Papa Georgio

by Annie Murray

  I decided to climb in the back. I could see out through the front and when I peered through the little plastic window in the back of the green tarpaulin roof, there was the caravan following along behind us. The feather bed was lumpy and squashy and wrapped in a huge piece of grey material with little white stitched patterns all over it, the same as the seats in the caravan. I lay on my side and opened my box of stuff.

  Inside the box was a new pencil case Mum bought for me with crayons, felt tips and pens, glue and scissors.

  ‘You should keep a journal of the trip,’ she said. ‘Like Dad’s log book when he’s climbing. You can stick pictures in and show me where you’ve been.’

  She’d put in a scrapbook for the journal and writing paper for me to write to her and Charlotte. There were books and a puzzle book and, most precious of all, my picture of Dad and one of Mum, Dad and me altogether taken by the castle at Dudley Zoo.

  I thought about writing a letter to Charlotte now, even though we hadn’t actually got anywhere much yet. I could tell her all about the caravan, with its tiny little cooker and sink and wardrobe (and toilet in a cupboard) and my bed along the back seat and all our food and clothes stowed away in the tiny cupboards. And Grandpa’s mysterious box.

  But of course instead of doing anything I lolled about and daydreamed until I fell asleep, while we chugged past the blossomy, dewy gardens, towards the sea.

  II.

  Fizz turned up that first day, on the ferry with its fat red funnel.

  We drove down the ramp, ‘ker-lunking’ into its belly, joining the end of a row of cars and caravans. It was almost dark down there and windy and echoey when we got out of the car. Grandpa peered at the vehicle sliding to a halt behind us and exclaimed,

  ‘Oh dear me – look at that. Bunch of hippies behind us!’

  The battered camper van stopped with a loud crunch of brakes. It’s basic colours were maroon and cream, but in the murky light I could make out that there were other things painted on it, squiggles and symbols in orange and lime green. I couldn’t see what Grandpa was complaining about. Grown-ups are weird like that. I thought it looked nice. Through the windscreen I could just see a strange looking woman on the front seat. Her face was long and thin, her nose curved like a pirate’s cutlass. Between tumbling hanks of dark hair she was looking down at a baby on her lap whose screams we could hear in torn scraps through the window.

  We were trying to squeeze past the van to go up on deck when its door slid open with a whoosh and someone leapt out, almost whacking Grandpa in the face.

  ‘Steady!’ Grandpa said jumping backwards, and Brenda exclaimed, ‘Oh, I say!’

  I took him in from the bottom up: a pair of very pink, chubby legs, the calf muscles bulgy and hard looking like cricket balls, tucked into faun socks and a large pair of spanking new navy deck shoes. Above the knees the flapping legs of a voluminous pair of white shorts was topped by a scarlet sports shirt. Over that hung a jacket in checks of brown and green so glaring that if Grandpa had been wearing his loud suit it would have looked dreary in comparison. Last, the face - round, very pink, a bald head with a rim of fluffy, sandy-coloured hair. The face grinned, showing a row of huge, but dodgy looking teeth.

  ‘Ull-or!’ the face exclaimed at high volume.

  Brenda hoiked her lilac cardigan more tightly round her as if to protect herself.

  ‘Afternoon,’ Grandpa said briskly, trying to edge past. But the man didn’t budge.

  ‘Come far?’ he boomed. ‘We’ve driven all the way down from Manchester. Little’un in there’s had enough, I can tell yer.’ He jerked his head towards the howling baby, then looked straight at me.

  ‘Eh, love - you’ll have to meet our lad, Fizz! He’d be about your age. Only he’s on’t toilet at the moment.’

  He had such a friendly grin that I liked him immediately and started to grin back, especially about the toilet thing. Grandpa and Auntie Brenda, however, had taken on the look of people caught out in a heavy rainstorm without an umbrella.

  ‘Oh – sorry!’ he stood back to let us through. ‘Here’s me rabbiting away and you want to get going. Cheerio!’

  ‘Cheerio,’ I said back, as Grandpa and Auntie Brenda hurried past the van barely murmuring a greeting. I was sorry they weren’t more friendly. But Mum had warned me that Grandpa had some ‘odd ideas’ about certain things.

  As I followed them I was sure I heard a strange, cracked voice from inside the van shout, ‘Shut up! Just shut up!’

