She alternated between giving the cats her attention and looking at butterflies on the internet. There was so much to learn if she wanted to be a lepidopterist. Sir Northcote told her that he was still learning all the time, so she reckoned it would take about fifty years at least. She looked at various species in turn, reading about where they had been seen recently, and in what numbers. She looked at hundreds of photographs that people had sent in of butterflies they had seen in their gardens.
“Camberwell Beauty” she typed in. She looked at image after image of the fascinating insect. It was a rare visitor to Britain, yet seemed to thrive in colder parts of the world like Scandinavia. It was the official state butterfly of a place called Montana apparently, where it was known as The Mourning Cloak, and often emerged in spring whilst the snow was still on the ground. Now that would be an amazing sight indeed: dark wings fluttering above the white snow. Why did they have to be so rare here in the UK, she wondered.
As she surfed from site to site, greedily devouring information, she came upon a site which gave up-to-date information about Camberwell Beauties in England. To her joy, fingers trembling with excitement on the keyboard, she discovered that there had been a possible sighting in Buckinghamshire the previous week. A dark butterfly had been seen in a suburban garden and there was a fuzzy photograph. This was where she could be useful to Northy. She couldn’t wait to tell him!
She stood up and looked out of the window. It was not long before she spotted Zak, some distance off, sitting on a tree stump. He must have followed her. Hyslop yawned. She had no use for him at the moment. She wondered whether to stay with Malcolm for a bit longer, looking at butterflies on his computer, or to head back to Sandy’s for spaghetti and ice cream before giving Northy the news about the Camberwell Beauty sightings. There were so many possibilities: different places where she could find a welcome, people who would give her things to eat, kindness and generosity, and freedom to wander. It was like emerging from the darkness into the light.
She raised her arms and stretched, rather in the style of Miss Hilda McKenzie, who was purring beside her with outstretched paws. She almost felt as if she could purr herself.
Quote
“… the caterpillars of large blues live like cuckoos inside red ant… nests, eating the ant grubs or… being fed directly… by the worker ants, who are tricked into mistaking the intruder for their own brood… a large blue generally destroys its host ant colony.”
(from The Butterflies of Britain and Ireland, by Jeremy Thomas and Richard Lewington)
Chapter Thirty Two
The Story of the Large Blue
The girl Hyslop had spent what seemed to be a whole hour at the potter’s house, then even longer at the furniture maker’s workshop. Zak had no idea what she was doing in either place but he was happy to wait for her. He didn’t mind when she was in someone’s house, in an enclosed place. At least he knew where she was. His great fear, a terrible dread that had begun to grip him, was that she would go away with that mother of hers, somewhere far away like Italy, and not come back. The thought of how empty his life would be, with only the vegetables to console him, was unbearable. With Hyslop around there was always something ahead, something to look forward to every day.
In the meantime, as he sat on the tree-stump waiting, he could look back to the Bernwood Forest trip. He could look back to the magical moment when they had seen the Emperor on the car mirror, when he had exclaimed what a fine butterfly it was, and how Hyslop had used his name, and smiled at him. He closed his eyes to recreate the scene in his mind and that was his mistake. When you closed your eyes, you could be caught out.
“Boy!” It was the cross voice of Sir Northcote. He should have been more vigilant and he could have avoided seeing the grumpy old man. Zak jumped up.
“Your father wants you!” Sir Northcote pointed his stick at him. “You’ve to help clean the car.” The stick came dangerously close to his head and the old man said his funny word along with a few swear words.
There was nothing he could do but obey. Zak took one last anguished glance back at Malcolm’s workshop door then set off slowly, shoulders slumped, towards the trees, on his way to the garage behind the big house where he knew his father would be washing the Mercedes. He kicked a stone in frustration.
“Come back a moment. I need to ask you what you mean by hanging about here anyway?” The old man sounded very cross indeed. “Are you following Hyslop around? Hmm! Are you bothering her, boy!”
