Papa Georgio

by Annie Murray

  Then something hopeful happened. From behind us came the choke and thrum of an engine starting up and as we both turned to look, we saw headlights moving away down on to the road, which had been invisible before.

  ‘Ah!’ Grandpa cried. ‘There it is! That must be those three banditos we met at the top. So we are a bit off course. Right – let’s turn round. Careful now – let me come in front.’

  Almost hugging me he exchanged places with me on the ledge and we began to edge back in the other direction. It was still very narrow, but things began to feel a bit better. Grandpa obviously thought so too.

  ‘I got myself a bit lost there,’ he called back to me. ‘Sorry about that m’dear. We’ll soon be back on the right track.’

  He turned and pointed. ‘I reckon the path’s just – ‘

  His foot slipped as he said it and he gasped, fighting to keep his balance. But as he put the foot down it slipped again, on the crumbly edge of the ledge. There was a moment which felt paralysed, even though it was really full of movement as he wind-milled his arms, trying to get his balance, giving little grunts of consternation. I reached out to grab his hand, but the hand and Grandpa were falling back, away from me and he was toppling over the edge.

  ‘Grandpa!’ I screamed.

  He fell back and I heard the slither and roll of his body and then his crying out in pain, and grunting and it got further and further away, and stopped. Then there was nothing.

  ‘Grandpa! Gra-a-a-nd-pa-a-a-a!’

  Frantic, I shouted over and over again into the nothingness at my feet.

  ‘GRANDPA!’

  A faint echo came back to me from the horseshoe curve of rock, but of Grandpa, of a real voice, there was nothing.

  III.

  I know now, you can be rigid with fear.

  Dad told me that you could. Fear was the demon he fought in the mountains. But I’d never known it for myself before. He’d always been there to catch me.

  I was squatting on that ledge in the sulphur smelling darkness, the moon like a half closed eye in the sky, and I couldn’t move. It was as if my brain had frozen, as well as my body. I couldn’t take in that this had happened, not in those first few moments. Grandpa here in front of my eyes, then gone, no sound. Me all alone. I couldn’t move at all, not go back or forwards.

  My first thought, when my brain twitched into action, was that someone had to rescue me. There must be someone who could get me out of this and make it all all right. Maybe if I shouted. Grandpa had taught me the Italian word for ‘help’ ages ago. It’s pronounced, ‘Ay-oo-toe’

  ‘Aiuto!’ I called. My voice sounded so weak and pathetic out there under the big sky. ‘Aiuto! Please, someone help me – please!’

  I already knew really it was no good. There wasn’t anyone there, not for miles. I started to shake and I could feel tears coming.

  ‘Please someone, please!’ I sobbed. I felt so helpless and terrified. What could I do? I couldn’t go back even if I knew the way, and just leave Grandpa down there, but I couldn’t just stay here either. What if he was dead? What if I was stuck here forever? The panic swelled up in me like a giant balloon until I was full of it. I felt small and useless.

  As I sat crying though, someone did help me. It was Dad. His voice came into my head, clear as anything.

  ‘When you’re in the mountains, you need to be strong, remember Janey love. You have to be strong like a butterfly. Strong in spirit. Then, you know you can survive. You know you can do it.’

  Funny then, suddenly it was as if my arms and legs were made of tough wire which couldn’t snap whatever. My head was very clear. No one was going to rescue me. There was only me, and I had to do it all myself. I had to be strong. Butterfly strong.

  ‘You can do this,’ I said out loud. ‘You are Janey Armitage, Peter Armitage’s daughter and you are a climber.’

  I got up and slowly, shaking, despite my brave words. I eased my legs over the side of the ledge. It wasn’t a sheer drop, it was a steep scree, the rocky, stony waste which falls down the side of mountains. It’s very difficult to move on, always prone to giving way, but somehow I was going to get down it. I had to find Grandpa.

  Heart pounding I began to edge down the dry scree, testing, finding my way. There were bits of rock, but like the rest of the volcano cone, a lot of it was quite soft and crumbly. Dad once told me that some mountaineers actually ride down softer screes on a boulder. You probably could down this one if you knew what you were doing, but I certainly wasn’t going to try it even if I could find a boulder!

