A table was set up on deck with a light over it. Dollie went away for a few moments and the speed of the boat slowed. He came back with Wendell, who was carrying the butterfly and the microscope. Wendell placed it on the table.
Dollie waved Moises over. “Come on, back to the grind. You can read for another hour and then I might let you rest till morning.”
Moises shuffled over miserably and stood beside Dollie. The Texan looked up from where he sat at the table, a quizzical, half-smile on his heavy face.
“What’s on your mind?”
“What happened to the other boys?”
“I put a spy on every one of them a while back. When we heard you had the butterfly …” Dollie pointed out into the darkness flying past the boat. “Well, the jungle has them now. It accepts all gifts doesn’t it, Moises?”
Moises nodded. He remembered how, when Hawthorne was drunk or stoned, he would promise to take Moises to England for a holiday. In those moments, the two of them would discuss going to the pub, walking around the park in a town called Luton, how they intended to eat ice cream and visit the museum there, and feed bread to those strange birds called swans.
Now Moises realised that Hawthorne had made the same promises to Lucito, Howard, Capac and Eduardo. He pictured their faces when Dollie’s men ended their bleak lives: filled with surprise, terror, gratitude even. Why hadn’t he realised it before? All the children here, him included, were trapped forever, like pigs in cages waiting to be milked. Only the men who owned them could set them free, with the swish of a knife or something worse.
Moises put his hand on the back of the chair to steady himself. The hatred in him was a beautiful thing: huge and clean and dark, like an endless shaft cutting through his mind, into which he could empty all of humanity.
“My brother, Mayta, he liked Peacock fish, too.”
“Hell, good for him.” Dollie said. “Me? I got a soft spot for rainbow trout, but they ain’t available down here. What’s your point?”
“He’s dead ... muerto.”
“You will be, too, if you don’t park your stupid ass.”
Moises sat down and gladly put his eyes to work …
The Jenny Museum
It took fifteen years for Richard to pluck up the courage to return to Luton. It seemed appropriate to go down on Jenny’s birthday, which fell on the last Friday in March, so he booked the Thursday and Friday as holidays and spent the month prior worrying about whether he should be making the trip at all.
The week before he left became extremely busy. Richard hadn’t planned it that way; he wanted to be relaxed for the trip, but something came up that he couldn’t put off until afterwards. He rarely slept well and the heavy workload coupled with nervousness at returning to his hometown meant that his sleep was disturbed even further. By Thursday morning, he was shattered.
Richard rose at six and found his car slick with icy dew. He packed it and stood with his hands on the open boot lid for a couple of minutes, staring at the two suitcases, watching his breath billow over them like primeval fog. His thoughts were doughy and unfocused; he hadn’t slept well at all: the witch dream again. He slammed the boot shut, went back into the house, took a couple of sleeping pills and slept through until late afternoon.
The route from Norwich was knotted in road works, exactly as it had been all those years ago, and Richard drove it thoughtlessly, as if it were a journey he made every day. At a service station on the outskirts of Thetford, he filled a 5-gallon can with petrol and put it back in the boot.
He approached Luton along the A505 and felt his heart flare like a strip of heated magnesium suddenly exposed to oxygen as he passed the Vale Crematorium. It was the biggest cemetery in the town. His mother had been burnt there. Richard had paid to have her ashes saved, thinking he might spread them at some place she held a particular fondness for, like they did in all those TV dramas. But he had never bothered to pick them up.
He wondered if Jenny’s parents had a plot for her on the site. Could you do that when there wasn’t a body to bury or burn? He resisted a strong urge to turn in and look for it.
There was no need to drive through the town centre, but he was curious. A Cineplex stood where the old Co-op used to be, some pubs had died or changed names, all the petrol garages seemed to be car washes now: innocuous changes, which couldn’t stop a sickly nostalgia welling up in his throat.
The guest house he had booked was just across the road from Wardown Park and the museum. The landlady, Mrs Macdonald, led him up the steep, narrow stairs to his room.
