Tall Story Read online

  There was a sharp whistling noise. The kettle was boiling in the kitchen.

  ‘Wait … let me get that.’ Mum hurried into the kitchen, which was also the hallway cupboard with all the coats and bags draped on a forest of hooks. What did that oily estate agent say? ‘Compact but so spacious you would be surprised.’ That was probably because HE was surprised. The flat was a shoebox.

  Point guard!

  All that hard work had finally paid off. All those training sessions. Showering in Coach’s spit as he yelled at us. Breathing in the aroma of sweaty armpits, dirty rubber balls, unchanged socks and old trainers.

  ‘Do you fancy some tea, Andi?’ Mum called.

  ‘Yes, thanks, Mum. Two sugars.’

  Mum bustled around the dining-room table, taking out two mugs and clearing aside a pile of ironing and a postcard just arrived from the Philippines. The postcard had a photograph of a concrete dome surrounded by banana trees.

  Amandolina, it said. This is the new basketball arena that is being built in San Andres. Wish you were here. Your loving brother, Bernardo.

  Mum laid a steaming mug of tea in front of me and sat down.

  ‘So what’s so awesome, Mum? Is it about Bernardo?’

  Highly unlikely, of course. Mum’s been trying to get Bernardo cleared by the Home Office since I was born. It would take a massive miracle to sort that problem out.

  ‘No, of course not. But it’s still great news.’ Mum’s eyes shone.

  ‘Oh?’ I held my breath and crossed the fingers on both my hands. Dared I hope? Could it be …

  ‘We got the house!’

  ‘YES!’ I leaped to my feet so suddenly that some of the ironing slipped onto the floor. Mum and I were too busy hopping up and down to care. ‘Yes, yes, YES!’

  ‘No more queuing for the loo!’

  ‘No more eating with the ironing on the table!’

  ‘Our own front door!’

  ‘MY OWN ROOM!’

  We collapsed, breathless, into our chairs.

  The oily estate agent had taken us to see the house only last week. It was a palace compared to this dump!

  I couldn’t believe it when Mum and Dad said they’d put in an offer. The estate agent raised an eyebrow like he’d found a black spot on a banana. There were so many other interested buyers, he warned, we shouldn’t get our hopes up.

  ‘It all came together today.’ Mum flicked a tear from her cheek. ‘The estate agent called this morning. He said we could have the house at the lower price if we could move quickly.’

  ‘That’s awesome, Mum!’

  ‘They wanted to exchange contracts by next week.’

  ‘Great!’

  ‘So we’re moving in two weeks!’

  Two weeks?

  Suddenly it was as if all the air had pumped out of my lungs. I tried to take a deep breath but I couldn’t.

  ‘What do you mean, we’re moving in two weeks?’

  ‘There was another buyer, but in the end the house owner went with us because we agreed to all the conditions …’

  ‘What conditions?’

  ‘Well, he wanted us to …’ Mum launched into a list that made my eyes glaze over almost immediately. The words ‘cash payment’ and ‘speedy’ jumped out. I shook myself.

  ‘But what about school? I can’t leave in the middle of term, can I?’

  ‘No worries! I made some phone calls. You start at Saint Simeon’s the day after we move.’

  My voice sounded far away, like it was coming from outside, on the landing. ‘But what about the basketball team …?’

  ‘I know it’s a bit sudden,’ Mum beamed. ‘But, Andi, the timing is perfect. The sooner we move, the better. Someday we’ll need an extra bedroom for Bernardo. And you’ll love Saint Simeon’s.’

  I sat very, very still.

  ‘What was your good news, darling?’ Mum said.

  3

  Bernardo

  It was while we young boys sat waiting our turn on the long bench at the barbershop that Old Tibo told stories about Bernardo Carpio the giant.

  To start with, everybody hated Bernardo Carpio, Old Tibo said. He would unfold his fingers and count off the reasons why the giant had been so reviled.

  1. The people feared him because he was different.

  2. He was a little bit magic. His mother was human, but his father? They weren’t so sure. He was from elsewhere, foreign. They had no goodwill towards him, even after he died.

