by Hilary McKay
“A fork?”
“A dinner fork!” said Binny, her face burning with lies. “And my hand slipped. Kept slipping, I mean. Don’t point the flashlight at me! I was going to paint the scratches out again to make it smooth. I’m good at painting. Me and Clem painted our whole house in the summer.”
“And you came out just now to check the color you’d need?” suggested Mark.
“No! Yes!”
“Well, that’s funny,” said Mark, “because ten minutes ago I said to Clare, ‘There’s some funny marks on that shed door across at the other place. Where James has his hen.’ And Clare said, ‘They’re only chalk; they’ll wash off.’ So I told her I meant these great scratches that you’ve just told me about . . .”
Binny said nothing.
“And then Clare remembered all about them! How for a joke she’d put them there with a knife . . . It’s all knives and forks round here, isn’t it?”
There was a pause, a dark pause, and not just because it was night.
“The thing about foxes is once they’ve found something they want they don’t give up,” said Mark. He said this very seriously and carefully, as if he was explaining something that mattered to someone very young, like James. He peered down at her after he had finished speaking, clearly waiting for some sort of understanding reply.
Binny said nothing.
“Anyway,” said Mark, after the silence had gone on for a while, “Saturday tomorrow! No school! No need to be up early.”
Binny was so surprised at this sudden change of subject that she actually looked at Mark properly. Under his leather jacket he wore the same olive green sweater that he had worn to shoot the rook. His black eye had changed color. In the beam from the flashlight, it was olive green too. He was so tall he had to stoop to look in the window of the little shed.
“Your James thinks a lot of that hen,” he said. “It was a shame how he lost the first one like that. We felt responsible. We wouldn’t have him upset again for the world!”
* * *
When Binny went in, her mother was reading a poem to James, because that was his homework, to listen to a poem.
The night will never stay
The night will still go by
Though with a thousand stars
You pin it to the sky . . .
November 1913
Peter at boarding school, walking, sleeping, opening and closing books, sitting at desks, lining up for meals and wash basins and the daily distribution of letters from home, not dead, but numb.
“That cousin of yours,” said a friend to Rupert. “Have you seen him lately? Bit silent, isn’t he? Bit odd?”
The friend was a red-haired Irish boy who translated Latin for pleasure and played football to destruction. He was a bit odd himself, but not a person to ignore.
Rupe sought out Peter and found him crossing the quadrangle, a damp and sunless spot.
“Peter! How’s it going down there in the dungeon? Anything I can do for you? Help dig the tunnel? Smuggle you a file in a loaf of bread?”
Peter looked at him with eyes as blank as hard-boiled eggs.
“Pete, you are managing?”
“Yes, of course,” said Peter, and walked away like someone who didn’t know they were walking away, like someone in a dream.
“PETE!” Rupe yelled after him (although yelling was not allowed).
Peter stopped, but did not turn round.
“You dropped something!”
It was Clarry’s piano letter. Rupe picked it up and held it out to him. Peter took it and put it in his blazer pocket.
“That’s from Clarry, isn’t it?”
Peter shrugged. He couldn’t read letters from home. He could not even force himself to open the envelopes. He could only endure the world he was living in by pretending the one before had never existed.
“Listen, Pete,” began Rupe, and then paused as a bell rang. He began again. “Look, I’ve got to go. You know where to find me, don’t you?”
“Yes,” said Peter, who didn’t know, and didn’t care. He had six letters in his pocket now. They made it feel stiff and bulky.
* * *
Later he took them out and stowed them in his locker, found himself missing them, and put them back.
He wasn’t the only unhappy person in the school. The small blond boy in the next bed to his said, “I’ve been counting when they give them out. You’ve had six letters now.”
Peter looked at him.
“Six,” said the boy.
“So?”
“It’s not fair.”
“Oh.”
“How long does it take to get letters from Malta?”
“Malta?”
“I’ve waited and waited,” said the boy. He looked at Peter’s letters like a dog looks at its dinner.
Peter didn’t know what to do. He couldn’t give the boy his letters. He couldn’t hurry up letters from Malta. He said, “I’ll read them to you if you like,” and one by one, he opened them.
“Ten shillings,” said the boy, when the pocket money appeared. “Your father’s sent you ten shillings.”
He didn’t speak enviously. He was just keeping count. Six letters. Ten shillings. One father.
Peter read on.
“You’ve got a sister,” stated the boy. “Have you got a brother too?”
“No.”
“A mother?”
“No.”
“A father though.”
“Yes.”
“And a sister?”
“Yes.”
“I’ve got two aunts.”
“Oh.”
“Two aunts in Malta. That’s all. They don’t like me but they’re stuck with me. Well, not anymore, I suppose. Now I’m here.”
Peter read the last letter.
“Read it again,” commanded the boy when he had finished, and when Peter had read it again, he asked, “Can I hold it? Just for a minute?”
Peter passed it over. The blond boy held it. Peter held out his hand, and the boy gave it back.
“Where would you run away to, if you were running away?” he asked.
“Cornwall,” said Peter.
