by Guy Burt
‘We should come together,’ I say. Anna shakes her head.
‘No. It’s too much work like that. It’s better if it’s one of us at a time.’
Jamie says, ‘What if something goes wrong? Supposing we need help, and there’s only one of us here?’
Anna frowns. ‘I don’t know.’
We both turn to Jamie. There is a long silence, and then he says, ‘There’s a way. Here’s how we’ll do it.’
Anna and I listen attentively while he explains the system to us. At the end he says, ‘What do you think?’
‘We’re not going to be getting much sleep,’ Anna says.
‘No. But there isn’t any other way, I don’t think.’
‘Right,’ she says. ‘You’ve both got alarm clocks?’
‘Yes,’ I say. Jamie nods.
‘Then it should work.’
‘And we should synchronize our watches,’ Jamie says.
‘What’s that?’ I say.
‘Make sure they all have the same time.’
We fiddle with our watches until they’re all the same. Jamie hands Anna the torch. ‘Green for OK, red for danger,’ he says.
‘I know.’
‘What about tonight?’ I say. ‘Who stays tonight?’
‘I’ll stay,’ Anna says. ‘I don’t feel tired yet.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Yeah. You two go home. I’ll see you for breakfast.’
‘All right,’ Jamie says. Anna gets up and pushes the case back against the wall.
‘You brought comics?’ she says.
‘Yeah.’
‘At least I’ll have something to do.’
We file across the organ-loft and down the stairs. The hermit hasn’t moved. The candles in the part of the circle nearest the chapel door flutter in a draught; they’ve burnt lower than the others. Mentally I note that we’ll have to be careful to conserve our candles.
Outside, the valley is dark. There is a sprinkling of lights down towards the bay, and the stars above are hard and bright, but the land itself, and the rising hills around us, are black. There is the soft crunch and light springiness of gravel and pine needles under our feet as we walk to the end of the chapel. Anna has the torch, but it is switched off. Everything is still; not even the bats that you see in the late evening are out now.
‘What time should I start back?’ Anna asks.
Jamie says, ‘Six o’clock to be sure.’
‘OK.’
‘And remember, every hour, OK? Start at—’ He thinks for a second. ‘Start at four. We’ve got to get home.’
‘I will,’ Anna says.
We are at the end of the chapel, under the belltower. Above us, on the wall, is the dandelion clock, its shape only just visible. In daylight, it is dark against the whitewashed wall, but now everything has been leached of its contrast and identity. I catch glimpses of the clock out of the corner of my eye, but when I look straight at it, it somehow vanishes.
‘You sure you’ll be OK?’ Jamie says, his voice low.
‘Of course I will be,’ Anna says. I am expecting her to say, Don’t be so silly, but to my surprise she says, ‘Thanks.’
Jamie says, ‘We’d better go.’
‘Wait,’ Anna says.
‘What?’
She steps a little closer to us. ‘We ought to swear,’ she says. ‘Promise not to tell.’
‘Of course,’ Jamie says.
‘No. I mean – really promise. Not to tell anyone. Ever. No matter what.’
Jamie says, slowly, ‘But supposing he gets worse, and we—’
‘No,’ Anna says. ‘He’s not going to get worse. He’s going to get better. We have to swear.’
‘But Anna – he might—’
‘No,’ she says. She grabs Jamie’s wrist, and he looks down in surprise at her hand there. I can see her fingers, tight, digging into him. ‘You have to promise.’
‘Why?’ Jamie says. ‘You know we wouldn’t tell.’
‘Because sometimes you have to promise,’ she says earnestly. ‘It’s only us three that know. It has to stay like that. We have to keep the secret.’
Jamie stares at her for a moment, and then tries to shrug her hand off. He can’t. Anna holds onto him, her eyes bright and fierce again.
‘Let go,’ Jamie says.
‘You have to swear.’
Jamie looks at me helplessly. I can tell that he doesn’t know what to do. If it were another boy, I think to myself, Jamie might punch them – like that time in the playground when I was in Salerno. But Jamie doesn’t hit girls. Besides, looking at Anna’s face, it seems suddenly obvious to me that if he did, she would hit him back; and then where would we be?
