Papa Georgio

by Annie Murray

  So I had to say goodbye when we all did. The morning I knew they were going, I stayed up on the top bunk. Somehow I just didn’t want to go out in the sun.

  Then Brenda called, ‘Janey – I think the Chubbs are leaving now. Don’t you want to come and say goodbye?’

  I went out, holding my package for Fizz and we went down to the bottom level, to the Ship of Dreams.

  Mum and Maggie were already hugging. Then Maggie and Brenda. It was amazing seeing Brenda giving hugs – she never used to. She even hugged Archie and kissed his cheek, standing on tip-toe to reach!

  I tried to look casual, as if I didn’t really care. But of course I was caught up in it too, straight away. Archie gave me a great big bear bug and said,

  ‘You’re a grand kid – thanks for looking after Fizz, lass. Keep in touch.’ He pressed a bag of sweets into my hand and I didn’t know what to say. I wanted to say, I hope you get better and you feel OK and don’t have nightmares about all the awful things that happened to you and you do know Fizz loves you don’t you?

  Instead I said, ‘Thanks,’ and ‘maybe we’ll see you again…’

  ‘I hope so too!’ Archie said, chucking my cheek like an Italian. But I didn’t mind.

  Maggie put her arms round me too, holding Clarey at the same time.

  ‘God bless darlin’! Hope we see you again – look after your Mammy.’

  ‘I will,’ I said. I knew Mum and Maggie had grown very fond of each other.

  Grandpa and Archie gave each other strenuous manly handshakes and there were lots of ‘old chaps’ and ‘take good care of yourselfs.’ Then Grandpa slipped Archie a piece of paper.

  ‘There we are old lad – don’t know if you’ll be passing our way one day if you’re heading north. But do call in – come and see my little business, if you want to. Always welcome.’

  A bashful smile spread across Archie’s fleshy face.

  ‘D’yer mean it, George? That’s good of you – very civil. I might well take you up on that, pal. I don’t know when we’ll be back in Blighty. We’re thinking of heading south – seeing if we can get a boat across to Spain, maybe go on to Morocco. But one day we’ll come calling. I don’t get many invitations like that.’

  Then I was face to face with Fizz. I felt so churned up, trying not to cry, and he looked awkward and solemn as if he was feeling the same.

  ‘Here – ’ I thrust the parcel at him. ‘This is for you. So you don’t forget me.’ I hadn’t known I was going to say that last bit – it just slipped out.

  Fizz looked completely astonished.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Open it, you idiot, and then you’ll see, won’t you?’ I sounded too gruff and wished I hadn’t. But it was awful trying to speak with a great lump crouching in my throat like a toad.

  Fizz opened the package and everyone else started to notice and say admiring things and then I really thought Fizz might cry. He hadn’t seen the quilt, not since all the last pieces had been sewn on and certainly not the backing. As he unfurled it, the salamander shimmered in the light almost as if it was running, a long, perfect shape - except for one detail that Fizz had suggested. Its tail, instead of tapering to a sharp point, ended short, a little bit of it broken off. We’d sewn the little broken bit on further down.

  Salamanders have special tails, Fizz once told me. If they get them trapped or injured, they just break the end bit off and keep running. It helps them survive.

  Fizz just gazed and gazed at it while all the others exclaimed over it. Then he looked up at me, very serious.

  ‘But you can’t give it to me – ‘ He waved a hand over it. ‘It’s not right. It’s yours.’

  ‘No, it’s OK,’ I said. ‘I’ve got a different sort of quilt at home that my Dad gave me.’

  That was true but it wasn’t really the reason. I knew the salamander was his sign, just as the butterfly was mine. ‘It’s yours – really.’

  He folded it up very carefully. ‘I’ll keep it forever,’ he said. Then he handed it to me. ‘Hold it for a moment. I’ve got summat for you.’

  He dashed back into the Ship and came back with something which he handed to me, taking the quilt back. In my hand was a gnarled, flat, brownish shell.

  ‘Turn it over,’ Fizz said.

  I turned it and the colours flared up at me, pinks, blues greens, vivid as oil on a puddle, all shimmering, watery and beautiful. A smile spread across my face.

  ‘Oh - it’s lovely!’

