by Sarah Lean
Peter was packing a towel into a bag.
“Are you going swimming? We never swim until July. The water’s too cold,” I said. “And anyway I haven’t brought a towel.”
“I’m going to swim; you can watch. If you change your mind then you can share my towel.”
“I thought we were going to make the swing ready for when you come back?”
“We are,” he said, winking. “Ciao, Nanu,” (which means Bye, Nanny) he called back as I followed him outside. Peter’s grandparents were Italian and although they’d lived here in France for over fifty years, they still didn’t speak much French or English, unlike Peter.
Outside, Peter said, all kind of secretive, “Today’s the day.”
“The day for what?”
“Jumping off the waterfall.”
“You say that every year.”
“I mean it this time.”
“What, from the top? You’ve always said it’s too high.”
“But I’m taller than I was before.”
I looked at the top of his head. With my hand, I measured his height against me, pressing his thick wavy hair down in case that was what was making him look taller, but he’d had his hair cut short ready for school, so it wasn’t that.
“For the first time ever, you are actually just a teeny, weeny bit taller than me,” I said, which made him grin. “But I’m not doing it.”
As we walked we discussed the good and bad things about jumping off waterfalls, asking each other if we’d heard of Angel Falls and Victoria Falls, Peter agreeing in the end that he would swim to the bottom first to check if there were any rocks under the water.
There was a shortcut across the Vilaros’ field, although we weren’t supposed to use it, and when we got near the gate the Vilaros’ guard dog, Bruno, blocked our way. Bruno usually just paced around the field, guarding against… well, I had no idea what, but this time he barked and barked at us in that way that made you not want to go any further.
Bruno’s chops dripped drool with the effort of the big noise he was making and Peter turned and walked back down the lane (well, kind of ran actually), probably expecting me to be right behind him as usual. Bruno was a big dog, not a house dog, with battle-tatty ears and grey chops, and I’d never taken much notice of him before, except when I had to avoid him on the way to school, but there was something about him that day that I couldn’t ignore.
“All right, Bruno, we’re not going across the field,” I said.
He kept barking, to tell me he was on patrol and wouldn’t be letting us past.
“Hope, come on! We can go through the vineyards instead,” Peter called.
All the dogs in the village were crazy with something that day and although Bruno was usually barky and grumpy, he seemed more upset than usual.
“Peter, I think something’s wrong.”
“Come away. Bruno doesn’t look very happy about us being here.”
“He’s never bitten us before.”
“That doesn’t mean he won’t today.”
“Peter, wait. I can’t just leave him on his own like this.”
In my pocket were some sherbet lemons. I thought if I gave Bruno something sweet it might make him stop barking and howling like that. I threw one at him and he snatched it up and spat it out again, probably because when you think about it lemons aren’t that sweet at all. He kept barking, looking at Peter and me, then staring up at the mountain.
“Look, Peter. Bruno isn’t even barking at us. He’s barking at the snow.”
Peter peeked out from behind the hedge at the bottom of the lane, his eyes wide when he realised I wasn’t with him, madly waving me to come.
“Bruno?” I said. “Are you talking about the mountain?”
Bruno watched Peter creeping back up the lane on tiptoes, all hunched up and clinging to the hedge, whispering, “Hope! Please come!”
“Peter, you’re being silly,” I said, “Bruno isn’t going to hurt us. I think he might even be trying to talk to Canigou, and he has to bark big and loud like that so it can hear.”
Peter rolled his eyes at me, which he does a lot, and said, “Now who’s being silly? Let’s go!”
By now Peter had crept back to where I was. He grabbed my hand and then I was running with him down the lane in that way, you know, when you feel like you’re not going to stop and it makes you excited and scared at the same time, and you scream and laugh together, and it felt good so I didn’t look back at that big old barky dog.
Peter and I climbed over the vineyard fence and through the hole in the hedge, a hole we’d made for avoiding Bruno before. We ran up the long path of stony earth between the vines, turned right to go through the next vineyard, and then across the track behind the Vilaros’ field. Bruno had raced through the field up to the wall and was still barking, his paws up on the wall, and then suddenly he stopped. Everything went silent. After all that noise, it made me look up instead of where my feet had to go.
“Peter!” I pointed, because I didn’t know how to say what I was seeing, although what I felt like saying was: The mountain answered Bruno.
It seemed to me like Canigou was a giant that had been asleep for a long time, breathing slowly, very slowly. And then maybe what happened was that the cold of the new snow was too heavy, too wintry and unexpected, and the mountain had to shift a bit to get comfortable again. And that made the avalanche happen.
A huge chunk of snow was falling down the mountainside, making a big white billowy mist, as if it was turning back into a cloud of snowflakes again. Even from where we were, the rumble of the fall and the crack of snapped trees echoed across to us as the avalanche slid down.
Peter moved in front of me. He knew as well as I did that the snow was too far away and would never reach us – that we were safe – but looking out for me was the kind of thing that Peter did.
