How the Penguins Saved Veronica

by Hazel Prior

  “You must have been so thrilled to discover a grandson, after all this time,” Terry exclaims, determined to find a ray of light at the end of my tale of woe. She wants so much to believe my grandson and I are in happy-ever-after land.

  I don’t respond to her comment. An odd clamminess is coiling under the surface of my skin. It chills me like a winter mist.

  I need to be alone.

  * * *

  —

  Patrick the Penguin is sleeping peacefully. One foot is lifted slightly and propped against the side of the suitcase. His chest rises and falls with each breath, a gentle penguiny snore gurgling in his slightly open beak.

  I straighten slowly. Everything has changed. The past has resurfaced. Memories of my father, of my mother, of Giovanni and of my precious baby Enzo burgeon painfully in my consciousness. My baby boy, whom I never found again, who was taken away before he learned to say “Mum,” who died before he even knew I wanted him.

  How I ache for them, for what could have been. Each of them snatched away from me too, too soon. I feel as if I am being strangled from the inside.

  This room is much too small. It is claustrophobic. Oppressive.

  Not far away there’s a vast community of Adélies waiting for me under endless fathoms of polar sky. The penguins can help; I am sure of it. They have a brand of ancient wisdom that transcends the confused strivings of the human race. I need to get out and be with them. Just me, Veronica McCreedy, and the elements and five thousand penguins. Nobody else.

  Dietrich is in the computer room. I can hear Terry and Mike talking in the kitchen. I silently struggle into my jacket and mukluks. I grab my cane. I can’t be bothered with a handbag this time. Treading with utmost softness, I sneak out.

  A chilly wind whips fragments of snow up into my face. I walk as fast as I can to put space between myself and the field base. I don’t look back. My breath is short. Puffs of steam rise on the frozen air. I force myself on, up the slope, leaning heavily on my cane with every pace.

  My face is numb. It is colder than I have ever felt it before. The sky is low, simmering with murky patterns. The wind becomes fiercer and fiercer as I go on. It batters against me, whistling around my ears. But I’m driven by an inner force that’s equally fierce. I just need to see the penguins, to be alone at last with the penguins. I put one step in front of another. Again and again and again. Somehow, in spite of my protesting lungs, I arrive at the top of the slope.

  And there they are, laid out before me, a huge, undulating mass of life, a black-and-white realm of mothers, fathers, couples and babies.

  I descend and walk among them in the dusky flurries of snow. Some lift their heads to look at me, but mostly they carry on attending their own business. Sheltering together, feeding together, arguing together, sleeping together.

  That is it, I realize. That’s the thing that gives their life purpose. That “together” that has been so lacking in my own life. All that I possess is encased in silver and hanging on the end of a chain, under my thermals, pressed against my skin. Four strands of hair.

  A hurricane of grief sweeps through me. And suddenly I’m wailing with the wind and spouting hot tears of sorrow. They burst out of my depths in a violent, gushing torrent. I never dreamed I had so many tears stored up inside.

  It has become hard to breathe. Inside my rib cage something strange is happening. There’s coldness like a huge mountain of ice beginning to shift. Then, without warning, the inner block cracks and splits right across the center. Pain scythes through me. I let out a sharp cry. The pain gathers momentum and will not stop. I feel the ice shatter into a thousand needlelike shards. Wrenching my body apart.

  I crumple onto the ground.

  • 36 •

  Patrick

  BOLTON

  I wouldn’t normally switch on my computer on a Monday morning before work. Not at 6:30 a.m. But my sleep patterns have gone crazy. The couple in the flat below are screeching at each other and clomping about, which isn’t exactly conducive to a good rest. Plus, I can’t stop thinking about Granny V.

  I thought there’d be something more in that diary. Something about what happened to baby Enzo—my father, baby Enzo. The guy I got my skin tone from, and who knows what other traits? I know Veronica gave him up for adoption, but it just doesn’t make sense. From the diary, it looks like she totally doted on him. And she’s not a wimpy kind of girl, not the sort who would be persuaded into it by those nuns or anyone else.

