Papa Georgio (9 page)

The sun was hot on my cheeks and I was having to screw up my eyes. I wished I’d brought my swimming costume.

‘Your Mum said we could have ice-creams,’ I said hopefully.

To my surprise Fizz said, OK,’ and walked straight out of the sea.

Maggie was sitting out on a deckchair, tipped back, with some oily stuff on her face and thin white arms, above the rows of copper bracelets and glass bangles. Little Clarey was wandering up and down in a pink sundress, a dolly in her arms. As we approached the van, a loud shriek, like a train whistle came from inside.

I grinned. ‘Pecky?’

Fizz nodded, giving one of his smiles which made me even happier. ‘We live by the railway in Manchester. He can do the whole lot – shunting engines, all of it.’

‘Will you get him to do it?’

‘Oh no – ‘ Fizz propped his net up by the van. ‘Pecky never does anything unless
he
wants to. ‘Can he come outside, Maggie?’

‘If you want,’ Maggie said, without opening her eyes. Her black hair was hanging in loose waves over her shoulders.

Fizz carried Pecky’s cage outside and placed it in a patch of shade. When I went to look in the cage, Pecky stared back very crossly and spent several minutes stepping from one dry-clawed foot to the other, scrunching up the one he wasn’t standing on, then swapping over.

‘Aren’t you talking today, Pecky?’

Pecky closed one eye and tilted his head back as if affronted by the question.

‘Can we have an ice cream?’ Fizz asked Maggie. ‘Buy them now, before Archie gets back?’

There was something funny in his voice, the way he asked the question, something between him and Maggie that they understood and I didn’t.

Maggie sprang up. ‘Yes – let’s be quick. Come on Clarey darlin’. Janey, you coming?’

‘Yes please!’ I liked the warm way Maggie spoke to me, as if we’d all been friends for ages.

The second I turned away from Pecky’s cage, the words, ‘SHUT UP!’ came ringing out. When I whirled round to look at him, he was sitting with his eyes tightly closed and I burst out laughing.

‘He’s so naughty isn’t he?’ I said to Fizz.

‘Oh he’s the lad all right,’ Maggie agreed, picking up her bag. ‘Come on – quick now.’

II.

The time spent with the Chubbs just whizzed past and when I got back to our van, Brenda was in a mood with me. Grandpa was sitting by the table with his usual glass of ‘vino’ and his pipe and Brenda was at the little stove cooking chips – my favourite. She looked over her glasses and said,

‘Ah – how nice of you to grace us with your presence.’

I had a sinking feeling. Did I promise to come back and do the patchwork with her? If so, I’d forgotten all about it.

But before I could say anything a great sheet of flame shot up,
Whoosh!
in front of her right to the ceiling. The chip pan had caught on fire!

Brenda screamed, Grandpa cried, ‘Oh I say!’ and jumped up. He shoved a towel in the sink and threw it over the roaring pan until the flames died out. We were all coughing and could hardly see through the smoke. When it finally cleared, the ceiling was as black as a cave.

‘Oh my Lord,’ Brenda said shakily. ‘What have I done?’

‘Never mind, my Little Dear,’ Grandpa said. We were all glad of his general breeziness now. ‘So long as you’re all right.’

I found that I was glad she was all right too. They spent ages scrubbing the ceiling to get the black off and kept the door open because there was such a smell of smoke and Vim. Mosquitoes and moths drifted in and flitted round the lamps.

And I just couldn’t stop talking about the Chubbs. Couldn’t help it. I was besotted.

Maggie had bought us all ice creams and we sat outside the Ship of Dreams eating them quickly as they melted in the sun. Fizz and I sat crossed legged on the ground. Maggie explained to me that the orange painted symbol at the front of the Ship meant ‘
Aum
’ which was to represent the eternal mystical union of the cosmos. As I was trying to take in this information, Clarey came and stared at me with her dark grape eyes. She was staring in a nice way, and she had ice cream all over her lips and hands. Her floaty conker-coloured hair was tied up with a little pink bobble like a strawberry sweet. After a moment she plonked herself on my lap. I felt really gratified that she liked me and wanted me to cuddle her and she felt so lovely and warm and squeezy.

Fizz stared at some earwigs for a while, then brought out some of his books to look at, and his shell collection.

‘Are you interested in animals and all that sort of thing?’ Maggie asked.

‘Yes, quite,’ I said.