  ‘Did you see that jacket?’ Brenda erupted as we climbed the metal staircase. She even giggled.

  ‘Manchester,’ Grandpa said. ‘How dreadful.’

  I walked behind them, wondering what was wrong with Manchester. I went shopping in Manchester with Mum once and it didn’t seem too bad. For a moment I had that horrible twisting feeling inside again, thinking about Mum, then about Dad and I felt so tired that I might fall over. I just wanted to go home instead of being in all these strange places with strange people.

  We climbed lots of staircases and caught glimpses of different decks and lounges from which drifted smells of coffee and smoke and fried eggs and the sounds of clattering knives and forks.

  ‘What would you like My Little Dear?’ Grandpa asked Brenda.

  ‘I’d love a coffee please, dear.’ She settled in a chair close to a porthole, opening up a magazine which had a smiling lady on the front. ‘And a bit of peace.’

  So Grandpa and I bought a coffee with milk but no sugar for Brenda, and a cup of frothy, sugary chocolate for each of us and we sipped and looked out as Brenda read her magazine. By the time we finished our chocolate, a loud ‘bwa-a-arp’ issued from the ship’s funnel, like a mournful giant blowing his nose and there was a shifting sensation as the ship heaved away from the quay.

  ‘Come along!’ Grandpa said, jumping up. ‘Time to go and explore!’

  We stepped out of a side door on to the deck, where the wind made us lean forwards, flapping our clothes about and snatching words straight from our mouths. Luckily Grandpa had left his straw hat inside on the table. I kept having to push my choppy hair out of my face and for the first time I wished I hadn’t cut it. I also wished Charlotte was here too, and suddenly I felt like crying. We walked to the ‘stern’ of the ship to look out at the huge, choppy blue sea shining in the sun. Grandpa took a little bottle of amber liquid out of his pocket and sipped from it.

  ‘Umm,’ he said. ’That’s better.’ I caught a hoochy whiff of it.

  The white wake churned and spread behind the boat like a gown and beyond, the white cliffs of Dover were shrinking further away. Everything was getting further away. Desolate, I wiped my eyes.

  Grandpa took my hand. He didn’t say anything but his touch was very gentle. All I knew about Grandpa was that he looked after my granny for a long time because she was very sick, and then she died. I only remembered Granny from when I was little, before she was ill. We stood there for a while with the wind in our faces.

  Grandpa breathed in and out loudly. ‘This is the life, isn’t it?’

  I managed to smile and when I looked up at him I saw that Grandpa’s eyes had turned deep blue, like the sea.

  ‘You mustn’t mind Brenda,’ he said. ‘She’s got a good heart.’

  I nodded, because I didn’t know what to say. I just didn’t think Brenda liked me very much.

  ‘D’you know – ’ Grandpa’s eyes swept the sea. ‘When I was a soldier–boy, they put us all on a big boat and took us all round France and Spain and Gibraltar – all the way to North Africa. And we went through Algiers and Tunis to Sicily, then Italy.’

  ‘When you were a little boy?’

  ‘No – we called ourselves soldier-boys, but I was a man of thirty-four when I got on that boat. A young blood with muscles like bars of iron!’

  He flexed his arm but I couldn’t see his muscles under his blue fisherman’s sweater. Now he wasn’t wearing his suit and his hair was all blown about in the wind, he seemed to have turned i
nto someone else.

  The land was fading behind us, a dream country.

  ‘Ah – ‘this other Eden, demi-paradise,’ – that’s what Shakespeare said about England,’ Grandpa said, as we turned to walk away. ‘Mind you – he never knew about the M1.’

  III.

  ‘Oh dear me,’ Grandpa stalled in the corridor. ‘The Man from Manchester. Not my type at all, I’m afraid.’

  We were heading back into the lounge to find Brenda when our path was blocked by the family with the baby. I felt myself tense up. They were all there together now. That was when I first saw Fizz.

  ‘’Ull-or!’

  The man greeted us as if we were old friends. He was carrying a tray loaded with cups and saucers and bottles of fizzy drinks with straws. The gypsy lady from the car was beside him in a long turquoise tie-die dress with the baby in her arms. The baby wasn’t screaming any more. Instead, she gazed round at everything with brown, shiny eyes.