“No, Northy, he’s not bothering me,” Zak whirled round at the sound of Hyslop’s voice. She had just come out of Malcolm’s workshop. “I’d let him know if he was bothering me. Really, he’s fine, so don’t worry about me.”
The old man said a few more swear words and then his Scottish word, but Zak ignored that. The girl Hyslop had defended him and that was all that mattered. He stopped to look at her, and there she was, the sun behind her making her hair look on fire, all dark and red and golden at the same time. She looked very fine indeed.
“See you, Zak,” she said, half raising a hand in a farewell gesture, and Zak’s shoulders went back like a soldier’s. She had used his name again. He ran off through the trees towards the garage, and knew that he had enough stuff to look back on to keep him going through the car cleaning and beyond. And he could also look forward to seeing her again tomorrow…
“I was looking for you,” Sir Northcote pointed his stick at Hyslop now. “I’ve just seen that ghastly mother of yours outside Keeper’s Cottage!”
Hyslop’s eyes opened wide. No one had ever been so openly rude about her mother before.
“She had no idea where you were when I asked,” he said. “Looked like she’d been out all night. I know what’s going on round here, I tell you!” He shook his stick violently. “People think I don’t know, but I know what’s happening!”
His voice grew louder and louder and spittle was flying in every direction, then he turned towards Hyslop, and it softened again: “It’s not your fault, Hyslop. Not your fault.” Then his eyes glared angrily around him and he looked quite mad again: “Something has to be done about all this! Something has to be done!”
“Never mind that for now, Northy,” Hyslop decided to try and calm him down. “I was looking for you too. I’ve found some interesting information on Malcolm’s computer about Camberwell Beauties.”
“Oh!” He put his stick back on the ground and stared at her.
“Yes,” said Hyslop. “There has apparently been a sighting of one in Chesham in south Buckinghamshire. That’s not too far from here I think?”
She described what she had learned on-line and the old man listened intently.
“If only I could bag one before I pop my clogs,” he said. “My grandfather’s collection would be complete and I could rest in peace. You understand that, Hyslop, don’t you? You understand the importance of this?”
“Well, I do understand, Northy,” she said. “Of course I do, but I also want you to understand that I’d find it hard to kill a Camberwell Beauty even if I was lucky enough to see one. Not sure how it could be done. I don’t carry a killing jar around with me. Besides, I want to get into conserving butterflies, not killing them.”
“Good girl, that’s what I want you to do,” said Sir Northcote. “Lots of work to be done on conservation. A life’s work if you like. Don’t you worry about the killing bit. That sort of thing can be taken care of.” He glared around him and headed off towards the trees, slapping his head and muttering “Dunderheids!” over and over again.
“Where are you going?” Hyslop had to run to keep up with him, and she wondered, as she often did, why he needed a walking stick when he could move so quickly.
“May as well head for the orchard,” he said. “There may be a nymphalid or two at the rotting fruit.”
“You mean, like the Beauty?”
“Oh, most probably just lots of Red Admirals,” he said, “But come on. I want to tell you a story.”
“Is it about butterflies?” asked Hyslop.
“What else?” he snapped. “You’ve been reading your book, Miss Smarty Boots, so tell me what you know about the Large Blue.”
“The Large Blue,” said Hyslop. “Mmm. Can’t recall its Latin name, but I know that there are two in your grandfather’s collection, and that the species went extinct in Britain in 1979.”
“That is correct, yes,” said Northy. “A disaster. An absolute disaster. Too many silly idiots ran around collecting them even when there were hardly any left.”
“I suppose your grandfather must have been hunting them too,” said Hyslop.
“Yes, that was in Victorian times,” said the old man, pausing to glare at her crossly. “It was for a valuable scientific collection, labelled and studied. He gave lectures to eminent lepidopterists of his day. He didn’t endanger species! Not like modern day cretins who want to make pretty pictures with butterflies in their suburban living rooms! Anyway, the problem was more to do with us messing with nature as usual.”
