The Summer of the Mourning Cloak

by Kathleen Nelson

  “I don’t make a habit of it!” snapped Sir Northcote. “As you know, I try to preserve butterflies, not kill them. Don’t get stupid on me!”

  “I’m not being stupid, I’m trying to understand,” said Hyslop. “Surely the collection of British butterflies is complete. You don’t have to keep adding to it, do you?”

  “Did I say it was complete!” he shouted. “DID I?”

  “Well, no,” admitted Hyslop. She wished he wouldn’t shout so much. “You didn’t actually say it was complete, Northy. I guess you’re always on the look-out for aberrations. Ones that are different.”

  “Oh yes, but not just aberrations. There’s one last drawer at the bottom,” he said, slyly. “Bring it over.”

  “I checked that already,” said Hyslop. “There’s nothing in it.”

  “Bring it over I said.”

  “Well, I’ll bring it over, but… ”

  “Just bring it!”

  Hyslop replaced the last drawer they had been looking at and fetched the very bottom drawer from the British Butterfly Cabinet.

  “See! There’s nothing in this one,” she said, laying it down for him to see.

  “Well, I know that,” he said softly. “I’ve known it these last seventy years.”

  He was looking at her in a very odd way, as if she had missed something obvious, and Hyslop screwed up her eyes and peered again at the empty tray.

  “There’s just a tiny label,” she said. “It’s hard to read.”

  “It’s the one species missing from the collection,” said the old man. “A species I’ve been searching for all my life. I’m surprised, Miss Future Lepidopterist Miss Smarty Boots Hyslop, that you haven’t fathomed it out.”

  Hyslop peered at the faded writing on the label.

  “Nymph… Nymphalis Antiopa,” she read aloud. She stared over at Sir Northcote.

  “Of course. The Camberwell Beauty.”

  It was a butterfly she remembered as coming straight after the Purple Emperor in her book, an exquisite dark butterfly with cream borders on its wings. She recalled reading that the early collectors of butterflies had regarded it as something of a Holy Grail. It was a great rarity, sometimes never seen for years and years in Britain. Lepidopterists all over the country would rush around with cameras and binoculars on even the vaguest rumour of a sighting.

  “Yes, Hyslop!” he nodded at her, his eyes shining. She thought he was going to clap his hands he looked so pleased. “Nymphalis Antiopa. Sometimes known as The Camberwell Beauty. Or The Grand Surprise. Or The Mourning Cloak. Call it what you like, my grandfather and I spent years looking for one to complete the collection. I promised him I would get one before I died. And I have not succeeded.”

  “Well, you’re not dead yet.”

  “I’ve been searching all my life,” he said, his voice quieter than she’d ever heard it. “And I’ve failed to get one for him. I’ve failed to complete his British collection.”

  “But surely… ” she frowned. “Surely you must have seen one in all that time!”

  “Oh, I’ve seen them dozens of time abroad,” he said, a slapping movement starting up and his voice rising. “Of course I have! But it doesn’t count. I have to get a British specimen – one that I find in the British countryside. This collection has to be honest. You can’t lie about butterflies.”

  Hyslop nodded, as she recalled having said something similar to Zak.

  “I guess not. You’ve never found one here in Britain?” she repeated. “In all that time!”

  “I think I did see one once,” he said. “It was in Kent, in the hot summer of 1976. It flew past so quickly I couldn’t be sure. I didn’t have my killing jar with me anyway. I was visiting my cousin. We were sitting having a gin and tonic in his garden. He was partial to a few gins before dinner was my late cousin, Southwold, and it suddenly appeared before me. It just appeared.” He might have been talking about a visitation from the Virgin Mary his tone was so full of awe. “And then it disappeared again.”

  He stared into the distance and Hyslop imagined the elusive black butterfly soaring past him, out of sight.

  “How frustrating!” she said. “Still, at least you saw one.”

  He came out of his reverie and stared intensely at her.

