How the Penguins Saved Veronica

by Hazel Prior

  Am I imagining it or has a shaft of sunlight just fallen across the room?

  “Please,” he says, “just live a little longer and you’ll see.”

  He is fading now, becoming dim and blurry round the edges. The extraordinary episode seems to have ended. Reality has resumed its course, and I can feel pain flooding back through my veins. But those words keep reverberating in my head.

  Live a little longer and you’ll see . . .

  • 44 •

  Veronica

  LOCKET ISLAND

  “Honestly, her face was completely changed.” It’s Patrick’s voice. “She looked positively radiant. And she couldn’t keep her eyes off this little guy.”

  “That’s interesting,” I hear Terry reply. “It could be that she was experiencing that phenomenon that sometimes happens when somebody’s close to death. It’s a kind of euphoria. For some people it’s like a tunnel of light. For others—well, I guess Veronica is pretty obsessed with Pip. It may have manifested itself differently.”

  “Well, it was totally bizarre, whatever it was.”

  “She seems to have rallied a bit, though, doesn’t she?”

  I am indeed managing to gather a few particles of strength. It’s possible I’ll live for another few days . . . It’s even faintly possible I’ll live for another few years.

  At the moment, I’m not in a position to appreciate life very much at all. But, bearing in mind what Pip said (or didn’t say?), I’m prepared to give it another go.

  Pip’s presence is a balm. Even when my eyes are closed or he is out of my line of sight, I can sense when he’s near. Sometimes Terry lifts him onto the bed and he snuggles into the crook of my arm, savoring the warmth. Encourages me on with this survival game and keeps my old heart alive somehow.

  My lungs feel like a tired, limp balloon that will disintegrate if any reasonable quantity of air is drawn inside. My muscles ache. My throat is lined with sandpaper. Speaking isn’t an option. Neither is sitting up. My days are inordinately tedious. The only way I can entertain myself is to listen to what’s going on around me. It’s fair to say I’m doing more listening than I’ve ever done in my life before. Never have I concentrated on others in quite this much detail.

  I do find kindness confusing. I am not in the habit of trusting it. I have always assumed that if people are good to me, it’s because they want something back. Usually, these days, the thing they want is money.

  Yet now I question that. The people here around me on Locket Island have been kind in a way I wasn’t expecting. I had presumed they all had an agenda, but perhaps they are simply being kind because it’s in their nature.

  Dietrich comes to my room fairly often. He doesn’t waste time in small talk or ask how I am. He knows I can’t answer. “Mrs. McCreedy,” he exclaims in a voice of eagerness, “I am going to read you another chapter from Great Expectations. I’m sure you’re going to like it.” He clears his throat and starts without further preamble. I am plunged into the story of a young boy full of hopes and dreams. The narration entertains me. It also has me reflecting on youth and how quickly it is eaten up; and how we are changed by our experiences. What sort of a person would I have been if my own youth had been different? If my parents had lived? If war had not introduced me to Giovanni or torn us apart again? If I had been allowed to keep my baby?

  Pressure is slowly building behind my eyes, a liquid rising to the surface. It gathers in two hot pools then starts to spill down my face and onto the pillow. I don’t try to stop it. I am powerless.

  Dietrich reads on. I like his voice now. The Austrian accent has a gentleness to it. I like the way his voice strokes the words as he reads. Sometimes, when the story touches on love, he pauses as if he is thinking, too. He has a wife and children in Austria. I am now keenly aware of how much he misses them.

  Time passes; minutes, hours, days. It’s impossible to keep track of them. Mike, Patrick and Terry are all even more frequent visitors than Dietrich. They appear in different combinations, each combination with its own dynamic.

  Mike’s visits surprise me most. I know he’s not fond of me, so there must be some other reason for them. Does he feel guilty about how frosty he was to me at the outset? Or is he attempting to prove something to someone?

