by Guy Burt
Anna says, smiling politely, ‘They all look like wankers. Are they your friends?’
‘What’s she say?’ Eddie asks.
‘She says she’s pleased to meet you.’
‘Yeah? Cool. How do you know her?’
Anna says, ‘Hey – tell them I’m your girlfriend.’
‘Don’t be silly,’ I say.
‘No, go on.’
Tim says, ‘Yeah, come on, Alex. How do you know her?’
‘She’s just a friend of mine. Stop letching.’
‘I knew you’d never get a girlfriend like that, Carlisle. Tell her I think she’s cute.’
‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ I say. Anna takes me discreetly by the hand.
‘Come on,’ she says. ‘Let’s go somewhere else.’
‘Yeah,’ I say. To the watching boys I say, ‘If Dalton comes by, can you tell him I’ve met a friend and I’ll be back for lunch? He won’t mind. I’ve done most of a sketch anyway.’
‘We’ll come,’ Jonas says eagerly.
‘Fuck off.’
They retire to where we’ve been sitting, grinning among themselves. As Anna and I walk away, I hear Eddie call after me – ‘Let her go free, Carlisle! You wouldn’t know what to do with a girl like that anyway!’ There’s some poorly stifled laughter. I grin at Anna apologetically.
She says, ‘You know, I knew your friends would be like this. I just knew it. I thought, it’ll be nice to see Alex, but of course all his friends will be adolescent males. I nearly didn’t come.’
‘Oh, cheers.’
‘You shouldn’t have told them. It would have been much more fun if we’d pretended to be boyfriend and girlfriend. You could have pissed them all off enormously.’
‘Yeah, well,’ I say. For some reason I find myself feeling very self-conscious, especially when Anna talks like this about us being boyfriend and girlfriend. I wish she wouldn’t. I’ve been thinking about seeing her for weeks, ever since I get her letter saying that she might be able to make it; but somehow I’ve never quite realized how much she will have grown up. Although I laugh with her at how transparently attracted to her my friends have been, I am nervously aware that I am, as well. It’s not something I can control. She’s a very beautiful young woman, and she has some kind of confidence that I’m horribly aware I don’t possess – feel like I never will possess, no matter how much older I get. Even more than before, when I was twelve, I feel that she has left me behind somehow – that the two years that separate us have stretched and become the whole difference between a child and an adult.
If any of this is occurring to Anna as well, she doesn’t show it. ‘Let’s get ice-cream,’ she says.
‘What, ice-cream and Cokes?’ I say.
‘Of course. Is there an ice-cream place near here?’
‘Florence,’ I say, with the assurance of one who’s been in the city a full eighteen hours, ‘is full of ice-cream. We’re bound to find some somewhere.’
‘This is so cool,’ she says. ‘I’ve been really excited.’
‘Yeah?’
‘Yeah. What about you?’
‘Yeah, me too,’ I say.
‘I wish we knew where Jamie was,’ she says, after a moment.
‘He’ll turn up,’ I say.
She glances at me. ‘Is everything all right with you two?’ she says.
‘Yeah, of course. What do you mean?’
‘I don’t know,’ she says, sounding thoughtful. ‘It’s just – in your letter, you sounded a bit – and now – I just wondered …’ Her voice tails off, and she shrugs. ‘Well, if you’re OK,’ she says.
‘Yeah,’ I say, not sure what she’s meant. ‘We’re fine.’
’She’s really fit,’ Eddie is saying approvingly. ‘Italian, though. Doesn’t speak English.’
I smile to myself and say nothing, knowing he’s wrong on both counts. Over lunch, Anna is the subject of conversation at our table, Eddie and the others filling in some of the boys who weren’t there and haven’t seen her.
‘How fit?’ someone asks.
‘Really good,’ Eddie says. ‘Wasn’t she, Tim?’
‘Mm,’ says Tim through a mouthful of pasta. ‘Definitely.’
‘How’d you know her, Alex? From when you used to live here?’
‘Hey,’ someone else says. ‘Is she the same girl that you used to draw? You had those pictures, remember?’
