Smack

by Melvin Burgess

  You poor brat, you’ve been brainwashed. Look, drugs are fun. They make you feel good, that’s all. Sure, they’re powerful, that’s why they’re dangerous. So’s life. If you’re in control, then it’s okay.

  They never dare tell you that, of course. It’s not because they want to keep you off drugs. Oh no, they like it, they want you to. They just want to make sure you take the ones they want you to take. It’s all part of the big mind control. Tobacco, booze, medicine—good; hash, acid, junk—bad.

  You think about it. What’s that row of little bottles in your mum’s medicine cabinet? How many is she on a day? How often do you reckon she’s clean—once every three months when the prescription runs out and she toddles off down to the doctor and gets some more? Medication, they call it. Thanks, I can prescribe for myself, I don’t need no experts telling me what’s good for me.

  What about Cousin John puffing his way through twenty fags a day, filling the air with his poison, breathing all over his baby and watching it cough and having a good laugh about it. What about your dad, going to the pub every night for three or four or five pints? It’d be an education to take a scan of what his insides look like after thirty years of that. You don’t know what goes on after you’re safely tucked up in bed. Ever hear the clink and ring of a bottle on glass after lights out? Take a look at the drinks cabinet and see.

  Then one day they catch you with a joint in your hand and it’s, “Oh my God, she’s on drugs”…and then it’s the police, social workers, tell the school, teachers checking your eyes in the morning, into care, and before you know it you’re going crazy and all their worst dreams come true.

  It’s all mind control. The tobacco companies, the drug companies, the booze companies—they’ve got it sewn up. It’s all right to take the stuff they churn out. Tobacco—makes you look cool. You’re going to look pretty cool in an oxygen tent with your legs cut off. Go to the doctor. Here, take this, take that, this’ll make you feel better. Meanwhile they’re dumping all the stuff that doesn’t work on the third world and you wake up one morning and your baby’s got no arms and one eye in the middle of its neck.

  No thanks.

  Yeah, I like to smoke a little hash. I like to breathe in a little smack. It makes me feel good.

  I got to admit, heroin’s the best. I mean, THE BEST. The others, well…Acid, your thoughts come alive and they start to live a life of their own. Hash, your senses sort of wake up. But with heroin, ahhh. You can just sit in a sewer all day and be soooo happy and feel soooo good.

  Chasing the dragon…yeah. It’s like Chinese magic. That smoke, that’s your Chinese dragon, and when you breathe that dragon in and he coils about in your veins, like Lily said, you feel better than anyone else ever did. You feel better than Churchill after he won the war, you feel better than the caveman when he discovered fire, you feel like Romeo did when he finally got to bed with Juliet.

  That’s why it’s dangerous. You have to be strong to feel that good, because after a while you have to open the door again and step out and…go to work or ring up your mum or whatever. You almost don’t dare to do it because it’s one hundred million dollars of feeling good. You don’t dare take it just to escape because when you get back, you might not like it much. Yeah…to do heroin, you’ve got to have a life.

  No, really, it is dangerous. Even I know that. Rob and Lily used to have a thing. That was before they came to Bristol, when they were still living in Manchester. They got into a bit of a mess up there, especially Rob. He had a hard time for a bit but he managed to kick it on the head. He’d been clean for a month when we moved in.

  Lily—well, she’s something else. Rob says she used to take loads and loads in Manchester. Then when she saw how he was in a mess, they both packed up and went to Bristol and she went right off it, no problem at all. Then once he was clean again, she started up just like that. Now she takes loads and loads again. She frightens me, she takes so much. She says that’s because she’s stronger than anyone else. Well, she is.

  Actually, Rob was never addicted to the heroin. It was the needles—jacking up. He had a thing about sticking the needle into his arm and pushing down the plunger. He used to do it with gin and vodka; he even used to do it with water when he hadn’t got anything else. But that was before we all got together. Things are different now. Sure, heroin’s strong. But we’re stronger. You have to be able to stop and start when you want to. Like, we do a bit, or we have a little binge and then we lay off for a few days, or a week. We all gave up for a week once, me and Lily and Tar and Rob. We just said right, that’s it, no more for a few weeks. And we did it. I could do it again tomorrow.