‘Fizz is mad about it – no stopping him. Animals, birds, fish… Obsessed, he is. But Fizz – Janey might want to do something else, darlin’.’

‘Oh – OK, ‘Fizz said. ‘D’you want to play frisbee?’

That was such fun. We rushed up and down laughing and chasing the red disc as it flew back and forth.

. ‘D’you like swimming Janey?’ Maggie asked when we flopped down for a rest.

‘Yes.’

‘Well why don’t you and Fizz go in for a swim? See I can’t do it – never learned. My Mammy had too many of us for us to learn, and Archie’ll never go in.’’

Fizz looked up. ‘In the morning, when we get up?’

I was excited. ‘OK – before anyone else. We’ll have it all to ourselves!’

‘The whole sea!’ Fizz said, rapturous. Odd things sent him into such a state of delight he looked as if he might burst.

I felt as if I could stay with the Chubbs for days. Maggie was so relaxed and kind and it was great to have someone to hang around with. None of us were moving on the next day.

We were all sitting outside as the sun went down, Fizz and me sprawled on the grass and taking it in turns to stand on our heads. But suddenly Maggie sat up very straight in her chair.

‘Lord above – I knew I should have gone with him!’

There was a terrible expression on her face. She was looking towards the camp entrance and we all saw the unmistakeable figure of Archie Chubb moving along the track. Everyone went quiet. What ever was wrong? Archie had only been doing the shopping, hadn’t he?

He was loping along in his huge shorts and deck shoes and a big green and white stripy sports shirt, carrying lots of shopping bags, swinging from each hand. He looked weary and red in the face. All I could see at first was a loaf of bread poking out of one, the long flat Italian loaves. Then I saw more and more. Rather a lot of loaves, in fact.

‘Back at last!’ he boomed from along the track. ‘I had to go miles to find shops that were open!’

‘Well you did that all right,’ Maggie said. There was a sad, dull note in her voice. Fizz was staring down at his books, as if nothing was going on around him at all.

Archie climbed up into the van and we could all hear paper rustling.

‘Look kids!’ We heard him call from the doorway. ‘I got you all some sweeties!’

I turned to look and caught sight of Maggie shaking her head, and her eyes looked so wretched. I didn’t know why but there was something about her that made me feel really sad as well.

Archie was holding a bag of sweets. Not a bag as most of us would think of it – a quarter of sherbet lemons or something. The bag was enormous, a huge brown paper sack which he had to hold up with both hands. There was a big, soppy grin on his face.

‘Come on – sweets kids! Janey – come and help yourself. Take as many as you want!’

I got to my feet but I wasn’t sure. I mean it’s not often you get an offer like that. Brenda had a bag of boiled sweets and let me have one after a meal – two if I was really lucky. But there was something weird about the way everyone was looking away as if this wasn’t really happening. I felt sorry for Archie. His huge hands held the bag open and I went and looked. Inside were more sweets than I’d ever seen together at one time in my life, all in little coloured wrappers of different shapes and sizes.

‘Take a handful love – keep your strength up!’

Timidly I dipped my fingers in among the cascades of sweets.

‘Go on – let’s see you really get stuck in! Fill yer pockets!’

Archie dipped a hand in and tried to give me a fistful of sweets, but even both my hands together weren’t big enough to hold them and some fell to the ground. Clarey toddled across and started to pick them up.

‘No Clarey!’ Maggie called sharply. ‘They’re too hard for you. Will you put them away now, Archie, for goodness sake!’

She sounded really upset and when I turned, holding my stash of sweets I saw that Fizz had picked up one of his books and was bent over it, hair over his face like a mask.

When I went back to the caravan, before the fire happened, Brenda said, ‘Do you really think you should be mixing with those people so much?’

‘But I like Fizz!’ I said. It made me cross that Auntie Brenda thought she knew about him when she didn’t.

‘There’s no harm,’ Grandpa said, a tumbler of wine in hand. ‘So long as we don’t have to have too much to do with them.’ He gazed affectionately at his glass. ‘
Manchester
. Dreadful.’

But he turned and winked at me.

III.

The next day we crunched down the stony beach in the early morning. My costume was pale blue with a white stripe down the left side. Fizz wore a pair of baggy black trunks which were too big for him.

‘Just run in!’ he shouted.

My skin was goose pimply and running into the iron-grey sea was not what I felt like but I didn’t want to tell Fizz that as he strode ahead. His back was smooth and strong and the colour of tea.

