copy of the
Evening Standard
. Minutes later, I heard her walking about the flat and then the sound of
Sergeant Pepper
.

She came into the kitchen. She still seemed tense, but she looked better; she had combed her wet hair and was wearing blue jeans, a thick grey sweater over a white T-shirt, socks – or tights – and scuffed brown shoes. She looked at me with a taut, apologetic smile. ‘Would you like some more coffee?' She picked up my mug.

‘Sure.'

I stood beside her as the kettle boiled. ‘I'm sorry.' She spoke without looking at me.

‘It's all right.' I didn't know what else to say. I had been shocked when Peter had told me of her addiction, but that hadn't prepared me for what I had felt earlier – when I found her and as I tramped the streets and returned with the bottle – fear, anger, and a little pity. Now I felt some relief as well.

She carried the coffee to the living room and sat down on a rug beside the stereo, and turned the sound down a little. I sat on the sofa, facing her. ‘I know what you're doing. Peter told me.'

‘He wouldn't know.'

‘He does. They all know – the whole group, they're very worried about you… You must know that.' She drank her coffee and looked at the floor without speaking. ‘
I'm
worried about you too.'

‘Well, it's all right. I've stopped.' She shook her head angrily. ‘It's over. I'm doing the methadone… thing. Have you got any cigarettes?' I handed her one and lit it. ‘There's nothing else to say… It's under control.' She pulled nervously on the cigarette.

‘Three hours ago you said you were going to die.' She turned
Sergeant Pepper
up, and picked at a strand of her hair and stared at it. ‘Look, I'm your oldest friend. Maybe I can help.'

She went on playing with her hair.

I remembered something. ‘By the way, Teresa sends her love and said to send her a postcard.'

‘Teresa?' She looked up at me, frowning.

‘From Marlow. She said she was your best friend.'

‘When – ?' She was looking at her hair again, holding it in front of her face. I saw that she was crying, though she made no sound. The record ended and the pick-up clicked back into place. She stood up with her fists clenched by her sides. ‘Oh God!' It was a high-pitched whine.

I stood up. ‘Deborah?' She ran from the room. I followed more slowly. ‘You all right?' A door slammed. I could hear a tap running.

I went back into the room with the sofa and thought about turning
Sergeant Pepper
over – and decided not to. After a few minutes she returned and smiled properly for the first time that evening. ‘I'm sorry.'

I said it was OK and we sat down at either end of the sofa.

‘I'm a fool, but I'm trying not to be any more.' She got up and turned the record over.

‘Sure.' I didn't know her as I once had. I wondered whether we would ever get back to the easy friendship where she said things I wasn't expecting and held my hand as if she hardly noticed it. It didn't seem likely. I had been going to ask whether she remembered our plan to go to Swan River, Manitoba – but that had been when I had thought we would meet for a drink and a chat. A part of me wanted to take her away somewhere and look after her, feed her methadone until she was better, and let her out into the wild again like a beautiful bird with a mended wing – she was beautiful now, even though she was so thin. But I knew it was a stupid dream; I knew nothing about addiction or heroin, had nowhere for her to live – and didn't even know her very well any more. And she had Chas. He seemed nice. He could look after her – as long as he kept caring. I wondered when he would come back.

‘What's the matter? You look sad.'

‘Oh, I'm all right. I was just…' – I wondered if I should say it -‘…thinking… I don't know you so well any more.'

‘Oh!… Well, you will. We can see each other a lot.' She reached over and took my hand, squeezed it and put it down gently. ‘I'm so glad you're around again… You've been great tonight. I'm sorry I was such a mess… but I'm still me… and you're you.' Perhaps I didn't look convinced. ‘You are. You're just older… that's all… and so am I, but I'm no different, whatever you might think.'

Maybe she was right; people didn't change that much. I forced a smile, leaned forward and slapped my knees. ‘You're right.'

‘Why don't we meet one evening next week? I promise I'll be there.'

‘OK, but…' I smiled more genuinely. ‘I'll take the phone number, just in case.'

She went into the kitchen and came back with two glasses and the remains of a bottle of red wine.

‘Is it OK for you to drink with the… you know?'

‘Yeah. There's not much here anyway.'

We drank and talked – about drawing, Chas, our parents, our old town. She said she'd love to see my mother again, and my father, and maybe go back to Marlow sometime. She seemed lively then, more like my old friend. When the wine was finished, she said there was no need for me to stay; Chas and the others would be back soon and she would be all right. I said that I'd stay until they arrived.

She smiled. ‘Don't you trust me? I don't even know where you put my methadone.'

‘Of course I do.' I wasn't sure whether I did or not. ‘It's next to the Marmite.'

I asked whether she remembered our plan to go to Swan River, Manitoba.

She did and she mentioned my grandfather and La Frascetti, though she had forgotten her name.

I told her that her drawing was now hanging in my room at my father's, how I had had it all through school, how Snape had polished the glass and

that boys used to touch La Frascetti's chest for good luck.

