Читать книгу Harry and Hope - Sarah Lean, Sarah Lean - Страница 8

Anybody would love Harry straight away. As soon as you put your hand out to touch him and he greeted you in his nuzzly donkey kind of way, he made you feel so nice. He was only little, about as high as my waist, with stick spindly legs, but round where there was much more of him in the middle. I always thought he was a bit shy, the way his eyelashes curled up and the fact that he never looked you in the eye. He seemed to hear everything Frank said, though, like the words poured down his tall ears and into his whole skin and bones and barrelled belly.

“Going somewhere?” Frank said, as Harry barged out of his shed, quivering with happiness just because Frank spoke to him. Harry trotted straight over to the trailer hitched to the back of Frank’s dusty jeep.

“Where are you going?” I asked.

“Same as always,” Frank said.

I mean, I knew where they were going because they always did the same thing every day. Frank would have to drive Harry along the lane and back again before Harry would go down to the meadow. It was an old habit of Harry’s from their travelling days years ago. If they didn’t go for a spin with the jeep and trailer, Harry wouldn’t go down to the meadow, no matter how big the carrot you held in front of his nose was. I completely got it, why Harry had to have things as they always were. Frank had rescued Harry and brought him over from India. Harry was safe, getting in the trailer every day and not going back to how his awful life was.

Same as always. But what about Frank’s passport?

I watched them go before running back up to the roof to get dressed.

Marianne was up there with her camera, taking photographs of Canigou.

Everyone called my mother Marianne, even me most of the time. She was an artist. Her bedroom and studio, where she’d normally be, were on the first floor next to each other. She usually stayed there most of the day and didn’t come out into the world if she didn’t want to. We weren’t allowed to go and disturb her either.

“The cherry blossom’s all gone,” she said.

“It’s been gone ages.”

“Oh, I hadn’t noticed.”

I coughed. “Excuse me, I want to get dressed.”

“I’m not looking,” she said, turning the camera towards Canigou. “Why are you sleeping up here anyway?”

As soon as it was warm enough I had wanted to sleep outside, so that if I woke up, I would see the dark shape of the mountain between the stars, even on the blackest night. I didn’t say that though, because I couldn’t talk to her about things like that. I couldn’t have just burst into her space and told her that the blossom was falling and it was so beautiful I might explode. There’s only that one moment when you feel like that and then it’s gone, and these things I wanted to say didn’t ever seem to fit with Marianne at the right time. So I’d gone and told Frank and he’d stood and watched with me and there was nothing left to say anyway, because Frank and I were the same, all filled up with that blustery breeze making pink snow of the blossom.

“It’s too hot in my bedroom,” I said, rummaging under the blankets drooping over the hammock and on to the floor. “I can’t find my shoes.”

“Where are the new ones I bought you?”

I shrugged.

“In your other bedroom, probably still in the box,” said Marianne.

I took my clothes downstairs and got changed. I grabbed my new shoes from the box in my room and a croissant from the kitchen and went outside with the croissant in my mouth to wait for Harry and Frank.

When they got back, Harry trotted out of the trailer, looked around, and Frank frowned and said to him, “You never give up, do you, Harry?”

“He’s a creature of habit,” I said. The croissant muffled the words in my mouth and flakes dropped all over me so I jumped up and down to shake them off. “That’s what you always say. Like all of us.”

“Seen Marianne this morning?” Frank asked.

I nodded. “I expect she’s in her studio now.”

I shoved my feet in my shoes without pushing my heels in and scuffed after Frank and Harry. Slowly Harry headed to the meadow, as always, in that kind of, oh yeah, I nearly forgot, there’s a lovely meadow for me here kind of way. I hoped Frank still thought that too. That this was the place where they both fitted perfectly.

Frank pointed towards something lying in the grass. I’d left my other shoes in the meadow yesterday. Harry had chewed on them. Frank had made me lots of rules since he lived here. Marianne said artists don’t like rules. But I’d got used to Frank’s because he was never mean and bossy, and that helped me remember them, almost all the time.

“Oh,” I said, picking the shoes up, disappointed I’d done something stupid. The canvas was shredded, the laces unravelled. “I know, I know, I’m not supposed to leave anything in the meadow. Sorry, it was just this one time I forgot because Peter and I were hiding things in the grass and trying to find them with bare feet and our eyes closed. I won’t do it again.”

“Hope—”

“I don’t mind, honest. I’ve got these,” I lifted my foot up to show Frank the new ones and hooked the back with a finger to get my heel in. “The others were too small anyway.”

“What might happen to Harry if he ate something he shouldn’t?”

“Oh.” But Frank didn’t make me feel stupid, just kind of like I’d try harder next time. “Sorry. Sorry, Harry.”

Frank shoved his hands in his pockets and I followed his eyes to the snow on Canigou. I hadn’t finished what I was saying earlier.

“Do you think it works the other way around?” I said. “I mean, because of the environment, because Canigou is different today, can it change us?”

Frank had stayed put for three years now. Had he changed enough to stay for good?

I looked across and Frank didn’t say anything because we had this other kind of quiet world where we totally got each other. He taught me you didn’t always have to have an answer straight away.

“Where you off to today?” he said instead.

“I was going to the waterfall,” I said, cramming the last of the croissant into my mouth. “Peter and I were going to check on the swing to see if it needs fixing, ready for summer holidays. But actually I think I’ll stay here today. With you and Harry.”

“Peter’s last day, isn’t it?” Peter went to boarding school in England and was only home for the break.

“Yes, but—”

“Go on,” Frank said. “I’ll be here when you get back.”

I still didn’t go.

“I’ll find some wood.” He smiled.

I knew that meant we’d sit outside by the fire-pit this evening, talking in the honey-coloured light with the mountain looking over us. About all the things I couldn’t say to Marianne.

All I had to do was find a way to remind Frank of all the good things about being here, all the good things that made pairs of us, and then he wouldn’t even think about going anywhere else.

I nodded.

“See you by the fire later,” he said.