by Guy Burt
‘Oh, three years, nearly,’ Jamie says. ‘What about you?’
‘Yes. I’m a musician,’ he says. ‘I play – saxophone. Tenor. It’s a big instrument. Heavy, too. You’ll know that if you carried it any distance.’
Jamie looks blank for a moment, and then nods quickly.
The man’s eyes sweep round us. I watch them, fascinated by the changing colours, held by their sudden sharpness. He says, ‘Jamie. Anna. Alex. That’s right, isn’t it?’
‘How do you know our names?’ Jamie says, sounding panicky.
The man grunts a half-laugh. ‘You said them before, remember? You were talking to each other. And I asked Alex his,’ he adds, nodding at me. ‘So. Jamie, Anna and Alex. I want to thank you for helping me so much. But I think perhaps I may have to ask you to help me some more.’
Anna nods. ‘We know,’ she says. She reaches to me and I hand her the pillowcase. She tips it up and the contents tumble out onto the floor. ‘This is all we could get straight away,’ she says. She spreads the empty pillowcase on the dusty floor and sorts through the items, putting them neatly into rows on the linen. ‘Jamie?’
Jamie opens the shopping bag he’s brought. In it is bread and bottles of water, a big stick of salami sausage, some fruit and cotton wool.
Anna says, ‘We can get more. We didn’t know quite what to get. This seemed like the best stuff to bring.’
The hermit looks at the accumulation of provisions and medications wordlessly for a time. His brow is lined with an expression that is partly pain from his leg, but also something else which I can’t properly identify; as if he’s trying to solve a puzzle in his head, maybe. Then the look clears a little. He glances up at Jamie and me.
‘Jamie and Alex,’ he says. ‘English names, yes?’
‘Yes,’ Jamie says.
‘Your Italian is very good,’ he says. ‘I wouldn’t be able to tell if it weren’t for the names.’ He takes a breath. ‘You’re sure no-one saw you come here?’
‘Yeah,’ Jamie says. ‘Nobody ever comes here any more.’
‘All the same,’ the man says. ‘Could you two go and check outside? Just have a look round the building – maybe have a look at the tracks and so on. Just to make sure.’
‘OK,’ I say. The idea of getting out of the murky chapel is appealing. I am beginning to think I am able to smell the metallic tang of the blood on the hermit’s clothing.
Jamie, though, doesn’t seem so eager to leave. ‘Anna?’ he says. ‘You come too.’
‘That’s all right,’ the hermit says easily. ‘Anna can tell me all about these things you’ve brought me.’
‘Anna,’ Jamie says. There’s a detectable urgency in his voice. ‘Come on.’
Anna gets up and the three of us go over to the door. Once there, though, she stops, and drops her voice to a whisper.
‘Just go and look round,’ she hisses. ‘It’s OK. I’ll be fine.’
‘We shouldn’t leave each other alone with him,’ Jamie says, slightly desperately. ‘You don’t know what might happen.’
‘Don’t be silly. Just go and check like he says.’
‘There’s nobody there,’ Jamie says. ‘You know that.’
‘For God’s sake,’ she says, angrily. ‘Don’t be so wet.’
Jamie flushes at the insult, but he stays where he is. ‘It’s not safe,’ he says.
‘Yes it is.’ She softens her tone a bit. ‘Look. Only a couple of minutes, all right? What’s the harm in that? Then you can come straight back.’
‘Why are you taking his side?’ Jamie says. ‘We don’t know anything about him.’
Anna shrugs. ‘He won’t do anything. We’re looking after him. He needs us.’
Some logic in this makes sense to Jamie. He hesitates still, but Anna takes his arm and gently pushes him out the side door. The light outside has changed; it’s getting to be evening.
‘We can’t stay much longer anyway,’ she says. ‘Just have a look round and check. I’ll tell him about the stuff we’ve got.’
She shuts the door after us, and Jamie and I are left standing by the side of the building, looking at each other.
‘Where should we look?’ I say.
