by Joanna Glen
‘There are crocodiles in the lake!’ said Gloria. ‘You must be mad!’
‘Not in the part where I go,’ I said.
‘We’ll all get bilharzia,’ said Douce.
‘Or leeches on our legs,’ said Pierre.
‘How about if we come and watch you?’ said Gloria. ‘Come on, Wilfred, you can come too.’
Wilfred stared back at her, with no words.
‘Pierre?’
‘Maybe,’ he said, his brow creased up as if he had a war going on inside him, as usual.
‘Zion?’
‘If Parfait’s going, I’m going.’
It was quite a walk down the hill, but the lake was shimmering, and there were butterflies about, and we almost felt like a family again, walking along together in a line in the sunshine.
Gloria and Douce linked arms, but they didn’t sing together like they used to; Wilfred ambled along with the rope still round his ankle; Zion was wearing the red-and-white nylon football top that he liked to believe had once belonged to David Beckham; and Pierre walked some distance behind.
‘This is what it would be like if we walked to Spain,’ I said to them. ‘Except when we arrived, we’d be swimming in the turquoise sea. In the actual Atlantic Ocean. And we’d be getting out onto the yellow sandy beach and having a picnic together. Possibly with a bottle of Spanish wine.’
‘I’m not sure we’d make it all that way up Africa,’ said Douce. ‘Or I’m not sure I would.’
‘We could go a little at a time,’ I said. ‘I’d make sure you all had time to rest, I promise you. And if you were tired, we’d wait a day before moving on.’
‘We don’t need to decide now,’ said Gloria.
‘We have to go,’ said Zion with that determined look on his face. ‘I can’t believe you don’t want to. We can go to Europe and build a new life, with our own house on the beach, all of us together. And we can drink Spanish wine and go to festivals together. What on earth is stopping you? I just don’t understand.’
‘We don’t know what Europe’s like,’ said Douce quietly. ‘It could be worse than here.’
‘Nothing could be worse than here,’ said Zion. ‘And I’m going with Parfait for sure. If you don’t want to, don’t bother.’
‘It’s such a long journey,’ said Gloria.
‘God gave us legs,’ said Zion. ‘What do you suppose they’re for? Except walking.’
I put my arm around Zion and squeezed him.
‘Give them time, Little Bro,’ I said.
‘I’m serious,’ he said. ‘If I could choose, we’d set out for Spain tomorrow. I want us to be happy again.’
Augusta
I first heard the word España when Diego moved into Willow Crescent. If somebody had told me there was a word for a country which sounded as light and airy and beautiful as this, I might never have chosen Burundi.
I thought (obviously) that the country which joined on to France had the name of Spain, which rhymes with pain and plain and rain.
We’d ventured as far as France on our August holidays, which we documented in sticky photo albums, covered by cellophane, annotated by my mother and arranged in date order.
People loved to comment on the differences between Julia and me, never looking through the albums without saying which one of us was taller, smaller, thinner, fatter, paler, darker.
This is what happens with twins.
I quickly became the clever one – and Julia was obliged to oppose me. Julia quickly became the pretty one – and you see where I am going with this. And, in seasons, being objective, I was not an attractive child.
There I was, knobbly-kneed and squinting on the beach in Benodet, twenty kilometres from Quimper, where we were staying, and where my mother bought the lasagne dish.
There I was in Wales, skinny and tall, with slightly lank hair.
It rained a lot on that holiday, but we swam in the pool anyway. My father stood under an umbrella with our towels over his arm, and my mother stood next to him, holding my glasses and intercepting me as I climbed out, so that I didn’t bump into anything. My grandmother sat in the pool café, storing up criticisms of our fellow guests to share with us later.
‘Far too much squinting at books,’ said my mother, hooking the spectacle arms around my damp ears, then trying to pat me on my upper arm. I wriggled from her touch. I didn’t like my parents to touch me, and because I wriggled, they gave up trying and lavished their touch on Julia.
