by Guy Burt
High over the valley, the sun continues its slow traverse of the sky, and the shadows of the verandah posts crawl barely noticeably across the boards.
‘Are you still hungry?’ Anna says. ‘Look, we got you some stuff. Bread and cheese and some patés and things.’
She lays the foodstuffs out carefully on a smoothed-out plastic bag by the hermit’s side. The man looks at them, and I see a flash of naked hunger cross his face. He nods. ‘Yes,’ he says. ‘Yes, that would be good.’
‘I’ll make you a sandwich,’ Anna says. She has Jamie’s pocket-knife, and she saws off pieces of bread and a slice of cheese and starts to put together food for the hermit. Her movements are casual and she sounds as if she’s at ease, but there’s a slight vibrancy to everything she does that gives her away. Jamie and I are waiting for her to begin. We’ve talked it all through, know what has to be said and done, but Anna has to start it all off. Finally, she does. She says, ‘Where did you say you’d come from?’
‘Rome,’ the hermit says.
‘What do you do there?’
‘I work in banking, in the city,’ he says. He looks round at us. ‘Not very interesting, eh?’
I say, ‘Rome. That’s a long way away, isn’t it?’
‘Yes,’ he says. ‘I suppose it is.’
‘A long way away,’ I repeat, looking at Jamie. I can see from his eyes that he understands what I mean.
‘Here,’ Anna says, holding out a crude sandwich to the hermit. He accepts it gratefully, tearing hard at the bread with his teeth. We watch him for a minute or more as he devours the sandwich, and then takes a swig from the water bottle, and at last relaxes.
‘That’s good,’ he says.
‘You shouldn’t have too much at first,’ Anna says. ‘Just in case your tummy’s not ready for it.’
The hermit laughs. ‘It’s certainly a relief to know I’m in such good hands,’ he says. ‘You like looking after other people, no?’
Anna looks frankly surprised. She says, ‘Not really.’
The hermit shrugs. ‘Well, you’re doing a good job with me, at least.’ I think back over the careful cleansing and dressing of the wound, which has taken the full forty minutes before Anna’s question about Rome. The hermit’s right: we are doing a good job.
Anna leans close to him and holds the cloth against his forehead again. She says, ‘You shouldn’t worry. You’re completely safe. No-one knows, and we won’t tell anyone. We promise.’
‘If we’d wanted to tell anyone, we could have done,’ Jamie says.
‘Exactly,’ Anna says. ‘That’s it exactly. But we haven’t, and we’re not going to. Do you believe us?’
The hermit looks at her, examining her face. He says, ‘I suppose I do.’
‘You trust us, then.’
The hermit gives a dry little laugh. ‘Do I have a choice?’
Anna takes the cloth away, wrings it out, wets it again with fresh water, and applies it again to the hermit’s brow. She says, ‘We just want to – to know things. We want to know what happened, and – and everything. That’s all, really.’
‘You want to know what happened?’ the hermit says. ‘What do you mean?’
‘No-one ever tells kids anything,’ Anna says, but she says it almost to herself. Then she shivers, and when she looks at the hermit she’s focused exclusively on him once again. She says, ‘We want you to tell us about it. What happened and – why it happened, and – well. Everything. I mean, we know some of it already, cos we worked it out, but it can’t be everything. Only you know that. And you could tell us.’ She searches the hermit’s face for some sign of acquiescence. ‘We’d never let on to anybody. We promise. We swear.’
The hermit just looks at her for a long time. Then he says, ‘Well. I’ll try.’ He shifts position slightly. ‘You already know how it was night when I was driving. Well, it had been a long day for me, you know? So I was already tired when I started the trip, and I suppose I’d left it too late anyway. I kept nearly dozing off but I didn’t want to stop, and I thought I’d be fine if I just kept my concentration. But I suppose it must have been harder than I’d thought—’
We are all staring at him in disbelief. Anna turns once to look at Jamie and me, and her expression is almost comical astonishment. The hermit is still talking when she interrupts him
‘No. What are you doing?’
The hermit breaks off, surprised, I suppose, by her tone of voice. He looks startled and wary.
