Shooting Butterflies

by Marika Cobbold

  ‘You really love that boy?’

  ‘I love him so.’

  ‘Would you like tea or coffee?’

  ‘I don’t mind; I love him so.’

  ‘So what’s your view of the US withdrawal from Vietnam?’

  ‘Thank God he’s safe; I love him so.’

  ‘Left or right?’

  ‘He lives just to the left of here. I love him so.’

  ‘And animal rights; where do you stand on the issue?’

  ‘Animals just adore Jefferson and he adores them; and me, I love him so.’

  ‘So what are your thoughts on the future of mankind?’

  ‘Well, his grandparents are all alive and fit although in their eighties, so if genes are anything to go by he should be around for a long time yet, and I love him so.’

  ‘Do you believe in God?’

  ‘God, I love him so.’

  ‘So do you love him?’ Angelica insisted.

  Grace turned her face from the window. ‘Who? Oh silly me, Andrew; of course I … It’s so … soft. Andrew, his family, it’s this soft place to land and, Angelica, I need one. You know those photographs of big happy families gathered round the table or the open fire, the kind of families we wanted when we were children in our neat little nuclear pockets? Well, with him, with them, it’s like I’ve stepped into one of those photos.’ She put her hand on Angelica’s arm, a little embarrassed. ‘I’m tired, Angelica. I’m thinking, why should I be the one shouldering all the burden of living with myself? Let someone else try it for a change. And how nice it would be to know that if I died, something other than the increasingly unpleasant smell seeping out from under my front door would alert the world to my fate. The last time I was away I forgot to cancel the milk. Each day there was another bottle standing on my doorstep. By the time I got back there were nine. How many bottles would there have to be before anyone noticed or cared that I was gone?’

  ‘Grace, do you love him?’

  ‘What is all this talk of love? People didn’t go on and on about love in the old days.’

  ‘Remind me to write a note to John Donne about that,’ Angelica said.

  ‘I mean … what is love?’

  ‘At least you’re asking that before you’re engaged,’ Angelica said. ‘Anyway, as far as I see it, if you felt it – love – you wouldn’t have to ask. If you need to ask … well, brainy; draw your own conclusion.’

  ‘Do you love Tom?’

  ‘I know what you think about him.’ She raised her hand. ‘No, don’t protest. And yes, I do love him. I’d have to … wouldn’t I, to still be there?’ Angelica turned wide blue eyes on her. Grace held her gaze, wanting to take her friend’s hand but lighting another cigarette instead. ‘Anyway,’ Angelica said, ‘don’t change the subject. Andrew?’

  ‘I believe I can make him happy.’

  ‘Virtue does not become you.’

  ‘All right, so I believe we can make each other happy.’

  ‘Silly ass.’

  A year later, Grace, a married woman, lay in her bed, lazy and warm, the summer sun shining a path along her face and chest. Slowly she opened her eyes: a crack at first, then wider. Her gaze took in the faded rose sprigged wallpaper, the heavy mahogany chest of drawers and, as a final treat, Andrew. It was Sunday morning, not yet eight o’clock, but already he was up and dressed. He was going to his parents’ house to help with the solar-heating panel; it had gone again, whatever that meant. Before leaving he bent down and kissed her tenderly, lingeringly, on the lips … and one more time.

  Moments later the front door closed followed by his steps on the gravel. Grace buried her face in the pillow that smelt faintly of him: clean sweat and lemon shampoo. She liked his hair that was golden and curly, mostly brushed tidily to one side in a left-hand parting. She liked it best when it got messed up on a walk or in bed. There was something so appealing about an escaping lock of hair, like the materialisation of a naughty thought. She had taken photographs of him with his hair like that, pictures she would not show his mother.

  ‘My mother-in-law. My husband,’ she said out loud. Next she changed the emphasis on the words. ‘My husband. My husband. My husband and I. My husband says … needs … likes … is … my husband … he and I.’

  These days Grace, the woman whose soles had not touched grass from one year to another, could go downstairs in her thin nightshirt and walk barefoot into the garden where only the birds could see her, yet if she dropped dead she would be missed pretty damn quickly.

