The Other Half of Augusta Hope

by Joanna Glen

And we stared at him.

  As he started to crumble.

  My mother opened her mouth but no words came out.

  ‘Darling,’ she said finally.

  My father’s shoulders hunched and convulsed in terrible sobs which seemed to shake his whole body.

  ‘Darling,’ said my mother. ‘Do you want to go somewhere else?’

  I opened my mouth.

  I closed it.

  My father’s sobs got louder, and, between them, he started to squeeze out broken words: ‘I,’ he said.

  Then he kept saying I again and again, but he couldn’t get past it.

  Until the next burst came out.

  ‘– am – go – ing – to –’

  We waited.

  He struggled.

  ‘– have – to –’

  We knew what was coming.

  ‘– get – rid – of – the – shop.’

  We all looked down at our crumble, and we couldn’t think of one thing to say.

  ‘I’m sure you’ll find another job,’ I said.

  But that was not the right thing to say.

  My father shouted at me, ‘You don’t understand,’ and it sounded as if all the flesh was stripping off his throat.

  ‘You,’ he yelled, and the noise was kind of animal-like, like a roar, or a howl, lupine, even, ‘you’, and again, ‘you’.

  I’d never heard that sound before, but I’ve heard it since.

  My mother reached for his hand.

  His small pale hand.

  He waved her away.

  ‘I’m sure she,’ Julia began, but her voice started shaking.

  ‘YOU DON’T UNDERSTAND EITHER,’ yelled my father at Julia.

  I watched Julia pick up her napkin and scrunch it together in the palm of her hand, like one of those strange plastic balls they give my grandmother for her arthritis.

  ‘Darling,’ my mother started.

  ‘YOU DON’T UNDERSTAND EITHER,’ yelled my father at my mother, and he got up, and he picked up his chair and he smashed it into the sliding glass door, which shattered.

  Then he put down the chair and walked out, through the jagged circular frame of broken glass onto the terrace, onto the lawn, and he walked round and round the circumference of the back garden, like a lion at the zoo.

  ‘It was the internet that killed the shop,’ said my mother. ‘We were never a country that relied on the internet before. We were a great manufacturing nation.’

  ‘Mum, we couldn’t rely on the internet when the internet didn’t exist,’ I said. ‘Before.’

  This was the beginning of what I decided we would call the obnubilation, which comes from the Latin word nubilus, cloudy, and the verb, nubilare, to cloud over.

  Number 1 Willow Crescent had clouded over, and the sparkling lights of Christmas couldn’t penetrate the gloom.

  Number 1 stood under a storm cloud, weeping.

  I went back to Durham.

  My mother ended up working in the pet shop on the parade near Tattershall Common. My father got a job in the Homebase next to the hugest Asda ever in the entire universe.

  I went home for my father’s birthday.

  My mother and father came in the door together around six o’clock, my mother with a slight whiff of rabbit food about her, and my father in his dark wool suit, carrying his leather briefcase with his Homebase uniform folded inside it. We ate supper, and by seven thirty, it felt like midnight.

  Back in Durham, conversely, midnight felt like seven thirty in the evening, as if time worked differently there.

  Olly and I walked with foxes through the streets.

  We went snowballing under a full moon.

  We laughed and laughed.

  Olly laughed so loudly it disturbed Barry, the boy next door, who liked doing Sudoku puzzles in bed. Barry slipped a complaint under the door, which made us laugh even more.

  We laughed until we cried.

  We rarely slept before two, three, four in the morning.

  February brought snowdrops and candle-lit dinners.

  And soon it was spring.

  Parfait

  It was Good Friday again, my fourth since I’d arrived, and I decided to drive my coach along the coast road, stopping to paint spring flowers, wild and abundant amongst the Roman ruins of Baelo Claudia, which was dotted with metal information plates, dug into the ground on poles. The flowers seemed to sprout straight from the stone of the old tuna garum vats (garum – a fermented sauce made of fish intestines, used as a condiment in the cuisine of Ancient Rome). I loved to think that the vats had sat here by the beach, according to the sign, for nearly two thousand years, since the time of Emperor Claudius, eight years after the crucifixion. There were sketches of Romans carrying pottery amphora, and, in the distance, three crosses on a hill.

