by Guy Burt
‘Tell us again,’ Anna says. ‘Don’t leave anything out. Tell us from when you knew you had to do it right through to getting away afterwards.’
The hermit shakes his head. ‘I’m tired,’ he says. ‘I should rest.’
‘You’re much better than yesterday,’ Anna says. ‘Start from when you first got to the apartment, then.’
The hermit looks round at us, and his expression is resigned. ‘Very well,’ he says.
I settle myself more comfortably to listen to the story.
‘Is she still in there?’ Jamie says.
‘Yeah.’
‘She doesn’t get bored, does she?’
I think about that, and it does feel strange to me that Anna can feel bored in so many situations that Jamie or I would find fascinating; but in the dim shadow-world of the chapel, listening to the hermit’s stories, she never is. She sits endlessly, making him tell her things over and over again, and picking at him for further details each time. After a long hour or two of this, Jamie and I have become restless, and on the pretext of needing to pee we have escaped the chapel. To find that there is still sunlight and a valley outside feels a disproportionate relief, after so long in the echoing stillness.
‘She’s really interested in it all.’
‘Yeah, but even the really dull stuff. It’s weird.’
I have to agree; but then, sometimes Anna is weird. I say, ‘We can stay out, if you like. She probably won’t notice.’
‘Yeah. Let’s.’
We sit ourselves down in the dust by the side of the chapel and set up a little chunk of wood on one of the big blocks of stone there, which we can throw pebbles at. Jamie is always better at this than I am, but sometimes I get lucky and knock the target over. Jamie takes careful aim and flicks a pebble; it bounces close, but doesn’t hit.
I say, ‘Do you think he’s telling the truth now?’
‘Yeah, I think. Don’t you? I mean, all the stuff he’s said so far makes sense, doesn’t it?’
‘I s’pose so.’
‘He was lucky to get away,’ Jamie says judiciously.
‘Yeah.’ I chuck a stone at the wood, but miss by over a foot.
‘Alex? You OK?’
‘Mm,’ I say.
‘What is it?’
Something is bothering me about the hermit’s first story of the morning – his account of the shooting. ‘He said he shot the man on the steps and then he went down to the back of the building he was in,’ I say.
Jamie is looking at me with a kind of cautious interest. ‘Yeah, that’s right,’ he says.
‘And then there was the other man—’
‘The bodyguard or policeman. Yeah. And he called out, and then shot the hermit, and the hermit shot him back.’
‘Mm,’ I say.
‘Well? What?’
‘I don’t know,’ I say despondently, and throw another pebble. It gets closer. Jamie spins one after it and the wood block tumbles off its place.
‘Got it!’ he exclaims with some satisfaction. ‘I’ll set it up again.’
I watch him trot over to the big piece of masonry and put our little target back in its proper spot. As he comes back to where we’re sitting, he glances in the direction of the river and the road beyond it.
‘Strange that no-one ever comes here,’ he says. ‘Not even kids from school. You’d have thought they would.’
‘Maybe they’re afraid,’ I say.
‘Why?’
‘Chapels and churches are spooky, sometimes. People get buried in them.’
‘Not in them,’ Jamie says. ‘Outside.’
‘Sometimes in them.’
‘Well, this one isn’t very spooky.’
‘No.’ It’s almost the truth; I’ve stopped being as apprehensive about the chapel now that the hermit seems to be recovering. It’s just a dark building, after all. Part of me is very proud of being grown-up enough to feel this way. Jamie throws a stone, and it skitters off one side of the wood, knocking it round a little way.
‘Nearly,’ he says.
I say, almost to myself, ‘He went down the stairs and out the back of the building. There was an alley. The man came down the alley and shot at the hermit, and the hermit shot him back.’
Jamie stops throwing stones. ‘What is it?’ he says, curiously. ‘Is there something wrong with that?’
I shake my head. ‘I don’t know. I just – it’s like it’s stuck in my head.’
‘Mm,’ Jamie says, thoughtfully.
