by Sarah Lean
I’d hoped he would understand. I closed my eyes, trying to find the right words.
“Remember that day of the avalanche and Bruno barked at us, and in the end you had to hold my hand and drag me away? Well it’s kind of like that. And I don’t mean that you should drag me away. I mean, I have to show Harry that I will keep him safe if he comes with me. I think Harry was making all that noise because he did want to stay with me, he just didn’t know if I wanted him to stay too. It just feels right, that I take him home by myself.”
Peter muttered to himself in Italian so I didn’t understand, then walked over to speak to Nonno.
I knew what I had to do. Harry and I could both change, even if Frank couldn’t. We had each other and together we had to break our biggest habit of all. Relying on Frank.
I didn’t think I’d ever looked past today. When you’re ten and eleven and twelve you don’t have to. Then it all seems to spread out in front of you, suddenly, all the things that are possible.
Peter came back over. “Hope, Nonno said if you walk home it’s going to be harder; you’ll be going uphill, it’ll take forever.”
“It’s all been hard, Peter. You can follow me or wait for me by the side of the road, but I have to do it.”
“What about Harry?”
Which was exactly what I was thinking. Harry already looked tired. And my shoulders were blistered, the skin on my cheekbones sore, and I ached with the emptiness of Frank being gone.
“I am thinking of Harry, Peter. And we will make it. Together.”
Our shadows stretched out in front of us, long and thin, which meant I didn’t have to turn back to see if Harry was still coming, because his shadow walked beside me. Poor Harry. I knew he would feel through his skin and bones, down his ears into every part of him, if I wasn’t strong. And it made me stronger. I wasn’t going to be afraid. Not with Harry next to me and Peter nearby. Harry had to know he was safe and that I wouldn’t let him down.
I saw Peter and Nonno in the car in the distance, slowly moving to the next layby where they could stop but still keep an eye on us.
The spots where we had stopped on the way – for shade by the rocks, the road that we had crossed, where I saw that someone had collected the tractor – felt like major milestones on our trek home.
Halfway up the hill, where we’d met the coach, I went over to the car and asked Peter and Nonno to drive on.
“Please, tell Nonno. We’re nearly there.”
Something else was on my mind. Somehow it seemed important that my mother saw Harry and me coming home together like this.
Eventually Nonno agreed.
“See you there,” Peter said. “I know you can do it.”
My legs didn’t feel as if they were mine. Like a machine, they just kept going as if they had no choice, or maybe my legs had made the choice and my head hadn’t caught up yet. I walked backwards up the mountainside when my calves ached. Harry hung his head low, digging in. I steered him towards patches of grass but he wouldn’t eat, and I worried that he felt what I did – that nothing could fill the big hole that Frank had left inside us and that things just wouldn’t ever feel like enough again. It’s the hardest thing to describe. To want to go home, but to dread being back.
The sun suddenly dipped behind Canigou and all the shadows joined into one. At the same time, I heard a soft sound behind me, like a bag of Nanu’s flour being dropped on the floor. Harry had collapsed at the side of the road.
He rolled to his side and laid his head down.
“Harry!” I gasped, running back to him. “Don’t give up. You can make it.”
Did he feel like I had yesterday, that if he shut his eyes and went to sleep then he could forget that he was a poor grey donkey who had been left behind? I got down beside him, stroked his face. His breathing was shallow; his half-closed eyes blinked slowly.
I’d made him go too far; I’d made him do too much. I looked around for water. I picked some grass, but he closed his eyes and moved his mouth away.
“Please, Harry. It’s not far now.”
I held the halter and half-heartedly pulled at him. I should have asked Nonno to go and collect a trailer for him, and thinking that made all the strength seep out of me. I let Harry lie back down.
“I’m sorry, Harry. I know it’s hard and I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
He sighed. His eyes flickered and closed again, and I lay down on the side of the road beside him. I had nothing left in my body, not for him or for me.
“We’ll just rest, Harry. We’ll stay here as long as you need to. It’ll be all right.”
Gently, I stroked his shoulders, ran my hands down his legs, hoping that somehow it would help if he ached or was tired. I felt the old scars below his knees, the lines of the ropes that once tied him too tightly.
His ribs rose and fell.
“We’ll sleep for a bit, Harry.”
I tried really hard, but I couldn’t not think of the grey donkey with the bricks, fallen by the roadside. When I closed my eyes, when I opened them, he was there. Frank had said the grey donkey would have got up if he could. It was the man from Mumbai’s fault he fell the first time. Now it was mine.
Harry wasn’t asleep. His eyes were half open, his nostrils twitched a little. I could tell he was also watching me, although he didn’t look me in the eye. I didn’t know what I was looking for but it was what Frank had done. He watched him and watched him and then he seemed to know what to do.
Donkeys don’t sleep much, I knew that, and they don’t always lie down to sleep. If he needed to rest, then I’d just let him lie there. I stayed quiet and waited and watched Harry’s eyelashes flicker. I tried to feel what he felt.
Harry moved his neck, so he could see me better, still without looking right at me. He breathed and disturbed the dust on the ground. His ears twitched, turning towards me, then away.