  Red, white, blue, pink, purple, golden yellow – wild flowers spreading all the way to the beach.

  As I painted the spring, I remembered my father saying that crucifixion–resurrection was the pattern of the seasons, and of our lives, throughout nature, throughout the world.

  I never knew exactly what he meant.

  I couldn’t follow the logic of it.

  But today, here, painting the spring flowers, I did know.

  I felt the pattern inside me, in the new way of unreasoned knowing that Paco had taught me without teaching me.

  I phoned Víctor.

  ‘Spring is exploding here,’ I said. ‘It makes me feel as if something good’s going to happen.’

  ‘It has!’ said Víctor.

  ‘The girls?’ I said, holding my breath, it had to be, here amongst the flowers, it had to be.

  I remembered the blood on their dresses and their changed faces, the tears coming up from deep inside. I remembered telling them that the shame didn’t belong to them – it belonged to the men. Possibly all men. I remembered saying I was ashamed to be a man. That they shouldn’t be ashamed. I’d carry their shame for them because I was stained by what had happened to them.

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ said Víctor. ‘No, not the girls, I’m afraid. We go on praying, Parfait. Every day. But there’s no news there.’

  I took a moment to collect myself.

  ‘So is it something to do with Wilfred?’ I asked.

  ‘Much warmer now,’ said Víctor. ‘Positively hot! Wilfred has said his first sentence!’

  I practically jumped on the spot.

  ‘We’ve had a resurrection before we even get to Easter Sunday!’ said Víctor.

  ‘Tell me what he said.’

  He said, ‘I want to start a rose farm.’

  ‘Put him on the phone!’ I said.

  ‘Hello,’ said Wilfred.

  Just hello.

  ‘Well hello hello hello,’ I said.

  And hello had never sounded so good.

  So momentous.

  ‘I hear you want to start a rose farm,’ I said.

  ‘Yes,’ he said.

  ‘That’s such a beautiful idea, Wilfred,’ I said.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said.

  I waited.

  I hoped he might say more.

  But he didn’t.

  I moved inland to Seville, catching the end of the Easter Sunday processions, the streets light with hope, and in the Plaza de España, a girl was singing with such raw yearning in her voice that it quietened the crowd, and all that any of us could say, above the rhythm of the clapping was, at unexpected moments, Olé, Olé.

  Olé, Zion, olé.

  Olé, Wilfred, olé.

  The moon came out over the square.

  Augusta

  It was Easter, and Julia was arranging her pale pink roses from Diego in a glass jug.

  ‘Rose thorns aren’t actually thorns. They should be called prickles. They’re where the epidermis bulges outwards,’ I said.

  Julia nodded.

  ‘The Romans used to wear roses on strings around their necks,’ I said. ‘Anything said under the rose had to be kept a secret.’
r />   Julia nodded.

  ‘A rose fossil was found in Colorado which was thirty-five million years old.’

  Julia nodded.

  ‘Did you know that more than 80 per cent of the land in Zambia is covered in roses?’

  ‘No more,’ said Julia. ‘That’s enough. No more research, Aug. Let me love roses because I do.’

  ‘Do you honestly prefer not knowing all this stuff?’ I said.

  ‘We’re just different,’ said Julia.

  I remember a chill in the room, a dark shadow like when a cloud crosses the sun.

  Perhaps we were losing each other after two terms apart. Perhaps absence hadn’t made the heart grow fonder.

  Julia went on cutting the stems, which fell, almost soundlessly onto the carpet. I sat on the floor, made a launcher out of an elastic band and pinged a cut stem into Julia’s face.

  Julia said, ‘Stop it will you, Aug?’

  I took each stem she’d cut and put them, one by one, in the bin.