I have noticed that, ever since I told Jamie and Anna about the hermit shooting two people, and about what I’d worked out about the gun and from the radio, they’ve listened to me more closely. It’s as if they’re surprised that I can work these things out, though of course I know that it’s just putting together things I’ve seen and heard, and not real thinking at all. Still, it’s nice that they think I’m clever about this. It’s difficult to say, though, whether this one thought running round and round my head is worth bothering about or not.
‘Is it about the bullets?’ Jamie prompts. ‘You know, the way there are three gone and three left?’
‘The hermit said he only shot him once,’ I say. ‘I mean, he only shot each of them once. So that’s two bullets, isn’t it?’
‘But maybe the other one is in the gun still.’
‘Yeah.’
We sit, nonplussed, for a while. Then Jamie says, slowly, ‘Wait a minute.’ His eyes are fixed on his trainers for a long time; and then his head snaps up suddenly. ‘Alex – he can’t have shot the second man the way he says. That’s what it is. He can’t have.’
‘Why not?’
‘The gun – the gun’s in the case. Don’t you see?’ Jamie says, excitedly.
‘What?’
‘He’s at the window. He shoots the man on the steps. Then he packs the gun into its case, and he goes down into the street. So when the man shouts at him and then shoots him, the gun is still in the case. He wouldn’t have had time to unpack it all and put it together.’
‘Oh. Yeah,’ I say, seeing what he’s getting at at last. ‘So maybe he was lying. Maybe he didn’t shoot him.’
‘Yes he did,’ Jamie says impatiently. ‘It was on the news, remember? You heard it.’
‘Oh, yeah.’
‘So he had the case with the gun in, and someone shot at him, and he turned round and shot them back, and they fell down. That’s what he said.’ Jamie gets up and starts to pace nervously back and forth, something he often does when he’s thinking. ‘But he couldn’t have, because he would have had to stop and get the gun out and put it together again and all that. So what happened?’
I say, ‘He could have had another gun.’
Jamie stops in his pacing, and stares at me. ‘Yeah,’ he whispers. ‘Yeah, he could have. Like – a small one, ready in case anyone …’
His voice tails off.
‘What?’ I say.
‘If he’s got another gun, where is it?’ Jamie says quietly.
‘Maybe in the car.’
‘We didn’t see anything.’ He looks at his feet, and then up at me again. ‘Maybe he’s still got it. Maybe it’s in his pocket or something.’
I’m worried; I don’t know quite what all this means to us. I say, ‘What should we do?’
‘I don’t know,’ Jamie says. ‘We should tell Anna, though.’
‘She’s in there with him,’ I say, realizing. My tone of voice must panic Jamie, because he tenses at once.
‘Shit. Yeah. Come on.’
We race across the churchyard, kicking up a trail of dust, and along the side of the chapel to the door there. Jamie tries to control how he opens the door but we still burst into the chapel in a clatter of footsteps. As the echoes die away, I’m aware that another sound has been suddenly cut off – a sound we’ve interrupted. The last traces of it fade with the echoes of our entrance: laughter. The hermit and Anna have been laughing.
Anna has jumped up. ‘What is it?’ she demands, l
ooking scared. ‘Is someone coming?’
‘No,’ Jamie says. ‘No, it’s – I mean, it’s OK.’
‘You scared the shit out of me,’ she says. ‘What is it?’
Jamie and I stare down the length of the chapel at her. The hermit is unseen in his jury-rigged bed. Anna’s face is white.
Jamie mumbles, ‘We were just – playing something. Sorry.’
‘Well, keep quiet, for God’s sake,’ she says. ‘And keep out of sight, if you’re playing outside.’
‘Yeah, we know,’ Jamie says. He and I shuffle our way back out of the chapel. Behind us, the sound of voices talking starts up again slowly.
‘Why didn’t you tell her?’ I say.
He shakes his head. ‘I don’t know. It’s – it’s weird. I couldn’t. I think – well, I don’t think she would have cared, do you?’
‘Oh,’ I say. I think about telling Anna. ‘No.’
‘And I don’t think he’d – do anything, do you? I mean, if he’d wanted to – to shoot anyone, or frighten anyone, he could have already, couldn’t he?’ Jamie walks on, head down, for a while. Then he says, ‘After all, we are helping him. He needs us. So probably he wouldn’t want to scare us.’