Anna says, ‘You told us all that shit about your granny and falling asleep. Haven’t you been listening? We know that’s crap. We’ve known that all along. We want to know what really happened. We’ve trusted you, after all – we’ve looked after you and made you get better. We won’t tell anyone, really. But we want to know all about it.’
The hermit’s eyes are very narrow now as he looks from one of us to the next. Anna and Jamie and I meet his gaze squarely, though when he looks straight at me I’m glad that the other two are there with me. If I was on my own, I admit, I might be scared by the way the hermit looks right now.
‘I fell asleep and my car came off the road,’ the hermit says steadily. ‘Now, I don’t know what adventures you’ve imagined for me, but you have to remember that real life isn’t a story, is it? It’s usually more boring than that. And this is probably more boring than what you’ve invented. Now, I’m grateful to you for all you’ve done for me, but I can’t be something I’m not for you, can I? And I’m not some character in a story you’ve made up. Excuse me, but that’s how it is. I know it must have been—’ He searches for the right word. ‘Exciting, I suppose, all this. But for me it’s just a bad accident that I want to put behind me. It’s not an adventure for me. All I want is to get better and go home. I don’t want to be caught up in a game that you’re playing, or anything like that. I’m sorry, but that’s how it is. Do you understand?’
His voice is very stern. I want to drop my eyes from his, and suddenly I’m consumed by a terrible doubt: what if Anna is wrong – what if we’re all wrong – and the hermit is just a man who works in the city, in an office in a bank? We might be in real trouble.
Then I remember the gun, and I know – with a kind of strange, upside-down relief – that we’re not wrong, and that it is the hermit who is making things up, inventing the stories.
Anna takes a deep breath, and then lets it out. She looks at Jamie, and then at me, and then at the hermit. ‘I suppose you have to, don’t you?’ she says. ‘Just in case. But it’s not like that. We really know.’
The hermit shakes his head. ‘Whatever you think you know—’ he begins, but Anna cuts him off a second time.
‘You shot someone in Rome. Two people. One of them died and the other one didn’t. And then someone shot you, in the leg. That’s a bullet wound, not a cut. And the bullet didn’t stay in you – it went all the way through.’
I say, ‘Two holes instead of one.’
‘Yeah,’ Anna echoes. ‘Two instead of one.’
Jamie says, ‘And you made a tourniquet with your belt and you drove here.’
The hermit doesn’t say anything. He’s just staring at us.
‘To see Signor Ferucci,’ I prompt, in case he needs to be reminded; but he’s still silent.
Jamie says, ‘But the car went off the road and you didn’t know what to do. You didn’t really fall asleep. We think you – you know, passed out cos of all the blood you lost in the car.’
I say, ‘Yeah. There was loads of it on the car seat. You were lucky. You might’ve died.’
‘And then you came here, and we found you.’ Anna shrugs. ‘We know all this stuff.’
The hermit looks dazed.
Anna says, ‘And we got your gun, too. The rifle. It’s safe.’
‘Telescopic sights,’ Jamie adds. ‘A sniper rifle.’
‘Yeah. So.’ There’s a pause. Anna says, ‘All we want is to know what really happened.’ She sits back on her heels and looks at the hermit expectantly.
The man doesn’t seem to know what to say. He looks from one to another of us, his mouth very slightly open. In the end he just says, ‘Can I have – some more water?’
Anna frowns slightly, as if she is wondering whether he’s just playing for time again. But then she hands him the bottle. As he takes it from her, I notice that the water inside trembles; his hands are shaking.
When he’s had enough, the hermit gives the bottle back, and wipes his mouth, and is still for a while. Then he says, quietly, ‘You haven’t told anyone.’
‘No. No-one.’ We wait for what he’ll say next. When the words come, though, they’re unexpected.
‘Why not?’
Anna blinks, surprised. Jamie and I steal a quick glance at each other; it is strange indeed that the hermit also wants to know what is, secretly, still puzzling us both.
Anna repeats, stupidly, ‘Why not?’ She doesn’t sound like she understands what he means.
