The Other Half of Augusta Hope

by Joanna Glen

  ‘We can’t possibly take them all,’ I heard Raúl say to Teo. ‘We’ll be over-run. It isn’t practical.’

  ‘Have you seen the news?’ I whispered to Raúl. ‘Would you like to stay in Aleppo? In Mosul? Someone has to take them in.’

  ‘Before we met tonight,’ the artist went on, ‘there were 3,770 stars on the tree for the refugees who died. Now you’ve added the names of those you’ve loved and lost, we’ll turn on the lights.’

  I stared at the artist’s face.

  I made myself look away.

  The tree was lit, and the square was grave and quiet.

  But still no tears came.

  I was dammed up.

  In the live Nativity, the baby’s cry broke the silence, and the big electric star was turned on above the stable.

  A man from the local government with a gold chain around his neck took the artist’s arm, and paused for the photographer. Look at me with the migrant, he seemed to be saying. Then the entourage sat down at a table with a white cloth, with the artist and the priest, for dinner.

  I couldn’t help staring at him.

  Diego and I walked down to the beach, looking up at the stars, which were unusually bright, forming clouds of light against the blue-black sky.

  ‘The Romans named the planets after their most important gods,’ I said, and I noticed I was gabbling. ‘As Venus was the brightest, it was named after the goddess of love. It has two huge continents on it.’

  ‘How do you know all these things?’ said Diego.

  ‘It’s all on our phones these days,’ I said. ‘I used to keep it in my brain. It bored Julia, all this stuff. Drove her mad. Does it bore you?’

  He shook his head.

  ‘It’s weird the way we keep our brains in our pockets now,’ I said. ‘Do you think our brains will gradually evolve to hold less and less information? And soon we’ll be Neanderthals again but with iPhones?’

  Diego smiled at me.

  ‘Then our brains will shrink like our appendixes did,’ I said. ‘But our phones will grow cleverer, and eventually phones will rule the world! They’ll keep human beings in their pockets, but we’ll all be apps by then.’

  There was something strange in Diego’s smile.

  I wasn’t sure what it was.

  ‘You’re a one-off, Augusta,’ he said.

  We spent Christmas Day on the beach.

  It was warm and sunny.

  We walked right down to our special spot, but the buried boat wasn’t showing any more. We barbecued sardines, which were very bony, on a little foil tray.

  ‘Happy Christmas,’ we said to each other, unhappily.

  The new year appeared.

  The Refugee Tree disappeared.

  So did the artist.

  I kept an eye out for his coach, but it never came back.

  The big old tree lay, bare-branched, by the bins on the main road, on its side like the skeleton of some great dinosaur, and gold cardboard stars flew about on the wind. I wondered if Julia or Rose would ever fly by. But they didn’t.

  Raúl, Teo and I rode the horses down the beach in the early morning, or sometimes at dusk, or in the dark. A strange tingling feeling would come over me, like a cloak, as the mottled moon glowed silver, as the egrets flew against the dark sky and the horses’ hooves thudded on the wet sand, spraying sea in our faces.

  Inside this cloak, I had the momentary sense that all was well, that there was a reality beyond reality, something else, which compensated, consoled, completed me.

  We’d untack the horses, and I would feel peaceful, alive, numinous somehow – and soothed – though it didn’t last.

  ‘When did the artist first arrive here?’ I asked Raúl as we sat at the bar drinking coffee, after riding, ‘You know, the Refugee Tree guy?’

  I tried to sound as casual as I could.

  ‘I think he came over in a boat,’ said Raúl. ‘He started out as a labourer at the great complex that never happened. Before someone in Tarifa spotted his talent.’

  ‘Where does he come from?’ I asked again, casually.

  ‘Nobody knows,’ said Raúl. ‘But over there.’

  ‘And what about the coach?’

  ‘He lives in it, travels about the place. I haven’t seen him since the tree came down.’

  I wish I lived in a caravan,

  With a horse to drive, like the pedlar man!

