Shooting Butterflies (35 page)

She took some shots after they had made love, of him dozing in bed on rumpled sheets, a faint flush to his cheeks. He was fine about that too, once she had reassured him that he had been lying demurely on his front.

For some of the pictures Grace rigged up the camera to include the two of them. ‘Gee, darlin', I wish we could always be like this,' he said as he sat at the kitchen table, wearing a navy V-neck sweater over his shirt and tie, a plate laden with apple pie before him. Grace, in long blonde wig and a floaty floral frock, hovered by his side, ready with the jug of cream.

‘In yer dreams, honey-pie,' she drawled as she reached for the remote switch and the shutter clicked.

The final picture in the series was shot the day before he had to return home. ‘There is not a woman born who's not a sucker for manly tears,' she said. She posed him at the corner of Kensington High Street and Old Church Street with a bunch of wilting flowers in his hand. It was dusk. He had done a lot of walking that day, as there was a tube strike and he had to get to a meeting in the City, so he was tired already. Looking at him standing there, with the bunch of dying anemones in his hand, he seemed as forlorn as if he had been waiting half the day. ‘She's not coming,' Grace said. ‘That's what you have to keep saying to yourself: the love of your life is not coming. She's gone to Timbuktu and will never ever return. Or she's died. Yes, I think she's dead. You're waiting for your one true love but she's lying dead in her smashed-up car not one mile from here. You don't know it yet, but the sirens you heard some fifty minutes ago were the emergency vehicles rushing in vain to her aid.' At that he looked so upset that Grace almost put the camera down to wrap her arms around him and tell him it was all right. But she took the picture instead.

I have my own sitting room upstairs. It's been fashioned out of what were two small bedrooms. Arthur feels that I need somewhere just for me, somewhere quiet. I sit by the open window in my new quarters. It is warm for early September and the leaves have not yet begun to turn. I can see the children playing on the lawn, disappearing and reappearing in and out of the mist rising from the river. When Jane looks up at the window I raise my hand and wave them towards me. ‘Children, come up and see your mama,' I mouth.

After John died I was not at all well and Lady Glastonbury suggested I see someone. As it happened she knew the very man, Sir Charles Granger, eminent in his field and no stranger to royalty either, although the last was whispered only in confidence. He had recently retired from his London practice to dedicate himself to the running of the excellent Harvey Clinic only fifteen miles away in Basingstoke.

I do not like Sir Charles. He tells me he is there to help me, but he never looks at me directly and he speaks over my head to Arthur and gives
him
the tablets I am to take. I ask Arthur what the pills are for. ‘They're to give you a rest.'

I need a rest even though I have done very little lately other than sit in my room, so I take the pills. I take two in the morning and two after my evening meal and I feel more and more tired, too tired to think. But I try to look awake when the children come to see me in the afternoon. I tell them stories.

Georgie wants to hear about the time his mama travelled with
her friends to Germany and how they all went down a deep dark mine.

The mother had soon had enough of fairy-tale castles and gingerbread houses. She was bored with the gentility of the spas. She wanted the boys and their little friend, a quiet girl with no mother or father of her own, to see something different. They passed the men seated by the roadside eating bread and cheese and sausages. Their faces were as black as Negroes'. Jack said the men were lucky because they were allowed to eat their supper without first washing their hands and faces.

The children wore brown smocks over their sailor suits. Jack was cross. He said that his smock would not show up the black dirt the way his blue and white sailor suit would. His mother ignored him. It was her way. She didn't waste her breath on arguing. She told you how a thing was but if you had an objection after that you might as well not have spoken. This was the reason for her calm and peaceful nature.

As they were lowered into the pit, Jack said it was the most exciting moment in his life. Maybe, he said, they would find treasure down there.

They arrived in the magic underworld and saw what the mother had wanted them to see; that it was nothing but a prison where men lived out the precious daylight hours in darkness, where the ponies wore blindfolds to keep them sane and where one solitary bird sat caged and silent.

