The Other Half of Augusta Hope

by Joanna Glen

  At that moment, the sky inflated with clouds, stacking one above another, and the wind blew up, and it was raining, when it never rains in August in La Higuera. I let the wind blow at me and felt the warm blobs of rain fall on my cheeks, slowly at first, then faster.

  Inside the wind, there we were, Julia and I, sitting out on the porch as the dove landed on the top of the magnolia tree; up at the pond, under the willow, feeding the seven goldfish; making a fire behind the shed; flying kites at Old John Brown’s; fishing for minnows on Tattershall Common; sitting on the flat-branched tree at the bluebell glade; killing ourselves laughing at Dad’s Y-fronts on our beds; waxing our legs with strips that didn’t work; and there she was walking down the aisle, forty-five buttons down her back, and so beautiful; and pregnant with Rose, and so sad.

  How could I have been so blind?

  How didn’t I notice?

  How didn’t I stop her?

  The irretrievable past.

  I felt contractions of nostalgia inside me.

  The algos – ache – of nostos – home.

  And home was a person.

  Who wasn’t here.

  ‘It’s just started to rain,’ I said to my mother.

  ‘It’s lovely here,’ she said.

  ‘It never rains in August,’ I said.

  ‘I won’t keep you,’ she said.

  The smell of hot earth was pungent in the puddles, and the doves were landing on the wet mud.

  I went and got my Lorca books and brought them up to the roof terrace, where the damp coated their pages.

  Whilst I read the familiar poems, I drank a bottle of wine.

  Alone on the roof terrace without Julia.

  I went down for my dictionary and let it fall open.

  It opened at H.

  Hobby horse.

  Oh no, please not hobby horse.

  Keep reading.

  Find a new word.

  ‘Hodegetria’, said the dictionary.

  I always, always love a new word.

  Whatever I’m feeling.

  ‘An iconographic depiction of the Virgin Mary holding Jesus at her side.’

  That’s what the dictionary said.

  I opened another bottle of wine.

  Perhaps there’s a Hodegetria in the church in La Higuera, I thought, they’re extremely keen on the Virgin Mary round here.

  Perhaps I could find it.

  I had to do something.

  Such a treat, have a day off for your birthday.

  There were no birds in the sky today.

  I started walking along the back of the beach, my head swimming a little and my legs heavy with wine. I walked past the shop and up the narrow road where the cats were on the bins, licking tuna brine from cans.

  There was the little black cat. I crouched down, and she stretched out her neck and lay her heart-shaped face in my hand. But there was Raúl, and she ran off.

  ‘We’ve run out of tomatoes,’ he said. ‘The restaurant’s jam-packed because of the rain.’

  I nodded.

  ‘Are you OK?’ he said.

  ‘It’s a hard day,’ I said.

  ‘Light a candle in the church,’ he said. ‘It’ll make you feel better.’

  ‘I’m on my way as it happens,’ I said.

  ‘Don’t forget it’s the start of the feria tonight,’ he said.

  He put up his thumb.

  ‘Teo’s collar’s off,’ he said, ‘and all the scans are clear. So it’s just the leg. We can cope with the leg!’

  ‘I’m so pleased,’ I said – and I was.

  My wet feet slipped off my flip-flops into the puddles.

  People huddled in bars, looking at the grey August sky, checking the weather on their phones. In the market, they picked up Buddhas and tried on Indian skirts.

  I walked into the church.

  There was a dark painting of the Virgin Mary and the baby, a Hodegetria perhaps, I wasn’t sure, and there was a row of lit candles, like a birthday cake.

  I sat on a pew in front of the candles, and I found that I was whispering the Lord’s Prayer, which we used to say every morning at school.

  Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.

  I was wet and cold when Diego arrived.

  ‘You’re shivering,’ he said.

  I realised I was.

  He’d bought me red roses for my birthday, and champagne.

  Julia liked roses.

  I preferred daffodils.