  I seized anything hard I could find, kicking my feet into the surface as I went, trying to keep a foothold, until my pumps were full up with pumice crumbs. It was so dry and unstable that I was slipping gradually down all the time, and my arms and legs were being constantly grazed, but the slope didn’t feel as alarming as I had feared. I could hear myself giving out sobbing breaths. Once I lost control and slithered a distance down on my front, feet first, grabbing with my hands, unable to stop. I was afraid I’d fall forever, down, down, into the heart of the volcano to the black, charred stick of a god in there I thought my mind would explode with panic. Something gashed me hard in my left shoulder and I moaned, but even the pain seemed somewhere else and nothing quite to do with me.

  And then it stopped. The slithering fall stopped, and I was at the bottom. I spat gravely dirt out from between my lips

  The winking moon was higher now, giving a faint silvering to everything. As I looked round, I saw I wasn’t at the bottom of anything, except the scree, at a lip in the rock where it ended. As my eyes focussed, to my right, I spotted something white, and I knew immediately what it was: Grandpa’s hair.

  I crawled to him. He was lying, slumped, broken looking.

  ‘Grandpa?’ Timidly I touched him. Peering very closely I tried to see if there was blood on his head and I had to feel because I couldn’t see. Gently I eased my fingers round his head and there it was, a wet, sticky patch at the back. In a panic I went for his pulse. He had to be alive, had to be! Dad had taught me about pulses, the little pricks of movement at the wrist, the throbbing vein in the neck and – oh relief! – there it was in Grandpa’s neck, still surging along, though quietly.

  As I held my fingers to his neck he made a tiny sound, the smallest of moans and this brought me to tears of relief.

  ‘Oh Grandpa, Grandpa I’m here! It’s Janey. It’s going to be all right – I’m going to get help!’

  I had to – I could do anything then. I knew I could.

  It was a case of feeling my way along, one foot, then the other, often on my hands and knees. It was slow, but I felt safer now. I’d been right about the horse shoe shape, like an inlet in the side of the cone. I was crawling along the arm of it towards where we had seen the lights from the car. The stuff under my feet now was softer piles of pumice mixed with stones and pyroclasts and it was hard going, like struggling along the soft sand at the top of a beach, but at least it was flatter and I didn’t feel I was going to fall. But I wanted desperately to hurry and I couldn’t

  It seemed to take forever to reach the end of the horseshoe shape. After that I was feeling my way across the rough surface of the cone, afraid of falling and rolling down. But at last, in the thin moonlight I saw below me the white strip, the zigzag.

  ‘Yes!’ I actually shouted. The path! I slithered down to it, emptied out my shoes then began gently to trot. I had to get down – just had to…

  Very soon I was in the car park. It was then, when the danger of the mountain was past that the full horror of the situation hit me. Somehow I’d held on to the hope that there’d be someone still there, still a car or two, people going home. Or that everything would miraculously have changed and Brenda would be there, waiting in our car.

  But there stood the Land Rover on its own, dark and empty – and nothing else. No other cars, and I was completely alone. I felt very cold suddenly, and defeated and frightened.

  There was only one thing to d
o – I had to get to Brenda. How far was it? Two miles, three? I had no real idea but the road was easy to run on after the mountain path, though my pumps were so thin I felt the hard slap of them on the road and every stone. But the burn of my worry for Grandpa kept me running and running, trying to keep the sobs of anguish down inside me because if I let them out I knew I wouldn’t be able to breathe properly and I’d have to stop.

  I tried not to think about anything: about Grandpa lying all alone up there with his head bleeding, and how dark it was and how far I had to go and that I was scared, scared scared …

  Strong like a butterfly, I said in my head, over and over as my feet slapped down, jarring my knees, trying to hear Dad’s voice, Strong like a butterfly…

  Now and then I just had to stop and walk to ease my heaving lungs, and then the road with its dark scrub on each side, and the beginnings of vineyards as I got further down seemed so full of shadows and frightening.

