I felt as if only the outline of myself was walking around the place. Jojo? Here, boy. Maybe he was in the garden—yes, that’s where he’d be, he had a secret kennel there that no one had told me about. The manor house was all old glamorous beauty from the front, the sort of house you’d gasp at if you saw it in a magazine. You’d think to yourself lucky bastard who lives there.
Empty dovecotes, long grass which hadn’t been cut for weeks and was wild with all the new spring growth. What did this man care about? Did he care about me? At the bottom of the garden, a tangle of bushes and straggly trees, some with blossoms still on the branches. No car in the driveway. Still no dog. At the back of the garden was a broken fence, a few overgrown bushes and not much else. Here was a man who cared not about his fences. It was very dark there, a few midges and flies buzzed about in the gloom. Twigs and branches snapped under my feet. Jojo? One last call.
A large cheerful dog barked and raced over to me, jumping and kissing me all over. I was kneeling in the grass with Jojo licking my hands. Jojo barked a few times but there was nothing of interest to keep him barking here except an odd smell of damp earth, a scent he was beginning to recognise. He crashed about under the trees, lifting his great handsome head from time to time to sniff the air.
Two small black shoes approached me through the grass.
What do you think you’re doing?
Rustle of darkness. Come, she said, pulling me to my feet.
Come.
Augusta and I alone in the gloomy garden.
‘What do you want, Augusta?’
No one could see us unless they peered through the broken fence or stood at the far bedroom window, and I didn’t care if anyone was doing that.
Come, she said reaching into my thoughts. Away from here. Here is nothing for me. We must go into the house, let us find him. Come, little Buddey girl. Let me in.
Rebecca Budde, what are you doing now? I took the key from my pocket, and opened the front door.
Up the stairs we climbed, her and me. I wasn’t looking at her, she didn’t smile at me, her hair did not curl around my hands. I was whistling a tune in case he was there. Hello, hello, hello, fancy seeing you here. And he turns to me all welcoming and kind and he says, Rebeccah, sweetheart, your lips are a rosy hue, your eyes see the far horizon. Your face is the one I have been searching for. And I turn to him and say Oh, hi Alex, here we both are—for what purpose, I ask myself, unless it is to be naked, glimmering under the moon?
Shut up, Rebecca Budde, I say to myself, but Augusta seems to like this.
Go on, she says, but I’m already thinking, Shut up and leave the house and stop looking at these private personal photos I should not be looking at in the top drawer in the bedroom with his belts and cufflinks and belongings.
Augusta’s happy just being in the house. She shouldn’t be here and I sort of know that but, then, neither should I. He didn’t say not to let her in here, did he? And now we’re here it seems churlish to make her leave. After all, we are quite companionable in our illegal activities. We’re upstairs and the house is quiet, not a single sound, except for me rifling through Alex March’s drawers and Augusta floating around happily, because finally, finally here she was, in the manor house.
There they were as children, Sophie and Alex, arms around each other, both with fair hair, although I could see Alex was always darker. Childhood in silver frames. Sophie and Sebastian squinting into the sun, Sophie holding a baby in a long christening gown, one hand protectively over her face. Sebastian with hair.
Older people, Mr and Mrs March, all of them in the garden, sunlight on their faces, smiling at the camera. Lucy as a toddler, wearing puffy shorts and a hat and clutching the neck of a small dog, a whole generation sitting behind her. Alex with his arm around a beautiful dark-haired girl. Skinny hips. Arm slung casually over her shoulder, her hand holding his. Cool beautiful people. That same knowing look on his face. I shut the drawer. My heart was thumping. If I met him on the way down the stairs I would say, Hey I was looking for your dog. That’s all.
‘Augusta? Where are you?’ Where was she? Did it matter? She was here now, in the house of her beloved George, even though he was a bastard. Maybe she knew he was here somewhere, just like she was. She still went back to him. She’d stop bothering me now. I could go home and be a normal person with Algie, him and me against the world, and I’d never ever think about Alex March again.
The front door slammed shut.
Oh diddly fuck. Augusta? Where the hell are you?
Voices in the hallway.
‘Alex? You here?’ Lucy Bloody Rutherford-Fuchs was in the house with another voice, a male voice, behind her.
My heart leapt out from my dreaming body and shot me halfway across the room. Quick, you idiot, you big blundering idiot—hide!
