by Sarah Lean
She said that the houses and the village wedged between the vineyards and the groves of the rocky mountainside protected us. Maybe it was for a completely different reason, but I had felt safe here too, high up, surrounded by things that made sense to me. Me and Canigou. Me and Frank. Me and Harry. Things that made me feel more me.
“Are they coming back?” I asked Marianne, wishing I’d said things to Frank, wishing I’d tried again to find a way to stop him from leaving. Or Canigou had.
She caught my hand. “He’d been saying for a while that he had to leave, but…”
“That day of the avalanche?” I guessed.
She sighed. “We’ve not really been together since then.”
It felt like the air had gone from the room. I went out to the balcony because that’s where I knew I could breathe. She had no idea how much what she said hurt me.
“He tried to change but he always was a travelling man.”
Marianne’s studio was crammed with pictures, postcards, photographs she took, and objects she had collected that she liked or that inspired her, all collected together. On the walls were either art or the materials she used to make art, splattered or spilled, marking every surface. Although Frank had lived here for three years, he’d left the biggest invisible mark.
When I look back now at the three years we’d all spent together, when everything and everyone seemed the same, it was like a painting that my mother had made. Not all the colours made sense, and you couldn’t see what else was going on off the edges of the canvas.
“Where have they gone?” I said.
I heard her walk across the floorboards, on to the rug, floorboards again, and felt her close behind me.
“It’s just you and me, like it always was.”
I didn’t know why, but the pair of us, me and my mother, didn’t feel right. Like we were tomatoes and cherries.
I could have stayed quiet but then she leaned on me, resting her cheek on my head, gripping the tops of my arms like she might fall off the balcony if it wasn’t for me standing there.
She said, “Don’t worry about me, I’ll be all right,” and something burst.
“I know you will!”
I felt her jerk slightly, as if she realised how stupidly selfish she sounded.
“We never really needed anybody else before Frank and Harry, not really, and we won’t again. You’ve got me and Peter. That’s all you need. I always knew it could never last with Frank and I’m surprised he stayed as long as he did.”
“You just don’t get me at all!” The words began to spill. “Did you ever think… have you ever even once thought that Frank and Harry weren’t here just because of you? I mean, Frank stayed because of you, and he had friends and people to drink beer with and lots of jobs…” I couldn’t get out what I wanted to say. And it hurt too much to realise, as I thought it, that I had no right to say that Frank stayed because of me too. There wasn’t even a word for us.
I remembered that Frank had told me it was Harry who had decided they would stay. But I knew that meant Frank too. Where one was, you were sure to find the other.
Marianne turned me around in her arms.
“I didn’t know how much Frank meant to you. I mean, I did, but I thought you’d be used to…” She tailed off as I looked up at her.
“I’m not like you!”
It was my weapon against her and I’d rarely used it. I was nothing like her, especially not that minute. I didn’t want to be somebody who was used to leaving people, or people leaving. Not this person and this donkey.
“You can let people go easily. You let them all go and every single time you’ve told me you were happy about it. But I’ve had nobody for me. Not even you, really.”
She looked like a bee had stung her, but I couldn’t stop.
“And did you do anything to make Frank want to stay?” I wanted her to take the blame because otherwise it meant Frank hadn’t wanted to stay for either of us. “I never argued with him, or sulked in my room for days on end, or made life difficult for him.”
Either she wasn’t listening or I wasn’t saying what I was trying to say, because she didn’t react.
“Frank chose to stay...” but I couldn’t continue. It also meant he had chosen to leave me as well as her.
There was a silence as I realised what this meant, and while all my breath was breathed out without the rest of the words.
“He didn’t leave because of you,” she said softly, her hands up as if she might catch me. “He stayed because of you and Harry. He said you both needed the same things. To have somewhere safe and solid, to show you there were people you could trust.” She sighed. “He didn’t think this through, did he? I mean, in the end… perhaps he even made things worse.”
I had heard something like that before but couldn’t remember when.
“But Frank gets me. He’s the only one who really does. I know he does because he asked me to look after Harry, because he let me wear his sheepskin jacket and he never lets anyone borrow it. He talked to me by the fire, about anything, about everything, even when he probably wanted to be alone or with Harry.”
I had never doubted the ways in which we had fitted together and it was only now I realised that it didn’t matter if there wasn’t a word for who Frank and I were to each other. I had felt it. I was sure he had too.
I still hadn’t said what was really on my mind.
“Mum?”
Occasionally I called her Mum. Only to be used in emergencies, and this really was one. She held me, kissed my hair and wrapped her arms like fabric around me.
“Antony and Martin—”
“Marvin,” she interrupted, and I recalled him and his noise and curly hair and guitar.
“All of them. I let them go. It was easy. I only ever liked them a bit. They were your boyfriends, they didn’t mean anything to me. And I can’t explain, but I did sort of mind them leaving too. Except when Rafael left, I didn’t like him at all.” The tears fell and it was a kind of relief to get past being angry and feel what I really felt. Hurt. “Frank and Harry, they were both like other halves of me. The halves that made me feel like all of me.”