Screaming and splashing we cantered into the waves. The cold, salty water gripped my legs, then waist, but then the sun came out like a light being switched on and the sea turned blue with silver flashes in it. Everything felt lovely, and we fell into the water swam and played. It didn’t feel cold any more: it just made you feel full of vim.

‘Look!’ Fizz yelled in amazement. He was treading water, pointing towards the rocks enclosing the lagoon. ‘Crabs!’

On almost every rock, in silhouette, crabs were basking on their tip-toes in the morning sun as if they were about to perform a dance.

‘There are hundreds of them!’ I laughed, panting.

‘Come on – let’s swim over,’ Fizz shouted. He set off doing crawl and I breast stroked after him until he stopped to wait for me.

‘Don’t go so fast!’ I yelled, panting.

‘Sorry – it’s further than it looks, in’t it?’

We trod water, trying to get our breath. It felt a bit scary being out so deep but I was with Fizz so it was all right.

‘Oh – look!’ I nodded towards the rocks.

We thought we had the beach all to ourselves but a figure had appeared on the rocks, hopping in amidst the crabs, a pale, strong looking man in swimming trunks. But he only had his right leg. The left was a stump cut off in the middle of his thigh. Nimbly he hopped over the rocks, then held his arms up, standing poised at the edge for a moment, then dived into the sea.

‘How does he swim with only one leg?’ I called to Fizz, feeling mine working away down there keeping me up.

‘Like a fish, I s’pose,’ Fizz panted back. The man’s head and arms kept appearing as he stuck out across the lagoon. ‘Like a dolphin or a shark. Dolphin man!’

And he gave one of his unexpected laughs of sudden joy, his face creasing. And I laughed too. Life was wonderful!

Maggie was already cooking bacon when we got back to the van and the smell came floating out, mouth-wateringly. We all sat round inside the Ship of Dreams with the crisp bacon tucked between hunks of thick bread and butter and it tasted like heaven. Clarey chewed on a piece of crust and watched me, as usual. I pulled faces to make her laugh. Fizz soon polished off his sandwich and fished out his mouth organ. He sat on the step and played about with it, producing mournful tunes that made you think of beaten up ranches in western films. I sat wriggling my sandy toes to the music and looking round again at the pink, yellow, green and orange patched walls, the blue ceiling with its stars and moon.

‘So you like our Ship?’ Maggie asked in her gravely voice.

I nodded, beaming. Like it? I
loved
it! I was glowing all over from the swim out there with the crabs and I loved everything about the Chubbs.

‘So,’ Archie said, including me as if I was one of the family. ‘What shall we do today then?’

‘Stay here!’ the rest of us chorused.

‘You’ll be able to play with Janey,’ Maggie said to Fizz. With her long fingers she stroked the top of my head and my almost dry hair. ‘Ah, that’s beautiful hair you’ve got darlin’. Soft and golden. Why don’t you wear it longer? It’s so lovely and thick.’

I shrugged, unsure what to say. One thing I liked about Fizz was that he didn’t ask questions so you never had to explain anything. I’d not even told him yet about Mum and the mountain. I wasn’t used to questions. But Maggie didn’t follow it up.

‘Right,’ she said when we’d finished. ‘You go and enjoy yourselves you two!’

All day with Fizz and the Chubbs – the day couldn’t get any better! But I had a wormy little feeling of worry inside. Would Grandpa and Brenda mind?

If they did, they didn’t show it. Brenda said, surprisingly, ‘No – you go ahead dear. Better to be with someone your own age. I’ll be about on the beach as well.’

Grandpa must have talked to her and said it was better for me to be with someone young, whether or not they were from Manchester.

So the day that began with the crabs and one legged Dolphin Man (who we never saw again) became the best day ever. Fizz and I were in and out of the sea all day, the sunlight a prickle on my skin, swimming and damning the stream with stones. We ran back and forth up and down the beach spying on some of the people around, seeing how close we could get to them without them spotting us, sometimes tearing up to the top of the beach to collapse on the ground behind the bushes at the top in fits of laughter. One time I had just flung myself down there when Fizz came behind me and almost hurled himself on top of me.

‘Hey – watch it!’ I squeaked, bubbling with laughter.

Fizz erupted, flinging himself on to his back on the sand, chortling helplessly. ‘That woman – the big fat one – I’d got that close and she turned round! You should’ve seen the look she gave me! Her eyes were popping and she was so red in’t face she looked like she was going to explode!’