  She had an appointment at ten. A friend of Robina’s was having her young granddaughter to stay and she wanted the child’s photograph taken. Grace was developing quite a reputation for her children’s portraits. Robina was proud of her. ‘Have you met my new daughter-in-law?’ she would say, with a look at Grace as if she had made her herself. ‘She’s a photographer.’

  The little girl coming to have her picture taken was called Arabella. In Grace’s recent experience it was quite difficult finding a little girl who wasn’t called Arabella, or at least Fenella, Lucinda or Melissa. And all those little people with names ending in a wore smocked dresses that were so long their tiny Start-rite sandals got caught in the hem with every other step they took. Fringes were out that too was obvious. Instead their wispy hair was parted neatly and held in place by a clip with a flower or a tortoise or a kitten as decoration. Grace looked at the photograph of herself as a child that Mrs Shield had given Andrew. Her straight dark hair was cut in an unforgiving fringe above straight dark brows and she was wearing a black dress with brightly coloured raggedy patches sewn on it. That dress had been her all-time favourite item of clothing and had been made by Aunt Kathleen. Aunt Kathleen had always been good at keeping in touch with her dead sister’s family in England, sending picture postcards when she and Uncle Leslie travelled around America and little gifts for birthdays and Christmas. Grace sent her drawings. She had sent one of her favourite rag doll, Maude, who was wearing a black dress with raggedy patches. On the back of the picture she had written several unsubtle and badly spelt hints about how much she would like just such a dress for herself. And five weeks later, for her eleventh birthday, a perfect copy of Maude’s dress had arrived from America. The dress was not only black but quite short too. Maude’s dress had been short, more like a long shirt all the better for her striped odd stockings to be seen. It had been a source of great disappointment to Grace that Mrs Shield had not allowed her striped stockings. She had to content herself with one navy and one white knee-length sock. When Robina Abbot saw the photograph – Andrew kept it in an oval silver frame on his desk – she had looked at Grace and said, ‘What a funny little thing you were. And to put you in black.’

  ‘I put myself in black,’ Grace pointed out. ‘Anyway, I think I looked rather sweet.’

  ‘Heaven help any child of yours.’ Robina let out a peal of laughter.

  But little Arabella wore the softest baby-blue Viyella and whiter-than-white ankle socks. Grace smiled as the little girl twirled unsteadily, one eye on the large hall mirror. ‘I feel so pretty,’ Arabella said.

  ‘You are pretty,’ Grace told her. ‘And if you go out with me into the garden and sit on the little wooden bench beneath the cherry tree and think of what you like doing best, we shall have a very pretty photograph as well.’ The grandmother pulled a hairy brush from her large bag and started tugging at the child’s baby-fine curls. ‘No, leave it as it is,’ Grace said. ‘I don’t like children looking too done, if you see what I mean.’

  ‘I simply can’t abide untidy hair,’ the grandmother said as the brush got caught in a curl. She gave a tug and then a backward yank so that Grace thought Arabella’s head was going to snap right off the stem-like neck. The child squealed and Grace shot her a sympathetic look; give women of a certain age a hairbrush or a damp cloth and no child was safe.

  The grandmother left to go to the post office, and once outside and released from her grandmother’s beady eye, Arabella turned out to be a born
model. Most little girls were, until someone came along and told them about the sin of vanity and the importance of being good deep down. Grace took some close-ups of Arabella twirling her hair, pouting her dark-pink rosebud lips, smiling, showing her perfect pearl-barley teeth. She changed the lens and shot some of the little girl standing by the stream at the bottom of the garden, her whole body arched as she pointed skywards at a bird, and of her bending forward looking at her own extraordinarily pleasing reflection in the water and almost tumbling over as she tried to catch a passing dragonfly. Grace ended up with three rolls of film: two black and white and one colour. People usually preferred colour shots for children, but Grace favoured black and white and always hoped to change their minds.

  Arabella wanted to see her picture as soon as the session was over and cried for a bit when told that was not possible. She drank a glass of Ribena without spilling a drop on her pretty blue dress and ate three sponge fingers. Grace retied the bow at her back and brushed the crumbs off the smocked front. Together they listened to the buzzing of a bumble-bee and marvelled at what a surprisingly loud noise it was for such a small creature to make. Arabella said she could make an even louder noise and growled like a lion.