  We dug the garden, Tar got on with his dandelion. He’s doing a really huge one on the wall of our bedroom. When we first moved in he started on it straight away. When it’s finished it’s going to take up a whole wall. You should see it—dense black in the back and these amazing arrows of yellow and orange.

  “That’s you,” he says, colouring in a petal. He still says that to me sometimes—you know, dandelion. He whispers it to me at night when we’re cuddled up. Only I don’t say ladybird back any more. I say, dandelion. Dandelion, dandelion. I love you.

  He’d stopped doing it for a while, but when we gave up junk for that week he almost finished it. And Rob got on with his motorbike. It had been lying in bits on the floor ever since we moved in; he hadn’t touched it. Then he got stuck in and he got the wheels on and the engine in place. Pretty soon, we’ll pack it in again and then he’ll finish it, I expect.

  It wasn’t difficult, coming off. I could do it again any time. So long as I feel like that I know it’s all right.

  Tar

  It’s a beautiful winter’s day.

  Here in Bristol you don’t get much frost. The sea gets channelled up the Bristol Channel and keeps us all moist and cool. But these past couple of days it’s been really cold. Yesterday there were tiny little frost crystals on all the walls and the twigs and branches. There’s a lot of trees in this town. Today there was another frost and all yesterday’s crystals had more crystals growing up them, like fairy land. Ice flowers everywhere you look. I went out as soon as I realised. I stood looking for hours.

  Me and Rob and Sal went out and made a slide down Richmond Road. It was already so slippery we had trouble walking up it. Once we got to the top, you could sit on a piece of cardboard and slide for miles down into the square at the bottom. We were at it all morning. We got Gemma out, and Col. Even Lily came out in the end. We forgot everything. Then this old black guy went past and started on at us for making the pathway dangerous and Lily lost her temper as usual.

  “Son of the morgue! Sod off and die!” she yelled at the poor old bloke. Lily really knows how to turn a good insult.

  Lily doesn’t go out so much any more. “Too many straights,” she says. She used to do the shops with us in the summer but we don’t have to do that so much now. Me and Rob do quite a bit of dealing these days. Not to make money, we never have much money, but just enough so we can buy some smokes and some hash and a little junk from time to time. You can shoplift most things but it isn’t clever to try and pinch drugs. Apart from anything else, they usually belong to your friends.

  Dealing’s okay, it’s a business. You go round and visit your friends, buy a little, sell a little, take a little. We usually have enough money left over to get food and stuff, so we don’t have to do so much shoplifting. That’s nice, because although it’s fun, it wears you down if you have to do it every day. Rob’s sixteen, he can sign on. Lily’ll be sixteen in a few months but meanwhile we only get what we make ourselves.

  I really got into the shoplifting for a while. I got Gemma to sew these big pockets into my coat so I could really stuff myself with things.

  I used to walk into the supermarket thin and walk out again fat. I even used to try and keep up with Rob, which was dangerous, really, because he’s in another class.

  Rob’s been at it since he was a kid. He used to train f
or it. He grew up in tepees and trailers and lorries. He’d get up in the night and go into someone’s tepee, and then he’d crawl round inside, hiding behind the chairs and the table and dashing out across the open spaces while they weren’t looking. Can you imagine?

  “Practising,” he says. For shoplifting, see? And he never got caught either.

  Yeah, the summer was beautiful. Now it’s winter, it’s cold. I suppose you wouldn’t expect it to be so good.

