Butterfly Island

by Corina Bomann

Cahill slaved away beneath the imagined gaze of the dead man and thought he could hear his voice whispering. “You took my father, my love, my life. Can you imagine what the penalty is for that?”

  “No penalty,” Cahill muttered to himself. “No one will know.”

  Once the grave was deep enough, he straightened up and peeled away his shirt, which was clinging to his body with sweat. A pleasant coolness brushed over his back.

  It’s almost done. He grabbed the dead man’s legs and dragged him to the edge of the hole. The makeshift shroud came loose. The dead eyes were open, staring at him. For a moment he felt as if, once again, it was Richard Tremayne he saw before him, smashed on a rock. Seized by dread, he gave the young man a kick that rolled him into the grave. As the body fell with a muffled thump, Cahill thought he heard a groan. Was he still alive?

  Fear welled up inside him. But he didn’t want to risk another shot.

  Once he’s covered in earth, he’ll soon stop groaning. He quickly set to work, feverishly shovelling dirt back into the grave.

  It began in the night. The voice of the dead man, his accusations and his threats, returned as he lay down in bed beside his wife. She was asleep, and as he feared her questions he chose not to wake her to ask whether she had heard anything.

  As Cahill closed his eyes, he saw Vikrama’s face clearly. The surprise as the bullet hit him, the dying light in his eyes. And he saw Richard Tremayne again. Surprised and full of reproach in that moment before he fell into the abyss.

  “I had to do it,” he whispered to himself. “Don’t you understand? I had to do it.”

  But the voices would not let him go. They whispered things he did not want to hear: secret desires, black stains on his soul, dark memories. They kept him awake all night, until day finally dawned and it was time to inform his employer what had happened. He must have heard the shot in the night, and perhaps he already suspected that this particular problem was over.

  Hours later, sitting in his employer’s study, the voices were a little quieter, as though they wanted to hear what Tremayne had to say. They subliminally demanded that he also confess to the murder of Tremayne’s brother, a murder perpetrated out of the deepest conviction that it would be a bad thing for Richard’s son to take the helm one day. The plantation had to remain in English hands. It simply had to, because in Cahill’s world order, there was no alternative.

  “I assume the matter has been dealt with,” Henry said without turning from the window where he was standing. He looked much more peaceful, more in control. As though a burden had been lifted from his shoulders. Now his daughter’s lover was gone, he could convince himself that everything was all right. Grace would have her baby in England, hidden from the eyes of the world. Perhaps they could place the baby in the care of a foster mother and deny it was their daughter’s. Anything was possible once Grace had arrived in England.

  “Yes, it’s done.” Cahill took a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped the sweat from his brow. “I’ve buried him in the new tea field. It was easier than I thought.”

  His uncertain laugh echoed, distorted, in his head.

  “And no one saw you?”

  “No one, sir. I feared the shot would wake people, but it didn’t.”

  Tremayne nodded with satisfaction. “Good work, Mr. Cahill. My daughter will have arrived in England by now. We’ll find a solution, I’m sure, and you can consider yourself reinstated as estate manager.”

  “Thank you, sir. You’re too kind.”

  Cahill had no inkling that he would not be enjoying for long the position he had just regained. Only two weeks later he lost the battle with the voices in his head. The fact that he had committed his guilty conscience, his dreadful deeds, to paper did not help at all. That was not compensation enough for the dead.

  After running out, screaming and naked, into the courtyard, terrifying the tea pickers and his good wife, he was examined thoroughly by Dr. Desmond and committed to the asylum in Colombo. Confined to a straitjacket in a dark cell where scarcely any light fell, Cahill was delivered up, helpless, to the reproaches and curses of his victims. Regular injections of morphine, considered to be a medicine for his condition, strengthened the voices all the more, so that nothing remained to him but to surrender by giving up the ghost.