Anna says, ‘You have to.’ Her voice is very quiet, but I think I can hear it tremble slightly.
I say, ‘I swear.’
Jamie glances at me in surprise. Then he blinks, and looks back at Anna. After a long moment he says, ‘OK. I swear too.’
‘Swear never to tell anyone about the hermit, for as long as you live. Swear to keep it a secret. Only us, all right?’
‘I swear,’ Jamie says.
I echo, ‘I swear.’
Anna says, ‘I swear.’
Silence steals over us. Anna seems to notice that she’s holding Jamie’s wrist still, and she lets it go suddenly. I can see the white marks of her fingers on his skin. Jamie makes a little movement as if he’s going to rub the wrist, but then changes his mind, pretends to scratch his leg instead.
Anna says, ‘Well. OK, then.’
‘Yeah,’ Jamie says. ‘We’d better get going.’
‘See you tomorrow,’ Anna says.
‘It’s today,’ Jamie grins.
‘Oh. Yeah, I suppose.’
‘Well. See you.’
She nods, and taps the torch on her leg for a moment, and then she grins too. ‘See you,’ she says, and turns and walks back round the corner of the chapel.
The department is crowded out with people. Upstairs, in the area where we usually work, there are displays of ceramics and print-making and sculpture. Downstairs there are drawings and paintings. And off in the little exhibition gallery are the three showcase walls, one of them mine.
I am dressed in the dark suit which is the proper thing to wear on days like this, though with the sunshine and all the people, the art building is baking in heat. I feel hot and uncomfortable, but also proud. My name is on the wall – Alex Carlisle – on a separate piece of card. I want to drift casually past the people looking at my pictures and hear what they’re saying, but I’m too nervous, too shy. I am terrified someone will recognize me and say something – anything. I am terrified they will be complimentary and tell me how good I am. I am terrified they will be critical. I end up skulking at a distance, stealing glances through the length of the gallery every so often.
A lot of people are looking at my stuff; more than are gathered in front of the other walls.
Mr Dalton appears and hands me a glass of wine. ‘You’re allowed one,’ he says. ‘And get something to eat while there’s still anything left. The hordes are truly ravenous.’
‘I will,’ I say. ‘Thanks.’
‘You seem to have drawn quite a crowd in there,’ he says. ‘I’m going to go and eavesdrop. See you in a bit.’
He walks casually away, stopping to chat to parents, laughing, smiling, pointing out work by boys they know. I fade further back into my corner of the room.
Suddenly I see Jamie among the people. He is walking quickly, head down, away from the display of my work. He heads out of the gallery area, and I see him near the foot of the stairs, looking around sharply. He looks almost angry; I wonder what has happened.
I hurry through the press of people into the lobby and see him by the door to the lavatories. He is scanning the crowd edgily. I make my way towards him, and at last he sees me. His expression is furious.
‘What is it?’ I say. ‘Is something wrong?’
‘Not here,’ he says. He
ducks quickly inside the door to the loos and, bemused, I follow him.
There are three cubicles and two hand basins. The cubicle doors are all open; there’s no-one here.
‘What is it?’ I say again.
He is pacing back and forth, his movements incredibly tense, as if he might shatter. He pushes a hand through his hair. His eyes are darting around the room, unable to stay still on anything.
‘Jamie,’ I say. I am casting about to try and imagine what might have done this to him – a fight of some sort? Getting into trouble? I have never seen him this angry.
I don’t know what to do. I put my hand out to touch his arm, to try and calm him, and he slaps it away violently. I am completely unprepared. I stagger back. The wine glass I’m holding in my other hand jars against the wall and shatters. The hand with which I’ve reached out stings sharply with the force of the blow.
‘Fucking hell, Alex,’ he says, not shouting, keeping his voice tightly under control, but still so angry. ‘What is that in there?’
I don’t understand him. ‘What?’ I say.
