The Other Things

by Jonathan Dransfield

  As Jane put down the phone, she felt inspired. ‘Italia, here we come!’

  Enza and Elisabetta

  Enza was engrossed. This wall had caught her imagination and she was drawing every detail. She was vaguely aware of her mama calling but was too focused to respond. She was meticulously drawing a child’s bedroom – at least, what remained of it after 2,000 years. She had watched the carbonised bed and small chair as they were removed to the museum store. Now she was recording the simple, beautiful frescoes on the walls. Painted with the brightest yellow ochre that the Romans possessed, this was definitely a little girl’s room. She imagined herself floating around it in a white dress, hair done up, just like the fresco of the girl. Her mama was trying to record the major features of the room and needed Enza to hold the tape. Enza had to finish the flower and little dog motif before bending her attention to the outside world.

  ‘Enza! Vieni qui!’ finally brought her back to the present. ‘Come on, you have to help me, and then Papa needs you to prepare lunch!’

  She put down the pad and pencils and tripped down the pile of hard ash that had been her seat for the last hour. As she dutifully held the tape, she studied the layers upon layers of ash still to be cleared from the rest of the house. Pompeii had been a bustling city and so big that much of it still remained under 5 metres of ash, despite more than a century of excavation. Enza had been helping her parents from as early as she could remember.

  Fresco of Lavinia

  Pompeii

  Campania, Italy

  40.4N 14.3E

  Altitude: 600ft

  Geology: Active volcano

  She spent much of her time in the restaurant kitchen with her father, and only had to slip through the staff gate nearby to find her mama somewhere in the ruins. She had seen many shops and dwellings uncovered, but this one she really loved. It was a family house attached to a restaurant, just like home, and the enchantment of discovering the little girl’s bedroom was like having her own Wendy house. Enza was sad when they found a void in the ash that, when filled with resin, revealed an almost perfect tabby cat. As they dug out the rest, she was terrified they’d find the remains of ‘Lavinia’, named after the lava. The more she studied this room and pictured their life, the more she imagined how her own bedroom might be discovered in millennia to come if it was consumed by the volcano still brooding on the skyline.

  She bounded through the crowd of tourists, across the streets, past old shops and graves, down the hill to slip through the gate by the ‘House of Mysteries’, skidding into the kitchen where her papa was chopping vegetables. ‘Gnocchi, Enza!’ was his curt order. Enza loved making the simple flour and potato dumplings. It had to be Thursday – piatto di giorno. The potatoes were already boiled, so she could start with the pile of flour, her strong little hands massaging the dough into long sausages to be cut up into little gnocchi parcels. ‘Hey, Enza, Mama says Jane’s coming soon, and she’s bringing a boy.’

  Lovely Zia Jane, who had taken such a shine to Enza. ‘She didn’t have a boy last time, Papa?’

  ‘Oh, they gained one!’

  Jane was Mama’s old friend from her time in London. She had come to stay when Enza was very small, but Enza still remembered her.

  The clinking of glasses suddenly reminded them of the mountain’s presence. Enza had often wondered why they lived on the site of a great catastrophe. Every year they lived here surely had to add to their risk. Had the original inhabitants not realised? They must have felt immune to the malice of the mountain. She too loved this place. It had always been her home.

  Her nonno had always said, ‘Life’s a gamble’, even if it was simply making it to the toilet in time.

  The restaurant was a simple affair, with a large area for al fresco dining, festooned with vines and, in late summer, abundant bunches of grapes. On the tables were gingham cloths and on the walls were a mixture of black and white photographs of the early excavations and Enza’s meticulous drawings. The food they served was simple but delicious. The absence of burgers from the menu was a refreshing change from the other eating places, and the beautifully cooked rustic food was drawing diners to the restaurant as a destination in itself.

  ‘Papa, finite!’ she called, as the last of the little morsels was completed.

  ‘Burro e salvia, Enzachino!’ Her papa smiled indulgently as she got to work.

  Enza could see the pasta special was already prepared – row upon row of tortellini, ready for the pot. There was a shudder of the glasses again. ‘Vulcan is snoring,’ her father said to reassure her. Enza inspected the mountain through the steamed-up window. Its perfect conical form had blown apart in the famous eruption. No plumes of smoke. It was just as her father said, the murmurings of a sleeping giant. She asked again the question she had asked one hundred times: ‘Will it ever blow again?’