  I remember those nights out in the garden by the fire. They really were the summer for me. Big bonfires—we kept them going all night. Whenever it got low someone’d toddle out and find some wood in a skip. There was the swing. Did you hear about that swing? Rob and I built it up in the big sycamore tree at the end of the garden. Huge great tree, its roots were breaking up the wall on the other side, tearing out stones and rubble…

  Anyway, we climbed up and cut off the branches to fit this swing in. We had to fight Lily about it, she went mad, she said we were mutilating her tree. She went on and on about it, but when we’d finished it, she loved it. It was one great long piece of rope, must have been five yards long, with a cross-piece of wood at the bottom. You had to go right back to the other end of the garden pulling the rope after you, right up on top of the little shed…then you let go…

  It was amazing! Not just how long it was, but because you went right out beyond the garden and over the road. People’d be walking along or driving or on their bikes and they’d hear this whoosh of air overhead like some giant eagle or something was coming down. And there’d be someone flying out above their heads! We used to do it with no clothes on. Stark naked. People used to almost crash their cars. It was such a gas. You can imagine—you’re driving along and then suddenly this naked girl appears howling and flying through the air.

  We were all in love with one another. We were in love with ourselves. We still are. And me and Gemma of course.

  When she took me back in I was so happy. I was just so happy. I really felt like I’d arrived, I belonged. We were just all over each other. I was nervous at first that she’d want a bit more freedom in the next few days, but it wasn’t like that at all. She’d really missed me. She didn’t realise until I’d gone. She wanted me so much. And then when I came back, she was in love with me as much as I was in love with her. It was a miracle. In the summer we’d sit next to one another for hours and hours, by the fire holding hands, and I was so grateful and happy that it had worked out.

  I still love her, but it’s different now. I don’t need her any more, you know. If she chucked me now, I’d still be really upset, but I know that I’d get on with my life. Back then, it felt like the end of the world.

  Maybe that’s the difference with me these days. I used to get this feeling that life was rushing past me and I had to grab hold of it or I’d lose everything. But when I moved here, I remember thinking, I’m in control now. It was the first time I felt I had my life in my own hands. There I was scrabbling and struggling to keep things together. These days, I just let go of them. And it isn’t me who falls. It’s the rest of the world that goes away—up or down, I don’t know. Just away.

  The trouble with the dealing is, there’s always drugs about so you tend always to take them. But I’m glad we don’t have to do so much thieving. We had a couple of close calls, actually. There was this one time we ran out of booze, so Rob and Col decided to go and do an off licence. I went along, I don’t know why. They’d done it before but this sort of thing was brand new to me.

  We got to the place. Rob whips out this brick—and crash, straight through the window. Then the alarm; it crashed about, it was terrible. I thought the whole world would be on top of us. We all dived in. I was a bit slow, I’m always a bit slow. I was too busy watching up and down the street but the other two dived in and grabbed bottles as fast as they could. But it was a good job I was a bit slow, because then I saw a cop coming. This cop was haring up the road, he must have been just around the corner. I yelled, “Pigs!” and everyone charged out and up the road, dropping cans of beer and smashing bottles of wine.

  We made it to a railway cutting, up the side and into the trees. The policeman waited at the top of the ridge. We heard the police cars wailing up the road, screeching to a halt. Then it was a manhunt!

  They roadblocked the two sides of the cutting. They had men up and down the side. I mean, fifty quid’s worth of booze and they had this operation that must have cost thousands. If they’d given me half that money, I’d never commit another crime for months. They even had a loudspeaker.

  “We know you’re in there…come on out, lads, and we’ll see what we can do for you.”

  Yeah, sure.

  We were hiding in the shrubbery, giggling. Actually, I got a bit panicky at one point and I thought we’d better give ourselves up. You know how they go on: It’ll be better for you, the magistrate will think better of you if you do this, we’re going to get the dogs now…

  But Col and Rob knew better. They’d been up to this sort of thing all their lives. We just sat tight. After a bit the pigs got bored, or they decided we’d legged it. So they went. And after they went, we went too.

  I was scared shitless, actually, but it was fun looking back on it. We don’t do that sort of thing these days. It’s too risky. If they came to our homes, it’d be serious. Apart from the fact that I do a little dealing, it would really do Lily in. She’s in a bit of a mess, if you ask me, although no one says anything about it.

