The Summer of the Mourning Cloak

by Kathleen Nelson

  Zak had no idea what she was talking about. It sounded like the kind of stuff a teacher would say, but, unlike with any teacher he had ever encountered, he could have listened to her speaking for whole hours and hours. Her voice wasn’t like other people’s voices: she didn’t speak like the kids in his class at school, but she wasn’t posh like Mrs Braithwaite or the old man either. She spoke like a teacher, using big words, but she was never boring. Listening to her was almost as good as watching her. He wondered if she knew how much he liked watching her.

  “You like watching things, don’t you, Zak?” she asked. It really seemed as if she could read his mind.

  “Some things,” he said, meeting her spooky gaze.

  “You like watching me, don’t you?” she said in a matter of fact tone. It was a question, but not the sort of question that needed an answer. That was the kind of question he liked. He did not reply.

  She turned back to her book and began flicking through it. She seemed totally engrossed in the pictures of butterflies. Zak felt a strange unfamiliar desire to make conversation. Somehow he had to get her to pay attention to him again.

  “Them Peacocks are out again,” he said after a while.

  She did not look up. He waited for a while.

  “Quite a lot of them about,” he added.

  “Yes, I’ve seen them,” she said. “And the Speckled Woods on the brambles.”

  Zak wasn’t sure about the Speckled Woods. Maybe they were those chocolate brown butterflies with yellowy spots that were always flying above the brambles in the woods.

  She continued reading her book for a long time, ignoring him. He felt self-conscious staring at her now, and he shifted his weight from one foot to the other and cleared his throat a few times. He wanted to get her attention, but the Peacocks weren’t going to do it today.

  “I… eh… I know where there’s other butterflies,” he said.

  Hyslop looked up.

  “Which other butterflies?” she asked.

  “I don’t know their names,” said Zak. “I can never remember names.”

  “Show me,” she thrust the book at him, and Zak’s mind began moving with unaccustomed haste. Thinking fast was new to him, but he did so now.

  As he turned over the pages of the butterfly book, he knew he would have to alight on something exciting to make her get up and follow him. There seemed to be lots of orange ones, and quite a few white ones. He glanced up at the girl Hyslop. She was staring at him with the dark unblinking gaze of her full attention, and he didn’t want her to stop. He turned awkwardly back to the book, and flicked through page after page. His hands were trembling slightly. He found the pictures of the Peacocks and the others, whose names he had forgotten, that they had seen the previous day. No, it would have to be something more dramatic. He had to impress her.

  There was a picture of a large butterfly with one wing purple and the other one brown. Surely that wasn’t right. The artist must have drawn it wrongly. He was tempted to say that he had seen it, but then thought it might be a trick picture. He turned the page over again and came to the largest and most dramatic looking butterfly he had seen so far. It was yellow and black and blue with raggedy sort of wings, sharp pointed at the bottom. He guessed that she would get up and follow him if he said he had seen one of these.

  “Seen one of them today,” he said.

  Hyslop put her head on one side.

  “That one there?” she said, pointing to it. “Where was it?”

  “Other side of the woods,” said Zak. “I can show you where it was.”

  “Are you sure, Zak?” she asked.

  He nodded, not trusting himself to say any more.

  The huge dark eyes stared right into him. He certainly had her attention now, but somehow her gaze was making him feel uneasy. Something was wrong.

  “That’s a Swallowtail,” said Hyslop. “It’s only found in parts of Norfolk now.” She paused, and then said softly: “Parts of Norfolk, and nowhere else in the country.”

  Zak felt his heart thumping. He didn’t know what to say. Words could get you into trouble, so he said nothing more. He did not know where Norfolk was but it wasn’t anywhere nearby; he was sure of that.

  “You lied, Zak,” said Hyslop. “Didn’t you?”

  He had no idea how long the silence was between them. It felt like a few seconds, and it felt like a hundred years.

  “You know, it’s OK to lie to adults,” she said at last. Her tone was light, and she didn’t seem cross, but it was still scary somehow. “We all have to lie sometimes. But you don’t lie about butterflies. Not to me. Not ever.”

