Sound of Butterflies, The

by King, Rachael

  She expects him to look away, despite her hopes. Instead, he stares up at her for a moment, and the glare softens. Then, she’s not sure, but she thinks he gives a small nod.

  ‘Darling!’ She falls beside him and puts her arms around his neck. She expects him to mould to her shape. His cheek against hers is burning; she has forgotten the fire held in the body of another human being. But he remains stiff and Sophie realises too late that she made a mistake. She draws back. He is blushing and his hand grasps a handful of bark and dirt from the ground. He says nothing.

  But it is a start, she tells herself. Isn’t it a start?

  Two days later, Sophie opens the door to her father. Charles Winterstone stands stiffly on the doorstep and, despite the warm day, wears a coat over his pale suit, and gloves. He pulls off his hat and nods.

  ‘Sophie.’

  ‘Father. Please come in.’ She stands aside and he passes into the hallway. She catches a whiff of soap as he passes, is close enough to see a fresh shaving cut beneath his neatly trimmed beard.

  ‘And where is Thomas?’ asks her father as he deposits his hat onto the stand. ‘And that girl of yours?’

  ‘Mary,’ says Sophie. ‘She has the morning off. The tea’s all made.’ She could have set her clock by her father’s arrival at eleven; she has never known him to be either late or early for any appointment. She had no fear of the tea getting cold while she waited for him.

  In the drawing room, she finally answers his question.

  ‘I’m afraid I have some bad news, Father. Thomas has been called away on urgent business. A telegram came for him this morning and he has had to go up to London to see somebody at the Natural History Museum.’

  ‘Oh, that is a pity,’ he says. ‘I don’t think I can be back here for a number of weeks.’

  His voice seems light but his eyes accuse her. She shifts in her seat. A few weeks. She has bought some time, then.

  ‘And Agatha’s father? How is he?’

  ‘Yes, good, I think.’

  ‘Did you thank him for letting you stay with him for so long? Perhaps I should thank him myself.’

  ‘That won’t be necessary. The family knows I had a lovely time with them.’

  This is not a complete lie. She has spent plenty of time at their house, and Christmas was one of the most pleasurable holidays she can remember. There is a warmth in that house: a bond between Agatha, her parents, and her younger brother and sister. Agatha teases the young ones mercilessly, and the house is filled with their shrieks and shouts, and inevitably Mr Dunne yelling after them to be quieter, but there is never anger in his voice. They never expected Agatha, once she was out and had courting prospects, to lose her wild ways. Sophie knows that many people in the neighbourhood disapprove of Mr Dunne and his half-gypsy wife and their band of raucous children, but they are too tight-lipped to do anything but accept them.

  Mr Winterstone has to make do with asking Sophie about her husband’s travels. Sophie, as best she can, makes up stories, based on the early letters she received from him.

  ‘And did he find his butterfly? The one that would make him famous?’ He leans forward eagerly. Hungrily, she thinks.

  ‘No, he didn’t.’

  ‘I see,’ says her father, and he leans back in his chair. His hunger appears sated. Sophie realises with a plunging heart that this is what he wanted her to say; he has been waiting for her husband to fail in some way.

  ‘At least,’ she blurts, ‘not that he has told me about. But I feel that the business he is attending to in London may be somehow related. He is quite secretive about it. Perhaps he is on the verge of an announcement and has had to keep it quiet.’

  ‘Perhaps.’ Her father strokes his beard and will not meet her eyes.

  She remembers cold days in their house in Kingston, when they would tiptoe around each other, the hard hand of Nanny pulling her away from his study door. She always wondered how a woman so sinewy could have such a soft demeanour. She had no bosom to speak of, but when she pulled Sophie into an embrace, she fit as snugly as a key in a lock.

  They finish their tea in near silence. Her father faces the fireplace and his gaze flicks up at the only photograph Sophie has of her mother. The woman has the look of one whose favourite rose bush has just been cut down; she is biting her narrow lip to will herself not to cry, but her eyes are defiant, planning revenge. The only memory Sophie has of her mother is a word; she can remember the feeling of ‘Mama’ on her lips as a toddler, but she had nothing to apply it to. Eventually it lost all meaning and faded from her vocabulary.