  The whole wretched thing keeps banging around in my brain, and what with all the noise from downstairs, there’s no way sleep’s going to be an option. So I’m sitting up in bed trying to distract myself by surfing the Internet. I’ve explored a few interesting websites on electric circuits and LED lights, and I’ve watched a couple of YouTube vids about the structure of bridges. It’s nearly time to get up.

  I check my e-mails before logging off, and what do you know, there’s one from penggroup4Ant. I wonder if there have been any more penguin attacks on handbags. Or maybe something about Granny V’s latest mission, the little penguin she’s adopted. But it’s something I wasn’t expecting at all, and suddenly I feel a bit sick.

  * * *

  —

  “What’s wrong, mate?”

  There’s me, thinking I’m smiling and looking cool, but you can’t get much past Gav. I tell him about Granny V.

  “Bad?”

  “Yup. Seriously bad. Like, the end.”

  He puts a hand on my shoulder. “I’m so sorry, mate. That’s rough. Just as you were getting to know her, too.”

  That’s pushing it a bit. I was hardly getting to know her. I’d met her a sum total of two times. I’d got right inside her teenage head, though, reading those diaries.

  “She’s stuck in polar regions with three scientists and five thousand fricking penguins for company. What a way to go!” I’m trying to make a joke of it, but neither Gav nor I are laughing.

  “Harsh,” he says.

  I drag the sandwich board outside the shop and set it up then come back in to see what’s on today’s repairs list.

  “Are you going to go out there?” Gav asks.

  I look at him blankly. “What?”

  “Are you going to go out there? To Antarctica, to say goodbye to her.”

  “We’ve scarcely said hello yet,” I point out. What a bizarre idea. Me, in Antarctica!

  “Well, it’s not such a bizarre idea,” he says, reading my thoughts. “She is your grandmother. And your only living relative.”

  “C’mon, mate. It’s hardly practical. Three reasons: (a) She wouldn’t want me there, (b) she’d probably not last till I got out there anyway, (c) cash flow won’t allow and (d) I can’t stand the cold.”

  “That’s four reasons, mate.”

  We get through the morning in the usual way. A family of five comes in, wanting to know if there’s going to be an offer on electric bikes anytime soon (there isn’t). We sell a few bits and pieces. A lad comes in who’s lost the key to his bicycle lock and just wants a new key that fits rather than buying a new locking system. It takes a long time trying to explain to him that the whole point of locks and keys is security, so no, the same make of key won’t fit into his old lock. Even if this was the case, we don’t sell them separately. I am beginning to lose the will to live, so Gav steps in. Very diplomatic, is Gav.

  I manage to concentrate on and off; mostly off, to be honest. I wish I could have said something to Granny, met her one more time in person, just to say . . . Well, I don’t know what I’d say, but I’d say something.

  “Still thinking about your granny?” Gav asks as I take my sandwiches out the back for my lunch break.

  “Yup, I guess. Just wishing I’d known all this other stuff about Granny V sooner. And wishing I had a few more answers, now that I know which questions to ask. And wishing she was nearer
so I could, like, make things better between us before . . . you know.”

  “So you do want to say goodbye?”

  “I would if I could,” I admit. “But, like I said, cash flow and that. I can only just cover the rent. The journey out there must be at least a grand.”

  “But you’d go all the way out to Antarctica if you had the funds? Even though you hate the cold?”

  I nodded. “Reckon I bloody would, you know. As you say, she’s my only family. I’ve just found her and I’m about to lose her. There’s a hell of a lot more to her than I realized. And I kind of feel like we have unfinished business.”

  Gav takes a long look at me. “Patrick, mate, forgive me for being insensitive, but there’s a bright side to all this. Looks like you might be about to become a millionaire.”

  I won’t say the idea hadn’t crossed my mind. But I’d bundled it out again because, well, it all seemed pretty far-fetched, to be honest. Anyway, I wasn’t going to count chickens.