  ‘Mother of pearl,’ Fizz said. ‘And the shells are called Sea Ears – well in Latin it’s haliotis tuberculata and in Italian they call it, Orechia di San Pietro – St. Peter’s Ear…’

  ‘Wow, Fizz – it’s fantastic!’ I said, before he could tell me its name in German, Chinese and Bulgarian as well. I knew it would make me think of the sea, and Italy and Fizz and it was a perfect present.

  Neither of us knew what to say then. Fizz came up, the quilt under one arm and gave me a rough hug with the other and I hugged him too. His back felt very hard and tough under my palm. It was over in a second or two, but as he was close to me, I said quietly,

  ‘Don’t forget – Poste Restante.’

  He let go of me with a lopsided grin and gave a thumbs up sign. ‘Poste Restante – you’d better!’

  I said my last goodbye to Pecky, who greeted me with his usual disdain and then we all stood and waved the Chubbs off: Mum, Grandpa, Brenda and me. We followed as the Ship crawled its way up to the middle level of the camp.

  Mum put her arm round my shoulder and waved, blowing a kiss to Maggie who smiled bravely and waved back.

  ‘Poor woman - she doesn’t have an easy time,’ Mum murmured. She looked down at me. ‘Fizz has been a nice little playmate for you, hasn’t he?’

  Playmate! I flared up fiercely in my head. He’s not some silly little playmate, he’s the best friend I’ve ever had. She just didn’t understand!

  Fizz waved too, trying to smile but I could see it was a struggle. I blew him a kiss. Didn’t really mean to, but once I’d done it, it was too late to take it back.

  Then we couldn’t see them any more and the Ship was raising dust along the track out of the camp. We saw it pause at the gate, under the Camping Sacchetti banner, then turn right on to the road south. And they were gone.

  II.

  Mum and Brenda were going to share the driving home. Brenda declared that if she could drive round Naples she could probably drive anywhere and Mum gave her a friendly nudge and said, ‘Good for you!’ I couldn’t have imagined Mum ever nudging Brenda before.

  There had been talk of putting Grandpa on an aeroplane and we three going overland together.

  ‘Oh no you don’t!’ Grandpa protested. ‘I’m not having that – missing all the action!’

  Our journey south was over and now we had to head home again. So we began to get organized. As well as our luggage, we were carrying with us: two stone dogs (heavy), one large wooden crucifix, a selection of bronze figures (some with clothes on) and a large accumulation of wine bottles (mostly full) which clinked and clanked like mad if we moved the caravan. But at least we were minus one golden pelican.

  ‘I expect I’ll be back one day,’ Grandpa said wistfully, after the Chubbs had left. He was sitting outside on his folding chair with a DGD in the form of a glass of wine. Mum and I were washing down the van with buckets of water. Grandpa couldn’t admit how much he was missing the Chubbs.

  ‘Oh, we definitely shall,’ Mum said, sloshing water over the wheel hub nearest to him.

  I knew she meant it. When she set out to do something she usually did mean it. And she loved Alberto and his family the way I did, I could see that, the way he’d made our family part of theirs.

  When we went up to say goodbye to them there were lots of tears. Alberto was always very tender with Mum and me, and he actually picked me up and cuddled me.

  Looking into my eyes with a twinkle, he said in his scraps of English, ‘Remember, lovely one, arrivederci no m
ean goodbye, it mean, until we see each other again.’

  The last evening at Camping Sacchetti I went to say goodbye to Queen Esmeralda, who didn’t seem especially moved, except by the cheese rinds I took her. Then I went to sit in my special place – Fizz’s and mine. I longed for him to be there, but in another way I also wanted to be on my own. My heart felt like a bucket that had been filled right up to the top, the surface bulging ready to spill over and in it was such a mix of happy and sad I could hardly tell one from another.

  Grandpa and Brenda had gone out that afternoon. Mum sent them I think, or they volunteered. I knew sometime or other she’d want to talk to me. Up until now I hadn’t wanted to ask about Dad. I knew my father was dead, that he wasn’t coming back, a walking miracle across the snow. I could admit that to myself now. I just hadn’t wanted to hear any more, not with everyone around, feeling right and warm, like a family.

  We put the table up in the caravan once it was just her and me, and sat there side by side with our backs to the gas cooker and the half door open so there was a breeze which smelt of frying onions and pine trees.

