The Butterfly Box (51 page)

It was then that Sam thought of Federica.

The letter was addressed to his wife Violet, Sam’s grandmother, and dated 8 May 1935. It was written from Rome. It spoke of his deep love for her and his desire to make her his wife. The marriage was obviously one her parents opposed for she had spiralled into a dark hole of despair from which there seemed no escape. Nuno had seen no other way to console her, being across the waters, so he had sent her his book with notes of encouragement which he had written into the margins alongside the verses he thought would give her strength. Sam was so moved by the letter that he read it more than once. Then he read the verses and Nuno’s comments. It had obviously worked for they had married in the end and shared many happy years together.

Sam thought of Federica. If it had helped Violet why not Federica? He sat down at the desk and typed out a verse. He had decided to send it anonymously because he felt there was more chance of her reading it and acting upon it if she didn’t know it came from him. After all, he had tried to reach her

twice and failed both times. Then he had gone all the way to London on the train to deliver it.

He had stood in wait outside her house under a black umbrella, so that she wouldn’t recognize him. Then he had hung around on the pavement for over an hour willing her to return. It had taken him that long to realize that she was already in the house. When he had peered in through the window he had caught a glimpse of her wandering about the rooms in her dressing gown, eating a packet of crisps. It was mid-afternoon. She was most certainly alone. He had resisted the temptation to ring the bell and slipped the letter through the box in the door instead before walking away and returning to Polperro on the late afternoon train.

He had spent the entire journey back to Polperro thinking about her. The image of her wandering through the rooms of her large, elegant house in her dressing gown, eating to assuage her unhappiness, had evoked feelings of both anger and pity. He had wanted to lie in wait for Torquil and hit him over the head, finishing him off for good. But he knew the only way to free her was to teach her how to do it herself. He hoped the letter might inspire her as it had inspired Violet. He dreamed of one day loving her himself, but those

dreams were frail clouds on the horizon.

 

‘You know, your wife’s going to the gym? She’s already lost weight. She only ate a salad last night at the Blights’. Not like her at all,’ Lucia said scornfully.

¹
Poverina
, I’d hate to exercise and diet. Sex is the only pleasant way to stay
in forma.
¹

‘She’s not going to a gym,’ Torquil replied loftily. ‘She’s got a personal trainer. I arranged it for her. It’s a good thing too, she needs to lose a bit of weight.’ ‘Sweet,’ she sighed. ‘It’s all for you, you know.’

‘I know. She’s been very distracted lately. I can’t seem to get through to her. Her silence drives me mad. I don’t know what’s wrong with her. Perhaps losing some weight will put the smile back onto her face.’ He shook his head in order to be rid of his domestic problems and grinned down at his mistress. ‘Now how about slipping into that little black ensemble I bought you?’

‘Well, you'll have to be quick, I’m meeting Fede for lunch at the Mirabelle.’ ‘Well, come here then,’ he said, holding her against him and running his hand up the backs of her legs.

‘Do you still make love to Fede?’ she asked as his fingers traced the tops of

her lace stockings.

‘Of course.’

‘No results yet?’

‘None.’

‘I’m sure
I’m
fertile.’

‘I’m sure you are, angel,’ he said, spanking her on her naked bottom. ‘Ah, you’re ready for me.’

‘I never wear knickers when you come to visit,’ she said and laughed throatily.

But as much as Torquil tried to lose his anxieties in Lucia’s succulent flesh, he was unable to stop thinking about his wife. He sensed her detachment and it alarmed him.

Chapter 37

Helena should have recognised her daughter’s unhappiness, because she had suffered too and knew marital discontent better than anyone. But Helena had never had the ability to see further than herself and her own needs. She only saw Hal because, unlike Federica, she needed him. He had always been the part of Ramon that she had been able to hold onto. As much as she had tried to convince herself otherwise, she believed she had never stopped loving Ramon.

Arthur was kind and compassionate, doting and generous - everything that a woman should desire in a husband, but she yearned for the magic of those early years with Ramon. They haunted her by night in the form of sensual dreams, which reminded her of that transient paradise, and by day in the form of a constant, nagging regret. The worse she treated Arthur the harder he tried to please her.

At the start of their marriage she had welcomed his affection with gratitude, and she thought she finally had everything she could ever want. But after a while her thoughts had been dragged back across the sea to another life where

she believed, at one point, she had truly known happiness. She couldn’t help but wish for something else, something more, something better. She seemed always dissatisfied. But Arthur’s patience was limitless. He felt he understood his wife. She had been neglected and hurt. She needed attention and understanding not severity. He was sure that given time she would soften and allow herself a piece of happiness. He was certain his love was enough.

