The Other Half of Augusta Hope

by Joanna Glen

  I didn’t think about the past.

  Or the future.

  I tried to live like a duck.

  Symbols of Death in Spanish Literature of the Early Twentieth Century.

  The title of my final-year dissertation.

  ‘Why on earth did you choose that?’ said my mother. ‘It sounds horrible.’

  So, I didn’t tell her the way the Beggar Woman plotted with the moon and carried the three characters of Blood Wedding to their inevitable end, death in the beauty of the night.

  I didn’t tell her it was everyone’s inevitable end.

  Most of us die in the early hours of the morning.

  As I worked alone, I thought too much.

  About living and dying.

  What it meant to exist.

  It’s hard to explain, but perhaps you’ve felt it.

  I delved so far down that I slipped out of myself and fell away, away, away.

  I clawed myself back inside myself.

  ‘Hold me,’ I said to Olly. ‘I’m frightened I don’t exist.’

  ‘Too much dissertation, Dragonfly,’ said Olly. ‘Too much death. Come here.’

  I wanted to, I wanted to come here, wherever here was, to lose my consciousness, to stop the voice, to block the questions.

  Sex, the relief of it, the weakening of consciousness, the almost spiritual release, la petite mort as it’s called – the little death.

  That little blast of melancholy or transcendence.

  And then reality again.

  Bursting in on you.

  ‘Oh, Dragonfly!’ said Olly. ‘So gorgeous and so flitty.’

  In the June of 2011, we gathered respectably with our families, like people who didn’t have sex with each other in the afternoons, gowned in black, on a piece of grass called Palace Green, next to Durham Cathedral.

  Olly’s parents couldn’t, or didn’t, come. He was their fifth child, and I think they were running out of steam.

  There were cream-coloured marquees, bunting and ice creams, gold-lacquered chairs and tables with cloths on. You could hear clinking glass and murmurs and laughter – and barbecued pig floated on the breeze.

  Olly was standing on Palace Green, with his blond wavy hair, his lop-sided smile and his magnetic lisp, pouring Pimm’s for Laura and Tom.

  My mother watched him as if he was some kind of rare bird.

  ‘Will you marry Olly Macintosh?’ she’d asked me the night before.

  ‘Promising love forever to one person sounds dangerous to me,’ I said. ‘And I’m not sure I could promise love forever to a man who passes his leisure time killing birds.’

  My mother said, ‘I don’t know where you got this obsession with birds from. A lot of men like killing. Think of them all fishing at Tattershall Pond.’

  A lot of men like killing?

  ‘Does Dad like killing?’ I said.

  My mother flushed, and her rash grew in whitey-red blotches, spreading all down her chest.

  ‘Take a photo of us, will you, Julia?’ she said.

  Olly and Diego watched us – my mother, father and me.

  ‘Do you shoot?’ said Olly to Diego.

  Diego shook his head.

  We struggled to find the right position for our arms.

  In the photo which my mother would later choose to frame in silver and place on a window sill, my father’s right arm looks like a set square, sticking out, in a triangular fashion, to the right.

  ‘Cheese!’ said Julia.

  ‘Cheese!’ we all said.

  We laughed.

  Then we stopped laughing and sat down.

  Julia tried to smile happiness into me.

  My father looked at all the other fathers and mothers pouring jugs of Pimm’s, holding forth – and then he looked at the sky.

  I looked up.

  There was nothing in the sky.

  Not even clouds.

  Which was unusual for Durham, for England.

  But my father went on looking at the sky.

  ‘What’s your favourite book, Mrs Hope?’ said Olly Macintosh, because posh people get taught how to start conversations at school.

  ‘My favourite book?’ said my mother, and she held her white handbag on her knee, like a pet cat.

  ‘Yes,’ said Olly to my mother.

  I looked at my mother: her cheap white pearl earrings protruding from large lobes, like little ping-pong balls; her curly hair corkscrewing tighter in the heat.

  ‘Bunnikin’s Picnic,’ said my mother to Olly. ‘That’s my favourite book.’

  ‘Oh, I see,’ he said.

  My mother sat and stroked her handbag.

  I couldn’t look up.