  I was running when there was a sudden flash of light, an engine: a car coming along the road. It was a distance away, but the jerking flash of the headlights came quickly closer. I hadn’t expected anyone to come up here – why would they at this time of night? Maybe someone had a cottage in the fields somewhere?

  All my desperation welled up. Whatever happened I had to stop them – they had to help!

  Before I was even expecting it the car came round a bend and was in front of me, the lights blinding me for a second. There was no time to think – I leapt into the middle of the road, waving my arms and jumping about like a maniac.

  ‘Stop! Stop – aiuto! Aiuto! Help me!’

  They kept driving, fast, and for a nightmare second I thought they were going to drive straight at me. They must have seen me. They slammed the brakes on. The engine died, but they left the lights on. Into the quiet, the car doors opened.

  And my heart skidded and leapt into my throat. I recognized them as they walked towards me on this lonely road, all in black, until they were all standing round me. Three young men, one with a beard – the banditos.

  ‘Aiuto,’ I managed to say again. ‘Aiuto – please, please….’

  Everybody

  I.

  They looked just like characters in a gangster movie with their black clothes and swarthy faces.

  No wonder I was frightened, I thought, seeing them again. Only this time they were standing round Grandpa’s hospital bed in Naples, and were all wearing big soppy smiles, which got even soppier when they saw me.

  ‘Ah – the little one!’ they cried and I was treated to lots of Italian style patting and face pinching. But I didn’t mind.

  The three banditos turned out to be twin brothers, Marco and Giuseppe and their bearded friend Andrea, and they weren’t frightening at all. They were as kind to me as if I was their little sister. They’d turned back to go up the road to Vesuvius again because Giuseppe thought he had dropped his wallet in the car park. They didn’t speak English, but when they saw me frantically crying and pointing up the mountain saying my Grandpa was hurt and my auntie (I called her Mamma because I didn’t know the word for auntie) was down in the café, they beckoned me to the car and drove me there.

  Brenda of course went off into an almighty flap, and while she did so, they called an ambulance. I had to take them up there, feeling our way to the horseshoe dip with torches. It didn’t feel scary with them all there, only I was desperately worried about Grandpa.

  He regained consciousness on the stretcher as we brought him down the mountain. We’d just reached the path again, after the tricky scramble across the rough, sloping ground. There was a low groan from the stretcher, and suddenly, out of the darkness Grandpa ‘s voice came quite distinctly,

  ‘What I need now,’ he pronounced, ‘is a Damn Good Drink.’

  ‘It’s all right Grandpa,’ I said, a grin spreading across my face in my joy and relief at hearing him. ‘You’ll soon get one!’

  The ambulance men didn’t understand of course, but they were very kind. Actually it was over a week before Grandpa got his DGD. They kept him in hospital in Naples with concussion, a badly cut head, a broken leg and all sorts of cuts and bruises. They patched up my cuts and bruises too, when we got there. I was amazed to see how many I had, especially the big bash on my left shoulder, but otherwise I was all right.

  And apart from the shortage of vino, Grandpa had a lovely time. Seeing his white hair and little boy expression, the nurses seemed to think he was cute and heroic and, like most Englishmen, a bit mad. They treated him with motherly sweetness. As the message got round of what had happened he sat up in bed holding court and everyone came to see him!

  Giuseppe never did find his wallet though and I felt rather bad about that.

  Brenda had had a pink fit about all of it at first, from the moment I appeared in the café with the trio in black and blood on my shirt. Grandpa was thoughtless and irresponsible and not safe to be let out! Then, after a rant, she realized we were going to have to go back up there and get him and she started crying. And when we came back she was all soft and relieved and tearful.

  Eventually though, another realization hit her. To visit Grandpa she was going to have to drive – in Naples.

  ‘But I can’t!’ she said, going all big eyed.

  ‘I bet you can.’ I must have sounded heartless but after the mountain I felt strong, as if I could do anything.

