The Other Half of Augusta Hope

by Joanna Glen

  Next stop, the hoop-la stall, and it turned out that, should hoop-la ever become an Olympic sport, I would win gold, no problem at all.

  I got to Graham Cook at the pond in Willow Crescent, with seven plastic bags of goldfish making grooves in the skin of my arms, and I tried to act like we were both pouring the fish into the pond, but actually Graham’s hands were twisted and didn’t manage to do things like that.

  Julia had meanwhile been instructed to distract my mother with plausible stories about me meeting Ali and going on the dodgems.

  When Graham saw the goldfish with the longest silkiest tail come swimming up to the surface, he started making cooing noises like a dove.

  Next thing we knew, my mother and Julia were up on the roundabout panting and my mother was saying, in her furious voice, ‘I’ve never been more worried in my life.’

  The Hedley Green Fair doesn’t happen any more. Nowadays, one big fair comes for all of half-term to Tattershall Common.

  They moved the fireworks there too, around the same time.

  It’s hard to remember that I used to love Fireworks Night.

  Before my life exploded in my face.

  Parfait

  I walked.

  That’s all I did.

  In the evenings, the bakeries threw out their stale bread. In the markets, you could pick up unsold fish from the barrows, bits of octopus tentacle, squid rings on the turn.

  I walked practically to Algeciras. I walked all the way back. The sky was the deepest blue and the beach was golden.

  Unnecessarily extravagant.

  Beauty.

  It kept me going.

  Pa, I said, Pa.

  Help me.

  I was back at the holey rocks and the trees.

  Don’t give up.

  Don’t give up.

  That’s what Pa said, or I said to myself, or God said, or someone said, the pine trees or the sea, or all of us together.

  I sat right by the water.

  I watched the little waves roll in.

  There were no fish jumping today.

  Augusta

  Julia and I used to sit dangling willow fronds into the pond, trying to get the fish to swim up to the surface before we fed them.

  But one day, no fish swam up.

  The same thing happened the next day, and the next.

  So we got our wellies on and dug about, but could see no sign of them.

  ‘Do you think they’re lying dead at the bottom of the pond?’ I said. ‘Like Jim Cook’s cichlids? Or do you think a heron got them?’

  Julia looked very strange.

  And much sadder than anyone would look about goldfish.

  ‘Why would all the fish be dying round here?’ she said, peering into the pond water.

  And now she didn’t so much look sad as frightened.

  ‘Are you OK, Julia?’ I said.

  ‘Oh yes I’m fine,’ she said in a very flat voice. ‘Mum thinks it’s my hormones.’

  ‘Do you think you got all my hormones too?’ I said, trying to make a joke about the way my boobs weren’t growing.

  But Julia didn’t seem to hear.

  The first time that Mr Sánchez showed us a film of flamenco dancing, the women were all wearing bright orange dresses which they flashed around in layers of fiery golden frills, and I thought that perhaps the seven goldfish had come to life like in a fairy tale.

  Raúl and Teo sometimes have flamenco dancing shows in their restaurant, but we never saw them on our family holiday in 2004 because the dancing started at midnight, and my parents liked to be in bed by ten thirty – or eleven o’clock at weekends.

  I had no idea then that Raúl and Teo would become so dear to me, so very central in my life, or that I’d be living here in the field at the back of their white stone house, with the flat roof terrace looking out to Africa. I had no idea that the three of us would gallop their mares down the beach at sunrise and sunset, and sometimes in the dark under the stars.

  I had no idea then what it would be like in La Higuera at Christmas for the celebrations of the live Nativity, or at fiesta time, when the sound of flamenco is carried on the Levante wind, when we celebrate the procession of the Virgin, wearing frilled dresses. I had no idea that I would learn to dance flamenco. That I would buy myself a tangerine-orange dress, with white embroidery and layers of frills which are called volantes.

  Volante, from the Latin verb – volare – to fly.

  The same word used for flying fish.

  And when you dance flamenco, you can sometimes fly right out of your own body.