‘Oh – yeah,’ Jonas says. ‘I remember those. You had drawings of her on your wall when you were in the third form. Is she?’
I say, ‘Yeah.’
‘Christ,’ he says. ‘She looks really different now.’
I shrug. I’m embarrassed by all the attention and stir Anna has created; and at the same time, part of me is strangely envious of these other boys, the way they can talk about her and think about her. I can’t do that. She’s my friend, not just some girl I’ve seen in the street and fancied. Everyone at the table is jealous of me, for knowing her, for being able to talk to her, to be with her, and all the time I’m feeling – left out. It’s stupid, but it’s there all the same.
Jamie’s late. When I see him come in, I ease my way out from where I’m sitting and go across to meet him.
‘Hey,’ he says.
‘Hey. Where have you been?’
‘Around,’ he says vaguely. ‘You know.’
‘Want to hear something cool?’ I say, unable to keep myself from grinning.
He looks at me curiously. ‘What?’
I glance around the restaurant. A couple of the other boys are watching us, ‘Outside,’ I say. Jamie raises one eyebrow, but follows me out into the street.
‘What is it?’
‘Guess who’s here?’
He looks blank. ‘What?’
‘Guess who’s here. Guess who I met by the Duomo today.’
An expression of mild irritation crosses his face. ‘I don’t know, Alex. Santa Claus?’
I have to tell him. I can’t keep it inside any longer. ‘Anna,’ I say, watching to see how he’ll react.
At first he just looks disbelieving; then he peers more closely at me, and his face alters. ‘What, really?’ he says.
‘Yeah.’
‘Anna’s here?’
‘Yeah.’
He looks almost comically shocked. ‘You’re – I mean, how come? What’s she doing here?’
‘She’s told her tutors she’s doing some research. Political history or something. She’s here for the week, too.’
‘Christ,’ Jamie says faintly. There is something in his face I can’t quite read properly. He says, ‘She’s here right now?’
‘Well, not right now. But she’s going to meet us this evening.’
‘Christ,’ he says again. And, ‘Anna. Shit. I mean, what kind of coincidence is—’ He stops, and again looks closely at me.
‘What?’ I say.
‘You told her?’ he says.
‘Well, I mentioned it,’ I say. I’m surprised at how he’s behaving. I have played through in my mind what it will be like when he finds out: confusion at first, then surprise, then delight. The three of us are together again. Instead of this, though, he looks almost suspicious, as if I’ve played a trick on him.
‘What? You wrote to her?’
‘Yeah,’ I say, some more of my excitement draining out of me at the tone of his voice. I say, ‘What is it? Aren’t you pleased?’
He hesitates then, and frowns slightly, and then rubs the hair back from his forehead. He looks at me, and blinks, and smiles slightly for the first time. Just a small smile. He says, ‘Yeah. Yeah, of course I am. Jamie and Alex and Anna.’ There’s another pause, and his smile widens, becomes more the way I know it. ‘Yeah. Cool.’
‘Good,’ I say, relieved. ‘You looked a bit – well, a bit weird then.’
‘It’s been a long day,’ he says. ‘I just wasn’t – expecting anything. Anything like that, anyway.’
‘She’ll be back at seven. What should we do, do you think?’<
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A slightly crazy look has come over Jamie’s face. ‘We should go out,’ he says. ‘Hit the town. Get partied up.’
‘Can you afford it?’ I say. Neither of us has much money.
Jamie just pats his pocket, and I hear the faint sound of coins there. ‘Don’t worry. The cash flow situation has eased.’
‘Shit! What have you been doing?’
He grins, and the faint look of madness is gone. ‘That saxophone’s already paid for itself twice over,’ he says. ‘Just give me a subway and some old favourites.’
‘What, you’ve spent the whole afternoon busking?’
He nods.
I shake my head. ‘You’re insane,’ I say. ‘Pray nobody catches you.’
‘They won’t,’ he says lightly. ‘They never have.’
‘You can’t be lucky for ever,’ I say.
‘Oh, shut up, Alex. You make your own luck. Come on, I’m hungry.’ He stops, though, just in the doorway of the restaurant. ‘Anna, yeah? Now that’s weird.’