  18

  Vannattuppūcci Tea Company, 2008

  Diana looked in the mirror rather sleepily. She had spent almost the whole night reading Cahill’s account, and although she had managed to snatch a few hours’ sleep, she was flabbergasted by the discovery of these crimes that no one was left to atone for.

  While reading she had burst into tears at the screaming injustice, but Jonathan had been there, had held her and rocked her in his arms, giving her the strength to continue reading.

  She felt it was justice that Cahill’s guilty conscience had driven him to madness. She would have wished the same on Henry, but even though he would never have been aware of it, he had been punished in other ways. His family tree, cultivated over centuries, had gradually eroded, his name vanishing with his two daughters, until finally the only remaining heir was from the branch he would have liked to extinguish for good. There clearly was something like karma in the world.

  At breakfast they saw Manderley, who looked at them expectantly but was too reserved to ask outright the question that was obviously burning inside him.

  “Did you sleep well?”

  Diana shook her head with a smile. “No, but that’s not a bad thing. I’ve been revived by your breakfast, and I’ve found out more about what happened to my great-great-grandmother.”

  “Ah . . .” The estate manager kneaded his hands. Usually so self-possessed, at that moment he looked to Diana like a boy expecting punishment. “It’s strong stuff between those covers?” He didn’t ask directly, but she sensed he really wanted to know what his ancestor had done.

  “It turns out that Cahill murdered my great-great-grandfather and buried him beneath the tea field, having previously murdered Richard Tremayne, another of my ancestors,” she told him. “After that he was haunted by voices that ultimately led to his being committed to the Colombo asylum—the one that was shown in my old guidebook as a tourist attraction.”

  “People’s outlooks were rather different then,” Manderley said, nonplussed, but a little relieved. “I thought my ancestor must have committed a murder, otherwise there would have been no need for people to keep quiet about him. Just think, his name’s crossed out in our old family Bible. Someone must have read his confession, perhaps even his own wife, but by then it was too late for a prosecution. If I remember correctly, Cahill died two months after he was committed to the asylum. He swallowed his own tongue.”

  “That’s terrible,” Diana murmured, trying to imagine what the man’s final hours must have been like. Grace was so good-natured that she would hardly have wished such a fate on him. Or would she?

  “I’m sorry about your own ancestor,” Manderley said awkwardly. “I always knew there was a dark shadow over our family—a reason we can’t leave this place.”

  “There’s no need to apologise. It’s a long time ago, and your family has nothing to do with the acts of your ancestor. And if there is a shadow, it’s gone now, since you’ve shed light on the events of the past.”

  Manderley nodded, then turned his attention to the water he was boiling to make tea.

  That afternoon, feeling good that she no longer needed any more information to enable her to reconstruct the events of the past, Diana packed her bag then picked up the letter. She wasn’t expecting it to reveal any more great surprises, but she took it to Jonathan’s room because it meant fitting the last tile in place in the mosaic.

  “The time has come,” she announced as he looked up from his packing. “We’re saying goodbye to Vannattuppūcci, so we can open it now.”

  Jonathan took her hand and drew her down to sit on the bed.

  After taking a deep breath, Diana broke the seal and took out the two sheets of pa
per.

  My dear house,

  Twenty years have passed since our family came to Vannattuppūcci, taking over your rooms and trying to fill them with life. Now I’m leaving this place forever, as a happy wife and mother of my little Daphne, who is now twelve years old. Someone has to look after Tremayne House before it falls into complete dilapidation. Since my sister, Grace, was disinherited by our father, I feel compelled to return to England with Noel and Daphne and take up my duties there.

  But before I go, there is something I need to get off my chest. Something that should never come to light, and that I can only entrust to you. I don’t want to take it back to England, so instead I intend to leave it here, the place where I burdened myself with guilt.

  Sometimes I’m pursued by images of those days, as though it all happened yesterday. Every now and then I believe I can hear Grace’s voice or see her walking through the park. Then the tears come, such is the pain the memory of our happier days brings.