  I didn’t want to see Laura and Tom’s faces.

  ‘By whom?’ said Olly.

  ‘It’s Ladybird,’ said my mother. ‘I’m not sure they have authors.’

  ‘I think all books would have authors,’ said Laura.

  But Olly stepped into her sentence, like my mother does with her mother.

  ‘Ladybird?’ said Olly on top of Laura.

  ‘I’m fond of ladybirds,’ said my mother, looking away, still holding her white bag. ‘Pretty little things, ladybirds. I like the dots.’

  She paused.

  Sweat bubbles spawned above her top lip.

  Then she added, ‘I’ve always liked dots. From when I was a little girl. They used to call me Spotty Dotty.’

  Laura pursed her lips.

  Spotty Dotty.

  They are only words.

  Julia smiled at my mother, crinkling her eyes as if she was in pain.

  I was in pain too.

  Agony.

  I don’t know if I was more ashamed of my mother or more ashamed of being ashamed of her.

  ‘I know what you mean, Mrs Hope,’ said Olly. ‘I had a dotty cravat once. I was rather fond of it.’

  That was kind of Olly.

  I thought of his dotty cravat lying amongst my knickers, the knickers my mother wouldn’t recognise.

  Soon I would have to hand back my black robe and pack up my student house and go home. To Willow Crescent, where there is one ragged willow tree on the roundabout, and where I once emptied goldfish into the communal pond for Graham Cook. They looked beautiful, like orange petals. But they didn’t help in the end.

  To Willow Crescent, where the roundabout pond had been filled in, and where people’s favourite books were not The Brothers Karamazov, not 1984, not Bleak House, not Don Quijote nor One Hundred Years of Solitude. But Bunnikin’s Picnic. And I knew I was wrong to judge them. And wrong to mind. They could like any books they wanted to like.

  My mother invited Olly to the Willow Crescent Collective Supper, which was held in our garage in July, and when he arrived in his convertible Mini in sheeting rain, my mother said, ‘So where did you come?’

  Olly peered at her, narrowing his blue eyes, and I realised how very tiny our hall was, and I noticed that Julia’s poem was still on the wall above the shelf, in a cheap clip frame.

  My mother said, ‘I gather Augusta was first.’

  ‘Got a first,’ I said.

  My mother nodded.

  ‘I came a poor second,’ said Olly, laughing.

  ‘Well done, dear,’ she said. ‘Well done.’

  ‘In truth, it’s tragic,’ said Olly. ‘A 2:2 is tragic.’

  Olly Macintosh was quite the centre of attention at the Collective Supper with his floppy blond hair and his charm.

  ‘Hasn’t Augusta changed?’ said Hilary Hawkins, rather too loudly.

  ‘She’s quite a different girl,’ Janice Brown replied.

  ‘You’d hardly recognise her,’ said someone I couldn’t identify.

  ‘She actually looks quite pretty,’ said Helen Dunnett.

  Parfait

  I’d bought a ladder which enabled me climb onto the roof of the coach, and I could sit on a deckchair, high up, staring out to sea, to Africa, or, if I turned around, looking out to the miles of farmland and the hills b
eyond.

  I watched the egrets on the cows’ backs, pecking at the ticks, seeming to whisper in their soft ears. As dusk fell, the birds would rise up, in white clouds, against the darkening sky, heading to roost in the needled branches of a huge old araucaria tree, which stood at the side of the beach road.

  I counted the egrets, and got to six hundred, tiny white flames flecking the branches, like an old-fashioned Christmas tree in a European children’s book.

  Augusta

  Diego’s family had given me their house in La Higuera rent-free for one week to celebrate adult life, freedom, whatever it was, wherever we’d arrived – our metamorphosis.

  I liked that word.

  I liked imagining the feeling of it.

  A tadpole stretching into new limbs; a caterpillar expanding into flight; a dragonfly arching out of itself, turning turquoise-blue, growing fairy wings – we saw it happening on the wall of Olly’s garden.

  I dreamt of who I might turn into now that I was graduating and would be free to be anyone I chose to be.

  I could hardly sleep, imagining that I would be back on the roof terrace, back on the Moroccan bed piled with jewelled cushions, transmogrifying.