A kind of rebellious anger takes hold of Jamie. ‘I’m not leaving,’ he says, and he squats down in the dust where he is, putting his eye to the keyhole of the door.
I glance around nervously; all the talk of being followed and checking for people has made me uneasy. Jamie shifts slightly. I say, ‘Can you see anything?’
‘Not much,’ he says. ‘I can see Anna and I can see his legs. She’s kneeling beside him again.’
‘Can you hear anything?’
‘No,’ he says.
‘What’s happening now?’
‘She’s just sitting there, I think,’ he says. ‘I can’t really see much. Maybe they’re talking.’
‘Nothing bad’s happening?’
‘No.’
‘Oh.’
‘Alex?’
‘Yeah?’
‘Do you think we’re doing the right thing?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Me neither.’
‘What’s happening now?’
‘Nothing.’
I wait while Jamie continues his observation. After a minute or so has passed, he stands up. ‘We could go back in now,’ he says.
‘We haven’t checked.’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ he says impatiently. ‘There’s no-one. I don’t know what Anna’s up to.’
‘Is she up to something?’ I ask.
‘Well, I don’t know. But she’s acting really weird, don’t you think?’
I consider this. ‘Yeah,’ I say.
‘Well then. I just wish I knew what she was doing.’
‘She always has good ideas, though,’ I say. ‘Like going to the car and stuff.’
Jamie nods reluctantly. ‘Yeah, that’s true. But why did she want to go there? It’s like she knows stuff without – without having a way to know it.’ He wanders in little aimless circles for a while. ‘It’s all really weird.’
‘Let’s go back in,’ I say.
‘OK.’ But he doesn’t go back to the door. Instead, he stops walking and stares up the valley at the hills there. He says, ‘Where d’you think he came from?’
‘I don’t know. Somewhere over the hills, I suppose.’
‘Yeah. And why did he come here?’
‘He knows Signor Ferucci,’ I say. Instinctively, my gaze darts down the valley to the distant white house on the hillside.
‘Mm.’ Jamie is lost in thought. When, after a moment or two, he shows no sign of moving, I tug at his sleeve.
‘We ought to go back in,’ I say.
‘Yeah. OK.’
We open the door quietly and slip inside the chapel again. Anna and the hermit both look up briefly. Anna is kneeling by the hermit’s side, just like Jamie has described to me. I am reassured; the hermit hasn’t hurt her or tried to hold her hostage or anything like that. In fact, it isn’t at all clear to me what, if anything, they’ve been doing. Perhaps Anna has been showing him all the things we’ve brought, just like she said she would.
She comes over to us. ‘His leg’s hurt pretty bad,’ she says.
‘Thought so.’
‘We need to put a bandage on it, I think.’
‘It’s getting late,’ Jamie says. ‘What about dinner?’
For once Anna doesn’t tell him not to be silly, or to stop being so wet. She frowns. ‘Yeah. We mustn’t let them worry. But I don’t think it’s a good idea to leave him alone.’
‘We can’t stay here all night,’ Jamie says.
‘Not all of us. But one of us could, if we were careful.’
‘How?’
She ignores the question. ‘And we need other stuff. I keep realizing. Lights of some sort. More water – we need to wash his leg, probably. Blankets and stuff. It must get really cold in here at night.’
I think about that, and
realize she’s right. The thought sends a little shiver down me.
‘That’s a lot of stuff,’ Jamie says.
‘We could do it. If we all work together.’
She’s looking straight at Jamie now, her brown eyes almost black in the dim light.
‘Please, Jamie.’
Jamie looks away, then looks back at her. Finally he nods. ‘Yeah, all right. What about dinner?’
‘You’ll have to cover for me. Is there a way to do that?’
Jamie thinks for a moment and then nods again. ‘Yeah. Yeah, we can do that. I think we can do the night thing too.’
‘Can you get back here after dinner?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Then let’s do that. I’ll stay with him for the moment, and then you guys come back. We’ll plan it all out properly then.’