  When her grandmother took her away Grace was sorry to see her go, but she knew that soon another little Arabella, Fenella or Lucinda, or a James, Jonathan or Charles, would come to have her or his picture taken.

  She had no more work on for that day. Since marrying Andrew she had cut down gradually in order to have time to do things like taking clothes to the drycleaner’s and ironing shirts and shopping for groceries and cooking: all those wifely tasks Grace had confessed to Angelica she found strangely enjoyable. ‘It’s all right,’ Angelica had said. ‘You’re not alone in this strange perversion; I quite like it too. Well, I used to, back when he was grateful.’

  ‘What do you think it is?’ Grace asked. ‘I used to hate all that stuff.’

  ‘It’s nature having its wily way; it’s nesting, so they say.’

  ‘Nesting; that expression makes me cringe. Anyway, isn’t one supposed to be pregnant for that?’

  ‘It’s preparation. Some of us prepare for longer than others. I bet you sniff his shirts.’

  Grace laughed. ‘I never. I did once stroke a pile of freshly ironed ones, but that’s as kinky as I get.’

  And there was all this family life to get used to. Today, as always on Sundays, they were having lunch with her parents-in-law. Before she left the house she saw to some of Andrew’s ironing. She liked that expression: saw to. It sounded so breezy and competent. She picked a blue shirt from the basket and as she smoothed it across the ironing board she smiled at the thought of her conversation with Angelica. Blue was Andrew’s favourite colour. She wondered if their child, when they had one, would be good in blue like its father or more suited to black like its mother. Then, as she folded the shirt, she remembered that, actually, Andrew was not really that fond of blue. It was Jefferson who liked blue of every shade. He had been just a little vain and aware that the colour brought out the deep cornflower of his eyes.

  * * *

  ‘Some of the front gardens around here are amazing,’ Grace said as they sat round the table at Hillside House. ‘Roses with heads the size of cabbages, phlox and peonies; has no one told them the best-kept Devon town award has gone already?’

  ‘You should take some pictures,’ Robina said. ‘Send them to the local paper.’ She had made a huge untidy pie and was serving it along with young carrots, new potatoes and home-baked wholemeal bread.

  ‘I don’t shoot flowers much,’ Grace explained.

  Robina and her friend Janet stared at her. ‘But why?’

  It was not a question to which Grace had given much thought. ‘They just don’t stand still for long enough,’ she said airily, holding her plate out for carrots.

  Robina looked at her for a moment then her brow cleared. ‘Oh, one of your little jokes.’ She turned to Janet. ‘Grace’s people on her mother’s side were Irish-American.’ Robina was a woman who needed a reason for everything. Lately she had seemed very keen to find a reason for Grace who kept trying to tell her that looking for reasons in this world could send a person mad. In Grace’s view, if God had wanted people to have reasons He would not have given them religion.

  Baby Rory was staying the weekend while his parents had some ‘grown-up’ time, Janet and Neil were there as usual on a Sunday and a young man called Stuart. ‘One of mother’s waifs and strays,’ Kate had said. Sixteen was a cruel age. Stuart Wright was a pupil at the nearby boarding school for disabled youngsters. Stuart’s parents were both dead and his closest relatives, an uncle and aunt, lived in Yorkshire, so on hearing that the boy spent almost all his weekends at school, Robina had stepped in and ‘adopted’ him.

  Stuart had been blind from birth although he could sometimes distinguish very bright light. When Grace was little there were times when she had played at being blind, walking with her arms theatrically stretched out before her, fumbling and stumbling, comfortingly aware that all she needed to do for everything to be well again was to open her eyes. But the reality of a sightless life scared her like little else; to live in darkness and never know when someone might be watching you. When she fell in love with photography the fear of blindness became an obsession. If she went blind, photography would have no meaning; and neither, Grace imagined, would life.

  She wanted to know if Stuart formed pictures in his mind.

  ‘I have no visual references,’ he said. ‘And I don’t know if what I think of as a picture is what a sighted person thinks of as one. But I do build pictures in my mind – from touch; from the feel of the sun, rain and wind; from scents and atmosphere; I’m especially good at sensing tension.’ A small smile spread across his lips. ‘Of course I do use other people’s descriptions, but that comes last. It’s my experiences I draw from, no one else’s.’