That was the last thing anyone at the school said to the blond-haired boy because the next morning he had vanished. Nobody ever saw him again. The rumor that he had run back to Malta took a long time to reach Peter. Peter thought of Cornwall, but said nothing, which surprised no one because he never did say anything.
After the disappearance of the blond-haired boy, Peter read Clarry’s letter again. That made three times. On the third reading something flickered inside him like a very small glimmer of a spark in a very dark place.
The next day a fourth letter arrived from Clarry.
Guess what Peter! I have been to the library and I have found a butterfly book that I am sure you haven’t seen. It is much newer than the butterfly book you took to school. It has colored plates of all the butterflies, the underneaths of their wings as well as the tops.
I wonder where our kestrel is now. I found out what its name means in Latin. Falco is falcon and tinnunculus is because of the word for a little bell ringing in French. Because French people think its call is like a little bell. French bells must be different to English bells but it is a nice idea. There should be a book of what all the Latin names mean. I asked at the library if there was such a book and the librarian said no, so when I have learned Latin I might write one. You can help if you like.
Love from your sister, Clarry
Peter read this letter twice, turning straight back to the beginning as soon as he reached the end. He already knew the stuff about the kestrel’s name but the book was not a bad idea. It was a good letter. It made Peter think of the blond-haired boy. He wished he was still in the next bed. Then he could have said, “Do you want to hear this letter from my sister?”
Rupe, wrote Clarry by the same post. I am sending Peter a parcel but I am sending it to you so that you can see him open it and then tell me what
he says. I am sorry if you thought it was a parcel for you and I have made you this bookmarker to make up. Love from Clarry
The parcel held a round white cardboard box. On the lid of the box Clarry’s writing spiraled from the edge to the center. Right in the middle was a tiny museum card.
Large Blue Butterfly
(Maculinea arion)
The writing said:
Peter, look! I don’t suppose you ever thought I would send you one of these. Look at the blue on the wings underneath. I hope the pin is in the right place. Love from your sister, Clarry
“I’m a bit impressed,” said Rupe, peering into the box. Then he laughed out loud and looked again. “I’m very impressed! I’m stunned! It looks perfect. Have you ever seen one?”
Peter shook his head.
“I’m to write and tell her what you say,” said Rupe. “You haven’t said anything.”
“It’s a male,” said Peter. “You can tell by the size of the wing spots. The pin’s not in the right place. Still . . .”
He didn’t say anything at first, Clarry, wrote Rupe, under a small picture of Peter in his spectacles turning cartwheels on the school chapel roof. But I could tell he was pleased. My bookmark is undoubtably the best bookmark in the school. I have showed it to twenty-three people so far and they all offered me money for it. It’s going to be hard to keep it from being stolen. I would never part with it, but if times get hard I may rent it out.
Do something for me please, Clarry. Tell your father to tell the grandparents that your cousin Rupert will NOT be going to university. I have told Grandfather myself but he cannot seem to understand. “It doesn’t have to be Oxford,” he says (flinching). “There’s other places . . .” (He tries to bring himself to say the dread word, “Cambridge,” fails, but manages to croak “London” without actually weeping.) Why is it that no one can grasp my simple wish for no more books and a great deal of fun.
Your admiring cousin, Rupe
“Rupe says,” said Clarry to the screen of newspaper that was shielding her father from herself and the breakfast table, “he’s not going to university and please will you tell Grandfather.”
“Nonsense,” said her invisible father, and then after a very long time he added, “Although, I suppose . . .” (there was another almost unbearable pause while he made a very careful turn of a page) “it doesn’t have to be Oxford.”
“He doesn’t want to go anywhere.”
“He’ll do as he’s told.” Clarry’s father rattled the newspaper back into shape, stood up very quickly, said, “While I’m out please refrain from disposing of any more furniture to rag-and-bone men,” and left before Clarry could show him the picture of Peter cartwheeling on the roof.
He is never, ever going to stop minding that I gave away the piano, thought Clarry sadly, but ten minutes later she stopped being sad because the morning post arrived and at last there was a letter from Peter.
Real paper proof that he was actually alive.
Although still grumbling.
Dear Peter, Clarry wrote back immediately in reply.
Your book is very old and I think the pictures in it are faded. Think of Peacock butterflies. Your book makes them look all brownish, when really they are as bright as paint.
The pictures in the book from the library are much brighter than yours. That is why the Large Blue I sent you looks so blue. I thought the pin might not be right. If you move it, be very careful of the antennae. I think they will break easily.
Love from your sister, Clarry
One butterfly, no matter how blue and beautifully labeled, was not enough to turn Peter from darkness to light. There were still days when he crawled out of bed, spoke no words, ate no food, saw no colors, waited dumbly for the dark and another day over. But also there were days when he re-read his horde of letters and inspected his butterflies. A Purple Hairstreak had followed the Large Blue. It was not perfect, but he grumbled less about it than he had about the blue. In his reply to Clarry he actually bothered to draw a diagram of how the pins should be placed. He was definitely reviving. Without realizing it, he had begun to look out of the windows again. There was a morning when he noticed a bird hanging in the air like a balanced star.