  When we went outside, the feria had started. The coloured lights made patterns on our faces as the men played guitars and the girls danced flamenco and the children rode the dodgems and jumped on trampolines, making star shapes with their bodies.

  Diego put a red rose in my hair, we finished the champagne and drank paper cups of fino, returning home drunk, arm in arm, telling each other stories of Julia which we already knew, and we lay out on the Moroccan bed on the wet cushions, and this was a bad idea, to allow this to happen, to warm to each other’s arms, to look inside each other to see if we could find her, to allow ourselves to dig like frenzied dogs after the smell of her.

  There was no comfort there, inside each other, but still we let ourselves in, we trespassed on each other – and on her.

  We heard only the low moan of our pain, disguised, for a brief moment, as pleasure – la petite mort, the little death, the brief lost consciousness – it joined my mother’s voice behind the veil at the funeral, and it sank into the muddy pools beneath the fig trees, moaning into the earth, downwards.

  We untangled our bodies and lay back, separate.

  I felt anguish in my veins and the damp recall of him between my legs, dripping down my thigh. Like the guano on their glass roof.

  Diego said nothing.

  There was nothing I wanted to hear from him.

  Nothing I wanted to say to him.

  I wanted more than anything, nothing.

  I wanted the sky to be black.

  So that I couldn’t see myself.

  I wanted the air to be thick.

  So that I couldn’t hear the crickets.

  Crickets, frogs and the lurking night …

  There were frogs among the rocks in the natural pool.

  Next door’s dog strained on its chain, barking. The dog at the back raised his howl to the moon. The farm dogs behind joined in, in great yelping moans and shrieks. The dog howls spread across the dry earth. Back, back, to the scattered farmsteads inland, where the hills began.

  As summer ran out, the beach began to empty, and Diego and I sat inside the open doors at the back of the house, away from the clouds of dust and the insects swarming down from the mountains in the wind.

  ‘I’ve been thinking,’ said Diego.

  He looked strange.

  And he paused.

  And something was happening to his face.

  He started to speak.

  Then he stopped.

  His face turned red.

  He couldn’t make his lips work.

  ‘We could get married, Augusta, you and me.’

  I stared at him.

  He held out his hand, which was small like my father’s.

  And I said, ‘No, Diego, never.’

  Never – ‘at no time, not under any circumstances, on no account’ – that’s what the dictionary says.

  Diego’s cheeks coloured.

  ‘But we’ve been living here eight months together,’ he said, ‘and we’ve, you know.’

  He stopped and reached for my hand again. ‘After the feria.’

  I didn’t take his hand.

  I turned away.

  ‘That was such an unbelievable night,’ said Diego. ‘I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it. But I didn’t know what to say to you. So I guess I said nothing. I wondered if you maybe felt the same.’

  Breathe, breathe, breathe.

  It wasn’t an unbelievable night.

  Or perhaps it was.

  It was som
ething that I couldn’t, or wouldn’t, believe I had done.

  ‘Diego,’ I said, ‘This feels really hard to say – but the truth is, I don’t feel the same.’

  ‘I’m in love with you, Augusta, so why don’t we …’

  ‘Did you hear me, Diego? Love is reciprocal. Two people have to feel it. And I’m so sorry but I don’t.’

  ‘But what about that night?’ he said, and now his dark face had reddened.

  ‘It was a mistake,’ I said. ‘It was the feria, and we were both drunk. And I was sad and cold and lonely. And it was Julia’s birthday. And then mine. And it was all too awful. Erase it from your mind – it was one big mistake.’

  ‘But I didn’t force myself on you, Augusta,’ said Diego.

  ‘No, it’s not that. You did nothing wrong. Or, if you did, we both did.’

  He reached for my hand again.

  ‘I don’t think it was wrong,’ he said. ‘We don’t need to resist it. It doesn’t matter what people say.’

  Again, I didn’t take his hand.

  ‘Did you think I could be your new flower bed?’ I said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘You wanted to leave the shit behind and find a new flower bed.’

  ‘You twist things,’ said Diego. ‘This was supposed to be a nice conversation.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I don’t mean to.’