The wilder Hal became the tighter Helena held onto him. As a child he had been eager to please, though never as accommodating as his sister. Federica had always been self-sufficient. Like her father, she had been happier in her own company. But Hal had always needed his mother and her unwavering attention and if anything had distracted her from him he had soon found ways of getting her back again. But Helena despaired at his sudden change of character, as if he had been possessed by the spirit of someone else. Someone bent on self-destruction.

Hal was far more complex than his mother believed. Like a clear river Hal’s nature was lined with a thick layer of silt accumulated over a long childhood of emotional upheaval. It only needed a bit of agitation for it to churn up and turn the water cloudy. It was his mother’s marriage to Arthur and subsequent

events that set his heart in turmoil. But the seeds had been sown many years before, as a child, that summer in Cachagua.

At the age of four Hal was painfully aware of his father’s obvious affection for Federica. Unable to express his jealousy in anything other than tears and tantrums, Helena had selfishly believed that he sensed the ill ease between his parents and wanted to protect her from Ramon. But Hal longed to be gathered up into the ursine arms of his father and loved like Federica was loved. He felt dejected each time Ramon left the house with his sister and although he had loved his train he had been envious of the attention Federica was given over her butterfly box. When Ramon stayed at the beach house instead of accompanying them to lunch in Zapallar, Hal had taken it, in his own limited way, as a rejection. Ramon barely noticed him and each slight settled into the silt in his character to one day resurface in the form of wretchedness and rebellion. So he had cleaved to his mother like bindweed, suffocating her with his neediness until she could think only of him. Then Helena had failed to tell him that they were leaving Chile for good and promised to give Federica a dog. Hal, unused to being passed over by his mother, took it as a rejection. Desperate not to

lose her he clung to her with all his strength, even managing to sleep in her arms at night, exploiting the emptiness Ramon had left and filling it with a need that replenished Helena’s longing to be loved.

As he had grown up so had his self-awareness. He felt guilty loving his mother with such intensity and suffered terrible mood swings, adoring her one moment and loathing her the next. He made every effort to hate Arthur because his mother loved him, but he had liked Arthur in spite of himself. Partly because of Arthur’s good qualities, but also because his sister hated him and he saw how much her rebellion upset his mother. Hal had always wanted to please Helena so the jealousy bubbled quietly in the pit of his stomach like black tar, to be placated only when he sensed that she didn’t love Arthur like she loved him. Her love for her son was as strong as ever. Arthur gave him the attention his father should have given him and Hal found himself responding to his kindness with a thirst that had built up over the years. He embraced him with the same neediness as he embraced his mother. Arthur made time for him, listened to him, bought him gifts, took him out just the two of them - all the things Ramon had done for Federica and what’s more, Federica despised him. Arthur belonged exclusively to Hal and his mother. It was Federica’s turn

to be out in the cold - until Helena had allowed her to live with Toby and Julian.

From that moment on he felt the painful separation from his sister, whom he looked up to and adored. Once more Federica had received special treatment. He suffered silently, unable to communicate his resentment and distress. So he found comfort in the underworld of drink and cigarettes.

At twenty-one Hal was in his final year at Exeter Art school, studying History of Art. But he somehow managed to fall into a group from the university and for the duration of his course, no one knew he wasn’t a university undergraduate.

He shared a house with five of his new friends, situated in the middle of a muddy field with no heating and electricity which constantly needed to be activated by slotting money into a meter. There were mice droppings in the kitchen drawers and bags of rubbish by the wall outside which no one could be bothered to move. The house was cold in summer and freezing in winter but they lit the fires and slept in thick jerseys. Hal didn’t do any work. He had only agreed to go into further education because he couldn’t make up his mind what he wanted to do. As long as he was in education he didn’t have to. It gave him

three more years to fritter away doing very little.

He smoked because all the other boys smoked and besides, it kept him warm. He drank because it made him forget his worthlessness and his mother, who called him every day to check that he was all right and to dig her clutches in deeper as her husband failed to fulfil her. Alcohol gave him confidence. While the effects lasted he was as charismatic, enigmatic and self-assured as Ramon Campione. During those fleeting hours he even looked like him.