  “The collection has to be completed, Hyslop,” he said. “I owe it to my grandfather. Every year I have lived in the hope of seeing one, of capturing one and placing it beside that old label that he wrote. There always seemed to be plenty of time. Each year I hoped for a Camberwell Beauty Summer but it just never happened. And now time isn’t so plentiful any more. Not for me.”

  “Do you mean you think you might die soon?” asked Hyslop. Northy had said one should always be honest about butterflies, but she did wonder if her question was perhaps a little too honest.

  “That can’t be far off,” he said, nodding. “At my age there’s no point in pretending otherwise. But before I go, that ghastly son-in-law of mine, Hugo, will cart me off to a fate worse than death, my dear. He’s desperate to shove me in a nursing home. A nursing home, I ask you!” He ended on a bellow of rage, and repeated with an even louder shout that made the walls shake: “A NURSING HOME!”

  “You don’t seem to need much nursing,” said Hyslop.

  This made the old man wheeze, which she now knew was his strange way of laughing. Wheezing turned to cackling and violent head-slapping.

  “You’re right,” he said. “I don’t need nursing.” There was a pause, and they both waited for the word to pop out : “Dunderheids!”

  “Do you want me to help you?” asked Hyslop. She decided that this was perhaps what he was leading up to. She wanted to make it easier for him before his shouting and head-slapping got out of hand. “Do you want me to promise to try and get one for you if you die before you find one? Or before you’re carted off to the dreaded nursing home? Like a sort of secret mission! A sacred quest!”

  “Yes, Hyslop,” he said, hand poised to slap his head. “Yes, that’s exactly what I want you to do. You must be the guardian of the collection and make sure it is completed. That is indeed your mission.”

  Chapter Twenty Two

  Zak is also given a Mission

  For once Hyslop caught Zak unawares. He was poring over a courgette plant in Mrs Braithwaite’s vegetable garden. He knew he should be weeding or hoeing, but he wanted to see how each individual courgette had grown since his last visit. They seemed to sneak to double their size in the night, and it was always amazing how many large ones would suddenly appear at once. As a shadow fell over him, he jumped up, thinking it was his father come to scold him for idleness.

  He felt a strange sensation surge through his whole body when he realised it was the girl Hyslop. If he had known how to name it he might have called it joy.

  “Oh, you’ve been in there a while, haven’t you!” he exclaimed, before he thought what he was saying. “Whole hours and hours!”

  Of course he realised he shouldn’t have said anything the minute the words were out. That was always the problem with words. The wrong ones came out and caused trouble. It was too late: he had betrayed the fact that he knew where she had been and for how long.

  “Where have I been then for hours and hours, Zak?” asked Hyslop softly.

  “I… eh… I don’t know,” he said, looking back down at the courgettes.

  There was a silence. They were both good at silences. Some people had to fill in and say something just to end a silence, but he knew that he and Hyslop weren’t like that. On the other hand, if he distracted her by mentioning a butterfly, maybe she would forget about the question she was asking him.

  “There’s a Cabbage White,” he took the opportunity to point out a white butterfly with black tips on its wings. “Cause a lot of damage, don’t they?”

  “As I told you before, it’s a Large White,” she said. Those eyes were boring into him again. “Where is it you think I’ve been? For whole hours and hours?”

  Zak wondered
what it was best to do. She had told him not to lie about butterflies, and that if he did she wouldn’t let him follow her or spend time with her again. Did she mean that he was not to lie to her at all, about anything? It went against all he had learned in life so far. Lying was what you had to do so as not to get into trouble. It was what you had to do to keep people from getting angry or suspicious or nasty. His feelings for the girl Hyslop were so strong, however, that some deeper instinct made him decide that it was best to be truthful with her. Even if she was angry with him afterwards, he would tell her how he knew where she had been.

  “I followed you,” he mumbled. “I followed you this morning and I watched you go into the old man’s house.”

  He did not dare meet her eyes.

  “Well done, Zak,” she said. “You told me the truth.”

  When he looked up, he found that she was no longer looking at him, but had opened her precious book again. She seemed to carry it around with her everywhere.