‘Yes. Why haven’t you told someone? If you know all this?’
The hermit doesn’t appear to be pretending any more.
‘Because—’ Anna says, and then stops. She considers for a moment, and then says, ‘Because we want to help you. You needed someone to help you. Without us, you would have died.’
I remember what she said to me in the empty river, about adults sometimes being weak, and about how the hermit would have peed in his pants if we hadn’t helped him.
The hermit is saying, ‘But still – why not tell someone? They wouldn’t have killed me, after all. They would have taken me to hospital. And you wouldn’t have had to do anything. You wouldn’t have been – there wouldn’t have been any danger to you.’
‘They would have locked you up, after,’ she says.
‘Yes. But why should you worry about that?’
Anna frowns, as if she really hasn’t thought about any of this. I can’t tell whether she really hasn’t, or whether she’s still playing some kind of trick on the hermit. She says, stubbornly, ‘You needed us.’
‘Well,’ the hermit says, after a second. ‘That’s true enough.’ He thinks for a while and then says, ‘You’re not scared?’
‘No.’
‘Why not?’
Anna shrugs. ‘Why should we be?’
‘Well … you know about – what’s happened. Doesn’t that scare you? It would a lot of – a lot of people.’ I am pretty sure, in my mind, that the hermit has been about to say a lot of kids.
Anna says, ‘We’ve been careful. We hid the car, and our parents don’t know. Nobody ever comes up here. So we should be safe.’
The hermit is shaking his head impatiently. ‘That’s not what I meant,’ he says. ‘Aren’t you scared of me? Of what I’ve done?’
Anna looks completely blank for a split second. ‘Scared of you?’ she echoes. Then, shaking her head, ‘No.’
I say, ‘Well, a little bit. At first.’
The hermit looks from Anna to me, and nods slowly. ‘So,’ he says. ‘Alex. You were scared a little, yes?’
He’s waiting for me to answer. Hesitantly, I nod. He turns to Jamie.
‘And you? Jamie?’
Jamie looks reluctant to admit it, but in the end he says, ‘Well. I thought we shouldn’t – you know. Get involved.’
‘I remember. You were very sensible.’ Jamie drops his gaze. The hermit says, ‘And perhaps a little afraid, too?’
‘Well,’ Jamie says, uncomfortably.
‘Indeed. But you?’ He looks at Anna. ‘You weren’t even a bit afraid?’
Anna looks right back at him and shakes her head.
I say, ‘You were. You were afraid he was going to die.’
Anna says, ‘Oh, that. That’s not the same thing.’
I think it is, but the hermit is nodding slowly. He says, ‘That’s right. That’s not the same thing at all.’ The words come from him thoughtfully, as if his mind is on other things. For a long while he is silent, and we just sit waiting for him to decide what to say. Jamie shifts a little on the boards of the chapel, and I fiddle idly with one of my shoelaces, but Anna is motionless, watching only the hermit. Then at last the man says, ‘This is all rather unexpected. You have the gun, you say?’
‘Yes,’ I say. ‘It’s—’
‘It’s safe,’ Anna interrupts, darting an angry look at me.
‘That’s what I was going to say,’ I say, put out that she thinks I would have forgotten that the gun’s whereabouts have to remain a secret.
‘Ah,’ the hermit says. He thinks briefly. ‘The case was locked,’ he says.
‘We broke it open,’ Anna says, quite calmly I think, given that we’re all sure she shouldn’t have.
I wait for the hermit to be cross with her, but all he says is, ‘Ah.’
Anna settles herself more comfortably, crossing her legs. ‘We just want you to tell us what really happened,’ she says. ‘And why. All that. And we won’t tell, and we’ll look after you, and it’ll be a secret always. Promise.’ She is staring at him fixedly, as if willing him to believe her. ‘Well? Will you?’
The hermit shakes his head. ‘I can’t,’ he says. ‘This isn’t the kind of thing for kids to hear.’
I know the answer to that. I say, ‘That’s OK. We’re not kids.’
The hermit turns to look at me, and in his troubled eyes I see that he’s almost ready to believe me.
