The day that Frank and Harry arrived three years ago, Peter turned up too. He sat on the meadow fence and watched Frank introducing me to Harry, and then all Peter did was come over and ask Frank if he could stroke Harry too.
Frank said what he’d already just said to me when I’d asked the exact same question. “You need to give Harry a bit of time to get used to you first.” I looked at Peter’s big brown eyes, and when Frank said, “He doesn’t know yet if you’re going to be kind to him,” I murmured along with Frank what I knew he was going to say next: “even though I do.”
I had one more day with Peter before I lost him to boarding school and would have to wait ages for him to be on holiday again. I ran across the meadow and Harry trotted alongside me until I climbed through the hole in the fence, into the vineyard, and raced on to Peter’s grandparents’ house, turning back to see Harry with his chin up on the top rung, his ears pointing high, watching me go.
“See you later, Harry!”
That donkey would always think he was coming with you.
Peter was dressed smart, as always. Even if we were going crawling through vineyards or driving Monsieur Vilaro’s rusty old tractor he looked kind of pressed and tidy and new. I liked my clothes, they made me feel comfortably like me, but I always got the feeling when I was next to Peter that actually my clothes were scruffy, not casual.
Peter was packing a towel into a bag.
“Are you going swimming? We never swim until July. The water’s too cold,” I said. “And anyway I haven’t brought a towel.”
“I’m going to swim; you can watch. If you change your mind then you can share my towel.”
“I thought we were going to make the swing ready for when you come back?”
“We are,” he said, winking. “Ciao, Nanu,” (which means Bye, Nanny) he called back as I followed him outside. Peter’s grandparents were Italian and although they’d lived here in France for over fifty years, they still didn’t speak much French or English, unlike Peter.
Outside, Peter said, all kind of secretive, “Today’s the day.”
“The day for what?”
“Jumping off the waterfall.”
“You say that every year.”
“I mean it this time.”
“What, from the top? You’ve always said it’s too high.”
“But I’m taller than I was before.”
I looked at the top of his head. With my hand, I measured his height against me, pressing his thick wavy hair down in case that was what was making him look taller, but he’d had his hair cut short ready for school, so it wasn’t that.
“For the first time ever, you are actually just a teeny, weeny bit taller than me,” I said, which made him grin. “But I’m not doing it.”
As we walked we discussed the good and bad things about jumping off waterfalls, asking each other if we’d heard of Angel Falls and Victoria Falls, Peter agreeing in the end that he would swim to the bottom first to check if there were any rocks under the water.
There was a shortcut across the Vilaros’ field, although we weren’t supposed to use it, and when we got near the gate the Vilaros’ guard dog, Bruno, blocked our way. Bruno usually just paced around the field, guarding against… well, I had no idea what, but this time he barked and barked at us in that way that made you not want to go any further.
Bruno’s chops dripped drool with the effort of the big noise he was making and Peter turned and walked back down the lane (well, kind of ran actually), probably expecting me to be right behind him as usual. Bruno was a big dog, not a house dog, with battle-tatty ears and grey chops, and I’d never taken much notice of him before, except when I had to avoid him on the way to school, but there was something about him that day that I couldn’t ignore.
“All right, Bruno, we’re not going across the field,” I said.
He kept barking, to tell me he was on patrol and wouldn’t be letting us past.
“Hope, come on! We can go through the vineyards instead,” Peter called.
All the dogs in the village were crazy with something that day and although Bruno was usually barky and grumpy, he seemed more upset than usual.
“Peter, I think something’s wrong.”
“Come away. Bruno doesn’t look very happy about us being here.”
“He’s never bitten us before.”
“That doesn’t mean he won’t today.”
“Peter, wait. I can’t just leave him on his own like this.”
In my pocket were some sherbet lemons. I thought if I gave Bruno something sweet it might make him stop barking and howling like that. I threw one at him and he snatched it up and spat it out again, probably because when you think about it lemons aren’t that sweet at all. He kept barking, looking at Peter and me, then staring up at the mountain.
“Look, Peter. Bruno isn’t even barking at us. He’s barking at the snow.”
Peter peeked out from behind the hedge at the bottom of the lane, his eyes wide when he realised I wasn’t with him, madly waving me to come.
“Bruno?” I said. “Are you talking about the mountain?”
Bruno watched Peter creeping back up the lane on tiptoes, all hunched up and clinging to the hedge, whispering, “Hope! Please come!”
“Peter, you’re being silly,” I said, “Bruno isn’t going to hurt us. I think he might even be trying to talk to Canigou, and he has to bark big and loud like that so it can hear.”
Peter rolled his eyes at me, which he does a lot, and said, “Now who’s being silly? Let’s go!”
By now Peter had crept back to where I was. He grabbed my hand and then I was running with him down the lane in that way, you know, when you feel like you’re not going to stop and it makes you excited and scared at the same time, and you scream and laugh together, and it felt good so I didn’t look back at that big old barky dog.
Peter and I climbed over the vineyard fence and through the hole in the hedge, a hole we’d made for avoiding Bruno before. We ran up the long path of stony earth between the vines, turned right to go through the next vineyard, and then across the track behind the Vilaros’ field. Bruno had raced through the field up to the wall and was still barking, his paws up on the wall, and then suddenly he stopped. Everything went silent. After all that noise, it made me look up instead of where my feet had to go.
“Peter!” I pointed, because I didn’t know how to say what I was seeing, although what I felt like saying was: The mountain answered Bruno.
It seemed to me like Canigou was a giant that had been asleep for a long time, breathing slowly, very slowly. And then maybe what happened was that the cold of the new snow was too heavy, too wintry and unexpected, and the mountain had to shift a
