The Dandelion Clock

by Guy Burt

  But we’re not thinking of that: it’s promised. This is the last night Jamie will be here, and we’re going to the beach. It’s a secret. The night-times have always been ours, and this last one is special. We both know it.

  When we round the last bulge of land and the cove opens up before us, the sea is like ink under the sky. The sounds of the water are quiet but clear; I can hear the waves slap gently against the rocks, only just moving here in the shelter of the spur. The cliffs reach up all around, shutting out the sky all round one side, while out across the sea there is no horizon any more; just the black of the sky and the black of the sea joining somewhere.

  Jamie stands for a moment looking out. ‘It’s beautiful at night,’ he says.

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘The water’ll be warm, too. You want to go in?’

  ‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘Let’s.’

  A couple of yards from the water is a long, flat rock, inclined just a little up the grade of the beach. Jamie stops by it, kicks off his shoes, pulling off shirt and jeans. In a moment he’s naked, and he stands there just looking at the water before picking his way through the stones to where the spur cuts out into the sea. I sit down to get my shoes off. I can see him tread lightly along the sharp and uneven surface of the rock, placing his feet in the right places, minding where the edges of the rock might cut you, until he’s far enough out to dive. I’ve got my clothes off too, now. He glances back at me, and I wave. He waves back, and I catch the white gleam of his teeth as he grins. Then he has his arms over his head, and his body tenses for a second, and then falls like a knife into the oily darkness of the water. There’s a sudden quick foaming of bubbles from the dive, and then everything’s still until he breaks the surface, far out in the water.

  ‘It’s great!’ I hear him call. ‘Come on!’

  I follow his route out along the spur, though more slowly; we’ve never done this at night before, and I haven’t Jamie’s easy certainty about where to put my feet. I’m clumsier at diving than he is, but I’m past that point where all I can manage is to curl myself into a ball and throw myself in. I can at least keep my feet together, and get my hands in before the rest of me. I throw myself forward, and the water clutches me as I plunge down. Jamie’s ducked under the surface at the same moment, and when I open my eyes underwater he’s there – some distance off, but kicking towards me, his hair drifting and streaming around his face. I try to keep below, but I can’t, and I trail up to the surface. We both emerge, grinning, shaking our heads like dogs to clear the water from our hair and ears.

  ‘Not bad,’ he says. ‘It is warm, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘I’m going to see if I can get all the way down to the bottom,’ he says. ‘You coming?’

  ‘You bet.’

  ‘On three. One, two, three—’

  We both gulp great lungfuls of air, and upend ourselves, kicking down through the storm of bubbles into the clear water below. The sea is changed, in the moonlight; where once there were great dancing slabs of light and colour, now everything is dark, shot through with moving lines of silver. When I look at Jamie, his body is ringed and wrapped in a lace of pallid light, shifting and moving across his shoulder and back. I can see his muscles working under the skin as he swims downwards, until at last he manages to anchor himself with one hand to a stone on the seabed. I’m trying to do the same, but no matter how hard I thrash my legs I can only hold position, a little above and to one side of him. He turns his head towards me, and shakes it to float the hair out of his eyes, and bubbles filter up from the corner of his mouth. For a moment, he looks like some creature of the sea – like one of the mermen in fairy stories. He looks like he could live down here for ever.

  I fall away upwards, and a second or two later he slips past me, having pushed himself off from the rock. I catch a glimpse of his feet kicking off above me before I break through into the air again. Jamie is gasping and laughing on the surface.

  ‘Great! Ottimo!’

  He sweeps his arms out sideways and floats for a moment on his back, looking up.

  ‘Hey. You should do this. It’s the weirdest thing.’

  I let my body relax and do what he says. The water comes up over my ears, and the sounds of the waves dull down to an echoing murmur. Above me, the sky looks as if it’s floating, too: the stars all feel somehow detached from their places, as if they’ve sprung free for a moment. I feel that, if I were to flick a drop of water up with my hand, I could make ripples spread out across the heavens, and watch the constellations tremble and shimmer.

  ‘Wow!’ I hear myself say, but the word, coming through the water, is strange and unfamiliar.

  ‘Yeah,’ Jamie replies, and his voice is the same: changed, and strange.