“Where do you hail from then, Mr Jet?”
“Luton, but I’ve been away for some years.”
“I thought as much; that accent hasnae changed, has it?”
“No, I guess not.”
The stairs turned sharply near the top and Richard got stuck, the meat in a suitcase sandwich. Mrs Macdonald watched from the top of the stairs, a tight smile on her lips.
“Are you alright there?”
“Yes … fine.” Richard lurched forward as he freed himself from the bottleneck, sending a rain of magnolia woodchips onto the carpet. He squeezed past her into the unremarkable little room and hoisted his cases up onto the bed. The woman looked from him to the suitcases.
“What do you do for a living, Mr Jet?”
“I’m a chemistry teacher.”
“A professional man. I expect you’re visiting friends or family?”
“Yes, something like that.”
They regarded each other for a moment. Richard pushed at the bridge of his glasses.
“Well,” she said finally, “dinner’s from six till seven p.m., but I need to know if you’ll be wanting some.”
“I’ll just have breakfast here if that’s okay?”
She nodded. “Breakfast from seven thirty till nine. No later.”
Like many tall people, Mrs Macdonald unconsciously hunched her shoulders. Her hair was thin and over-lacquered, and as she leaned forward, rattling off her spiel, sunlight from the landing window behind her turned it to smoke. To Richard, she looked like an ancient, desiccated witch. But, then, he saw witches everywhere.
“Will you be needing anything else?”
“No thanks. That’s fine.”
“Right you are then.” She let the weighted door swing shut behind her.
Richard blew a long sigh through his teeth and unpacked his Antler Weekender case while he waited for the kettle to boil. He didn’t open the older suitcase. Drawing the curtains against the harsh glow of the street lamps, he sat and sipped a weak tea. Around him, magnolia walls, chintz furnishings and fussy mediocrity: a trait he had come to expect in such establishments.
The bed was low and lumpy. Richard took a couple of sleeping pills and lay on his back, arms crossed over his chest, like a man waiting for tear-streaked faces to shuffle past. A large, delicate spider was moving across the emptiness of the ceiling with slow precision. What a fate, he thought, to pace one’s life out across such an unremarkable landscape. Soon, tears were pulsing steadily down his cheeks and a dismal weariness overtook him. He mumbled Jenny’s name long into the night.
Richard woke before five the next morning and sat by the window, watching the world shiver away the spell of darkness. Eventually, he heard movement downstairs and forced himself to have a tepid shower. He wore a black suit and tie, items bought specifically for the occasion, and spent ten minutes getting his Windsor knot just right.
The dining room was empty. It smelt of sour fat. Drab prints of hunting parties crowded the walls, like windows into a world where people still took themselves seriously. Mrs Macdonald was very cool when taking his order, only coming to life when two young lads came down for breakfast. She then spent most of her time hovering around their table: a grotesque flirtation in which she laughed loudly and far too oft
en. This morning, her hair was flattened at the crown like a crop circle and whenever she went to the kitchen, the boys laughed at her. She didn’t notice.
Richard ate a little of the rubbery sausage, shattered the bacon and slid the jellyfish egg around for a few minutes – noticing there were dried remnants of the egg’s ancestors in the fork tines – before returning to his room to fetch the old suitcase. It was large, constructed of stiff, black leather with metal reinforced corners and was adorned with stickers from all of the towns he had visited over the years. Two tan straps buckled over the top. The buckles and the metal handle were rust-bitten.
“How much further?” Jenny was blowing hard as she leaned into the steep, tree-studded hill.
“Here … just behind these bushes.” Richard reached a bramble bush in an area of sunlight between trees. He looked around to see if anyone was nearby and then disappeared. Jenny found him sitting beside a hole he must have dug on a previous visit. His legs were splayed around a big, open suitcase. In it there was a blue hand towel, a cloudy, amber soap bar – the type Richard’s mum preferred – a tin of creamed rice and one of plum tomatoes, a box of matches and some shampoo sachets. Richard picked one up.