In our tiny pinewood bedroom, I read Julia poems, which she tolerated, and excerpts from a book called An Instant in the Wind which I’d found on my grandmother’s shelves. I’d marked the sex scenes between the white woman and her black slave with shop receipts so I could read them aloud to her in bed.
My mother followed us around the damp log cabin camp, ‘keeping an eye’ because Amanda Dowler went missing on her way home from school and her body was found in the River Thames. Then, would you believe it? On the fourth day of the holiday, two girls called Holly and Jessica went missing in a place called Soham. Julia and I prayed so hard that they would be found safe and well. But they weren’t. Their plight sent my mother nearly over the edge, and she started saying that she didn’t want us to walk to school any more. We would be kidnapped and sold to traffickers and turned into prostitutes.
‘Ha ha ha,’ said my grandmother.
Parfait
The soldiers, when they felt like it, broke into our hut and broke my sisters’ bodies as if they were clay jars with nothing inside them.
Although we were broken, I thought, we would fly away to Spain, and I pictured us all up above the clouds like grey-crowned cranes, or angels, with white-feathered wings. Oh yes, please send angels to swoop down and rescue Douce and Gloria, right now this minute, I prayed.
But failing that, and in the absence of angels, I would take them to Spain where no man could touch them, and I’d build them all a little white stone house down by the water, and I’d tie each one of them a hammock between two palm trees, and they could lie there, swinging, and I’d go fishing in the blue sea, and when I came home, we’d all sit around the fire barbecuing fish and reading Spanish poetry.
Augusta
My mother and father wanted Julia and me to go on with French. But for the first year ever in our new school, Hedley Heights, we could choose Spanish in Year 9, or, if you were in the top set, you could do French and Spanish together.
Julia was not in the top set, and she chose to carry on with French. She didn’t really want to because she was in love with Diego at number 13, as I was too, but she did French (which she was awful at) because she always liked to do what my parents wanted.
‘It hurts me when they look disappointed,’ she said.
‘They’re manipulating you,’ I said.
If you wanted, as an extra, at Hedley Heights, you could also do Latin at lunchtimes. I put my name down in the first week of Year 7, which meant I would miss Cookery Club, one of its most significant attractions. In the beginning. Before I loved everything else about it.
My mother had signed us both up for Cookery Club, cooking being her thing. I’d spotted that some people assumed cooking would be my thing, by dint of me being a girl, and the best way, it seemed, to destroy that assumption would be never to learn to cook. Either in Cookery Club or in the many invitations made to me by my mother in the kitchen at number 1.
‘Oh, Augusta,’ said my mother. ‘What good will Latin be to you later on?’
‘Perhaps I will be a professor at Cambridge University,’ I said.
‘Professors at Cambridge University still need to cook,’ said my mother.
Which was a perfect example of the knack she had of entirely missing the point.
‘I don’t know what you’re planning to do with all these words you’re so keen on,’ said my mother.
‘You wait and see,’ I said.
Here I was, alone in Spanish, in Year 9, with España dancing on the air around my head, light as a fairy-spr
ite, like a butterfly, like the feeling of spring.
Before I could stop myself, I put up my hand and asked the teacher what the word was for sprite in Spanish. Because I couldn’t stop myself. And I didn’t want to know how to say I am called Augusta, which was clearly where we were heading.
‘Fairy or sprite – hada,’ said the teacher, but his mouth was all soft like a bean bag when he said it. I wondered if I could do that with my own mouth, soften the d to the point of collapse.
‘Or duende, I suppose,’ said the teacher, ‘which actually means spirit, except it’s untranslatable.’
Untranslatable, my ears pricked up – what a lovely, complicated thought. I saved it away for later, hoping that I was untranslatable, myself.
‘A book has just come out called Duende,’ said the teacher. ‘A book by Jason Webster – you may want to read it.’
Duende – I tried the word out on my tongue, imitating the teacher.
