by Sarah Lean
Actually, I hated the story, because of what had happened to Harry, but I loved it too. Because of Frank.
“Fire away,” he said, like always, and we both smiled because the bonfire and the talk had always gone together.
“How did you find Harry?” I began.
Frank took a big breath, like he was preparing himself deep down inside. He picked two sappy grasses, held one out to me, getting ready to go travelling in his memory and take me with him.
“Paths crossed, I reckon.”
“Where was it you were going?”
“Travelling, that’s all.”
“But, like, where were you exactly?”
“India, Mumbai, near a building site.”
“And what were you doing at the building site?”
“Just looking, watching things change.”
“What made you stop for Harry?”
He shook his head and twitched his lip as he crushed the grass stem between his teeth.
“There are some things that a man finds hard to pass by.”
I loved the way he talked. Bold and sure. Each time the answers familiar, but that day, strangely unfamiliar too. Maybe that was because of me hearing them differently, because I had grown since the last time he’d told me the story. Or maybe it was because something cold had settled in my stomach, like a sprinkling of snow.
“How big was the pile of bricks Harry was carrying?” I asked.
“Bigger than himself.”
“He was a good donkey though,” I said, knowing the story so well.
Frank nodded.
“So why did his owner treat him like he did?”
Again he waited a moment, leaving a space, like that silence was the place for me to work things out, to be ready to see the things he’d seen.
Frank threw the last of his papers on the fire. New sparks rose.
“When the donkey fell, the man couldn’t see that he’d have got up if he could.”
“What did you do, Frank?”
He poked the ashes with a stick.
“Pulled him back on his feet.”
I didn’t ask any more about this part of the story, eager to get past the struggle that I couldn’t bear to hear. Frank had never given any details, as if he was saving poor Harry from being shamed by what happened. And I kind of understood, if you can call it understanding by putting your own thoughts in a donkey’s head. Harry was strong and willing and he would have got up if he could, but Frank had to help him.
“You wanted to carry some of the bricks for Harry,” I reminded Frank.
He studied the crushed stem he’d been chewing. It took him a long time to answer and I wondered if there was another bit missing, a bit that Frank didn’t tell me.
“I made it worse. Poor grey donkey,” Frank said. I never understood this. How could anything be worse than poor Harry almost buried under his load? But Frank said no more. I wondered if he did it on purpose, stopping right at that point to give his story just about as much weight as Harry’s burden of bricks, to let the fact of the story sit inside me for a while so I could feel how heavy his heart had been when he’d seen the grey donkey buckling and having no choice but to try to get up and carry on.
“But you saved Harry! You bought him and took him away and he’s never had to work hard like that again.”
Frank rested his cheeks on his fists. He’d gone quiet. I knew the story so well I filled in the rest for him. The good bit.
“You rescued Harry. Together you travelled across countries that I’ve never even heard of, your tyres popping all the time while you drove up those stony mountain roads, following your friends from Germany who were on their motorbikes and who had maps of how to get to Europe. Then they helped you get visas and papers, to have all the checks that you and Harry had to have.”
I followed Frank’s eyes to the bonfire, to the papers now burning at our feet.
“And you avoided all the places where people would ask you too many questions about Harry, and all the time he was safe in the trailer behind your jeep with a pile of straw and a bunch of carrots.”
I could feel the freedom they must have had, travelling along like that together.
Frank looked over at me and I couldn’t help that the smoke from the fire was getting in my eyes.
“Then he had to go into quarantine. You hated that bit, being without Harry. I would too.”
“Listen,” Frank said. “Like I said, I’ve been thinking—” but I didn’t want to hear. I didn’t want any of the words to be things I didn’t want him to say. I hadn’t meant to remind him that he loved travelling but I couldn’t hold things in any longer. If Frank left, and Harry with him, I didn’t know what I’d do.
“So have I,” I said, wedged up against him. “And right now it feels like only a minute ago that you and Harry arrived. And I feel the same, exactly the same as I did when I first met you and Harry.”
He rested his head on mine. I kept going.
“Remember when you came? All the dust your jeep kicked up, making big sandy dust flowers blooming along the lane all at once. Like all of a sudden everything was ready for you. Or we were. And I know you didn’t say yes at first…” I pulled Harry closer so Frank and Harry made a sandwich around me. “I remember you stood there for the longest time at the edge of the meadow and Marianne said there was no reason a donkey couldn’t live here because nobody used it. And you talked to Harry and I wish I knew what you’d said to him. Was it you or Harry who decided to stay?”
Frank laughed softly.
“Harry.”
“Harry?! See, he knew this place was right for you. Freshest greenest meadow he’d ever seen in his life, that’s what you always say. And I said I’ll brush him for you, he looks kind of grey, and you said…”
“He’s grey underneath that dust too.”
We smiled at Harry, his head and eyes drooping with sleep, standing quietly beside me. We touched him gently and I knew it was impossible for either of us ever to be without him. Harry chose the meadow, and that put me and Frank together too.