  Sophie tries to chat, but her father sits fortified behind his tiny cup. It is an inadequate defence, but somehow he uses it as the largest and strongest shield. On no account must any of her warmth penetrate him. She has an urge to laugh, but she stifles it and stands.

  ‘Well, thank you for visiting, Father.’ She registers the relief in his face.

  ‘Yes, yes,’ he says as he stands also. ‘I do have some business to attend to.’

  The business of brandy, she expects, up at the Star and Garter. She releases him from his misery. No — she releases them both.

  After he has gone, she moves slowly up the stairs, a cup of tea in one hand, the other dragging itself on the banister. Thomas is asleep in the dim room. She pulls the curtains open and sets the tea down beside him.

  ‘He’s gone,’ says Sophie. ‘Thank you for being so quiet.’

  Captain Samuel Fale alights from his cab at the entrance to the Star and Garter Hotel. He is meeting his old friend Sid Worthing, but plans to get there a little early to knock back a sly whiskey or two to help him cope with Sid’s banter about his wonderful life. Not that Fale begrudges his friend his good fortune — Sid had taken some options in a Brazilian rubber company and is now enjoying the fruits of a remarkable boom — but he doesn’t need to hear him drone on about it. About that, and about his pretty new wife, a silent Frenchwoman he picked up in his travels. She is a gorgeous specimen, no doubt about it, with a sweetly puckered face like a marigold; but Fale can’t work out how he has made her so damned quiet — after all, aren’t those Mediterranean types supposed to be hot-blooded and noisy? He rather thinks this is their attraction. Not that he wants one for himself — give him a straight-backed English girl any day — but he can’t help but wonder what the point is. Perhaps her demureness is just for show and all that passion is repressed all day, to be let out at night.

  He chuckles to himself at the thought of Sid — not the most agile of men now that his wealth has gone to his belly — wrestling under the sheets with a golden beauty. What a waste.

  He pays the driver, who grumbles at the short distance from Fale’s home. The captain feels his eyes on his back as he limps away, and he exaggerates the stiffness in his leg to rouse some sympathy from the rough young man. Surely he can see that he isn’t about to walk here from his house with his injury. He hears the driver click his tongue to his horse and drive away.

  The dining room is filling slowly, but it is nowhere near capacity. On the weekend, which had been unseasonably warm for late spring, there were close to six hundred for dinner. The Star and Garter is the fashionable place for Londoners to venture for the day — they often spend the morning at Kew, then make their way to Richmond and be home on the train or boat by supper time. Fale missed out on his favourite spot and took tea on the terrace overlooking the river, which he found to be most pleasant. He closed his eyes and felt the sun beating down on his lids. When he opened them a fraction, and tiny slits of Italian Romanesque architecture loomed above him, he could fancy himself somewhere on the Italian Riviera, a place he had never been but had always wanted to go.

  Fale takes his seat and orders a drink. The clinking of cutlery and the murmur of sparse conversation nibble at the edge of his consciousness. The smell of roast beef feeds his stomach’s anticipation. He nods at the man at the next table, who nods back and returns his attention to his newspaper. He seems a very tall fellow; his long
legs jut out the side as if he can’t quite fit them under the table. His pale suit is crinkled and a black bowler sits on the table beside his elbow; a coat is draped over the back of his chair. He reminds Fale of a colonel he once served under, a huge man with an even larger voice and the same neat beard, who died under the hooves of a runaway horse when he pushed a young private out of its path. This resemblance gives Fale a respect — irrational, he knows — for this stranger, and suddenly he cares very much what the man thinks of him. He sits up straighter in his chair and, with his finger, checks his moustache for crumbs.

  The waiter puts his drink down and moves on to the stranger’s table.

  As Fale takes a sweet sip of his whiskey the waiter says, ‘Will there be anything else, Mr Winterstone?’ The man, Winterstone, orders a brandy. Fale is disappointed to hear his voice, which is not booming as his colonel’s was, and has no pretensions in the accent — pretensions that Fale himself maintains at all costs.