  Her words echoed round and round in his head. She had said : “Well done.” She had used his name. She did not seem to be worried about what he had said, and had just returned to her book with no sign of anger or irritation. It was as if he had been holding his breath underwater and had surfaced and was able to breathe again. He had been truthful and it had been the right thing to do. Telling the truth to his father or grandmother was not a good thing. If they asked what he had been up to he could never tell the truth and say that he had been sitting looking at plants for a whole hour. There would be trouble if he did. He always had to lie and say he had been weeding, or going on an errand for Mrs Braithwaite. It was the same at school. If Miss Carradine asked why he had not done his homework, it was best not to tell the truth and say that he didn’t want to do it because it was boring, or because he didn’t understand it. Instead he had to pretend to have done it but left it at home, or say that his grandmother had been ill and he was looking after her. That was always a good one. Adults felt sorry for him because his mother had died, so if he pretended that Granny was ill there would be a sympathetic nod and no more said on the subject. With the girl Hyslop, however, none of the normal rules applied. She had not questioned him on why he was following her; she just seemed pleased that he had not lied.

  After a while she turned the book round and showed him a picture of a dark butterfly, almost the black-red colour of her hair, with blue spots and creamy yellow at the edges of its wings.

  “I want you to look at this,” she said. “Look at it very carefully.”

  Zak humbly took the book from her and looked at the picture.

  “Have you ever seen this butterfly before?” she asked. Her tone had an edge of warning: “Think before you speak, Zak.”

  Zak shook his head.

  “No, never one like that,” he said.

  “Well, I didn’t think you would have done,” she said. “The last one of those seen anywhere near here was in 2006. Do you know what it is?”

  Zak looked at the name under the butterfly picture and his mouth tried to form the long words. He desperately did not want her to know how poor his reading skills were.

  “It’s a Camberwell Beauty,” said Hyslop, coming to his rescue. “Nymphalis Antiopa. Sometimes called a Mourning Cloak because that’s kind of what it looks like.”

  “Oh,” he said.

  “I want you to look at that picture really hard, Zak,” she said. “I want you to memorise that butterfly. And I want you to look out for it in the woods and garden and the fields around here.”

  Zak stared intently at the picture. He almost felt his eyes burning with the intensity of his looking.

  “It’s a very important insect,” she said. “It’s very rare, and doesn’t often come to our country, but Northy wants me to look out for one.”

  Zak was astonished to hear her call the old man Northy, but he said nothing, and kept his eyes on the picture of the butterfly. He did not want to forget a single detail.

  “If you ever find one, you must come and get me at once,” she continued. “It doesn’t matter where I am. Just come and find me.”

  He looked into her eyes and felt slightly dizzy.

  “If you find one,” she said, “if you can get one for me, you will make me very happy, Zak.”

  Her face creased into a smile. It was a quick smile, it hardly lasted a second or two, but he had caught some of its magic, and it almost made him drop the butterfly book. He closed his eyes for a moment and tried to imagine how bright her smile would be if he could find a Camberwell Beauty for her. He could hardly breathe.

  “I’ll look out for it,” he whispered. “I’ll look every day for the Beauty.”

  Chapter Twenty Three

  Moths on the Patio

  When her mother sent her to bed at a strangely early hour, Hyslop did not mind at all. Vanessa had been to the supermarket for once, but had bought nothing very substantial for supper. Bags of crisps and nuts lay unopened on the kitchen table, waiting to be decanted into little bowls, and the fridge was full of wine. Clearly she was expecting someone. Hyslop decided that one bag of salted peanuts wouldn’t be missed and she sneaked it upstairs with her.

  She lay on her bed with the window open, her book propped up against her knees, and the bag of peanuts beside her. They were deliciously satisfying even if they did make her fingers salty and greasy, and she was hungry as usual. Carefully she opened the pages of her book with a handkerchief, so as not to mark them.

  It was no surprise this time when she heard Hugo’s voice downstairs and his loud “Darling!”

