How the Penguins Saved Veronica

by Hazel Prior

  I’ve missed a hell of a lot of Granny V’s life. Will I ever catch up with her properly? Is it too late? What is she like really, I mean really like, underneath all the war paint and stuffiness? What on earth possessed her to go all the way to Antarctica, to be with penguins?

  I wonder more and more about my dad, too. Joe Fuller. He’s her son. He’s our missing link, the middle generation, the thing that cements us (like it or not) together—yet neither of us ever got the chance to know him at all. I’ve always had him down as a lump of slime because of what happened to Mum. But maybe he didn’t know what he was doing, maybe he had issues. You don’t know anything about other people really, do you? Even the ones you know well, you don’t really have much of an idea about what makes them tick.

  Now, suddenly, I wish I knew more. Any info would be good. What he ate for breakfast, what he watched on telly, if he was into trivia, like me, or mechanical stuff, like me. He was a mountaineer, so I guess he must have been an adventurous kind of guy. Maybe he got that from Granny.

  That family who adopted him, surely they must be able to fill in some details? The parents are dead, and there weren’t any brothers or sisters, but the cousin’s still alive, as far as I know, in Chicago. Maybe I can get in touch with her. Or maybe I can track down my dad’s mates. Assuming he had any.

  I wander over to the window and stare out at the drainpipes.

  Granny must be keen to know about her son, too, mustn’t she? She took the trouble to locate me, after all. But she’s not Internet savvy. I could help her. When she gets back from Antarctica, we should meet up and talk about it. I’m hungry for everything she knows, right from the moment she gave him up for adoption.

  Why the hell did she go and do a thing like that? I didn’t get anywhere near to the bottom of it. Man, I wasn’t even halfway down; I was too busy pratting about on the surface. When Granny V gets back, things’ll be different. I’m going to get digging.

  * * *

  —

  The phone is ringing when I get back from my jog. Panting like a dog from the last lap up the stairs, I pick up the receiver.

  “Still nasty weather, isn’t it!” a voice says, as if we’re continuing a conversation we started earlier.

  “Um, who is it?”

  “Eileen Thompson. You know. We met at the airport.”

  “Hi there, Eileen. What can I do you for?”

  “Well, you see, I’ve just had an e-mail from them. Them in Antarctica. The Terry one, actually.”

  “Oh yeah. Me, too. Did you see the blog?”

  “Yes, yes, I did. Mrs. McCreedy looked very nice, didn’t she? Very smart, I thought.”

  “Yes, very, er . . . colorful.” I pace the room, flapping cool air up my T-shirt with one hand, holding the phone to my ear with the other.

  “But did Terry tell you the other thing?” she says.

  “Which other thing, Eileen?”

  “The other thing about Mrs. McCreedy. She’s been bitten by a penguin!”

  “What?”

  “Your grandmother. Bitten. By a penguin.”

  “Righto.” I’m not sure if I’m meant to be worried. I have to admit I’m not that familiar with penguin bites. “It’s not fatal, I presume?”

  “No, no, not at all! The Terry scientist says Mrs. McCreedy was rather put off by it, though, and nearly decided to come back home. But she’s OK about it now. And I had a brief note from Mrs. McCreedy herself as well, which was e-mailed to me via Terry.”

  “This Terry bloke seems to be acting as Granny’s servant, doesn’t he?”

  “Yes, I suppose he does. But I’m very relieved somebody’s looking after her. She can be a bit . . . well, you know. She’s not as young as she used to be.”

  I smile. Eileen’s a gem.

  There’s a minuscule pause down the line then an abrupt question: “Have you opened the box?”

  Am I imagining it or is she hoping I have?

  “The box? The one you sent? You told me Granny had said not to—so, no.”

  “Ah yes. Just wondered. You see, I do worry about her, Patrick. She’s got used to having nobody much around her, except me, and she doesn’t, you know, let me in much. I mean, she lets me in to her house of course—she has to do that—but she never lets me in to what she’s thinking or feeling. Then there’s this thing I read in Doug’s Daily Mail yesterday . . .”