She laughed and suggested we go to Swan River when I had my holiday from work in the summer.

I was wondering how serious she was – and whether I, or she, could afford the trip – when we heard footsteps and voices in the hall. The rock group had returned, tired and grumbling about their audience. Peter was taking the van home and offered me a lift. Deborah wrote down the phone number and kissed my cheek.

In the van I told Peter what had happened and how Deborah had said that she would follow the methadone treatment.

‘Well… let's hope she sticks to it.' He didn't sound hopeful.

* * * * *

April was cool that year, but from the beginning of May the London air warmed slowly to a long climax of hot days and nights which lasted from the end of June until well into September. The King's Road boutiques were filled with beads, kaftans, bells and colourful cotton scarves – for men to wear knotted around their necks. Pat wore all of the gear most of the time; Peter the Painter had a bell around his neck that made him sound like a cow on a Swiss mountainside, and happily endured the barracking of the older regulars in the Goat in Boots; I hid a tiny bell on a strip of leather under my shirt and a red cotton scarf, and pretended to be surprised when people heard its subtle tinkle. The scent of joss sticks and marijuana and the sounds of ‘A Whiter Shade Of Pale' and ‘San Francisco – Be Sure To Wear Some Flowers In Your Hair' pervaded Chelsea, Kensington and Notting Hill, and people were buying the magazine that I helped to stick together with Cow gum.

Though I didn't dress like an archetypal hippie, I embraced what they believed in and had the exhilarating feeling that the world was changing for the better, that I was part of something significant and was, myself, helping a little to bring it about.

Drugs were a part of it. But to me, they weren't important. I consumed other people's from time to time, but the overreaction of the establishment – made known to all by the sentencing of Mick Jagger to prison for possessing four tablets of speed, bought legally in a chemist's shop in Italy – reinforced the view that the authorities were oppressive and too cynical to believe in the possibility of peace, let alone universal love.

It all seemed very straightforward to me, as it did to many of my peers:

those who wanted to imprison Jagger were the allies of those who were so keen to destroy communism that they would kill and maim children in Vietnam and send their own sons to do it. As Martin put it in one of the cartoon strips I sat waiting for him to complete, they were imprisoned by their own tiny minds. Those people, we thought, couldn't imagine a world where everyone loved everyone and there was no need for nationalism or wars. We could see that – and bring it about: by example, by having fun, and by defining everyone as our neighbour.

Personally, I thought the new world should be organised on the principles of anarchism as described by Bertrand Russell in
Roads to Freedom
. That no one agreed with me on that detail didn't reduce the excitement and energy that came from believing – for a short time, but for longer than just that summer – that somehow people would understand the bigger message and that the world would change.

* * * * *

Deborah and I met often for a while, and gradually I came to see her objectively for the first time. When I was younger, she had just been there, my supportive friend, who was funny and had a vivid imagination. Now I saw that she was exceptional – talented and clever – and had an unusual desire to explore and understand things, many of which I knew nothing about. She was interested in R.D. Laing and Marshall McLuhan, and lent me a book that I struggled to make sense of:
Memories, Dreams, Reflections
by Carl Jung. And she came closer than anyone to agreeing with me about anarchism – and was the only person who, on my recommendation, actually read
Roads to Freedom
.

When I told my mother that I had found Deborah she immediately asked us both to dinner at her flat. She provided wine and the two of them talked animatedly about art. Later, when we were alone, my mother said she thought Deborah and I would make ‘a good pair' – even though she was concerned about her thinness and the way she picked at her food. We were certainly good friends again but, even if Chas had not been around, I couldn't imagine any other form of relationship.

I took to dropping in at the flat in Earls Court and became friendly with Chas, and realised that, to a degree, he was her mentor as well as her lover. He looked at me with sad eyes and said how much he regretted making her aware of smack. He admired her talent and her intelligence and said he thought she was on some kind of quest, which he hoped she would resolve. Meanwhile she was vulnerable; he wanted to make her happy, but wasn't sure how.

I had seen no more signs of smack; when we arranged to meet, she always turned up, pale and smiling, in an afghan coat, with a red and black knitted bag on her shoulder. But then one night her head kept drooping and she fell asleep while I was talking to her in Finch's; it was only half past eight. She seemed groggy when I woke her, and I walked her home. On another occasion, late at my flat, she asked me to lend her a pound for a taxi, and became angry, almost panic-stricken, when I didn't respond instantly. Ruefully, Chas told me that she was back on smack. There seemed nothing I could do, except talk to her.

Late one evening, she told me that she expected to kill herself within a year; she saw no point in life. She was frighteningly lucid and, though I argued for most of the night, I couldn't convince her – or indeed myself – that there was a point. It seemed to be a matter of belief, rather than reason.

She didn't mention suicide again, and there were times when she was wholly the person I knew and used to rely on, but other times when it seemed that part of her was obliterated, replaced by panic or by the drug which made her seem as if she were sleepwalking. Unintentionally, imperceptibly, I began to see her less often.