  The boy was behind them. He was looking away as if he hadn’t noticed we were there, his face half hidden by a flopping fringe of treacle brown hair. I felt very nervous. Having no brothers and going to an all girls’ school, I wasn’t used to boys. And since Dad had been stolen by the Mountain–God I couldn’t seem to find the right things to say to people any more. In those seconds when he wasn’t facing us I took a look at him. He was tall, thin and strong looking, not at all like his Dad who was bacon pink and doughnut fat. And he was a bit hippy-ish, with that long hair down to his collar. He was dressed in sludgy green jeans, a pair of Green Flash plimsolls which were so old they were brown instead of white and a baggy jumper of rainbow stripes. There was something defiant about the way he was standing, as if he had to protect himself, his legs braced, hands resting on his lower back so that his elbows stuck out. And he kept looking away, away, as if trying to see something out of the window. Everything about the way he stood seemed to say you can’t make me…

  The man put his tray down on one of the little tables which were fixed to the floor.

  ‘Nice to see you again!’ he boomed, reaching for Grandpa’s hand. ‘I’m Archie Chubb. This is Maggie, my wife, and little Clarey.’ He tickled the baby’s cheek and she squirmed. Maggie’s long, severe face broke into a smile showing big, uneven teeth, and which suddenly made her pretty.

  ‘And this is our lad, Fizz.’

  Fizz came forward then. Neither of us could get out of it. My heart was thumping with nerves. Were we going to get stuck with each other? What would we say? And then he turned to face me, pushing his hair back with one hand. And what a face. A strong-featured, quite-long nosed, greeny-brown-eyed interesting face. His eyebrows were thin arcs, raised now as if he was trying to look casual but friendly at once. And there was a moment, when he looked at me and I looked back, that I saw something in his eyes before he quickly glanced away again and I knew: he’s scared too… Maybe even more scared than me. And it drew me to him. What was he scared of? Me? How crazy was that?

  But as Grandpa said my name, Fizz looked directly at me again as if to say, come on, let’s see how it is then and reached out his hand. I’d never shaken hands with someone my own age before. But I took it and for a second Fizz’s hand was in mine, surprisingly warm and reassuring, like bread fresh from the oven. My cheeks went red which was really annoying.

  ‘’Ello,’ he said quietly. I could see he was wary, but underneath, basically friendly. Maybe I looked wary too. It was how I felt.

  ‘Hello.’ I smiled. And things were all right suddenly, because Fizz smiled back and he didn’t seem aloof any more, just relieved.

  ‘Come and join us,’ Archie said, waving his hand at the table. ‘I’ve got enough for everyone.’

  I wondered who else exactly they’d been expecting, because on the tray were three bottles of fizzy orange and five cups of coffee. Maggie Chubb sat down with Clarey on her lap and every move she made set off tinkling noises from her long earrings and the coloured bangles up her arms.

  ‘But my wife…’ Grandpa said helplessly.

  ‘Bring her over as well,’ Maggie’s voice was deep and later Grandpa told me her accent was Irish. ‘She sounds as if she gargles with nails,’ he said.

  But Grandpa decided to leave Brenda where she was. ‘I expect she’ll be grateful for a few moments more peace and quiet.’

  ‘Nice if you can get it,’ Maggie chuckled. She lit a cigarette and blew smoke from her nostrils, over the baby’s head.

  Fizz and I drank bottles of pop, listening to the talk. I glanced at him now and then because I didn’t want him to think I wasn’t friendly. Just once he looked back and I thought he almost smiled. As soon as we’d finished our orangeade, Archie said, ‘Here you go – here’s another one. Polish that off between you. And you’ll need a bite to eat….’ From his pocket he produced several bars of chocolate. I found myself grinning. It was like meeting Father Christmas.

  ‘Shall we go and look out?’ Fizz suggested, nodding towards the porthole.

  Breaking off hunks of Fruit and Nut, we knelt on seats by a window, seeing the blue line of water outside lurch first this way, then that. I started to feel a bit queasy with all that pop inside me.

  ‘We’re going to Italy,’ Fizz told me. He had a Manchester accent too, only gentler.

  ‘So’re we.’

  Fizz looked pleased. I felt glad as well. Suddenly our journey didn’t seem so lonely and weird.