She looked lost. No words or answers for me.
Instead she led me to the sofa and lay me across her lap and we tried to get comfortable while something inside was almost too painful to bear. I didn’t know how to be me without Frank and Harry.
It felt like the night sky had filled in all the gaps tightly around me. I needed some air to untangle from the sweat sticking me and my mother together. I went downstairs.
Outside, I saw something that made no sense to me at all.
I ran back towards the studio, calling, “Mum, come outside!”
I half dragged her down the stairs to see what was there at the front of the house.
Harry.
Still with the picnic and my clothes on his back, he was standing near the bench where Frank would have met him before Harry went to bed. Marianne and I froze. Harry raised his head, turned his tall ears forward and stared at the bench. He took a couple of steps, ears twitching, head turning, slowly looking and looking for what he expected to see. But Frank wasn’t there, and Harry didn’t understand.
Harry took another step, and, feeling nobody rub his neck and forehead, stayed right where he was. He sniffed the ground as if Frank’s feet might be there too but he just couldn’t see them.
“What’s Harry still doing here?” my mother gasped, but I didn’t know either.
Not knowing what else to do, I unbuckled the backpack, tapped Harry’s shoulder and asked him to follow me to the shed, but Frank missing, with his goodnight affection gone, Harry wouldn’t move.
“I don’t understand,” my mother murmured. “Frank didn’t tell me that he was leaving Harry behind.”
“He needs to go in the shed though. Please, Harry,” I said.
For the first time I suddenly wondered if the reason Harry had gone to the trailer every morning was because he’
d never wanted to stay. I had no idea how Frank would have got Harry to stay here after he’d left.
I tapped Harry’s shoulder, more firmly this time. He looked at my hand. He didn’t understand why his best friend was missing.
“Oh, God, it’s the trailer all over again,” Marianne said.
“Get some carrots and apples.”
She came back with the things I’d asked for, but Harry wouldn’t be moved, even by the treats. He just stood there, ears twitching, blinking slowly.
Frank never got angry with Harry and I knew that wouldn’t be the right thing to do. But what could I do about a stubborn donkey that got left behind?
“Do what Frank did,” Marianne said.
Sitting on the bench I held out my hands but Harry continued to stand as if frozen-still with confusion.
I tried again by copying what Frank had done, crossing my ankle over my knee, arm across the back of the bench, and then leaned forward. Harry let me rub his neck and the fringe between his ears, and I whispered, “Please, Harry, let me say goodnight for Frank.”
I tried every single way. With Marianne sitting on the bench and me beside Harry, tapping his shoulder after Marianne had said goodnight. I tried an Australian accent. We tried everything to make the situation most like what Harry was used to.
We weren’t strong enough to help him. We weren’t stopping Harry from doing something, like Frank had when he’d refused to let Harry go to the trailer. We were trying to make Harry do something new, and that seemed like a whole other set of rules that none of us understood.
“He’ll have to stay out here,” Marianne said at last.
“We can’t just leave him.”
“He’ll go back to the meadow.” She rubbed her forehead. “He’ll be fine. It’s not cold. Donkeys live outdoors all the time in the wild.”
“He’s not a wild animal,” I pleaded. “He’s never lived in the wild. He’s always had people making choices for him.”
“He’s a donkey, Hope. Put a halter on him and lead him in.”
I noticed the frustrated way she had of not being able to sort things out, how she used to be years ago. Frank had made life easier for her too.
She went inside, leaving Harry to me.
I had no other ideas until frustration made up my mind for me too.
I put the harness on his head.
“Come on, Harry, you have to go in,” I said. The rope went taut and slipped out of my hands when Harry threw up his head. I looped the rope around my hand a couple of times. With the rope held tight and supported by my shoulder, I turned my back, dug my feet in and leaned away from Harry’s weight. Harry raised his head and pulled away from me again, standing his ground.
“Harry, please! Frank would want you to go in too.”
I turned to face him. The tightening rope squashed my knuckles together and pinched my skin.
“Goodnight, Harry!”
I pulled. Harry’s rear end lowered and he dug in with his hooves.
Teeth gritted, I shouted, “Harry! You have to!”
I yanked the rope hard. Harry threw his head up, wrenching me back so suddenly that I ended up sprawled at his feet in the dirt. Small, with spindly legs, but so strong. Harry took one tiny step away from me. It made me cry into the dust, that he had only moved inches, just enough to take care not to stand on me, but not enough to get any closer to the stable, or away from where Frank was supposed to be.
I gave up. Not on Harry. I gave up being upset with him for being a donkey that found it hard to break old habits. Maybe Harry and I were the most alike of all the pairs.
Instead, I brought the pail of water out of the stable and armfuls of straw. I collected blankets from Frank’s old bed, draped one over Harry’s back and one around my shoulders. I tucked my knees and nose into the smell of Frank, and prepared to sit out the night with Harry.
“Hey, I came to see if you were ok. I’m sorry about today, about Frank, I mean,” Peter said, and then his eyes opened wide when he saw Harry.