  “You reckon Granny’s going to leave me her millions?”

  “I do.”

  “Come off it, mate. She hates my guts.”

  He shakes his head. “I think not. You made the effort to go and see her at the airport, didn’t you? I bet she was touched by that, even if she didn’t let on. And she sent you those diaries. They were all locked up, you said, with a padlock and code, so they’re clearly not something she bandied about all over the place. Then she sent you the code. Nobody else has read those diaries, mate, not even her trusty carer, you told me. C’mon, Patrick, it’s obvious she’s going to leave you her money!”

  I suppose it does make sense when he puts it like that. Holy shite! Me a millionaire is even more bizarre than me in Antarctica. I give a little leap in the air with the thrill of it. Gav puts his hand up to be slapped, and I give him a high five.

  The moment doesn’t last long, though. I hate to think of Granny V dying out there in the cold.

  “Listen, Gav. I kind of do want to go and see her. I don’t suppose there’s any way you’d be prepared to . . .”

  “What, mate? Spit it out.”

  Money’s such a bind. I can’t be sure of anything. Granny V is eccentric and impulsive; I know that much. It’s possible she’s left me her entire inheritance, but on the other hand, she might have gone and left it to an orphanage or something.

  The words come tumbling out of my mouth. “You wouldn’t, er, consider lending me enough for the airfare, would you?”

  He gives me a slap on the back. “Of course, mate. Thought you’d never ask!”

  God, what am I playing at? Am I a complete idiot? If the orphans get Granny’s inheritance, how am I ever going to pay Gav back?

  “Maybe you want to think about that answer,” I find myself saying.

  Gav’s not having it. “No, you’re all right, mate. In fact, the timing couldn’t be better: my mum’s inheritance has just come through. I’d like to make good use of it.”

  We argue back and forth. I seriously don’t want to be in Gav’s debt in the event that Granny V doesn’t leave me a penny. He’s an unstoppable force, though. Says I can pay him back anytime within the next twenty years. In installments or whatever. Says in the great scheme of things it isn’t that much. Says he owed me big-time anyway because the bike shop would never have survived without me. He’s stretching a point here.

  As he speaks, I’m actually getting quite into the idea of zipping off to Antarctica. Beginning to see myself as a bit of a hero. Me, Patrick the Brave, embarking on a valiant quest to bring peace and harmony to the troubled soul of an old woman. But then I remember something.

  “Hang on a mo, mate. What about young Daisy? Shouldn’t you be spending this money on the latest treatments for her? If anything can be done to make her better, that’s a hell of a lot more important than sending me off to the other end of the planet.”

  He won’t hear of it, though. There isn’t a treatment Daisy can have beyond what she’s already having, apparently.

  I still feel bad. “If not a treatment, how about treats?” I hate to think of Daisy missing out because of me.

  “Daisy has tons of treats. And there’s plenty of money to buy her more. Just shut up, will you, and get that flight booked!”

  I’m not going to argue anymore. I’m going to make things right with Granny Veronica.

  Antarctica, here I come!

  • 37 •

  Veronica

  LOCKET ISLAND

  I am a misshapen collection of little dots. Every little dot twinges and stings, sore and raw. I’m under a great heap of blankets, but I’m cold, so cold. Husky breath comes in shallow gasps, fighting to find its way in and out of me.

  A woman is fussing around.

  “Look, Veronica, here’s our penguin chick come to see you. He seems to get bigger and bouncier every time I set eyes on him. He’s doing brilliantly.”

  I try to pry my eyes open. Through the thin slit of vision, the light burns torturously bright. I can make out shapes, but everything has blurry edges. A small, fuzzy gray figure is waddling about the room. I want to stretch out and touch it, but I can’t. My eyelids won’t stay open anymore, either. The shutters come down over the brightness again.

  “And you’re doing brilliantly, as well, Veronica.” My lids open again for just enough time to register the woman. She looks familiar. She has limp blond hair that spills over her shoulders, and glasses that magnify her sad blue eyes.