  Zak sneaked a look up at her. The sun was shining on each individual hair on her head, and he knew he had never seen anything or anyone so beautiful in his whole life.

  “Butterflies are important to me,” she said. “Do you understand that, Zak?”

  She seemed to be wanting an answer this time, so he nodded his head slowly.

  “If you lie to me about butterflies, I will not spend time with you,” she said, her voice suddenly cold. “I will not allow you to come here following me around. And believe me, I will know when you are following me.”

  Zak felt miserable. It was like the sun had gone in behind a cloud, though in fact there were no clouds in the sky. Even his father shouting at him couldn’t make him feel this bad. He stared down at his feet, utterly wretched.

  “I won’t lie again,” he whispered, “not to you, and not about butterflies.”

  Hyslop said nothing for a long while, and seemed to be pondering something.

  “I might be going on a trip soon,” she said after a while. Zak looked up, puzzled. School was over for the year, and the girl Hyslop had missed out on all the school trips.

  “A butterfly trip,” she added. “To look for the Purple Emperor. To Bernwood Forest.”

  “With the old man?” he asked.

  He knew that Sir Northcote went on butterfly trips to various places nearby, sometimes to Bernwood Forest, and his father drove the car for him. Zak had never wanted to go before, but now he wanted to go so much it felt painful. He longed to go with the girl Hyslop and help her find this Purple Emperor butterfly.

  “Northy is taking me,” she said, slamming her book shut.

  “Oh,” he said, his eyes shining with eagerness. “I… would… I mean, I would… like… ”

  “I just thought I’d let you know,” she said, and she walked off, her book tucked under her arm. “Now leave me in peace.”

  Zak did not dare follow.

  Chapter Nineteen

  A Serpent in Paradise

  It was all very well knowing the seventy two butterfly species in the book that could possibly be found in Great Britain and Ireland, but there were also over two thousand species of moths. How could lepidopterists contain so much knowledge in their heads! One would simply have to specialise. Hyslop, curled up in bed reading her beloved butterfly book, was reminded of nocturnal insects by the appearance of two brown and fawn moths fluttering around her bedside lamp. Several more were flinging themselves against the window pane. It was strange, she mused, that creatures which chose to live in the dark should be so attracted by light. If they liked light so much why didn’t they choose to fly in the daytime? That was a question for Sir Northcote when she next saw him.

  The two at her bedside light were now joined by a third. They had managed to come in through the open window. Hyslop put her book down and watched them for a while. She realised she would have to capture them and release them outside. There was nothing for them here in her room.

  “You silly creatures,” she said, putting them outside the window. “Stay away from windows.”

  She put her light out so as not to lure any other moths in and looked out into the night. She knew that Sir Northcote sometimes wandered around in the dark, and she peered out to see if she could detect any sign of him.

  Despite her experiences in dark cupboards, Hyslop was not afraid of the night. She d
id not mind darkness, as she liked being invisible herself. Nor was she scared of things that most people would be afraid of in the dark, like winged insects brushing against her cheeks, bats squeaking, or owls hooting. Such natural phenomena were comforting to her. The other scary things of the night, which her schoolfriends in both France and Italy had talked of in terrified tones, were ghosts. Hyslop, for the first time in her life, felt she had banished her fear of the ghostly girl in Oncle Xavier’s cupboard. She smiled as she thought of the new ending to her recurring dream. Either there was no such thing as a ghost, she decided, in which case there was nothing to fear; or, if spirits really did exist, Hyslop was confident that the two people who had loved her most in the world, her Papa and her Nonna, were ghosts themselves and would protect her from anything bad in the spirit world. In truth, she was more afraid of her mother than of anyone or anything else. How different she was from most children, who turned to their mothers for comfort from night terrors. Hyslop could not imagine ever disturbing her mother to tell her about a bad dream or a scary noise.