I’d forgotten all about Peter. It must have been hard for him to overhear Frank saying that he was leaving and then carry those words all the way to the waterfall and give them to me.
“What’s Harry still doing here?”
Peter knew that Frank and Harry were always together. It didn’t make sense at all that Frank hadn’t taken Harry with him.
“I don’t know, but he won’t go in. He won’t have a drink and he won’t eat and he won’t lie down,” I said. “I’ve tried everything.”
“Do you think that maybe Harry needs to have a different home altogether?”
I wasn’t sure exactly what he meant by that but it made me think. What would I do without Peter?
“You’re quite clever, did you know that, Peter Massimo?”
I threw off the blanket.
“Harry needs a new house,” I said.
I collected big canvases that Marianne had thrown out, and Peter helped me thump old posts of wood into the ground to lean the canvases against, while the dark made walls around us. We pegged another blanket over the top so Harry was enclosed, so it seemed more like he was inside.
“If you can’t get the donkey in the stable,” Peter said, “you can build a stable around the donkey.” He laughed and it suddenly seemed so funny, the bench forming the back wall of the new stable, with us still sitting on it, peering under the blanket roof with Harry contained inside. Harry was surrounded by half-finished paintings of mountains and vineyards that made him look like a giant donkey among them.
Peter talked to me jokily, the way he always did. Shall we drag the meadow over like a grassy rug? Brick by brick, should we move the guesthouse next to Harry’s new house? I laughed, but that made my eyes fill up, because I wasn’t really laughing. I was just letting things out and there were so many feelings to come out that it felt like too much for me.
“Peter, stop,” I said.
He fed an apple to Harry that Harry lazily took, as if it was any other apple and not the first he’d eaten since Frank had left.
“Why do you think Frank left Harry behind?” Peter asked.
He nudged me but I was numb with something other than cold. I pushed away the things I didn’t want to see.
“Can we not talk about it any more because I feel really bad, I mean, worse than I knew I even could.”
Peter pulled the blanket across me so he could put it over himself too.
“You’ve got dust stuck to your face,” he said, touching his own cheek to show me where the tears had dried.
“Thanks,” I said, wiping my face with my sleeve.
Peter sighed.
“So are we going to sit out here with Harry every night? All summer? What about after summer and when it’s winter?”
Today was enough to think about, but I felt safer knowing that at least Peter would be here.
“I don’t want it to be like this, Peter. It all feels broken in bits.”
Peter stayed quiet. I buried my face in the blanket, to stop the tears, to not cry in front of him.
“Does Marianne know where Frank has gone? I mean, in case you needed to contact him about Harry, or anything else.”
“She didn’t say.”
I assumed Frank was travelling again. But he hadn’t talked of places where he wanted to go, only of those that he’d already been to. I didn’t think Frank had anywhere left to travel. I also realised I had no idea how big the world was.
“What about tomorrow?” Peter said. I knew he needed to know what all this would mean about us and our summer plans.
“I don’t know. I had it all planned, but not planned. Just me and you and none of this.”
It felt strange to think of somebody gone. It wasn’t a hole that Frank had left. Inside I felt crammed full of things I didn’t want to feel, and I felt if I started to let them out I’d be buried underneath it all.
In lots of ways, Frank had also been family without it ever having been like the law, or your genes,
or whatever it is that makes a family belong to each other. It’s what it had felt like to me, because every day was really no different to when Peter went home to his grandparents after a day of adventure with me. Except his family had proper names for who they were.
“I was going to show you what I’ve taught Harry to do. I’ve been working hard every day, looking after him.”
I told him all the things I’d had to do to get Harry to trust me. Peter thought for a minute.
“Do you think Frank left Harry on purpose?” he asked.
“Why would he do that?”
“For you, Hope.”
I shook my head.
“Why else did he ask you to train him and look after him?”
All the time, had Frank been trying to find a way to make Harry get closer and closer to me? So Harry would let him go?
I couldn’t accept that at all. How could he do that to Harry?
Harry’s head still hung, but his ears twitched at every tiny sound in the distance, like he was expecting to hear Frank’s jeep rumble up the drive.
I couldn’t explain it, but that felt like the most hurtful thing, for Frank to have left Harry behind.
I threw off the blanket, startling Harry who twitched his ears back.
“Harry should be with Frank. Frank should be with Harry.”
These were the words I said out loud. But there was much more I couldn’t say, couldn’t hope for, and couldn’t choose.
I nearly knocked the bench over scrabbling to get out of Harry’s temporary stable.
“Sorry, Harry.”
“Hope, wait a minute.” Peter had climbed out over the back of the bench and was now standing in front of me. “Where exactly are you going?”
“To find Frank.”
“But how?”
I wasn’t annoyed by Peter trumping me with more sensible answers than I had. I was more annoyed with myself for not thinking of this earlier, for knowing that I’d wasted time while miles and miles had stretched out between me and Frank, Frank and Harry.
“We can make a proper plan in the morning,” Peter said as if he had the final decision. “I’ll ask Nonno, I’m sure he’ll drive us to look for Frank.”