Annie's Promise (16 page)

They gave him more pain killers and for a moment he slept. When he woke the pain was there, digging deeper, deeper, and Annie was gone. He called but she didn’t come. He was alone with it and he couldn’t bear that, it was coming again and he needed her.

Then she was there, thank God she was there, but don’t touch me. Don’t touch me he screamed, but his lips didn’t move. She hadn’t touched him. She knew, she could see inside his head because she was part of him but why wasn’t she stopping the pain?

Annie made Tom take Sarah away. She mustn’t see this, she mustn’t see her father’s glistening, grey, waxy face, the eyes which knew no one, which sank deeper with each hour into the darkening hollows.

Georgie called again, Why? The pain was fading, then it was here again and there was sunlight. It hurt his eyes. The pain was sweeping through him, clawing at him and he groaned and groaned again and then darkness came, and there was nothing.

Annie let Sarah into the room now. ‘He’s in shock, he’s unconscious, now you must go back to the children’s ward, help there until I call you.’ Her voice was quite calm, she was too tired for it to be anything else.

She helped the nurses to roll him, to avoid lung congestion. She checked the garments that Tom brought over, checked the advertisement. It would go in in two weeks’ time.

‘Three,’ Tom said, coming again the next evening. ‘One of your Glasgow buyers rang. He wants me to take up some samples. He’s decided he underspent his budget after all and wants a presentation but is it OK if I leave you?’ He nodded towards Georgie’s room. ‘I’ll be away two nights.’

‘Yes, go. You can’t do anything and by then it’ll be decided one way or another.’

Georgie came to in the afternoon of the next day and Annie gave him a drink, putting the spout to his lips, letting the water trickle into his mouth. There was a stubble on his chin and his face was less waxy. The pain killers were given again and took the edge off the pain more efficiently now.

They changed the dressings as they had done each day and Staff Nurse peeled off the last of the lint from the raw wound as Annie leaned across, hiding the stump from Georgie, talking to him gently. She saw the naked agony in his face even though they had soaked the dressing in warm water and was glad that when he was unconscious at least he was spared this.

She sat and talked with him in the afternoon, telling him of the Glasgow buyer, of the diary Sarah had at last finished.

‘Why aren’t you working?’ he murmured, too filled with pain to speak properly.

‘I am, I have it here.’ She held up the traders’ pants.

‘Those aren’t Manners’ pants.’

‘No, these are for the traders. The mail shot goes out in three weeks.’

The pain came through the pain killer, it roared and raged and took him away from Annie, took him down dark tunnels, twisting and turning with him until day became night and now he woke again and there was a rim of light, a nurse but no knitting, thank God, for the click, click would have jarred on the pain.

He looked for Annie. She was there, watching him, smiling.

‘I wish they’d cut the bloody thing off,’ he groaned, wanting to touch her, but not being able to bear the pressure.

‘They have, my darling,’ she said.

‘No they haven’t, I can feel my toes. Why don’t they cut it off?’

The morning came and he woke again and there was Tom with Annie and he was holding her hand. Georgie was glad someone was.

‘It hurts,’ he said to Tom. ‘If they took it off the pain would go.’

Tom looked at Annie. ‘They have bonny lad, they’ve taken it off.’

‘That’s what Annie said, but they haven’t because it still hurts.’

The nurse told Annie she must get some sleep that night and Tom insisted too, and she fell on to the bed and slept though she dreamt of the camps, of Prue, of Lorna, of the parade ground.

Again Georgie woke and there was the nurse, and the light, but no sun. It was night then. His mind was clearer, the pain was less, wasn’t it? Yes, a bit less, he felt different, stronger. He turned his head. Annie wasn’t there.

‘Is she sleeping?’ he asked the nurse. She nodded.

He lay still, thinking of Annie’s face, her eyes, her laugh, her voice. What had she said? Tom had been here too, holding her hand, talking. He’d been talking. What had he said? Georgie looked up at the ceiling, floating, drifting in and out of pain. Oh God, why didn’t they take it off?

Then he remembered what Annie had said and Tom too, so it must be true, but what did it matter – there was still the pain, which was swelling, growing, taking him back into the darkness.

Georgie improved a little that night, more the next day, the greyness went from his face and the pain eased though they still injected pain killers to calm his tortured nerve endings. He didn’t ask again about his leg, so Annie just waited.