  ‘We could have a baby,’ he said. ‘Your mother …’

  ‘No, Diego,’ I said. ‘You loved her, not me.’

  ‘Well, why can’t I love both of you?’

  ‘It’s so wrong,’ I said.

  ‘Then we can’t stay here together in the house,’ said Diego.

  ‘You know how much I love this house,’ I said quietly.

  ‘So that was it, was it?’ said Diego. ‘That was all it was.’

  I got up and I went to my bedroom, and I lay on my bed, on the coral bedcover, and I looked at the stone walls, the driftwood shapes on the window sill and my long red dress on the back of the door, and I thought that yes, that was all it was.

  I couldn’t bear not to live here.

  If I didn’t live in this house, where would I live?

  What would I do?

  No thoughts came.

  What if I couldn’t even come here?

  Couldn’t ever again see the baby frogs swimming up and down in the natural pool, see the familiar twists of fig bark, the swirling threads of sea sewn into the fabric wall hangings.

  I didn’t turn on the light.

  It was hot in the room, despite the wind outside, and the air was thick around my face, and a fly was stuck between the mosquito screen and the wooden shutter, and I slept and I woke, and it buzzed, and in the morning, Diego and I met each other in the dark stone passage.

  He opened his mouth.

  I opened mine.

  Neither of us moved, backwards or forwards.

  ‘Should we go for a walk?’ he said. ‘Talk some more?’

  ‘I think we should try and end well,’ I said. ‘For everyone’s sake.’

  ‘Don’t talk about endings,’ he said. ‘I’ve had enough of endings.’

  I went out of the back door into the light, with my eyes blinking.

  ‘I want us to go to the end of the beach,’ he said.

  ‘I thought you didn’t like endings,’ I said.

  ‘I’m not sure it’s the moment for jokes.’

  ‘It was a crap one anyway.’

  We walked out to the dunes.

  There was the artist, painting.

  Row after row after row of roses in straight lines.

  He was back again – and so soon.

  ‘Why are you painting roses?’ I said to him.

  I said to him.

  I spoke to him.

  ‘Can you talk about this another time?’ said Diego.

  We went down to the sea.

  I took off my espadrilles and walked at the edge of the water. Diego walked on the dry sand, a few feet away from me.

  We kept going without speaking, our heads down – and Julia walked between us.

  ‘What are you thinking?’ I said.

  ‘I still feel like she’d be happy for us,’ he said.

  We walked.

  ‘What are you thinking?’ Diego asked.

  I was thinking that the flocks of birds were flying wrong in the sky, that the pebbles were sitting wrong on the beach, that the artist was painting red roses in rows, that I wished I could go back and ask him what they meant.

  I said nothing.

  I shrugged.

  ‘I’m in two minds,’ said Diego.

  ‘About what?’

  ‘About telling you something.’

  ‘You’ll have to tell me now,’ I said.

  ‘But I don’t know if it’s right to,’ he said.

  ‘Nothing we’ve done is right,’ I said.

  The waves kept up their rhythm, breaking in little spumes of spray, which shimmered over my legs. Diego stayed on the dry sand.

  ‘Thing is, she told me not to tell you,’ he said.

  We were drunk on cider on Tattershall Common, but now I think of it, perhaps it was only me who promised not to have secrets.

  He sat down.

  I sat down, to the right of him.

  I picked up a pebble and threw it, then another, and another, into the sea.

  The wind had calmed, and there was a thin layer of cloud over the sun. Cirrostratus cloud, I remembered from somewhere.

  ‘There was one thing she never told you,’ said Diego.

  ‘Something that happened right here?’

  He nodded.

  ‘She told me,’ I said. ‘The day before she died.’

  ‘The day before she died?’ said Diego. ‘And you didn’t think to tell me?’

  ‘I thought it would be hurtful to find she’d kept a secret from you. I didn’t know you knew.’