“You tell the story of Harry better than I ever did,” Frank said.
“He’s like the reason for all of us being together, Frank.”
I hoped that made sense to him and I think it did because he smiled in that way that made me feel even the whole world had nothing like we had.
He spoke to Harry, like I was supposed to hear too.
“What are we gonna do about you, Harry? You’ve still got some bad old habits, mate, and it’s just not good for you. I think we’ve gotten too used to each other and I’m not sure I can help you break them any more.”
Sometimes you want to show someone that there’s a good reason why you’re together too.
“I could help,” I said. “I mean, like you said, I am growing up and I love Harry. I could help him.”
Frank leaned over to Harry and patted his neck, slowly running his hand down Harry’s nose, having the kind of conversation that only they could have without saying any words. Then Frank said to him, “What do you reckon, Harry? Do you trust Hope? Me too.”
“Really? I’ll train Harry?”
“That’s what I’ve been thinking. Nobody knows Harry like I do. It’s about time I let you in on that.”
“What, like, me look after him? Me and Harry?” Beautiful, sweet, safe Harry.
“How about we start now.”
“See if you can put Harry in for the night,” Frank said.
“What do I do?”
“Wait here a second.” He strode ahead over to the bench outside the guesthouse and sat down. I guessed he was getting out of the way so that Harry and I could do this together by ourselves.
He called, “Tap his shoulder twice, left shoulder, and he’ll follow.”
I’d seen Frank do it a thousand times, but it’s not the same when you do it yourself and you haven’t realised it has to be his left shoulder and your fingers are nervous. Harry curved his neck around and looked at m
y hand. Like we didn’t speak the same language, not yet anyway.
“Come on, Harry,” I said, and started to walk. He didn’t follow.
I went back and did it again and Harry looked at my hand again, and I told him again, “Harry, come on, time to go inside.”
Harry looked over at Frank, one ear up, one ear down. He stayed where he was.
“Does he only understand Indian?” I said, which I realised was stupid as I’d never heard Frank use any other language.
Frank laughed. “It’s not the words or your voice he’s listening to. You have to feel that you mean it, so he feels it too. Feel sure. Then he’ll be part of you.”
Frank was about to get up and come back over. Of course that was what I wanted. Me and Harry, Me and Frank.
“Yes! I can do it. Give me a minute.”
Frank sat back down.
“And I was only joking,” I called over. “About talking Indian, I mean.”
“Take your time. He’ll be ready when you are.” Frank leaned back, rested one ankle on the other knee, his arm stretched across the back of the bench.
I stood beside Harry, tidied his fringe. I didn’t want to disappoint anybody, including myself. I knew there was something between Harry and me that I had to find – what Frank and Harry had, what Peter and I had. When you just kind of fall in with each other’s footsteps.
I looked over at Frank.
If I looked after Harry, would I be completely in their world? Would that make it impossible for me and Frank and Harry to ever be apart? It was all I wanted. I’d never wanted anything so much, or tried so hard.
I thought of me and Harry. Of us being like yoghurt and honey too. I tapped Harry on his left shoulder twice. This time, he followed.
I couldn’t stop smiling at the little grey donkey, who was with me in a way he’d never been before. It felt huge and new and exciting.
When Harry got closer to his shed, he went over to see Frank. Maybe Harry was just checking they were still best mates, or maybe he wanted to tell Frank in his nuzzly donkey kind of way that he was OK with the choice he’d made for me to look after him too.
Frank sat forward, wrists dangling over his knees.
“Good boy, Harry,” he said.
Harry leaned his head over Frank’s shoulder. They said something else to each other again, but not in words or a language I understood, yet.
“Has he got clean water?” Frank said.
I checked inside the shed and ran back to tell him, “I filled the bucket up, right to the top. And changed the bedding.”
Frank patted Harry, just like he always did. I loved that about Frank, how he changed things without anyone being left out.
“G’night, Harry, mate,” he said. Magic words.
Harry turned away and I took him into the shed, fresh with straw and an apple I’d left for him to chomp on.
Something nearly broke and fell in pieces that day. But now I was completely in their world, somehow more part of Frank and Harry than ever before.
The snow melted.
Frank drove me over to see the broken casot, where the wall had fallen in and the roof had sagged. Harry had to come too, of course. Frank had been helping Nonno and the others dig out some of the new vines, but most of them were buried so deep that they had drooped by the time they reached them. The leaves looked odd, like they were burnt, not frozen under cold snow for weeks. The stakes were stacked in a pyramid, the wires rolled up, and the vineyard abandoned. Canigou was as it always was. So were me and Frank and Harry. I thought I got the message that the mountain gave me – that things should stay the way they were.
I wasn’t lonely at all while I waited for Peter to come back for the summer because there was always Frank and Harry, and even Bruno. I told Frank about Bruno. I don’t know why I hadn’t already asked him what to do about the old drooly dog barking in the lane on my way to school every day.
