Читать книгу Harry and Hope - Sarah Lean, Sarah Lean - Страница 10

“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.