  Where he comes from nobody knows,

  Or where he goes to, but on he goes!

  At Easter, there was still no sign of the artist.

  I’d started working in Raúl’s restaurant for the summer season, and this made me feel a bit more like a normal person with a normal kind of life. I quite liked the feeling, which scared me. Wasn’t that what I’d prided myself on hating? The days trotted by, one after another, with days off and payday, and April becoming May.

  When I rang my parents, they seemed strangely enlivened by the prospect of chucking out the foreigners and reclaiming Britain for the British.

  On the day of the Brexit vote, in June, I was walking past the roundabout, at the back of the beach, when I saw the artist’s coach turning in. I looked determinedly out to sea as he drove past.

  When I went down to the square, he was there, chatting to people by the market stalls. I sat at the corner table in the bar, and I watched him: his wide smile, the way he held his hands out, moving them up and down when he spoke.

  Later, I saw him on the beach, doing football tricks with some children.

  The next day, my mother phoned.

  ‘We did it,’ she said.

  Diego mouthed, ‘Be nice!’

  So I said, ‘Well done. Congratulations!’

  ‘It’s your country too,’ she said.

  But I wasn’t sure it was.

  ‘We’re going to turn back the clocks,’ said my mother.

  ‘Great,’ I said, thinking that clocks don’t turn back, even if we want them to.

  ‘I’d love to speak to Dad,’ I said.

  ‘He’s trying to sweep out the garages for the Brexit party,’ she said. ‘Though it’s not very easy for him these days. Even with the shorter broom.’

  My chest ached at the thought of him struggling round the garage in his wheelchair trying to keep it spick and span, as he likes to say, as nobody says.

  ‘Well, enjoy your party,’ I said to my mother, and I walked out along the beach road, carrying my rubbish bags to the plastic bins where I’d first seen the kitten. But she wasn’t there. There were just some boys, who ran off, throwing fire-crackers.

  The rubbish lorry arrived, stinking, and the cats dived off into an old pipe.

  Down on the beach road, I saw some movement inside the art gallery, and I walked through the open glass doors.

  The artist came in a minute later.

  He wore his jeans low.

  You could see the waistband of his boxer shorts and where his hip bones jutted out.

  You shouldn’t have been looking, that’s what Julia would have said.

  I was looking.

  Let’s be honest.

  He propped his paintings up against the wall, went out, brought more paintings, in and out, in and out. I tried not to stare at him.

  ‘Sorry!’ I said, I don’t know why.

  Which was awkward.

  My voice echoed in the empty cube.

  What was I doing here?

  Why was I sorry?

  And how could I get out?

  I couldn’t concentrate on anything. He made me feel funny. I blushed at nothing.

  ‘Do you want to give this painting a title?’ he said.

  I liked the way his voice sounded on the air.

  I liked the way his eyes glinted.

  I had a strange feeling that my voice wasn’t going to come out when I opened my mouth.

  I looked at his painting – a huge rubbish dump, with prowling storks the size of the smallest children.

  He nodded at the painting.

  ‘How
about Gehenna? As a title?’ I said, colouring slightly.

  ‘I know that word,’ he said.

  ‘It’s the rubbish dump outside Jerusalem,’ I said.

  ‘And it’s used to mean hell, isn’t it?’ he said.

  He wrote Gehenna in perfect italics on the white card.

  I held my breath, as if I had hiccups.

  ‘In my country, people walk barefoot through the rubbish every day,’ he said, sticking the white card, Gehenna, to the wall, ‘looking for scrap metal and plastic for selling. Or for making things. In the rain, the rubbish mixes with the sewage.’

  I nodded.

  I was still holding my breath.

  ‘Would you not leave if you could?’ he said.

  I let my breath out – it made a strange gasp.

  ‘Apparently,’ I said, ‘people have started using plastic as firewood, and it’s killing them. The fumes are getting into their food.’

  I looked at the dark backs of his hands, at the black inky shapes of the letters of Gehenna. Then I walked off, facing away from him, looking at the view of the sea through the square window, and I felt as if tears were bubbling in my chest.