  I dunno, perhaps she knows what she’s doing. Sometimes I do really honestly think she has special powers. She thinks she does. You know that book they got me? We’ve still got it. I keep it in a drawer. In the drawer there’s a cutlery box we found in a skip, an old one made of wood with a silk lining. Inside there’s this piece of silk, a scarf or something. It’s really old. We found that in a skip too. It’s wonderful. It might be seventy or even a hundred years old or more. Someone wore it when they were young and beautiful in the nineteen twenties or further back. Then they got old and kept it tucked away because it was full of memories. Then they died and the people who came after threw it out.

  But we found it, so it isn’t wasted. And wrapped in the silk is the book. Lily calls it the Sky Bible because of that remark I made when I first saw it. Rob kept repeating it. “It must be like owning the sky.”

  Lily lights incense sticks and candles, and fills the room with smoke and candlelight. Then she takes the book out very slowly, very carefully.

  “Sky Bible, what we gonna do today?”

  And she lets the book fall open. Last time it was a piccy of a naked woman. Not young, quite old and baggy. She was sitting on an armchair smoking a cigarette and looking out of the window. All the smoke was coiling around the place. She wasn’t pretty or anything but the photograph was really beautiful. I thought so anyway.

  “What’s it mean, Lily?” asked Gemma.

  Rob said, “Have sex in an armchair?” He’s a bit irreverent about it, it annoys Lily.

  Lily screws up her eyes and thinks carefully. Then she says, “Nah. It says, we gotta do some heroin today…”

  Everyone fell about laughing. But she really meant it, she got quite annoyed.

  “Strange, that’s what it said last time,” I said.

  Lily patted it. “The Sky Bible knows how to have a good time,” she intoned.

  I could never work out if it’s a game or not. But I think if anyone’s magic, Lily is. It’s funny—sometimes she’s dead against any sort of hocus pocus, other times she acts like she’s the Queen Witch. You never know what’s going on with Lily. She worries me sometimes. She thinks that whatever she happens to be thinking is fantastic. And the problem with Gemma is, she thinks whatever Lily is thinking is fantastic.

  I tried to talk about it to Gemma the other day, but she just got annoyed. She thought I was getting scared, told me I ought to lay off the junk. I’m not worried about it for myself, I never take smack two days on the trot, just to show myself. But I do wo
rry about Gemma. I can take it or leave it, but she never says no.

  It’s one of the problems that we all do the same kind of thing. There’s always one of us wants a chase. Of course we never use needles, we’ve got more sense than that…but I might want to have a break but Gemma’ll feel like she wants some. Or if both me and her decide to have a break, Lily’ll turn up or Rob will or Sally…

  You sort of infect one another like that.

  It’ll be all right. I just have to remember I got away from my mum and dad. If I can escape from that, I can escape from anything.

  Gemma

  One day I’m going to have babies. One day I’m gonna move to the country and grow flowers and vegetables. Maybe I’ll have a little flower shop. Maybe I’ll sell the things I grow. And in the summer when I need to get off my head I’ll go round the festivals and meet all my friends.

  One day. But right now, I’m a city girl. It’s all here, in this half a square mile. You can stuff your face on it. You can just bend down and pick it up, anything you like.

  In the city, you gotta have money. For the first six months we lived off nothing but after that…well, you need money to do everything. You need money for the bus, to go to bops, to buy yourself things. The only thing is, you gotta find an easy way of making it. Work in the factory for forty hours a week? No thanks, I’d rather be skint at home.

  Money’s easy, that’s another thing Lily taught me. It was—I dunno—last spring? We were all really skint. We’d been having a bit of a binge that week, too much really, but it’s nice to do too much once in a while.

  We’d had a couple of grams at the beginning of the week. Then Sal came round. It was about the time she’d given Col the elbow and she was missing him but she didn’t want to take him back. She’d been away visiting her brother in Manchester so she’d been clean for a week and she as gasping. She bought a couple of grams. We always share everything, so we got through that lot together.