It had been a long day, a hot one, and a hard and tiring one. We’d started so early. My talk with Lee hadn’t made it easier either. There was a bit of a strain between us now, which I hated, and there was a general strain caused by everyone snapping at each other in the final few hours of daylight. The only exception was Homer, who hadn’t snapped at Fi. He’d had a go at me, about the amount of water I was putting on the vegetable seeds, and at Lee, over whether soccer was a better sport than footy, but Fi was immune. He wasn’t immune from her though. When he broke off a big piece of fruit cake (Mrs Gruber’s) and ate it, she burned his ears with a string of words like ‘greedy’ and ‘selfish’ and ‘pig’. Homer was so used to being told off in his life that you might as well have told a rock off for being sedimentary, but when Fi went for him he stood there like a little kid, red in the face and wordless. He ate the rest of his slice of cake, but I don’t think he enjoyed it. I was so glad she hadn’t seen me with the Iced Vo-Vo biscuits.
Yes, finding the hut had been the only highlight of the afternoon.
Fi had moved into my tent while Corrie was away, and that night, as we lay in bed, she said to me, ‘Ellie, what am I going to do about Homer?’
‘You mean the way he likes you?’
‘Yes!’
‘Mmm, it’s a problem.’
‘I wish I knew what to do.’
This was my specialty, sorting out my friends’ love lives. When I left school I was going to take it up as a career; open a business where people could come in off the streets and tell me all their boyfriend and girlfriend problems. It was just a shame I couldn’t figure out my own.
So I rolled over to where I could see Fi’s small face in the darkness. Her big eyes were wide open with worry.
‘Do you like him?’ We had to start somewhere.
‘Yes! Of course!’
‘But I mean ...’
‘I know what you mean! Yes, I think I do. Yes I do. I didn’t at school, but honestly, he was such a moron there. If anyone had said to me then that I’d end up liking him, well, I’d have paid their taxi fare to the psychiatrist. He was so immature.’
‘Yes, remember that water fight at the Hallowe’en social?’
‘Oh, don’t remind me.’
‘So if you like him now, what’s stopping you?’
‘I don’t know. That’s the hard part. I don’t know if I like him as much as he likes me, that’s one thing. I’d hate to get into a relationship with him where he assumed I felt as strongly as he does. I don’t think I ever could like him that much. He’s so ...’ She couldn’t think of a word to end the sentence, so I supplied one. ‘Greek?’
‘Yes! I mean, I know he was born out here, but he’s still Greek when it comes to girls.’
‘Do you mind that he’s Greek, or part Greek, or whatever you call it?’
‘No! I love it. Greek is sexy.’
‘Sexy’ sounded funny coming from Fi. She was so well brought up she didn’t normally use words like that.
‘So is that the only thing stopping you, that you don’t feel as strongly as he does?’
‘Sort of. I feel like I have to keep him at arm’s length or he’ll just take over. It’s like, you build a dam upstream to stop the village being washed away. I’m the village, and I build a dam by being cool and casual with him.’
‘That might just make him more passionate.’
‘Oh, do you think so? I never thought of that. Oh, it’s so complicated.’ She yawned. ‘What would you do if you were in my position?’
That was a tough question, because I was half in her position anyway. It was my feelings for Homer that were stopping me from taking the plunge with Lee. It would have been just my luck to be a castaway on a desert island with two guys and to like both of them. But Fi’s saying ‘sexy’ had made me realise that with Homer it was pretty physical. I didn’t want to spend hours with him talking about life; I wanted to spend hours with him making animal noises, like sighs and grunts and ‘Press harder’, or ‘Touch me there again’. With Lee it was something else. I was fascinated by his ideas, the way he thought about things. I felt I would see life differently, the more I talked to Lee. It was like I could learn from him. I didn’t know much about his life, but when I looked at his face and eyes it was like looking into the Atlantic Ocean. I wanted to know what I could find in there, what interesting secrets he knew.
So in answer to Fi’s question I just said, ‘Don’t string him along forever. Homer likes excitement. He likes to get on with it. He’s not the world’s most patient guy.’
She said sleepily, ‘So you think I should try it?’
‘“Better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.” If you go for it and it doesn’t work, well, what have you lost? But if he loses interest, so you never have anything with him, then you’ll spend the rest of your life wondering what might have been.’
Fi drifted off to sleep, but I lay awake listening to the night sounds, the breeze in the hot trees, the howls of feral dogs in the distance, the occasional throaty call of a bird. I wondered how I’d feel if Fi got off with Homer. I still couldn’t quite believe that I suddenly liked Homer so much. He’d been a neighbour, a brother, for so long. I tried to think back to the way he’d been a month ago, a year ago, five years ago when he was just a kid. I wanted to work out when he’d become attractive, or why I hadn’t noticed it before, but I couldn’t feel anything much for the way he’d been in those days. It was like he’d metamorphosed. Overnight he’d become sexy and interesting.
A dog howled again and I started wondering about the Hermit. Maybe that howl was the Hermit coming back to his violated house, coming to look for the people who’d trespassed into his secret sanctuary. I wriggled closer to Fi, feeling quite spooked. It had been strange, finding that little hut, so skilfully concealed. He must have really hated people to go to so much trouble. I’d half expected the place to feel full of evil, satanic powers, as though he’d huddled there for years holding black masses. What sort of man could do what he’d done? How could he have gone on with his life? But the hut hadn’t felt all that evil. There had been an atmosphere there, but one that was hard to define. It was a sad, brooding place, but not evil.
As sleep crept up on me I turned my mind to my evening ritual, that I performed now, no matter how tired I was. It was a sort of movie that I ran in my head every night. In the movie I watched my parents going about their normal lives. I made sure to see their faces as often as possible, and I pictured them in all kinds of everyday situations: Dad dropping bales of hay off to sheep, waiting at the wheel while I opened a gate, swearing as he tightened the belts on the tractor, in his moleskins at the field days. Mum in the kitchen – she was a real kitchen person, Mum; feminism had made her more outspoken maybe but it hadn’t changed her activities much. I pictured her looking for her library books, digging up spuds, talking on the phone, swearing as she lit the fuel stove, swearing that she’d change it for an electric one tomorrow. She never did. She claimed she was keeping the Aga because when we started taking tourists for farm stays they’d think it was picturesque. That made me smile.
I didn’t know if I was making myself feel bad by trying to make myself feel good, thinking about my parents, but it was my way of keeping them alive and in my thoughts. I was scared of what might happen if I stopped doing that, if I let them start drifting away, the way I was drifting away now, into sleep. Normally I’d be thinking about Lee, too, at about this time, hugging him to me and imagining his smooth brown skin and firm lips, but tonight I was too tired, and I’d already thought about him enough today. I fell asleep and dreamt about him instead.