The Dandelion Clock

by Guy Burt

  ‘Really really,’ Jamie confirms.

  ‘Well then.’

  ‘If the applications are next week, how come you know all about it?’

  ‘I have friends in high places,’ I say.

  ‘Dalton?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Thought so.’ He takes the piece of paper from me and stares at it. At last he says, ‘Yeah. That would be cool.’ There’s a distant, slightly dreamy quality to his voice, as if he’s already there in his head.

  I say, ‘You sure?’

  ‘Of course. Hey, Alex,’ he says, as I open the door to go’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘What do you call a clock without hands?’

  ‘A dandelion clock, of course,’ I say, and for some reason that neither of us properly understands, we burst into uncontrolled laughter. In the corridor, a boy in Jamie’s year passing by shakes his head in exaggerated disbelief. When I’ve got my breath back, I say, ‘It’s still a crap joke, Jamie.’

  ‘All the best ones are,’ he grins. Then, after a moment, ‘This is a good idea, Alex.’

  ‘I’m full of them.’

  He just grins, one eyebrow raised, doesn’t answer. I close the door, smiling to myself; I haven’t been sure that Jamie will want this, but I have wanted it very much. It feels to me like it could be good for him. I have been haunted by what he said a long time before, that leaving Italy was a mistake. I want to see him back there, even for a short time. Now that he’s agreed to it, there’s only one more thing I have to do. As I walk back down the corridor to my room, I find myself whistling.

  I’m still whistling softly as I smooth the sheet of writing paper and write out the school address at the top. Then I stop for a minute, staring at the blank part of the paper, wondering exactly how to say it. It’s been a while since I last wrote; it’s become harder to endure the silent waiting for replies that don’t come. But this one will be different: I’m sure of that.

  I tap the pen briefly on the desk and then write,

  Dear Anna

  ‘You’ve been nervous all day,’ she says, mopping up the coffee I’ve spilt with her napkin. ‘What’s up with you?’

  ‘It’s nothing.’

  ‘Well, you shouldn’t be drinking espresso if you’re already this jumpy.’ She hesitates, then looks at me more closely. ‘Seriously, Alex. What is it? Is it still the – you know, the explosion thing?’

  ‘It wasn’t just an explosion thing,’ I say. ‘It was a bomb. People were killed.’

  ‘Yeah,’ she says quietly. ‘I know. But not us; we’re OK. And it’s been two days. Why are you still thinking about it?’

  It’s instinctive to glance round, though the moment I’ve done it I feel foolish. The café table is on a busy little street corner, and anyone lingering near us in the bustle would be painfully obvious. Still, I do it; and then I turn back to her. I say, ‘Don’t you ever wonder about him?’

  ‘Who?’ she says blankly.

  ‘Him. The hermit.’

  A flash of something – surprise? – crosses her face. She says, ‘That was ages ago, Alex. What’s that to do with anything?’

  I say, ‘I know it was ages ago. But sometimes, when you forget things, they—’ I can’t work out what to say to make sense of it. I stumble on anyway. ‘We were warned, weren’t we? Not to forget. That was the thing. But you sound like it’s all – buried, all gone away.’

  ‘It’s in the past,’ she says. ‘That’s the same thing.’

  ‘Not always, it isn’t.’

  She looks at me with amusement. ‘So what’s all this about?’ she says.

  ‘I saw someone, at the bar. The night we were there, you know?’

  ‘Right. So did I. Lots of people.’

  ‘Not inside. Outside, on the street. It was someone I’d seen before.’

  ‘Yeah? Where?’

  ‘I can’t remember,’ I say.

  ‘Did you know him?’

  ‘It wasn’t a him, it was a her. A woman. I’d seen her somewhere before, and then she was there that night at the bar.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ Anna says; she sounds doubtful.

  ‘Yes. Really sure. I just – can’t remember where it was I saw her first.’

  ‘Oh.’ She’s quiet for a moment. ‘And?’

  I can tell I’m not making this sound right to her. She thinks I’m being paranoid. I say, ‘Listen. You remember when – you remember the hermit.’

  Her mouth twists in impatience. ‘Yeah, Alex. What’s that got to do with anything?’