‘Right,’ Jamie says. ‘You sure you’ll be OK?’
‘Yeah. You’d better get going. It’s getting late.’
Jamie and I take a final look around the darkening chapel – at the paler shape of the hermit’s figure leant against the pew back in the shadows, at the huge daubs of colour cast by the stained-glass window, at the upstretched arm of the wood and plaster Christ over by the wall. Then we duck outside, and the remains of the afternoon’s heat wash round us. We pull the door closed behind us, and I catch a quick glimpse of Anna standing there staring after us, hands by her sides, the smear of blood on her T-shirt just visible as the shadow from the moving door closes over her. Then we are completely outside, and there is no way of telling that there is anyone in the chapel at all. The afternoon is still and humming with insects, and our feet crunch drily on the grit and pine needles. Jamie looks at his watch.
‘Is there time?’ I say.
‘Only just. We’d better run,’ he says.
‘I’ve run everywhere today,’ I complain as we trot across the churchyard to the fence.
‘Yeah.’
‘Jamie?’
‘Mm?’
‘Are we really going to stay here all night?’
‘I’m not sure,’ he says. ‘Maybe. I think Anna wants to.’
‘It might be spooky,’ I say.
‘Yeah, I know. Don’t worry about it now, though.’
In the dry riverbed, we lengthen our strides and I try to keep up with Jamie’s pace.
‘Jamie?’
‘What?’
‘He’s going to be all right, isn’t he? The hermit.’
‘I hope so,’ Jamie says.
‘What if he dies?’ I say.
‘He won’t.’
‘He might die,’ I say. ‘Maybe he’ll get sick and die.’
‘That won’t happen, Alex. Don’t say things like that.’
‘It might, though.’
‘Shut up.’
We run on in silence for a while.
‘If he dies and we were supposed to look after him, are we murderers?’
‘He’s not going to die, Alex. Be quiet now. We’ve got to get home. We can talk about it after dinner, OK?’
‘OK.’
I am out of breath from the running already, but Jamie doesn’t slow down like he sometimes does. I force my legs to work harder, to keep up; and to my surprise, they somehow manage it. We jog steadily down the river towards home.
‘We’ve got blankets and sheets,’ Jamie says, laying them down. ‘And we filled these up with water. And we got candles because Alex says they never use them in his house unless there’s a power cut. And my torch. And scissors this time, but we’ve got to take them back cos Lena uses her sewing box quite a lot and she’d know if they went missing. And biscuits and comics,’ he finishes, slightly embarrassed.
Anna doesn’t seem to notice his embarrassment. ‘That’s good,’ she says quietly. ‘What happened with dinner?’
‘Oh, it was easy. We told my mum and dad we were going to Alex’s, and we told Alex’s mum and dad we were going to our house. Then we went round the back and hid.’
‘I got us food,’ I say.
‘We did the same thing with tonight,’ Jamie goes on. ‘Told them all we were staying at the other house, you know? It’s fine. Nobody minds.’
Anna grins. ‘Excellent,’ she says. ‘We could do this a lot.’
‘I don’t think so,’ Jamie says. ‘I mean, this once, yes, but if we do it more often, they’re bound to realize. All they’d have to do is go round or something and we wouldn’t be there.’
‘Oh. Shit. You’re right.’
‘We’ll have to think of something else.’
‘Yeah. We can do that later.’
‘How is he?’
A shadow of worry passes across Anna’s face. ‘He’s sleeping again,’ she says. ‘But he’s got very hot. He’s sweating.’
‘But it’s cold,’ I say.
‘I know. I think it’s bad.’
‘What do we do now?’ Jamie says.
‘I think we need to bandage his leg properly. He was going to try to do it himself when you went, but then we didn’t have scissors or anything and it hurts him a lot to move. His leg seems to have gone all stiff, so he can’t move it so easily.’
‘Oh.’
Anna says, ‘I suppose we’d better get started, then.’
