Harry and Hope

“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, weighing 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.

Actually, I hated the story, because of what had happened to Harry, but I loved it too. Because of Frank.

“Fire away,” he said, like always, and we both smiled because the bonfire and the talk had always gone together.

“How did you find Harry?” I began.

Frank took a big breath, like he was preparing himself deep down inside. He picked two sappy grasses, held one out to me, getting ready to go travelling in his memory and take me with him.

“Paths crossed, I reckon.”

“Where was it you were going?”

“Travelling, that’s all.”

“But, like, where were you exactly?”

“India, Mumbai, near a building site.”

“And what were you doing at the building site?”

“Just looking, watching things change.”

“What made you stop for Harry?”

He shook his head and twitched his lip as he crushed the grass stem between his teeth.

“There are some things that a man finds hard to pass by.”

I loved the way he talked. Bold and sure. Each time the answers familiar, but that day, strangely unfamiliar too. Maybe that was because of me hearing them differently, because I had grown since the last time he’d told me the story. Or maybe it was because something cold had settled in my stomach, like a sprinkling of snow.

“How big was the pile of bricks Harry was carrying?” I asked.

“Bigger than himself.”

“He was a good donkey though,” I said, knowing the story so well.

Frank nodded.

“So why did his owner treat him like he did?”

Again he waited a moment, leaving a space, like that silence was the place for me to work things out, to be ready to see the things he’d seen.

Frank threw the last of his papers on the fire. New sparks rose.

“When the donkey fell, the man couldn’t see that he’d have got up if he could.”

“What did you do, Frank?”

He poked the ashes with a stick.

“Pulled him back on his feet.”

I didn’t ask any more about this part of the story, eager to get past the struggle that I couldn’t bear to hear. Frank had never given any details, as if he was saving poor Harry from being shamed by what happened. And I kind of understood, if you can call it understanding by putting your own thoughts in a donkey’s head. Harry was strong and willing and he would have got up if he could, but Frank had to help him.

“You wanted to carry some of the bricks for Harry,” I reminded Frank.

He studied the crushed stem he’d been chewing. It took him a long time to answer and I wondered if there was another bit missing, a bit that Frank didn’t tell me.

“I made it worse. Poor grey donkey,” Frank said. I never understood this. How could anything be worse than poor Harry almost buried under his load? But Frank said no more. I wondered if he did it on purpose, stopping right at that point to give his story just about as much weight as Harry’s burden of bricks, to let the fact of the story sit inside me for a while so I could feel how heavy his heart had been when he’d seen the grey donkey buckling and having no choice but to try to get up and carry on.

“But you saved Harry! You bought him and took him away and he’s never had to work hard like that again.”

Frank rested his cheeks on his fists. He’d gone quiet. I knew the story so well I filled in the rest for him. The good bit.

“You rescued Harry. Together you travelled across countries that I’ve never even heard of, your tyres popping all the time while you drove up those stony mountain roads, following your friends from Germany who were on their motorbikes and who had maps of how to get to Europe. Then they helped you get visas and papers, to have all the checks that you and Harry had to have.”

I followed Frank’s eyes to the bonfire, to the papers now burning at our feet.

“And you avoided all the places where people would ask you too many questions about Harry, and all the time he was safe in the trailer behind your jeep with a pile of straw and a bunch of carrots.”

I could feel the freedom they must have had, travelling along like that together.

Frank looked over at me and I couldn’t help that the smoke from the fire was getting in my eyes.

“Then he had to go into quarantine. You hated that bit, being without Harry. I would too.”

“Listen,” Frank said. “Like I said, I’ve been thinking—” but I didn’t want to hear. I didn’t want any of the words to be things I didn’t want him to say. I hadn’t meant to remind him that he loved travelling but I couldn’t hold things in any longer. If Frank left, and Harry with him, I didn’t know what I’d do.

“So have I,” I said, wedged up against him. “And right now it feels like only a minute ago that you and Harry arrived. And I feel the same, exactly the same as I did when I first met you and Harry.”

He rested his head on mine. I kept going.

“Remember when you came? All the dust your jeep kicked up, making big sandy dust flowers blooming along the lane all at once. Like all of a sudden everything was ready for you. Or we were. And I know you didn’t say yes at first…” I pulled Harry closer so Frank and Harry made a sandwich around me. “I remember you stood there for the longest time at the edge of the meadow and Marianne said there was no reason a donkey couldn’t live here because nobody used it. And you talked to Harry and I wish I knew what you’d said to him. Was it you or Harry who decided to stay?”

