The Dandelion Clock

by Guy Burt

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Cos they change when you’re older. You get hair and all that.’

  ‘Mm,’ I say.

  ‘Some of the older boys at school say they already have,’ he says.

  ‘Do you think they have?’

  ‘I don’t know. Perhaps. Maybe they’re just saying it, though.’

  ‘I wonder what that’s like.’

  ‘Mm.’

  Jamie has closed his eyes again.

  I say, ‘You mustn’t go to sleep in the sun.’

  ‘I’m not going to sleep.’

  ‘Lena says it’s bad for you.’

  ‘I know. She always says that.’

  ‘I’m hungry,’ I say.

  ‘Yeah. Me too. We’ll go and get a sandwich in a little while.’

  ‘OK.’

  The beads of water on Jamie dwindle in the sun, and leave tiny, pale ghosts of salt behind them. I sit up and scan the sea for fishing boats; sometimes they cross the horizon between the far cliffs and the end of the spur. Today, though, the stretch of sea is empty. Jamie stirs, and stretches.

  ‘God, I am falling asleep.’

  ‘I told you.’

  He sits up and yawns. ‘OK. We’ll go now, if you want.’

  ‘Let’s get some Cokes.’

  ‘If we can afford it,’ he says doubtfully. Money is a problem. We have the roll of notes the hermit gave us; but the small ones have been used up on supplies, and we are too scared of looking suspicious to use the big denominations that are left over. There is the pocket money that we get, but this week’s amount is all gone; and we are left with only the change that Lena gives us for sandwiches and ice-creams. Of this, some has to be set aside for emergencies. Anna is very stern on this point.

  ‘Well, let’s try anyway.’

  We pull our clothes on slowly and lazily, feeling the ache of the swimming in our arms and legs. When at last we are ready, Jamie leads the way back up the beach to the cliff path.

  ‘What shall we do this afternoon?’ I say.

  ‘Don’t know. We’ll think about it on the way.’

  With the sun overhead, and the last of the seawater evaporating and making our hair crisp and tangled with salt, it is hard to believe that there is somewhere a hermit in a dark chapel, and a gun in a case, and three shiny bullets hidden behind a grating at the foot of a wall. It could all be a dream, I tell myself: a strange and unfathomable dream. I try to pretend, while walking, that it really is a dream, and that we’re going to meet Anna outside Toni’s for ice-cream. It makes me a little sad, deep inside, when I realize that I would far rather that this made-up reality were the truth.

  Now that I know where Jamie goes at night, he suddenly makes more sense to me. For weeks after he takes me to London, I keep seeing the city streets we walked along in my head, and keep seeing also how different Jamie looks here. It’s as though the Jamie I see every day in school is an imitation, good enough to fool everyone else, but not quite enough for me. The Jamie I have seen backstage at the club, and playing the saxophone in front of the crowd of people there, is unfamiliar – but at the same time, he is also the Jamie I know. This is a new way to look at him, but underneath it, he has the same sense of adventure and discovery and searching for something that have been there all his life. Although he has clearly changed, at least I now understand what that change is; and it’s in keeping with who I know him to be. Strangely, it satisfies me. There have been times when the peculiar distance that has come between us has seemed to have altered him, made him harder for me to understand; and now I understand him again.

  So now we share the secret. It reminds me of the other things we keep between us; and it must remind Jamie too, because in some way it affects what we talk about. Our conversations drift around the subject of the hermit, and the past. I’m not entirely sure that I understand everything about Jamie yet, but I’m ready to give him time – to wait – to see what he chooses to tell me.

  But as the term wears on, and the spring weather gets clearer and warmer, more changes come over Jamie. His grades in academic subjects, which have been slipping steadily, now slump dramatically. He shrugs it off to me, saying that he can catch up on the work whenever he likes; that the night-time excursions are only once a week or so. He’s hard to argue with because I know he’s right, that he could catch up if he wanted; but whenever he has a free afternoon, or any scrap of spare time that he could use for studying, he is always either in the music schools or else catching up on sleep, or off on his own somewhere. It isn’t long before I am sure that he simply doesn’t care enough to make a fuss about his grades. It worries me a lot.