‘Maybe he threw the other gun away,’ I say. ‘After he shot the man.’
‘Yeah, maybe,’ Jamie allows. ‘Maybe.’
‘They were laughing,’ I say.
‘Yeah, I heard.’
‘What do you think they were laughing about?’
He kicks a stone edgily. ‘How should I know, Alex?’
‘I can’t think of anything very funny to be laughing about,’ I say. ‘I mean, about shooting people and all that.’
‘Maybe they weren’t talking about all that any more.’
‘But that’s what Anna wanted to talk about,’ I say. ‘She went on and on about it.’
‘Maybe they got bored with it. They could be talking about something else now.’
‘I s’pose,’ I say. I can’t understand why Anna would rather be inside with the hermit than outside with us, and the lizards and cicadas and bush crickets. ‘I wish we could go swimming,’ I say, looking vaguely towards the dry river.
‘Yeah. I know. Maybe we will later.’
‘It’s always later since the hermit came,’ I say, rather petulantly; but Jamie doesn’t have an answer for that.
In the afternoon, my friend the cat comes padding through the garden. There are still some scraps of food, and I fetch them, throw them to the grass. The cat inspects them delicately and then eats the ones that it seems to feel are the most promising. From the verandah, I watch its movements. I have brought the photographs out here with me into the sun, and I am surrounded by a mosaic of images. Almost the entire exhibition is arrayed here on the boards, the ochres and earth-colours glowing in the afternoon sunlight. For one sad, brief moment, I wish very much that Lena could be alive to see them all.
There was a time, a few hours past, when for some unknown reason I couldn’t stop myself crying. It was something to do with the pictures, and the faces in them, and the memories that have begun floating like disturbed sediment through this old house. But for the life of me I can’t remember now what started it. It seems a frail and strange thing, to be suddenly at the mercy of tears like that.
Now, the cat steps carefully and curiously up the steps of the verandah, and finally sits in a wide patch of sunshine and starts to clean its head and ears with one paw. It is good, I think to myself, to have a friend on an afternoon like this, when so much seems – uncertain, and unclear.
Inside the house, on the wall, the scene I am painting – the scene I can’t help painting – is beginning to come together. You can see the water properly, now, even through the dark; and in the evenings by the tentative flickering of candlelight, the figure in the foreground – the boy in the foreground – the boy standing about to dive – seems to flicker and tremble as well. Things are changing. Old things that have been eroded by the years are coming back. Sometimes it’s fresh plaster on a damaged wall, or new boards in the corner of a room. And sometimes it’s a beach at night, with dark cliffs and a sea limned with moonlight. Things are being mended, made good again.
My eyes drift over the surface of the photographs as if they are a landscape: a series of terrains seen from high, high above. I feel at an impossible distance from them, as if I am in a tiny aeroplane, or perhaps a glider, silent in the currents and ribbons of air that flow over them. I want to set down, to land, to put my feet on these landscapes and walk through them, get to know them, but I can’t set down and I can’t land. I am trapped in a gulf-stream like the pull of a tide, and my little aircraft and I are incapable of choosing our own course. The paintings are clear to me from where I am; I can see every detail in them. But I can’t get close to them. The distance between them and me is impossible.
* * *
I can hear their voices, low but clear, through the door. It is nearly midnight, and soon I will have to go inside and relieve Anna from her shift. She is insistent that we keep up our watch on the hermit, even though he seems so much better now; and again, when Jamie and I press her on this, she becomes first vague and then angry, saying that it’s just what we have to do. Jamie mutters later that he doesn’t understand anything about Anna. I think to myself of her voice, softly raised in song, and of the words I can’t understand, and I agree with him; but I keep my thoughts, and what I’ve heard, to myself.
Outside the chapel, in the afternoon, Jamie and I at last tell Anna what we’ve worked out about the hermit’s gun, and the second man he shot.
‘It can’t have been the rifle, you see,’ Jamie says. ‘Because it was all in pieces. So—’
‘Oh. Yeah,’ Anna says. ‘I see.’ She’s quiet for a moment, thinking, and then she shrugs. ‘Well, I suppose he must have another gun, then.’
