Papa Georgio by Annie Murray

exasperating!
    ‘And where,’ Brenda demanded, looking round with hands on hips, ‘are we going to get any water?’
    ‘I’ll find some!’ Grandpa picked up the white plastic water carrier and strode off. He didn’t come back for half and hour. Feeling a bit sorry for Brenda I stayed in to help her peel potatoes while she opened two tins of stew.
    ‘I don’t know why,’ she said, with a vicious turn of the tin opener as if she’d like to wring someone’s neck. ‘He has to take us to these squalid fields in the middle of nowhere. It’s not as if Italy doesn’t have nice little places buy the sea with a bit of life going on in them. Look at this!’ She pointed indignantly out of the window. ‘We might as well be in Essex!’
    I thought the field was quite nice, but it was true, Grandpa did have a talent for stopping us in some rum places – the big petrol station that had had the oil leak and the picnic spot with the ants nest.
    ‘Never mind,’ I told her. ‘I expect we’ll be somewhere nice tomorrow.’
    ‘Here we are, my little dears!’ Grandpa arrived, clumping in with a full water carrier and plonking it triumphantly on the table. ‘You’ll need to boil it,’ he added cheerily. ‘But there you go. Now – what I need is a Damned Good …’
    ‘ Boil it?’ Brenda interrupted, tip-toeing towards the water carrier as if it was a booby trap that might explode in her face. She unscrewed the cap. ‘Where did you get it from?’
    Grandpa was pouring himself a generous glass of vino as a reward for all his efforts.
    ‘There don’t seem to be any working taps,’ he said, after a generous swig of wine. ‘But over the back there I found the swimming pool. It’s just rainwater dear – perfectly all right for our needs.’
    ‘But George – ‘Brenda peered into the container, one eye shut. ‘There are things swimming about in it !’
    I pressed my lips together, trying not to laugh. Grandpa looked round innocently.
    ‘Oh, boiling will kill off anything harmful, my Little Dear. Just pass me the pan and I’ll get it going.’
    A day later, Brenda was feeling very poorly. We had to stop and find another camp so that she could lie down.
    ‘It was that water,’ she groaned. ‘I knew it! I expect you’re feeling terrible too aren’t you Janey?’
    I was almost ashamed to admit that I felt absolutely fine and dandy. Grandpa looked full of beans as well. Poor Brenda was white-faced and all night she’d been sick and hurrying to the toilet.
    I felt sorry for her, and fetched her bottles of mineral water and wiped her forehead with a damp flannel. Brenda gave me weak little smiles, but she slept most of the time, too ill to put on her makeup. Her hair had gone limp, the curls fallen out of it. Without her black batwing glasses she looked like someone much softer and sweeter who I’d never seen before. I felt almost like kissing her cheek, but I didn’t in case she woke up and asked me what on earth I was doing.
    ‘Poor little dear,’ Grandpa said. ‘We must look after you.’
    He was very loving and sweet with her and sat on the bed stroking her head so that Brenda stopped complaining about the water with things swimming in it because she felt loved and that was more important.
    By the next day she was sitting up with her glasses on and able to eat a boiled egg and drink black tea. Grandpa still didn’t move us along, despite the great hurry which seemed to be driving him.
    ‘We need you feeling nice and strong,’ he told Brenda.
    Then, he wandered off into the nearest town and came back with a happy smile and a carved wooden crucifix more than three feet high. Jesus was a dull bronze.
    ‘Beautiful, isn’t it?’ he said, all bubbly.
    Brenda sighed, too weak for more thorough indignation. ‘And where exactly d’you think you’re going to put that?’
    ‘Don’t you worry,’ Grandpa said. ‘I’ll think of something.’
    That afternoon Brenda and I packed the front bed away at last and