  ‘How about another title?’ he said to me.

  I came back.

  ‘You look sad,’ he said, and his eyes were so kind. ‘Were you crying?’

  ‘No, I can’t cry,’ I said, though the more I looked at his eyes, the more I thought maybe I could.

  He started writing – a letter M and then a y.

  The warm cloak came over me, like dawn on the beach – the moon, the spray, the egrets. I remembered I used to feel the same watching Julia write italics, hearing the tiny scrape of the pen nib on the paper, watching the flow of ink, the way the card drank it, porously. It comforted me.

  My.

  He smiled, and his kind eyes were bright against his dark skin.

  Friend’s.

  He looked at me and I wondered if I could be his friend.

  My Friend’s Tears. My Tears.

  That’s what he wrote.

  I tingled.

  ‘Five hundred people have drowned off the coast of Greece,’ said the artist. ‘It’s so tragic. They paid around two thousand dollars – all they had – to drown.’

  ‘Did you know they use doves to spot people drowning at sea?’ I said. ‘Their eyes are better than people’s.’

  ‘Some people’s eyes are better than others’,’ said the artist, and he smiled at me again.

  ‘They’re really brave too, doves,’ I said.

  ‘So are people,’ he said. ‘I’ve known some extraordinary people. I bet you have too.’

  I nodded, thinking, I don’t know if I have.

  In Willow Crescent.

  At Durham University.

  I remembered telling Julia that I wanted to be extraordinary, and I knew I wasn’t.

  Not yet anyway.

  I couldn’t think what to say.

  So I walked out without saying goodbye.

  I thought: Why the hell did I talk about doves?

  Five hundred people dead – and I said that doves were brave.

  I blushed.

  I meant pigeons anyway – not doves. The ones they used in wars.

  I would never ever be able to talk to him again.

  I had embarrassed myself beyond belief.

  When I walked past the gallery each day, I turned my head away so we didn’t catch each other’s eye.

  And, every time I thought of going in, my legs went off in a different direction.

  On Julia’s birthday, I was up on the roof terrace and there were birds flying above me, on the wind. They were either late, drifting north, or very early, getting ready to head south.

  Every morning, Diego headed off to work in Conil, and Raúl and I got up to exercise the horses, swimming in the sea before the crowds descended on the beach. I was working in Raúl’s restaurant, with hardly a day off, since Teo fell off her horse. She was now home from hospital, with a broken leg, her neck in a collar – fingers crossed, said Raúl, her head looked fine in the scan.

  I didn’t speak to the artist again.

  Not about pigeons.

  Not about anything.

  The exhibition was over – every painting had sold, so people said in the bar in the square.

  I saw his coach turn right at the roundabout on the beach road, and he was off again.

  Oh no, not today.

  Surely he wouldn’t be gone another six months.

  How ridiculous that I hadn’t spoken to him again.

  Course you feel sad, I said to myself, it’s Julia’s birthday.

  But it wasn’t only that.

  My mother phoned me.

  When I answered, neither of us could speak.

  ‘The worst day,’ said my mother.

  ‘But then again, are there better days?’ I said. ‘Or just more days without her?’

  Then we didn’t say anything.

  I felt I should offer her something hopeful, but I couldn’t think what that something might be.

  ‘Shall I catch you up on the crescent?’ said my mother.

  I sat not listening to my mother’s updates, watching the birds, which were now magnetic filings against the sky fading into specks, into pinpoints, into nothing.

  ‘So what’s your news?’ said my mother.

  ‘The same really,’ I said. ‘Working at the restaurant, swimming in the sea, riding Raúl’s horses …’

  ‘I hope you wear a riding hat,’ said my mother.

  ‘Yes,’ I lied.

  ‘That lady in the newspaper was paralysed from the neck down,’ said my mother.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ I said.

  ‘And your flamenco dancing?’

  ‘The lessons stopped for summer,’ I said.