At the same time as I am getting to know Jamie again, a strange thing is happening: he is changing. It is as though the Jamie I am trying to get closer to is constantly moving away from me, shifting direction, so that it becomes hard to follow him, hard to keep up. At first I can’t understand it at all; whenever I think I’ve finally got to know him, I glimpse something else which makes me doubt that I’ve got close to the whole story. Gradually, a picture starts to emerge from it all, and I realize that it is a picture that worries me – and almost scares me.
Jamie has always been the one who works well in school, and does well – effortlessly well – at sports, and I have always been the one who struggles along awkwardly in his wake. But now, it is as though something has swapped over between us. I am making a presentable effort in most of my subjects, and in Art, of course, everything is very fine. But Jamie seems to have lost interest in the things that used to fascinate him: the stars, his sense of wonder at the world, the endless, tireless questions that used to pour out of him. Instead, he seems to be turning more and more inward, spending more and more time alone. Not from me, exactly; I am always welcome – or at least always allowed near him. But from the rest of the house, he becomes slowly aloof. No-one else seems to notice it, much; but one day I realize that, while they still respect him and like him, I can’t be sure that he likes or respects any of them. It’s a disconcerting and upsetting realization, because some of these boys used to be Jamie’s friends. As I watch, he slowly withdraws into himself, and into his music, until the Jamie that one sees from day to day around the school is more like a ghost-image of him than the real thing.
I start to notice, also, something I haven’t seen in his face since – well, since many years before, when the hermit was in the chapel and the darkness each night was interlaced with flickering signals up and down the valley. There are dark smudges under his eyes, the kind that come from not enough sleep; and he seems dozy and unable to concentrate much in the mornings.
‘What’s going on?’
He looks at me, slight puzzlement vying with a kind of veiled guilt. ‘What do you mean?’
‘You know,’ I say patiently.
He shrugs. It’s a mild day in the spring term, and the grounds of the school are bright with new greenery as we walk between the house and the music schools. ‘Nothing,’ he says.
‘Something’s wrong,’ I say. ‘I can tell. I know you.’
He lets a breath out in a sharp little exhalation, and then nods. ‘Yeah. I know. But it’s not something wrong, it’s – well, it’s something right, I suppose.’
‘You look tired,’ I say.
‘I haven’t been getting much sleep recently.’
‘How come?’
He pauses. ‘I – there’s something I’m doing.’
‘I guessed that. So are you going to tell me about it, or do I have to keep coming up with questions and try to piece it all together?’
Reluctantly, he smiles. ‘Sorry. I don’t feel – safe, really, talking about it all.’
‘Not even with me?’
He hesitates, and then the smile widens fractionally. ‘Well, OK. Sorry. Sometimes I forget I can really talk to anyone.’
I wait for him to go on. It worries me, the way he’s so cautious. Jamie and I used to tell each other everything, and I have thought, recently, that we’ve started to do the same again.
He says, ‘I’ve been going out.’
‘Going out? Where?’ There’s nowhere to go out to around our school; just a quiet little village half a mile away.
‘Well—’ He thinks for a second, and then stops, turns to me. For the first time all week he looks really awake and animated: his eyes are bright suddenly, with excitement and the exhilaration of confiding in someone. He says, ‘I could show you. Tomorrow night, if you can make it.’
‘When?’
‘Nine.’
I blink, uncertainly. ‘Nine? When do we get back?’
‘About half-one, two o’clock.’
‘That’s impossible,’ I say. ‘Someone’ll miss us. You should leave it later – like midnight.’
‘I can’t,’ he says simply. ‘I have to be there by ten.’
‘By ten? How long does it take? Where are we going?’
‘We have to take the train,’ he says. ‘Don’t worry. It’s safe. I’ll make sure no-one’ll miss you either.’
‘How can you do that?’ I say, impressed and fascinated.
‘It’s not a problem,’ he says vaguely. ‘You just have to convince the monitor on duty that it’s OK. I can do that.’
‘OK,’ I say, not quite believing him.
‘So – nine o’clock? Just after roll-call. Wear something – I don’t know, something casual.’