Maybe she is not imagining his snake-like quality. Just as she told Sophie that the deer she encountered in the park would stay with her, perhaps Thomas met with a snake in the jungle. They probably crossed his path willy-nilly — there would have been no getting away from them. But no. Her grandmother led her to believe that animals are good spirits, not bad ones that would rob a man of his ability to speak and thereby devastate his wife. Unless he has done something to deserve it.
She shakes this thought off immediately. Not Thomas — he wouldn’t hurt a fly. She smiles. Because he does hurt flies, doesn’t he? And beetles. Even the butterflies he professes to love so much. The first thing he does when he catches them is pinch their little bodies until they die, or drop them in a jar with poison until they suffocate to death.
She sighs and closes her eyes to the strengthening sun. She has always liked Thomas, if just for the fact that he makes Sophie so happy. Despite his murderous tendencies towards insects — she isn’t naïve, she knows it’s all in the name of science — he has a light touch with his wife; when they are together his hand on her waist seems to make Sophie float. He brings out a maternal instinct in the women around him — even in Agatha. She was with him one day when he tripped on the road and she had an urge to kiss the graze on his palm better. Thomas mistook her hand on his and the look in her eye for something far more inappropriate and jumped to his feet, his face exploding with colour. She laughed at him then; she couldn’t help it.
Agatha hides her cigarette case in her little purse, adjusts her new hat, which she decorated herself last week with silk flowers, and sets out for Sophie’s house. She feels a little guilty that she doesn’t plan to stay long; she has used Sophie as an excuse to leave the house, but she plans to spend the afternoon with Robert. The deception adds to the thrill.
Mary answers the door and shows her to the parlour. Sophie’s cheeks are pale when she looks up. Agatha wonders how long it has been since she has taken one of her daily walks. She wears her dowdiest blouse and skirt of coarse cotton that verges on hessian; Agatha supposes she has recently returned from church. Her knees are probably rubbed raw from kneeling and praying for her husband. Her hair is scraped into a tight bun, quite out of step with the current fashion, and it gives her the look of a cruel schoolmistress. Agatha feels quite shocked; it’s as if her friend is punishing herself.
Sophie seems too lethargic to even stand and welcome her, so Agatha bends to kiss her on the cheek and sits.
She leans forward. ‘So where is he?’ she whispers.
‘He’s still having bed-rest,’ says Sophie. ‘He gets up in the evenings and we dine together. But the doctor said he’s to live quietly. To see if it …’ She raises a hand to rub at an imaginary spot on her forehead. ‘To see if it helps his condition.’
Agatha slumps back in her chair and lets her arms dangle off the sides. Sophie is enormously distracted; she hasn’t even commented on her new hat. She usually teases her about whatever she wears.
‘Sophie Bear. My Sophie Bear …’ She doesn’t continue.
Sophie nods, as if in answer to an unspoken question. ‘I’m fine. Just a little tired, that’s all.’ She manages a weak smile, which broadens, falsely, as Mary brings the tea things in. ‘Thank you, Mary. Down here, please. I’ll pour.’
Mary backs out of the room. She seems to be trying to make herself as unobtrusive as possible and it’s working. Agatha shoots her a sympathetic look and takes a cup, turning her attention back to Sophie. ‘What are you going to do? Do you have a plan?’
‘Dr Dixon said I should try to communicate with him by taking him to do the things he likes. Take him to the park.’
‘He hasn’t been yet? But he was always there …’
‘Yes, he was. But no, he hasn’t been.’
‘And what about his brother? What about Cameron?’
‘He’s abroad. I’ve written to him, but as yet I’ve had no reply. But look, there’s this.’ Sophie pulls a folded sheet of paper from the pocket of her skirt. It amazes Agatha, the things that Sophie produces from her pockets: a handkerchief, a letter, a book — she once saw an umbrella appear from seemingly nowhere and was inclined to think that Sophie had been keeping it hidden in her skirts.
It is a letter. Sophie hands it to Agatha, who immediately recognises the mean, tight writing. ‘From your father,’ she says. ‘Did you tell him Thomas is back?’
