Papa Georgio (16 page)

As we climbed nearer to the top and the zigzags of the path were getting shorter, I thought I heard voices. We hadn’t met anyone coming down for ages and it was nice to know there was someone up there with us - or it was until we saw them. Suddenly, from the top, close to the lip of the crater, they were coming towards us, three dark shapes, who became three young men in dark clothes, one with a beard. My heart lurched. There was something frightening about them.

‘
Buona sera
!’ Grandpa greeted them. ‘Good evening!

To my relief, they said a rather sullen good evening back, and passed us, their footsteps crunching away behind us. I relaxed again.

‘Goodness, they looked like a bunch of bandits didn’t they?’ Grandpa said.

‘You wouldn’t want to meet them on a dark night,’ I said, and again this made Grandpa laugh, but I realized he had been nervous of them as well.

We were at the top then, standing on the flat rim where you could look down, our nostrils met by the sigh of Vesuvius’s warm, stinking breath. The volcano opened out in front of us, a vast, gaping maw. In the dim light you could just make out the deeper dark space of the crater dropping away in front of us, its scalding black throat coughing up steamy wafts of cloud which stank of sulphur.

It was hard not to think of it as alive.

‘Who are you?’ I wanted to whisper. I thought of Kanche, the goddess of Kanchenjunga, the icy, frozen spirit of Dad’s mountain. This god was charred in the very entrails of the earth. I imagined it with lava gushing out, the smoke flowering up like a pine tree twenty miles high and grey ash raining down. But that was another thing I decided not to think about because the idea that it might suddenly belch and roar was so frightening I wanted to run straight back down again.

‘Splendid, isn’t she?’ Grandpa said.

We didn’t say much more. Words were cancelled out by the awe that struck us, standing at the top of this big pimple on the earth’s face with starry sky all around us. We could see no stars right over our heads though because of the cap of cloud from the volcano. Looking back, the lights of the towns seemed very far away and low in the sky I saw there was a half moon rising.

I heard Grandpa taking in some deep breaths. Breathing deeply felt the best way to talk to a volcano.

‘Well,’ Grandpa said after a few minutes. ‘I suppose we’d better wend our way down,’

Going down was harder. Back we went, to the zigzagging path. Simple: all we had to do was follow it and all I had to do was walk behind Grandpa, with his stick. But it was much more slippery going down on the dry path.

‘Steady,’ Grandpa said as I banged into him from behind when my foot skidded. ‘We’ll take this nice and slowly, no hurry.’ I knew though, that he
was
in a rush to get back to Brenda because he felt bad about leaving her in the café all this time.

We couldn’t look at the view going down. I was too intent on my feet and on not bashing into Grandpa again. It suddenly felt very late and I started to wish the whole adventure could be over, with us back in the caravan drinking a nice cup of cocoa.

Back and forth we wound our way and it seemed further going down than it had going up. I started to realize that things felt different and not quite right. Grandpa slowed down. Then he stopped.

‘Just need to get my bearings,’ he said. ‘I’m just not sure…’

I’d known there was something wrong. The ground underfoot was different, harder as if we were walking more on rock and less of the trickly pumice gravel.

‘I don’t think…’ Grandpa sounded confused, and for the first time I felt a wriggleworm of fear inside,

We were not on the path any more. There was something odd about the edge of the mountain to our left. Whereas before, all you could see in the gloom was the edge of the path and the land rolling away down below, now I could just make out a curving shape and a steeper drop below, as if we were heading into a horse-shoe shape cut into the side of the mountain. Nothing looked right. There had not been anything horse-shoe shaped before.

‘Well we can’t be far off,’ Grandpa said, trying to sound optimistic. ‘By my reckoning, the car must be just round there – look, where there are all the lights beyond.’

Those distant necklaces of light made where we were seem very dark. The moon was higher now and gave everything a faint sheen but it was still hard to see.

‘What we’ll do is make our way along here.’ He pointed ahead with the stick. ‘I’m sure we’re going in the right direction. We’ll probably meet up with the path again at the end. And it’ll get better along here, I bet.’