The sky was that kind of miracle deep blue, bright and cleaned for the night. Cool air dropped on to my shoulders.
Harry turned towards me as if he was checking I was still there. His ears swivelled. I really wanted to whisper into his tall ears, something nice, something good that would persuade him to keep going, to come home with me.
Harry raised his head and almost, almost looked me in the eye, and then lay back down, moving his head further away as if he was disappointed that I wasn’t what he wanted to see. I wasn’t sure that Frank was right about Harry choosing me instead of him.
“It’s hard, Harry, but I want us to be cherries and almonds too, even if Frank’s not here.”
I rolled on to my knees and lay across his side, staying there for a while to feel him breathe. I wondered why Frank had said that pulling Harry up when he fell from the weight of the bricks had made things worse. Was this something Harry had to choose to do himself? I did the only thing I could think of. I reached over and gently smacked Harry’s bum, and then I said what I did because that’s all there was to say, “You know you can trust me, Harry. But I think you have to do this bit by yourself.”
I didn’t look back as I trudged home with my own heavy weight, hoping I’d done the right thing.
When I came along the track, Marianne was sitting on the bench outside the guesthouse, and for a second I forgot that Frank wouldn’t be there. Marianne leaped up, and then we just stood there for a minute looking at each other.
“Peter’s gone home but he came here first and told me what happened.” She looked different. I couldn’t really say how, but I also was too afraid to look back, so I just went to her and we met in the middle. Her arms were warm and she smelled familiar and good and she bundled me right into her like I’d been gone for years.
“I’m sorry,” she kept saying. And I knew that she was trying really hard to make up for something, for not really making me important like Frank had. Still holding me she whispered into my ear.
“It’s me that needs to change, not you, not Frank. You’re strong and sensitive, loving and so beautiful, and I don’t know what I’ve
been thinking all this time. I should never have let you go alone. What was I thinking? Perhaps I wasn’t. You’re still just my little girl. But I’m here now. Really here.” She swept the hair away from my eyes.
“I didn’t think you’d get it, why I had to go.”
“I’ve got you now.”
And then it was easy to tell her the words inside me.
“I left Harry by the roadside. He wouldn’t come any further, and I had to leave him behind.”
“It’s OK, it’s OK.”
“It’s what happened to Harry in Mumbai when Frank found him. Maybe he hadn’t fallen down, maybe he just lay down because what he had to carry was too much for him.”
“Not any more. He’s got you. And he’s got me. Together we’ll rescue him. Even though we’ve never quite been a matching pair, not like… not like you and Frank, or Frank and Harry. Or you and Harry. We never quite fitted together because we were too different. I always gave you what I wanted. But it wasn’t what you needed at all. That’s why Frank thought you needed someone to stand by you for a while longer until you were ready, someone to give you what I didn’t. I guess that’s why he left Harry. The other half of him that could stay.” She held me. “I’ve seen how you take care of Harry. I’m ready to take care of you now too. You should have had your mum with you all along.”
We stood there for a long time, all her words melting into me.
“Hope?” she breathed, and when I looked up, she was pointing behind me.
Slow muffled hooves scuffed along the track. I turned around. I held on to my mother as Harry trudged towards the house. He stood there for a little while and that was the second time he looked me right in the eye. His ears and eyes turned towards my mother and my friend. He kept walking before stopping a short distance away from the bench, his nostrils flickering. His ears fell back and I knew it was because Frank wasn’t there. Harry had chosen to get up, to come back, but maybe that was only because he thought he might still find Frank here?
My mother hesitated. I could see she was about to say something to me, then she shook it away as if something better needed to be said.
“Well done, Harry. You made it home.” She told him.
Deep down inside, I was cheering for Harry, but had he really come back for me?
“It’s not fair to make you or Harry do anything more than you already have,” my mother said. She began collecting the things she needed to make a stable around Harry, just like Peter and I had the night before.
Marianne went into the house and brought out a sleeping bag and cushions and blankets. She brought down my hammock and hung it on our porch.
“In you get,” she said, helping me up as if I was wounded. She climbed in beside me, in the hammock that we’d brought with us when we first came here, where we’d lain together all night watching the mountain turn dark, drawing the outline between the stars with our fingers.
We swayed in the hammock, still in our clothes, her arms around me. She whispered lots of things about Canigou, about herself, as if she had only just realised that there might be a way that we fitted together perfectly.
“If I remember that night when we first came here and slept in the hammock…” she said, “when I remember that night, I want to start again from there.”
We listened to the soft grind of Harry’s teeth on the hay.
“It’s all right that Harry’s here with us, isn’t it, Mum?” I whispered, as if I had to dare myself to ask.
“More than all right. This is a new beginning.” I think she was crying, and that had nothing to do with Harry, and everything to do with me and her.
I slept in the hammock most of the next day with Mum watching over me and checking on me every five minutes. She didn’t ask me to get up, she didn’t go to her studio either. Peter came round and sat with me for a while and read one of his books out loud to me, a story his father had chosen for him. He told my mother that Nanu said to go over for coffee (which also probably meant a spread of food on the kitchen table), which was nice for my mother. Nanu had a soft spot for Mum, especially when Mum was alone.
