Sound of Butterflies, The (25 page)

She scoops up the ouija board and readies herself against the rain.

Sophie sits in the darkened parlour with a cool flannel at her forehead. She hardly slept last night, and her stomach is hollow. The thought of eating makes her feel sick, as if food will turn to glass once she has swallowed it and embed itself inside her. She hasn’t been able to face Thomas at all since taking him his supper last night. Part of her doesn’t trust herself — fears that she might fly at him and scream and slap him, hard. Now her head aches with keeping it all in and her body feels pinned to the chair.

Her husband has been unfaithful to her. Dear, sweet Thomas, who had never so much as touched a woman before he met her. The first time he kissed her he was trembling, and as he pulled her close she felt his heart through both of their clothes, unnaturally fast. His peppermint lips had been furtive, as if they might break her if he leaned in too near.

She has always been good at pushing aside bad thoughts — considers it to be a skill, in fact. She could choose to ignore this setback, never mention it to Thomas, never even mention it to herself. It may go away, and once Thomas is better, they can all go back to normal.

Sophie gropes beside her for the glass of brandy she poured herself on impulse before she sat down. It stings her throat and she coughs. It forges a hot channel down through her chest to her stomach, warming her.

Should she leave him? Is this what one does when one discovers an affair? How ill-equipped she is to deal with this! She knows of women who tolerate their husbands’ affairs as long as they are not flaunted, but those men are successful businessmen, going up to London at every opportunity for this dinner or that business meeting; she even knows of some who have been invited to parties by the King himself and not returned home for days. But these men are not Thomas.

And yet those women are not unhappy. Not outwardly, anyway, despite probable adultery. Has she been naïve? Has it always been beating at her world, too, and now she has just released it, like a hoard of moths? Is she holding on to some distant Victorian morality, despite a new King and, some say, a new age?

She hears the doorbell ring, but it is a distant rumble that seems to belong to another time and place. The house has been in a thick fog, with only the muffled patter of rain from outside, and with the flannel on her forehead, Sophie has become lost in it. She hopes whoever it is will go away.

‘Miss Dunne, ma’am,’ says Mary, and in strides Agatha, soaked to the skin. She is hatless for a change and her hair hangs like sodden weeds around her face. She is puffing, as if she has been running, and her cheeks are a healthy shade of pink. Water runs off her skirts and onto the carpet.

Sophie pulls the flannel from her face. ‘Good Lord, Aggie, what have you been doing?’

Agatha looks down at herself and laughs. Despite her headache, and her need for silence, Sophie welcomes the sound as if it were music.

‘I was going crazy at home,’ says Agatha. ‘I needed to get out. Cat and Edwin were driving me batty. What are you doing?’

Sophie tucks the flannel beside her. ‘Nothing. I was just thinking.’

‘Well, don’t,’ says Agatha, removing her gloves. She has something tucked under her arm. ‘It’s not the weather for it.’ She drops into a chair and sighs, placing her ouija board in her lap.

‘Agatha!’ Sophie ignores the instrument; it’s Agatha’s favourite toy, but if she doesn’t mention it, maybe her friend will forget it’s there. ‘You’re soaking wet! Let’s get you upstairs and changed out of those wet things. Then we’ll get Mary to light the fire.’

‘But it’s too warm for a fire, Bear.’

‘I won’t hear another word. Come on.’

Sophie is glad to leave behind the dark room, which suddenly seems too small for the two of them, as if their limbs stretch into every corner. Memories of evenings laughing in front of the fire with Thomas are starting to evaporate now, and all she can see is sagging furniture and curtains the colour of bruises. Even the roses on the mantel look as if they have been dipped in blood and left to dry. She will go mad if she has to spend the rest of her days in this house. She is glad, too, for something to do — a job to keep her busy, tending to Agatha and making sure she doesn’t catch a cold and ruin the furniture all at once.

Upstairs, Sophie helps Agatha remove her outer garments and gives her a robe to wear before going back downstairs to find Mary, who gives her a curious look when she is handed a bundle of dripping clothes.

‘Start the fire, please, Mary, and make sure these things get dried.’ Sophie is all bustling efficiency now, her headache receding.

‘So how is it going with you know who?’ Agatha asks when Sophie comes back. She sits on Sophie’s bed, drying her hair. ‘Have you found out yet what his secret is?’

Sophie raises a finger to her lips and closes the door, checking first for the possible strip of light under Thomas’s door. The hallway is dark.

‘No,’ she says, turning back. ‘That is, I might have.’

Agatha sits up straight, her eyes eager. ‘Really?’

Sophie slumps onto the bed beside her. ‘I did what you suggested. I did some digging. I went through his belongings. First of all, I found this.’ She reaches over to her dresser, where she has placed the box containing the blue butterfly.

‘It’s gorgeous,’ breathes Agatha. ‘How special! Where can I get one? Did he have any others?’

‘Well, he had crates and crates of them, if that’s what you mean.’

‘Wouldn’t it look just perfect on a hat, Sophie? What do you think?’ She holds it up to her hair and Sophie snatches it away from her, suddenly jealous.

That stops her. Agatha seems to choke on her own breath. Sophie is not sorry. How tetchy she is today.

‘All right,’ says Agatha. ‘Sorry. I only meant it would look very well. I wonder if he would sell me one for a hat.’

‘It’s too delicate,’ mutters Sophie. ‘It would blow off and get torn.’ Can’t she leave the subject alone?

‘Well, maybe he has collected something else! Don’t they all stuff birds and animals on those expeditions? A little bird would be grand! With a tiny nest. What a fine hat that would make.’