Grandpa was doing his best to jolly me along. We edged our way slowly. It didn’t get better – it got quickly worse. The narrow ledge along which we were walking began to tail off, becoming so narrow that soon there was only room to put down one foot in front of the other as if we were mincing our way along a catwalk.
I don’t like this
, I thought, almost in tears. I knew now that Grandpa was not in charge, and we were so close to the steep slope below, to a drop down into darkness that my legs had gone all weak and shaky. But I didn’t want to show how scared I was.

Then something hopeful happened. From behind us came the choke and thrum of an engine starting up and as we both turned to look, we saw headlights moving away down on to the road, which had been invisible before.

‘Ah!’ Grandpa cried. ‘There it is! That must be those three
banditos
we met at the top. So we are a bit off course. Right – let’s turn round. Careful now – let me come in front.’

Almost hugging me he exchanged places with me on the ledge and we began to edge back in the other direction. It was still very narrow, but things began to feel a bit better. Grandpa obviously thought so too.

‘I got myself a bit lost there,’ he called back to me. ‘Sorry about that m’dear. We’ll soon be back on the right track.’

He turned and pointed. ‘I reckon the path’s just – ‘

His foot slipped as he said it and he gasped, fighting to keep his balance. But as he put the foot down it slipped again, on the crumbly edge of the ledge. There was a moment which felt paralysed, even though it was really full of movement as he wind-milled his arms, trying to get his balance, giving little grunts of consternation. I reached out to grab his hand, but the hand and Grandpa were falling back, away from me and he was toppling over the edge.

‘Grandpa!’ I screamed.

He fell back and I heard the slither and roll of his body and then his crying out in pain, and grunting and it got further and further away, and stopped. Then there was nothing.

‘Grandpa! Gra-a-a-nd-pa-a-a-a!’

Frantic, I shouted over and over again into the nothingness at my feet.

‘GRANDPA!’

A faint echo came back to me from the horseshoe curve of rock, but of Grandpa, of a real voice, there was nothing.

III.

I know now, you can be rigid with fear.

Dad told me that you could. Fear was the demon he fought in the mountains. But I’d never known it for myself before. He’d always been there to catch me.

I was squatting on that ledge in the sulphur smelling darkness, the moon like a half closed eye in the sky, and I couldn’t move. It was as if my brain had frozen, as well as my body. I couldn’t take in that this had happened, not in those first few moments. Grandpa here in front of my eyes, then gone, no sound. Me all alone. I couldn’t move at all, not go back or forwards.

My first thought, when my brain twitched into action, was that someone had to rescue me. There must be
someone
who could get me out of this and make it all all right. Maybe if I shouted. Grandpa had taught me the Italian word for ‘help’ ages ago. It’s pronounced, ‘Ay-oo-toe’

‘
Aiuto
!’ I called. My voice sounded so weak and pathetic out there under the big sky. ‘
Aiuto
! Please, someone help me – please!’

I already knew really it was no good. There wasn’t anyone there, not for miles. I started to shake and I could feel tears coming.

‘Please someone, please!’ I sobbed. I felt so helpless and terrified. What could I do? I couldn’t go back even if I knew the way, and just leave Grandpa down there, but I couldn’t just stay here either. What if he was dead? What if I was stuck here forever? The panic swelled up in me like a giant balloon until I was full of it. I felt small and useless.

As I sat crying though, someone did help me. It was Dad. His voice came into my head, clear as anything.

‘When you’re in the mountains, you need to be strong, remember Janey love. You have to be strong like a butterfly. Strong in spirit. Then, you know you can survive. You know you can do it.’

Funny then, suddenly it was as if my arms and legs were made of tough wire which couldn’t snap whatever. My head was very clear. No one was going to rescue me. There was only me, and I had to do it all myself. I had to be strong. Butterfly strong.

‘You can do this,’ I said out loud. ‘You are Janey Armitage, Peter Armitage’s daughter and you are a climber.’

I got up and slowly, shaking, despite my brave words. I eased my legs over the side of the ledge. It wasn’t a sheer drop, it was a steep scree, the rocky, stony waste which falls down the side of mountains. It’s very difficult to move on, always prone to giving way, but somehow I was going to get down it. I had to find Grandpa.