  The next morning I told Fizz what had happened. He was lovely. He saw all my cuts and bruises and he looked really worried.

  ‘That looks bad. Are you OK? And what about your Granddad?’

  We were outside the Ship of Dreams and Maggie came over as she saw I had a bandage on my knee.

  ‘What’s happened there? Are you all right darlin’?’

  So I told them both and Maggie’s eyes were full of concern and her face softened.

  ‘My stars, what a terrible thing – and you all up there on your own with him! You must have been frightened weren’t you, you poor little lamb?’

  ‘A bit,’ I admitted.

  ‘I’ll tell Archie when he gets back from the shops. He’ll want to go to the hospital and see him.’

  Completely amazed by this, I clamped my mouth shut to stop myself saying ‘no don’t!’ I couldn’t say that could I? It was so rude and what did Grandpa have against Archie anyway?

  Fizz was extra nice to me that morning. We went into the Ship of Dreams and talked to Pecky who was as grumpy as ever.

  ‘Shut up!’ he squawked in his crotchety voice, shifting excitedly from foot to foot. Then he gave a shrill but quavering whistle.

  ‘He’s started imitating the kettle,’ Fizz said with a grin.

  ‘Shut up!’ came from little Clarey who was on the bed at the side.

  ‘See – now she’s picking it up,’ Maggie said wearily. ‘Don’t you start that now young lady – ‘ She picked Clarey up, burying her face in the little girl’s tummy to tickle her and Clarey roared with laughter.

  Fizz and I went out and played Frisbee and went off exploring round the camp and we fed Esmerelda the Queen Pig some cheese rinds. We didn’t talk about anything sad. We just played and Fizz told me jokes and it was the best. Because although I felt strong, and the butterfly was still with me, if I stopped and thought about it, especially lying in bed last night, I was back on the mountain on my own again and it seemed to spin round in my head and make me feel scared and sick. And I didn’t want to do that – I just wanted to have fun. It felt as if Fizz was the very best friend I’d ever had.

  II.

  Brenda did drive through Naples.

  ‘All that awful traffic,’ she said, ‘And on the wrong side of the road. But it’s got to be done.’

  She sat bolt upright at the wheel, her hair, which had grown quite a bit now, hanging in floaty little waves. She hadn’t been able to keep all that perming up and it looked softer now. She looked softer.

  ‘Now dear, I’ll need to concentrate, so best you don’t talk to me unless it’s strictly nec
essary,’ she said, as if normally I was the worst chatterbox in the world.

  ‘OK,’ I said.

  She did it all right. Of course she did, with a few ‘oh dears’ and ‘damn and blast its’ through all the seething, hooting, swerving Naples traffic. In fact she seemed to have a better sense of direction than Grandpa. When we finally braked in the hospital car park she turned off the engine and leaned her head back, closing her eyes.

  ‘Phew!’ Then a startling sound came from her – a giggle which just burst out. When she looked round at me her face was pink and she was looking very twinkly and pleased with herself.

  It made me giggle as well. We both sat and roared with laughter.

  ‘Well dear,’ Brenda chortled when she could speak again. ‘All we’ve got to do now is get back again!’

  ‘You can do it,’ I said. And for some reason this set us off again.

  ‘Well, yes, perhaps I can,’ she said wiping her eyes. ‘Let’s hope for the best, anyway.’

  Grandpa was sitting up in bed in a pair of pale blue pyjamas. The bandage on his head covered his left eye and tufts of white hair stuck out from it at odd angles. There was a white caste on his right leg and various plasters on his arms and hands. His visible eye which was ringed, panda-like, with bruising, peered out warily at Brenda as she came near with her parcel of grapes and peaches.

  ‘Hello, My Little Dears,’ he said, with the face of a small boy who has been caught with his fingers in the jam. ‘How did you get here?’

  ‘I drove,’ Brenda said breezily, picking something off her sleeve.

  ‘Did you? How marvellous! Clever girl!’

  There was a silence, then Grandpa said, ‘Well, I’m very sorry my dear. No fool like an old fool, is there?’