“I took these from the guest house we stayed at in Southend.” He pushed at the bridge of his glasses. “What do you reckon? It’s not a bad start, is it?”
Jenny smiled nervously. “Are we really going to run away?”
“Yes, but we need more stuff. What can you get?”
It was a bright, cool day. The sky was scattered with perfectly plump cumuli, like a giant Magritte reproduction, but the old Victorian building held its damp shadows stubbornly close. The museum was just opening when Richard passed under its portico at precisely nine o’clock. The man who opened up gave him a quizzical look as he passed through the tall, glass doors. Richard guessed they didn’t get much custom first thing on a Tuesday morning and he did strike an improbable figure with his starchy funeral suit and battered old suitcase.
Richard looked around the museum interior in excitement, picking up memories. He passed through the archaeology section first, his cold footsteps echoing around the glass display cabinets painfully. Some of the rooms had been extended, but the overall themes appeared very similar to what he remembered. Richard recognised the cut away of a Saxon dwelling: arrowheads of flint and rusting iron neatly arranged in velvet cases like ancient cutlery sets. There were plastic dinosaur dioramas and the ubiquitous ammonites. Two interactive touchscreen displays had been added, almost, it seemed, as a within-budget concession to the modern world.
There was a room celebrating the history of hat making in the town, decorated in the blue and orange of the local football team. Beyond that, in the Military Room, there stood the same life-size model of a Chindit soldier burning a leach from his arm with a cigarette. Jenny had hated leaches and Richard teased her about it every time they came, which was quite often during the summertime. It was a crazy thought, but he felt he could see something like recognition when he looked into the soldier’s eyes.
He moved to the next room, which always housed exhibitions by up and coming local painters. After studying them in a kind of stupor for a while, he came back to himself, knowing he had to get it over with. Slowly, he climbed the broad, oak staircase to the first floor and put the suitcase down. He realised it was the first time he had ever been up there alone. The corridor was about 30 feet long. At the far end was a dark, glass-fronted room. His heels tapped holes in the thick silence as he made his way towards it.
Jenny squeezed Richard’s hand so tightly he nearly cried out as he listened to his own quick breaths and the squeak of her plimsolls on the polished, wooden floor. Behind the glass ahead of them was a waxwork of an old Victorian woman sitting alone in her living room, busy with some needlework. Reflections slid and fractured off the glass as they edged nearer. The woman’s pale, smooth face appeared to lift in a shuddery movement; Richard saw the shake of a withered arm, a sharp needle catching light … He let out an odd noise and Jenny screamed. They turned in panic, pushing and pulling at each other as they bounded down the curved, wooden staircase, past the stunned curator and out into the breathless sunshine. They bent over, hands on hips, fear making them giggle in the centre of the immaculate lawn.
“What did you see?” asked Jenny.
“Shit!” Richard muttered, staring into the empty room. He peeled his hands from the cool glass and watched the prints fade away like disheartened ghosts.
The curator was silver-haired and wore a crisp, white lab coat. Richard found him sorting through postcards in the tiny gift shop.
“The old lady?” the man asked. “Or the witch!” His hands curled into claws and he moved forward, flashing a wall of teeth that would never need flossing. Richard recoiled in horror.
“You’re worse than the kids, you are.” The man laughed, but a look of concern was growing on his ruddy face. “I was only joking, mate.”
“Yes I know,” Richard said unconvincingly. “We used to call her that back in the old days.”
The old man began stacking sweet-sized rubbers with pictures of the museum stamped on them. “Ah well, she always had quite an effect on the children.” He straightened up. “Gone for refurbishment, actually. She’s getting a bit shabby after all these years.”
Richard left and the curator’s voice stopped him at the door. “I’ll tell her you called. You never know, she might come and give you a visit.” The man’s laughter followed him out into the park.