‘Not weird,’ I say. ‘Cool. It’ll be just like old times.’
‘Yeah,’ he says. ‘I suppose.’
Later, when the plates are being cleared away, I try to catch his eye across the room; but he’s not looking my way. Around me, the conversation finally drifts away from Anna, as Eddie and one of his friends discuss how cheap the wine is in Italy, and how easy it is to buy. I let my mind drift, and the words just wash around me.
I am in bed with my temperature for two days; so is Anna. The doctor comes and says I’ll live, but when he’s gone, I can sense the suspicion from downstairs. The doctor has asked difficult questions. Have I been out in the cold? Sleeping with the window open in the storm? Walking around at night? I mumble and shake my head and deny everything, but I can see in their faces that they don’t quite believe me.
I have blisters on the sides of my feet, and on my heels, from where my wet socks have rubbed. It’s a small miracle that nobody notices this, and that I don’t have to think of yet more excuses and explanations.
The two days feel like a week. It occurs to me also that Anna will be going away again soon, and this seems a miserable way to spend what little time we have left together.
At last, though, we’re better. Lena tells us not to go so far out into the valley, and to be back for lunch each day; no more money for sandwiches. She says we’re still recovering and we need to take things easy for a while. For the first time ever, Anna’s natural energy and verve seem to waver, and she just nods; she still looks terribly tired, as though two days and nights in bed have done her no good at all. But then, I remind myself, neither have they me; I feel just as weak as I did when we staggered up Jamie’s drive with the remains of the thunderstorm dripping from the trees around us.
We sit behind the wall at the bottom of the garden, and look at the side of the valley. The sun’s out today, which makes everything look more cheerful, but there’s no doubt that the proper part of the summer is gone. Every so often a cloud draws across and the rocks go dull around us, before brightening again a minute later, and there’s a thin, but steady, breeze coming in from the sea. Jamie idly flicks stones at a tin can some yards away; I watch him. Anna has her eyes closed, leaning back against the bricks of the wall.
‘Do you think he took the car?’ she says.
‘Maybe.’
Jamie throws a stone and misses. ‘I’m glad he’s gone,’ he says, with a sudden and surprising vehemence.
‘Why?’ I say.
‘I don’t know. I just am.’ He throws another stone, and the can jumps sideways with a clonk.
‘I wonder where he is now,’ Anna says, half to herself.
‘Could be anywhere,’ Jamie says. I think, instinctively, of what I’ve seen; of Signor Ferucci’s house all bright with lights, as if it’s filled with bustle and activity. But I still don’t say anything. Even if it was the hermit there, he won’t be there any more. He wouldn’t have been there two hours after I saw it; I’m sure of that. And now it’s been three days.
‘I wonder if …’ Anna stops.
‘What?’
‘Nothing.’
A voice calls, ‘Jamie! Anna!’
‘It’s my mum,’ Jamie says, sounding surprised. We brush the rock dust and dirt from our jeans and trot round the end of the wall to the front of Jamie’s house.
His mother is in the hallway. ‘Here,’ she says. She sounds both amused and slightly intrigued, as if she can’t quite work something out. ‘This came. It’s for you, Anna.’ She holds it out: a postcard.
Anna takes it and turns it over, and her face goes pale.
‘What does it say?’ Jamie says; his voice is shaky. Anna just holds the card out to him. I peer over Jamie’s shoulder.
For Anna on her eleventh birthday. There’s nothing else.
‘Who’s it from?’ Jamie’s mother says. ‘The postmark’s Salerno, see?’
‘Oh,’ Anna says. ‘Yeah. That would be – I have a cousin who lives there, I think. That would be – yeah, that would be her.’
‘She’s a little late,’ Mrs Anderson says with a smile. ‘But it’s a nice thought.’ She goes back into the sitting room, leaving us alone.
‘Yeah,’ Anna says. Jamie turns the postcard over. On the other side is a picture of a figure silhouetted under a tree at sunset; it’s one of those rather slushy pictures you see a lot at news-stands. What we’re all looking at, though, is the line of print along the bottom of the picture. Sometimes they say things like You’re cute or My friend or something like that. Jamie’s finger traces the words.