  It was a very black darkness outside and Hyslop wondered if all the butterflies were safely roosting, and if there were any night predators which might take them unawares. Her head was still full of the book she had been reading. She wanted to impress Sir Northcote with her knowledge when he showed her his butterfly collection. Of course, in one way it wasn’t very pleasant to think of butterflies being killed and pinned, collected and labelled like stamps, but in Victorian times it was the only way to record them. There was no need nowadays when sophisticated cameras could record every detail, every brightly coloured scale of their wings. In any case, Sir Northcote seemed far more interested in conserving habitat for butterflies, and in saving them from extinction. Killing them was the last thing he would want to do now.

  For some time Hyslop had been vaguely aware of a background noise, and had assumed that her mother was watching television downstairs. Now she heard laughter, both her mother’s and a man’s. Her whole body tensed and she had a moment of horror as she imagined that Uncle Massimo had somehow returned. She stood motionless at the window as she heard the patio doors below her being flung open and the outside lights went on to illuminate the wooden table and chairs.

  She stood to the side, though she knew they would not be able to see her in the darkness. Her mother was carrying two glasses and the man behind her was carrying a bottle.

  “This is terribly decadent.” Her mother’s voice rang out, full of fun and laughter. “Champagne and it’s nearly midnight. Whatever are we celebrating?”

  “We’re celebrating you, Vanessa,” said the man. It was Hugo. Relief that it was not Uncle Massimo coursed through Hyslop’s blood, though it was quickly replaced by puzzled suspicion. What was Hugo doing here at this time?

  “Well, it’s not my birthday or anything,” said Vanessa, putting the glasses on the table. “Though these days I don’t admit to birthdays that often I must say!”

  “You don’t have to worry about birthdays.” Hugo seemed to be struggling to open the bottle, probably because he was staring at Vanessa rather than at the task in hand. “My darling girl.”

  Hyslop scowled to hear Hugo refer to her mother as “my darling girl.” She watched as several large brown moths began circling around the patio lights.

  There was a loud pop as the bottle was opened and he filled the glasses with foaming, golden liquid. Hyslop had tried champagne once or twice when adults had forced her to drink it. She did not know why they all made such a fuss about it; she much preferred lemonade.

  “To us!” Hugo clinked his glass against Vanessa’s and she gave him the full radiance of her smile. Poor man, thought Hyslop, poor silly man, he stands no chance against that.

  “To us, Hugo?” said Vanessa. “That’s a funny old toast. I didn’t know there was an ‘us’. Our acquaintance is rather recent.”

  They drank their champagne and there was more silly banter. Hyslop heard snippets of conversation.

  “Don’t toy with me, Vanessa,” Hugo’s voice sounded desperate, pleading. What an idiot he was. “The minute I saw you, it was like un coup de foudre.”

  Hyslop bit her lip so hard it hurt. “Yes, Hugo,” she thought. “You certainly have been struck by lightning, and there’s nothing you can do about it.” She also thought that his French accent was pretty awful.

  Her mother said something which Hyslop could not catch and Hugo stepped towards her. Although Hyslop was unable to make out his exact words, Hugo’s tone was familiar. She had heard it all before, in French, in Italian and now in English. Her mother had made a conquest. Hugo had fallen in love with her.

  It was a strange development. Hugo was a married man, and although her mother had targeted married men before, this was surely different. Hyslop had never known the wives of any of the Uncles. Now she not only knew Penny, but liked her very much. Hugo was Penny’s husband, he was Sandy’s friend, Malcolm’s friend, Sir Northcote’s son-in-law. He was part of the whole community. Turning him into an Uncle would hurt lots of different people. Everything was different here.

  Money: that had to be it. With Vanessa, it was always about money. Was Hugo really so fantastically rich? So much richer than the Italian Uncles?

  “I just don’t want to waste any time,” she heard Hugo saying. “I want us to be together.”

  Vanessa’s reply was a low murmur and Hyslop strained to hear. They were standing very close now, drinking champagne with their glasses almost touching.