  Winterstone, Winterstone. He knows the name, but can’t place it. Fale takes in the long legs again, which put him mind of a stork’s. His shoulders are broad but fine, giving him proud, upright air. And those long legs …

  Sophie.

  He leans back casually and takes a cigarette from his silver case. He taps it twice on the tablecloth and lights it. He realises he has been staring when Winterstone looks up and returns the gaze. Yes, there in his eyes is a further resemblance. They stare over the half-moon reading glasses, into Fale’s heart, analysing him. Fale feels a curious sense of regret — for what, he can’t be sure. He sees that he is going to have to speak to justify the scrutiny. He exhales his lungful of smoke and addresses the man, maintaining his nonchalant stance.

  ‘Excuse me, sir.’

  Winterstone says nothing.

  Fale presses on. ‘Are you by any chance related to Mrs Sophie Edgar?’

  The man folds his newspaper slowly and deliberately. He places it neatly at the corner of the table, lining up all parallel and perpendicular lines. He removes his glasses.

  ‘She is my daughter,’ he says at last. ‘And you are?’

  Fale surprises himself by stuttering. ‘F-forgive me, sir. I couldn’t help overhear your name and make the connection. My name is Fale, Captain Samuel Fale. Mrs Edgar is an acquaintance of mine.’

  ‘Is she? Surely you mean her husband, Mr Edgar?’

  Fale takes a breath. He knows he could make a fool of himself and put Sophie at risk with whatever comes out of his mouth. He must act carefully, deliberately. And fast.

  ‘Yes, of course.’ He can’t remember Edgar’s first name. What is it? ‘He … he and I are old friends,’ he lies. He realises too late that he is digging a hole for himself, and possibly with both hands. ‘That is, we have known each other for some time.’ This is not completely untrue — Fale met Edgar’s father once, when — Thomas! Of course, it is Thomas — was just a lad. The boy accompanied Mr Edgar senior into town.

  ‘I see.’ The man’s face softens, and he does not go back to his newspaper. ‘Would you care to join me, as we are both drinking alone?’

  ‘Well, I am expecting someone …’

  ‘I see,’ Winterstone says again.

  Fale must remember that this man is not his sturdy colonel. He has embarrassed him, and he can see the older man’s hands shake slightly as he goes to take up his glasses and newspaper again. He must make amends. ‘But my companion won’t be here for another twenty minutes. I would be delighted, sir.’

  A slow smile spreads over the older man’s face.

  Fale starts to rise, but Winterstone spots his walking stick and his stiff leg and bids him sit, instead picking up his drink and moving to join him.

  It turns out that Winterstone dines at the Star and Garter whenever he is in Richmond on business as a barrister. The two men discuss the history of the hotel; Winterstone visited it as a young man, when it was another building altogether, before it burned down in 1870. He recalls his excitement when he first visited the hotel without his parents. Captain Fale attended an engagement for the Indian officers who had arrived for the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee. He doesn’t tell Winterstone, but he made up a few stories that night — made out that he had been fighting in the Boer War when he damaged his leg. Nobody had any reason to disbelieve him.

  ‘You must see something of your daughter, sir,’ says Fale, ‘if you come to Richmond so frequently.’

  Winterstone looks away, and his jaw tightens.

  ‘Not very much,’ he says. ‘I am usually too busy.’

  ‘Ah,’ says Fale. ‘That is a shame.’

  The man smiles a watery smile. ‘I did see her today, however. I had tea with her this morning.’

  Fale nods. ‘It’s a terrible shame, isn’t it? About her husband, I mean.’

  Winterstone’s head snaps up. ‘Whatever do you mean, sir?’

  Fale pauses to read the man’s voice. He detects an icy tone creeping into it. He must proceed with caution. ‘Did you not see Mr Edgar today?’

  ‘He has been called to London on urgent business. I had hoped to meet with him and discuss his journey to the Amazon. It was all planned, but he had to leave at the last minute. He will be away for some days.’