Sophie nods. ‘I had to, really. He might have heard about it from somebody else. I wrote to him straight away.’
‘And have you told him?’
‘No! Heavens, no. Give him something else to disapprove of? Ugh. I couldn’t bear it.’
‘So what did you tell him?’
‘Well, naturally I told him that I had moved out of your house and back here.’
‘Ah yes, The White Lie.’ They thought of the lie — that Sophie had moved in with Agatha’s family — as quelling Mr Winterstone’s anxiety. He wouldn’t stand for having a daughter abandoned by her husband to live alone. But Agatha and Sophie both knew that if it was Sophie’s welfare he had been concerned about, they wouldn’t have lied to him; Sophie was convinced he was more worried about appearances than anything else. The thought of his daughter keeping house alone might enrage him. Anyway, it wasn’t a complete lie: Sophie does spend a lot of time with Agatha’s family; she even spent Christmas with them.
‘But here’s the problem, see.’ Sophie leans forward and taps the final paragraph of the letter. ‘He wants to visit. The day after tomorrow.’
Agatha reads it out loud. ‘I am interested in discussing Thomas’s expedition with him.’ She looks up. ‘Oh, hell.’
Sophie flinches.
‘Sorry,’ says Agatha. ‘What are you going to do?’
‘I don’t know. I didn’t expect to have to deal with this so soon. I mean, he never visits. Kingston is only a few miles away, but he just never seems to have the time.’
‘And he never issues invitations to you.’
‘Precisely.’
‘What will he do?’
‘If Thomas still isn’t speaking?’
Agatha pauses. How naïve Sophie can be, how optimistic. That she even thinks there is a chance Thomas will be speaking in two days’ time makes her want to jump up and hug her. ‘Yes,’ she says.
‘Well, in the worst situation, I suppose he might order me to come home and insist that Thomas goes to a hospital. But then again, what kind of a scandal would that cause? I doubt he would tolerate that. Perhaps he will ignore the problem. Maybe he will turn his back on us forever.’ She takes the letter back off Agatha and begins to fold it into smaller and smaller squares. Her hands shake and some colour is creeping back into her face.
‘Don’t be angry with him yet,’ says Agatha. ‘You don’t know that he’ll desert you.’
‘Yes,’ says Sophie. ‘I’m letting my imagination run away. It seems too real sometimes. You’re right. Perhaps he’ll turn out to be kind about Thomas after all.’
‘What’ll you do in the meantime?’
‘Follow Dr Dixon’s advice, of course. I plan to take him for a walk this afternoon.’
‘And you think this will help?’
Sophie sighs again. It settles over Agatha. The weight of it presses on her shoulders.
‘I don’t know, Aggie. What do you think?’
Agatha sips her tea and takes a bite from a muffin. ‘I think …’ Her mouth is full, but she presses on. ‘What about dancing?’
This elicits a smile from Sophie. ‘Thomas didn’t dance very well before!’
‘Well, there you go!’ says Agatha, pleased she has at last raised some mirth. ‘He’ll probably be much better at it now!’ She reaches out and touches Sophie’s knee. ‘We’ll get him to talk, darling, don’t you worry.’
‘I don’t know if it’s just a matter of getting him to talk, as you say. There’s something that has silenced him, and I need to find out how to get him back. To get my Thomas back.’ Her face becom
es suddenly red, and the tears follow.
Agatha realises she has been uncharitable in thinking of Thomas as a snake. It’s not his fault; the man is very ill. She only identified him as the cause of Sophie’s suffering and reacted badly. He is more like an infant, a burden on her poor friend. She must do everything she can to help.
But not this afternoon. She is already walking towards Robert in her mind, planning the secret route he showed her from the park, which will take her past the ugly old crows that loiter by the wall and through a rotting gate into his garden. She knows that Sophie saw their exchange in church that day, and Agatha has waited for her to say something, or to start asking questions. She might even have told her if she wanted to know. But now her friend has too many other things on her mind.