  ‘They have giant squid in Italy,’ he announced. ‘I want to see one – they can be up to two tons in weight.’

  ‘Bet you won’t see one of those.’ I felt angry suddenly, at the way he said it, as if I could feel all his longing and see that he was sure to be disappointed.

  ‘No,’ he agreed, looking up at me suddenly with those startling eyes. They seemed to looked right into me. ‘But there are octopuses. How old’re you?’

  ‘Eleven. What about you?’

  ‘I’m thirteen – just. On May 17th.’

  ‘What school d’you go to?’ I asked. I was missing the end of my last ever summer term at the Valley Primary.

  ‘Oh…’ he said vaguely. ‘I don’t go to school really.’

  I didn’t get this. ‘What d’you mean?’

  Fizz shrugged, fiddling with a loose thread in the sleeve of his jumper. ‘I just don’t do school. I went in Manchester for a bit but we move about too much. I hate school anyway and Maggie doesn’t like them: she says you learn more by travelling the world.’

  ‘Maggie?’

  ‘My mother. She doesn’t like being called “Mum” either.’

  I tried to imagine calling my own Mum ‘Liz,’ but I couldn’t.

  ‘Why’re you called Fizz? ‘Cos you like fizzy pop?’

  ‘No – it’s my name. Part of my name that is…’ Fizz was looking really uncomfortable and I was sure I could see a blush on his cheeks. ‘You don’t need to know my real name – ‘He scrambled off the seat and seemed very tall. He stood as if ready to run. ‘D’you want to come down to the Ship with me?’

  ‘We’re on the ship,’ I told him witheringly, as if he’d lost his mind.

  ‘No - the van. Maggie calls it the “Ship of Dreams”. So we call it the Ship.’ He frowned suddenly. ‘I s’pose you’re going to have a go at me about that now?’

  ‘No!’ I said indignantly. He made it sound as if I’d been having a go at him ever since we’d met! But I felt sorry for him. He seemed to expect to be made fun of constantly. ‘I won’t. And by the way I’ve got a really awful second name.’

  ‘Have you?’ Fizz sounded hopeful.

  ‘Audrey Jean – after my gran. Dad’s’ mother.’

  Fizz stared at me, disappointed. ‘Is that all? That’s not that bad. Come on – let’s go.’

  IV.

  No one stopped us as we rattled down the steps back into the hold full of cars even though Fizz said he thought we weren’t allowed down there. His Green Flash slap-slapped on the metal floor. He had a fast, loping walk and I had to run to keep up
. He opened the door of the van with a key on a long red cord round his neck.

  ‘Blimey!’ I gasped as we climbed inside.

  It was nothing like Grandpa’s caravan with its white walls and grey seats. It was magical!

  Every available bit of wall was painted a patchwork of different colours: pink, orange, bright leaf green, sunflower yellow. At the windows hung purple curtains with tie-dyed swirls of white and lime green in them. A section in the middle of the ceiling could lift up to make the van higher, but all round it – my face broke into a smile as I looked up - was velvet-blue dotted with silver stars. Over one corner hung a sickle of moon.

  ‘It’s fab!’ I grinned at Fizz. ‘Who did it?’

  ‘Maggie. She likes lots of colour. She says it’s good for your spirit….’

  He was interrupted by the same cracked voice I’d heard earlier, saying very distinctly, ‘Shut-up!’

  Fizz beckoned me. He seemed in command now, like the captain of a real ship on an important mission. Along the side of the van was a seat covered with more of the tie-dyed cloth, and a little cooker and sink. Fizz knelt down and pulled out something that was wedged between the sink and the wall. When he stood up he was holding a cage, in which a grey parrot was sitting on its perch with a baleful expression.

  ‘Ull-or!’ it exclaimed.

  The parrot had a Manchester accent.

  ‘All right Pecky?’ Fizz made room for me to kneel next to him. His hair flopped across his face. A sour, mealy smell came from the cage.

  ‘You’re all right,’ he told the parrot. ‘You’ve got enough to eat.’

  ‘Shut up!’ the parrot retorted crossly, closing one yellow eye and peering at us. ‘Pecky shut-up!’

  Fizz laughed at me laughing. His cheeks creased and his eyes lit up, making me laugh even more.