  On Sunday 31 October 2004, Angela Dunnett had her much-anticipated Hallowe’en party under a striped gazebo.

  Nobody really has a clue where the word, gazebo, comes from. It popped up (get it?) in 1752 in a book about oriental design, which was quite the fad in eighteenth-century England.

  People think the author took the ‘ebo’ of the Latin future tense and added it to ‘gaze’.

  I will look, kind of thing, out of the gazebo.

  It doesn’t sound that likely an explanation to me, but then I’m not an etymologist.

  I did indeed spend much of the long evening of Angela Dunnett’s Hallowe’en party looking out of the gazebo and seeing nothing.

  Julia had refused to go as a ghost or a witch or a skeleton or a corpse. So, in the end, we both went as fruit bats, and I rammed a quarter of an orange into my mouth, which I refused to take out to speak to anyone. Though, after a while, it was quite wearing, and people got a bit bored of finding it funny. So I took the orange out and put it in my pocket. Then everyone took off their spooky costumes, and the juice from the orange dripped down my leg, making me feel as if I was peeing myself.

  Underneath their costumes, people had put on the coolest clothes they owned, and some girls had brought make-up bags with them and they all crowded into the Dunnetts’ toilet to put on lipstick.

  Angela Dunnett’s cousin, Ricky, said, ‘Are you Julia’s younger sister? You’re very tall.’

  First, there was some karaoke – and Angela Dunnett pranced around in black leggings and her mother’s wooden Scholls, shaking her boobs and yelling, ‘You’re the one that I want!’

  Then we all danced in the garden underneath the fairy lights in a big group, and I saw out of the corner of my eye that Diego and Julia were deliberately dancing away from the main group, further, further, further, until they entirely disappeared behind Mr Dunnett’s shed.

  I tried dancing to the right and to the left to see if I could get a good look at what might be going on behind that shed, but my view was entirely blocked, by two apple trees on one side, and by a high trellis fence on the other.

  I kept dancing around under the fairy lights, trying to look normal, but feeling really abnormal – dance, dance, dance.

  When things got a bit boring, I put the orange-quarter back in my mouth, but nobody noticed, so I took it out again.

  Then I spent some time stroking the whippet.

  The evening went on and on and on, forever.

  I wasn’t used to doing this kind of thing without Julia.

  I kept going into the Dunnetts’ toilet and checking my watch and thinking surely surely this party will end soon. Surely surely it will be over by midnight.

  Then – joy! – Mr Dunnett pulled the plug out of the wall, turned off the fairy lights and shouted in the karaoke microphone, ‘That’s it, folks!’

  Julia and I walked home in dead silence.

  When we got to the porch, I noticed that her lipstick was all smudged and her mascara was running.

  ‘Have you been crying?’ I said.

  ‘Oh, Aug,’ said Julia.

  I took my orange-quarter out of my pocket and shoved it in my mouth.

  She said, ‘It’s finally happened.’

  ‘Did you have a nice time?’ said my mother, coming down in her dressing gown.

  ‘Great,’ said Julia.

  ‘What did you do?’

  Julia blu
shed.

  I started making strange groaning noises with the orange still blocking up my mouth.

  ‘Take that out, Augusta,’ said my mother.

  But I kept going, saying, ‘We just danced really and slaughtered a few of the neighbours,’ except you couldn’t hear me because of the orange.

  ‘Off to bed,’ said my mother.

  We lay in bed, still in silence.

  ‘So?’ I said. ‘Tell me.’

  ‘Oh, it’s nothing,’ said Julia.

  ‘Nothing!’ I said. ‘We’ve been after that boy for four years.’

  ‘But I feel a bit bad,’ said Julia. ‘We always said he’d have to choose between us.’

  ‘Please don’t worry, Jules,’ I said. ‘I think I might have gone off him anyway – and also I don’t have any tits.’

  Then it all came out.