He sat on a bench by the boating lake, a little shaken by his experience in the museum. Was it a coincidence that the witch wasn’t there on the very day he had returned?
It’s just a waxwork. She’s not a witch. She doesn’t know you. Richard ran the words around his head like a mantra for a few minutes until he almost believed them. He then rang Mrs Pity. When he had first decided to contact Jenny’s mother he imagined she might be difficult to trace, but he found her at the first attempt, in the same house she had received the terrible news twenty years before.
“Are you sure it’s going to be okay?”
“Yes, fine.”
“I mean, if it’s too–”
“No, no, it will be nice to see you.” There was a strained quality to the woman’s voice; politeness, the habit of a lifetime, still overriding her true feelings.
“I’ll be there in half an hour … if you’re sure?”
“Yes, I’m very sure, Richard. See you soon.”
Richard put his mobile away and sat for a few moments, watching the swans drift on the water. He was excited about meeting Jenny’s mum after all this time and wasn’t sure if that was the wrong feeling to have. Jenny was always with him, of course, but he only had one photograph of her and he couldn’t seem to feel her anymore, or remember her voice. He looked for her in the faces of strangers. He hoped that somehow he could re-establish a connection with Jenny through her mother; that something would leak from Mrs Pity when he looked into her eyes or listened to her voice.
The house was the third in a long terrace. You could always tell the ones that had been bought from the council: they were double-glazed. Mrs Pity opened the door as he approached it, looking like an effigy of the real Mrs Pity, the one he remembered. Age had shrunken her. She wore black leggings, the type that hook over the heels, and he couldn’t see any evidence of her legs touching the stretched nylon. Her pale, round face popped out of the cream fleece, smiling, and there was a fierce concentration on her features, as if it were taking all her strength to hold the muscles in position.
“My goodness, you’ve got so tall.” Mrs Pity grabbed his sleeve to test the quality of the material.
“Very smart.”
Richard shrugged, pushing at the bridge of his glasses. “I just thought it was suitable today.”
“Yes, it’s very thoughtful, thank you. How a
re you anyway?”
“Fine, and you?”
“Fine.” She opened her arms and they hugged awkwardly.
He put the case down in the hall and looked around: more fake mahogany and magnolia walls. Mrs Pity showed him into the fussy living room and offered him tea. The room smelt of lavender furniture polish and years of cigarettes. She left him and he took a closer look at all the photographs of Jenny. There were none of Jenny standing proudly beside her first car, none of her posing, knife in hand, over her twenty-first birthday cake, no nebulous shots of her wedding day, or one of her looking pale and bleary eyed, holding her first child to her chest. In the majority of them, she wore a school uniform. She had a wide, tentative smile and lank hair cut into a lopsided bob. Richard remembered her father used to cut it to save money.
Above the fire was a large oil portrait of Jenny in an ornate gold frame, something her parents had obviously commissioned after her disappearance, a concentration of all the photographs in the room, rendered by someone of limited talent. It reminded Richard of the type of portrait you might see in a haunted house ride at a theme park.
“There you go.” Mrs Pity set down the tray of flowery china and gestured around the room. “I couldn’t have them up for years you know. Harry couldn’t bear it, God rest him.”
Richard nodded sympathetically.
“But I love to look at her, I really do …”
She lit a cigarette and poured the tea through an old-fashioned strainer. Richard sipped and nodded occasionally as she reminisced. She paused only to suck at her fag and roll blue clouds at the ceiling.
“You never did get to move, then?” he asked pointlessly.
“Oh no, we couldn’t leave … not until we found her. What if she came back and we weren’t here, you see? It’s unbelievable really. Little Jen’s still out there somewhere.” She gestured furiously with her cigarette hand, whipping a ribbon of smoke across the room like a rhythmic gymnast. Her eyes began to fill up. “I’m sorry; it’s the birthday and everything.”
The Dreams of the Black Butterfly Page 16