  Her father’s familiar answer was, ‘Every hundred years or so. But probably not like the big time.’

  ‘Why do we live here, Papa?’

  Her father suddenly slammed down a large knife on the chopping board and pretended he had cut his finger off, holding up a little piece of sausage. Then, showing her his full set of digits, he just said, ‘Everything and everywhere has its hidden dangers.’ Waving his knife towards the restaurant door, the vines and the blue sky beyond, he added, ‘And where else could we go as wonderful as this?’

  Enza didn’t reply. She just kept finely chopping the sage and wondered to herself. What amazing places might she find in her life to come?

  Her mother breezed in. ‘Vincenza, you left your pad and your pencils.’ She put them down before going through to organise the service. Both her parents had been precocious children in their own right, and neither really understood just how exceptional their daughter was. Even during term time, Enza would help her father with the evening meal and her mother in the late afternoon. Many children could cook at an early age, but it was Enza’s eye for detail in her drawings that really set her apart. Photographs did not follow the same neurophysiological process involving the eye and brain, which made the drawn recording of archaeological remains so important.

  It is the careful study that reveals the nuances and shapes that could easily be missed. It was Enza who first spotted that it must have been a little girl’s room in the uncovered house.

  Enza went through to help her mother, clutching knives, forks and spoons, setting the tables one by one. Looking up from her task, she saw a cat stretching on a wall. Her mind went back to the body of the tabby cat that had been caught as if asleep.

  She felt her eyes moisten as she reflected on Lavinia’s fate. The cat had set her off, but the intimacy of Lavinia’s bedroom and belongings had brought on sadness. Did she escape? Did she grow up? In the busy narrow streets of Naples, were her distant offspring still enjoying the hustle and bustle of family lives not that different from those ancient days?

  Napkins! Enza sped round the tables, still feeling the tears well up. Would they find Lavinia curled up like the others, with her parents’ bodies in the other room? Then Enza took a deep breath and looked at the mountain again. ‘Well, you aren’t going to get me, at least not before I’ve done something worthwhile!’ With that, she set her mind to being known for her life, not her death.

  Her mother, Elisabetta, broke the trance. ‘Did Papa tell you? Zia Jane’s coming with her boy in two weeks. We’ll have to do something special.’

  Enza thought for a second. ‘I hope he’s not like the idiots at school.’

  Dead Cat

  Chapter 12

  Buzz Gets His Wings

  Plane over Dallas

  Dallas

  Texas, USA

  32.5N 96.5W

  Altitude 500ft

  Geology: Limestone escarpment – river crossing

  Guilt about leaving the mission team to go to the conference had made Ford edgy and nervous. After hours of flying to pick up Buzz, he was now just feeling tired. Above the cloud tops, it felt like time had stoppe
d. There was a bottle-bright gleam to the fields below, and the low shadow of the sun and the skittering ranks of cloud dappled the patchwork of land as it slowly moved beneath the aircraft’s wings. To the south-east, the weather was clear and the sun lit up the cotton-wool cumuli, giving each a bright white body and steely silver back. With the wind behind it, the ‘old crate’ was going at a fair pace. A grid of freeways and fields below soon became a spiderweb of roads and Dallas city centre blocks. Another landmark gone, he thought, happy to follow the highway for a while to his destination.

  ‘I’ve topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace

  Where never lark, or ever eagle flew —

  And, while with silent, lifting mind I’ve trod

  The high untrespassed sanctity of space,

  Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.’

  – ‘High Flight’ by John Gillespie Magee, Jr.

  There was a bank of clouds towards starboard and he decided to move a little further north to skirt it. Air is a fluid and when whisking along at 300mph, it can feel like running the rapids. Ford could already feel the bumps of heavier air. He lifted the nose of the ‘old crate’ and, easing the throttle forward, gained height. Seeing the brooding weather ahead, Ford muttered the airman’s poem. It was his companion when alone in the blue or, in this case, approaching the turbulent banks of cloud.