  Hyslop kicked the wall in front of her. It was rather painful as she had bare feet, but she welcomed the sensation of pain as it blocked out the other familiar emotions of fear and insecurity. She did it again, and the pain felt good.

  What did Hugo mean, he wanted them to be together? How could such a thing be possible? She caught more snatches of conversation from Hugo, declarations of love that made her feel like vomiting, and mention of a London flat. Her mother’s voice was still too low to make out, but she was not rebuffing him, that was clear.

  Hyslop had heard enough. She felt physically sick. She crept into her bed and hugged the butterfly book to her chest. She didn’t want to put the light back on as they would see it from down below and know she might be listening. In any case, she was too tense to read. She lay on her back, eyes wide open, drumming her fingers on the hard covers of the book.

  Chapter Twenty

  Zak Watches Hyslop Go Where He Cannot Follow

  Zak escaped from the house before his grandmother could give him new chores, or scold him for not doing yesterday’s chores. Or even chores from the day before yesterday. Their tiny back lawn needed mowing, and had done for several days, and she wanted him to move some logs into their wood shed. He was not in a particular hurry to get on with either of these tasks. Also, she was probably going to make thin, watery porridge for breakfast and he didn’t like it much, so it wasn’t worth hanging around.

  There was not much to eat in the cupboard, but he found a piece of rather dry bread to chew on. He didn’t linger to toast it or spread butter on it. He made his way to the Hemmingswood estate, to the vegetable garden, where he knew there would be raspberries and gooseberries. He crushed some of the berries onto his bread to make it more palatable. He sometimes did this : it was like having really fresh jam. He was still hungry afterwards so he picked some tomatoes in the greenhouse and munched those. They were delicious, so much better than the supermarket tomatoes Granny sometimes bought. Mrs Braithwaite had caught him eating her tomatoes once but she hadn’t said anything. She had smiled at him in a friendly way, so he didn’t feel that he was stealing. He wouldn’t have let Mr Braithwaite or the old man catch him, though. That would be a different matter. There would be shouting and swearing then for sure. And if his father found out he would get a slap. You had to be careful of who was watching; you had to be on your guard all the time.

  Zak examined a cucumber plant and wondered if he dare pick one. The cucumbers were more tricky as it was p
ossible that the Braithwaites knew which ones were ripening, and if he picked one it would be missed. There were pepper and aubergine plants too, but he didn’t like the taste of those. One of them, he was sure, was a chilli plant, and he had had a very nasty experience once when he had picked a pretty red chilli and taken a bite. He shuddered. He didn’t even want to think of it.

  As he prowled around the greenhouse, he caught sight of the girl Hyslop striding past the end of the vegetable garden. He ducked down behind a bushy aubergine plant, though he needn’t have worried. She wasn’t looking in his direction.

  She was walking much faster than usual. She did look around her a little bit, but there was no stopping and examining butterflies like she normally did. It was rather too early for butterflies anyway. They were not early risers he had noted. She was moving purposefully, as if her mind were on her destination, not on the insects around her.

  Zak slipped out of the greenhouse and followed her at a distance. It was easier to follow her when she was walking fast like this, rather than looking around all the time. Somehow, when she was studying her butterflies, she seemed to be aware of everything and everyone in her vicinity and it was hard to creep up on her.

  He kept well back as he watched her stride across the lawn of the big house. Was she going to visit the Braithwaites, he wondered. Her walk was confident: she was not afraid of being confronted.

  At the end of the lawn, however, she did not march up to the big house door, but turned right, and he had to wait until she was out of sight before scurrying across the lawn himself. Mr Braithwaite would be safely on his way to work, and he hoped that Mrs Braithwaite wouldn’t be looking out of her window. She probably would not shout at him as she was a kind lady, but she would wonder what he was doing on the front lawn.

  Cautiously he turned the same corner that Hyslop had, and followed the line of the wall, guessing that she must have done the same. There was a little door in the wall leading to the estate beyond, and she must have gone through it. Perhaps she was going butterflying in the woods beyond the old man’s house.