Patrick
LOCKET ISLAND
Granny and I have one thing in common, at least. We’re both nuts about penguins. I never used to give penguins much thought, to be honest, but now all that’s changed. What is it about penguins? I don’t know if it’s their human characteristics or their quirky birdiness, but watching them is a total therapy. They make me laugh. They make me kind of mushy inside. They’re so small but they’re brimming with life. It’s a beautiful thing.
The scientists take a lot of their time at base writing up their notes. There’s no TV, and they’re often using the super slow Internet, so I’ve started to explore the bookshelves. The novels mostly seem to be boring classics like Dickens and Jane Eyre. No crime or action stuff at all. There’s also a ton of books about penguins. I’ve started one of them. It’s pretty interesting, actually.
“Your grandmother likes to be read to, you know,” said Dietrich the other day, seeing me turn the pages.
“Are you kidding?”
“Well, she seems to like Great Expectations. You can try her on All You Ever Wanted to Know About Penguins—if you think it’s more her thing.”
“Thanks, mate. Maybe I will.”
So I do. I read penguin facts to Granny every day from the big volume. I plump Pip on the bed, and he settles down with us quite happily. Seems like he’s fascinated to learn more about his species. Sometimes he looks cynical, as if he’s saying, Well, that bit’s pretty accurate, but that bit, mate, is complete bullshit. Other times he plucks at the pages with his beak, trying their taste and texture.
A tiny hint of color has come back to Granny’s cheeks. She managed to gulp down some soup today, a spoonful or two of minestrone. She still doesn’t speak a lot, but she did say this much, in a tone of great astonishment:
“You’re a good chef, Patrick.”
I was chuffed. “Why, thank you, Granny!”
She muttered something else so croaky I couldn’t get what it was.
“What was that, Granny? What was that you said?”
“I said . . .” She cleared the phlegm from her throat. “I said it must be the Italian in you.”
Of course! The Italian in me! I’d never thought of that.
Terry and I are out penguin watching again. The snow is light and powdery, like sifted icing sugar. The sea is shining silver blue, all decked out in its chunky jewelry of floating ice.
“So are you glad you came out here to Locket Island?” Terry asks as our boots creak along.
“No,” I answer, sticking hands in pockets, pulling the corners of my mouth down. “It’s been totally grim.”
She starts apologizing and saying what an upset the whole episode must be for me. I interrupt with a laugh.
“Terry, stop! It’s not as if I’ve been majorly grief-stricken.” I tell her how I’d only actually met Granny on a couple of occasions, and what a fiasco that was. “I have begun to like her, though,” I confess. “Never ever thought I’d say that.”
“I’m so glad to hear it, Patrick.”
There’s something about Terry: you feel you can tell her anything, totally anything. She’ll be cool.
“I only came here because of one thing,” I admit. “She sent me her teenage diaries. There was something about that gesture. And she had a bloody miserable past. So it seemed the decent thing to do was to come out here and be with her in her final hour.”
“What final hour?!”
We snigger happily. Looks like Granny’s going to be around for a bit after all.
We’ve reached the colony. I look out at the acres of penguiny-ness and breathe in the heady stink of guano.
“Want to help me with some weighing today?” Terry asks. She shows me how to dive in and grasp a penguin, avoiding the jabbing beak and thrashing flippers, how to put him in the weighing bag before he’s had time to think, how to get him weighed and set loose again. There’s a definite art to it. I get myself pecked a bit, and a few birds dive out of my grip and scuttle off before I’ve got control of them. It’s OK, though. More than OK, actually. Man, I love it!
Terry does the weighing and recording, and I take on the role of Lord High Penguin-Wrangler. I’m getting pretty nifty at it, if I say so myself. We laugh, how we laugh.
When we’ve done nine or ten penguins, Terry says to me, “I’ve been thinking about Veronica.”
“Mmm?” This is what Gav does when he wants to encourage an opinion out of me. I want to see if it works with Terry. It does.
“She told me about her childhood. About the war. And about her parents and Giovanni and her baby.”
“Granny opened up to you?” Even Granny gets how cool Terry is.
Terry shrugs her shoulders. “Veronica didn’t talk about herself for ages. But one day, it all came tumbling out.”
“Maybe these guys helped,” I comment, passing Terry a fat, bemused-looking penguin.
“Yes, I do think so.” She grabs the penguin and plunges him into the weighing sack. She makes the reading and jots it into her book. “Veronica’s been hurt again and again and again,” she continues. “Everyone she loved disappeared. I really think she’s taught herself over the years to see the worst in everyone, to make sure she doesn’t get attached. Because she simply can’t cope with any more loss.”
“You may have a point there, Terry.”
She sighs. “I can’t imagine the pain of suddenly finding your baby has been taken away!”
“Taken away?”
“Yes, what happened to Veronica. When the nuns whisked him off and gave him to that Canadian couple—and she never even got to say goodbye.”
I gawp at Terry as what she is saying hits home. “You mean . . . you mean she had no choice?”
“Didn’t she tell you? Wasn’t it in the diaries?” Terry’s eyes widen in surprise. Then her mouth drops open as she sees I really had no idea that’s what happened.
“I thought she was the one who’d given him up for adoption, even though it seemed like she was fond of him. I get it now. God, poor Veronica! Poor kid!”
We share a moment of reflection. “I guess it’s as well you know now,” Terry says at last. “He was your father, after all. You do know he’s dead, don’t you?” she adds, anxiously.
“Yeah, yeah. In his forties, mountaineering accident.”
She sighs again, and her face takes on a philosophical kind of expression. “Life’s cruel, isn’t it? Just when you’ve got over one thing, something else happens. So many people die.”
“Um . . . not wanting to be pessimistic and that, but I kind of think we all die,” I point out.
She darts a smile at me. It’s cheeky and gobsmackingly beautiful. “We don’t have to do it yet, though, do we!”
“No,” I agree. “We totally need to enjoy the time we’ve got.”
“Oops! Penguin!” We’ve been so engrossed chatting we’ve gone and left the fat penguin in the weighing sack. She empties him out, and we watch him reel a little before scuttling off to join his mates.
We spend a while longer out there. Must have weighed at least thirty penguins, and I enjoy every minute of it. It’s fan-bloody-tastic, doing all this penguin stuff. I totally get why Terry, Mike and Dietrich are obsessed. It would be a tragedy if they had to stop the project.
My thick brain has finally cottoned on. That’s what Terry was trying to tell me when she was going on about money that time, but she was too delicate to spell it out. Granny must have told her she was planning on leaving her millions to the penguin project, rather than yours truly. Terry’s been guilt struck, I bet. Desperately needing the money for her beloved penguins but feeling it was my right to have it. Seeing both sides, because she would; she’s like that. Assuming I care about the money.
And do I care? Well, look at it this way. I never even knew I had a granny till a few months ago. And aside from paying Gav back for forking out on my travel here (which does worry me), I wouldn’t actually know what to do with that kind of money. I’d probably fritter it on useless stuff. Video games, gym memberships, beer, bikes, fancy cooking equipment, etc., etc.
No, Granny V is welcome to leave her millions to the Adélies. They need it a hell of a lot more than I do.