The Dandelion Clock

by Guy Burt

  ‘Wait for me!’ I call, and then launch myself into the water along with them, curling up like a depth-charge and squeezing my eyes shut for the impact. When I surface, the water around me effervescent with tiny bubbles from the splash, they are swimming back towards me, Anna grinning, Jamie looking irritated but not angry.

  ‘We’ll do it again, if you like,’ she says. ‘Proper start. Alex can judge.’

  ‘Well – all right,’ Jamie says. Then he grins too. ‘You’re pretty fast for a girl.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘I’ll judge,’ I say.

  Jamie says, ‘All right, then. Let’s do it right, if we’re going to do it. Alex, you say three, two, one, go. OK?’

  ‘OK,’ I say.

  ‘And get over near the rock so you can see the finish properly.’

  He and Anna scramble out of the water while I scull my way towards the finish post. I haven’t seen much of girls except at school, and I squint at Anna’s figure as she and Jamie stand ready to dive. Side by side, their bodies are a lot alike; something I register with a vague sense of approval.

  ‘Three, two, one, go!’

  We swim for over an hour, making regular trips to the promontory to jump in. The water is cool enough to take the heat of the walk from us, but warm enough that we’re never cold, even standing dripping on the beach. After a time we gather together on one of the big flat rocks of the shore, getting our breath back and letting the sun dry the salt on our skin.

  I notice Anna looking up at the cliff where it hangs out over the water. ‘What is it?’

  ‘I was just looking,’ she says. ‘See there?’

  ‘What?’

  She points. ‘There’s a ledge,’ she says. ‘Like a little shelf. See it?’

  I’m not sure. ‘I think so,’ I say.

  Jamie is looking too. ‘Yeah, I think so,’ he says. ‘What about it?’

  ‘I think I could get up there,’ Anna says. ‘Wouldn’t it be great to dive from?’

  ‘You couldn’t get up there,’ Jamie says uncertainly.

  ‘Yes I could. It’s not so hard. There’s plenty of places to hold on.’

  ‘Isn’t it too high?’ I ask, worried.

  Jamie is looking harder, now. His brow is furrowed with thought, and I know he is working things out, imagining how he would make the climb, running through it all in his head. I wait and let him finish.

  ‘Maybe you’re right,’ he says slowly. ‘I think I can see a way.’

  ‘Told you.’

  ‘But isn’t it too high?’ I ask again.

  Jamie shakes his head slowly. ‘No, I don’t think so. It’s like the big diving board in Salerno, maybe. And the sea’s that deep, isn’t it?’

  ‘What are you so worried about?’ Anna says impatiently.

  ‘You’ve got to be careful,’ I say importantly. ‘Someone at school dived into the shallow end of a swimming pool by mistake. He broke his nose and broke out all his front teeth. And he got – that thing. Concussion. He could’ve drowned.’

  ‘Well, the water’s a lot deeper here,’ she says. ‘Come on. Let’s do it.’

  Jamie says, ‘Alex is right. We’ve got to be careful. I’ll go first and see. Then if it’s safe you can go.’

  ‘Of course it’s safe,’ she says.

  ‘Well, I’ll go first anyway. To make sure.’ Jamie stands, and picks his way carefully across the jumbled pile of rocks at the base of the cliff. Anna and I follow him a little way. When he reaches the junction of rockfall and cliff, he turns back for a moment and waves. Then he turns his body and his attention to the cliff surface. He moves carefully but quite quickly, choosing where he puts his feet and hands with his easy precision, pulling himself up the rock until he can get one foot onto a horizontal lip which follows one of the sandwiched layers running through the cliff. He shuffles patiently along this while we follow his progress from the beach. At last he is able to lower himself the eighteen inches or so down to the ledge. Once there, he turns round and waves again.

  I wave back, and turn to see if Anna is doing the same. She is frowning, though, staring at Jamie.

  ‘What?’ I say.

  ‘That’s not where I meant,’ she says, sounding cross.