  “Veronica, hello. I’ve dropped in to see how you are,” he’ll start, settling himself on the edge of the chair beside my bed. “The weather today is a little warmer, nearly 1.8 degrees C” (this means nothing to me. I only understand Fahrenheit). “We haven’t got any sunshine, though. I am going out to the rookery shortly.” He fills me in on the most recent news from the penguin colony, keeping it factual. The penguin called Sooty is still sitting forlornly on its nest. More chicks are hatching every day. Many of them succumb to starvation or have their lives snatched away by predators. Others are thriving. I picture them in my mind’s eye and hope that one day I’ll be well enough to see them again.

  Whenever Mike coincides with Patrick, there are short, terse exchanges. Little barbed comments from Mike. Stubborn resistance from Patrick. One-upmanship of various kinds. When Mike coincides with Terry, however, I’ve noticed he takes on a softer, much gentler tone.

  As I previously suspected, Mike is in denial.

  Terry has no idea, of course. She considers herself to be unattractive, asexual almost, because she isn’t a typical magazine-style beauty. She sees herself as something of a geek. She pours her energies into looking after Pip and me. (“Please try to eat something, Veronica. I have mushroom soup. Pip, be patient. It’ll be your turn in a minute.”) She likes to feel useful. She doesn’t even seem to mind the unsavory business of emptying the chamber pot and ensuring my cleanliness by means of sponges and flannels. I submit as needs must, grateful to the girl for her sensitivity and discretion. If she is anywhere near as revolted as I am at my body’s shenanigans, she must relish the task very little. Mercifully, she is skilled in hiding the fact.

  My grandson is here the most. He evidently has nothing else to do. I simply cannot comprehend why he is in Antarctica. I find it difficult to believe he would have undertaken such a voyage just for me, and yet it seems this is the case. Although his company was irksome to me at the beginning, I am now becoming accustomed to it. He talks much more than he used to. Sometimes it isn’t clear which of us he is talking to, Pip or myself. He rattles on about his attempts at cooking decent food from the basic provisions here. He tells us about the bicycle shop back where he lives. He talks of his friend (“mate”) called Gavin (“Gav”) and a little girl called Daisy who has cancer. He even, when he thinks I am asleep, talks about his foster families and his ex-girlfriends. Slowly, more parts of his life unfold.

  I keep my eyes tightly closed and I listen. Whether I was hallucinating or not, I can’t forget Pip talking to me as I lay dying. I remember what he said about Patrick, and a word that slipped out from me and seemed to be reiterated by him: the word “beloved.”

  It may be that I’m just having a brief respite. But if I do live a little longer, there is no doubt about it: I’m going to have to review my opinion of everything.

  • 45 •

  Patrick

  LOCKET ISLAND

  Granny and I have one thing in common, at least. We’re both nuts about penguins. I never used to give penguins much thought, to be honest, but now all that’s changed. What is it about penguins? I don’t know if it’s their human characteristics or their quirky birdiness, but watching them is a total therapy. They make me laugh. They make me kind of mushy inside. They’re so small but they’re brimming with life. It’s a beautiful thing.

  The scientists take a lot of their time at base writing up their notes. There’s no TV, and they’re often using the super slow Internet, so I’ve started to explore the bookshelves. The novels mostly seem to be boring classics like Dickens and Jane Eyre. No crime or action stuff at all. There’s also a ton of books about p
enguins. I’ve started one of them. It’s pretty interesting, actually.

  “Your grandmother likes to be read to, you know,” said Dietrich the other day, seeing me turn the pages.

  “Are you kidding?”

  “Well, she seems to like Great Expectations. You can try her on All You Ever Wanted to Know About Penguins—if you think it’s more her thing.”

  “Thanks, mate. Maybe I will.”

  So I do. I read penguin facts to Granny every day from the big volume. I plump Pip on the bed, and he settles down with us quite happily. Seems like he’s fascinated to learn more about his species. Sometimes he looks cynical, as if he’s saying, Well, that bit’s pretty accurate, but that bit, mate, is complete bullshit. Other times he plucks at the pages with his beak, trying their taste and texture.