“He’s a guard dog, it’s hard for him to be any other way,” Frank said, when I told him about the sherbet lemon and trying to make friends with Bruno. “All that bark might just be for show too. He’s probably glad to talk to someone.”
“Maybe that’s it,” I said. “He’s on his own so much. I mean, I expect he’s lonely and, you know, needs someone who will be like the other half of him.”
“You mean Bruno’s the cherry and he needs some almonds,” Frank said, laughing.
“Exactly. And maybe I could be his almonds.” I thought for a minute. “How am I going to do that, though?”
“Just like you’re doing with Harry,” he said, knowing how well Harry and I had been getting on.
Frank said animals don’t actually recognise the words we say, but when they feel something about us, it goes straight inside of them and they understand us.
“You’re right,” I said. “But I think I’ll need something sweeter than lemon sherbets to make friends with Bruno.”
“Good point,” Frank smiled.
I set off to see Bruno with half of my croissant.
“Hello, Bruno, it’s me, Hope,” I said, standing in the lane quite a long way off, trying not to feel worried about his teeth. “I think you’re very handsome and you should be proud of your shaggy fur and maybe, one day, when you don’t bark quite so much, I’ll bring a brush and make it even smarter. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”
He snatched up the croissant I threw him, wolfed it down, and barked for me to go.
I went back and told Frank.
“Give him time,” he said. “Everything and everyone can change. Bruno just hasn’t worked you out yet.”
“I get the picture,” I said. “I haven’t worked him out yet either.”
“Sure you will though.”
I kept it up, every day, giving Bruno half my breakfast. I said nice things to him in between his barks, so we kind of had a conversation, even if I didn’t think he was listening to me very well.
“Yes, I know, you’re guarding the field,” I said. “But I’m not going through the field, Bruno. Honest.”
But still, we did start to make some progress, because although he barked, he stayed by the gate and let me go past him up the lane, which meant I didn’t have to go through the hedge and take the long way round to school.
I was making progress with Harry, too. There was still one habit that I couldn’t help him break though. When I let Harry out of the shed in the morning, he still trotted off to the trailer instead of going straight to the meadow. Carrots and apples didn’t mean anything, or at least not as much as a drive up and down the lane.
“One thing at a time,” Frank said. “This habit’s probably going to be the hardest of them all to change.”
With Marianne and Frank either side of me, we watched the mountains from the roof one night in June. The people from the villages all around lit bonfires on the peaks of the Pyrenees, as they did every year on that day, and we cheered when Canigou burned gold on the top. It was like a giant chain of fairy lights being turned on slowly, one at a time, stretching right across the skyline as far as we could see. I thought of how big those mountains were, how strong, how safe I felt right where I was.
I dreamed of me and Marianne, Frank and Harry travelling to the places Frank had told me about, the places where his shoes had once left their prints in the ground. My dreams were as bright as the photographs my mother took of the mountain.
I didn’t think about the things I couldn’t see off the edge of the shiny paper.
It was summer by now and I was still sleeping up on the roof terrace when one morning I heard Frank talking to Harry down on the drive.
“You gotta choose, Harry,” Frank said. “You gotta choose.”
When I leaned over the roof tiles this is what I saw: Frank standing with his long legs spread, hands on hips, stopping Harry from getting in his trailer.
I ran downstairs and my mother asked, “What’s going on outside?”
“I’m supposed to be training Harry,” I called back.
“Why did you let him out today, Frank?” I said. “And why aren’t you letting him into the trailer?”
“D’ya think I’ve fooled him all this time that he’s been anywhere else but here?”
“No, but if you drive him around for a bit then he’s happy and he’ll go down to the meadow by himself like he usually does.”
“He’s had a heck of a long time to get used to staying.”
Which of course he had. Which of course meant something especially to me. To me, Frank wanted Harry to finally understand that they weren’t going anywhere.
People say donkeys are stubborn but, when I watched Frank and Harry holding their ground, I couldn’t say which one of them was the most stubborn.
“I thought I was supposed to be teaching Harry,” I said. “I could do it. I just need some more time to work it out with him.”
“I know, Hope, but I figured this habit is down to me and Harry.”
There was a part of the world of Frank and Harry that still belonged only to them.
All morning the two of them faced up to each other, although Harry never did look Frank in the eye, each of them determined about their own things. Frank took off his hat, wiping at the sweat, refusing to let Harry pass. The poor donkey swayed, stepping to the side, swaying the other way, trying to get to the trailer. I felt how much Harry wouldn’t give up on what he wanted, right through my skin and bones into the middle of me.
Frank was never mean to Harry. Never. He didn’t shout, he didn’t try to push Harry away or trick him, although by lunchtime Marianne and I tried to persuade Frank to give the donkey treats that we knew he loved, offering to lay a trail of apples to the meadow.
“Harry’s gotta work this out himself,” Frank said.
Why was this different to Bruno? Why was this different to all the other things I had slowly, bit by bit, trained Harry to do?
“Try again another day, let me try again another day,” I suggested. “He doesn’t look ready yet.”