Sophie has to smile. She never stays angry at Agatha for long. She pats her friend’s hand as an apology, hoping she will understand. She replaces the butterfly carefully on the dresser, keeping her back turned. ‘You and your hats,’ she murmurs. Then, ‘There is something else.’ A whisper.

‘What?’

Sophie takes a deep breath and sits back down on the bed. ‘I read his diary.’

‘No!’ Agatha leans forward and starts rubbing her hands together. ‘What was in it?’

Sophie’s not sure she wants to share, but Agatha is looking so eager. And it will do her good to talk about it, surely. ‘Mostly he wrote about the butterfly he hoped to find. Just day-to-day things, really, although there was quite a bit that he didn’t tell me in letters. Some of the dangers he faced, for instance. Fire ants and jaguars and piranhas!’ She chuckles as Agatha looks suitably enthralled. ‘I suppose he didn’t want me to worry. There were pictures, too, of the butterflies he’d caught. They started out quite simple, but they soon became quite expert. I was surprised.’ She pauses for breath. She knows she is procrastinating. ‘There were quite few pictures of the butterfly he wanted to catch, actually — it has one side yellow wings and the other black. A swallow-tailed butterfly, you know?’

Agatha nods, rapt. ‘So he
did
catch it?’

‘That’s what I thought at first, but the entries didn’t say so … not as far as I read, anyway. I think he was just obsessed with it, drawing it over and over, like a doodle.’

‘Is that it? Is that what you found?’

Out with it
. ‘I think there was a woman.’

Agatha’s head snaps back.
A woman
, she mouths with big eyes. How beautiful she is. Her dark eyes are so striking next to her white skin; her teeth bite a full bottom lip that is always smooth and red. The gypsy in her.

‘You mean …?’ Agatha doesn’t seem to be able to say it, but Sophie knows what she means.

‘I can’t be definite. The entry was not direct by any means, but that is how I read it.’ She feels her mouth screw up and fill with saliva.

‘Not Thomas!’ says Agatha. ‘But he loves you!’

Sophie can no longer speak. Tears hammer behind her eyes.

‘Sophie, darling …’ Agatha lays a hand on her arm. ‘These things do happen. You mustn’t blame yourself.’

‘Oh, I don’t,’ bursts Sophie. ‘I blame him! And her!’ She slaps a tear away and composes herself.

‘Well, what are you going to do?’

Sophie thinks for a moment about telling Agatha of her impulse to see Captain Fale. What drove her there? Revenge? She can’t now imagine what was going through her mind — she seemed to move automatically, without thought or feeling, and the memory of the evening is blurred, as if she is remembering something that happened to someone else. Thank God he didn’t let her in, though she doesn’t have it in her to do anything
really
bad. She just wanted to try it out, she supposes. ‘I don’t know. Do you think this is why he won’t speak?’

Agatha grunts. ‘Hardly. Men do this kind of thing to their wives all the time. It’s not something they would lose sleep over, let alone their voices. It might explain why he can’t look at you, but he doesn’t talk to
anyone
. And he stays in bed all day long. Where has his passion gone? He has no passion.’

Sophie turns away, embarrassed to hear Agatha talking of her husband’s passion. She can be vulgar sometimes.

‘You must keep reading.’

‘Ugh,’ says Sophie. ‘I couldn’t. Not yet, anyway.’

‘Sophie.’ Agatha grabs her hand. ‘Look at me.
Look
at me. He loves you. Look at this.’ She stands and picks up the butterfly where Sophie let it drop onto the dresser. ‘This proves it. This is hope. You can hate him for what he has done, or you can keep going and find out what is the matter with him. I know it’s hard, but you’ve found out that he’s human after all … Now that it’s out, you’re just going to have to live with it.’

She’s right, of course. Agatha is so often right, even if at first Sophie doesn’t agree with her. ‘But I don’t need to know any more. This is bad enough. What if … what if it gets worse?’ She barely even mouths this last word.

‘Yes, well, there’s that. The world’s not quite the place you thought it was, is it?’

Sophie shakes her head, miserable, while Agatha lays a hand on her shoulder. The hand is shaking slightly — she must be cold, sitting there in damp underwear with only a robe to keep her warm.

‘Why don’t you go and get the journals?’ suggests Agatha gently. ‘We can look together. I’ll be here with you.’

Sophie finds herself obeying without question, standing and moving as if on wheels to the door and out into the hallway. No sound comes from Thomas’s room. She opens the door a crack. He lies on his side and she is startled to see his eyes looking at her. She expected him to be asleep as usual. Perhaps the rain drumming on the roof is keeping him awake. Or perhaps he simply can’t sleep any more. He must be bored, lying there like that. I must remember to get him up when it stops raining, she thinks, but stops. Where did that thought come from? She is angry with him, and here she is worrying that he needs entertaining, as if he were a child again.

She goes to back out of the room, but as she does so, she notices that the Gladstone bag has gone from its place by the door.

‘The bag’s gone,’ she says once she is back in her room.

‘Oh, bother,’ says Agatha. ‘He’s hidden it, I suppose. But you’ll keep looking, won’t you? Say you will.’

‘I don’t know,’ says Sophie. And she really doesn’t.

The next day Sophie watches Thomas get dressed with his back to her. She knows it would be polite to leave, but she gains some satisfaction from making him uncomfortable. The wounds on his back are healing — it is a good start — and she has removed the bandage from his arm. The cuts are dry now, shiny welts that are sensitive to touch — he flinches when she runs her finger over them — but tightly closed.

They walk down the hill through the gardens towards town. She holds his arm lightly, for appearances, but she feels as if she could crush that bone if she wanted, wring his reedy neck and nobody would ever know. She strays for a moment from the path; the earth springs under her feet like a sponge, still sodden from yesterday’s rain.