Heart pounding I began to edge down the dry scree, testing, finding my way. There were bits of rock, but like the rest of the volcano cone, a lot of it was quite soft and crumbly. Dad once told me that some mountaineers actually ride down softer screes on a boulder. You probably could down this one if you knew what you were doing, but I certainly wasn’t going to try it even if I could find a boulder!

I seized anything hard I could find, kicking my feet into the surface as I went, trying to keep a foothold, until my pumps were full up with pumice crumbs. It was so dry and unstable that I was slipping gradually down all the time, and my arms and legs were being constantly grazed, but the slope didn’t feel as alarming as I had feared. I could hear myself giving out sobbing breaths. Once I lost control and slithered a distance down on my front, feet first, grabbing with my hands, unable to stop. I was afraid I’d fall forever, down, down, into the heart of the volcano to the black, charred stick of a god in there I thought my mind would explode with panic. Something gashed me hard in my left shoulder and I moaned, but even the pain seemed somewhere else and nothing quite to do with me.

And then it stopped. The slithering fall stopped, and I was at the bottom. I spat gravely dirt out from between my lips

The winking moon was higher now, giving a faint silvering to everything. As I looked round, I saw I wasn’t at the bottom of anything, except the scree, at a lip in the rock where it ended. As my eyes focussed, to my right, I spotted something white, and I knew immediately what it was: Grandpa’s hair.

I crawled to him. He was lying, slumped, broken looking.

‘Grandpa?’ Timidly I touched him. Peering very closely I tried to see if there was blood on his head and I had to feel because I couldn’t see. Gently I eased my fingers round his head and there it was, a wet, sticky patch at the back. In a panic I went for his pulse. He had to be alive, had to be! Dad had taught me about pulses, the little pricks of movement at the wrist, the throbbing vein in the neck and – oh relief! – there it was in Grandpa’s neck, still surging along, though quietly.

As I held my fingers to his neck he made a tiny sound, the smallest of moans and this brought me to tears of relief.

‘Oh Grandpa, Grandpa I’m here! It’s Janey. It’s going to be all right – I’m going to get help!’

I had to – I could do anything then. I knew I could.

It was a case of feeling my way along, one foot, then the other, often on my hands and knees. It was slow, but I felt safer now. I’d been right about the horse shoe shape, like an inlet in the side of the cone. I was crawling along the arm of it towards where we had seen the lights from the car. The stuff under my feet now was softer piles of pumice mixed with stones and pyroclasts and it was hard going, like struggling along the soft sand at the top of a beach, but at least it was flatter and I didn’t feel I was going to fall. But I wanted desperately to hurry and I couldn’t

It seemed to take forever to reach the end of the horseshoe shape. After that I was feeling my way across the rough surface of the cone, afraid of falling and rolling down. But at last, in the thin moonlight I saw below me the white strip, the zigzag.

‘Yes!’ I actually shouted. The path! I slithered down to it, emptied out my shoes then began gently to trot. I had to get down – just had to…

Very soon I was in the car park. It was then, when the danger of the mountain was past that the full horror of the situation hit me. Somehow I’d held on to the hope that there’d be someone still there, still a car or two, people going home. Or that everything would miraculously have changed and Brenda would be there, waiting in our car.

But there stood the Land Rover on its own, dark and empty – and nothing else. No other cars, and I was completely alone. I felt very cold suddenly, and defeated and frightened.

There was only one thing to do – I had to get to Brenda. How far was it? Two miles, three? I had no real idea but the road was easy to run on after the mountain path, though my pumps were so thin I felt the hard slap of them on the road and every stone. But the burn of my worry for Grandpa kept me running and running, trying to keep the sobs of anguish down inside me because if I let them out I knew I wouldn’t be able to breathe properly and I’d have to stop.

I tried not to think about anything: about Grandpa lying all alone up there with his head bleeding, and how dark it was and how far I had to go and that I was scared, scared scared …

Strong like a butterfly
, I said in my head, over and over as my feet slapped down, jarring my knees, trying to hear Dad’s voice,
Strong like a butterfly
…

Now and then I just had to stop and walk to ease my heaving lungs, and then the road with its dark scrub on each side, and the beginnings of vineyards as I got further down seemed so full of shadows and frightening.