  She pauses for dramatic effect. I think I’m meant to be impressed by her current affairs savviness. She definitely assumes I’m on total tenterhooks about what she’s going to tell me next.

  “Go on,” I say.

  “It was all about old people and loneliness.” Her voice becomes a confidential whisper. “It said what a bad thing that is, the not communicating. Wait a moment. I’ve got it here.” Another pause and the sound of pages turning. “Yes, here it is! ‘A new study . . . blah blah blah . . . confirms the heavy toll that loneliness can take on your health blah blah . . . Not sharing thoughts and opinions with others increases your risk of dementia by 40 percent.’ Forty percent!”

  “Dementia?” I’m amazed. “Granny V seemed spot-on both the times I met her.”

  “Oh yes. She is, she is! I didn’t mean to alarm you. Please, that’s not what I meant at all. But just sometimes there’s a . . . a little blip. A tiny little memory blip. And I wonder if she’s needing more in the way of family and friends, to stop her getting worse. That’s why I’m so very glad she’s got you now, Patrick. And the nice Terry man. And penguins.”

  • 20 •

  Veronica

  LOCKET ISLAND

  “I think all this fresh air is doing you good, Mrs. McCreedy,” says Dietrich (who is the only one who doesn’t call me Veronica. He has evidently been well brought up). “You’re looking well.”

  “Thank you, Dietrich.”

  “Don’t you think she looks younger, Mike?”

  The unaccountably disagreeable Mike makes a low noise in his throat that is open to interpretation. I choose to take it as confirmation that I am indeed looking younger. Not that it signifies in any way whatsoever.

  I am surprised about Dietrich. Terry’s support is natural, desperate as she is to improve this blog of hers. The support of Dietrich, however, is most unexpected, bearing in mind he is both a foreigner and a person of the male gender. I have the distinct impression he has conducted a consultation with himself and decided to give me the benefit of the doubt.

  As for Mike . . . well, we tolerate each other. Had it just been up to him, I would have been ejected from their company by now—although quite how they would have done it, I don’t know. Possibly, they would just have turned me out into the cold. It wouldn’t be the first time in my life that had happened.

  Mike persists in leaving doors open constantly. I know he does it just to rile me.

  Due to immense forethought and consideration, I started getting muffled up and mukluked a while back. I am therefore already poised at the door by the time Terry has got her parka on. She grabs her cameras, notebooks and a handful of penguin tags. She is wearing her unsightly woolen hat with the dangly tassels. Her blond hair pokes out from beneath it, limp and untidy.

  “You’re obviously not bothered about fashion and style,” I comment.

  She bursts into a ripple of laughter. “Thank you, Veronica! You’re not impressed with my image, then?”

  Politeness demands that I pussyfoot around the truth. “Well, I absolutely understand that Antarctica demands certain compromises when it comes to style. So I’ll admit the possibility that back in England you may be a glamour-puss . . . but I somehow doubt it.”

  She giggles. “You’re right to doubt it,” she admits, then adds, “but who needs designer handbags when you can have a guano swamp and five thousand penguins?”

  I glance down at my own designer handbag, which (due to the demise of my scar
let one) is my third favorite, the fuchsia one with gold trimmings. I am about to answer sharply then realize she didn’t mean it as a jibe at all; the reference was entirely random.

  We set off together. The snow squeaks and crunches beneath our feet.

  The girl beside me is so different to how I was at that age. She takes herself for granted, blithely heedless of the years of possibilities stacked up ahead of her. It doesn’t occur to her that they can all be wrecked by a single step in the wrong direction. I hope she does more with her life than I did. But she is already doing more, isn’t she? For the first time, I really start wondering about Terry. Her presence is quiet, but there’s a definite sense of purpose about her.

  “What’s your background, Terry?” I ask out of genuine interest. “How did you come to be out here?”

