Sound of Butterflies, The (18 page)

His house is remarkably cool, given the closed windows and how hot it was in church; but it is always cold. Even in the middle of summer he lights fires at night in an effort to warm the place. He puts this down to the sparse furnishing: a décor he has taken little interest in. There is no doubt about it: the house requires a woman’s touch. Mrs Brown cleans for him, certainly, and cooks, but she doesn’t live here; she certainly doesn’t interfere with the house beyond her duty, never offering to embroider a cushion for the hard settee in the drawing room, or to cut some flowers from the garden to brighten the mantelpiece. Not that she would find many out there; beyond a neatly trimmed lawn and a few rose bushes tended by a hired gardener a few times a year, the garden is as bare as the house. One day, he thinks, one day. It will be filled with blossoming flowers and perhaps even a few children running back and forth on hobbyhorses or with hoops and sticks, or whatever it is that children play with these days.

At least if he had a wife he could widen his circle of friends and stop spending all his time with other bachelors, and with his old army friends, who only keep in touch with him out of pity. He’s not the only cripple he knows — Jack Burroughs lost an arm in the war, but nobody feels sorry for him, especially since he pins his empty sleeve up with his bloody medals. Jack got married soon after he returned; the women flocked to him, and his wife mollycoddles him beyond belief. But those men: they never try to introduce Fale to their wives’ younger sisters, or their own, as if he’s not good enough for them. No wonder he hasn’t found anyone to marry. The men enjoy his company, enjoy analysing politics over a brandy and a cigar, but when they start talking about the war, and the blasted Boers, he feels their shoulders turn away from him, until someone will flick a glance his way, clear their throat and change the subject. It’s not his fault he missed it. It was that bloody horse’s. He should have had the thing shot. He’d rather have died in the war than feel the space that blooms inside him sometimes.

He drops, exhausted, into his armchair by the fireplace. It is only eleven o’clock, and already his stomach gurgles. At least he has an hour to get his strength back and to calm his nerves before he is due out for luncheon.

Well, he handled that badly, to be sure. How sweet Sophie looked when she told him about trying to rouse her husband. Her fine nostrils went an endearing pink before she put her hand over her face and composed herself. He thought for a moment she must have known he had met her father at the Star and Garter, when she asked him like that not to tell anybody — he found himself blushing, and his embarrassment at her seeing him in that state made him blush even more. But he had chosen not to speak out about her husband’s condition to her father. For now.

It cut him up to see her turn away from him so angrily. Why had he opened his mouth? He reaches for the whiskey bottle he keeps secreted behind his chair and takes a swig. She is mad with him now, but might not his words sow in her a tiny seed of doubt? She seems to be the brooding type; perhaps she will go home and think about what he said, start to read a few signs here and there, and decide that her husband has indeed become … a heathen. A non-believer, after all.

But he mustn’t lose her trust. He will send her a card, an apology, tomorrow. He must proceed very slowly and softly. Perhaps it is time to contact Mr Winterstone again. As a barrister, surely he would have the right contacts to further proceedings.

He takes another nip of whiskey. Yes, this room is bare. What it needs is some of those lacy doily things that women like to hang over the backs of chairs. Maybe some new wallpaper, something flowery. Is he mad himself? Surely Sophie would never consider divorce. But then again … they have no children. Wouldn’t her husband’s insanity present a perfectly legal case to clear the way to the only woman he desires? All they would need is a good solicitor on their side.

After Agatha leaves, Sophie sits for a long time looking out into the garden, where the flowers are thriving in the spring weather. Her roses have had a sudden spurt of growth and the buds sit tightly coiled, ready to open. Daffodils nod their heads in the breeze. Crocuses cluster together in the far flower bed like butterflies gathered to lap at a puddle, along with the pretty little violas and pansies she planted only last month. The lilac and philadelphus that line the garden path have flowered and the orange-tinted scent drifts in through the open window.

Inside, though, Sophie is cold. Thomas hasn’t come down, and she can’t face going to him. He probably sneaked out while she and Mary were at church on one of his secret expeditions that leave his boots caked with mud and, she has also discovered, his pockets filled with mulch from the forest floor.

Secret. That is the word that Agatha used
. I think Thomas has a secret, Sophie. You should try to find out what it is.
She gave no reason for this new suspicion, but Sophie is not at all surprised by it. Not after what Captain Fale said at church.

What if he is right? When she looks into Thomas’s eyes, all that light that burned is gone. It’s as if all the muscles in his face have been paralysed, so devoid is it of any kind of expression. What if he has lost his faith? What would be the point of living without it? What if he wastes away, his soul barren and withered, until he just dies one day, and nowhere for him to go but straight to hell.

She begins to cry. Tiny, discreet sobs at first, but as she realises that Mary is out and Thomas upstairs with three doors between them, she lets herself fall into her grief as if it were a well: deep and black, with mossy brick sides and a stench of fungus.

When she has finished, she feels better, but a new feeling now eats at her. How much Thomas has deprived her of! When he was away, she felt truly independent for the first time in her life, with nobody to consult about any aspect of her life. All decisions were hers alone, with no man to override her or take charge — not her father, not Thomas, not even Agatha’s father. She rehearsed over and over in her head, as she glided across the park, just how she would explain to him when he returned that she didn’t want him to take care of her, to treat her as an invalid, or a child, or somebody incapable of any kind of thought or movement, as so many women seemed to be treated. She planned to tell him she would be needing more independence in her life.

But he has robbed her of that option. Now she
has
to be the strong one; there is no choice in the matter. She is impotent once more, with Thomas dictating how her life is going to be.

She stands and throws down her sodden handkerchief. Blast him! If he has a secret, she’ll find out what it is.