  ‘Five more days.’

  Olly smiled.

  ‘Four more days.’

  Olly smiled again.

  ‘Three more days.’

  Olly went on reading.

  ‘Are you excited?’ I said.

  ‘Course I am,’ he said.

  I didn’t say two more days or one more day. I tried to act a bit cool. But it was seven years since I’d been there.

  On the plane, Olly fell asleep with his inflatable horseshoe-thing around his neck before the air steward had finished pretending to pull down the oxygen mask.

  I wanted to anticipate with Olly.

  But he was asleep, and asleep he stayed for two and a half hours.

  I opened my mouth to say, ‘Look! Palm trees!’ but he’d put his jumper over his face.

  When we arrived in La Higuera, my heart leaping to the palm fronds, my body tingling to the smell of heat, Olly said, ‘Why do you keep looking at me like that?’

  ‘What do you think?’ I said.

  ‘Lovely beach.’

  ‘No, but do you see?’

  ‘See what?’

  ‘What I mean?’

  It was more fun arriving here with Julia.

  Olly and I set out to explore, and I kept looking at him. But he just walked along as if we were in a normal kind of place by the sea.

  There was an artist with his easel beside the beach road, his skin smooth and conker-coloured, his bunch of plaits tied up so that his cheekbones stuck out – and he was painting the egrets. I stopped and watched, quietly. I hoped Olly would do the same. But he kept on asking me loud questions about restaurants. I said I only knew Restaurante Raúl and the tuna with grapes was delicious, and the paella, and the chanquete fish which you ate whole. And the crema catalana ice cream which tasted of burnt sugar. But still he didn’t shut up.

  The egrets flew across the canvas in a big burst against the dusk, though when I drew closer to the painting, it seemed as if the egrets weren’t there at all. There was only a kind of blast of white light. I wanted to say something to the artist. But he didn’t look up. And I felt awkward. I pulled Olly away.

  The woman in the shop was wearing the same short-sleeved light blue housecoat that she’d worn in 2004, when I was fourteen and translating Spanish newspapers. Strangely, she remembered me from then.

  I felt stiff and odd in the shop, and my Spanish came out constricted on my tongue. I moved my mouth around, stretching my lips, to find my rolling rs and guttural js.

  ‘What are you doing?’ said Olly, frowning at me.

  ‘Trying to find my Spanish,’ I said.

  ‘Your sister!’ said the woman. ‘Quite a little pickle! She’d pop something in the basket without anyone looking!’

  ‘My sister stealing things?’ I said. ‘That doesn’t sound right.’

  ‘How is your sister these days?’

  ‘Very well,’ I said. ‘Looking after babies. She loves babies.’

  ‘You won’t sleep well,’ she said. ‘The egrets are roosting in the tree up by your house – and they make a terrible noise.’

  ‘I always sleep well,’ I said, which wasn’t true.

  I’m starting to sleep again.

  It feels good.

  ‘You must try some of my dulce de membrillo,’ the woman said. ‘Beautiful with salads. Cured meats. Manchego cheese.’

  I translated, and Olly lit up. He loved new food combinations. I imagine he still does. Over in Cirencester. After a long day out on the farm. They’ve probably opened a farm shop. Everybody does these days.

  ‘What is this stuff?’ Olly asked me.

  ‘A kind of quince paste. Very Spanish.’

  ‘Where are you going to have your picnic?’ said the woman.

  ‘Down where the boat’s buried,’ I said. ‘Before the trees. At the end.’

  ‘No one likes to go there,’ she said. ‘That little wooden boat blew ashore on New Year’s Day years back, and the passengers’ bodies were never found.’

  I translated.

  ‘After that, more of them came in. Thousands of them all down the coast,’ said the woman, and her lips turned right down at the end as if her mouth was a croquet hoop.

  ‘Where did they come from?’ I asked.

  ‘Africa – they set off from Morocco, but often they’d walked all the way from Senegal, or further,’ she said. ‘For a few years, they kept being blown ashore in their tiny little patera boats.’

  ‘Patera,’ I said. ‘New word.’