  Everything changed on the day Grace broke down and told the doctor she was pregnant. The identity of the father caused my parents great consternation, since Grace refused to say, merely looking to the ceiling with an empty gaze whenever she was asked.

  But the truth will always out.

  There was a rumour that Miss Giles passed Grace’s secret journal to my father after she found me looking at it. But that’s not true. I want to unburden her poor soul by stating that it was I who took the notebook to my father. I didn’t mean to harm Grace, but rather wanted to show Papa what had driven her to take that step, what had fuelled her love, a love I had known about for some time.

  I hoped he would understand, that he would show leniency, since the cause of his anger was Grace’s silence about the father of her child.

  But my well-intentioned deed ultimately triggered the misfortune. All hell broke loose, and I have probably lost my sister forever.

  She sent no reply to the letter I sent her saying that Vikrama would come to her, just as she refused to answer any of the other letters in which I begged her forgiveness and offered my help. I found out that she’s living in a small German town and that she’s now married and has a little daughter. But she still doesn’t answer my letters. I wonder if she ever found out that Vikrama wanted to come to her . . .

  I’ll never be able to give her an answer to that question in any case, since Vikrama, that handsome Tamil, suddenly vanished without trace. I assume he’s no longer alive because the search for him was suddenly stopped and peace returned to Nuwara Eliya. One of Stockton’s bloodhounds probably ran him to ground and did away with him. However great my optimism, I can’t think of a better explanation.

  Now the time has come; the carriage is about to leave. I’m entrusting this letter to the place where Grace kept watch for her beloved, and where I’ve left a little memorial in the form of the symbol of our plantation: a butterfly. The sumptuous curtain that used to adorn our room has largely rotted away, but a part remains. I’ve made it into a scarf to remind me of my time here.

  Farewell, Vannattuppūcci. I’ll miss you!

  With love,

  Victoria Princeton, née Tremayne

  Diana finished reading the letter and silence fell. Neither she nor Jonathan could say a word. As they sat side by side on the bed, she listened to the rustling of the trees, which seemed like distant whispering from the past.

  “So it was Victoria who betrayed her sister,” Jonathan said, finally breaking the spell.

  Diana nodded. “You could put it like that. That was the guilt she wanted to lay to rest. The guilt Grace knew nothing about.”

  Jonathan put his arm around her. “I think that means you have everything. The mystery is solved.”

  “Not quite,” Diana said. “We still have the palm leaf. Although I’m not quite sure that I really want to know what it says. Given all that I’ve found out about my family history, what meaning would a prophecy have?”

  “You could check whether it was true. In case you ever have a similar horoscope prepared for yourself.”

  Diana snuggled against his arm. “Do I really want to know my future? Know when I’m going to fail and when I’m going to succeed? What surprises would be left to me then?”

  “I think these horoscopes are just indications for life,” Jonathan replied. “Ways to help people change. Especially if they’re warned when they’re going to make mistakes.”

  “But don’t you think people fulfil their destinies by overcoming obstacles that others place in their way?”

  “That’s one argument.” He rubbed his cheek against her hair. “You know, I like the fact that we have more in common than we thought at first.”

  “Our Tamil inheritance.”

  “That’s right. You never know, one of my ancestors may even be one of yours. The Indian Tamils who were brought here by the British were from one region. They might perhaps have been on the same ship.”

  “Well, I hope we’re not related like Grace and Vikrama were.” That knowledge still made her feel uncomfortable. Cousins of all degrees in royal houses might marry one another, but Diana nevertheless felt uneasy about it.

  “No, I’m sure we’re not.” Jonathan took her hand and kissed it.

  An hour later, Diana and Jonathan left Vannattuppūcci, after thanking Manderley and promising to send him a summary of the events for his records.

  The driver had arrived early and was waiting by the gate; he drove them speedily along the green-lined road to the small railway station where they had arrived a little over a week before.

  As the overcrowded train rumbled towards Colombo, Diana gazed wistfully out at the mountains of Nuwara Eliya. Now she knew that a small part of her roots was here, she found it difficult simply to leave. I’ll be back, she promised silently. Sometime.