  I plough on anyway. ‘You remember you and he – talked about stuff?’

  ‘We all did.’

  ‘No. You talked to him more. Jamie and I got bored, but you never did. You used to talk to him lots more than we did.’

  She shrugs. ‘I really don’t remember. It was a long time ago.’

  ‘He must have told you things. Don’t you remember any of what you talked about?’

  ‘Not really,’ she says. She thinks for a moment, and then adds, ‘Well, there was some stuff about – you know, what he’d done. But I think that was pretty much it. I was always like that as a kid, wanting to know all about things. It wasn’t just the hermit, it was everything, I think.’

  I think of the Anna I remember from those years – the Anna constantly craving more of everything, more sensation, more experience, always fighting away boredom, always taking the risks Jamie and I wouldn’t dare – and what she says now makes no sense to me. It was Jamie who wanted to know all about things, not Anna; Anna was the one who did things, not the one who read about them or talked about them.

  ‘What is it?’ she says. ‘You looked strange there, for a bit.’

  ‘I was just – remembering,’ I say. ‘You didn’t seem like that to me.’

  ‘Well, we were just kids,’ she says again. ‘Things always look different, I guess. Are you going to drink that or not? I’ll have it if you don’t want it.’

  I say, ‘You don’t think he could have said something to you that was – I don’t know. Important, somehow. Like – something you shouldn’t have heard?’

  ‘Why?’ she says, sipping at the remains of my coffee and wiping her mouth with the back of her hand.

  ‘Because – maybe if he said something, and you heard it, and then later he realized that he’d said it, then he’d—’

  She’s starting to giggle. ‘Just get it out, Alex,’ she says.

  ‘Maybe they’re trying to kill you,’ I say. The moment the words are out, I know how wrong they are; they sound ridiculous, melodramatic, insane, in the bright morning air. Anna throws her head back and laughs delightedly.

  ‘Oh, Alex! That’s good. Is that what’s been bothering you?’

  The laughter feels like acid to me; and a memory stirs somewhere, uneasily.

  I say, hopelessly, ‘I mean it. What if the – if that bomb had been meant to kill you? Or both of us? I mean – we’re the only people who – who know. About him, I mean. We know his face.’

  She’s still laughing. ‘Oh, Alex,’ she says again. ‘God. I mean – are you serious? Like the hermit’s stalking us?’ She snorts laughter again, and I wait, flushed and ashamed, until she stops. She drinks the last of the coffee and sets the cup down.

  I say, ‘Well, I just thought—’

  She interrupts. ‘Look,’ she says. ‘It’s just a coincidence, OK? If the hermit had meant us any harm, he could have done it years ago. He didn’t, though. He’s out of our lives and we’re out of his. Why on earth should he come back now? It’s just all been a – horrible coincidence, that’s all. There’s no hermit any more. Maybe he’s dead now, or in prison.’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ I say dully. ‘There’s never been anything in the papers.’

  ‘You mean you read the papers – watching?’ She sounds amazed, and perhaps appalled as well.

  ‘Sometimes.’

  ‘Christ,’ she says. She shakes her head, and we’re quiet for a minute or more. Then she says, very
steadily, ‘Alex, it’s really simple. We were kids and we helped someone. He’s gone now, and he’s not going to come back and – I don’t know, blow us up or something. It just doesn’t work like that.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘I know,’ she says firmly. She is talking to me as if I am seven again. She says, ‘It’s all in the past, and the past is gone. What we’ve got now is the present. That’s all that counts.’

  Very reluctantly, I let myself nod. ‘OK,’ I say.

  ‘Right. It’s a beautiful day, you’re in a beautiful city with lots of shit to sketch and draw and all that, and you stand a very good chance this afternoon of screwing your childhood sweetheart – again. So stop all this – panic. It was just something that happened, but we weren’t there. It happened to other people, not us. It was nothing to do with us. Things like that happen all the time, everywhere; it’s just that this one brushed by close to us. But it brushed by. Nothing more than that. OK?’

  ‘OK,’ I say. She’s smiling at me, gently.