  ‘They’re really bad,’ I say, looking over his half-termly report card. ‘You’re failing these three. You’ve got exams next term, you know.’

  ‘Yeah.’ He is staring out the window of his room, tapping one finger impatiently on the sill. ‘It’s not important, Alex.’

  ‘Well, it will be if you don’t get any passes and they kick you out. What’ll your parents say when they see this?’

  He shrugs. ‘I don’t know. I mean it, I really don’t. Maybe they’ll think I had an off day.’

  ‘You’ve had an off year,’ I say.

  ‘Mm,’ he says, noncommittally. Then, out of the blue, he adds, ‘Strange, isn’t it. Calling it a dandelion clock. I mean, why a clock?’

  I stare at him. ‘You know,’ I say. ‘You blow it to find out the time.’

  ‘Yeah. Still, why not – a dandelion wand? Hit it on something and make a wish.’

  ‘I s’pose,’ I say.

  ‘I just think it’s strange.’

  ‘You sound like you did back then,’ I say. ‘Why are the rocks like sandwiches? Why don’t snakes blink? Why? Why?’

  He’s grinning. ‘Yeah,’ he says. ‘I remember that. Those were good times.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  He’s quiet for a moment, and then the smile goes out of him. ‘Sometimes I think leaving Italy was a really bad mistake. That I shouldn’t have come here at all.’

  ‘How come?’ I say.

  ‘I don’t know. Things were – better, there.’

  ‘Well, sometimes,’ I say.

  ‘All the time. Anyway.’ He swings his legs back and forth, kicking the wall under the window. ‘Too late now. At least I’ve found this one thing.’

  He means the music. I say, ‘Yeah, that’s good.’

  ‘It’s better than good.’ He manages a smile. ‘Sometimes it feels like it’s all I’ve got.’

  ‘You’ve got other things.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Well – friends.’

  Jamie laughs, but the sound isn’t a happy one. ‘Really? I don’t know anyone here.’

  ‘Everybody likes you,’ I protest, shocked.

  ‘I know. Everyone likes me and nobody knows me. They don’t get to know you here; have you noticed that? They don’t really – get to know you. There isn’t anyone here who’s a proper friend, who I can really talk to. That’s why I need to – get out, sometimes, get to London. At least some of the people there – Paul, you met him – at least they actually – talk about stuff. Not just this being-nice bullshit.’

  I am surprised by the vehemence in his voice. I say, ‘What about – I mean, don’t you—’

  A flash of realization crosses his face. ‘Shit, Alex, I didn’t mean you,’ he says. ‘You know I – you know I can talk to you.’ He shakes his head. ‘I didn’t mean that. I meant everyone else.’

  ‘Yeah, I know,’ I say.

  ‘I mean, we talk about everything, don’t we?’

  ‘Sure,’ I say. Inside, some small voice echoes everything? – but doubtfully, as if waiting to be convinced.

  Jamie says, ‘Only sometimes it feels like – you know, it’s just us, and all around us everything’s – blank, somehow. I feel that here all the time.’

  ‘But not when you’re in London?’

  ‘No. Not then.’

  I don’t know what to say for
a long time. In the end, I say, ‘You should still try to work a bit, you know.’

  ‘I guess.’

  I say, brightly, ‘I mean, think how it would be for me if they kicked you out. Then I wouldn’t have anyone to talk to.’

  He grins weakly. ‘Yeah. I suppose so.’

  ‘So you’ll try?’

  ‘I’ll do some,’ he agrees. ‘But not if it – interferes.’

  ‘Of course not,’ I agree with mock solemnity. ‘Our art before all else.’

  The grin widens. ‘Fuck off.’

  ‘Yeah, and you.’

  I go to the door, and he follows me, puts his hand out to stop me opening it. ‘Alex?’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘You were – it was kind of you, talking—’ He stops, shakes his head. ‘I mean, thanks.’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘For looking out for me.’