Frank laughed softly.

“Harry.”

“Harry?! See, he knew this place was right for you. Freshest greenest meadow he’d ever seen in his life, that’s what you always say. And I said I’ll brush him for you, he looks kind of grey, and you said…”

“He’s grey underneath that dust too.”

We smiled at Harry, his head and eyes drooping with sleep, standing quietly beside me. We touched him gently and I knew it was impossible for either of us ever to be without him. Harry chose the meadow, and that put me and Frank together too.

“You tell the story of Harry better than I ever did,” Frank said.

“He’s like the reason for all of us being together, Frank.”

I hoped that made sense to him and I think it did because he smiled in that way that made me feel even the whole world had nothing like we had.

He spoke to Harry, like I was supposed to hear too.

“What are we gonna do about you, Harry? You’ve still got some bad old habits, mate, and it’s just not good for you. I think we’ve gotten too used to each other and I’m not sure I can help you break them any more.”

Sometimes you want to show someone that there’s a good reason why you’re together too.

“I could help,” I said. “I mean, like you said, I am growing up and I love Harry. I could help him.”

Frank leaned over to Harry and patted his neck, slowly running his hand down Harry’s nose, having the kind of conversation that only they could have without saying any words. Then Frank said to him, “What do you reckon, Harry? Do you trust Hope? Me too.”

“Really? I’ll train Harry?”

“That’s what I’ve been thinking. Nobody knows Harry like I do. It’s about time I let you in on that.”

“What, like, me look after him? Me and Harry?” Beautiful, sweet, safe Harry.

“How about we start now.”

“See if you can put Harry in for the night,” Frank said.

“What do I do?”

“Wait here a second.” He strode ahead over to the bench outside the guesthouse and sat down. I guessed he was getting out of the way so that Harry and I could do this together by ourselves.

He called, “Tap his shoulder twice, left shoulder, and he’ll follow.”

I’d seen Frank do it a thousand times, but it’s not the same when you do it yourself and you haven’t realised it has to be his left shoulder and your fingers are nervous. Harry curved his neck around and looked at my hand. Like we didn’t speak the same language, not yet anyway.

“Come on, Harry,” I said, and started to walk. He didn’t follow.

I went back and did it again and Harry looked at my hand again, and I told him again, “Harry, come on, time to go inside.”

Harry looked over at Frank, one ear up, one ear down. He stayed where he was.

“Does he only understand Indian?” I said, which I realised was stupid as I’d never heard Frank use any other language.

Frank laughed. “It’s not the words or your voice he’s listening to. You have to feel that you mean it, so he feels it too. Feel sure. Then he’ll be part of you.”

Frank was about to get up and come back over. Of course that was what I wanted. Me and Harry, Me and Frank.

“Yes! I can do it. Give me a minute.”

Frank sat back down.

“And I was only joking,” I called over. “About talking Indian, I mean.”

“Take your time. He’ll be ready when you are.” Frank leaned back, rested one ankle on the other knee, his arm stretched across the back of the bench.

I stood beside Harry, tidied his fringe. I didn’t want to disappoint anybody, including myself. I knew there was something between Harry and me that I had to find – what Frank and Harry had, what Peter and I had. When you just kind of fall in with each other’s footsteps.

I looked over at Frank.

If I looked after Harry, would I be completely in their world? Would that make it impossible for me and Frank and Harry to ever be apart? It was all I wanted. I’d never wanted anything so much, or tried so hard.

I thought of me and Harry. Of us being like yoghurt and honey too. I tapped Harry on his left shoulder twice. This time, he followed.

I couldn’t stop smiling at the little grey donkey, who was with me in a way he’d never been before. It felt huge and new and exciting.

When Harry got closer to his shed, he went over to see Frank. Maybe Harry was just checking they were still best mates, or maybe he wanted to tell Frank in his nuzzly donkey kind of way that he was OK with the choice he’d made for me to look after him too.

Frank sat forward, wrists dangling over his knees.

“Good boy, Harry,” he said.

Harry leaned his head over Frank’s shoulder. They said something else to each other again, but not in words or a language I understood, yet.

“Has he got clean water?” Frank said.

I checked inside the shed and ran back to tell him, “I filled the bucket up, right to the top. And changed the bedding.”

Frank patted Harry, just like he always did. I loved that about Frank, how he changed things without anyone being left out.