  We lie on the slowly moving surface of the sea, and the salt water buoys us up and holds us there. As long as you stay relaxed, you can float. My arms and legs are completely limp, spread out from me. I think of myself as a starfish, just lying there: a starfish watching the stars. The fingers of my right hand brush against something, and in a moment I recognize it as Jamie’s hand, and I take hold of it; we won’t drift apart that way. He gives my hand a quick squeeze before he lets his arm go relaxed again, and for a long time we lie like that, with the water lapping over us and round us, warm and comforting.

  ‘Shooting star,’ says Jamie’s strange new sea-voice, through the water to my ears, and I see it in the sky in the same instant.

  ‘I see it,’ my sea-voice replies.

  We’re laced with silver. The moon climbs gradually higher in the sky, but there’s no high haze or thin cloud, and the stars stay as sharp and diamond-clear as ever.

  In the end it’s Jamie who moves first. He lets go my hand and twists in the water, and I let myself sink down until only my head’s showing, like before. My ears are out in the air, now, and when he speaks, his voice is back to normal.

  ‘We’ve drifted,’ he says. ‘Look.’

  He’s right; the gently lapping waves have carried us out towards the end of the spur. Beyond that is the open sea.

  ‘It was good, though.’

  ‘Yeah, wasn’t it?’

  We start the swim back, a slow breaststroke. For some reason, neither of us suggests a race – not that I’d win, anyway, but in an afternoon we might have. Instead, though, we take our time, letting the land creep imperceptibly closer.

  ‘I’m going to dive,’ Jamie says, when we’re back in the centre of the little bay.

  ‘I’ll watch.’ I don’t want to leave the comforting warmth of the water.

  Going back to the beach, and then walking out along the spur, is the long way round. Jamie just swims over to where the bank of rock comes up out of the water, and grabs hold, and lodges one foot high in some crevice: a moment later he’s pulled himself up out of the water, one lithe movement, and is standing there. From where I am, he’s a kind of reverse silhouette against the night sky: light against black. He takes a second to compose himself, and then he puts his arms up, and jumps like his whole body was a spring – tension caught and then released in one swift moment. I can just see him shoot by me under the water, still ribbed and wrapped with silvery lines like strands of seaweed, and he breaks the surface some yards past me.

  ‘That was a long one,’ I say.

  ‘Yeah.’

  We swim and dive over and over, and the moon wears round in the sky. Neither of us knows or cares what time it is. The air is still warm, and there’s no breeze, and the waves lap steadily and calmly in the little bay.

  Finally we are tired and have had our fill of swimming and diving. We’ve been underwater, right down to the bottom, and we’ve lain on the surface and looked at the sky, and between the two we’ve splashed and swum and worn ourselves out with it. We head for the beach, swimming with slow, languid strokes that barely stir the surface.

  The flat rock is big enough for two, and we sit on it, water streaming from us and running over and off the smooth stone. I’
m expecting to shiver and be cold, but we’ve warmed ourselves with swimming, and the beach is still full of the warmth of the impossibly hot days of the summer, all that spent heat stored up in the rocks and cliffs and leaking slowly out now to keep us comfortable. The air here carries the scent of flowers from the cliffs – evening flowers now closed, and night-flowers, calling subtly to the big white moths that love them. We sit on the rock and wait for the air to dry our bodies.

  ‘Alex?’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘I wish I wasn’t going away.’

  We’ve promised not to talk about that; but because it’s Jamie who’s said it, I realize the promise doesn’t count any more.

  ‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘Me too.’

  ‘It’s like – this –’ he indicates the cove with his head, ‘all this is what’s in me, you know? It’s – who I am. I don’t know what I’ll do when I’m somewhere else.’

  I think I know what he means. ‘You’ll be OK,’ I say. ‘It won’t be so bad.’

  ‘Yes it will.’

  I have something to tell him, I remember. ‘Hey,’ I say.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I asked my parents if I could go to England too. Next year, I mean, when I’m old enough.’

  He looks at me, and there’s a peculiar expression on his face.

  ‘What did they say?’

  ‘They were pleased, I think. My father was, anyway. They said I could, if I could do well enough at school, pass the exams, all that.’