  She hummed to herself and opened her book at the section about the butterfly she had been told to look out for: “The Camberwell Beauty is one of the most spectacular butterflies to be seen in the British countryside, and one that has always elicited great excitement… ”

  As the voices and laughter downstairs drifted out onto the patio, Hyslop hummed even more loudly and continued reading: “British specimens came to be regarded as the greatest of all prizes among early dealers and collectors… ” The words in the book and her tuneless humming blocked out the laughter from outside. Hyslop closed her eyes and tried to lose herself in a fantasy of finding a Camberwell Beauty for the old man. The trouble was that finding the butterfly, near impossible as that would be, was only the first stage. She would somehow have to get near enough to it to catch it without damaging it. It would be sad, quite unbearable, to capture such a rare and special creature and then have to kill it. She was not sure she could do such a thing, even for the precious collection. Northy would have to teach her about killing with his cyanide jar. Part of her was curious about how it worked, yet she still recoiled at the thought of the deed itself. She wondered if a net was needed too. The main point for those early collectors was not to damage the wings. It was such an extraordinary mission to have been given, a privilege of course, but also a heavy obligation. There was no point in worrying about it too much, she decided, as it was scarcely likely to happen. If Sir Northcote and his Victorian grandfather had failed in two lifetimes of searching, probably with servants helping, it was unlikely that a small girl, who had only just discovered the joys of butterflies, would succeed.

  Sometimes in an indistinct background murmur, a phrase or a sentence stands out.

  “And of course I have a flat in London,” she heard Hugo’s voice say clearly. Hyslop stopped humming and put the book down, listening despite herself. “A very beautiful flat in Chelsea.”

  “I have missed London all these years,” she heard her mother say. Hyslop knew that this was a lie. Her mother had been born in London, in a poor part of the city, somewhere south of the river Thames and had always tried to forget her roots, and reinvent herself in French or German or Spanish or Italian. Hyslop turned her bedside lamp off and mouthed the word: “Liar” into the darkness.

  “Come to the flat,” Hugo’s voice was thick with emotion. Hyslop screwed her face up in disgust as she imagined him closing in on her mother and getting read
y to kiss her. “Come and stay there, Vanessa!”

  There would be a declaration of love next. Hyslop closed her book and made her way over to the window.

  Her mother and Hugo were standing very close together. There were little bowls of nuts and crisps on the table and a bottle of wine. There were candles everywhere too, which flickered and danced. Her mother was barefoot as she usually was on the patio, which made her seem even tinier beside the huge bulk of Hugo.

  Hyslop looked out into the darkness beyond the patio, distracted by a movement in the distance. Was someone else out there?

  Her mother’s voice was low and difficult to make out, but Hugo’s voice carried more clearly and she could make out snippets: “… life here is meaningless… ” “… been like this for years… ” “… life is short, no point in wasting time… ” “… I know you feel the same way too, I know you do… ”

  “You know nothing, Mr Hugo Braithwaite,” whispered Hyslop softly. The man was mistaken if he thought he knew what Vanessa felt about anything.

  Whatever her mother felt, however, the whole thing was going to end in an embrace. Once again, Hyslop was distracted by a movement in the shadows beyond the patio. Surely it wasn’t that boy Zak Judd again. Did he watch her and follow her around at night too? He would not be able to see her standing in her darkened room. Or could it be the old man out looking at his moth traps?

  Hyslop had a strange sense that she wasn’t the only one watching the couple on the patio, and she put her hand on the glass of the dark window pane. A dark coloured moth appeared almost at once, climbing up the window on the other side of the glass. Sir Northcote had a moth collection too, which he had promised to show her one day, after she had done more field work on butterflies. He had given her a moth book, beautifully illustrated like her butterfly book, but she had only flicked through it.

  “I don’t know your name, moth,” she whispered. “But one day I will.”

  As she looked on, a fawn coloured moth appeared and walked up her hand on the other side of the glass, soon joined by a stripey brown one. Hyslop kept her hand there and watched them in fascination.