‘Duende,’ said the teacher, ‘is that …’
He hesitated.
‘That …’
We stared at him.
‘That moment of ecstasy.’
He stopped.
I thought of how much I wanted to find it, that thing I couldn’t find, whatever it was.
Parfait
I knew where to find it, the thing I couldn’t find. It was up there, to the north – I just knew it was.
I headed up the hill to see Víctor, who was out in the vegetable garden, digging. Because I’d decided.
‘We have a Hutu president again, Parfait,’ he said. ‘They really are sharing power – and maybe peace is in sight!’
I watched him pull the big flappy leaves off a broccoli stalk, putting them in one basket, the little tree-like head in the other, and I thought, I’m not interested in the new president.
The chickens went on clucking about in the mud, beside the pen, and Víctor’s band of blind children were in the yard, swinging their white sticks, chanting: ‘Left foot out, stick to the right, right foot out, stick to the left.’
‘I’ve made up my mind, Víctor,’ I said. ‘I’m going to travel to your country and set up home there.’
‘Are you now?’ said Víctor, kneeling back with his buttocks resting on his heels, winking at me.
‘What’s the point of staying here?’ I said.
‘Well, it sounds a great plan, Parfait,’ said Víctor. ‘But it might be a bit ambitious for your first trip. After all, Spain is eight thousand kilometres away.’
‘We can go one step at a time,’ I said, furious at Víctor’s patronising tone, at not being taken seriously, ‘and it doesn’t matter how long it takes. There’s nothing to keep us here.’
‘You do know that there’s a sea between Africa and Spain?’ said Víctor, as if I was an idiot.
‘But it’s a very small sea,’ I said, not smiling. ‘I’ve looked on the map in my atlas, and it’s more like a river. We can cross by boat from Tangier. Have you ever been to Tangier?’
‘As a matter of fact, I have,’ said Víctor.
‘When did you go?’
‘Before I came here, at the start of my little road trip through Africa.’
‘What did you do there?’
‘I stayed with my friend – he’s a priest and he lives in the port …’
Víctor stopped talking, and he closed his eyes for a second.
‘But it can be quite dangerous at night, Parfait, thugs about, you wouldn’t want to be out late, or there at all on your own, to be frank—’
‘So your friend’s still there?’ I said.
‘I believe so,’ he said.
‘You believe or you know?’ I said, because I could see what he was up to, trying to put me off.
Víctor fiddled with the broccoli leaves.
‘Don’t say you’re not sure because you want to stop me going,’ I said. ‘I feel like your friend would be willing to help us, wouldn’t he? If I say I know you.’
Víctor creased up his eyes.
‘Maybe I just don’t want to lose you,’ said Víctor. ‘After all, I’ve only just got you helping up here, driving the van for me …’
His voice petered out.
‘You will give me his name and number, Víctor, won’t you?’ I said. ‘It feels like the whole plan is coming together.’
‘Well,’ said Víctor, ‘maybe our first job is to teach you Spanish. You’ve got English under your belt already …’
‘That was my father,’ I said. ‘And the Baptists …’
‘And Spanish is pretty similar to French …’ said Víctor.
‘So can we start now?’ I said.
‘We’ll start with the verbs,’ said Víctor.
‘Pa said I learnt quickly,’ I said. ‘He said I was like a sponge.’
This was true – if I set my mind to it, I could keep going for hours, and if I kept on repeating things, they seemed to stick.
The chickens went on clucking, and Víctor went on gardening, and the blind children went on swinging their sticks in the yard, and I sat under a eucalyptus tree, with hope in my heart, saying, ‘Hablo, hablas, habla, hablamos, habláis, hablan.’
Augusta
Mr Sánchez gathered himself together.
‘In a performance of flamenco, duende happens when all the conditions are right – the guitar, the voice and the dance somehow melt into the clapping of the audience and the heat of the night and, sometimes for a moment, like a firework almost, except better, there is an intoxicating energy, and the atmosphere changes. And somebody near you might very quietly, under cover of dark, from inside the spell, murmur Olé.’