‘That – that fucking wall of stuff,’ he says. He’s pacing again now, back and forth, back and forth. ‘What’s the matter with you – are you retarded or something?’
‘I—’
‘You drew all that?’
‘I – yes—’
‘And then you put it all up on a wall so everyone can see it?’ He sounds incredulous. ‘What the fuck were you thinking?’ He rubs both hands across his face.
‘Jamie, I don’t understand.’
He stops walking and suddenly he is standing right in front of me. His fists are clenched. He says, ‘My parents are here today. Yours too, I imagine. They can go in there and they can see all that shit you’ve drawn. Christ, Alex, what’s with you? You don’t just break the promise, you paint the whole thing on big fucking canvases and stick it on a fucking wall so everyone can see it. I mean, why not put all up there? Not just the hermit and Anna – you could have everything else as well. You could have little fucking stickers saying, This is a boy I knew called Jamie and when I was twelve we went to the beach and he—’
The door opens and a younger boy comes in. I know him, vaguely; he’s often in the department but I don’t speak to him much. He stops dead, staring at us. Jamie is frozen for a moment, and then a kind of forced, artificial casualness comes over him. He takes a step away from me.
The boy says, ‘Carlisle – you’ve cut your hand.’
I look down and he’s right. There is a thin, curved cut, like a crescent, on the side of my finger. On the floor little spatters of blood twist in the spilt wine and among the scattered shards of glass.
‘It’s OK,’ I say. ‘I broke a glass.’
‘Yeah,’ Jamie mutters. ‘We should – you should wash it. Here.’ He reaches into his pocket and takes out a clean handkerchief.
‘Thanks,’ I say. I rinse the cut under the tap and dab it dry with paper from the dispenser. I wrap Jamie’s hanky round it. I am aware all the time that the younger boy is staring at us both.
Jamie says, ‘There’s glass on the floor. We’d better clear that up.’ He glances at the boy. ‘There are other loos upstairs. Use those, OK?’
‘Should I get someone?’ the boy says. He looks like he knows it’s not just a broken glass.
‘No,’ I say. ‘It’s nothing. Go on.’
He hesitates, then turns and leaves.
‘Shit,’ Jamie says quietly. He lets out a breath – a long breath. The tension is gone out of him now. ‘How’s your hand?’
‘Can’t feel it, really. I hadn’t noticed I’d done it.’
He walks to the line of cubicles and then back again, slowly. His head is down and he’s looking at his feet while he walks. He says, ‘What were you thinking?’
I finger the hanky round my hand gently. I say, ‘No-one will know anything. They’re just pictures. I bet if you didn’t know, you wouldn’t recognize a thing.’
‘I recognize me.’
‘Well – only because you know it’s you. Nobody else has said anything.’
‘Really? You’re sure?’
‘Yeah. Besides, so what if they do? Everyone knows we were – we knew each other in Italy. They’ll just think you’re in a few of them because – well, because I remember you from there. That makes sense, doesn’t it?’
Reluctantly, he nods. He’s still not looking at me. ‘I suppose.’
‘I didn’t break the promise, Jamie.’
‘But why did you do them at all? Why couldn’t you just – let it all alone?’
I shake my head. ‘I don’t know. It’s not like that.’ I struggle to find the right words to explain it to him. ‘It’s not like I choose to do this, you know. It’s just – what I paint.’
‘Everyone else paints still lives and all that crap.’
‘Yeah. Me too. But this is different – this is what it’s for.’
‘Can’t you just – stop? Do something else?’
‘I don’t think so. And nobody’s going to know anything, are they? Like I said – if you weren’t there, how would you know?’
‘What about your parents?’
I manage a smile. ‘Well, they weren’t there either, were they?’
He looks up at last. ‘I suppose not.’ His eyes meet mine, and I see the last of the anger drain away. His expression softens, and a smile tugs faintly at the corners of his mouth as well. He says, ‘Well. So maybe it isn’t as bad as all that.’
‘It’s not. Really.’
He sticks his hands in his pockets. ‘Sorry I was so wound up.’
‘It’s OK.’