Jamie watches her for a while, waiting for her to say something else. When it becomes clear she isn’t going to, he says, ‘Aren’t you worried?’
‘Why?’
‘He’s got a gun we don’t know about. He might have it on him.’
‘It’s OK,’ Anna says blithely. ‘He won’t hurt us.’
‘How do you know?’
‘I just do.’
‘How do you know for sure?’
‘He won’t, OK?’ she says. ‘He’s – he’s not like that. We’re helping him. He wouldn’t hurt us.’
Jamie doesn’t look at all sure.
Anna says, ‘I’ll take the first shift this evening, OK? Stop worrying. Everything’s going to be fine.’
Now, her voice comes quietly through the cracks in the wood. I can hear everything she says, and this time, I understand; she’s speaking Italian.
‘Can I see it?’
‘Why?’
‘Please. Just to look.’ I wonder what it is she wants to see.
‘It’s not a thing for a girl to see,’ the hermit says.
‘Why not?’
‘It just isn’t.’
‘Don’t you have women, then? In your – you know. In what you do.’
The hermit is quiet for a time. Then he says, ‘Yes.’
‘Well, then. Show me. I won’t touch it or anything.’
There’s a pause, and then I hear a kind of rustling as the hermit shifts position. ‘Here,’ he says. ‘Now are you satisfied?’
‘It’s small,’ she says.
‘Yes.’
‘It’s all smooth, too.’
‘It’s designed that way. It was designed for the Soviet security forces, to be concealed in clothing. That’s why it’s small, and why the surfaces are rounded like this.’ There’s a pause, and then he says something that I don’t catch.
Anna says, ‘I know. But it’s easier in Italian. I – I think I forgot a lot.’
‘How long has it been, now?’
‘A long time.’
‘You should try to remember,’ the hermit says. ‘These things are important. They make us who we are. They sh
ouldn’t be forgotten.’
‘I know,’ Anna says. Then, ‘You should put it away now. Alex will be here soon.’
‘Ah.’
I nod to myself, wondering what she’d think if she knew I could hear her talking like this. Probably, she’d be cross. I will be certain to keep a secret of what I’ve heard, even though I don’t understand half of it.
When the time comes, I trudge round to the side door and do my trick of making a bit of noise as I open it.
‘It’s me,’ I call down the body of the building; and in a second, Anna’s voice calls back.
‘Hi, Alex.’
She meets me halfway. ‘He’s sleeping,’ she says. There’s nothing in her tone to give away the lie, to suggest that only a minute before, she was deep in conversation with the hermit. ‘He’s pretty tired. Does your watch have an alarm?’
‘Yeah,’ I say.
‘If you like, you can set it for the hours and sleep as well. Just wake up for the signals. OK?’
‘All right,’ I say.
‘Just keep near so if he wants anything you can get it for him. Well, I’m off.’
‘’Bye,’ I say.
‘See you tomorrow,’ she calls quietly from the door.
I shake my head, and we both say it together, grinning: ‘No, today.’ Then she’s gone, and the door is quietly closed. I make my way down the length of the chapel to where the hermit is, and locate the torch on the bottom stair. We’ve all got used to moving about the chapel in the darkness; I never stumble into anything any more, even without the torch. There is one candle stub burning on the end of the pew, but the shadow it casts falls right across the hermit’s chest and head, and it’s impossible to see his face.
I wait a little while, watching to see if the hermit makes any movements or gives any indication that he’s actually awake. But he’s still, and after a time I begin to think he must have really fallen asleep, while Anna and I have been talking. It seems believable to me. He must be tired, after all.
I climb the stairs and cross the balcony and duck into the soft moonlight of the belltower. At the top of the wooden staircase I check my watch again, lean out the arch, sight the torch down the valley and key its switch three times. I have to wait a while, and send the signal twice more, before Jamie’s bedroom lights wink back in reply; and I wonder whether he has found it hard to get out of bed. It’s sometimes a terrible struggle not to ignore the alarm clock under your pillow and just drift off again.