  ‘It’s OK. You look out for me, too.’

  ‘Well someone has to.’

  ‘Oh, cheers.’

  He hesitates, and I think he is about to say something else; and then he just shrugs slightly. His hand, as he takes it away from the door, touches the side of my face for a moment before it drops to his side. He says, ‘And thanks for coming and watching me play.’

  ‘You were really good,’ I say. ‘Really cool.’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Absolutely. Ottimo.’

  ‘Yeah,’ he says, very quietly, as though he’s known it secretly all along.

  ‘See you later,’ I say.

  ‘Sure. Bye, Alex.’

  Outside, in the corridor, I pass little clumps and groups of boys – running, walking, chatting in their studies. I watch the faces as I walk past. A couple of people look up and nod at me or say Hi, Alex. Outside, there are boys on the sports pitches: football still, but there will be early cricket after the half-term, if the weather is right for it. And as I walk, and the sea of faces parts to let me through and closes again behind me, I see that Jamie is right: it is only us two. None of the rest of the people here are real in any way. Even Anna, far away in a different country, is more real to me now than any of these faces. It’s just the two of us – the three of us – like it always has been.

  Gradually, the hermit’s leg gets better. Each day we change the dressings, and each day Anna checks the two wounds; they have formed tight, yellowish-brown scabs now, and we keep the bandages looser to let the air in. The hermit is still weak, but is eating steadily, and is stronger. He is able to manage going to the loo on his own; and when I talk to him, on some of the evening shifts when I am alone but he is still awake, his voice is firm and controlled. He sounds like a man who is getting back some strength, and part of me doesn’t know quite what to feel about this.

  The hermit talks to me sometimes: about my life, and the valley, and what I like. It’s not the way he talks to Anna, but it’s friendly. I ask Jamie if the hermit talks to him about these things, and he says no. I am not sure whether Jamie knows what’s happening between the hermit and Anna; he doesn’t mention it, and I don’t like to say anything. But when I go to start my shifts, I have got into the habit of setting off early; and through the chapel doors there are always two voices, low and serious sometimes, and laughing at other times, before I go inside and the hermit pretends to be asleep.

  Knowing something like this about Anna feels unsafe – there’s that same sense of almost electrical danger that I felt when I saw her on the cliff – but I can’t stop myself doing it. Even though often the words make no sense to me, I feel like I want to hear them.

  Anna looks after the hermit more and more, letting Jamie and me run off into the scrub of the abandoned fields up here at the top of the valley, or take whole afternoons to go to the beach. Even so, there are still the night shifts to be managed, and Anna still insists that we keep the schedule up. When I ask her how long we’ll have to do this, she just says, As long as it takes.

  We’re all tired. We sleep against walls and with our heads pillowed on our arms, at nine in the morning or two in the afternoon, whenever we can. Only the sun and fresh air manage to mask the blotches of darkness under our eyes. Anna’s skin stays fair, though, from being in the dim hollow of the chapel so much of the time, but no-one seems to notice that Jamie and I are tanning and she is not. To start with, she looks as tired as we do; but then, gradually, she seems to absorb the tiredness, draw it inside her and somehow force it down. She starts to look better, more alive. I wish I could do the same.

  In the night-time, the signals flicker up and down the valley, keeping us all comforted in the knowledge that we are safe and that we aren’t alone. Every hour, on the hour, we are all thinking of each other – even if that thinking is done through a haze of tiredness, the signals noted through eyes still only half-open. At least we’re there. I think to myself, when it is my turn in the belltower with the torch, that it is a bit like reaching out and feeling Anna’s and Jamie’s fingertips brush against mine for a moment – just a whisper of contact, but reassuring even so. In the drifting air of the belltower, with the dandelion clock outside reading no hour at all and only the pigeons for company, that can feel like a lot.