  3. And of course Bernardo was a freak, a monster.

  ‘How many times did the townspeople try to drive Bernardo Carpio out of San Andres?’ Old Tibo would say, stabbing his razor in the air. ‘They poisoned his well. They stoned his fruit so that it fell to the ground and rotted before it was ripe. They even stole his dog.’

  Which was so appalling that all the boys on the waiting bench looked at each other in horror.

  But Bernardo Carpio refused to be driven out.

  His late mother was born in San Andres and so was he. To live in the village was his right.

  ‘But what could he do? How could he win the people to his side?’ Old Tibo would stop snipping and turn to his audience. ‘Instead of fighting back with anger, he decided to fight back with kindness. He was going to make the villagers love him. He was going to become their hero.’

  One morning the farmers of San Andres woke to find that their fields had been ploughed. In the night, Bernardo had run his comb through the soil and turned the earth into furrows.

  A river ran on the other side of the hill but not close enough to irrigate the fields. Bernardo pushed his finger into the side of the mountain and carved a stream from the river down to the fields, bringing irrigation and fresh water to the village. ‘If you look closely at the hillside,’ Old Tibo said, ‘you can just see giant footprints where he trod.’

  The fields lay in the deep shadow of a valley, and as a result, the crops of San Andres grew stunted and pale from lack of sun. So Bernardo planted his huge hands on the two mountains that shaded the valley and pushed them apart, just enough to let in the sun. To this day, hand-shaped indentations remain on the mountain slopes.

  ‘Bernardo was a blessing,’ Old Tibo said. ‘And he was right: not only did the villagers come to love him, they came to realize that they needed him.’

  One terrible monsoon, when rain lashed the village like a vicious whip and many coconut trees lost their crowns in the storms, the Earth began to shake. A few quakes here and there at first. And then, every day, a great shuddering.

  One day the village shook so violently that houses crumbled as if they were made of sugar. Across the main road, a huge crack appeared, steam hissing out in clouds. Peering down into the fissure, the villagers saw two moving walls of rock about to collide with each other, like a pair of monumental hands poised to clap. It would have been a collision so powerful as to destroy San Andres completely.

  The earth began to shake again, and everyone closed their eyes tight, said their prayers and waited for the end.

  But nothing happened.

  When they opened their eyes they saw, deep down in the fissure, Bernardo Carpio, arms braced against the two walls of stone, his face twisted with determination.

  And then the granite lip of the fissure crumbled, and rock and earth caved into the crack. And they never saw Bernardo again.

  But the village was saved.

  4

  Andi

  Coach came round to talk to Mum and Dad.

  I sat outside on the landing, listening hard, but they never raised their voices loud enough for me to hear, and when Coach reappeared he was all smiles and Good Luck With Your Move and Congratulations On Your New Home and shaking hands, so I knew that he had totally lost the battle before even beginning the war. Mum and Dad stood in the doorway grinning their best grins.

  ‘And thanks for dropping by!’ Mum said brightly as Coach and Dad shook hands.

  ‘Thanks, Coach,’ I muttered as he went past. Thanks for nothing.

>   He avoided my eyes and raised his shoulders. ‘Sorry, Andi.’ And then he edged past me and down the stairs like a guilty man.

  ‘Oh, Andi, Andi, Andi,’ Mum said. ‘Come and have a hug.’

  I hated it when she treated me like a toddler. But I went and had a hug anyway.

  ‘Well done for getting point guard,’ Dad said, ruffling my hair the way he would a dog’s. ‘But we can’t pass up this chance to move. This flat is a cupboard, we have no choice. You know that.’

  ‘I know.’ I rubbed my eyes.

  ‘Come on in,’ Mum said. ‘I’ll get supper on the table.’

  I followed them back into the flat. ‘It’s just … I’ve been working hard to get Coach to pick me. I’ve been slaving away …’

  ‘I know, darling.’ Dad began to lay the table for dinner.

  Mum lit the stove and measured some rice into a pot, sighing. ‘Ah well. It was inevitable really, wasn’t it?’

  I stiffened. ‘What do you mean, inevitable?’

  ‘Oh, you know, you’re not exactly basketball-player material.’

  I stared at her.

  ‘Mum, I made point guard. It’s not about height, it’s about skill.’