  Diego apparently put his right arm around her shoulder and then he swung around until he was holding her with both arms. He put his hands to her jaw, cupping her chin like an egg in an egg-cup, and he moved his face forward and put his tongue right inside her mouth, and, although she’d never done this kind of thing before, she knew exactly what to do.

  ‘It made me forget everything,’ she said. ‘I wanted to go on and on kissing forever.’

  ‘Could you breathe?’ I said.

  ‘It made you breathe more,’ she said. ‘My own breath got louder and louder and drowned everything else out. All my thoughts. All my worries.’

  ‘What kind of thoughts? What kind of worries?’ I said. ‘I wish you’d tell me. You never tell me. Not since Spain.’

  ‘Let me keep telling you this,’ she said. ‘This is much more interesting.’

  She told me that feeling the palms of his hands on the skin of her face and his tongue wrapping up in hers made her whole body start quivering and shaking and she felt as if she might well collapse.

  ‘Really?’ I said. ‘And did you? Did you collapse?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Yes.’

  ‘What? You actually fainted?’

  ‘Well, it was more accidentally on purpose,’ she said. ‘And we were lying on the grass by now, and I could feel his willy all hard inside his trousers.’

  ‘Really?’ I said. ‘Was that a bit gross?’

  ‘No,’ she said.

  She honestly liked that.

  That’s what she said.

  The fact that she had caused it. Ta-dah! Like a magician!

  She and Diego lay right on top of each other – her underneath and him on top.

  ‘Didn’t you get squashed?’ I said. ‘Wasn’t he really heavy?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘That is weird,’ I said. ‘Come and lie on top of me. I’m sure I’d feel squashed. And you’re not nearly as heavy as Diego.’

  ‘What?’ said Julia.

  ‘Go on, let’s do an experiment,’ I said. ‘Remember I have had a really shit evening. At least let’s have a laugh.’

  ‘Really?’ said Julia.

  ‘Let’s be like we used to be,’ I said. ‘Silly.’

  ‘Silly?’ said Julia.

  ‘Oh go on, don’t get all serious and up yourself just because you’ve learnt how to kiss. Just because you’re the willy-magician.’

  Julia laughed.

  She leapt out of her bed and she lay down right on top of me, face down, and she raised her arms and legs the way seals do when they sunbathe on the beach, being as dead a weight as she could manage.

  We started laughing and laughing so hard, and Julia started wriggling about doing all the strange humpy actions he’d done on top of her.

  ‘Did he really do that?’ I squealed.

  She kept putting her hands on my cheeks and touching my hair.

  We were properly hysterical by now.

  Then my father came in.

  ‘Stop this right now!’ he yelled. ‘Get into your own beds!’

  We were laughing so hard that we couldn’t stop.

  ‘Get into your own beds!’ shouted my father again.

  ‘I am in my own bed,’ I said.

  ‘Don’t you dare cheek me,’ he said, and he rushed out.

  In the morning, our mother appeared to tell us how rude and disrespectful we’d been to our father.

  ‘I want you to tell me what on earth you were doing,’ she said.

  I realised at once that explaining was problematic, without revealing what had happened to Julia behind the shed – and this was not something that I was going to be describing to my mother. Though one assumes that some time long ago she might have collapsed on the grass with my father – it’s just that I really really couldn’t imagine it.

  ‘We were messing about,’ I said.

  ‘Were you drunk?’ she said. ‘Or hiding a boy in here?’

  I knew I could do better.

  ‘We were being fruit bats,’ I said, and I knew I was a genius, and I went and got the sucked-dry orange-quarter and I shoved it in my mouth, and I started flailing about, humping and twisting, on my bed.

  ‘Oh,’ said my mother, frowning a little. ‘Is that what fruit bats do?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Always. In the wild.’

  ‘Oh, I see,’ said my mother. ‘I’ll tell your father.’

  She went out.

  ‘Call me a genius,’ I said to Julia. ‘I’ve revealed nothing.’

  ‘I feel a bit odd this morning,’ said Julia. ‘When Diego was kissing me, I felt like it would solve everything. But I don’t think it did.’