“There’s a kestrel,” he said to the new boy from the next bed, a bony creature with a permanent cold.
“A what?”
“A bird. A kestrel. Falco tinnunculus.”
“What’s that mean?”
“It means falcon that sounds like a small bell ringing.”
The bony boy gave a great wet sniff, plodded to the window, stared up at the kestrel, and then looked out across the sodden sports fields.
“Doesn’t it ever get too wet for football?” he asked. “Football hurts. Rugby really hurts. Cross-country is agony. You get out of it with your leg. How’d you hurt it so bad?”
“Jumped off a train.”
“A moving train? Or a standing train?”
“Moving.”
“Did it hurt?” The bony boy seemed obsessed with the word.
“Of course,” said Peter.
“Even so,” said the bony boy, considering, “it would only hurt once. You’d just have to shut your eyes and do it. And if you changed your mind and didn’t want to, you could always go on to the next station.” Then he turned his gaze away from the terrible sports fields and looked instead toward the village.
A bell went, the bell for morning prayers and breakfast. Peter and the bony boy left the window and set off down the stairs together. During the day Peter noticed the bony boy looking at him once or twice as if interested in his limp. At nighttime he noticed how very tidy and empty the bony boy’s bed appeared.
Like a deserted bed.
At school, Peter had retreated so far into his own private shell that the outside world hardly touched him at all. But still, this bed. What was it about the bed beside his, that people kept abandoning it? The blond-haired boy would be in Cornwall by now, if he was lucky, Malta if he wasn’t, but the bony boy with the cold who didn’t like football, where was he?
Despite his leg, Peter could move quite fast when he wanted. Down through the school he hurried, into the darkened common room and caught the bony boy, one leg in and one leg out of the window.
“Do you want to hear this letter from my sister?” asked Peter.
* * *
Clarry had a list, remembered from summer: A Large Blue. A Purple Hairstreak. A White Admiral. A Silver Spotted Skipper. A Swallowtail.
How did you know he wanted them most? asked Rupe in his letter describing the success of the latest parcel to Peter.
He told me in the summer, Clarry wrote back. But I didn’t even know what they were like until I looked them up in the book. The Swallowtail is the best, but I think it will be the hardest. Perhaps it will be too hard. Or perhaps things will never be so bad that I’ll need to send a Swallowtail.
So the Swallowtail is your final emergency butterfly? replied Rupe teasingly. The one that you will send to the rescue when the worst comes to the worst, and all other hope is lost?
Yes, said Clarry. You know how the globe in the sitting room is more than just a round ball? And books are more than just paper? I think Swallowtails are more than just butterflies. But I expect you will laugh.
The White Admiral butterfly followed the Purple Hairstreak after an unusually long letter from Peter.
The boy in the next bed had his family visit, he wrote. They came in their car, his parents and his sister. Vanessa. That means butterfly. She didn’t know that, until I told her. They took me out to dinner with them because it was me who stopped him climbing out the window. I had to sit beside his sister in the back of the car. It was even worse than traveling by train. All they said afterward was, “Why didn’t you ask us to stop?” But I wished I was dead.
Clarry sent the White Admiral, and the suggestion that Peter write to Vanessa’s family and apologize.
Of course I’ve already done that, wrote Peter huffily by re
turn of post. And a postcard to Vanessa, but I don’t suppose I’ll ever see her again.
Clarry sent the Silver Spotted Skipper to soften her own bad news.
Peter, there won’t be Cornwall this summer.
Chapter Eleven
Binny could not sleep for thinking. Clarry and the kestrel. Clare and the paw prints. Knives and forks and the marks on Pecker’s shed door. Mark and his gun. Gareth and his silence. James and his poem that was stuck in her head like a tune.
The night will never stay
The night will still go by
Though with a thousand stars
You pin it to the sky . . .
It was the pins that reminded Binny of Clarry and the butterflies. Every day she was beginning to think more and more about Clarry. The girl with the kestrel. The girl who shared a name with Clare. The girl who drew pictures with the ends of pencils. She was part of the story that held Binny and Clare and James and Mark and yet she was a mystery. She had lived in another world. Binny still had not looked at the butterflies in the round cardboard boxes, nor read the writing on the lids. What had Clarry written there? She had lovely writing, small and even, like a chain of fine dark links. It was writing from that other world, and Binny had a sudden feeling that she should look at it again.
Two minutes later she tiptoed down from the attic, with her hands full of small round boxes.
Five had the spiraling writing on the top, around a miniature label. One was white, except for a shadow of scribbled pencil. Binny had to hold it close to her bedside lamp to read it, one word, Rupe.
Rupe, the laughing blond boy in the center of the picture. Binny opened the box, and found herself looking at a Swallowtail butterfly.
It was a gorgeous butterfly, not bayoneted on a pin, but with its wings held wide open across a background of a painted summer sky. Binny looked at it for a long time while her thoughts flew around in the night as if the stars had got loose from their pins. Very gently she touched the left-hand wing, while she admired the lemon yellow, the etching of black, the lapis blue edging, the dusty ruby. She tipped it gently to see the underside. The pattern was perfect.