a pale moth fluttering towards the light of the candle, here, at the front of the caravan, in the dusk, where I’m writing. I bat her away. She has dark squiggles on her wings, like letters written on sepia paper.
Julia went inside for matches, and we crept to a lovely hidden place behind the shed – I can feel the rough texture of the wooden slats which pulled threads out of our jumpers when we brushed against them and I can see the wire fire basket hung with spider webs. There, in a lovely empty pocket of time, the sort of pocket reserved for brothers and sisters, she and I made a little bonfire in the wire cage, and we stood together, in the warm evening, watching the pages of the story turn into flames.
My father went hysterical when he found us.
I said it was all my fault.
Julia joined in the blame, using a very soft, calm voice at his rage, like a warm shower.
‘We’re sorry, Dad, we’re sorry,’ she said, with her little heart-shaped face crinkled with sorry-ness.
It came to me then, and it comes to me now, that I didn’t feel sorry at all.
One thing the committee could not talk about, as Barbara Cook was running the Craft Fair, was what Graham Cook would do on the day, as, although nobody said it, they all thought the strange drowning noises he made might put people off buying.
But one Saturday, Barbara Cook went to visit her sister, so the committee arranged an ad hoc meeting. My father walked in and out of the kitchen, hoping the meeting would soon be over, practically before it had begun.
‘Perhaps Barbara’s brother might come over and look after Graham at the Craft Fair,’ said my mother. ‘He’s very good with him.’
My father shook his head.
‘He’s unpredictable,’ he said, as he passed through. ‘We wouldn’t want him running amok in the garden.’
‘I would be very happy to look after Graham Cook,’ I said. I knew that Graham was five years older than me, but, in the circumstances, I thought this might still work.
‘Oh no, darling, you couldn’t possibly look after Graham Cook,’ said my mother and father, practically in unison, as my father passed through again. ‘You’re only ten.’
‘I’m nearly eleven,’ I said.
‘If Graham Cook’s angry,’ said Hilary Hawkins, ‘he loses his rag – it’s quite frightening, to be honest.’
In the end, Barbara Cook told the Craft Committee how much Graham was looking forward to the Craft Fair, and on the day, he sat down at the end of the garden in a shady corner next to the candle stall with his red bus, making drowning noises and putting people off coming near.
I went to the second-hand toy stall and bought a red plastic bus, and I sat with my red plastic bus right next to Graham with his red plastic bus, so that holding a red plastic bus would seem more of a normal thing to do. I considered whether I should also make some drowning noises and shoot my limbs out, but came to the conclusion that this might cause a bit too much of a commotion.
Graham Cook and I sat with our red plastic buses in the unexpected sunshine, and he seemed comforted and hardly made any strange noises at all. Julia couldn’t move from her position at the Lucky Dip over by the outside toilet, but she smiled at me in that way she had.
My father came over to me and, once Barbara Cook was out of earshot, he said under his breath, ‘For God’s sake get up, Augusta. You’re making a fool of yourself – and people will think you’re a bit …’
‘A bit what?’ I said.
‘A bit …’ said my father. ‘A bit, you know, not all there. Spasticated.’
‘I’m staying right here,’ I said, ‘in solidarity with Graham Cook.’
Then my father took hold of my upper arm and dragged me upwards with a big tug, which made me feel as if my arm and my shoulder were going to come apart from each other, and in a strange tight voice, quite menacing, he whispered in my ear, ‘Get over to the Lucky Dip and help your sister.’
Graham Cook moaned and wailed and tried to run away, so Jim Cook had to hold him in an arm lock.
I shut myself in the outside toilet and cried and cried at the shock of it all, and when I came out, with my red bus, there was a long queue, and Angela Dunnett said, ‘We were about to call the Fire Bwigade. We thought you were locked in.’
I felt really bad that Angela Dunnett was being so nice to me, and had gone and bought me a cupcake with butter icing from the cake stall to help cheer me up, and I determined that I would never ever again make jokes about the way she said r.
My friend, Ian, turned up and he bought the ugly ragdoll with the yellow plaits as a joke, and we went behind the outside toilet and had a tug-of-war with her – and all her stuffing fell out of her middle.
Then I went and stood next to Julia at the Lucky Dip holding the red bus. Julia didn’t ask me why I’d been crying. She just reached for my hand, but when my father came by, his face all tense and contorted, she let it go. He did another loud whisper in my ear which said, ‘Put that damned bus down.’
Julia bit her lip and she puffed up the sawdust in the Lucky Dip to bring the remaining prizes to the surface.
All the happiness had seeped out of her face.
I remember the day I met Víctor, the Spanish priest, out on the road on his bike. We started talking, and I found that things came pouring out of my mouth, things I’d been storing up inside, not knowing what I could do with them.
I told Víctor that, the week after Melchior Ndadaye was assassinated, my father, Melchior, died too.
‘The soldiers came to our colline,’ I said. ‘And my father turned his cheek because he wanted to break the chain.’
I told him that the next time they came, Wilfred the English missionary stepped in front of our pregnant neighbour, Honorine, so that the soldiers would shoot him instead of her.
‘I’ll never forget the way he was smiling, though he was dead,’ I said. ‘He was lying there amongst the daffodils his mother had sent over from England. I felt so bad about what our country had done to her son.’
Víctor nodded.
‘My mother went with the women to the rubbish dump,’ I said, ‘and they made daffodils out of old tin cans to put around his grave.’
I took a deep breath because I didn’t want to speak about Claude.
I’d told Claude to run when the soldiers came with flaming torches, but as I counted everyone in, behind the bush by the stream, he wasn’t there. We found his burnt body too late, cowering in the corner of our hut.
‘Wilfred’s still got the rope around his ankle,’ I said to Víctor. ‘The one that used to join onto Claude’s ankle. He won’t take it off, and I can’t ask him why because he won’t speak any more. Not a word since Claude died.’
I told him that my mother wasn’t feeling too good, but she wouldn’t go and see the doctor because all doctors were Tutsi and she didn’t trust them.
Things went on pouring out of my mouth, and Victor went on nodding.
He told me some things about his life. How he was setting up a school for deaf and blind children, up the hill, bringing them out of the shadows so that they wouldn’t feel ashamed of themselves any more. He invited me to come and see them, and I shook their hands, and Víctor gave me mango fruit chopped up in porridge in the little kitchen of his house.
‘Is Spain really over there?’ I asked him. ‘At the top of Africa and over