Tall Story - Candy Gourlay [26]
I didn’t know what to say.
‘Thanks,’ I whispered.
For a moment I thought he was going to embrace me but instead he held out his hand and we shook. His eyes were suddenly red.
‘Nardo!’ Uncle burst into the room. ‘Out the back, quick! Tibo and the others are at the door again.’
I stood up, my arms tight around the basketball.
‘I’ll stay here and delay them,’ Jabby said. ‘Go, go!’
Uncle picked up some bags and Auntie grabbed my hand and began to drag me to the back door. ‘I … I’ll email you when I get there,’ I said. It sounded so inadequate. I wanted to say something more but there was nothing I could say that would change anything.
‘That would be great!’ Jabby forced his mouth into a grin. ‘I … I’ll see you soon.’
Which wasn’t true of course.
But it was one way of saying goodbye for ever.
7
Andi
Apparently this was the third time it had happened, though we only found that out when we got home from Heathrow and Mum rang Auntie Sofia to yell at her. Apparently she and Uncle Victor had decided not to tell us about the two other seizures because they did not want us to be alarmed.
Alarming is not the word I would choose, although it ranks up there with the others. Terrifying. Horrible. Embarrassing.
When Bernardo collapsed on the tube, he slumped forward into the narrow aisle between the seats, and a sharp swerve of the train rolled him around like a giant log. He didn’t even flinch. His eyes rolled to the back of his head and his body arched, his legs rigid and grotesque. Dad dived down and pulled the scarf off his neck. He ripped the tie from Bernardo’s neck with a loud zip. It was attached with Velcro. But nobody laughed. Bernardo’s long, long body softened for a moment and then stiffened again, like a thousand volts were shooting through him.
‘Oh my God.’ Mum sat, frozen in her seat, wringing her hands. ‘What’s wrong, Will?’
‘I don’t know,’ Dad said. He unbuttoned Bernardo’s shirt at the throat.
Bernardo had dropped his mobile on the floor. I picked it up just as it vibrated with a new text message.
Beep beep.
I stared at the tiny glowing screen.
It was a text message from the Philippines. I could tell by the +63 country code. Auntie Sofia? I pressed a key to view the message.
Another earthquake 2day. Come back.
I meant to press the red button to turn it off, but instead the phone scrolled back to the previous message.
NARDO WHY U ABANDON US?
Bernardo woke up. It took all three of us and the man sitting at the end of the carriage to sit him up in the corner again. He seemed groggy, disorientated. He collapsed against Mum, his head lolling over hers, and then suddenly he was fast asleep. We had to shake him awake when we got to our stop, and Dad had to yell down at a man on the platform to hold the train while we unloaded Bernardo and his bags.
It was only a five-minute walk to the house from the station. It felt like five hours.
‘Maybe it’s just jet lag,’ Dad muttered softly to Mum as we guided Bernardo home. But she had her ‘I’m the nurse’ look on her face, pursing her lips and shaking her head. When she does that, I don’t know why Dad doesn’t just reply, ‘Well, I’m a nurse too.’
The moment we entered the house, Mum was on the phone to Auntie Sofia. Dad, Bernardo and I stood in the hall with the luggage.
‘Hello? Hello?’ Mum’s call had gone through. ‘Can you hear me, Sofia? Can you hear me now?’ Then she started yelling in Tagalog, which sounds a bit like this: Yakataka baka yaka taka babalaba.
It never did matter that I couldn’t speak Tagalog. Mum’s body language was so expressive that translating what she was probably saying had become a form of entertainment. Whenever Ma talked to Auntie Sofia, I would translate for Dad: ‘She says she’s glad the crocodiles are attending the disco. She says she can’t wait to taste the cat food.’ ‘No, no, she didn’t say cat food,’ Dad would interrupt. ‘She says the cat food was fine last time but today she’d rather dance like a chicken.’
Right now, she sounded really upset and whatever