Tall Story - Candy Gourlay [21]
Hurt and disappointed, the giants filtered out across the world, some stepping over oceans in search of other lands, others simply lying down in their grief, covering themselves with forest and rock and becoming part of the landscape.
‘Do you really think that’s a bamboo thicket sighing in the wind?’ Old Tibo would put the clippers in his left hand to wag his right finger. ‘Do you really think that’s the monsoon howling? Do you really think that geology had a hand in carving that hill into the shape of a man’s body?’
‘No, sir,’ I’d say, bowing my head.
‘Giants! That’s what they are. Just giants. As for earthquakes – an earthquake is nothing but a giant’s shudder.’
This was my cue to ask the question I asked every time. ‘Why would a giant shudder?’
‘Regret, of course.’ Old Tibo would shake his head sadly. ‘All giants regret that they had to leave Heaven to be with their mortal mothers.’
The cellphone shuddered on the bed again. My eyes flew open. What time was it? I snatched the phone up.
But its little window remained dark.
Then it shook again.
It was not the phone.
It was the bed.
The wall.
The room.
Mama’s picture on the wall tilted slowly to the right.
Earthquake.
Part Two
Mind the Gap
1
Andi
He had to crouch to get through the double doors.
And suddenly it was as if the crowd in Terminal 3 had turned into a sea of eyeballs, all swiftly rotated in our direction.
He was massive.
No, not massive, because he actually looked slight, if you could call a giant slight.
Slight like it would take a tiny gust to blow him over.
Slight like a long straw, all air and no structure.
Slight like an empty suit dangling from a hanger. A very long suit.
His shoulders were round and he was stooped.
Everything about him was lanky, his arms, his legs, his hair. Who cut his hair? It was horrible, chopped around his ears like a jigsaw. And don’t get me started on the suit, made of some kind of shiny nylon, and the tie that hung like it had been pasted on with Velcro. On his feet he wore some deeply ugly sandals with black socks.
The other passengers emerging from the doors flowed past him like a fast-moving stream as he made his way towards us, walking like his legs were tree trunks that he had to uproot with every step.
His face was all angles, like the bones had grown all wrong, his cheekbones jutting, too sharp for a boy’s face.
Then when he spoke … oh, that voice!
He sounded like he was underwater. He sounded like he had the treble turned off. He sounded like Dad’s prehistoric CD Walkman with a flat battery.
And yep. He was tall.
I mean, did Mum actually think she was preparing me to meet this … this GIRAFFE … by bleating ‘he’s tall’ every few minutes?
Lame. Lame. LAME.
2
Bernardo
Ma leaped higher than a grasshopper in a paddy field to hug me. She just missed my shoulders and embraced me around the waist instead.
The Arrivals area shimmered behind the tears in my eyes and I squeezed her hard.
‘Mama! Mama,’ I murmured, my throat tight. Suddenly the worries that had plagued me since I got off the plane vanished. Losing my way, taking the wrong exit, picking the trolley with a sticky wheel – nothing mattered.
I was in London at last.
Uncle William was waving a long white streamer high in the air. I recognized him from the photos: pineapple hair cropped close to his head, freckles like orange dust all over his face. More tears welled in my eyes as I read the message written across the banner with a marker pen.
Welcome Home, Bernardo.
Remembering my manners, I bent low to touch Ma’s hand to my forehead.
She grabbed my hand and cradled it against her cheek, whispering in Tagalog, ‘Oh, my son. My baby. At last. At last.’
Uncle William came forward, rolling the streamer into a scroll. He gave me a quick hug.
‘Welcome to London, Bernardo,’ he said.
Instead of touching his hand to my forehead, I shook it firmly, hoping that my palms weren’t sweaty. ‘Once you’re in England,’ Auntie had