The hallway is in darkness. With all the doors to the rooms shut, no light illuminates its creaky corners. Thomas’s study is under the stairs and the door has stayed shut since the cab driver stacked Thomas’s crates in there on the day of his arrival. Not even Thomas has been in there.

When she opens the curtains, light falls as a sheet through dancing dust motes. The atmosphere chokes her: a mixture of stale air, dust and the chemicals Thomas uses to kill and preserve his precious insects. She sneezes, then pushes the window up and takes great gulps of air. She disturbs a thrush outside, which carries a snail in its beak. When it sees she doesn’t intend any harm, it goes back to its task of hitting the snail against a rock.

The crates sit where the man left them, assembled in the corner of the room below a wall map of England — marked with flags where Thomas has found this or that rare butterfly — and beside his precious Brady drawers, in which he keeps his best specimens.

They are nailed shut, but she soon finds a metal instrument to prise a lid open. The cracking, tearing sound of the wood and nails clashing startles her and she stops for a moment and listens, expecting to hear Thomas’s footsteps on the stairs above. But the only sound is the tapping of the tenacious thrush with its snail.

She lifts the lid off carefully and sets it on the ground. Her hands come away blackened — this is one of the crates tarnished by the smoke from the ship’s fire. A powerful chemical odour hits her in the face and she leans away, the back of her hand to her mouth. She supposes the chemical is necessary to stop the specimens being attacked by fungus or parasites or whatever the danger is for them. Inside the crate more boxes are packed together, and when she opens these, still more, this time floating in cotton wool and sawdust, which is infused with the foul smell. When she picks some up and runs it through her fingers, she detects a base note of camphor. In the smaller boxes — some are cigar boxes, others biscuit tins — lie little parcels of paper with twisted corners. She lifts one carefully and unfolds it. Out slips what she first mistakes for a jewel — the most exquisite creature she has ever seen. It is a butterfly, with clear wings speckled with stardust. Two bright spots of the deepest pink appear to have been painted on this morning, they are so vivid. She can see the colour of her hand through the transparent wings. The inside of the envelope is inscribed in Thomas’s careful handwriting: Cithaerias aurorina, River Tapajós, Brazil. She turns the butterfly this way and that, catching its wings in the light.

Sophie opens several more boxes and envelopes. In the sturdiest boxes, butterflies are pinned in rows, with labels etched onto tiny strips of paper below. A few of them have jagged tears in their wings. When she opens one of the boxes, only chunks and crumbs fall out, and she jumps up to brush her skirts off as half a body falls into them, the remains of its wings little more than tiny rags. But most of them are perfect: large butterflies and small ones, some of the most breathtaking, luminous primary colours, others with intricate markings like drawings — all perfectly symmetrical. If she didn’t know better she might think they had been manufactured by man, that Thomas made them himself from silk and oil colours. But no — these are a testament to the artistic flair of a benevolent God. She feels a surge of pride.

She opens another crate, and there, on top, is a small tin with her name inscribed on it. She stops for a moment, breathing hard. Should she open it? It has her name on it, but should she wait for Thomas to show her? Her hands itch and tremble, and she finds them pulling her towards the tin, fumbling with the lid, prising it off. Inside, on a bed of snow-white cotton wool, sits a deep blue butterfly, its wings rimmed with black. She stares at it; she feels it luring her in; it is as if she could fall into those wings. It is the most beautiful of them all. She looks for the inscription. On the inside of the lid there is a note. ‘Sophie. It reminds me of your eyes. Love, Thomas.’

Thomas
, she thinks, as her vision blurs.
My Thomas. What happened to you, my love?

She doesn’t think she will find any more clues in these boxes, just more butterflies, as lovely as they are. He told her in his letters that he was keeping a journal. Where would she find that? She closes her eyes for a moment and squeezes the last of the tears out of them. She sees a picture of Thomas on the day she met him at the station, standing on the platform, looking so frightened of her, trembling like a newborn calf. His thin arms wrapped around that Gladstone bag.

She carefully replaces all the lids and dusts herself off. Her hands have left black streaks on her skirts and as she passes the hallway mirror she startles herself: her eyes are wide, and tears have traced intricate patterns through the soot on her cheeks. Her hair, which she carefully set only that morning, is coming detached from its pins. She pauses to smooth it.

Upstairs, she hears Thomas’s even breathing and pushes his door open. The bag is where he left it, right by the doorway. With one eye on her sleeping husband, Sophie picks up the bag and closes the door softly. She crosses the landing to her own room and sets it down while she washes her hands and face at her basin. The water turns an inky black. The bed is too pristine and white to risk soiling, so she sits on the little chair she uses to drape her clothes on at night time. It gives a shudder under her weight — how long since she actually sat on it? — but holds fast.

The clasp on the bag releases stiffly, and deposits more grit into her hands; it appears that Thomas has not opened it for some time. On the top of the bag Sophie recognises her own handwriting — her letters, tied tightly with the blue velvet ribbon she sent him with the first one. She fingers them, and lifts the pile from the bag. Seeing them clumped together like that, she realises she had plenty to say to him while he was away — even after his letters stopped.

Underneath the letters, she knows she has found what she is looking for. She tips the bag out and four journals tumble to the floor, along with a few of his textbooks:
British Museum Handbook of Instructions for Collectors
,
Butterflies of South America
,
A Naturalist on the River Amazons
. She picks up the most battered-looking journal; the edges of its red cover have been worn white. It is tied with a band, and bulges thick and misshapen; shards of dried leaves poke out, and a fragrance emanates from its pages, from the flowers that are pressed inside. Sophie unties the band. The first page is headed
On the Atlantic, May 1903
— his outgoing voyage.