  Jamie puts his arms up and bends his knees and casts himself into the air. He is in shadow on the ledge, but halfway through the downward arc of the dive his body is caught by the sunlight, suddenly startlingly bright before it slices into the surface of the water. Three long seconds pass, and he surfaces ten yards away, grinning, his hair plastered down over his head.

  ‘It’s really great!’ he shouts.

  Anna waits until he’s swum back to shore. ‘That’s not where I meant,’ she says.

  Jamie looks puzzled. ‘That’s the only place there is.’

  ‘No. Up there.’ She is pointing again. Jamie moves close to her to follow the line of her arm, and he frowns sharply. I am trying to see also, and at last I do: another ledge, higher and much smaller than the one Jamie has reached.

  ‘That’s far too high,’ he says after a moment. ‘I mean, that’d kill you.’

  ‘Wouldn’t, I bet.’

  ‘The bottom here’s all rock, not sand,’ he says. ‘And it’s not so far down right by the cliff. It’s deeper in the middle there, but not at the cliff.’ His tone is patient.

  ‘I bet I could get up there,’ she says.

  ‘Well, probably you could get up there,’ he says. ‘But you couldn’t dive. It’s too high. It’s twice as far up as the other place.’

  Anna looks from one part of the cliff to the other, and gradually acceptance comes into her face.

  ‘You’re right,’ she says at last. ‘OK. But it was good from that one?’

  Jamie grins again. ‘Yeah. You got to try it. You too, Alex.’

  ‘Yeah!’

  ‘Me first,’ Anna says. We watch as she climbs over the rocks and follows the path Jamie has taken. The way she moves is different to Jamie, I realize. When I watch Jamie I always feel safe; know that everything he does has been thought through carefully and will be all right. Anna’s movements are easy, casual like Jamie’s, but they make me tense watching her: as she makes her way up the cliff, I am always afraid she will fall. But she never does; not navigating the change from scree to cliff; not when edging along the little lip of rock; not when letting herself down into place. All the time I am watching, it is as if she is on the edge of falling, but she never does.

  She turns and waves and waits a second. Then she kicks away from the rock and drops cleanly to the water. It is a good dive, almost as good as Jamie’s. A few moments later she surfaces, gasping and laughing.

  ‘It’s good!’ I hear her call.

  ‘Me now!’

  ‘Go on,’ Jamie says. ‘I’ll tell you where to go.’

  We climb the cliff, and dive, and climb again, until we’re exhausted. The beach is bakingly hot, the rocks painful to touch at first, and it isn’t long before we’re dried off. Jamie looks at his watch regretfully.

  ‘We ought to go back soon,’ he says.

  We get dressed, brushing the grit from between our toes before we put our socks back on, and start along the little path that leads back to the harbour.

  ‘I like this place,’ Anna says.

  ‘It’s great,’ I agree. ‘We come here lots.’

  She’s staring around her as she walks, taking in the cliffs and the sea and the sky as if it is all completely foreign to her – as if she’s never seen sunlight or water before. ‘Yes,’ she says quietly.

  Seawater has made me thirsty. ‘I want a drink,’ I say. ‘We could buy Cokes.’

  Jamie searches his pockets. ‘I’ve enough,’ he says. He has the change from our sandwiches. ‘But the store shuts soon.’

  ‘We could go to Toni’s,’ I say.

  ‘It costs more there. We don’t have enough for that.’

  ‘Oh.’

  He looks at his watch. ‘I could run there,’ he says. ‘And wait for you.
’

  Anna and I glance at one another. ‘Yeah, OK,’ she says.

  ‘I’ll wait for you by the signpost tree.’

  ‘OK,’ I say. I know where he means: a big old tree by a roundabout on the edge of the town with signs nailed up on its trunk, pointing the distances and directions of five or six little villages.

  Jamie takes off at once, quite slowly at first, but then quickening his pace in long, even strides. He can run much faster than I can ever hope to. It isn’t long before he’s out of sight around the curve of the land.

  ‘He’s fast,’ Anna says, sounding impressed.

  ‘Yeah,’ I say. I wish, suddenly, that I have something I can do as well as that, which would impress her as well. Then she stops, frowning, her hands going to her pockets.

