Cool Bananas (5 page)

T
he next day, Grandpa suggested a walk.

Claudia nodded.

‘I’ll ask Mrs Chang if she wants us to take Peter.’

She wondered who Peter was. Mrs Chang’s grandson? Her dog?

While Grandpa raced next door, Claudia changed her clothes. She put on lip gloss and studied her reflection.
No, I need different earrings.
Carefully, she swapped her gold studs for a small
pair of silver sleepers.

One final tweak of her blonde hair and Claudia felt ready.

‘You’ve had enough time to try on everything in your wardrobe,’ called Grandpa from the front door. ‘Ready?’

Claudia spun round.
Well, at least I don’t look like someone’s lunch after they’ve been on a sideshow ride.

Grandpa wore stripes with spots. Then spots with other spots of different colours. Everything he wore was really bright. Hadn’t he heard of brown or grey?

She walked into the lounge room. ‘What’s that?’

‘That is Peter,’ said Grandpa. ‘Say hello.’

He stood in the doorway holding a little birdcage. Grandpa waved the cage from side to side. The bird gripped its perch.

‘You’re taking a
bird
for a walk?’

‘No.’ Grandpa shook his head.
‘We’re
taking a bird for a walk.’

Claudia stared at him.
He’s not joking.

‘I’m not walking along the beach with a bird in a cage,’ she said. ‘We’ll look silly.’

Grandpa snorted. ‘We’d look sillier if we took him out and put a lead on him. He wouldn’t be able to keep up.’

She didn’t know what to say.

‘Everyone deserves to get out and breathe fresh air. Anyway, Mrs Chang is from China. Over there, they eat their dogs and walk their birds. Or at least, they used to.’

She thought about Grandpa diving into the pool, about his licking his false teeth at the table and how he didn’t mind taking a bird for a walk.

‘Are you scared of
anything?’
asked Claudia.

He paused. ‘Everyone is scared of something.’

She slipped on her shoulder bag. ‘What are you scared of then?’

‘I’m scared of people asking me what I’m scared of.’

‘You
are
not.’ She stepped outside and Grandpa closed the door. ‘What’s the real answer?’

‘I have althaiophobia.’

It was a big word. Grandpa looked serious. It sounded like a horrible disease.

She put one hand on his forearm. ‘What’s altha…what’s that mean?’ ‘A fear of marshmallows.’

B
efore Tahlia came out to play, Claudia paddled in the wading pool, then the spa.

Grandpa tried to help. ‘When you put your face in the water, breathe out lightly through your nose, then you won’t get water up there.’

That was a good hint. She hated it when water crept up her nose. It headed straight for her brain.

She tried it.

Excitement shot through her.
I did it! I put my face under the water.

Claudia flopped and bobbed around like a cork. She could only submerge her head for a few seconds before panic set in. Yet it was more than she ever thought she could do.

Grandpa, bright in an orange shirt with green swirls, knelt beside the pool. ‘Take a few deep breaths before you take one for diving under the water…no, not from your chest. From your stomach.’

‘How do you breathe from your stomach?’ ‘Put your hands on your tummy and, when you breathe, try to make them rise up.’

Claudia tried that.
Yes, my fingers are moving
.

Tahlia arrived with her mother.

Wow, look at that,
thought Claudia.

Tahlia’s mother had dark hair, fluffed so high that she’d have to watch out for low ceiling fans. She could get stuck on one. Her gold jewellery glinted in the sun as she waved her hands.

Grandpa moved quickly to sit beside her.

The girls played in the pool for a long time. Finally, Tahlia said, ‘You look like a prune, yeah?’

Claudia checked out her hands. Her skin was wrinkled from the water. She knew her hair would be ratty. Her lip gloss had washed off hours ago. Yet she’d had more fun in the last week than she’d had in the last year.

‘Lunch!’ bellowed Grandpa. ‘I’m hungry enough to eat the bottom out of a low-flying duck.’

Claudia rolled her eyes.

C
laudia and Grandpa sat on the balcony, their feet propped up on the railing.

It was late. Headlights and streetlights below them lit up the night sky. On the beach, waves scraped the sand. White caps flashed in the darkness.

She licked her strawberry ice-cream cone. The ice-cream had melted onto her fingers and made them sticky.

Grandpa crunched the bottom of his cone.

Then he sucked chocolate ice-cream through the hole. ‘Ah…tastes better like that.’

Claudia nodded.

‘Here, have a tissue.’ Grandpa fumbled in his pocket. A piece of paper fell onto the balcony. It had writing on it.

‘Ooops, better not lose that.’ He scooped it up. ‘Tahlia’s mother gave me her phone number.’

No way.
Claudia looked over at Grandpa,
ready to argue that it wasn’t true. Then changed her mind.

‘Woman’s a chronic giggler. And a bit slow. She’s the kind of person who’d trip over a cordless phone. But she likes burgers.’

Grandpa was cheeky. But people said that about her sometimes.

The two weeks of her holiday were passing quickly. She couldn’t really say she could swim. Not properly. But she could put her face underwater and splash her arms. She had never done that before.

Grandpa had guessed her secret. And she didn’t mind. But now she wanted to know his. ‘Grandpa, why haven’t I seen you before?’

‘Well…’ Grandpa shifted in his chair. ‘Your mother was busy proving she was a big grown-up and could do things by herself. And I was trying to show that I didn’t need anyone. I thought
she
should phone
me.
She probably thought
I
should ring
her.
In the end we both waited too long. It was too hard to pick up the
phone. ‘

Claudia nodded but didn’t interrupt. If she did, he might stop talking.

Grandpa wiped his mouth on his sleeve. ‘Every time I thought about phoning or visiting, I got this fluttery feeling in my stomach. Then it would go into tight knots. It was easier not to do anything. Not to get that feeling.’

Surprised, she lowered her ice-cream cone. ‘I get that too. When I’m nervous, my stomach goes all…’ She wiggled her fingers to show how it felt.

‘How’s that?’ Grandpa chuckled. ‘We must be related.’

She laughed with him.

‘So that thing I said about being scared of marshmallows? That was a joke. I am scared of something though.’

‘What?’ asked Claudia.

‘I’m scared of your mother.’