Footsteps coming up the stairs, footsteps and voices, behind the door, no, no, no, they’ll see me, under the bed, under the bloody bed, oh you mighty, mighty fool.
I crawled under Alex March’s bed, my heart thumping like a drum in a marching band, boom boom boom and glory, glory hallelujah, perhaps I would die like this. Death from embarrassment while Lucy Rutherford screwed her boyfriend—not Dave, please don’t let it be Dave, she chucked him, didn’t she?—on the bouncing laughing bed.
I lay under the bed with a mouthful of dust from the wooden floorboards. I was going to have to come out and surprise them. But it didn’t sound like Dave. Sounded more like Alex March, a little bit posh, a little bit London, not a Wye on Thames voice.
‘You sure about this, Luce?’
‘’Course. Alex says I can use the place whenever I want to. He knows what Sebastian is like.’
Why, Lucy darling, Alex says the same to me, use the place whenever, Rebeccah, stay under the bed for as long as you want to.
‘He’s okay. Is to me, anyway.’
‘Yes of course he is to you. He likes you. He thinks you’re a good influence on me. Oh God, if only he knew.’
There was a terrible, terrible silence, and I could hear all sorts of terrible, terrible sounds I’d have given anything in my life not to hear. Augusta, get me out here, please.
The door opened and from where I lay I could see her black little shoes swing into the room. She stood at the door watching Lucy in her twentieth-century act of passion with whoever was meant to be a good influence on her.
As Augusta stood there a huge swirl of dust went up my nose and I desperately tried to stop the sneeze, but I couldn’t. I knew it was coming. Oh shit shit shit. I practically shoved my whole arm into my mouth. I would have shoved my whole body into my mouth if it had stopped the sneeze, but no, it was coming, it was coming, any second now . . .
It nearly blew my head off. And one sneeze was never enough.
‘Oh my God, did you hear that?’ Lucy shot up off the bed. I could see Augusta’s feet dance over to the windows where she flapped the curtains, opened the window, slammed the bedroom door shut then opened it again and turned the bedroom light on and off, on and off. She was magnificent.
They both scrambled up from the bed, almost screaming with fright. ‘What the hell’s going on? Oh my God, what the hell is this?’
I prayed that Lucy wouldn’t look under the bed for the source of the sneeze, but at that moment Jojo raced in. God bless you, Jojo, and God bless you, Augusta (was that a funny thing to say to a ghost?). He barked his head off at Augusta and Lucy and the boy, and Lucy was saying, ‘Oh my God, we’re not staying here, wait till I tell Alex he’s got poltergeists in his bloody house. Come on, Nick, let’s get out of here.’
Augusta slammed the bedroom door shut behind them and I heard Lucy scream halfway down the stairs. Augusta really seemed to be enjoying herself.
I could hear Jojo outside scrabbling over the driveway behind Lucy and Nick, whoever he was. I slid out from under the bed. Car doors slammed, an engine started, then revved away. Shaky legs, beating heart, covered in dust.
‘Augusta! You marvellous thing. Thank you.’
She inclined her head to me.
‘Is all that hard to do?’
Easy.
‘Do you feel good now?’
I was thinking of . . . She paused, gathering his name from some undisclosed sadness. Then she said it. George.
A tiny smile played at the corners of her mouth. I had never seen Augusta smile before. I couldn’t feel her sadness; it sat like a stone in front of me, I could only see it from the outside. I had no idea what she had felt or what her life had been. I only knew mine. I had to get out of there. I was going home to Algernon. Algie, I am coming.
Where are you?
‘Miss Budde, I am sitting in the wardrobe.’
‘What’s up, Algie?’
‘I would like some more of your company, Miss Budde.’
‘Here I am.’
‘Yes indeed, here is your corporeal presence.’
‘Exactly.’
He looked tired and crumpled but still he smiled at me with his beautiful kind face. Algernon. Oh with what fondness do I regard you?
‘Shall I tell you about this afternoon?’
‘I told you not to let her in.’
‘I didn’t, she was there already. But it’s all right, Algie, nothing bad happened.’
‘Misbehaving most likely,’ he said.
‘Having fun,’ I said. I was thinking of the huge pile of fluff under Alex March’s bed. I wondered what would have happened if Lucy had looked under the bed. I thought Algernon would be pleased that his sister was busy being somewhere instead of being nowhere.