  ‘Oh no.’

  ‘What?’ I say.

  ‘My watch. I haven’t got it. It must be back on the beach.’ She hesitates, glancing first in the direction Jamie has gone, then back towards the cove. ‘It was a present. I’ve got to get it.’

  ‘OK,’ I say.

  ‘Look, I know the way back. You go on and tell Jamie I’ll be late. I won’t be long. Well, not very. I might have to look for it.’

  ‘I can help,’ I say.

  ‘No, it’s OK. I know where it should be. He’ll worry if we’re too long, but if you tell him, it’ll be OK.’

  ‘Oh. Yeah. All right,’ I say.

  ‘Thanks,’ she says with a quick smile. ‘See you in a bit.’ She turns, and half-runs away down the path the way we’ve come.

  I stand there feeling suddenly lonely, and then start to trudge on towards town. I go slowly, thinking vaguely to myself that she may catch me up and keep me company if I’m not too quick. But as I walk, a doubt comes over me. Anna has said that she’s left her watch on the beach; and there’s something about that which is wrong.

  I can remember her watch – can remember how it looks when she tilts her arm to check the time earlier in the afternoon. It’s half-past three, she says. There’s ages. In my head I see the sun glitter on the watch face against the pale brown of her arm, the tiny hairs there bleached straw-blond by the sun.

  * * *

  There is a glitter in the corner of my eye as we walk back towards Altesa. I am thirsty; the thought comes to me that we could buy Cokes. Jamie has money, I know; what’s left from the sandwiches. Anna is walking on Jamie’s other side, her arms swinging slightly. Almost out of my vision in the bright afternoon light comes an intermittent glitter, a sparkling of light on metal.

  ‘I’m thirsty,’ I say.

  She hasn’t left the watch back at the beach; she has been wearing it further back along this path. I’ve seen it on her wrist.

  Even now, it doesn’t cross my mind for a moment that she might have deliberately deceived me, that she might have slipped the watch off and pocketed it in the same motion which I have taken to be her checking her jeans for it. I just think that it must have come off her arm some way back along the path, and that now, searching for it on the beach, she’ll never find it. I have to go back and tell her.

  I trot back, keeping alert in case I spot the thing on the way, but the path is bare. At last I reach the corner that leads to the beach, and something here makes me pause. I can see the beach where we have been, but Anna isn’t there. I frown. Suddenly I feel apprehensive, as if maybe I shouldn’t have come back after all.

  I shuffle around the shoulder of sandstone, keeping in close to the protective shadow of the cliff for some reason I can’t quite explain to myself. There is a dash of colour on one of the massive stones at the foot of the cliff. Anna’s clothes.

  I look at once to the diving ledge we’ve discovered, and sure enough, she is there beside it, pressed against the cliff face, feeling with one foot for a hold. She obviously wants one more dive before going back home. I wonder briefly why she hasn’t just said so.

  Two things about her strike me at the same time. The first is that this time she has taken all her clothes off. Her body looks much paler against the cliff, in shadow, than it does in the sun. The second thing is that she is climbing the wrong way – past the point where she should be easing her way along, ready to drop down to the ledge. Instead she is climbing upwards and to one side. Her movements are determined, focused, and I know now that she is aiming for the higher ledge, the one she had seen at first, but which Jamie has said will kill us.

  I find I have gripped hold of the rocky surface beside me with both hands, as if perhaps my grip will help to hold her as well. I want to scream at her, to yell Come down! – but I can’t. The air is on fire in my lungs, but it is frozen there, too. There is nothing I can do.

  She makes it to the ledge. I see her straighten and glance quickly around the cove. She pauses for a minute – getting her breath back after the climb. She looks very small at this distance, diminished by the vast presence of the cliff, and for a long moment I am sure she is going to edge her way back down again. She has to; it’s the only way.

  Then she throws herself off, hands pointed, doubled up for a moment before straightening. She seems to hang in the air for one interminable, vertiginous second, as if suspended. The sun catches her as it has caught Jamie, but for longer – infinitely longer. My stomach has contracted into a fierce knot of tension. And then she breaks the surface of the sea and vanishes.