Spittle was flying everywhere. He tried, unsuccessfully, to stifle some shouting and cursing and head-slapping, and Hyslop let it all run its course.
“Well,” she said after a while. “I read that they re-introduced them to a secret location in the south west of England. All very cloak and dagger at the time but now there are colonies on various sites down there.”
“Yes,” said Sir Northcote, calming down again. “Yes, they did. The chap who wrote the book I gave you, chap called Thomas, spent years studying them at close hand and they discovered it was all to do with rabbits and ants!”
“Rabbits?” frowned Hyslop. “I think I read that the Large Blue caterpillars are adopted by ants and protected and fed, a bit like a cuckoo in their nest. But where do rabbits come into it?”
“It needs huge numbers of rabbits to graze and keep the grass down to a certain height so that the ground temperature is exactly right for the special type of ant that will adopt the Large Blue caterpillar. Rabbits and sheep.” Sir Northcote stopped head slapping and cursing and was able to talk fluently as he only did when he was talking about butterflies. “Man of course messed up as usual, and introduced a vile disease called myxomatosis to keep the rabbit population down. Hideous thing, terribly cruel way to kill the rabbits. So there was not enough grazing, d’you see, to keep the grass down. We changed the livestock grazing so there weren’t enough sheep, and killed too many rabbits. So no ants of that special sort, and therefore no Large Blues. It was all part of a cycle, and we interfered with it.”
“Well, I suppose even if we humans do interfere with nature,” said Hyslop, “we do sometimes try to get it right later. We managed to re-introduce some from Sweden, didn’t we? So isn’t it sort of a happy ending?”
“There’s not always a later, not always a happy ending,” growled Sir Northcote. “That is the point. You can’t rely on ‘later.’ Usually it’s too late.”
“It’s weird how ants can think that a caterpillar is one of their own grubs,” said Hyslop. “It’s just the most extraordinary thing.”
“Yes, not just any old grub,” said Northy. “But a queen ant grub. They tend it and keep it safe all winter until it pupates. Defend it with their lives, and it repays the poor things by eating all their own grubs, and more or less destroying their colony.”
“Nature is cruel at times,” said Hyslop.
“Not as cruel as humans.”
“I think I read that the caterpillar produces a scent to fool the ants and also it has a funny little song that it sings to them. A song that is similar to that of a red ant queen. How amazingly clever is that!”
“Well, it’s not a song that would be audible to human ears, but yes, you’re right. It’s a song that makes the worker ants treat it like a queen.”
“Clever little thing getting itself looked after, I think. Shame it has to destroy its host sometimes. Why are you asking me all about the Large Blue anyway?” asked Hyslop as they reached the fruit trees. “There aren’t any round here, are there?”
Sir Northcote pointed with his stick at a pair of Red Admirals on the rotting plums, then slapped his head.
“No,” he said. “None round these parts. It’s August, so we’re too late this year anyway. Oh look, there’s a Peacock now.”
They watched the butterflies around the rotting fruits in silence for a while, a silence broken only by head-slapping.
“I have a plan for next year,” said Sir Northcote. “Next June, if I’m still here, if I haven’t popped my clogs and if Hugo hasn’t carted me off to the loony bin.” He snorted loudly. “Or the Nursing Home! Well, next year, next June I mean, we could do a trip, Hyslop, down to Somerset to a National Trust place where we can see the Large Blues flying. I won’t involve Judd.” He shook his head dismissively. “We could get Sandy and Penny to share the driving, find a nice hotel, go and see the butterflies and make a bit of a long weekend of it, just the four of us. That’s my plan!”