  ‘Mary Ann,’ Dad said urgently, but Mum ignored him.

  ‘I know, I know. Skill. But you’ve also got to be tall. Basketball players have to be TALL.’

  ‘Mary Ann!’ Dad groaned.

  ‘What?’ Mum looked up from the stove. ‘I’m just saying.’

  ‘MUM, they made me POINT GUARD!’ I banged my fists on the table, making all the plates jangle.

  ‘ANDI!’

  Mum glared at me like I was the annoying one.

  ‘Andi, sweetheart, we’re so sorry you had to leave the team,’ Dad said hurriedly. ‘Mum’s just—’

  ‘I’m just telling the truth!’ she whirled furiously at him.

  Dad ignored her outburst. ‘Mum’s just brainstorming.’

  ‘Yeah. Right.’ I scowled at them. ‘It’s not about height, Mum. I’m good at basketball … which you would know if you ever came to see me play.’

  Mum didn’t reply, but she glowered at Dad like it was all his fault.

  I walked out. Which is hard in a flat as small as ours. It was only one small step into the sitting room. At least there was a door, which I tried to slam, but it wouldn’t even close properly because Dad’s bedroom slippers were in the way. I kicked them into the kitchen and the door thudded shut. As if on cue, Mum and Dad’s voices rose in sharp argument.

  They had no idea how important basketball was to me. Mum never came to any of my games. Dad came once or twice but neither of them was ever around enough to see if I was any good or totally rank. And now I had to give it up. Saint Simeon’s website mentioned football, hockey, netball … but not basketball.

  The new house was just round the corner from the Northern Royal Hospital, where both Mum and Dad worked as casualty nurses. They were always working. Night shifts and twelve-hour shifts and this shift and that shift.

  We weren’t just moving so we could have more room. We were moving so they could do even MORE shifts.

  I felt a twinge. I couldn’t even resent that fact without a pinch of guilt. I mean, they were working all hours saving lives! I was like Lois Lane wanting a snog when Superman had to go off and save the world. It was so unfair. Why was it me who had to feel guilty all the time?

  Well.

  To be honest, I knew that I was the lucky one.

  I was the one who got to live with them … instead of being on the other side of the world like poor Bernardo, waiting for ever and ever for the Home Office to let him come to England.

  I mean, sixteen years he’s been waiting!

  I feel guilty about that too.

  There were photos of Bernardo on the mantelpiece.

  Bernardo as a baby with spiky black hair.

  Bernardo on Mum’s lap.

  Bernardo with toddler me, that one year Mum took me to the Philippines.

  And Bernardo at fourteen, all bad teeth, bad skin and big head, sitting in a restaurant with Mum.

  He looked like any regular kid on a day out with his mother. Except of course he only got to see Mum every two years.

  Which has always made me feel extra, extra guilty.

  And next to the Bernardo pictures was a picture of the other Bernardo.

  He was a solemn-looking man with a short haircut and Chinese eyes. Ever since I can remember, his picture has been on the mantelpiece. Which is kind of creepy, because of course Mum isn’t married to him any more.

  The other Bernardo belonged to Mum’s other life, a long, long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. Well, in the Philippines anyway. He was Bernardo’s dad.

  Mum and Dad’s wedding picture stood off to the right and a little to the back behind a ceramic vase.

  Dad didn’t seem to mind having the picture up there. He acted like it was the most natural thing in the world for his wife’s ex-husband to take centre stage on the mantelpiece.

  Yeugh.

  Apparently soon after little Bernardo was born, both Mum and Bernardo Senior fell ill with dengue fever. That’s one of the diseases you can get by being bitten by a mosquito, of which there are plenty in the Philippines, so Mum says.

  Mum was so ill, her sister Sofia had to look after baby Bernardo while she was taken away to hospital.

  She woke up many days later and her doctor told her, ‘The good news is you are now immune to the dengue mosquito that infected you. The bad news is there are four strains of dengue fever. One down and three to go.’

  Which would have been a hilarious thing to say had it not been for the fact that, unlike Mum, the husband named Bernardo had not woken up from the fever.

  He was dead.

  Mum said it was the worst time in her life.

  She was ill, bereaved, with a tiny baby to look after.