We stood there for a long time watching the snow roll and tumble, until at last everything stopped and was quiet again. Even the insects had stopped buzzing and the leaves had stopped shuffling. It was now really, really quiet.
“The mountain shrugged,” I whispered, because that was what it seemed like to me.
Peter rolled his eyes again. “The world according to Hope Malone,” he said, like he usually did.
People appeared; Monsieur Vilaro on his tractor and some people who worked in the vineyards, running up the slopes with Peter’s grandfather, Nonno, all heading towards the edge of the spilt snow.
Nonno saw us and came jogging over, his bandy legs making him lurch side to side. He wiped the sweat from his forehead, spoke to Peter in Italian, before swaying back to the men all gathering together.
“Nonno said we should go home,” Peter translated. “To stay out of the way, just in case another avalanche happens.”
We didn’t go, not straight away, even though Peter was pestering me to leave, to do as we were told.
“Can you feel it, Peter?” I whispered.
“The snow?”
“I don’t know. Something like that. I can smell it too.”
I held out my arms to see if the air felt different on my skin.
“It seems the same to me,” Peter said.
We went back the way we came, through the vineyards towards my house, and I saw our footprints from where we’d walked earlier, where the red earth was softest, exactly as we’d left them.
Everything was about to change though, and, like the avalanche, there was nothing I could do to stop it.
“Frank! Where are you?” I called, as Peter and I ran up the drive.
Harry came first, trotting up from the meadow to see what was going on. The meadow had fences on three sides, except the top side next to the gravel drive, although Harry usually acted as if there was one there and didn’t stray out.
There were old rotting planks of wood stacked outside the guesthouse, and the guesthouse door was open. Frank came out.
“There was an avalanche on Canigou!” I said, with the little breath
I had left.
“You OK?” said Frank, pulling me close.
I nodded against his chest.
Frank held me away and looked into my face. “How far did the snow come down?”
“As far as the casot,” Peter said. “You know, the old shepherd’s hut?”
“Has anybody else gone up there yet?”
“Nonno’s there and a few others.”
“I’ll take the top road in the jeep, see if there’s anything I can do. Hope, tell your mother where I’m going.”
Frank, as he always was. Frank to the rescue.
He ran to the jeep and Harry followed him.
“Not this time,” Frank called to Harry. “Keep hold of him, Hope!”
Harry tried to go after him. Peter and I held on as best we could, our feet skidding in the dust as Harry dragged us along for a bit. Even though he was little, with short thin legs, he was really, really strong. Harry couldn’t help himself, he always wanted to go with Frank if Frank was going anywhere.
As the jeep sped off, Harry watched the dust spitting up behind, his ears leaning right forward as if they were still following the sound of Frank leaving.
“Come on, Harry,” I said. “Back to the meadow.”
It was easy to say that to him, but Frank was the only one who could get Harry to do what he wanted.
I got carrots from the kitchen to try to lead him down there, but he stood there for ages, not moving, no matter what Peter and I said.
Sometimes I wasn’t sure how much Harry understood, although he seemed to completely understand Frank. Even though Frank didn’t say much to him, there was a whole world of things that they said to each other without words. Other times, I thought Harry was just thinking like a donkey has to think: about all the fresh grass at his feet and how much he could eat before going in his shed for the night.
Harry wouldn’t look me in the eye, but then again he never did. Not even with Frank. In fact, Harry always looked kind of sad, and that was probably because of the way his head drooped as if there was something heavy on his mind.
The words to describe Frank and Harry are those that anybody would understand: best mates. The best way to describe what Frank was to me is like this:
One day a man (I forget who) came over to our house to see Frank about getting some carpentry work done. I was outside and so was Frank, who was painting the shutters, and the man said hello to me first, and then he saw Frank climbing down from the ladder and said, “Can I speak to your dad?”
And I said, “He’s not my dad, he’s my…” and couldn’t finish what I was saying, even though that wasn’t what the man thought was important right then. My mouth was still open, ready to say a word that fitted exactly right after ‘my’, but Frank was already striding over holding out his big brown Australian hand, which had paint on it, and he wiped it on his jeans first and said, “I’m Frank, what can I do for ya, mate?”
Marianne told me my father was an art dealer. I’d never met him so I didn’t miss him because I didn’t know him or what there was to miss. He didn’t fit with us and I suppose we didn’t fit with him either, so I was OK with that. But me and Frank, we’d never filled in the blank about who we were to each other.
It took ages for Peter and me to get Harry to go to the meadow. In the end, I think he made up his own mind to go.
Peter and I wandered back to the house talking about what we thought everyone might be doing up at the avalanche and I noticed that Frank had left his door open. I wasn’t ever supposed to go in without knocking and never had, but I was sure he hadn’t meant to leave it open.
As I closed the door, through the gap I saw a pile of clothes on Frank’s bed.
For a minute, something like that makes your mind do all sorts of things. Like adding things up. Passport, half-packed bag and… what else? Just a kind of uncomfortable feeling.
I ran up to the roof.
“Where are you going?” Peter said, running up after me.
“To see.”