Thinking of you.
‘Yeah,’ he whispers. ‘I bet.’
Anna’s hands, when she takes the card back from Jamie, seem to be shivering slightly.
‘What does it mean?’ I say. ‘It’s him, isn’t it?’
‘Not here,’ Anna says shortly; and she leads the way back outside behind the wall. There, in the sunshine, we pass the card from one to another, reading and rereading it.
‘Why?’ Jamie says at last.
‘I don’t know. I think—’ She hesitates.
‘What?’
She rubs her thumb gently and slowly across the words the hermit has written, but the ink doesn’t smudge. She says, ‘It’s like he’s gone, but—’
‘I don’t like it,’ Jamie says. ‘It scares me.’
‘No,’ Anna says. ‘No. It’s not like that. It’s not a – you know, it’s not to scare us. It’s just – a reminder. You understand?’ She looks round at Jamie and me.
‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘I understand.’ Jamie doesn’t say anything.
It’s a low, overcast sky that has settled on the valley when the time comes for Anna to go. It’s been a strange week, since the hermit’s disappearance; all of us feel it. Even after we’re fully better from the summer chill, our games don’t feel the same. We don’t know what to do with ourselves any more. For moments, sometimes, we’re able to lose ourselves in some fantasy and everything is the way it always was; but then something breaks the mood, and we remember that things are different now. I remember also what Anna said long before – that none of us is a kid, and none of us is weird. At the time, that made me feel very grown-up and important. Now, though, I find myself wishing sometimes that we could go back, and be kids again. I don’t know what we are any more. I remember looking for lizards with Jamie, and swimming in the cove, and comics and theatres and all of that, and it seems like someone else’s life.
The bus comes for Anna just before lunchtime. Early that morning, we set off up the valley for what will be the last time for ages. It’s Anna’s idea. She wants to see the chapel before she leaves, she says, and Jamie and I can’t refuse her. The bed of the empty river is muddy and sludgy still, but at least the water is gone again. Lena was right; it only fills up sometimes. Debris has been swept down the watercourse from the hills, and the familiar little piles of branches and pieces of detritus along the way are all gone. It’s just another thing that
has changed.
At the chapel, the stone pines hardly cast shadows in the dull light. Anna walks slowly round the building, staring at it; staring at the belltower and the walls and the eaves high up where the roof starts. She goes inside for a time. Jamie and I stand at the door and watch her. The ashes of our fire are still on the marble at the altar end, but apart from that, the chapel is much the same as when we found it.
Outside, we stand under the dandelion clock. Anna looks despondent, as if she doesn’t know what to do now she’s actually here. On the journey up the valley she’s walked purposefully, as if she has a goal in mind; now, she seems almost unsure of why she’s come all this way.
‘Will you come again?’ I say.
She smiles a little at that. ‘Yeah. Can I? Next year?’
‘Of course,’ Jamie says.
‘I’d like that,’ she says. ‘I really – I mean, I’ve—’
‘That would be great,’ I say.
She looks around. ‘I really like this place,’ she says. I know she means all of Altesa, not just the chapel. ‘It’s – I don’t know.’
Jamie looks at his watch. ‘We’ll have to go soon,’ he says. ‘Or you’ll miss your bus.’
‘I don’t mind,’ she says. ‘They can go without me.’
‘What’ll you do?’ Jamie says, smiling, going along with her.
‘I’ll – I’ll live here, of course. I want to be a hermit – only I’ll be a real hermit this time. I’ll live in the chapel, and I’ll cook on a fire there at the altar end. And I’ll pull down some of those boards over the windows so the light comes in and it’s bright and all colours.’ Her eyes are bright, dancing with ideas. ‘I’ll make a bed with straw from the fields and I’ll sit up in the belltower and watch everything that goes on in the valley. All the people coming and going – and all the boats out in the harbour – and cars on the roads – and the houses at night, with the lights on. And I’ll sing to myself to keep cheerful.’
‘Won’t you be lonely?’ I say.
‘No. I’ll draw people on the walls to keep myself company. And you and Jamie can come and visit.’
‘We can bring you sweets,’ I say.