The lows were unbearable. His insecurities would invade the armour the drink had built around him and gnaw at his self-esteem more venomously than before. When the money dried up Helena gave him more, without questioning why he needed it. She didn’t ask Arthur, she just gave him what Arthur gave her. When that was no longer enough he seduced Claire Shawton, a mousy girl with a thin, pallid face and long, skinny legs because her father was Shawton Steel and there was no shortage of money in her bank account. Keen to hold on to the dark, impenetrable Hal, Claire gave him money for his drink and his cigarettes, his gambling and his extravagance.

‘I’m not an alcoholic,’ Hal explained to her when she protested. ‘It relaxes me. I’ll pay you back, I promise. I’m having trouble getting around the trustees,

that’s all.’ But there were no trustees because there wasn’t a trust. Only Helena’s blind generosity.

Claire Shawton’s uses extended only as far as her bank balance; sexually she couldn’t begin to satisfy Hal. He went about his sexual adventures with the same destructiveness with which he confronted everything else in his life. He slept with dozens of girls, promised them devotion and commitment, then dropped them as soon as they wanted a relationship outside the bedroom. Claire knew of his transgressions but instead of closing her cheque book and walking away she gave him more money and received the kisses that followed with pitiful gratitude.

When Hal returned to Cornwall for the holidays Arthur noticed immediately that he was gaunt and pale, unable to sit still or concentrate for very long. He slept most of the day and stayed up watching videos until the early hours of the morning. When Arthur approached Helena on the subject she excused him by saying that he was overtired, studying too hard and needed the holidays to rest.

‘Don’t hassle him, Arthur, he’s very sensitive about it,’ she said

proprietorially. ‘He’s got no confidence as it is. Let me deal with this.’

Once again Arthur rolled his eyes and backed off. Helena had been cold and distant in the last few months. She was prone to moods, adoring one moment, aloof the next, but he was used to that. He wasn’t used to the consistent ill humour that now seemed to dominate her personality. Like a diminishing candle, her affection for him seemed to be getting noticeably less and less as each day passed. If he didn’t do something the flame would go out altogether. But he didn’t know what to do. In despair he wondered whether she was seeing someone else.

Helena was seeing someone else. She was seeing Ramon. When she closed her eyes at night and when her mind drifted off by day and finally when she lay in the rough arms of Diego Miranda, she saw the awesome face of Ramon Campione. The only man she believed she had ever loved. She had cried enough bitter tears of remorse to sink one of Diego’s ships. She had looked back on her life and recognized her mistakes. Mariana had been right, you often don’t know what you have until it is gone.

She knew where Ramon was. But she hadn’t heard from him in years. She

hadn’t even bothered to find him to tell him about his own daughter’s wedding. She now wished she had. It would have been a good excuse. Now there was no reason to call him.

Helena hadn’t gone out of her way to have an affair. She hadn’t even considered it, or desired it. Her heart was somewhere in the past, barely concentrating on the present at all. She had been in the pub in Polperro with Arthur, one cold summer Sunday, when a strange young man with long black hair and deep black eyes had accidentally knocked into her, pouring her glass of red wine all over her pale cashmere sweater. She had lost the little patience she had, not so much with him, but with life and the misery of it all, flinging her arms in the air and swearing furiously.

‘I’m so sorry,’ he exclaimed, turning to the barman in desperation. The barman handed him a dishcloth and he proceeded to dab at her chest in his confusion. ‘I cannot apologize enough,’ he said when Helena stared at him in horror.

‘Your accent,’ she stammered. ‘Where are you from?’

‘Spain.’ She felt her stomach turn over and her head spin with a strange sense of
deja vu.
He sounded just like Ramon. When she gazed into his eyes

she believed they too resembled Ramon’s, until in her state of yearning she believed he was Ramon’s shadow, split from him by magic, all the way from Chile.

‘Diego Miranda,’ he declared, extending his hand.

‘Helena Cooke,’ she replied. ‘I used to live in Chile,’ she added, forgetting the wet stain on her sweater.

‘Really?’ he responded politely. ‘You must speak Spanish.’

‘Yes, I do,’ she enthused, her voice hoarse with excitement. ‘But I haven’t spoken the language for many years.’

‘You never forget a language like Spanish.’

‘No, I think you’re right,’ she agreed, drifting on the music in his voice that seemed to call her from the misty shores of the far-distant past. ‘What do you do?’

‘Shipping.’

‘Ah, the Armada.’ She laughed.