Because of the plane trees, we couldn’t see the casot or where the snow had fallen from there. Most of the land belonged to the Massimos and Peter was quiet until he said, “Where the snow fell, that was where the new vineyard had been planted.”
I wanted to feel something about what he said, but I couldn’t. I wanted to see something else other than Frank’s travelling bag and the passport in his pocket.
When Frank arrived home later, Harry headed straight back up from the meadow and went over to the jeep, walked all the way around it and then followed Frank.
I hung back.
“Was anyone hurt?” Peter asked, running up to him.
“The casot helped stop the avalanche,” Frank said. “The snow’s wedged up behind it. It’s smashed up a bit but it looks like nobody was up there.”
“It doesn’t matter about the casot; nobody’s used it for about fifty years,” said Peter.
“The new vineyard… it’s under the snow too,” said Frank softly.
Peter’s shoulders dropped. His family wanted to make more wine and more money, give more people jobs. The soil and the sun and the vines and the Massimos all fitted together perfectly up here too.
“New things will grow,” Frank said. “They always do.”
“Was Nonno OK?” Peter said. “He gets tired easily.”
Frank smiled at Peter and touched his shoulder. “I gave him a lift home.”
“I’d better go back. I want to see him.”
“Peter! Will I see you before you go?” I said.
“Ciao, Hope! See you in the summer,” Peter called as he ran.
“Family comes first, hey?” Frank said.
I was still standing on the porch not knowing what to say.
“Frank?” I caught his sleeve and asked him. “Are you going somewhere?”
Moments passed while he seemed to measure out the right amount of words to say, while I hooked my fingers together around his arm.
At last, he said, “Nonno has asked me to help with digging out some of the vines and posts from the snow, see what we can salvage of the new vineyard. Might take weeks, or more.”
“You’re not going anywhere else?”
“Like I said, I’m needed here.”
Had Frank been about to leave? If it hadn’t been for the avalanche… I looked back at Canigou. I knew I had always been right about my giant friend: that it stood by me, no matter what.
“Come and help me light the fire,” Frank said. “We still got some talking to do.”
My mother turned out the lights in her studio upstairs, which meant that Frank, Harry and I were the brightest things on the hillside, made amber by our fire.
Frank went inside and brought out some papers to throw on the fire, and we collected up the old rotting bits of wood that he’d been sorting out earlier to burn. I leaned on him, hooked one leg over his so he knew I wanted to sit in his lap.
“You’re really comfortable to sit on, Frank.”
“You’re getting kinda big,” he said after a while.
“I’m not heavy though, am I?”
He laughed. “Big on the inside.”
I sat on a shorter log next to him.
“I’m cold now,” I said.
He gave me his sheepskin jacket. Sheep were the warmest creatures, he’d once said, and he thought it was mad that millions of them lived in the sweltering heat in Australia, which was where Frank was born. Wrapped in his jacket was kind of like being Frank, or at least part of him, smelling of fire smoke and the outside and long journeys.
I leaned my head against his side. Harry came over and blinked from the heat of the fire.
Frank threw old papers into the flames. The little burning pieces shot into the sky and made us our own kind of fluttering stars. Flakes of the burnt papers fell towards me as they died in the sky. I caught one and it made a soft grey mark on my palm.
“We gonna talk?” Frank nudged me and I didn’t answer for a while, probably like him, weig
hing up what I did and didn’t want to say.
“I’ve been thinking,” he said. It wasn’t like him to go first. It was usually me spilling over with questions. “What you said earlier about cherries.”
“I’m right, aren’t I?” I smiled into the fire.
“I get it.”
“I know. I never knew anyone before like you or Harry.”
We were both quiet again after that.
Everything turned to shadows when the sun fell behind Canigou, making the sky bright blue around our mountain’s shoulders. I had a different feeling, of being held up like a piece of washing on a line by a flimsy wooden peg.
“Spill,” Frank whispered.
Perhaps it had always been hard for him too. I wanted Frank to understand what I didn’t know how to say. That even if my mother and he didn’t want to be together, that somehow we’d still be each half of a pair, even if there wasn’t a word for us.
The only reason we’d all come together in the first place was because of Harry. Harry’s life hadn’t all been happy, but if it wasn’t for that donkey, none of us would ever have met.
I nudged Frank and he squinted one eye in that here-we-go-again kind of way but with an added ton of patience, because he knew what I wanted to hear.
“You want me to tell you again how I found Harry?” he said.
“From the beginning.”
Frank hadn’t exactly told me the story of Harry, not like someone normally tells you a story, by starting at the beginning, going on to the middle and then ending at the end. You had to prise bits of it out of him, ask questions, even the same ones again and again, and then sometimes he’d let a bit more spill. But the end of the story was always the same. They ended up here.
Sometimes Frank talked about ‘the grey donkey’ rather than Harry. I thought maybe he was protecting Harry by not calling him by his name when he spoke about where he came from. Or maybe it was so Harry wouldn’t hear. Like I said, you never can tell how much a donkey understands.