‘Ha ha ha,’ said my grandmother.
The soldiers, when they felt like it, broke into our hut and broke my sisters’ bodies as if they were clay jars with nothing inside them.
Although we were broken, I thought, we would fly away to Spain, and I pictured us all up above the clouds like grey-crowned cranes, or angels, with white-feathered wings. Oh yes, please send angels to swoop down and rescue Douce and Gloria, right now this minute, I prayed.
But failing that, and in the absence of angels, I would take them to Spain where no man could touch them, and I’d build them all a little white stone house down by the water, and I’d tie each one of them a hammock between two palm trees, and they could lie there, swinging, and I’d go fishing in the blue sea, and when I came home, we’d all sit around the fire barbecuing fish and reading Spanish poetry.
My mother and father wanted Julia and me to go on with French. But for the first year ever in our new school, Hedley Heights, we could choose Spanish in Year 9, or, if you were in the top set, you could do French and Spanish together.
Julia was not in the top set, and she chose to carry on with French. She didn’t really want to because she was in love with Diego at number 13, as I was too, but she did French (which she was awful at) because she always liked to do what my parents wanted.
‘It hurts me when they look disappointed,’ she said.
‘They’re manipulating you,’ I said.
If you wanted, as an extra, at Hedley Heights, you could also do Latin at lunchtimes. I put my name down in the first week of Year 7, which meant I would miss Cookery Club, one of its most significant attractions. In the beginning. Before I loved everything else about it.
My mother had signed us both up for Cookery Club, cooking being her thing. I’d spotted that some people assumed cooking would be my thing, by dint of me being a girl, and the best way, it seemed, to destroy that assumption would be never to learn to cook. Either in Cookery Club or in the many invitations made to me by my mother in the kitchen at number 1.
‘Oh, Augusta,’ said my mother. ‘What good will Latin be to you later on?’
‘Perhaps I will be a professor at Cambridge University,’ I said.
‘Professors at Cambridge University still need to cook,’ said my mother.
Which was a perfect example of the knack she had of entirely missing the point.
‘I don’t know what you’re planning to do with all these words you’re so keen on,’ said my mother.
‘You wait and see,’ I said.
Here I was, alone in Spanish, in Year 9, with España dancing on the air around my head, light as a fairy-sprite, like a butterfly, like the feeling of spring.
Before I could stop myself, I put up my hand and asked the teacher what the word was for sprite in Spanish. Because I couldn’t stop myself. And I didn’t want to know how to say I am called Augusta, which was clearly where we were heading.
‘Fairy or sprite – hada,’ said the teacher, but his mouth was all soft like a bean bag when he said it. I wondered if I could do that with my own mouth, soften the d to the point of collapse.
‘Or duende, I suppose,’ said the teacher, ‘which actually means spirit, except it’s untranslatable.’
Untranslatable, my ears pricked up – what a lovely, complicated thought. I saved it away for later, hoping that I was untranslatable, myself.
‘A book has just come out called Duende,’ said the teacher. ‘A book by Jason Webster – you may want to read it.’
Duende – I tried the word out on my tongue, imitating the teacher.
‘Duende,’ said the teacher, ‘is that …’
He hesitated.
‘That …’
We stared at him.
‘That moment of ecstasy.’
He stopped.
I thought of how much I wanted to find it, that thing I couldn’t find, whatever it was.
I knew where to find it, the thing I couldn’t find. It was up there, to the north – I just knew it was.
I headed up the hill to see Víctor, who was out in the vegetable garden, digging. Because I’d decided.
‘We have a Hutu president again, Parfait,’ he said. ‘They really are sharing power – and maybe peace is in sight!’
I watched him pull the big flappy leaves off a broccoli stalk, putting them in one basket, the little tree-like head in the other, and I thought, I’m not interested in the new president.
The chickens went on clucking about in the mud, beside the pen, and Víctor’s band of blind children were in the yard, swinging their white sticks, chanting: ‘Left foot out, stick to the right, right foot out, stick to the left.’
‘I’ve made up my mind, Víctor,’ I said. ‘I’m going to travel to your country and set up home there.’
‘Are you now?’ said Víctor, kneeling back with his buttocks resting on his heels, winking at me.
‘What’s the point of staying here?’ I said.
‘Well, it sounds a great plan, Parfait,’ said Víctor. ‘But it might be a bit ambitious for your first trip. After all, Spain is eight thousand kilometres away.’
‘We can go one step at a time,’ I said, furious at Víctor’s patronising tone, at not being taken seriously, ‘and it doesn’t matter how long it takes. There’s nothing to keep us here.’
‘You do know that there’s a sea between Africa and Spain?’ said Víctor, as if I was an idiot.
‘But it’s a very small sea,’ I said, not smiling. ‘I’ve looked on the map in my atlas, and it’s more like a river. We can cross by boat from Tangier. Have you ever been to Tangier?’
‘As a matter of fact, I have,’ said Víctor.
‘When did you go?’
‘Before I came here, at the start of my little road trip through Africa.’
‘What did you do there?’
‘I stayed with my friend – he’s a priest and he lives in the port …’
Víctor stopped talking, and he closed his eyes for a second.
‘But it can be quite dangerous at night, Parfait, thugs about, you wouldn’t want to be out late, or there at all on your own, to be frank—’
‘So your friend’s still there?’ I said.