  Back in the village of Ambalangoda, this time there was no festival. The huts stood in silence along the beach. There were only a few children, romping in the sand, running with loud shrieks after a small light-brown dog that sought to escape its pursuers with its tongue lolling.

  “I wonder if Mr. Vijita is back,” Diana said anxiously. She took the package out of her rucksack, and the palms of her hands prickled as she opened it. What else did this palm leaf have to tell her? She wondered whether it predicted Grace’s or Vikrama’s fate, and whether events had unfolded as had been written a thousand years before.

  Jonathan made some brief enquiries in the village and came running back to her.

  “We’re in luck. He’s back. He’s not completely recovered, but his son says we can talk to him.”

  The old man’s hut was neat and tidy, but nevertheless radiated poverty to Western eyes. There was a simple bed, a small table with somewhat crooked legs, two chairs that looked in little better shape, and a chest of drawers in which the old man probably kept all his worldly belongings—a few items of clothing and his memories.

  He was sitting on the bed as they entered, dressed in a shirt and a traditional sarong, his feet in sandals. He greeted his guests with a toothless smile, studying Diana closely before indicating to them to sit.

  As he only spoke Tamil and Sinhalese, it was Jonathan who spoke to him, and then handed him the leaf. The old man looked at it, his brow creased, then spoke a few rapid words.

  “What did he say?” Diana whispered. “Can he make anything of it?”

  “I think so,” Jonathan replied, his voice hushed. “He says your palm leaf hasn’t come from a library.”

  “Hasn’t it?” Diana raised her eyebrows. “But . . .”

  “He says this horoscope was drawn up for a wedding. It’s the custom to compare the horoscopes of the bride and groom before they marry, with the intention of preventing unhappy marriages.”

  The old man said something else in his staccato voice. Jonathan replied, which led to a discussion between the two of them. Maybe I should have got him to teach me a few words, Diana thought. Like Grace did.

  Jonathan finally explained to her, “He’s a
bsolutely certain that it’s a wedding horoscope.”

  “But Grace spoke of a palm leaf that prophesied bad luck for her family.”

  “Then it must have been one that only existed as a copy. Since palm leaves were regularly used by the Tamils as writing paper, the forecast for R. Vikrama was also written on a palm leaf.”

  “This is Vikrama’s wedding horoscope?”

  “Yes, it is. He probably intended to take it with him to England, to marry Grace. If Mr. Vijita is not mistaken, this leaf is no more than one hundred and twenty years old.”

  Diana’s first thought was that Michael had been very surprised at the results of the dating analysis.

  “That’s a pity,” she said, a little crestfallen. “A pity that Vikrama never got to marry her.”

  “That’s true.” Jonathan thought for a moment, then smiled. “But on the other hand I’m glad things turned out as they did.”

  “Why?”

  “If Vikrama had married your great-great-grandmother, how would your lives have been? Our paths certainly wouldn’t have crossed if you hadn’t been researching your family history. And that really would have been a pity.”

  A day later, after a short stay in Jonathan’s flat, the time came for Diana’s flight. Nothing could have held Jonathan back from going with her to the airport, to snatch a few more hours with her. They had talked a lot the previous evening about the past and the future.

  Diana’s head was spinning, but she was happy. The mystery of the Tremaynes had finally been solved. She had fulfilled Emily’s wish and could now move on with the knowledge of her unusual origins.

  Her heart was breaking as the time approached for them to say goodbye.

  “I’ll miss you so much. You and Sri Lanka.”

  “Your homeland, in a way.”

  “Yes, my homeland—to a small extent, at least.”

  “We’ll see each other again,” Jonathan said and kissed her passionately. “You get your life in order and I’ll make sure I finish my book. Then we’ll see how things lie between us.”

  They held each other for a moment longer before Diana had to go. She waved at him once again from beyond the barrier, then turned so he wouldn’t see her tears.