  Julia had started spending hours and hours with Diego.

  And not with me.

  I felt – what did I feel? – lost.

  ‘Are you feeling a bit jealous?’ said my mother.

  ‘What of?’ I said, casual as anything.

  ‘Don’t be like that,’ said my mother.

  ‘Like what?’ I said.

  The truth was that yes, I was feeling jealous.

  But the person I wanted was Julia.

  Not Diego.

  I hadn’t known that would be true.

  But seeing him mooning around after her made him undesirable to me.

  ‘He’s so handsome,’ said my mother.

  He’s so desperate, I thought.

  I kept on with my research – several files for Burundi, a file for Andalusia, majoring on horses, and a file for each of my favourite Spanish novelists, poets, dramatists and artists.

  ‘Who’s that photo of?’ said my mother, from some way away over by the cooker.

  ‘Federico García Lorca,’ I said.

  ‘Someone you’re interested in?’ she said, coming closer. ‘A boy?’

  ‘Very much so,’ I said.

  ‘He sounds Spanish too,’ said my mother.

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  ‘Tell me more.’

  ‘He was shot on the nineteenth of August 1936,’ I said. ‘He was a homosexual poet.’

  ‘Augusta,’ she said. ‘I don’t know what’s the matter with you. I think you need to get out a bit more.’

  So I went round to Ian’s house.

  Ian was growing his hair long and he had a layer of dark down above his lip which he refused to shave. It made me feel a bit ill.

  ‘Do you fancy me?’ he said, out of the blue, while we were sitting on his bed.

  I shook my head.

  ‘I didn’t think so,’ he said.

  I smiled.

  ‘I don’t fancy you either,’ he said.

  ‘Great,’ I said, and then we played computer games.

  ‘Don’t you get bored with all that kissing?’ I said to Julia. ‘Kissing and kissing all day long? Does your tongue get a bit sore?’

  She looked away.

  ‘It’s nice,’ she said.

  ‘What do you talk about for all those hours on end?’

  ‘Stuff.’

  ‘Do you still love me?’ I said.

  ‘Course I still love you,’ said Julia.

  Diego bought Julia a gold heart pendant.

  �
�Love is in the air,’ sang my father, which was quite out of character.

  Love was not in my air.

  Love had sprouted a new season of letters and gifts in Julia and Diego’s air.

  Julia bought an italic pen set with little cream cards and matching envelopes, and she wrote Diego inky love letters, sometimes choosing to copy awful rhymes from greetings cards you could buy in the newsagent by Hedley Green station, next to our secret glade with the trees to climb and bluebells in spring.

  Julia never wanted to stop off there any more.

  She was always rushing to meet Diego on Hedley Green high street.

  ‘Ian’s given me some cigarettes,’ I said. ‘Shall we go and smoke them in the bluebell wood?’

  She grimaced.

  ‘You don’t want to try smoking?’

  ‘Diego doesn’t like it,’ she said. ‘Especially not on a girl.’

  ‘Not on a girl?’ I said. ‘What the hell’s being a girl got to do with it?’

  ‘Well, anyway,’ she said. ‘Apparently, it’s like kissing an ashtray.’

  ‘Has he tried kissing an ashtray?’

  ‘Don’t be silly, Aug.’

  ‘When did he kiss a girl who smoked?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Aren’t you jealous?’

  ‘Anyway, it gives you lung cancer,’ said Julia.

  ‘Not one cigarette,’ I said.

  ‘You smoke one and then you’re addicted,’ said Julia.

  ‘You are addicted to Diego,’ I said. ‘I challenge you to give up French kissing for Lent.’

  ‘I don’t really do Lent,’ said Julia.

  ‘Or you could give up Diego for Lent,’ I said, trying to sound as if I was being funny, trying not to sound hurt.

  ‘I need to go,’ she said.

  That did hurt me.

  That she couldn’t stay for three seconds to have a conversation with me.