  “Oh, there’s nothing special.” She is more focused on the landscape, the chance of sighting a seal or a rare bird, than she is on the question. “I’ve always been a nature buff.”

  “Tell me more.”

  “Well, I was totally fascinated by birds as a child. Wildlife in general but birds in particular. I spent my teenage years sitting on rocks, wading up rivers or standing in the middle of marshes staring through my binoculars. My friends must have thought I was such a bore.”

  At least she’d had friends. Unlike me, she has probably always been easy to like.

  “After school I took a degree in natural sciences,” she continues, “then a master’s in wildlife conservation. I worked at a local nature reserve for a while and in my free time did a lot of volunteering for conservation charities. I spent a few summers tracking seabirds in the Outer Hebrides.”

  If you are interested in something these days, you just go ahead and do it. Such opportunities didn’t exist when I was young. Not for a woman, anyway. Envy, sour and cloying, rises in my throat. It is difficult to swallow life’s multiple unfairnesses.

  “I never expected to get this job when I applied,” she continues cheerfully as she stomps up the slope. She’s warming to her theme now. “But every day I’m just so grateful that I did! I love being here, love the challenges and the hardship and all the funny little things that happen. I love the team. We’re not perfect, but we’re strangely close. And, of course, it’s a dream come true to work among penguins.”

  We’ve reached the top. Her pace slows and she sweeps an arm round at the panorama. A gauzy lavender-colored mist hangs low over the mountains. Ice crystals glint from the dark recesses in the rocks. The population of penguins is spread out below us, a multipiece jigsaw detailed in black and white.

  “This place,” she goes on, “it gets right into your heart and soul. It changes everything. The way you see the world and yourself, the way you think about it all.” She looks at me suddenly. “You find that, too, don’t you, Veronica?”

  I don’t know how to answer. I suspect she may have a point. Neither I nor my handbag have been attacked again after my first unfortunate experience. Indeed, my initial delight at seeing the penguins has returned. It is with great pleasure that I look forward to my daily encounters with these small, flippered life forces.

  Yesterday I witnessed a wondrous thing for the first time: an Adélie chick in the process of hatching. First the egg wobbled and there was a faint tapping from inside. Then the tip of a tiny beak appeared. A sticky little creature followed, uncrumpling itself, lifting clumsy feet to clamber out of the shell. It was gray, fuzzy and somewhat dazed looking. I wasn’t the only witness, of course. The penguin mother was waggling her head about to view her new baby from every angle. They nuzzled each other affectionately. Then the little one craned his neck to look round his mum at the scene beyond her. He was all agog at finding himself in a universe made up of shining stones and snow.

  I am glad I didn’t let the obnoxious Mike push me into leaving Locket Island. This definitely beats writing out shopping lists for Eileen or giving Mr. Perkins instructions about the perennials. I am proud to note, as well, that the physical limitations of old age have not turned out to be too great a burden. I have risen admirably to the challenges of Antarctica.

  Terry knuckles down to work. She dives in to grab the penguins one by one and suspends them in a weighing bag. Some of the birds struggle and peck, but she is very deft at avoiding beaks and claws. She records statistics in her notebook. Every so often she pulls out her camera and takes a snapshot. I inquire whether the photos are part of her research.

  “It’s partly that, partly just for my own pleasure and partly for the blog,” she answers.

  “You’re very keen on this blog of yours, aren’t you?” I comment drily.

  She nods. “Social media is the best way—virtually the only way—to influence minds, to make people care.”

  I wonder if this can really be the case. I am wholly ignorant about the machinations of social media, but I have observed that the media in general wields tremendous power. When Robert Saddlebow presented a program about the ozone layer a few years back, everyone suddenly noticed what had been staring them in the face for decades: that humans are destroying the planet not only for wildlife but also for ourselves. A few people even started to act upon it.

  If this social media gimmick can make people care, then it may not be such a bad thing after all.