  ‘You didn’t wonder why she was telling you on that particular day, after all those years?’ he said, and he stood up, agitated. ‘Wasn’t it obvious, Augusta? Why the hell didn’t you tell me? Then I might have guessed what she was about to do.’

  ‘That’s cruel,’ I said. ‘I’m sure we both wish we’d picked up the signs, but we have to forgive ourselves.’

  ‘You knew how fragile she was.’

  I sat staring at the sea.

  He stood staring at the sea.

  Did I know how fragile she was?

  Was it obvious?

  Was it?

  ‘She didn’t finish the story, Diego. We were outside the party shop, the day before, do you remember? You came and she stopped talking.’

  ‘Oh, so you’re blaming me?’ he said, looking down at me.

  ‘You were blaming me,’ I said. ‘I said we both had to forgive ourselves.’

  I looked up at him, and it was odd seeing his face from this unfamiliar angle – his Adam’s apple looked enormous, and he was breathing deeply, in, out, in, out.

  ‘Then she was dead,’ I said, ‘and I couldn’t ask her. So will you please tell me the full story? I want to know.’

  The three of them headed down here for their picnic, that’s what Diego said. That morning, the morning when the clouds were puffer fish.

  ‘Your dad was all worked up and freaked out. He hadn’t slept, and he kept saying it wasn’t wise being out so early, when no one was about. Except a guy on a horse who disappeared.’

  ‘Probably Raúl,’ I said.

  ‘Julia saw a black man lying on the beach – and your father told her to come away.’

  Diego was pacing about as he spoke, almost as if he was acting out the story, here where it happened.

  ‘So she came away. But then she turned back towards the sea. She thought she’d seen someone out there and she wanted to check.’

  Diego looked out to sea, before turning to look at me.

  ‘But your father was yelling at her, really yelling at her. Like he’d totally lost it,’ he said. ‘You know how he
gets.’

  ‘How he used to get,’ I said.

  Julia asked if she could please just look.

  But my father said she was seeing things.

  And my mother said it was someone swimming, someone waving at them. For fun. Probably.

  By now my father was going hysterical – about crooks on the beach. Or something. And Julia wouldn’t move. Which wasn’t like her. She’d never disobeyed him before.

  So he slapped her.

  In the face.

  ‘Do as you’re told,’ he said, and he yanked her away. ‘We’re not getting wrapped up in this.’

  The red cheek.

  My mother slathering aftersun.

  And everyone ashamed.

  ‘She always had a thing about hands, didn’t you notice?’ said Diego. ‘She had nightmares about that hand. Out at sea.’

  ‘Not waving but drowning,’ I said to Diego. ‘The poem.’

  ‘That fucking poem,’ he said, shaking his head at me.

  I watched a wave that was sheeting up the beach.

  ‘When Rose was born, her hand was sticking up,’ said Diego. ‘It sent her crazy. She said the baby drowned inside her …’

  The waves came in and out.

  Julia, I thought, why didn’t you tell me?

  I should have gone with them for breakfast on the beach that day, and everything would have been different. Lives would have been saved. If I hadn’t been so lazy. So selfish. So desperate to be on my own.

  I should have noticed how bad she was after Rose died.

  Should have.

  Could have.

  Would have.

  The worst tense of all.

  If I had, if I hadn’t – all too late.

  ‘Do your parents really think that she didn’t see the train?’ said Diego, and his eyes looked cold. ‘How would you not see a train? It’s laughable.’

  He laughed.

  He actually laughed – in the same breath as he said train.

  ‘Let them think whatever helps them,’ I said.

  ‘Let’s make it up,’ said Diego, coming closer. ‘For her sake. Make a home with me, Augusta, up at the house. You know how much you love that house. You can write your book. We could have children here. They could grow up on the beach.’

  ‘You tell me I could have stopped it, you laugh at my parents and in the next breath you want to have my children.’

  ‘I don’t want you in my house any longer, Augusta,’ said Diego, his voice flat and cold, and he started to walk up the beach, turning around to say, ‘And don’t tell me you don’t laugh at your parents!’