‘Is your hand really all right?’
I glance at it. ‘Yeah. Stings a bit now, but it’s clean.’
‘Wine’s probably a good disinfectant.’
‘Yeah,’ I say.
‘Especially the cheap shit they lay on for stuff like this. Probably plenty of antifreeze and stuff to – you know, kill the microbes and stuff.’
‘Yeah,’ I say. He tries the smile for real now, and I feel myself grin a little back at him. Then it fades, and he’s just looking at me. Outside, I can hear people talking, and footsteps on the staircase, and the clink of glasses and an occasional voice raised in comment or laughter.
‘What are you – I mean, how long does this thing last?’ he says.
‘Until twelve. When are you on?’
‘This afternoon. Orchestra at two, Jazz Band at four-thirty.’
‘Good luck,’ I say.
‘Thanks.’
‘I’ll come and listen.’
‘Don’t. Well, not the orchestral thing, anyway. Maybe the jazz.’
‘Yeah.’
He scuffs one toe on the floor for a while, and then says, ‘They’re really good, you know.’
‘I know. I heard some of the rehearsals last week.’
‘No,’ he says impatiently. ‘Your pictures. They’re really good. The ones of Anna.’
‘Oh,’ I say.
‘And that one with the ring of candles. I – when I saw it—’ He breaks off, looks at the door, takes a breath. ‘I mean, it was the weirdest thing. Because I—’ He stops again.
‘What?’ I say.
He’s not looking at me, and his voice is low, strange. ‘I don’t know. It’s weird, Alex. Since we came here, you know, it’s like I’ve started to forget stuff.’
In my head, a voice from long ago sounds again.
That’s another thing about growing up. What to remember and what to forget.
I say, ‘Like what?’
‘Like – I don’t know. Like what he looked like, exactly. What his face was like. I remember some stuff so clearly, but then parts of it all get – blurry. Like they might not really have happened. Like maybe I dreamed them. And then when I came in here, it was like there was a whole wall of it – all the stuff that I was forgetting, all the stuff that had just – slipped out of my mind, you know? And suddenly there he is – his face –
only you’ve done it in that way like it’s all broken up into pieces, yeah?’ He steals a quick glance at the broken wine glass on the floor. ‘Well, it was like seeing him again – but different. Almost more real than what I have in my head, cos I don’t remember so clearly.’ He laughs, almost. ‘But then you would remember it all, wouldn’t you?’
Slowly, I shake my head. ‘It’s not like that,’ I say, and my voice sounds in my ears like his – hesitant and low and unsure, as if feeling its way in darkness towards something. ‘Not any more.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I can’t do that any more. The thing I used to. It’s gone.’
His face changes, and I see a kind of regret, and sympathy, in his eyes. ‘When?’
‘When I came here,’ I say. It’s almost the truth, after all, and perhaps it’s kinder.
‘Really? All of it?’
‘Not all of it. I can still – see things, you know. If I really try. But I can’t – go into them.’
‘I’m sorry,’ he says; then, ‘You didn’t tell me.’
‘No. I would have, but you—’
He nods, and suddenly he is looking sad, terribly sad. ‘Yeah,’ he says. ‘I know.’
We stand there, staring at the floor and sometimes at each other. The sounds keep on outside, the bustle of people, until there is a hush in the background murmur of noise, and then a spatter of applause. Jamie looks up.
I say, ‘They’re doing speeches now, I think.’
‘Right. Lots of that going on.’
‘They’re pretty boring,’ I say.
‘Do you want to hang around?’
‘Not really.’
‘All right. Let’s go.’
I sweep the broken glass under the nearest hand basin with the side of my foot. Outside, the parents are gathered listening to Mr Dalton talk about what has been happening in Art this term. Probably he will be going to say something about me, and normally I’d want to stay to hear what it is – even if I keep at the back. But it’s not important any more. As we slip out the side door, Jamie turns and looks at me, and for a moment there is the shadow of a smile on his face – a smile like the ones I remember.
The late morning sunshine is warm. We go together towards the music schools, and we talk as we go.