In the evening, Harry came over to the hammock by himself, and I scratched his head and nuzzled against his nose and tried to believe that he wanted to be here.
He still wouldn’t go in the shed though, so Mum and Peter made up the stall around him again, this time right next to the hammock.
And things went on like this for a while. Days went past but it was as if time stood still. I lay in the hammock, Peter came over and the only thing that was moving on was the story he read to me. Harry slept in his makeshift shelter. It felt easier just to push everything aside in this way and sleep.
And then one day, I don’t know why, I knew something had to change. It had already changed in me and I needed Harry to see it too. Peter had put his book down, leaving it open, and it looked just like the roofs of the village. I thought about us still being halfway through a story. I thought about what I’d like to happen next.
Harry came up from the meadow and headed for the hammock. It was becoming a new habit for him, to come over for a cuddle, for me to say g’night, and him to wait for us to build the stall around him. This time I jumped down from the hammock with my blanket and went into his shed without looking back. I didn’t really think what I was doing or why. It smelled a bit in the shed, but not awful like you’d expect. Kind of sweet and earthy and familiar. Harry’s home. I shuffled straw into a bed for me and lay down and closed my eyes.
There was bright light on my eyelids, a new day, my mother whispering, “You did it!”
Harry had slept the night in the stable with me.
I thought about that time with Frank and the trailer and how I’d cheered, but Frank hadn’t seemed as if it was the triumph it was. I think I knew why, now. No matter how brilliant it was that Harry had broken his old habit, when Harry chose to be with me instead, it meant Frank was closer to saying goodbye to him. That morning, it reminded me again that all the clever things that Harry had learned, were because Frank had left.
We did this for a few nights until Harry chose to go into the shed all by himself. Now I knew that even though he needed me, he could also rely on himself, too. That night I took my hammock back up to the roof, and slept there.
When I woke the next morning, I found a note from Peter: When you feel ready, let’s go over to Canigou. There’s something I want to show you.
My head was still kind of numb. I wasn’t tired, not in that way you are when you’ve walked forever to get a stubborn donkey back home. More like I could only think of one thing at a time, kind of quietly, moving slowly to get showered and dressed while Marianne tried to help by making up a bag of things for me to take, checking with me what I needed.
“Do you want a spare T-shirt? You should take the sun cream. Do you want the after sun as well? Shall I put them both in? Will that make the bag too heavy?” Questions that seemed to float by me but that told me she only thought of me. I felt us drawing together, closer than we’d ever been. I nodded and said, “Whatever you think, Mum.”
“Are you sure you want to go?” she asked. “I don’t have to paint today, so why don’t you stay at home and rest, let me look after you. You still look worn out, Hope. This will wait.”
“It’s not fair on Peter. He’s not had any fun yet this summer.”
“Hope,” Marianne said as I was about to leave, “I’m sorry things turned out like this.”
She looked smaller. Or had I grown taller?
She had changed. We all had. All of us except Frank who had gone back to the way he was, back on the road.
I let Harry out of the shed and led him down to the meadow.
He looked no sorrier for himself than he always did. Still the same shy eyes and drooping head. I wondered how his memory worked. Had he forgotten the last few days? Or did he still have the burden of what had happened, of Frank leaving us, weighing like bricks on his chest, like I did. I hoped he didn’t, but it occurred t
o me for the first time that perhaps he had always been that way. That was probably the saddest thought I’d ever had: that sometimes sad things happen and then you’re stuck like that forever.
“We’ll be all right, Harry. We will. If I could have carried some of those bricks for you, I would’ve, just like Frank. If you’ve got any others left, though, you know, somewhere inside, I can carry them for you too.”
I hoped the meadow would be all he thought of today, and all he felt would be the endless supply of sappy green grass and flowers, crunching between his teeth.
Peter took one look at me and asked, “Are you ready?”
“When is anyone ever ready?” I said. “How do I know what I’m supposed to be ready for?”
“We could go another day,” he said, but I wanted something new to think about.
“Let’s just go.”
Bruno grumbled at us in the lane. I had food for him and he was happier eating the leftover chicken I’d kept for him and letting us past than guarding us against going across the field, but I still hadn’t found a way to make us good friends who properly understood each other yet.
It was another long walk before we reached the old shepherd’s hut at the foot of the mountain. Part of the back wall and half the roof had crumbled where the avalanche had crushed it. Peter climbed through the wall and stood on the rubble. He gathered up a few of the stones and tried to stack them.
“You know, we could fix this up,” he said. “It could be a really good place for Harry. He’d love it here.”
“Maybe we’ll bring him another day,” I said.
A stone fell back out but Peter quickly picked it up, turned it over, and found a better way to wedge it back in.
“We could clean it and make it nice,” he said, trying to rebuild the wall. “Harry would be safe and dry, and maybe we could take the door off so he could go in and out whenever he wants.”
“It’s OK, he goes in the shed at night now.”
Why it came into my head right then, I didn’t know. But moments in the last few days suddenly seemed to tumble together, like I could almost make sense of them, but there were still things missing.