  ‘I was scared too,’ she says. ‘When you told me, I mean. But it’s gone now. We only have a couple of days left here, and we ought to make the most of them. It’s just us, Alex; there’s no-one lurking in the shadows, waiting to get us. It’s just us. OK?’

  I think of the woman I am sure I have seen before, but even so, I say it. ‘OK.’

  ‘And that’s all. Come on, I’ll pay up. Let’s go and find something to do.’

  She is getting up, taking her bag from the back of the chair, starting towards the counter inside. I can’t stop myself: the words rise up unbidden. I call after her, ‘Name angel.’

  She stops dead, turns back to me; her face is white as paper, as if it is the voice of a ghost that’s called out to her.

  She leans on the low wall that runs along beside the river, folding her arms around her as if she’s cold, though the air is warm. I rest my elbows on the stone as well. She’s not looking at me, but staring out over the water to the buildings running along the waterfront opposite, many of them cantelevered out and supported on wooden beams or stone arches.

  At last she says, ‘Where did you learn Hungarian?’

  ‘Your father was Hungarian, wasn’t he?’

  She nods. ‘Yeah. But that was – ages ago.’

  ‘Have you ever seen him again?’

  Another nod. ‘A few times. He’s got another family now. He used to come and see me sometimes, but my mother didn’t like it. I write to him. I mean, I used to. Sometimes.’

  ‘Is that why you wanted us to help him?’

  I mean the hermit, of course; and for once she doesn’t ask me who I’m talking about. ‘Maybe,’ she says.

  ‘Because he was Hungarian too?’

  ‘Maybe.’ She’s quiet for a time. Then she says, ‘How did you know that?’

  ‘I didn’t,’ I say. ‘It was a guess.’

  ‘But you learnt the language?’

  I shake my head. ‘No. I just remember what he said. I’d like to learn it, though; one day. Perhaps you could teach me.’

  She looks confused; dazed, almost. ‘What do you mean, “What he said”?’

  ‘The first time we saw him. We were going to go and get someone – an adult, an ambulance, something like that. We’d got to the door of the chapel and he said something. It didn’t make any sense at the time – well, not to me. But it did to you. That was the start of it all. You were – you were like us, up to then. You were going to go and tell someone, find an adult, call an ambulance, all that. And then he said it, and you – you changed.’ I pause, take a breath. ‘You wouldn’t let us leave him, remember? You wouldn’t let Jamie and me leave. And later, when he told us to go and get Signor Ferucci – you wouldn’t do that either. All because of that thing he said.’ I stop, and look at her for a while. ‘What does it mean?’

  She is silent, and I wonder if she’s trying to develop a lie; but then she just says, ‘It means, “Don’t go.” Ne menj el.’

  Name angel.

  ‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘That’s what I thought.’ I shake my head. ‘And that was enough to – to make you do everything else? Just knowing he and you were born in the same country? That was all?’

  ‘You remember the strangest things,’ she says, not answering. ‘Christ. When you said it, I thought – I mean, it sounded like him. You sounded like him.’ She sounds as though she can’t quite believe this.

  I say, ‘I just said what he said.’ I know what she means, though; in saying the words, I have imitated the one time I’ve heard them aloud. It’s not the hermit’s voice that has come out when I’ve spoken, but something in it must be close enough to wake that memory in her. She still looks pale, even in the warmth of the sunlight here.

  She says, ‘God.’

  I say, ‘Do you see what I mean now? About him being a danger to us?’

  She shakes her head slowly. ‘No, Alex. It doesn’t change it at all. If anything, it’s why I know you’re wrong.’

  I stare at her, waiting for her to explain what she means.

  She says, ‘You were right about one thing. I did talk to him. I talked to him a lot.’

  ‘Ah,’ I say.

  ‘But that’s why I’m sure, Alex. Maybe if I hadn’t talked to him I’d be as – scared as you. But I got to know him. He wasn’t just the hermit, for me. He was – someone I knew. Like a friend.’

  There is a catch in her voice as she says the last few words, and at once, I understand what it is she’s held back. I say, incredulously, ‘You know his name, don’t you?’

  She shakes her head quickly, and then swallows, and nods. ‘Just his first name. Don’t look like that. It’s quite a common name, back home. It doesn’t – identify him, or anything like that.’