The little guest, who was not a brave strong girl like Lillian, began to cry. Jack liked to argue about anything and everything but even he could not find a reason why he should want to be one of those men now.

When they were back up in the sunlight the girl who had cried asked, ‘What have those men done that they are made to work down there?'

‘Done?' the mother said.

‘Have they been very bad? They must have been.'

‘They have done nothing wrong. Good people can be given bad lives and bad people can be given good lives.'

‘But that's not fair!' the girl wailed. ‘That's not at all fair.'

‘No,' the mother said. ‘No, it is not.'

The girl followed behind the others, walking slowly, feeling the ground beneath her feet, scratching at the soil with the toe of her black polished boot. If what the mother had said were true, she would never again feel safe because whatever she did, whether she was good or bad, there was only a layer of soil and rock between her and the underground.

‘That's a strange story to tell young children,' Jane says. She has come into the room without anyone noticing.

‘They like it.'

Jane says, ‘If you say so,' and means, ‘I don't think so,' but she keeps her smile in place as she picks Lillian up from the rug on the floor. ‘However, in my experience what children like and what is good for them is seldom one and the same.'

I want to tell Jane to put Lillian down and leave us all alone. I want to tell her to stop telling Arthur lies about me in that soft voice of hers, but I'm too tired and anyway she would go straight to Arthur and he would accuse me of being unkind.

Jane takes the children away. At first they protest and say they want to stay but by the time she has promised them a game they skip ahead of her through the door.

Arthur suggests a small dinner party to show the world that I am well again.

The guests smile and chat but I can see their thoughts. It's not difficult; I have lived amongst these people for long enough to know that what they said about others they would sooner or later say about me.
Poor Arthur. His splendid beard has turned grizzled; worry of course. How attentive he is of his wife. Such a stony-faced woman. Prematurely aged. She was never exactly a beauty, in spite f those fine eyes, but now she is downright plain. You get the face you deserve.

Jane was at the dinner. When had she stopped being shy? When had she become so sure, so at ease, and when had these people started to treat her as their friend?

‘What's the matter with you?' The party is over and Arthur is angry. He had troubled himself, arranging the dinner party, and
what had I done in return? ‘You sat at the table showing as much life and interest as a mechanical doll.' Was there anything I could be bothered with these days, anything at all? His eyes are narrow with hurt; his strong hands flap helplessly. What had happened to his Louisa? ‘I loved you dearly. I thought you were different from the callow young girls I had come across.
I
saw your beauty when no one else did. I admired your serenity, your sweet temperament, your honesty. Even when that honesty presented itself as gaucheness, rudeness, even then I defended you.' He paces up and down the floor, and with every step I hear those words: ‘I loved you dearly.'

I want to put my hand out but I can't reach. He gives me another look full of hurt and disappointment and, as he leaves, stalking off, stamping on the floor with his heavy-soled shoes, I stand with my hand half raised and tears falling down my face.

I dream that I live in a place in the sun where my children play beneath the blossoming orange trees, but what warms me most is that, in my dream, Arthur loves me still.

One day Viola arrives in her brand-new motor car. ‘We are on our way to paint the sea,' she announces. ‘William is outside.'

Arthur says I should go. ‘It'll do you good. Remember how you used to enjoy playing around with your paints and brushes?'

‘You make me sound like a child, Arthur,' I say. If I made him cross he does not show it, not in front of Viola. I can never tell if he likes her. I know he disapproves of her habit of dressing in slacks, but I also know that he enjoys telling people his wife is a close friend of the daughter of Sir Derek Glastonbury. Viola follows me up to the nursery and kisses my children and laughs at Lillian who frowns with furious concentration as she attempts to thread a huge needle with yarn. ‘She's been at it since she got up,' Nanny says. ‘And she won't let me help.'

I look at my children and I want to hug them both close, squeeze them to me, never let them go, but I stay by the door.