  Mum had on a pink t-shirt and her cut off denim shorts, so her strong brown legs were next to mine, in my shorts. She put her arm round me and she smelt of Nivea crème.

  ‘Janey, I’ve got some things to show you. I think it’s time, don’t you?’

  Her voice wavered a bit then and I nodded, not quite looking into her eyes, because I knew they’d be full of tears. But when she spoke again her voice was firm.

  ‘Before we talk about Peter, about Daddy, here’s something else I brought from home. I didn’t give it to you before because, well, you were having such a good time with Fizz. I thought it would be a nice surprise for after he’d gone.’

  She handed me an envelope and I saw it was addressed in Charlotte’s handwriting.

  ‘I haven’t written to her in ages,’ I said, guiltily, though I was excited to see it. ‘I haven’t written my diary for a bit either.’

  ‘Never mind,’ Mum said. ‘Though Charlotte did seem a bit sad not to have heard from you. She got this for you all in a rush when she knew I was coming here.’

  Inside was a card with a daft looking dog on it, with a saggy face and long ears, a Bassett like Grandpa’s Mungo. Mum and I laughed. Inside, Charlotte had written,

  ‘Dear Janey,

  I hope you’re still having a nice trip and you’re OK. You’re not missing anything round here I can tell you and I’m missing you like anything! Sorry I’m not very good at writing – but write to me, you meanie!

  Hope you’re coming home soon – you’d better be!

  Love from your best, best friend forever, Charlotte xxxxx :-)’

  Wow, I thought! Charlotte actually missing me! So she did care after all! That made me feel good. I was missing Fizz so much that it was comforting to think I had another friend waiting for me and I felt sorry for not writing.

  ‘I’ll do her a card tomorrow,’ I said.

  ‘Now pet,’ Mum looked serious, and I felt my chest tighten. ‘Let me tell you about Daddy, can I?’

  So later, with Fizz’s shell in my pocket where I kept it all the time, I went to the special place and sat on the familiar, dried mud shelf that was our seat.

  Mum told me they’d found Dad’s pack on the mountain, torn open and with nothing left in it except in one side pocket where there were socks. Knowing his socks had survived seemed very sad. It was definitely his pack. He and all his other belongings, including his tent, were buried under the ice from the avalanche.

  She hadn’t climbed right up to where he died. It was too dangerous and she‘d kept her promise to me not to climb. She had gone a bit further up than base camp, to a point where both Roy and Kalsang had advised her to stop. Roy said Daddy would certainly have passed this point on the climb, would have stood and seen what she could see as she looked down from Kanche’s flank.

  So she had made a memorial for him there, piling stones into a rough cairn, slipping between them our letters and messages of love to him and twisting round it a line of coloured prayer flags, their colours bright against the snow. ‘As if they were cuddling him,’ she said. With more stones she pinned down the remains of Daddy’s back-pack next to it (the socks, she brought home with her) and with pebbles she arranged his initials, P.J.A. in the snow. She had taken lots of photos of it to give to everyone, and she gave me one which she had put in a frame.

  I sat in the dusk, above the camp, in the sultry air. There were no fireflies tonight and the air seemed still and calm, except for a few gnats shimmering in front of me. I stared and stared at the picture, thinking about Daddy and his mountain and the fierce goddess Kanche, who had taken my father to add to her treasure house. But no - I knew it wasn’t like that. There was no goddess collecting gold and silver, corn and sacred books: just Daddy and the ice and rock and wind, and he now the treasure of his beautiful, harsh mountain.

  Inside the frame, along the bottom of the picture, Mum had slipped a finger’s width of paper with two lines of verse typed on it. She told me she had left these words on Daddy’s grave, along with our messages of love:

  ‘Do not stand at my grave and weep, I am not there, I do not sleep.

  I am a thousand winds that blow. I am the diamond glint on snow.’

  When I read these words over and over I felt the full bucket in me overflow and I cried and cried from deep inside, until tears were dripping down on to my knees. I let the breeze dry my cheeks, and sat there for a long time, until it was too dark to read anything at all.

  Stiffly I got up, pressing the picture to my chest and for the last time I walked down the path through the camp from my special hiding place. I wanted warmth and light, to be back in our caravan, which for now, was home. And I wanted to see my Grandpa. My Papa Georgio.