  The summer is starting to draw towards its end, and there are some days when the sky is hazy in the early morning, and some days when the haze doesn’t burn away by midday. Once we see thunderclouds far away on the skyline out to sea; but they must pass us by, because we never see anything more of them. Still, the heat now sometimes has a sweltering humidity to it, making T-shirts stick to you even when they’ve been clean on that morning and you’ve only been outside an hour. The weather seems to know it’s going to break eventually, and is gathering itself for it.

  The chapel stays cool and constant. In the patchy, deep-coloured half-light that spills in through the stained-glass window, the hermit lies in his bed on the dusty floor, and heals.

  Chapter Nineteen

  The school year comes to an end, and another one begins, and Jamie continues his night-time escapes to London. Some part of what I say to him about schoolwork must make sense to him, though, because when his exam grades come through, they’re not as bad as I have feared: they are mediocre, it’s true, and everyone knows he should have done better, but they’re enough to keep us together.

  Even though my father’s job has brought my parents back to England as well, now, I see little of Jamie in this summer. His parents are moving house again, and rather than stay with them through the haul of removals and packing and unpacking, he spends the time in London. He tells them – and I tell them, too, when they ask me – that he’s staying with a school friend, someone in his year, whose family have a flat there. I know the truth: that he’s sharing a bedsit with Paul, and playing the clubs almost every night. When I do get the chance to go and see him, it’s always like visiting another world – a world that surrounds Jamie and makes sense of him in some way, so that he seems at ease and properly alive. It is a world in which I feel curiously detached; not unwelcome, but as if I am a child in the company of adults. It is only when the autumn closes in, and school begins again, that he sinks back into a kind of frustrated lethargy.

  Sometimes I go to find him and he’s not there. I get to know the signs; a kind of tension builds in him during the day, and in the late evening when everyone else is sleepy and ready for bed, Jamie is faking his sleepiness. An hour or two later and he will be gone. Most of the time he’s back before three, creeping into the house by secret ways and going silently to bed. Sometimes, though, it’s later – four or five o’clock. I know, because sometimes I lie awake and wait to hear his door, further down the corridor, open in the darkness of the sleeping house. Now that I am sixteen, I have once again caught Jamie up, if only in the sense that our rooms are on the same floor.

  After that first time, when he lets me come with him, he doesn’t invite me along on these excursions. He says that he’s afraid of getting me into trouble if he’s caught, and I believe that this is true – or mainly true. It�
�s OK to go and watch him in the summer, he allows, and in other school holidays; he’ll tell me when and where. But I know also that he doesn’t tell me everything; that sometimes when he goes to London the saxophone stays in its case in his room. It’s more than just playing the clubs, then; but I can’t be certain what more.

  I worry all the time about what will happen if they catch him, if he’s found out. When I try to tell him this, though, he just laughs about it, as though it wouldn’t matter at all.

  ‘Have you heard about this?’ I ask him one evening.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘They’re doing a combined arts trip to Florence. Applications next week.’

  ‘Oh,’ he says. ‘You going?’

  ‘Yeah. It would be cool, don’t you think?’

  ‘I suppose. Lots of sketching and so on, then?’

  ‘And other stuff,’ I say. ‘I thought – well, do you want to come?’

  For a moment he looks genuinely perplexed. ‘Why?’

  ‘You know – just to get out of here for a while. It’s a whole week next term.’

  Jamie looks dubious. ‘Would they let me? I’m not an artist.’

  ‘You’re a musician. Look here.’

  I have copied down the dates and events, and the phone numbers of all the concert halls and churches where they’re to happen. It has taken me most of the afternoon, and a huge amount of change, to find it all out.

  ‘What’s this stuff?’

  ‘Concerts and musical evenings and things like that. All in the week of the trip. There’s bound to be more, but this is all I could find that’ve been planned out this far in advance. If you take this to the director of studies, he’s bound to let you go. I mean, combined arts means music as well as painting and literature and that shit, doesn’t it?’

  A slow grin is spreading over Jamie’s face. ‘You really think they’d go for it?’ he says.

  ‘Why not? You’re an artist. You want to go. You’ve done all this preparatory work, and you’re really, really enthusiastic about it. You are really, really, enthusiastic, aren’t you?’