Papa Georgio (13 page)

‘Oh –
grazie
, thank you,’ I said shyly and Fizz thanked her as well.

The Signora opened her arms and we found ourselves in a tight embrace, pressed against her cushiony-bosomed chest.

‘Ah, bellissimi ragazzi!’ she crooned. ‘Beautiful children!’

She released us, stroking first my cheek with her work worn finger, and then Fizz’s.

‘Beautiful girl,’ she said. Then she stared down into Fizz’s eyes. ‘And you are very, very lovely boy.’

I didn’t know what it was that set Fizz off, but to my horror I saw his eyes fill with tears, his face contorting with terrible emotion. He pushed Signora Sacchetti away and ran. We heard his footsteps slapping fast along the stone corridor.

Fizz completely disappeared. I followed him out into the sunshine, but couldn’t see him anywhere.

I knew I had to find him. Seeing Fizz like that was horrible, like another great chasm opening up, terrifying, waiting for us both to fall down it. Like when the phone call came about Dad. My legs were shaky but I made myself run. I
had
to find Fizz and make things better.

First I ran to the Ship of Dreams. To my surprise, Archie was sitting outside, looking very pale and plump. After, I realized he didn’t look like Archie. He was so quiet, not giving his usual booming greeting. But I was in too much of a hurry at the time to take it in.

‘Is Fizz here?’ I panted.

‘’No darlin’.’ Maggie looked up from between her curtains of hair. Her face seemed a little more relaxed. ‘Isn’t he with you?’

Not answering, I ran round the camp, checking Fizz’s favourite haunts: the scrubby corners where he tried to lure salamanders towards him and the toilet block with the moths. But there was no sign. I slowed down, panting, determined not to cry, kicking at the base of the wash bins with my dusty pumps, not knowing where to go next.

What upset Fizz so badly? And where on earth was he? I felt as if my body was going to explode. I was hurting on behalf of Fizz, for some terrible pain he was feeling, but I didn’t know what it was. I just knew I hurt as well.

Then it came to me where Fizz might be.

Queen Esmerelda was eating, as usual. She stood looking up at Fizz as he leaned on the wall of her sty, her mouth squelching loudly at a mouthful of food. I couldn’t see Fizz’s face because he was leaning with his hands shielding it on each side. He was swinging his right foot, kicking and kicking the wall.

With a cold feeling inside, I knew that there were all sorts of things I didn’t understand about the Chubbs. I was scared of Fizz suddenly. He was my friend – my best friend it felt like now - but sometimes he was so silent and far away, even though he looked familiar enough in his baggy shorts and grubby T-shirt. It felt vitally important at moment that he talk to me.

I crept closer to him and leant on the wall. I knew he’d noticed me but he didn’t move.

Queen Esmerelda gave a deep snort. We were not interesting any more and she went back to swinging her snout inquiringly over her food like a giant vacuum cleaner.

‘What’s up?’ I said once the silence had gone on and on. But it came out sounding pushy when I didn’t mean it to so I added softly, ‘I mean, are you OK?’

I expected Fizz to get cross and push me away, like he did before. But there was a silence and then I noticed that his shoulders were moving. He was fighting with himself not to cry, and he lost the fight and couldn’t stop, pushing his fists into his eyes, sobbing and sobbing. I came close to crying too, he sounded so heartbroken.

I put my hand on his shoulder. It felt very warm, as if he had been running. He didn’t push me away.

‘Are you worried about your Dad – because he’s poorly?’

Another silence, then, ‘He’s not my Dad.’

‘No, but…. Anyway, he looks better today – I saw him.’

Fizz turned on me fiercely then, shaking his head, tears running down his cheeks. It was awful seeing him like that. He looked into my face and his expression softened. For one trembling moment I thought he might be about to hug me and I wanted him to. But then he pulled away and started to walk, with stiff, furious movements.

‘He’s
not
better. He’ll never be better. You don’t understand!’

He gave an almighty stamp, as if he wanted the earth to shake, and turned round again, face contorted with feeling.

‘He’s never going to be better -
ever
. And there’s nothing I can do about it!’

Alberto

I.

‘All right, now I’m ready to take you with me,’ Grandpa George said.