  ‘Really?’ It’s like someone’s lit a candle inside him: his face is glowing with a strange intensity. ‘You really think you might come too?’

  ‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘I want to.’

  ‘That would be—’ He hesitates. ‘That would be good.’

  ‘We could be together. I bet England wouldn’t be so bad that way.’

  ‘No. I bet too.’

  ‘And it would only be a year before I came too.’

  He shakes his head slightly, as if in wonder. ‘That would be good,’ he says again, quietly.

  ‘It was Anna’s idea too,’ I say. ‘We were thinking about it, and I didn’t want to tell you in case my parents said no.’

  ‘Oh, right,’ he says. ‘Yeah. But they said it was OK?’ He doesn’t sound like he quite believes it.

  ‘Yeah. If I can do well enough.’

  ‘You can,’ he says, decisively. ‘You’ll do fine.’

  I feel a glow in me, too, at his confidence. Nobody else believes so simply that I can do things, not even Anna.

  Jamie says, ‘I – I’d just got used to the idea I wouldn’t see you again. Except holidays, I mean.’

  ‘Oh. But you will.’

  ‘Yeah.’ He lies back on the rock, stretching himself, his arms behind his head. ‘Thanks, Alex.’

  ‘I was going to be lonely too,’ I point out.

  ‘How quick do you think a year will go?’

  ‘I don’t know. Quite quick, if we keep writing to each other. Besides, it’s not a whole year. It’s just till Christmas.’

  ‘Yeah. That’s true. You know it snows in England at Christmas? Well, sometimes.’

  ‘Wow. We could build snowmen. When I’m there.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  I lie down too, but on my side, so I can look at him. He’s watching the sky, and his face is dreamy, as if full of the possibilities opened up by what I’ve said. I’m thrilled I’ve made him so happy.

  Jamie says, ‘They’ll all speak English, too. If we talk in Italian, no-one will know what we’re saying.’

  ‘Like a secret code,’ I say.

  ‘Yeah. Imagine – we can talk about people right in front of them, and they won’t know.’

  I am delighted at the idea. ‘That would be neat.’

  Jamie’s quiet for a bit. Then he says, ‘Alex?’

  ‘Mm?’

  ‘You know what you want to be when you grow up?’

  I think for a second. ‘No. Do you?’

  ‘I don’t know. I used to think I’d work on one of those big telescopes in New Mexico. Radio telescopes.’

  ‘The big dish ones?’

  ‘Yeah. Looking out really far.’

  I imagine Jamie standing in the middle of a big circle of dish antennae, high up on a flat-topped mountain in New Mexico, staring at the sky. ‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘You’d be good at that.’

  ‘You think?’

  ‘Of course. You’re really good already. You know all the names and everything.’

  ‘Yeah. But now I’m not so sure. I don’t really know what I want.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ I say. ‘You’ll find something you like. You know you will.’

  There’s a companionable silence for a time. Jamie’s still staring at the stars, and I watch him as he does so: his face, intelligent and inquisitive and calm, with his dark hair still slick with seawater; his arms cradling his head; the faint shadows of the ribs down his side; the slight, flat hollow of his belly.

  ‘Jamie?’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘It’s different.’

  ‘What?’

  I nod down at his body.

  ‘Oh. Yeah.’

  It’s been because of Anna, I suppose; Anna’s insistence on swimming trunks and bathing costumes. Now that I think about it, I realize this is the first time for a year or more that I’ve seen Jamie completely naked. His body’s got taller and slightly slimmer in that time, and I’ve noticed that I can see his muscles more clearly sometimes, but these are things I’ve seen from day to day. Now I can see that there have been other changes, too, which – because of Anna and the swimming trunks – I haven’t noticed.

  ‘It looks different,’ I say.

  ‘Yeah. I know.’

  ‘And there’s hair. Some,’ I add. There’s not much, just a smudge.

  Jamie props himself up on one elbow. ‘You don’t mind, do you?’

  I shake my head, surprised. It’s a strange question to ask. ‘No. Course not.’ Jamie’s still Jamie; how he looks doesn’t make any difference. I’m just curious. I say, ‘How long’ve you had hair?’

  ‘A while.’