  She is a liar. I am not doing brilliantly.

  She speaks again with forced jollity. “We’ve got a surprise for you, Veronica. Your grandson is coming! All the way to Antarctica. Just to see you.”

  The words float around, slowly circling one another. Then all at once they crystallize into something solid and I can grasp their meaning.

  I know where I am and what it’s all about. This is a young woman who has a man’s name, a woman I like, one I’ve come to think of as a friend. Terry. Yes. Terry: scientist on Locket Island, Antarctica. What was it Terry said? The echo of the words is still in my brain. She said that my grandson is coming to visit.

  My grandson! God in Heaven! I must be even worse than I thought. I open my lips and try to say, “Tell him not to bother,” but the words are stuck at the back of my throat and refuse to come out.

  So this is what dying is like. Who would have thought it would be so frustrating and boring? I’d like it to be over, but no doubt it will drag itself out as long as possible, just like life. How extremely tedious.

  Something groans. It’s me.

  I feel a hand stroke the hair back from my brow.

  She speaks softly, close to my ear, her sentences short and spaced out, following a trail of disjointed thoughts. “He should be here soon. We’ll need to prepare another bed. I hope he doesn’t mind cramped conditions. We’ll have to make do, somehow. It’ll be really nice to meet him, though. I’m looking forward to it . . . I think. I wonder what he’ll make of it all.”

  I wish she’d stop talking. I wish she’d pick up my baby from the floor and let me stroke his fluffy head instead. I’d very much like to touch him again before I die.

  “You must try and get better, Veronica. For your grandson.”

  My grandson? Oh. Him. I think I remember something about it. On a mad whim, I got Eileen to send him my diaries. Was that terribly unwise? My brain hurts if I try to separate out the strands of thought. Didn’t somebody say he was coming? If he really does come I’ll be flabbergasted. I’m flabbergasted he’s even thinking about it. Maybe it’s some misunderstanding.

  A voice is rambling on in the background. “I was thinking how confusing it’ll be to have two Patricks at the camp. We could call them Patrick One and Patrick Two, I suppose. But maybe our fluffy little sausage should change? What do you think, Veronica?”

  I don’t care in the slightest but am quit
e unable to say so.

  “What can we call you, sausage?”

  She pauses, mulling it over. I’m starting to drift into oblivion. All these Patricks and numbers and sausages are somewhat trying.

  Terry pipes up again. “I know! I’ve got it. The book on your bedside table is Great Expectations, and we have great expectations for our little sausage. So we should name him after the main character in the book. We should call him Pip!” Her voice changes as she turns her head and addresses the stumpy character on the floor. “Would you mind if we called you Pip from now on?”

  There’s a response from the corner of the room, a brief, high-pitched fluting sound that is almost, in itself, like the word “pip.”

  “I’ll take that as a yes, then!” I can hear affection in her words.

  It’s brought things into focus again. Sausage is a penguin. Patrick is a penguin. Pip is a penguin. All are one. All are dear to me. I hope beyond hope that the people here will look after him when I’m gone. I think they will. Terry will, at any rate. The others are men, I think. I cannot recall their names at present. I seem to remember that they, too, have a soft spot for Patrick-sausage-baby; Pip, as his name seems to be now. Soft, downy Pip with the big eyes and big feet, whose little scufflings I can hear now if I focus hard.

  “No, Pip, leave Veronica’s slippers alone!”

  What is he doing with my slippers? I want to see but it is too difficult to open my eyes, and turning my head would be an impossibility.

  A sigh tries to work its way through my lungs but can’t. Even breathing shallowly is like dragging a hacksaw through my innards.

  It’s a great shame I never sorted out that legacy thing for the Adélies. I should have looked into it earlier. I have got it wrong, yet again. I suppose my whole inheritance will end up going to my grandson now. It isn’t what I wanted at all. I wanted it to go to a worthwhile cause.