  A tiny hint of color has come back to Granny’s cheeks. She managed to gulp down some soup today, a spoonful or two of minestrone. She still doesn’t speak a lot, but she did say this much, in a tone of great astonishment:

  “You’re a good chef, Patrick.”

  I was chuffed. “Why, thank you, Granny!”

  She muttered something else so croaky I couldn’t get what it was.

  “What was that, Granny? What was that you said?”

  “I said . . .” She cleared the phlegm from her throat. “I said it must be the Italian in you.”

  Of course! The Italian in me! I’d never thought of that.

  * * *

  —

  Terry and I are out penguin watching again. The snow is light and powdery, like sifted icing sugar. The sea is shining silver blue, all decked out in its chunky jewelry of floating ice.

  “So are you glad you came out here to Locket Island?” Terry asks as our boots creak along.

  “No,” I answer, sticking hands in pockets, pulling the corners of my mouth down. “It’s been totally grim.”

  She starts apologizing and saying what an upset the whole episode must be for me. I interrupt with a laugh.

  “Terry, stop! It’s not as if I’ve been majorly grief-stricken.” I tell her how I’d only actually met Granny on a couple of occasions, and what a fiasco that was. “I have begun to like her, though,” I confess. “Never ever thought I’d say that.”

  “I’m so glad to hear it, Patrick.”

  There’s something about Terry: you feel you can tell her anything, totally anything. She’ll be cool.

  “I only came here because of one thing,” I admit. “She sent me her teenage diaries. There was something about that gesture. And she had a bloody miserable past. So it seemed the decent thing to do was to come out here and be with her in her final hour.”

  “What final hour?!”

  We snigger happily. Looks like Granny’s going to be around for a bit after all.

  We’ve reached the colony. I look out at the acres of penguiny-ness and breathe in the heady stink of guano.

  “Want to help me with some weighing today?” Terry asks. She shows me how to dive in and grasp a penguin, avoiding the jabbing beak and thrashing flippers, how to put him in the weighing bag before he’s had time to think, how to get him weighed and set loose again. There’s a definite art to it. I get myself pecked a bit, and a few birds dive out of my grip and scuttle off before I’ve got control of them. It’s OK, though. More than OK, actually. Man, I love it!

  Terry does the weighing and recording, and I take on the role of Lord High Penguin-Wrangler. I’m getting pretty nifty at it, if I say so myself. We laugh, how we laugh.

  When we’ve done nine or ten penguins, Terry says to me, “I’ve been thinking about Veronica.”

  “Mmm?” This is what Gav does when he wants to encourage an opinion out of me. I want to see if it works with Terry. It does.

  “She told me about her childhood. About the war. And about her parents and Giovanni and her baby.”

  “Granny opened up to you?” Even Granny gets how cool Terry is.

  Terry shrugs her shoulders. “Veronica didn’t talk about herself for ages. But one day, it all came tumbling out.”

  “Maybe these guys helped,” I comment, passing Terry a fat, bemused-looking penguin.

  “Yes, I do think so.” She grabs the penguin and plunges him into the weighing sack. She makes the reading and jots it into her book. “Veronica’s been hurt again and again and again,” she continues. “Everyone she loved disappeared. I really think she’s taught herself over the years to see the worst in everyone, to make sure she doesn’t get attached. Because she simply can’t cope with any more loss.”

  “You may have a point there, Terry.”

  She sighs. “I can’t imagine the pain of suddenly finding your baby has been taken away!”

  “Taken away?”

  “Yes, what happened to Veronica. When the nuns whisked him off and gave him to that Canadian couple—and she never even got to say goodbye.”

  I gawp at Terry as what she is saying hits home. “You mean . . . you mean she had no choice?”

  “Didn’t she tell you? Wasn’t it in the diaries?” Terry’s eyes widen in surprise. Then her mouth drops open as she sees I really had no idea that’s what happened.

  “I thought she was the one who’d given him up for adoption, even though it seemed like she was fond of him. I get it now. God, poor Veronica! Poor kid!”

