Buckets of Blood, by Tessa Hadley

 

SUMMARY AND OPINION, by Begoña Devis

Hilary and Sheila are two sisters, both daughters of a vicar's large and poor orthodox family. The memories of their childhood and youth are not exactly happy: endless queues to use the bathroom, scant food, a heater that hardly heats up, fear of his belongings being stolen by his brothers, and, especially, the figure of their mother, overwhelmed, permanently dishevelled, pregnant and with a wild appearance that made people look at her in the street.
For all these reasons, when they both confess to each other that they no longer believe in God, they decide that, in no way, they are going to follow the family model, to have a conventional family, or pregnancies, or children, or anything that remotely reminds them of how their childhood has been. As escaping from this pattern is not so easy, because of their status as women, they decide that Sheila, always more courageous and determined (and probably the older one) will be the one to lead the way by going to the university, so that, later on, Hilary would be also able to move away from the place where they still reside.

When Sheila is already at the University of Bristol, Hilary embarks on a hopeful bus trip to visit her. It is her first time away from home, she is shy and rather unfriendly with people because she doesn't know how to interact with them, and the trip makes her sick, but, despite this, she feels happy. She hopes to meet her sister waiting for her at the station, and then to go together to the Manor Hill residence, where she will be happily ensconced.

But nothing goes as she expected. Instead of her sister, a young man who seems ugly, short and very inattentive, comes to pick her up at the station. She is forced to follow him through innumerable streets, leaving behind the tower of the University, to reach a filthy building, poorly lit, with hardly any water, where her sister and a group of friends live illegally. Sheila is suffering great pains at this time, and everywhere there are small buckets of blood, because she is having a miscarriage. The discovery that her sister has had sexual relations, has become pregnant (by Neil, the ugly boy who has been waiting for her in the

station, and who is not helping at all in that situation) makes Hilary to be in shock, and changes their relationship forever. On the other hand, her classmates seem to her unattractive, and more concerned with drinking in pubs and consuming joints than studying. Hilary has a great disappointment. She can’t understand how people who are on the lucky side of life can behave so rudely and inappropriately, and she can even less understand the attitude of her sister, always willing to please Neil, despite the fact that he did nothing for her during her miscarriage, and that he is always arrogant and pretentious. Hilary can’t recognize in Sheila the girl who had always been her sister.

Finally, after a few days, Sheila accompanies her sister to the station for the trip back home. They have made it very clear that the family will never know anything about what happened, and they won’t ever talk about it again.

On her way home, Hilary thinks that her life will never change as much as her sister’s has, and she feels bewildered. Suddenly, the landscape that she sees from the window seems beautiful to her, and she is saddened by thinking that, when she'll die, she will stop seeing it; then she thinks that she is already dead, and she cannot see it any more, but somehow she is allowed to return to life, and so she decides to enjoy everything while she has the opportunity to do it, down to the smallest detail.

 

PERSONAL OPINION

I think that Hilary and Sheila are very different, even though they are sisters.

The only thing that unites them is the fact of not wanting to form a family that follows the pattern of which they belong, and the need to flee from there.

When Hilary visits Sheila at the University, her hopes are dashed and her wishes changed. That was not the kind of life she expected there, and much less the life she wanted for herself. For this reason, during her trip back home, she suddenly finds herself appreciating the present: she doesn’t like the past, and the future is uncertain, so she decides to appreciate every second and every opportunity that the present offers to her.

QUESTIONS

-“She worried that she smelled of home.” Does every house / home have a different smell? Why does she say “home” and not “house”?

-What do you think of priest getting married and having a family? (Have you seen the film “Keeping the Faith”, “Más que amigos” in Spanish)

-How can you notice that someone has dressed up to be admired?

-Why did both sisters want to get far away from their home and not to become like their mother?

-But Sheila is studying Classics, a bit as her father. What kind of relationship is there between her and her father?

-Has religion or your opinions of the existence of God to be a private question? Why do you think so?

-Do you think there is trust in a family when the children don’t tell one another?

-In your opinion, why is their mother so disarranged?

-Why their mother’s pregnancies were humiliating for both sisters?

-How can you define “provincial”?

-Why does the author describe the hospital as something “sobering and impassive”?

-What do you think of the squatter movement?

-What do you know about Bluebeard story?

-Did you feel a difference between secondary school and university in the students’ attitudes in front of subjects and exams?

-To go to university is being in the “lucky side”?

-What is for you the event that changes a child or a teenager into an adult?

-In the story, Neil seems to be the “alpha male” because of his intellectual power or his coolness? Is this kind of rank going to disappear in the future?

-What do you know about the Oresteia? Do you think it’s a kind of symbol in our story?

-When Hilary goes back home, the weather is cheerful. What is the use of this for the story?