  Fale realises he has made a mistake in mentioning this, but then a myriad possibilities swim before his eyes. Mr Winterstone does not know about Edgar’s condition. Sophie has lied to him, surely. Or perhaps Edgar has recovered. Since his return, Fale has kept his distance, but Sophie confided in him only yesterday, when he had met her on the street. He could tell that she was putting on a brave face; she stood so tall and strong. Beautiful. He felt a tug in his breeches, but luckily it didn’t amount to much. She asked him not to tell anybody — not yet, anyway — and he complied for her sake. But here is a chance to do some good, perhaps. Surely if her father only knew about his son-in-law’s muteness, he would be able to help her. Perhaps he could arrange for some top-quality care in some hospital, somewhere far away.

  He realises he has not spoken for some time. Winterstone searches his eyes. ‘What exactly are you saying about my daughter’s husband, Captain Fale?’

  Such an elegant man. Even when he suspects something is being held from him, he keeps such a strong composure and good posture. He was so considerate when he spotted Fale’s walking stick. A real gentleman, Fale thinks, and it comes to him, the nature of the regret he has been feeling.

  He should have liked this man for a father-in-law.

  Four

  Santarém, December 6th, 1903

  My dearest Sophie,

  Thank you for your last letter, and for sending me my beloved peppermints. I ran out a week ago, and have not been able to find any like them in Belém. I’m glad you are coping without me, my lamb, but I still fret and have some regrets about leaving you alone for so long by yourself. I trust you are surrounding yourself with good company.

  We have left Belém, as our journey up the Amazon must continue. We boarded another ship bound for Manaus, which arranged to drop us off at Santarém. We are fortunate that there is currently a rubber boom, because it affords easy mobility up the river. I think about the times that naturalists before us had to reach their destinations by small unreliable trading vessels and canoes, at the mercy of who knows what type of scoundrels and heathens! We may yet have to take such a boat if we wish to go further into the interior, but for now I’m happy not to experience the genuine article.

  We were all a little sad to leave Belém, despite our impatience both to see more of this wondrous country and to meet Mr Santos. It will not surprise me at all if our time at Belém turns out to be a golden period of our stay — despite small discomforts, life was very easy there. It was there I began to think of myself as a collector, not just one who dabbles, meandering around the countryside, picking up the odd pretty insect.

  I have not much to report about the 400-mile journey up the Amazon. After leaving Belém, and the stretch of tributary before the main river, the huts of caboclos, t
hose people who are a mixture of all the races of Brazil, thinned somewhat. I encountered some of these settlements in my walks when I had ventured some miles from Belém. The caboclos live by gathering from the forest and fishing in the river, and off the produce of a small plantation. Many of these people are also rubber gatherers, and the men are lured by the promise of wages and drink away from their families. The women are left to take care of themselves. I was struck by how miserable the plantations were, and there were always plenty of small children whose mouths, no doubt, needed feeding. Once or twice I confess I succumbed to my pity and gave the children some coins. More often than not they looked at them as if they didn’t know what they might do with them. Their big eyes asked, ‘Do you expect me to eat this?’

  Continuing up the river, it becomes so wide in places one cannot see the other side. The view became monotonous once we were accustomed to it, a steady but not unpleasant draping of green above the ochre of the river. Every now and then we saw some creature or another rise out of the depths. The crew tossed out scraps to see what would pick it up, and pointed out alligators and pirarucu, one of the fish here, which grows to the size of a small dolphin.

  We arrived at Santarém and what a welcome sight it was — I am anxious to continue with my collecting. Santarém is a pretty town at the mouth of the Tapajós River, which flows into the Amazon, set on sloping ground, with whitewashed houses that have red roofs. It is quite European in its appearance, disarmingly so. The inhabitants are mostly Roman Catholics, and the church, which stands in a large grassy square, is quite impressively large, such as something you might find in Spain or Portugal. Walking at first through the streets I might have been inclined to forget I was on another continent were it not for the oppressive, moist heat and the forest encroaching on all sides. The forest is quite different here from in Belém. It is sparser, and the hilly ground is marked by wide-open spaces of clumpy, dried-up grasses. In the height of the dry season, the locals tell us, it rains less than once a week.