At the end of the week he told her that she shouldn’t be sitting here while Tom and Gracie did all the work and he smiled at her. ‘Get on, or there’ll be nothing for me to do when I get back on my feet.’

Annie felt despair. He still didn’t know. She looked at the nurse, who shook her head. So she grinned. ‘OK slave driver, I’ll be back at four.’

‘Make it six,’ Georgie said, ‘Then I can have me tea in peace.’

He watched her go, seeing the looseness of her clothes, the tiredness in her shoulders. It would give her time to eat hers in peace too. He lay back on the pillows and now, with just the nurse there, he lifted the sheets. Yes, they had taken his leg off. He really was a cripple. They had been telling him the truth and he wept the tears he had not wanted any of his family to see, knowing that they must be hidden again by this evening.

Annie sewed most of the day, then checked the Glasgow garments which Brenda and the homeworkers had been sewing. Oh God, there was still the smell of smoke on Meg’s and they needed to be packed tonight. Annie walked round to Meg, standing on the step, asking her if she’d work in Annie’s house because if there was no time to air the clothes
now, what would it be like when the mail shot began next week – if it worked that is, and it had to.

That afternoon she talked to Tom, checking that last month he had put in for planning permission for Briggs’ warehouse. He had. ‘We should know if it’s been granted this week, then we’ll be set up for when we need to take on the premises.’

‘Thank heavens for that. Well done, Tom, we’ll have to take it the moment we can. It’s going to be chaos next week, absolute chaos.’

‘We hope,’ Tom said.

‘It’s just got to be. It’s going to sink in soon about his leg and he’ll need something to get hold of, to work at.’

Georgie listened to Mr Adcock telling him that losing a leg was a great inconvenience but not fatal. ‘Mobility can be obtained with a false leg and of course, wheelchairs. We’ll be getting you along to physio soon, and then to the special unit where we’ll fit your leg.’

Georgie nodded. He smiled until Adcock left, then sank back on to the pillows, slept again and dreamt that he was running across the sand with Sarah, chasing Annie, catching her, pushing seaweed down her neck.

He smiled again when Annie came, kissing her, smelling the summer on her hair, her skin. He’d forgotten about seasons, it was just dark or light in here. He listened as she talked of the last minute preparations for the mail shot and Meg’s sewing machine which they had installed on the kitchen table.

‘Geoff smokes, that’s why I used to hang them on the airer, I just didn’t want to tell you but of course you’d have understood.’

‘Of course,’ he said as she bathed him, washing his arms, his chest, his leg.

‘I know about my leg,’ he said then, quite quietly, casually, and he was proud of himself. ‘I know and it doesn’t matter, I can learn to walk again, it’s just an inconvenience.’ He
looked at the ceiling, at the wall, and then at her. ‘It’s all right, Annie, tell everyone it’s all right.’

She touched his face, kissed his lips gently. ‘Inside you must be destroyed but I shall tell them because it will be. I promise you it will be.’

He wouldn’t talk about it any more and so Annie told him of the greenfly which were annoying Bet, of the kids’ gang and the carts they were making out of old prams, of the world which seemed a million miles away to him and he was glad he was here, hidden behind the nurses and these walls, out of sight of that world which hadn’t yet seen him as he was now and into which he must one day stumble.

Annie came in over the weekend with Sarah, dressing his stump and she didn’t speak then, just concentrated, as he should have done, he thought.

‘Where did you get the capital for the advertisement?’ he asked when she had finished, when he could trust his voice not to shake from the pain.

‘Don’t worry about that,’ Annie said, taking the bowl from the room. But couldn’t she see that he did worry? But then he felt tired again, so tired and the agony that was his stump took all his energy.

‘Where did you get it?’ he asked Annie again when she returned.

‘The profit from the Glasgow deal,’ she replied because she had had time to think in the sluice.

But he didn’t hear, he was asleep.

‘He’s just not thriving at the moment,’ Staff Nurse told Annie. ‘It often happens when they discover the facts. Just keep on as you’re doing, it’s fine.’

The advertisement appeared on Tuesday and the first orders came through that morning.

‘They must be from the newspaper staff,’ Gracie said, opening the envelopes, stamping the coupons, passing them to Annie who entered them into the book, packing up their orders, stacking them under the window, going out to bank
the cheques, to wait for them to clear before sending the orders off.