  I view the penguins fondly. Terry takes a snap of me.

  “You look like a queen, with all her subjects gathered around her.”

  I rather like this idea.

  As I am musing, Terry starts up again. “Don’t get me wrong, Veronica, but I’ll confess I’m surprised that you should want to leave your millions for a project on Adélie penguins. I’m very glad, and oh so grateful, but I can’t help wondering . . . You have a grandson, don’t you?”

  “I do,” I reply. My enthusiasm plummets at the thought.

  “Patrick, is it?”

  “Yes.” I am uncomfortable with her probing. I did not come here to be probed.

  Terry releases a penguin and it scoots off, first upright and then plopping onto its tummy to slide across the snow. “So, if you don’t mind my asking . . . is there a problem? I mean, the normal thing is to leave your money to members of your family. Sorry if I’ve overstepped the mark, but I can’t help being a bit curious.”

  I sigh. The fact of Patrick’s existence is like a persistent fly bashing itself against the window of my consciousness. The more I try to forget it, the louder it seems to be. I have no wish to discuss the topic, and my normal modus operandi would be to change the subject. But there’s something about the presence of penguins that makes me more relaxed, more unguarded than usual. If Terry needs an explanation then I can give her one. “Patrick and I barely know each other. I don’t think of him as family. We only met for the first time a few months ago.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yes. And it was all most unpleasant. Although I had traveled some way and gone to considerable trouble to make his acquaintance, he was far from friendly. He has made a few paltry attempts to make up for it since, but I am not impressed with his pecuniarily induced advances. Besides, he is a lost cause.” I then deliver what is commonly called the punch line. “Patrick is on drugs.”

  Terry is shocked, just as she should be. “Oh, I’m really sorry to hear that, Veronica. Have you any idea why?”

  Why? I haven’t given any consideration to this question. I would have thought the answer was self-evident. “Just your common or garden degeneracy, I believe.”

  Terry’s face displays a species of half smile, but her eyes are pensive behind those unattractive glasses she wears.

  “If you barely know him, perhaps he’s been through hard times he hasn’t told you about. Maybe that’s why he turned to drugs?”

  This hadn’t occurred to me. I am not accustomed to delving into what causes other people to behave badly. If truth be told, I am not accustomed to considering other people very much
at all. In my experience, it usually leads to inconvenience and aggravation. However, Terry has forced a snippet of memory to the forefront of my mind: a few words that Patrick mumbled about his mother. He didn’t go into any specifics. And I was too angry at the state of his abode, his personal hygiene and his rude manner to make any further inquiries. Now I begin to wonder if Patrick is shaped by some tragedy that happened in his past. Perhaps, like me, he does not choose to share his history with the general public.

  “So, is he on hard drugs?” Terry asks.

  “I have no idea how hard or soft they are. It was something he smoked. It smelled disgusting,” I answer.

  “Probably just cannabis,” she says. “It could be a lot worse.”

  “Hardly!” I snort.

  I turn my attention back to the penguins, but Terry has stopped weighing them and I can feel her eyes on my face. Then she says in a measured tone, “Cannabis is legal in a lot of places now. It’s had bad press, but it does have quite a few medicinal uses. As a scientist, I can assure you it has benefits as well as downsides.”

  “Really?” I look at her skeptically.

  “Oh yes! It can be used to treat multiple sclerosis and to ease the awful side effects from chemotherapy, for example. In some cases it’s actually less harmful than painkillers.”

  This is not at all what I was expecting. I grip my handbag tightly. I am aware of the packets of paracetamol and aspirin that are tucked into the inside pocket. Surely, these are morally far superior to cannabis? But Terry doesn’t seem to grasp my horror of drugs.

  “I’m sure Patrick has his reasons for smoking dope,” she insists.

  “No doubt,” I say in a voice that makes it clear the subject is closed. But her words have given me cause for reflection.

  • 21 •

  Patrick

  BOLTON

  “Eileen, why are you ringing me?”