Page 15 of The Man Who Didn't Call
Eddie sat on the grass next to me, removing from his pocket what looked like an uncomfortable bunch of keys. They were held together by a little wooden key ring in the shape of a mouse.
‘Who’s that guy?’ I asked, as Eddie handed me a pint. ‘I like him.’
Eddie turned to look at the key ring. After a little pause he smiled. ‘She’s called Mouse. I made her when I was nine.’
‘You made her? Out of wood?’
‘I did.’
‘Oh! Gosh, how lovely.’
Eddie ran a finger along Mouse. ‘She’s been with me through a lot,’ he smiled. ‘She’s my taliswoman. Anyway. Cheers.’ He leaned back on his elbows, turning his face to the sun.
‘So we’re just drinking in the middle of the day,’ I surmised happily. ‘While everyone else is working. We’re just sitting here, drinking.’
‘I’d say so.’
‘We’re drinking in the middle of the day and now we are quite drunk. And we are having a nice time, I think.’
‘Will we resume conversation, or are you going to spend the afternoon making statements?’
I laughed. ‘As I said earlier, Eddie: clarity. It keeps me on the straight and narrow.’
‘OK. Well, I’m going to just eat some crisps and drink my beer. Let me know when you’re done.’
He opened the crisps and passed them over.
I like him, I thought.
Since arriving in this secret garden, Eddie and I had sifted through our childhood memories and discovered hundreds of historical intersections. We’d walked the same hills, been to the same sweaty nightclubs; we’d sat on the same towpath at sunset and counted dragonflies dancing above the reed beds in the old Stroudwater canal.
All of this had been separated only by a couple of years. I imagined sixteen-year-old me meeting eighteen-year-old Eddie, and wondered if he would have liked me then. I wondered if he liked me now.
Earlier on I had told him about my non-profit organization and he’d been delighted, had asked me endless questions. He understood straight away the difference between our Clowndoctors and the regular entertainers who’d visit a children’s hospital. And he understood that I did it because I couldn’t not, no matter how many funding cuts we suffered, no matter how frequently our guys were treated as mere party clowns. ‘Wow,’ he’d said, after I’d showed him a clip of two of our Clowndoctors working with a child who’d been too afraid to go into surgery. He looked actually quite emotional. ‘That’s incredible. I . . . Good for you, Sarah.’
He had shown me pictures of the furniture and cabinetry that he made in a workshop on the edge of Siccaridge Wood. That was his job – people commissioned him to make beautiful things out of wood for their homes: kitchens, cabinets,tables, chairs. He loved wood. He loved furniture. He loved the smell of timber wax and the crack of a biscuit joint tightening in a clamp, he told me; had given up trying to force himself to do something more profitable.
He showed me a picture of an old barn: small, stone, with a gently pitched roof, sitting in the sort of forest clearing that’d be right at home in a Hans Christian Andersen tale.
‘That’s my workshop. It’s also my home. I’m a real-life hermit; I live in a barn in a wood.’
‘Oh good! I’vealwayswanted to meet a hermit! Am I the first human you’ve talked to in weeks?’
‘Yes!’ Then: ‘No,’ he added quickly. In his eyes I caught the edge of something I couldn’t grasp. ‘I’m not actually a hermit. I have friends and family and a busy life.’
After a pause he smiled. ‘I didn’t need to say that, did I?’
‘Probably not.’
He cleared the picture of the barn from his phone, just as it started ringing. This time he switched it off, although without any visible irritation. ‘Well, that’s my job, anyway. I love it. Although there have been years when I’ve earned almost nothing. They’ve been less fun.’ A tiny spider crawled up one of his arms and he watched it, pushing it gently away when it tried to enter the sleeve of his T-shirt. ‘A few years back I even thought about getting a proper job, something with a guaranteed pay packet. But I can’t do a nine-to-five. I’d . . . Well, I suspect I’d struggle. Maybe die. Something bad would happen; I wouldn’t survive it.’
I considered this.
‘I find it rather annoying when people say things like that,’ I said eventually. ‘I think only a tiny handful of people would actually choose to be in an office nine to five. But you have to remember, most people don’t have a choice. You’re quiteprivileged, being able to do something like cabinetry out of a workshop in the Cotswolds.’
‘True,’ Eddie said. ‘And of course I know what you mean, but I’m still not sure I agree. It’s my contention that everyone has a choice, in everything. On some level.’
I watched him.