‘Something like that,’ he replied indulgently. ‘Please let me give you my address so you can send me the bill.’

‘Bill?’

The bill, for the dry cleaning,’ he said, frowning at her in amusement.

‘Oh, yes, the bill.’ She giggled, watching him smile and feeling her stomach turn all over again. ‘Do you live in Polperro?’

‘No, just passing through.’

‘Oh.’ She sighed, trying to hide her disappointment. ‘Where are you staying?’

‘With friends.’

‘Sightseeing?’

‘Yes.’

‘How strange,’ she recalled, shaking her head. ‘I met Ramon sightseeing too.’

‘Who’s Ramon?’ he asked.

‘Another life,’ she said, brushing it off and smiling through the memory. ‘I took him around the old caves and smuggling haunts. The places you can’t find in guidebooks.’

Diego’s eyes twinkled with interest. ‘Really?’ he said, then grinned at her from under his thick Spanish eyes. ‘I’m afraid I’m following the map.’

‘You mean, your friends aren’t showing you around?’

‘They don’t have time, they work,’ he said, watching her mouth curl up at

‘If you want a guide, I could show you some of the places very few people know about. I grew up here, you see,’ she explained.

‘I would be honoured,’ he replied, kissing her hand and bowing.

She gave him a wide, carefree smile before she was distracted by Arthur’s insistent waving from the other end of the pub. ‘Oh God!’ she sighed irritably. ‘I completely forgot about him. Don’t worry,’ she responded to his inquisitive frown, shaking her head. ‘Meet me here tomorrow at eleven.’ He nodded in understanding and raised an eyebrow, unable to believe his luck. He had noticed her rings and her husband’s concern. He was Latin after all.

Diego was surprised by Helena’s enthusiasm for an affair and imagined she had had many. She drove him around the coast and allowed him to make love to her on the cliff in the car overlooking the sea. Later she invited him home to her house where she took him to her bed. She enjoyed the firm way he handled her, the confident way he kissed her, the sensual way he caressed her. She closed her eyes and demanded that he speak to her only in Spanish, then she projected her mind across the waters and across the years to a time when

The first time Arthur had trouble turning the tap in the shower he had been surprised. Helena always left it dripping. The second time he was perplexed. The third time his intuition told him that another man had used it. He leant back against the wall to steady himself as his heart plummeted to his feet. In the last few days Helena had been friendlier, happier, she hadn’t snapped at him or ignored him. She had embraced him with fondness and quite obviously guilt. He let the hot water pound onto his skin, drowning out the screaming in his head that refused to give him peace to think rationally.

He had believed her detachment to be rooted in her anxiety over her troubled child. Worrying about Hal had become a full-time occupation. He hadn’t understood it as a symptom of her waning affection for him. He worshipped her. Sex had never been a problem; they had loved and laughed together in bed even during the difficult times. He was sickened at the thought of her giving herself to another man. He was wounded by her blatant rejection of him in spite of all his efforts to please her.

He wondered who it could possibly be. But Arthur wasn’t stupid. He wished

he were because it was all too easy and therefore too painful. He had noticed her talking to the dark foreigner in the pub. She had returned to the table crimson-faced and distracted. She had kept looking over at him, watching him, lowering her eyes coyly when he returned her stare. Arthur hadn’t liked it, but he had indulged her. There was nothing wrong with a harmless flirt if it made her feel happier, more attractive.

She had left with Arthur in a buoyant mood and talked all the way home in the car. Usually she stared bleakly out of the window responding to his attempts at conversation in monosyllables. But he hadn’t suspected anything. He hadn’t imagined she could be so devious.

After despair came anger. He thrust the palm of his hand against the wet tiles of the shower room as his lungs filled with fury, causing him to wheeze in torment. He thought of their first kiss, their first touch, their wedding day and their initial marital contentment and felt nothing but hatred and loathing. Then he recalled with precision the many hurtful things she’d said to him, the uncaring manner in which she had treated him and bit his lip with self-loathing. He had taken it all because he loved her. But now he had suffered one humiliation too much.

‘I will never forget the face of the Polperro beauty.' Diego said, running his finger down Helena’s face, where it lingered on her satisfied lips before following the line of her chin, pulling it towards him and kissing her.

Helena sighed with pleasure. ‘When do you leave?’ she asked, carelessly revealing the desperate whine in her voice.

‘Tomorrow.’

‘Tomorrow?’ she repeated, the sweat breaking out on her forehead and nose. ‘You mean, that’s it?’