  I can’t believe this. I say, ‘He told you his name?’

  ‘Why not? We told him ours. We trusted him, and he trusted us.’

  ‘You make it sound so simple,’ I say. ‘Anna, he was someone who killed people for a living.’

  ‘Not for a living,’ she says, and there’s a spark of anger in her voice that surprises me. ‘He wasn’t like that.’

  ‘I can’t believe you’d trust someone like that.’

  ‘You trust me, don’t you?’ she says. Her eyes are flashing with some hard, unflinching emotion that I can’t properly read; mainly anger, but – something else.

  I say, ‘Of course. But that’s—’

  ‘Why? Why do you trust me? I keep telling you you hardly know me. We haven’t spoken properly for – what? Six years or something. How can you trust this person?’

  ‘That’s just stupid,’ I say. I can hear anger in my voice – and in hers, too. I say, ‘You’re talking about totally different things. You’re my friend, someone I know. He was a terrorist, for God’s sake. They’re cowards, Anna – they kill children with bombs and run away. Like at the club. We could have died because of one of them, and we wouldn’t even have known what they looked like. So no, I don’t understand how you can trust someone like that, and I don’t understand how you can say he was your friend the way – the way I am.’

  Her face is white. ‘You don’t understand anything,’ she says.

  ‘What don’t I understand?’

  ‘Have you studied any of this, Alex? Do you know anything – one single thing – about how terrorism works?’

  ‘You don’t need to study it to know this kind of thing, Anna. It’s obvious.’

  ‘No,’ she says. ‘It’s not.’

  I can’t understand why she’s so angry. I say, ‘Look – let’s go and get a drink or something.’

  ‘I don’t think so.’ She takes a breath, lets it out. ‘Alex – I could do with some time to myself, OK?’

  ‘Hey,’ I say. ‘I’m sorry. I just—’

  ‘It’s OK,’ she breaks in. ‘I just need a walk. Why don’t you go and sketch stuff for a while? I’ll just – you know. Have a wander round. I’ll see you later.’

  I’m starting to realize that
I’ve upset her somehow, though I still can’t see how or why. I say, ‘I’m really sorry. I just don’t understand.’

  ‘No,’ she says. ‘I know. It doesn’t matter.’

  ‘I’ll see you later?’

  ‘Sure.’ She smiles, a small, uneven smile. ‘Don’t worry.’

  I watch her as she weaves her way through the people, head down, in the direction of the Palazzo Vecchio. All I can think is, Christ, Alex – how did you screw things up like that? What did you do wrong?

  But I can’t work it out. And I can’t see how she can think that the hermit was ever her friend. It makes no sense to me.

  I’d like to learn it, though; one day. Perhaps you could teach me.

  It’s just a moment of language, then, that links Anna and the hermit: a momentary realization of a connection. It’s so slight. Then, from that first tiny contact, there come conversations, and gradually laughter, and quiet songs with unfamiliar words in the night. Hiding a gun, and a car. Keeping watch. Not telling, never telling. All from three small words.

  But it’s years before I do learn the language; painfully slowly, over a long time. It doesn’t come easily, but I do it anyway, though I’m never really sure why; there’s no reason to learn it any more. It’s just one of those things: a relic. I do it anyway.

  As the heat of the summer starts to be charged with humidity, and we see storm clouds more often far out at sea, we have to spend less time with the hermit. It becomes more and more difficult to absent ourselves from home so constantly, and although we keep up the rota of night-shifts in the chapel, during the day we are sometimes forced to abandon the hermit for hours at a time. None of us is too worried about doing this, though; while the hermit is still unable to move any distance unaided, his wound seems to be healing well, and he’s able to feed and look after himself much better than before.

  One afternoon, when we are talking together in the sun outside the chapel, Anna says, ‘What day is it?’

  ‘Tuesday, I think,’ Jamie says.

  ‘What date, I mean.’

  He looks at his watch. ‘The twenty-third.’

  Anna nods. ‘I’m going to be eleven tomorrow,’ she says.

  ‘Really?’ Jamie is surprised, and I am too; Anna hasn’t said anything until now. ‘It’s your birthday tomorrow?’