An image of how it would be leapt immediately into Hyslop’s mind. It would be a holiday, a holiday that she would actually enjoy, with people that she cared for, and who cared for her. It would be different from holidays with her mother and all her mother’s rich friends: there would be no sarcasm or cruelty from hostile adults, no drunk horrid Uncles, no punishments, no feeling alone and hungry. Sandy and Penny would be joking and laughing together, fussing round Hyslop; all of them would be teasing Northy and he would be happy, hardly swearing or shouting at all; there would be picnics full of Penny’s wonderful sandwiches and cakes and ginger biscuits and chocolate tiffin; there would be Sandy’s home-made lemonade; the two dogs, Sasha and Skye would be there too, of course, running ahead and chasing rabbits; above all, there would be a hillside bathed in sunlight with Large Blue butterflies flying around, all newly emerged and in perfect condition. It was an image so beautiful it brought sharp tears to a prickly place behind her eyes.
The reality was, of course, that there were many obstacles to such an outing. In the first place, Hyslop had no idea where she would be in a year’s time. Would her mother have made Hugo an Uncle? If so, would Penny and Sandy and Sir Northcote hate her and her mother forever? Would Hugo and her mother force Northy into a home and turn the butterfly wilderness into a shooting estate? Would she be forced to go back to Italy with her mother just when she had found happiness and good people for the first time in her life since she had lost Nonna? She even found cause for regret in thinking of how sad Zak would be if she left. Everything beautiful that she had found would be destroyed. It was like eating a juicy ripe peach which suddenly turned rotten and maggoty in her mouth. She fought back tears.
“What’s wrong, don’t you like the idea?” asked Sir Northcote.
“I like the idea very much,” said Hyslop. “Oh, yes, Northy, don’t worry about that. It would be just perfect. It’s just that… well, I don’t know what plans my mother has for me. I don’t know what will have happened in another year. It’s so far ahead.”
“Just like with the Large Blues,” sighed the old man, “sometimes you have to give nature a bit of a helping hand.”
Chapter Thirty Three
Watchers in the Night
“I have a guest due to arrive any minute,” said Vanessa, emerging from her bedroom, with her high heeled shoes dangling from her right hand. “You can stay and make polite conversation for ten minutes, then you can scoot off upstairs.”
“If it’s Hugo coming, I’d rather go upstairs now,” said Hyslop.
“I don’t recall giving you the choice of what you’d rather do.” Vanessa stooped to put the shoes on, admiring first one elegant slim ankle, then the other. “I said that you could stay and be civil for ten minutes first. I think it’s time for you to be civil to him.”
“And I’m saying that I don’t want to be civil to Hugo,” Hyslop had been careful to hide her precious butterfly book in case her mother became destructive again, so there was no danger of it being snatched f
rom her and hurled across the room.
Vanessa looked at Hyslop first of all in a slightly incredulous way, then anger flashed across her eyes and it seemed for a moment as if she was going to fly at her daughter. She made no move to strike, however, and Hyslop decided it was because she did not want to be caught out in a temper if Hugo arrived at the door.
“I should like you,” said Vanessa coldly, “to stay for a minute or two and pay your respects. Hugo may well become an important part of our lives.”
“Well, he’s not an important part of my life and he never will be.” Hyslop felt a strange surge of power as she realised that her mother was not going to shout at her or slap her with Hugo likely to arrive at any moment. Unlike the Uncles in France and Italy, Hugo was not living with them, and he had so far posed no physical threat. Besides, she had her own allies now: she had adults who cared for her.
“That’s what you think, Hyslop. You’ll find that he’s quite an important person whether you like it or not.” Vanessa’s anger turned to a sneering laugh. “Go on then, off you go upstairs to your silly books and your insects. Enjoy it all while you can!”
They stared at each other and for once Hyslop did not lower her eyes. Two pairs of dark eyes flashed at each other, and Vanessa lowered her gaze first.
“I hold all the cards round here, Hyslop,” she said, wandering over to look out of the window.
Hyslop said nothing but took a handful of peanuts from a small bowl and went upstairs.
It was not until she reached the safety of her room that she felt her legs shaking. She had stood up to her mother and it felt good. It felt like she had just run a race, and burst over the finishing line first at sports day and her heart was beating loudly in her chest. Normally she could not hear her own heart beating, but now she did. She was aware of her own breathing too. She felt alive and vibrant and strong.
The Summer of the Mourning Cloak Page 19