  The knot in me becomes an awful slackness, as if everything in my belly has turned to lukewarm water in an instant. My eyes are fixed on the surface of the sea, unmoving, unable to blink. Seconds go by and the waves lap slowly at the pebbles of the shore. Somewhere far off, a sea bird calls and another answers it.

  Then her head comes up, and after a second I hear a shrill cry. I think She’s hurt – she’s hurt herself – and then she shouts again, a long whoop of exhilaration and release. For a minute or more she floats there on the calm surface of the water, shouting at the top of her voice at the echoing cliffs of the empty cove, and laughing, and shouting again. At last, she swims slowly to the shore and walks up the beach.

  I am still holding the rock, though I find I can breathe again. It is only with difficulty I can make my hands open. The palms are impressed with little grains of sand and the shapes of the strata they’ve held. I pull myself further back into shadow, but I can’t stop watching her. She turns slow circles on the beach, her hands out from her sides, letting the sun and the air dry her. She must have known that waiting for clothing to dry would take much longer – too long – might give her away; that is why she’s made the climb naked. Gradually, the terrible anticipation of watching her climb too far up the cliff is wearing off, and my stomach is starting to feel more normal. From my hidden place by the rock I watch Anna turning round and round, her face lifted towards the sun. I stare at those parts of her which were covered before, and I see that in one place at least, her body is very different to Jamie’s.

  Then she begins to draw her clothes on, and with a slight lurch I realize that she will be where I’m standing in a matter of minutes. I have to go.

  Forcing my legs into an unsteady obedience, I run awkwardly and irregularly back along the path, running to get as far away as possible before she catches me up. Whatever it was that made her go back, she clearly meant it to be a secret; this, coupled with a nebulous fear that I can’t pin down, spurs me on. I want very much to preserve the myth that she has gone back for her watch, and that I have walked on along the path. Admitting to anything else feels somehow dangerous, like playing with something you don’t understand. I keep running until I’m out of breath and have a stitch and have to slow down; but by this time, I’m a long way along the path.

  She catches me up just outside the town, and we meet Jamie together.

  ‘Where have you been?’ he says. ‘You were ages.’

  ‘I forgot my watch,’ Anna says. ‘I had to go back. Alex was supposed to come and tell you.’ She glances at me. ‘What took you so long?’

  ‘I – don’t know,’ I say. ‘I just walked.�
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  Jamie says, ‘Oh, Alex is no good with things like that. If you leave him alone he goes dreamy. He’s probably been sitting doing that half the time.’ He grins. ‘He’s mad,’ he adds.

  Anna looks at me curiously. ‘Really?’

  ‘Well, a bit,’ Jamie says.

  ‘Yeah,’ she says. ‘Why not. Do you have the Cokes?’

  Jamie has kept them in the shade, and they’re still cool. We drink them thirstily as we head home.

  Jamie’s party is great fun, with a little crowd of children from school – mainly his year, of course – and also some other relatives of his. There are decorations and ice-cream and games in the garden which we all enjoy until we feel tired and happy and slightly sick. I don’t see much of Anna at the party. I have the vague impression that she keeps away from the crowds much of the time, and towards the end she vanishes from view. Jamie’s torch is silver, and twisting a ring set into its handle cycles through the colours. It comes in a neat cardboard box and there are several sets of extra batteries. I give him a little pocket-knife that I’ve saved for, with a black handle and two blades. I test how sharp it is before I wrap it, and cut my finger badly enough to need a plaster.

  The day after the party, when all that’s left of it are a few damp paper streamers in the garden, Jamie comes to find me.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘It’s Anna,’ he says.

  ‘What about her?’

  He’s quiet for a moment. ‘Do you like her?’ he says.

  I think for a second. ‘She’s OK,’ I say. ‘You know. For a girl.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Jamie says. ‘I s’pose.’

  ‘Why? Don’t you?’

  ‘Well, yes.’

  ‘So what is it?’

  He says, ‘She wants to stay for longer. She says she doesn’t want to go home.’