  The midway stop at Amarillo felt like a distant memory. The events of the last few weeks had taken his brain and wrung it dry. Ford edged open the canopy to let a stream of air refresh him. It worked for a minute, but the drone of the engine and the strain of the day made it difficult for him to focus. He tried taking deep breaths and singing out loud to refresh his thoughts, repeating again and again the only two verses of ‘Amarillo wants me’ that he knew. ‘Amarillo wants me. No, I won’t go back there!’ He suddenly realised they were the wrong lyrics and laughed out loud. He remembered the correct verse: ‘Is this the way to Indiana?’

  Amarillo

  Texas, USA

  35.11N 101.5W

  Altitude: 500ft

  Geology: Playa lakes – high plains

  Flying can be like driving. On a long journey your mind can wander, and Ford’s was entering the danger zone, the cumulative tiredness pecking at his consciousness. He needed a stimulant or distractions to re-energise him.

  ‘Wait a minute,’ he thought, ‘use this time to solve problems!’ They’d been working on the landing stage of the project and were stuck on delivering the spacecraft to the surface. They had been through the physics and Sharon had come up with the brilliant idea of sending fuel-generating pods ahead to land conventionally with air bags, like the early rovers. The question was to attain a stable orbit to despatch them with pinpoint accuracy.

  The main craft was just too heavy to land in any way they had done before. The genius of the ‘sky crane’ used to land the 1-ton Curiosity Rover wouldn’t cut the mustard for this mission. To decelerate 12 tons from orbit at 5,000mph to zero was a major issue and no one had been able to work it out.

  Curiosity Rover

  Landed 6 March 2012

  Aeolis Palus –

  Gale Crater

  4.5S 137.4E

  Weight: 899kg

  Method of landing: Sky crane – lowered from hovering landing vehicle

  He began to recalculate the sums and as he did, his eyelids started to quiver. He flicked his head, but moments later they started again. There was little to focus on in the growing mass of grey. After each effort his eyes closed tighter and tighter. Slapping his thigh, he attempted to do the calculations of how they could stop something with nothing. Mars’ atmosphere was so thin – only a hundredth of Earth’s – it didn’t have the stopping-power for them to be able to rely on parachutes, and they couldn’t carry enough fuel to thrust their way to a standstill. ‘What could break the long fall to the planet’s surface?’ he thought again, as his lids finally drew shut.

  He slumbered as the plane flew level and then dipped its nose into a shallow dive. The speed accumulated: 275, 325, 350 – the knots grew on the dial – in 30 seconds there’d be no return. At 375mph the aircraft was juddering; at 390mph, the airframe was alive, and Ford was still asleep. The plane hit the cloud bank like a wall; 400mph and five seconds to go.

  Bang! The jolt rocked through Ford’s brain. ‘What… what?’ Instinctively he pulled back on the stick, the drumming of the wings and scream of the air over the elevators chanting in his ears. Pull, pull! The nose lifted. Feeling groggy, he missed the chance to level off and up went the plane, fighting against gravity, up through the grey massed clouds, engine screaming, forcing the giant metal bird to the heavens, until the point where the momentum equalled the pull of the planet beneath. The aeroplane hung in mid-space, slowly turning against the propeller, and fell on its tail, the pilot now weightless. It pirouetted into a graceful dive. Ford was now fully recovered.

  ‘Oh my God! That’s how we do it – fly the damned spacecraft into a stall turn! Use gravity. The escape velocity of Mars is 11,000mph. It’s bound to come to a stop at some point.’

  Heart beating, with slightly damp underwear, Ford had not only cleared his head for the flight, but also a major obstacle for the mission.

  Trojan in Stall Turn

  Buzz knew that Granf was coming. He started counting the seconds, holding his breath for sixty, then another sixty, then again. He’d worked out how far he was travelling. He’d got the text sent from Amarillo. He knew the times and had worked out the wind speed and direction. By his calculations, Ford was late, and this was why Buzz was holding his breath; it was his way of slowing down the seconds. He hated being incorrect and was fretting that Ford was not on time. Time had been lost because of weather fronts and unplanned aerobatics, otherwise he’d have been spot on. The silence helped him listen for the drone of the Wright 1820 radial engine. Suddenly he picked it up, way in the distance, almost imperceptible but unmistakable. He might have lacked in communication skills, but he made it up with other abilities like mental arithmetic. At his tender age he had worked out sign tables, times tables and square roots of weird numbers, just for entertainment.