  I wanted to tell her that Lorca had written a play about a spinster called Rose. That her botanist uncle had a rose called the rosa mutabile, which was red in the morning, brighter red at midday, white in the afternoon, shattered and fallen apart at night. I wanted to tell her that roses budded but they also decayed.

  I wanted to talk to her about death, how it frightened me, how I didn’t want to die alone, without her, and perhaps we could do it together, like roses on the same bush.

  Julia’s roses didn’t last long.

  The water greened in the jug and stank, and the petals fell off on the carpet.

  On the Tuesday after Easter, using our Christmas money, Julia and I went and stayed at a cheap bed and breakfast near Brancaster Staithe for our ornithology weekend.

  The roadsides were lined with daffodils.

  ‘Do you remember when you bought me those daffodil buds?’ I asked her. ‘To help me get over you having a boyfriend?’

  She nodded, smiling at me.

  ‘Well, I prefer daffodils to roses,’ I told her. ‘I like the way they’re shaped like trumpets. Trumpets are supposed to pass messages between worlds. And announce extraordinary things. And new beginnings. And I like the way daffodils grow through the snow. How strong they are. Like nothing can mess with them.’

  ‘Well, you’ll have to get married in the spring then,’ said Julia. Which wasn’t at all what the daffodils made me think.

  ‘I don’t have to get married,’ I said. ‘The only thing any of us has to do is die.’

  ‘Aug, don’t say things like that,’ said Julia.

  ‘Don’t you ever think that?’ I said.

  ‘I want to concentrate on living,’ she said.

  ‘Living and dying are basically the same thing,’ I said.

  We set off across the marshes, arm in arm, Justa again, and, on the sand dunes, we sat and looked out over the little lagoon where the water-birds gathered. I took the wine out of my rucksack, and I said, ‘To sisters!’

  We clinked our glasses and drank our wine in big gulps, and we stared at the ducks, as they flew over the marshes in great flocks, landing in twos and threes, skittering and skating over the water; and the geese flying in V formation into the pale grey sky.

  The birds took our minds off our conversation about dying, the way living things do, the way the present does, until it dies too, which it does, constantly.

  Parfait

  It was time to go home from Seville.

  Home!

  The word floated through my mind like smoke from a fire.

  I might have expected home to be Tarifa, but I found I was heading to La Higuera. I was driving between the olive fields and turning into the village, fig trees each side of the road. I was going through the square, down to the beach road, and I was parking on the raised scrubland.

  Just there.

  Just where.

  I got out and I walked through the pine trees down to the beach, where it comes to an end, where the holey rocks make shapes in the dusk. I sat and watched the waves darkening the beach, drying, dying, disappearing.

  A sea mist blew in.

  I looked out over the sea.

  Zion’s body was out there, under there, somewhere.

  It was a horrible thought, so I spoke aloud over it.

  ‘I’m rebuilding my life, Little Bro,’ I said. ‘But I miss you. I miss you so much.’

  My phone shook in my pocket.

  As if.

  Never mind.

  It was Víctor.

  He’d gone with Wilfred to see his new farm.

  ‘We were standing on the hillside …’ he said.

  I could smell the hillside, I could hear it, I could feel it on my skin, and I wondered – can home be more than one place?

  As Víctor and Wilfred stood there together, about five thousand African pochard had landed in a huge great flock on Lake Tanganyika, and Wilfred thought it meant something.

  ‘Also, I asked him why he stopped speaking,’ said Víctor. ‘He said there was too much death, and he had nothing to say about death.’

  ‘There’s been too much of it in our family,’ I said.

  ‘I know how much you loved them,’ said Víctor.

  But I wasn’t sure if he did.

  He’d never met my father, who was the most lovable man on earth.

  Perhaps love comes in shades like colours, depending on the person you’re trying to love. Or maybe on how good you are at loving. I’m not sure which.

  ‘Your mother told Wilfred that flowers have meanings,’ said Víctor. ‘She said that roses meant love. And he’s planning to send these roses from Burundi all around the world. So that Burundi will be known as a place of love and not of hate.’