  ‘Quite inadequate for the job, those pateras,’ said the woman. ‘Hundreds of them drowned. The ones who made it got jobs building houses. But then we had la crisis. And there weren’t any jobs. And now with the sea patrols, it’s harder to get across. Very good thing, I say. Better we all stay where we are.’

  We left the shop.

  ‘That is actually Africa,’ I said, gesturing over the sea.

  ‘You don’t say,’ said Olly.

  Stupid expression, you don’t say.

  ‘I couldn’t believe it when we first came. The thought of Africa. Just over there. And Burundi – way down south.’

  ‘Had you never seen a map of the world, Dragonfly?’

  Don’t dragonfly me, I thought.

  I let go of his hand.

  I willed myself to feel ecstatic and happy, which was what I’d planned for the trip.

  The nudists were still here – more of them.

  I remembered reading my mother and father those poems.

  Not waving but drowning.

  They fuck you up, your mum and dad.

  It made me smile.

  It made me sad.

  We sat a bit beyond the nudists, who were diving into the sea, heads down, tails up, dabbling free.

  I thought of telling Olly about the morning of the poems, about the day my family went to the beach without me, about the boat trip in Tarifa, the last day in the garden, Julia, my fears.

  But I didn’t want to – and not talking about these things made me wonder what I really felt about Olly.

  It wasn’t yet lunchtime – and certainly not Spanish lunchtime – but Olly wanted to try the quince paste and Manchego cheese.

  ‘The Spanish never have lunch before two,’ I said, ‘and sometimes nearer four.’

  ‘Delicious with the cheese,’ said Olly, with his mouth full. ‘Let me try it with the chorizo.’

  ‘It’s not lunchtime,’ I said.

  ‘Are there rules about eating on this beach?’ said Olly, and then he found a little burst of laughter, as if he was joking.

  I wasn’t sure if he really liked the quince paste that much. Or if it was something to say.

  Olly suggested that we should go naked.

  It was a way of blowing away our flat feelings with a little gulp of novelty, which
I suppose is how capitalism works, or unusual sex.

  I wondered what Julia would say. I wasn’t sure that she and Diego would go naked. I wasn’t sure if it was something I particularly wanted to do either, but it was too late by then. I’d taken my bikini off.

  Olly seemed to find it enormously amusing. I didn’t like that. This obsession he had with laughing all the time. The thing I loved when I first met him was becoming the thing I really didn’t love. I started to feel my jaw clenching every time he laughed. Did he need to laugh so loudly? So Englishly? On this beach?

  Being naked really isn’t that funny.

  Olly wanted us to take photos of each other, to mark the moment.

  I didn’t argue.

  It felt easier not to.

  In the photos, I look bony as anything, with my little high breasts and my nipples darkened by the sun, my skin brown as an acorn, all over, my long hair dragged up in a tie-dye band, and Olly, tall and covered in blond hairs all over, his nose slightly pink, holding his Hawaiian shorts over his private parts for the photo. As if that was, in some way, hilarious.

  In the photos, I look sad.

  You maybe know how horrible it is to feel sad on a day when you’re supposed to feel happy.

  ‘Come here, Dragonfly,’ Olly would say, and we’d roll about in the sand dunes, kissing and climbing on top of each other, but all the time I was rolling about, I was analysing whether I wanted to be rolling about. I didn’t lose my consciousness like I used to.

  The voice kept narrating, and afterwards I felt emptied out.

  Like one of the shells on the beach.

  Conch shells.

  You can make conch shells into bugles, apparently, and play them, but most of them only have one note.

  Olly bought me a necklace with a silver conch shell on it. He said he loved me when he put it round my neck.

  Then he looked at me, right into my eyes, waiting for me to say it back.

  I said, ‘I tried to use conch in a rhyming poem once. But I couldn’t find one single word it could rhyme with. And then I wondered if no one rhymes with me.’

  Olly Macintosh’s parents wanted to take the whole family, with girlfriends and boyfriends, to Australia for Christmas because they had no drawing pins on the continent of Oceania on the wall map in their smart downstairs toilet.

  I wanted to go to Australia because I wanted not to have Christmas in Hedley Green.