On Wednesday there was a deluge of mail, and they opened the envelopes, stamped coupons, filled the orders from stock, and told the homeworkers to keep on with the traders until their orders were filled and only then moving on to the mail shot, since they had enough in stock.

That evening Annie delivered the traders’ stock on her way to Georgie, grateful that they didn’t ask for sale or return any more – smiling when they asked how Georgie was.

‘Coming on, he’ll be riding a bicycle soon,’ she laughed. That night she told Georgie of the two hundred orders already received, that she needed him alongside them, longing to be able to lift the darkness which hung behind his eyes.

He was even quieter tonight, feverish and he wouldn’t eat. ‘Ring me,’ she told the staff. ‘I must know if he’s any worse.’

‘It’s because he knows, he’s trying to adjust, he’s depressed, but you’re doing fine.’

She sewed all night, without rest, she had to re-order from Glasgow, she had to write up the schedule for the homeworkers. She rang the hospital at dawn. His fever was down and his spirits too. Is it any wonder, she thought. ‘Shall I come?’

‘No, he’ll only start fretting because your nose isn’t actually on the grindstone. He needs some time to himself to accept things.’

At eight-thirty the postman knocked, emptied his sack on to the floor. ‘Mrs Norris is right glad you warned her of this,’ he said, pushing back his cap. ‘Me wife sews you know.’

‘No, I didn’t, get her to bring round a sample, Joe, today if possible.’ One of the homeworkers that Tom had picked out had moved with her husband to Nottingham last week.

Annie packed, stacked, then cut and sewed until lunch, then checked through the girls’ work, approving Joe’s wife’s sample, keeping her in reserve. She drove with Sarah to see Georgie in the evening, her head aching, her eyes and fingers
sore, but her smile was warm though he looked no better – and so quiet.

They sat and she knitted because he liked it, but her hands were sore as the wool rasped and rubbed. She dressed his stump again, soaking the old dressing, easing it, feeling his pain as though it were her own. Her hands were trembling, the air was heavy, the smell of healing flesh strong. She tried not to breathe, then to take shallow gasps. Don’t rush, you’ll hurt him. Don’t rush, whatever you do don’t rush. There, it was done.

She took the soiled dressings to the sluice, putting them in the waste, the dishes in the sluice, leaning against the wall, then putting water on her face, more and more. She was tired, that was all.

She sat with him, knitting, always knitting, until eight-thirty.

‘Sarah must get to bed, she has school, my love,’ she told him, though he was sleeping again.

‘He’ll be all right, you’re doing fine,’ Dr Smythe told her and she wanted to scream because if she was doing fine, why wasn’t he improving?

She worked when Sarah was in bed, and the same again the next day, but only after her visit, and the next, and still the orders were pouring in and she should have felt excited, pleased, but she didn’t because still he was not thriving and exhaustion was clawing at her. Now she couldn’t get the smell of the dressings out of her head, and when she grabbed at an hour’s sleep she dreamt and woke herself up chanting ichi, ni, san, yong.

On Saturday there were more orders, many more orders, and they opened, stamped, entered, banked, then Tom sent her to the hospital because they could sew, package and check between them, he said.

‘Now scoot.’

As she drove she talked to Sarah about the fields of ripening wheat they passed, of the villages they drove through, of Bill Haley’s new song which Sarah loved, of the need for a
catalogue that they could send out with the orders to save on advertising costs.

‘I must get Tom to design some more sets. We could extend our range.’

‘I wonder how Dad is?’

‘Better, much better I think. Do you think we should have a catalogue?’ Annie asked because she didn’t want to think of Georgie’s despair which she couldn’t touch, or the dressings she must do yet again.

‘Oh I don’t know, Mum, I just want to see Dad.’

There was silence in the car. Yes, I want to see him too. I’m just tired, she thought and her hands felt slippery on the wheel. She wiped her left one on her skirt.

It was as though the car drove itself now, down the drive, parking near Adcock’s reserved space. It was as though her feet knew their own way to his room, it was as though her smile flicked on independently as her eyes took in the darkness in his, the flatness of his voice. Her hands became busy and they were nothing to do with her, soaking the dressings, peeling them, redressing. They washed themselves in the sluice, again and again, then dried themselves, again and again.