Yesterday he had gone on his wanderings and come back, wearing a smile. That smile couldn’t lift me right out of what had happened with Fizz, of seeing his rigid back hurrying away from me, but it was certainly something.

Next morning we ate a breakfast of bread and cherry jam and climbed into the Landrover, dogs, crucifix, the lot (he’d tied the crucifix on to the roof, wrapped in plastic with ropes running in through the windows over our heads). Brenda had almost given up tutting. We drove round the edge of the Bay of Naples. The sea was sapphire, sky a milky blue above the steaming purple cone of the volcano.

‘One day,’ Grandpa announced, ‘we must Climb Vesuvius.’

But today he had other things on his mind. As I sprawled on the feather bed on top of the dogs, I knew the secret box was also stowed underneath us. Would we be needing that? I stared at the creases in the back of Grandpa’s neck. It was no good asking – that never got you anywhere with Grandpa.

It was a hot day. From my bed at the back all I could see was a seething mass of traffic, sunlight sparking off rear lights and mudguards and there was a constant hooting and parping of horns.

‘
Really
,’ and ‘
Dear me
!’ Brenda kept saying at the sight of the crazy Neapolitan drivers but I couldn’t see much and I was hot and sleepy and cross at being in the car when I could have been out in the sun, playing with Fizz… But thinking about him gave me a sick, plummeting feeling inside because all I could see was his face, screwed up, shouting and his body all knotted up when he stormed away from me. What had Fizz meant, that Archie was never going to get better? I was confused and I felt like crying every time I thought about it. I wanted to comfort Fizz but I didn’t know how. It was another thing I tried not think about – like Dad. I squeezed my eyes shut and fell into a doze.

‘Right – come along!’

We were parked somewhere. I slid out from the back into a side street where voices echoed between the tall buildings with their flaking pale green and yellow paint. It was cool there in the shade, but the sun was beating down and as Grandpa led us out into the main street I screwed up my eyes. Brenda was shielding hers with her hand, even though she had on a lacy white hat with a brim. Her cheeks were a rosy pink in the heat. I could tell that she, like me, had decided it was useless to protest or ask questions.

‘Now,’ Grandpa announced, plonking his straw hat on his head. ‘We’re going to catch a bus.’

This was too much for Brenda’s vow of silence. ‘But why don’t we just drive, George? We’ve come this far.’

‘No, not this time. The way to do it is by bus. You’ll see. Soon be one along.’

I couldn’t resist asking then. ‘Do we need the box, Grandpa?’

I saw Brenda’s lips form the word
BOX
? But no sound came out, except a small sigh.

‘No,’ Grandpa decreed briskly. ‘No box.’

As he predicted, a bus soon arrived, panting like a monster. On the front it said, ‘
Cellina
.’ Pronounced Chellina.

The bus crawled out of the edge of town and began to zigzag up a very steep hill. We had to hold on tight. Brenda had a seat but Grandpa and I stood at the back, near the little kiosk where the man took the fares, and I was squeezed in between him and two elderly ladies, both barrel-shaped and dressed in black. One wore heavy silver hoops in her ears and the other grinned at me, showing a set of gums with a few scattered teeth, one big gold one at the side. She grinned even more when we lurched round the hairpin bends and saw us clinging on to the pole near the door. I was just relieved that they didn’t have their hands free to start pinching my cheeks and saying, ‘Ah,
bella
!’

‘Look where we’re going, ‘Grandpa said, leaning his tanned face close to me. His snowy hair blew about in the breeze through the window.

I peered out between the steel-grey heads of the old ladies. The side of the hill fell away beneath us, dry and rugged, the road edged sometimes with low walls and tile-roofed cottages near the bottom. It was greener below. Further up grew yellowed grass and a scattering of olive trees with twisted trunks and grey-green leaves. Looking up, I could just see thick grey walls.

Eventually we stopped climbing, and pootled along a gently sloping road. CELLINA the sign said outside and we swerved in through a big stone gateway, growled through the narrow streets for a time, then braked. The engine died and we stepped out into the quiet of a town square paved with grey stone slabs. At one side there were sleepy little cafes under awnings, advertising beer and Pepsi Cola and Motta ice-cream. A fat man sat outside, forking up spaghetti into his mouth, a thick white napkin tucked under his chin like a bib.