I thought duende had possibly come through the grey walls of the classroom, or under the door. The atmosphere had changed, and everyone was dead silent. We sat staring at Mr Sánchez as if we were in a trance.
The silence drained away, and the tiniest whisper of noise came back, like butterflies’ wings.
I put up my hand.
‘And the word for butterfly?’
But my voice had gone funny.
All I could think about was duende.
‘Butterfly – mariposa,’ said Mr Sánchez.
‘Oh,’ I said. ‘Thank you.’
Because if you say mariposa – try it – you will find that a butterfly has flown out of your mouth.
‘Let’s all say it,’ said Mr Sánchez.
Mariposa mariposa mariposa.
Butterflies flew around the classroom like thrown confetti.
‘What’s the Spanish for spring?’ I said.
‘Spring?’ said Mr Sánchez. ‘Primavera.’
Primavera primavera primavera.
I liked making up Latin sentences, and in fact I was trying to write some of my diary in Latin. I didn’t tell anyone in the family as they all thought I was mad enough already.
Primavera.
I could hear Latin underneath the word.
Primum – first.
Verum – truth.
I put up my hand.
‘Mr Sánchez,’ I said. ‘The word for spring sounds like first truth.’
Around me people got that expression they always got around me.
But Mr Sánchez nodded.
His face looked so thoughtful and sad and I wondered why.
‘Spring,’ he said, with his eyes as doleful as that sad cow the Hendersons kept in their field for no reason. ‘Spring – the first truth. Yes, yes, probably.’
Again, the classroom went silent.
As if duende had come back.
Mr Sánchez was the only teacher I’d ever had who could make silence out of his own silence. Most teachers had to wave their arms around and shout and make threats.
‘Spring,’ he said again. ‘The first truth.’
It seemed impossible but the bell went.
Mr Sánchez jolted.
I later found out that he’d lost his wife, who was called Leonor like the wife of the Spanish poet, Antonio Machado. She’d died in the spring. As she lay bal
d and fading to nothing in the English hospice, the apple blossom fell past her window and rotted in the grass.
‘We must have spent a long time handing all the books out at the beginning,’ said Mr Sánchez. ‘I can’t think where the time went.’
‘Where it always goes, Mr Sánchez,’ I said.
He laughed.
Then he stopped and looked as if he was about to cry.
‘So where is all that time, Augusta?’ he said.
‘Perhaps we’ll find it in heaven,’ I said, which was a surprising thing to say, and came out of my mouth without me thinking about it.
‘Or would it be hell?’ said Mr Sánchez. ‘If you found the past, all piled up by the side of the road. All the things you’d ever said. All the things you’d ever thought. All the things you’d ever done.’
That was one of those questions that Mr Sánchez asked that made you stop dead, as if the question had shot you through the heart.
As we all stood up to leave our first ever Spanish lesson, Mr Sánchez said, ‘Of course, Spanish is the language of Miguel de Cervantes, Federico García Lorca, Gabriel García Márquez, Isabel Allende, not to mention Picasso, Dalí and Velázquez.’
The sounds of their names!
That’s my heaven.
All of them sitting together under an eternal palm tree discussing important things forever, in gorgeous Spanish, like gunfire and joy mixed up together.
We all filed out of the room, but I stopped and said, ‘Thank you so much, Mr Sánchez. That was the best lesson I’ve ever had – and please may I borrow your book on Duende?’
He nodded and stroked his beard as if he had just had a great shock, and all I could think of was how desperately I had to get to Spain.
To España.
Parfait
I told Víctor I was planning to be a teacher or a doctor, an artist or a poet once I made it to Spain.
‘Well let’s start with the art,’ he said. ‘I can help you with the art.’
He went and got an old easel and a case of mucky paints and sketching pencils from a store cupboard out at the back of his little house.