  And she was broke.

  She had to borrow gazillions to pay the hospital bills. Nurses in the Philippines don’t earn gazillions and she owed gazillions. It was dire.

  One night she saw a comet flashing through the sky and she made a wish. She wished she could earn enough money to pay back the debt.

  The very next day the job in England came up.

  Her wish had come true.

  She left baby Bernardo with Auntie, thinking that she could send for him when the time was right. But it never happened.

  Then of course she married Dad and had me.

  She’s been trying to bring Bernardo over to England for as long as I remember. But it’s been a mission. Years of paperwork and overseas phone calls (most of which seemed to consist of Mum going, ‘Hello? Hello? Can you hear me now, Sofia?’). Mum will bore anyone willing to listen with the saga of getting Bernardo’s immigration papers.

  So though her wish came true, it took Bernardo away from her.

  Maybe that’s the way wishes work.

  I wished for point guard.

  Mum wished for a house.

  We both got our wishes. But one good thing deleted the other, like a finger falling on the wrong computer key.

  Oops.

  5

  Bernardo

  It was almost midnight.

  The chirping of crickets and the buzz of snoring from upstairs combined into the usual night chorus.

  I sat at the kitchen table, postcard and pen in hand, staring at Mum’s photograph on the wall. It had been hanging there for so long the red of the London bus had been bleached to pink. I was racking my brains for something more intelligent to write than just wish you were here, even though that’s all I ever wanted to write because it was true.

  I wished she was here. And Uncle William. And Amandolina.

  Actually, I wished I was there more than I wished they were here. When Ma sent photos from London, Auntie often sniffed and said London looked too grand, too cold, too hurried, too posh. But I didn’t care. And it wasn’t that San Andres was too rough, too hot, too slow or too tired either. Home is wh
erever Ma is, and home was where I wanted to be.

  Tap tap.

  Who was that tapping at the window? It was far too late, even for Jabby. But then Jabby was perfectly capable of sneaking out at night on some crazy impulse. I cast a sidewards glance at the window and started.

  It was wide open; the mosquito screens that Auntie usually kept fastened gaped outwards into the black night.

  ‘Psst. Giant Boy!’ The whisper wafted in like a slight breeze.

  The voice was unmistakable. Mad Nena! What was she up to? I bowed my head, fixing my eyes on the postcard as if I hadn’t heard, hoping she would go away.

  ‘Psst. I know you can hear me.’

  The casement suddenly swung hard against a nearby table. Goose pimples pricked the back of my neck.

  ‘So. Can you hear me now?’

  I stood up.

  In the shadows beyond the windowsill, Mad Nena’s head was a dark lump; the peering eyes watched me greedily, the way they watched me every day from around street corners and behind trees, following my every move.

  I hurried over, glancing up the stairs. Should I call for Uncle and Auntie? But then what would Mad Nena tell them? She stood in the yellow square of light cast by my window, her bony arms hugging herself tight.

  I cleared my throat. ‘Sister Nena … ma’am … my auntie will not …’

  ‘You know as well as I do that she’s gone to bed. Hero.’

  I swallowed. My hands were suddenly cold, like I’d plunged them into a bucket of ice.

  ‘Please don’t call me that.’

  ‘Hero? But that’s what you are. Bernardo, who’s going to save our town from calamity.’

  ‘Please don’t.’

  ‘Do you feel guilty, Giant Boy? Guilty about Gabriela? Guilty for what you did to me?’

  ‘Look, Sister, I’m sorry,’ I mumbled. ‘I’m sorry for everything.’ I wished now that Auntie would suddenly appear. Nena, what are you doing? she would say. Shoo! Shoo!

  I could easily have called for Auntie over my shoulder.

  But I didn’t.

  It was after Gabriela died that Nena started wandering the streets. She wore the same clothes until they melted into rags. At the oddest times, and for no obvious reason, she would yell and weep. Then she would begin to sing her strange, wordless songs. Her most treasured possession was a laminated card that someone had given her at Gabriela’s funeral. She wore it around her neck on a red ribbon. It had Saint Gertrude’s prayer on it, the one that released a thousand souls from Purgatory every time it was prayed.