  ‘Mom, Granf’s coming in!’ he called, running from his bedroom. He grabbed her arm and ran out of the house to the car.

  ‘Has he rung, amorcito?’ Maria asked.

  ‘No, I can hear him!’

  She strained her ears. ‘Are you sure?’

  He was dragging her. ‘Come on! Come on! He’s due, of course I can!’ As they drove to the airport, Buzz was peering intensely through the window. He pointed to a small dot, lost in the steely sky. His mom needed to keep her eyes on the road as she turned up Fairchild Street.

  ‘Stop it!’ she said, placing a comforting hand on his wildly jiggling knee. Her car was old enough without further problems caused by Buzz drumming his foot through the floor!

  Maria had dreamed of a future with a career, marriage and children. Yet for all her talent and looks, a darkness had crept up in her teens, thwarting all her aspirations except for this child. She could sing like an angel, which only led to shattered dreams and the drugs of the late-night music scene. Tonight she was torn between missing her boy and the desperation to recapture her youth, and the vain hope that Anthony would come good.

  She’d had high hopes when she met the wonderfully different young Armstrong in an open-mic bar. Armstrong was stunned by her clear-cut siren voice, and not just the singing. There was a look, a flashing between extremes, that drew him in. Unfortunately they shared an addictive nature that all the talent in the world couldn’t tame. They soared the heights of grand folly and delusion, until they crashed down into burned-out animosity. Armstrong moved on, not even considering what he’d left behind.

  Buzz’s dream was to be part of a real family. The Boyf had no interest in Buzz, just in his mom. He hadn’t experienced the balanced attentions of two loving parents and he vainly hoped that an evening with his mom and Granf would be a substitute. His foot s
topped drumming as they reached the airport, when his mom blithely announced, ‘It’s great you can be with Grandpa tonight. Anthony’s asked me out.’

  Buzz’s breathing stuttered and he muttered, ‘But, Mom, just family tonight, I thought…’

  She flashed him an enigmatic look. ‘Sorry, Aldrin, but life’s complicated…’

  All he could say was, ‘It’s not complicated, it just sucks.’ Then, with venom, ‘I hate The Boyf!’

  Buzz spent an enjoyable evening with his grandfather. Ford’s steady calm and humour, and their mutual interest in all things that flew, filled a hole of his psyche. Their takeaway pizza arrived and Buzz eagerly waited as Ford braved the chaos of the hall to bring it back to the relative orderliness of the child’s room. He watched with horror as Ford moved one of the beautifully built models to make room. His grandfather jumped at hearing Jane chastising him. ‘Put that back, cariad!’ Buzz had got her down to a T. He had an amazing gift for mimicry.

  It was one of Buzz’s saving graces at school. He could make people laugh and it had rescued the weird, nerdy kid from total ostracism. Over Coke and beer and the ridiculously large pizza, they played several rounds of ‘AirAce’. To his delight he won the final contest. Granf’s plane had veered off the course to crash into the crowd, as Buzz took the final flag. He looked round at the slumbering figure of his grandfather, who’d nodded off mid-game. Buzz got up and eased Ford’s head onto the wing of the sofa, to sleep an uncomfortable night before the early start to the farm, Jane and then Italy.

  ‘Did you sleep well?’ Maria asked over breakfast and Ford struggled to give an honest answer.

  ‘I don’t know. I was asleep at the time! I woke up pretty badly, though.’

  The airport beckoned and Buzz was feeling important. Granf had printed out the itinerary of the flight especially for him, and called him ‘co-pilot’. Although an indulgence, it didn’t stop Buzz studying it as if they were on a serious mission. He eased into the trainer’s seat and strapped himself in. His placed his bag under his bum so he could look out and strapped two coffee cups to his feet in the faint hope that Granf might give him a lesson. When the engine roared to life, it was as if he’d been injected with pure excitement. They wore old-fashioned leather caps with goggles, just like in the black and white films.