* * *
There is bright sunlight on the stairs. How can there be sunlight? The chapel is dark—
The front door stands wide and bright sunlight comes through and spills up the stairs. I straighten, and for a long moment I am not sure whether this is afternoon light or morning light. My head spins a little with standing, and there are tense muscles in my legs. I stretch, breathing in deeply. I feel I could drink this sunlight.
Tools are scattered on the floor. I must have been working hard. I have my sleeves rolled up; there is plaster and dust and flakes of old paint on my forearms. There is dust on the photographs that ring the walls, too. I stink of sweat; I need a shower.
I wonder what day today is.
Time seems to have been slipping by me again without touching me properly. Things are being done, it seems, but hardly with my knowledge. I must be doing them, because I can see the house changing in front of me: a cupboard door fixed here, a loose window-frame seated properly here, a missing tap and a cracked tile replaced here and here. The house changes around me and I seem to drift through the changes, doing them but at the same time only noticing them when they’re done.
In the living room, the scene on the wall is taking form into itself, gathering substance and weight. I am almost frightened by how it is happening. Around it, framing it, are the perfectly ordered photographs whose order I know to be flawed. In London, they will be the same; but the eyes – the eyes tell me I have understood things wrongly. This is not how they should be.
I feel out of control, but there is nothing – nothing at all – I can do about it.
What day is it? It must be Monday. Or Tuesday; Tuesday at the latest.
I should call Max. I should go into town now.
The chapel keeps pulsing in and out of the corners of my perception, as if it is all about me, but hidden behind the merest fraction of a hair’s breadth. I feel the house could turn in an instant to dust, and leave me stranded in the past, with no way of getting home.
I can feel my thoughts reeling and making no sense. I try to hold onto them, to pin them down and keep them from whirling like this, but it is too difficult. I can’t move fast enough to catch them.
We should have told someone. It was Anna’s fault, what we did; it was her idea.
No. It was all our faults. It was my fault too. I was there, and I could have done something, and I didn’t. A sin of omission, then.
The paintings stare down at me from the walls, and I hardly recognize them any more.
I want to turn back the hands on the clock and change it all, make it different; three friends who build a tree house, and who meet up by chance in an old city and share a beer and laugh at old stories and old jokes. But it wasn’t like that; and the clock h
as no hands, so I can’t turn them back.
Chapter Ten
Jamie lights candles and places them in a circle around where the hermit is lying. He has his torch, too, and sets it so that it shines straight onto the hermit’s leg. The encyclopaedia is on one of the pews, held open at the pages on first aid. It is a big section, all about what to do in emergencies, and there are diagrams, too: how to give the kiss of life to a drowned man. How to make a splint for a broken bone. How to make a sling.
Anna and I crouch at the hermit’s side. He is awake again, though I can see that his face is glistening slightly in the candlelight. The shadows around his eyes look very deep now that there is no more light from the window to reflect in them.
He says, ‘You will have to bandage the leg. You understand this, yes?’
I nod. Anna says, ‘Yes.’
‘And clean it, too. That will help stop infection.’ Infection is something we’re all worried about now; the hermit has explained to us that just stopping the bleeding may not be enough. The encyclopaedia says that something called Sulfa will stop infection, but none of the bottles or packets we’ve brought has this word on them. There is a cream which Lena puts on my knees when I graze them, though, and we are going to use this instead.
‘You’ll have to cut the trouser leg, I’m afraid,’ the hermit says apologetically. ‘I don’t think I can move the leg enough to get them off.’
‘That’s OK,’ Anna says. ‘We’ve got scissors.’
The hermit takes a breath, and for a moment his gaze drifts away from Anna and out into the darkness of the chapel. Then he blinks, and seems to see her again.
‘Where was I?’ he says.
‘You said we had to cut the trousers away,’ Anna says. She glances at Jamie, who is looking worried.
‘Yes. That’s right. And then there’s this.’ He moves his hand on his thigh and I see something I haven’t noticed before. The dim lighting and the darkness of the blood staining the cloth have hidden it. The hermit has a belt wrapped around his leg, right up near the top.