 

VOCABULARY

drawstring, navy school, school mac, Mothballs, Germolene, spots, dribbled out, remonstrated with, fleshpots, flaunt, surreptitious, reading, permed, hand-me-down, wellingtons, paltry, picked, palsy, entrist, beach rounders, twin-tub washing machine, playpen, dun, larked, ropy, maimed, pinstriped suit jacket, blue-rinsed, embossed, Brownie belt, squeak, dogged, daunting, quaint, racked, bundling, toppling, leering, shifty, Hills, Shuggs, kicked out, mould, reel, buckings, the halls, fractious, potties, tummy bug, studded, jug ears, lumpish, duffel coat, perfunctory, estate, fumy, slum, debunking, beeting, harrowed, heaved over, Brummie, small talk, shrank, gawky, lectures, skeins, haze, hummocky

Seraglio, by Graham Swift

SERAGLIO, PLOT AND COMMENTARY, by Núria Lecina

This short story tells us about the relationship of a couple. We don’t know their names.  Maybe the storyteller, who is the husband, doesn’t think it is necessary. He explains the facts and his thoughts.  Neither, we never know his wife’s feelings in this experience.  They are on holidays in Istanbul, but they could be anywhere, their relationship would be the same.

They decided to travel to Istanbul, a place really beautiful and interesting, because they wanted something exotic, they needed holidays, but different. “A place where you can save your ordinary life”. They look for an escape. They feel that have suffered, and now they are in convalescence, so that’s why they want an exotic and special place. But this way they won’t solve their problems. Sooner or later, they’ll return.

Thanks to the husband’s narration, who has a tourist’s book, we know a lot of aspects about the exotic Istanbul. For instance, what is the Seraglio, the place where the Sultan had all his women or concubines.

He also defines what is his wife like, both physically and psychologically. And what is the couple’s life like.

It is a rich text in descriptions, full of adjectives that help the reader to understand and imagine the situation.

One day in these holidays, when the husband arrives to the hotel after he has done a photographic report, he finds his wife laying on the bed crying. She explains to him that a hotel’s worker has come to their room to repair the heater, and when he had finished, he approached her and touched her. The explanations aren’t much clearer, neither what they can do to clear up the incident. At this moment, the situation becomes tense. Is she the victim? Is he guilty because he wasn’t there? Is it necessary to inform against? What is the meaning of “touched her”?  Did she use this fact to blame him? Is he being insensitive? …

This fact makes the husband think about how they can have arrived to this way of living, and then he tells us about their past. Their wedding was seven years ago. They worked together. He immediately fell in love with her. Soon they got married.

He, practising an odd philosophy, tested his love. He had a lover to check that really the woman who loved was his wife. This adventure, like a secret Seraglio, finished when the wife was pregnant. But soon after, she had a miscarriage, and it all got ruined. Perhaps his cheating on her was also an addition to their crisis?

Between them, it was installed the silence, a common guilt, the incapacity to talk about the loss, the incapacity to talk about the causes of everything and about what they could do to get out of their mourning.  And so, the solution was the escape, covering up what hurt them, the loss.

From that moment, rewards are the most important thing: theatre, restaurants, concerts, exhibitions, and expensive holidays.

I think the last sentence sums it up well: “So, one doesn’t have to cross to the other continent, doesn’t have to know what really happened”.

Until when?

QUESTIONS

-What do you know about the history of Istanbul?

-A cruel custom is mentioned. Do you know about similar customs related to power?

-Beauty is sometimes terrible: that is what we call sublime. Do you know any examples of this?

-What do you think of the famous cliché “Men seem to have the power, but who really gives orders is his wife”?

-What do you know about Oman II?

-“On holiday, you want to be spared ordinary life”. What do you think of the tourists lying on the beach, while shipwrecked immigrant people that have come out of a small boat lay on the beach?

-Do you think clichés in the story about Turkey are close to reality? Have you seen “Midnight Express” or “The Turkish Lover”?

-What do you know about Florence Nightingale?

-Where is Surrey in England? Do you know anything about it?

-How fond of taking photos are you? How do you like taking them?

-Do you think something really happened between the porter and the wife? How do you know?

-According to your opinion, are police officers competent enough to attend assaulted women?

-“But I have wanted this too.” What does it mean? Page 4, line 11.

-Was he really in love with his wife? How do you know?

-What do you think of the saying “Out of sight, out of mind”?

-Can you comment the sentence “Men want power over women in order to be able to let women take this power from them”?

-Do you usually discuss a film / play after seeing it with your friends / partner?

-Who killed their baby? Did he have a reason to feel guilty, and thus cause the miscarriage? What reason could be?

-What is the best way to narrate an embarrassing / delicate situation?

-What do you think is the meaning of her holding “one hand, closed, to her throat”?

-Having in mind their circumstances (abroad, tourists, eastern country…), what would you have done in her situation, talk to the manager, go to the police, go to your embassy…?

-Why did the author mention that the radiator was “distinctly warmer”?

-Why in the plane “other people glanced at his wife”?

-Do you think their marriage will go on?

 

VOCABULARY

sherbet, rent, squalls, hailstorms, bloated, spattered, Elastoplast, cripples, chequers, bled, dig, flawless, complexion, fastidious, tends, interfered, elicit, bluffly, blowing up, sensible, cut out, consultant designer, crushed, make believe, conscripted, heater, siege, scornful, issue, scoff, linen, gauge, ledge, reprieve, stay of execution, plane trees