Tall Story - Candy Gourlay [53]
2
Andi
It had been a rough night.
Dad rushed in from work at two in the morning and the three of us watched the rolling reports on the twenty-four-hour news channel. The earthquake was a seven on the Richter scale, which is as strong as they come, and the village was so close to the epicentre, the place was totally destroyed.
Dad and I sat on the sofa, shoulder to shoulder. We could not take our eyes off the screen. And even though we had the heating on full blast, my hands were freezing.
Mum, frantic and sobbing, worked the phones, trying to get through to Uncle and Auntie, but of course there was no answer. All the lines were down. The news helicopters were not able to land for hours, and when they did, everything was still in such chaos, nobody could tell them anything. Then the army arrived and soon there were scenes of trucks filled with men and women carrying children, and dogs and goats and chickens; and then the soldiers began to pull people out from under broken buildings.
One news crew stayed in an emergency room, and kept a tally of the casualties arriving. Fifty, one hundred, two hundred. The figures climbed by the minute.
Then tents began mushrooming in fields and there were doctors with surgical masks and nurses and bandages and splints and plaster casts.
And all the while Bernardo slept.
I was all for waking Bernardo up so that he could keep watch with us, but Mum shook her head.
‘No, no, don’t tell Bernardo anything.’
I stared at her. ‘That’s crazy, Mum. We’ve got to. Besides, it’s unfair.’
Mum took my hand. ‘Look, we will tell him. But not yet. First, we must make sure your Uncle Victor and Auntie Sofia are all right.’
All right? It was a gentle way of saying ‘not dead’.
Mum’s brown skin had a pale yellow cast, like the night had sucked some of the blood out of her.
‘… and whatever we find out, I need time to pull myself together. And I want to choose my words carefully. It’s … it’s just too awful. I don’t know how to tell Bernardo what happened.’
And she suddenly looked so tiny and so sad that all I could do was put my arms around her.
Poor Mum. Poor Bernardo. The villagers had tried to stop him from coming to England, hadn’t they? They believed that without Bernardo, they were doomed. And now … and now …
Mum was right. Bernardo didn’t have to know just yet.
My brain was a hive of buzzing as Bernardo and I walked to school. I could barely hear him talking for the swarm in my head, but I could have won a Best Actress trophy for all my laughing and smiling, strolling along as if I didn’t have a care in the world, as if I hadn’t spent the night watching a horror story unfold on the other side of the world, as if my heart had not turned to lead.
We were almost up to the school gates when Bernardo suddenly stopped.
‘Andi! I forgets the uniform of Rocky.’
‘Oh no,’ I said, still acting to the hilt. ‘You’ll have to play basketball naked!’
Bernardo grinned. ‘No, no, I just go back. There is many time.’
I slapped him on the arm, maybe a little bit too heartily. ‘And don’t you dare try to get out of the game.’
Bernardo waved as he turned back towards home. ‘Why I do that? Nothing will stops me from playing.’
3
Bernardo
Ma had given me my own key.
I didn’t knock or ring the doorbell. Ma was on the night shift and she would be resting upstairs. Uncle Will was probably asleep as well. No point disturbing them. I crept in as quietly as I could.
The TV was on. Was that the news? I thought the breakfast news ended after nine o’clock in the morning.
I called out in Tagalog, ‘Mama! Would you believe Andi and I went all the way to school before I realized I’d forgotten the basketball kit!’
I poked my head into the living room. ‘Ma!’
But Ma wasn’t there.
‘Ma! Are you upstairs?’ I called. But the volume was turned up so loud she couldn’t possibly have heard me.
I glanced at the screen and froze.
Mad Nena.
Her face filled the screen. The eyes empty. The lips moving. There was a news commentary over the shot but I could read her lips repeating the one word. Gabriela. Gabriela. Gabriela.