  We share a moment of reflection. “I guess it’s as well you know now,” Terry says at last. “He was your father, after all. You do know he’s dead, don’t you?” she adds, anxiously.

  “Yeah, yeah. In his forties, mountaineering accident.”

  She sighs again, and her face takes on a philosophical kind of expression. “Life’s cruel, isn’t it? Just when you’ve got over one thing, something else happens. So many people die.”

  “Um . . . not wanting to be pessimistic and that, but I kind of think we all die,” I point out.

  She darts a smile at me. It’s cheeky and gobsmackingly beautiful. “We don’t have to do it yet, though, do we!”

  “No,” I agree. “We totally need to enjoy the time we’ve got.”

  “Oops! Penguin!” We’ve been so engrossed chatting we’ve gone and left the fat penguin in the weighing sack. She empties him out, and we watch him reel a little before scuttling off to join his mates.

  We spend a while longer out there. Must have weighed at least thirty penguins, and I enjoy every minute of it. It’s fan-bloody-tastic, doing all this penguin stuff. I totally get why Terry, Mike and Dietrich are obsessed. It would be a tragedy if they had to stop the project.

  My thick brain has finally cottoned on. That’s what Terry was trying to tell me when she was going on about money that time, but she was too delicate to spell it out. Granny must have told her she was planning on leaving her millions to the penguin project, rather than yours truly. Terry’s been guilt struck, I bet. Desperately needing the money for her beloved penguins but feeling it was my right to have it. Seeing both sides, because she would; she’s like that. Assuming I care about the money.

  And do I care? Well, look at it this way. I never even knew I had a granny till a few months ago. And aside from paying Gav back for forking out on my travel here (which does worry me), I wouldn’t actually know what to do with that kind of money. I’d probably fritter it on useless stuff. Video games, gym memberships, beer, bikes, fancy cooking equipment, etc., etc.

  No, Granny V is welcome to leave her millions to the Adélies. They need it a hell of a lot more than I do.

  • 46 •

  Veronica

  LOCKET ISLAND

  “You have been kind to me.”

  “Don’t sound so surprised, Granny.”

  I used to find the word “Granny” toe-curlingly dreadful, particularly when applied to myself, particularly by him. However, I’m becoming quite accustomed to it. The boy has been generous with his attentions a
nd gentle in all his administrations.

  “I confess to some degree of amazement,” I tell him.

  I’m hunched up in bed, resting my shoulders and head on a mountain of pillows. Renewed health is surging through me. I’m still not up to much, of course, but it is an immense relief to breathe and eat properly once more. Patrick is on the chair beside me. He has just brought me tea. Terry is on the other side of the room, fixing a bright orange tag onto Pip’s flipper. Now that Pip has started to go out, it’s important we keep track of him. I’m desperately concerned about his safety. I have seen numerous penguins meet their deaths, and that first time I saw the chick dangling from the skua’s talons is seared into my memory. I couldn’t bear it if something should happen to our dear Pip now. I try to put the thought out of my head. It’s bad for my blood pressure.

  “’Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.” That phrase has just reeled through my head. Where did it come from? I can’t think. It isn’t Hamlet.

  When Pip is a little bigger, he will have to go and live among his fellow penguins. Terry has pointed out that we can’t carry on feeding him forever and it would be wrong to do so anyway. He is not one of us; he is a penguin. He must be allowed to fulfill his penguin potential. He must make a life for himself away from us humans. In due course, the whole colony will move seaward. The Adélies spend winter on the pack ice where the air temperature is higher than on land. They find cracks in the ice to fish through. It is something we humans cannot teach Pip to do. He must learn along with his compatriots.

  I switch my attention back to my grandson. If I study Patrick’s face carefully, I can perceive a little something of Giovanni in those eyes.

  “I will admit my first impressions of you were not good,” I inform him. “I was rather put off by your lack of cleanliness at the time. I am glad to note it has improved since.”

  He bows his head in acknowledgment of this truth. “Much obliged.”