‘
George
,’ Brenda said with the dangerous air of a woman nearing the end of her patience. ‘Will you please tell me why we’re here on this wild goose chase?’

‘I shall my dear, in just a few moments.’ Grandpa spoke very gently, as if all he could do was be very kind to everyone.

He led us out of one corner of the square, past a gaggle of children with shrieking, peacock voices. I could feel the warmth from the paving stones through the thin soles of my pumps, but there was a breeze blowing too and the air stroked my bare legs like a warm cat.

‘Not far now…’

There was a high wall on the right of the street covered with trailing plants. On the left were little houses of crumbling grey stone. At the end the road forked and in the fork stood a church and Grandpa stopped with his back to it. Brenda and I halted beside him. He looked round, and a silence began which lasted some time. Grandpa seemed very far away.

‘I stood here,’ he said eventually. ‘In 1943.’

The War, I thought. They were always on about that. It wasn’t easy to understand when you weren’t even born at the time. Brenda didn’t say anything either, she just looked hot and bewildered.

‘My unit came through here, one evening. We’d walked miles and we all needed somewhere to sleep. Most of the lads stayed outside the town and set up camp. I often went jangling off on my own to take a look round - I was known for it. Bunking Baxter they used to call me. It wasn’t that I was worming my way out of anything – I was just keen to take an interest. It wasn’t just me that night. There were four of us and we decided to come and have a look round.’

He gazed up and down the street, seeing things that we couldn’t, painted there by his memories.

‘It was October, warm-ish, the sun just going down, mellow light. Lovely: I’ll never forget it. It was all different then – dirt poor, tumbledown houses, and almost deserted. Most of the men of the town had gone to war of course. We stood here –’ he shifted his feet on the dusty street. ‘Me and Charlie Roberts, Hoggy Hodgson and Fred Barrett. The only living thing we saw for a good while was a great big pig lumbering along from over there –’ He pointed. ‘Snuffling and snorting. Then a priest – a thin, stooped old fellow, all in black of course, black hat. He raised his hat and went on past… The church was a dreadful mess – it had been hit … Part of the roof had collapsed and everything was white with dust inside.’

Looking up at the church you could see it was a patchwork of rebuilding, the old stones held together with new.

‘The four of us camped out in the ruins of the church that night. It was quite eerie, with just a couple of candles. Lying there, you could see the stars at one end where the roof was gone. There was a big ragged beam sticking up and you could just make out the end of it against the sky. There were statues, and some of the holy pictures on the walls. I slept on an old pew – hard as hell - mice running round half the night, and the smell - damp plaster …’

He breathed in hard, as if smelling it now.

‘It was just another town going through the ravages of war. But then I found out something else about the place. The next morning the four of us came walking back along here –’ He pointed towards the high, greenery-draped wall. As he spoke, I could see he was re-living it, calling up the details.

‘We were about half way along, when a young lad came around the corner there. A boy, about your age Janey – no, perhaps a year or two younger – and he was quite smartly dressed: long shorts, jacket a bit too big for him, brown shoes, old but well polished. His hair was cut neatly, a fine head of black hair.’

I could already see the boy in my mind, walking along the wall, faced by four strangers in his town; soldiers.

‘He stopped when he saw us. He was very solemn, with huge brown eyes and somehow for a moment he looked more like an old man than a child. That’s right - he was ten, I remember now. Charlie and the other two said something cheerful to him and walked on, but I stopped. I don’t know why really, except that the lad was standing right in my path. He almost seemed to pick me out. I said hello, and I thought he’d do what most of the kiddies round Naples all did. They’d come running, begging for chewing gum – the Yanks had a lot of that – or chocolate. But he just stood there in front of me and said
buon giorno
back, very quietly, politely.’

I had forgotten Auntie Brenda was there. I had almost forgotten Grandpa, except for his voice. I was with the boy, saying hello on that autumn day, seeing his big sad eyes. Because I already knew from the way Grandpa was talking that he was sad.

‘We chatted for a bit, as much as I could manage. He said his name was Alberto and he lived in a house just round behind there, with his mother and sister.’ Grandpa pointed, and I could just see the steps of a house lined with pots of scarlet geraniums.