On our way downstairs Viola tells me that William is angry with me for giving up on my classes. ‘You must allow him to persuade you of your worth. I thought I was only capable of the most commonplace little things, competent, pretty, but nothing more.
But you should see how he has brought things out of me: colour … boldness of line. You must reconsider, Louisa.'

‘I'll come out with you both today, but I don't think that I will come to any more lessons, although I'm glad to hear you are making such progress. I always thought that, of the two of us, you were the artist.'

‘I don't think that is what you really believe. It might be what you wish to believe to make your life easier.'

I stop at the bottom of the stairs and put my finger across her full pink lips. She looks straight at me and I feel the colour rise in my cheeks. Slowly she raises her own hand and puts it across mine, imprisoning it. Now her eyes are easy, smiling. Then she lets me go.

I sit in the front next to Viola who is driving the Lagonda. William Fenton sits in the back holding his tweed cap down on his head first with one, then with both hands. He shouts against the wind, ‘Louisa Blackstaff, I want you back!' I can't remember the last time I laughed like that.

The waves are tipped with light and overhead the gulls circle, laughing at us sorry earthbound creatures. I lie down on the warm sand and close my eyes. Viola lies next to me and I feel her fingertips touch mine. The sun warms my face and penetrates the thin skin of my closed lids, filling my head with soft yellow rays. The grey mist that had shrouded my heart and mind for so long turns transparent, liquid, and in that liquid a tiny quicksilver fish stirs and flaps its tail, reaching the surface and the sunlight.

‘And now to work.' I open my eyes and look up into William Fenton's smiling face. He is just a boy, a laughing, kind, talented boy who believes in himself and in the goodness of the world.

I say to him, ‘William, I'm done with painting; I told you so.' But I allow him to pull me to my feet and lead me to the edge of the water. Viola follows, barefoot and laughing. ‘There,' William says. His feet are bare too and his trousers are rolled up at the ankles. ‘Behold,' he makes a sweeping gesture across the horizon, ‘the beauty of creation.' He turns and takes a step back into the water, his eyes, like the sea, reflecting the sun. He is smiling and he waves his arms about as he speaks. ‘Come on, Louisa Blackstaff,
you must do your part. You must create your own beauty. It's a sin not to when you know how.' He attempts to look stern. ‘Think if God had given up halfway. Think if He had got bored or discouraged after He had created the mountains, and never got round to the sea?'

I take a step towards him, not caring that my shoes are getting wet. I reach out and take his hands in mine. ‘But, dear William, there is a difference, can't you see? I'm not God.'

Viola has brought a picnic. When we have finished with it, William lies down on the sand, his panama over his face, and soon he is snoring. Viola and I glance at each other and then we laugh, hands across our mouths, trying to be quiet, not to wake him. I look at her: olive complexion flushed with peach, smiling eyes, a small hand with its palm padded like a child's. A soft mouth. Our eyes meet. We stop laughing and Viola leans across and her lips brush against mine.

We sit side by side looking out across the sea. I believe I have never been happier.

William is asleep still. ‘You will return to our lessons, won't you?' Viola asks me.

I have been looking at the horizon, thinking how much is out there that I will never see. ‘What's the point? Even if you and William are right and I have some talent, I shall never be able to paint the way I want to. For that I would have to be very brave, crazy or,' I laugh, ‘a man.'

‘You're brave.'

I shake my head. ‘No, that I'm not.'

‘So be a man. Smoke cigarettes and strut and preen and admire yourself greatly.' She draws a heart in the sand, smiling as she tells me, ‘At my school there was a teacher with whom I imagined myself in love. He was tall and straight and fair like you, although his eyes were not such a dark blue. His name was Forbes.'

‘What do you see, Louisa?' William asks. In front of me, between me and the sea, he has put up his easel. I look at Viola, and at the empty canvas before me. ‘Hope,' I say, ‘I see hope.'

* * *

It's late, the sun is setting. William says it is time to go. Viola and I glance at each other. ‘I'll drop you at the station, William, and you shall have to take the train back. Louisa and I want to go on.'