  ‘Means you’re growing up.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘I wish I had hair.’

  ‘You will.’

  ‘What’s it feel like?’

  Jamie says, ‘Well – I don’t know. Like hair.’

  ‘Can I touch it?’ I say.

  He hesitates for a moment. ‘If you want.’

  I reach over and touch my fingers briefly to the smudge. It’s soft, softer than head hair. ‘It’s nice,’ I say.

  ‘You think?’

  I touch again. ‘Yeah. It’s – it’s nice.’ There isn’t a better word for it.

  I’m still running my fingers to and from when something bumps gently against them.

  ‘Hey,’ I say, grinning. Jamie sits up suddenly, drawing his legs up so I can’t see. Even in the moonlight, I can tell he’s blushing furiously.

  ‘Shit,’ he says. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘It’s OK.’

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘It’s OK,’ I say again. He turns his head away from me. ‘Hey, Jamie,’ I say. ‘It’s all right.’

  ‘It does it all the time,’ he says, rather indistinctly, still looking away. ‘It’s really—’

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ I say.

  ‘Shit. Sorry, Alex.’

  ‘What’s it like?’ I ask. I think of what has happened to me, looking at Anna and imagining touching her, and it reminds me of her voice, years before: At least it wasn’t – you know. Like that. I know what happens sometimes to my body, and I’ve seen Jamie naked before; but never this. Besides, his body’s changed, and I realize I’m curious.

  Jamie looks back at me. He looks uncertain, like he’s not sure whether to trust me or not.

  ‘Go on,’ I say. ‘Show me.’ I can’t believe he’s so embarrassed.

  Slowly he lets the leg nearest me down, until I can see. He says, ‘It keeps doing it.’<
br />
  ‘I hadn’t noticed.’

  ‘Well – good.’

  ‘It’s all right, though. I mean, it’s not, like, weird or anything.’ I can’t explain properly what I mean. The way Jamie’s talking about it, you’d think it was something separate from him; but to me it still looks part of Jamie. I can feel he’s worried about it, in some way, and I search for something to say that will make him feel better. ‘I think it looks nice.’

  ‘Do you?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  There’s a long silence. Then Jamie says – and his voice sounds slightly strange to me, though I can’t tell quite why – ‘Do you want to touch it?’

  I look at him, a little surprised. ‘OK.’ I reach out again and press my fingers lightly against it. ‘Hey. It’s pretty hard.’

  ‘Mm,’ Jamie says. I’m going to take my hand away, but he puts his hand on mine and presses it back, so I leave it there instead.

  I look at him, and he’s looking back at me. There’s still a lot of uncertainty in his eyes, as though he’s really worried about something. I can guess that all the changes must be pretty strange for him; I try to imagine what I’d feel like, if they were happening to me. I know I’d want someone to reassure me that they were OK. I say, ‘It’s – it’s nice. I like it.’

  ‘You do?’

  ‘Yeah.’ It’s actually true. It feels very strange, touching Jamie here – I can’t remember ever doing it before. And it’s stranger still, the way it feels now, all hard to the touch. But at the same time that it feels strange, it also feels like a surprisingly tender thing to do, like Jamie’s letting me touch something secret and part of him and special.

  ‘Alex?’

  ‘Yeah?’

  His hand is back on mine, and I feel him shift my palm, where I’m touching him, slightly.

  ‘Like this.’

  He rocks my hand back and forth a little, and I understand and do the same.

  ‘That way?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Jamie says. His voice is strange, like it was when we were in the sea and I was hearing it underwater. ‘Yeah. Like that.’

  I keep doing what he’s showed me, and while I’m doing it, strange thoughts start to seep into my head. I think of how Jamie’s body looks now, and remember what I’ve said: it means he’s growing up. I’ve known what happens when you start growing up, known for a long time, but it’s always struck me as something that’s a long way off, something in the future, that’ll come along one day and needn’t worry me now. But suddenly it seems that, for Jamie, it’s started to happen. And for Anna, too; I think of the way she’s looked, this summer; of her breasts and the new curves of her body, which used to be so much like Jamie’s. They’re both changing; both growing up. Just that smudge of hair between Jamie’s legs means a whole world of difference between us.