  ‘Do you think you’ll ever get married, Augusta?’ said my mother. ‘You’ll be twenty-six tomorrow.’

  I said I didn’t know, I would need to find someone to marry first, ha ha – it wouldn’t work so well without the bridegroom’s speech.

  ‘It’s a lovely thing, marriage,’ my mother said. ‘You stick together through thick and thin. Because you promised. Without the promise, it would be much harder, I imagine.’

  ‘It is a lovely thing, Mum,’ I said. ‘You and Dad are so good at it. You’re real pros at marriage, you two. You’ve shown me how it’s done. How to really keep your promises.’

  ‘You stick at it,’ said my mother.

  There was a long pause.

  Then she said, ‘Thank you, Augusta.’

  ‘It’s a pleasure,’ I said.

  ‘I think that’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me,’ she said.

  It made me feel nice, and it made me want to put down the phone and savour it. Because it wouldn’t last.

  ‘And what are you going to do for your birthday tomorrow?’ said my mother.

  ‘Watch the birds,’ I said. ‘Ride the horses.’

  ‘I don’t know why you want to live there,’ she said. ‘When you haven’t got any friends to celebrate your birthday with. If you were here, half the crescent would come out.’

  ‘Mum,’ I said. ‘I’ve been meaning to tell you this for a long time. The thing is. I hate Willow Crescent.’

  There was a long silence.

  I wished I hadn’t said hate.

  I wished I’d said don’t like.

  ‘But that doesn’t mean I hate you,’ I said. ‘I love you.’

  I should have emphasised the love more than the you. I’d half hoped she might say I love you back. But it would probably have been embarrassing in real life, the way it isn’t in your mind, where you can both be different people from the ones you are.

  ‘I think it’s better to be honest,’ I said. ‘So that you can adjust your expectations.’

  ‘So, when do you think you’ll be coming back?’ said my mother. ‘To Hedley Green?’

  ‘Mum,’ I said. ‘I’m not coming back to Hedley Green. I’m staying here.’<
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  Then she didn’t have anything left to say, and I felt horrible and guilty because Julia said the whole point of families was to stick together.

  The next morning, when I got back from riding, my mother phoned again.

  Diego had tied balloons to the door before he left for work, and there were fresh ensaimada pastries in a box on the table, tied with a bow.

  ‘Happy birthday,’ said my mother flatly on the phone.

  ‘Thank you,’ I said, flatly, back.

  ‘Her doves still fly over every evening,’ said my mother.

  ‘I couldn’t watch,’ I said.

  ‘It comforts me,’ said my mother.

  ‘I’m glad,’ I said.

  ‘Speak to your father,’ said my mother.

  He made some noises at me, and I thought of Graham Cook, and how much my father had hated the noises he’d made, noises that told him that bad things happened to good people. Now he was making those noises, himself, because bad things had happened. No matter how many times he’d said Nothing to worry about, there were, in the end, things to worry about, and he couldn’t stop them.

  My mother came back on the phone.

  ‘Diego will have told you Pally’s having a baby,’ she said. ‘Lola came round to tell me last night. To bring good news on a bad day, she said. She can’t wait to be a granny. She says I can be an honorary granny too.’

  ‘That’s lovely,’ I said.

  ‘Might you think of having a baby?’ said my mother.

  ‘Yes, I might, Mum, I might think of that some time,’ I said, though I wasn’t thinking of it at all.

  ‘It was the best time of my life,’ she said.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I know.’

  ‘It seems such a long time ago now.’

  ‘It does.’

  ‘I loved making your clothes – little matching dresses.’

  ‘I know you did.’

  ‘I kept them all – for, you know.’

  ‘I know,’ I said. ‘Although Julia cut some of them up for the patchwork quilt. Which was …’

  ‘I hope you’ll have some grandchildren for us. I wondered if perhaps. I mean, we have spoken about it, your father and I …’

  ‘I don’t have a boyfriend, Mum, like I said yesterday.’

  I could hear my father making noises at her.

  ‘Well, have a lovely day anyway,’ she said.