Besides, the room is oppressive. There is no hint that it is a beautiful morning outside; the curtains are nearly closed. ‘It’s no wonder you’re feeling so gloomy, Bear.’ Agatha stands and crosses to the window. She tugs at the drapes, letting a wash of light fall into the room. ‘And now I really must be going. I promised Mother I would help her with her sewing.’
And she will. Later.
Sophie stands over her sleeping husband. His tanned skin is reverting back to its paleness — too pale, really, but it could be the gloomy light of the bedroom. He sleeps on his back, with a pile of pillows beneath his head and shoulders, so that his body is bowed. His arms lie outside the bedclothes, and below the sleeves of his nightshirt his hands are still red and callused. The wound on his arm is beginning to heal, and soon she will remove the bandage altogether. His face is turned to one side. Even in sleep his lips are neatly pursed. His hair is beginning to curl awkwardly around his ear, which protrudes less obviously now that his face is filling out somewhat. He hasn’t lost his appetite at least; he eats the soup she brings him every day, and in the evening has been devouring a good-sized plate of meat and cheese and bread for supper. And yet he still looks deflated somehow, hollowed out. There is an air of sadness about him, even as he sleeps.
She misses him more than she did when he was in Brazil. At least when he was there she knew he was thinking about her — to begin with, anyway — and she could imagine him moving through the rainforest with strong legs, his face crinkled with concentration. The day she saw him off at the station, he pulled her onto the train with him and embraced her in his empty compartment. When the whistle blew, she had to disentangle herself from his arms; the train had started to move as she opened the door and jumped back onto the platform. She was left with the smell of peppermints in her hair and the sight of his bright face at the window.
Thomas jerks awake and for a moment she thinks he is going to smile at her, but his face remains expressionless, his head fixed to the pillow. Only his eyes dart about, as if looking for the other people she might have brought into the room with her.
‘Let’s go for a walk in the park,’ she says. ‘It’s a lovely afternoon.’
Her husband draws back the bedclothes to let himself out of the bed. His thin legs, she notes, are also scarred from the insect bites. The golden hairs are caught in a chink of light from the window and they seemed to sparkle. He stands firmly on his feet — he has been kept fit with a turn around the garden every evening before supper. Sophie will not have her husband a cripple as well as a mute.
‘I’ll leave you to get dressed,’ she says.
As they stroll up The Terrace, towards the park entrance, Sophie becomes aware of another problem; one she hadn’t even thought of before now. People nod at them as they pass. Some of them avert their eyes. She dreads meeting somebody they really know: not just polite strangers, or those who have heard about the strange, silent young man who has returned from the Amazon, but people from church. She’s glad they live in a reasonably big town, not a tiny village. She can sometimes go days without seeing people she knows, and in the weekends, the place is full of Londoners, so she can further sink into the background.
They make it to the park without seeing a familiar face. Thomas’s gait is slow at first, a shuffling amble, as she imagines a sloth might move. As they pass through the gate, walking without touching, Sophie feels a cool breeze on her face. It reaches inside her and lifts her spirits. She feels it like a finger tracing circles in her abdomen. She leads him up the path towards the shady wood, where Thomas used to collect beetles and where she knows they are less likely to come across any people.
Thomas has picked up his pace, and she feels her muscles stretch as she keeps in step with him. She misses her own walks. She doesn’t like to leave him for too long, in case he needs her, or in case he decides to speak and there is nobody there but Mary to hear him. She spends only a few minutes in the church, early each morning, before he wakes up. Mary is under instructions to come and get her if he shows any change, but so far her visits have gone undisturbed.
I need to talk to him, she thinks. What can I talk about?
‘Do you remember, Thomas, the first time I went beetling with you?’ She doesn’t wait for an answer. ‘And how bitterly I complained! You promised me a picnic that day, but you got so excited about finding that one — what was it, a stag? — that you forgot to eat, and you left me sitting there in the shade getting cold! But I soon learned, didn’t I; I brought a book the next time.’