  Augusta

  ‘Does it feel odd that you and Diego will probably stick together forever now?’ I said to Julia, watching the ducks on the lagoon. ‘That you’re never going to love anyone else.’

  ‘Not really, Aug,’ she said. ‘It was always meant to be.’

  ‘Don’t you ever want to be on your own?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘Or try someone else?’

  ‘For me there’s only ever been Diego. From the day he moved in.’

  ‘You were nine,’ I said. ‘Is that not a bit weird?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘Nine years and you’re sure you don’t find it a tiny bit boring?’

  We looked out to the marshy inlet – the gathering of ordinary mallards and coots, and a handsome pair, rather exotic, a little apart from the others.

  We got up and started to walk.

  ‘What about you and Olly?’

  ‘What about us?’

  ‘Is it serious?’

  ‘It feels kind of un-serious,’ I said, ‘which is how I like it.’

  We went into the little wooden hide, and I looked down the telescope.

  ‘Jules, look at this duck.’

  It was orange with a striped head in white and blue and rust, with tangerine sails, sticking up each side. The female was brown and speckled, duller but quite stylish, like a posh wedding fascinator, I thought, with a spark of green-blue.

  ‘Mandarin ducks,’ Julia read from the poster. ‘Introduced from China and escaped from captivity. Occasional sightings.’

  ‘Not more invaders,’ I said. ‘Don’t tell Mum and Dad.’

  ‘Shall we not talk about Mum and Dad?’ said Julia. ‘I think I need to get away from their sadness.’

  ‘It’s making them bitter,’ I said.

  ‘It would make anyone bitter,’ said Julia. ‘Think of the hours Dad put into that shop. It’s too sad for words.’

  I wasn’t sure I could find the words for it either. You can’t always, even though there are so many in the dictionary to choose from.

  No, we would definitely do our best not to think of Stanley Hope Uniforms, which was being refurbished and turned into a Costa Coffee shop, and which soon wouldn’t exist.

  I’m sitting here thi
nking that, although I was so embarrassed by that shop my whole childhood, it was actually quite nice. I kind of miss it. Especially the wooden pull-out drawers with glass fronts where he kept the socks. I kind of miss all the shops like that which don’t exist any more.

  ‘Could Olly be the pedlar man?’ said Julia. ‘Where he comes from nobody knows?’

  ‘He comes from Cirencester. Everybody knows!’ I said, laughing.

  ‘Might he travel across the Sahara with you one day or sail dhows in Zanzibar or ride round the world in a gypsy caravan?’

  ‘Probably not. He’ll probably stay in Cirencester and pass on the farm to his children,’ I said.

  ‘Would Mum and Dad like Olly?’ said Julia.

  ‘Does it matter?’ I said.

  ‘It does to me,’ said Julia.

  Julia and I sat together on the little wooden bench, watching the ducks through the huge glass window as they upturned themselves, diving for algae – and I thought that, however strange it seemed, the only thing on their minds – at all – was probably algae.

  ‘Why do you think people have children?’ said Julia.

  ‘I have no idea,’ I said.

  ‘Why do you think they had us?’ said Julia.

  ‘I’ve never thought about it.’

  ‘Don’t we owe them something?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said.

  I didn’t want to owe them anything, however mean that sounds.

  ‘Don’t people have children so that they can all stick together?’ said Julia. ‘But nowadays families all split apart across the world and never see each other. So what’s the point in being a family?’

  ‘I’ve never thought about it like that,’ I said. ‘Not in those actual words.’

  ‘In all that thinking, why have you never thought about it?’ said Julia.

  But I couldn’t answer her.

  ‘What would you like to buy as a souvenir?’ said the bed and breakfast woman as we were paying, showing us a selection of hand-made toys and home-made jams.

  I bought Olly an awful patchwork owl hot-water bottle cover (ironically), though we didn’t need any more heat.

  Heat is what we had all through our second year.

  Then it was summer and we went to festivals and we danced in the mud and slept in a small tent in a happy chaos of wellington boots and vodka.