They pass the fork in the path that winds around an oak tree and leads to the hidden hollow where Thomas once tried to make love to her. She places her hand on his arm again and lightly steers him down the path. Twigs crack and the sponge of rotten leaves springs under their feet. Sophie reaches out a hand and trails it over the brittle bark of the oak. Her fingers find tiny gorges and riverbeds in its texture, a landscape for a thousand insects. She pulls him to a stop in their secret spot. With the sound of their feet on the forest floor withdrawn, the silence rises up to meet them. Thomas closes his eyes, seeming to breathe it in through his pores as a frog might. The air is cool in the shade, the pillars of the forest trees robust and strong. Sophie realises they have achieved absolute quiet. Always there is something that produces noise in their lives — whether the clipping of a horse and carriage, or the animal roar of a motor. Even in the sedate paths by the river, the water sluices the banks, licking at itself or the edge of a pier.
She kisses his cheek. It reminds her of when she was a girl and would kiss her father goodnight. There is a slackness to the skin, and yet the flesh is unyielding, and doesn’t press itself to her lips as she has learned that a lover’s would, or even a friend’s. Nanny would bring her into her father’s study every evening — the only contact she had with him all day. She stood by his chair and told him what she had learned that day, before leaning forward with her warm breath and planting her offering on his waiting cheek. He would turn his back on her then and it was time for Nanny to take her hand and lead her away. She would look back, hoping that her father would turn, just once, and give her a secret smile to hold on to and to carry to her bed. But all she saw was the cold mountain of his back bent over his desk, his hand scribbling madly, his daughter forgotten.
Thomas has not shaved for some time; a few red bristles poke through his skin, but his face is mostly covered with a fine down. It is the closest to a beard she has seen on him. When she pulls back from the kiss on his cheek, he will not meet her eyes; he is the same new frog-Thomas, not a prince. But he blushes a little and for a moment reverts back to the shy young man she first met at the fête on the river. There was a tea dance at the Star and Garter, where he stood on her foot, twice, during the waltz. Later that evening, the riverside was lit up with lights and he asked to see her again. The lights were reflected in the ambling river. When he laid his hand over hers she felt as weightless as the Chinese lanterns lifting and turning in the summer breeze.
She decides to leave him for a moment and wanders over to the clearing in the trees, which give her a view down the valley. She stood in this very spot once when she was a little girl and Nanny brought her to Richmond for the day. She accidentall
y got ‘lost’ and found herself here as the sun sank behind Windsor Castle. She looked out at it, knowing that she was destined for great things — to marry a prince and live in the castle, perhaps. The Thames was a silver ribbon winding towards her. Now it is a river again, with rowboats dotted on its surface. She can make out the chimney of the Sunbury Waterworks and Eel Pie Island, where Nanny told her all the eel pies in England are made. To the left of the view, the smoke of Kingston-on-Thames, where she grew up, mingles with the blue haze of the distant Surrey Hills.
And now her father is coming to visit. She doesn’t want him to find Thomas like this; she knows her father will be disappointed in her and see her once again as a burden. Her father has never taken much interest in her husband; he was anxious to marry her off early but hoped she would marry Thomas’s older brother Cameron, who was the heir to their father’s fortune. As the second son of a semi-wealthy man, Thomas was provided with an allowance that was more than enough for them to live on, but modest. Sophie knew that her father thought the only way to be rid of all responsibility for her was to have her marry a man whose money would allow her to be surrounded by servants, and to have her every fancy catered for.
She turns and finds Thomas where she left him; he has sat himself down and is leaning against a tree with his eyes closed. She realises as she walks towards him that for the first time his face appears to be relaxed. There is even a contented curl at the edges of his mouth. He is cured, she thinks. This is all he needed — a stroll in his beloved park.
She rushes to him and the rustle of her skirts and the crack of twigs beneath her feet make his eyes jerk open. He glares at her. It stops her in her tracks. Surely he isn’t angry with her? She feels a stab of guilt that she has disturbed his peace. She has trampled on his domain. Sophie stands up straight and puts on a bright voice.
‘Are we feeling better?’ She immediately regrets her patronising choice of words. ‘Are you feeling better, Thomas?’
Sound of Butterflies, The Page 6