  ‘Any news on the little-grandchild front?’ Robina who had been trying to change the subject for a while now turned to Grace.

  ‘Is that what babies are known as these days?’ Kate said, rolling her eyes. ‘Grandchildren.’

  ‘Sharp as a tack, aren’t you, my dear,’ Robina said. ‘In fact it gets her into trouble sometimes. She’s seen as very much a leader amongst her peers, you know.’

  ‘Mother!’ Kate protested, but just then Leonora arrived, surprising them all.

  ‘I wasn’t expecting you today, darling,’ Robina said, calmly bringing out another plate. ‘Weren’t you and Archie supposed to be going away for the weekend?’

  ‘Well, we changed our plans. Hi, Grace; hi, Stuart; hi, everyone.’ Leonora, looking as if she had slept in her hippy chic, nodded towards Janet and Neil.

  ‘Take a look at this …’ Timothy pushed a piece of paper towards Leonora. On it was a drawing he had been busy with during most of lunch, depicting four little men with tall pointed hats and some other men pointing guns. ‘Now,’ Timothy said, expanding with the sheer excitement of the problem, ‘one of these little guys will be in a position to warn the others …’

  ‘Draw a rose for me,’ Grace said, tearing a clean piece of paper from Timothy’s notepad and putting it in front of Stuart. She found a Biro in her pocket and put it in his hand. ‘Here,’ she plucked a stem from the bowl of dusky pink roses at the centre of the table and beheaded it, handing him the flower that was just a bud. ‘I’ll float it in some water on a saucer when we’re done,’ she reassured Robina. ‘I won’t waste it.’

  Stuart sniffed the rose that had no scent. He touched each petal delicately with the tip of his middle right finger, then he stroked the outer ones. Next he put it down by the side of his plate and began to sketch.

  Baby Rory, excited to see his mother, was bobbing up and down in his wooden seat that looked so uncomfortable compared with the new padded manmade ones, but Robina hated anything plastic and swore by natural materials. ‘Me, me, me.’ He stretched out a podgy hand, wanting his own flower. Grace looked a
round and caught sight of a nodding daisy right outside the open back door. Excusing herself, she nipped out and picked it, then handed it to Rory who tried to eat it. Leonora took it away and gave him a rusk instead.

  ‘For future reference,’ Grace said, ‘Feed Baby rusks, not daisies.’

  ‘Don’t you worry, my dear,’ Robina said. ‘Motherhood will come naturally. In fact, I always say that Baby brings his own sense with him. And Grace, Stuart is gravely visually impaired; I don’t think he wants to play at drawing.’

  Stuart’s rose was a jagged mouth inside an outline like a pansy and set in a V-shaped cradle. Like all good abstracts, it had captured the essence. Grace was tempted to ask him to draw a portrait of Robina, but thought maybe that would be best kept to later. Instead she deheaded a second stem and handed it to Stuart, saying, ‘Tell me what you see now.’

  Robina cleared her throat. Stuart explored the second rose. This one was open other than for a small tight bud at its centre. ‘Moist,’ Stuart said, his index finger prodding at the closed centre of the flower. He smiled dreamily. ‘Flesh-pink.’

  ‘That’s just a word,’ Grace said. ‘What makes you think it’s that colour?’

  Stuart handed Grace the rose, taking her finger and tracing it along the same path as his had wandered a few moments earlier. Grace too began to smile. When she felt the tight bud at the centre of the rose she laughed. Then Stuart laughed too.

  Robina, who was like Mrs Shield in the way she hated being left out of anything, wanted to know what was so funny. Timothy wanted to know if anyone had solved his puzzle.

  ‘Actually, all the little fuckers can get shot, for all I care,’ Leonora said. She had been unusually quiet until then.

  The others all began to talk and, knowing they weren’t overheard, Kate spoke to Grace. ‘You know, it really bugs me the way Mum keeps saying I’m so smart and everyone loves me and I’m a leader. She knows it’s not true. I’m really unpopular. I’m not in anyone’s group. Some people are scared of me, that’s all. But try telling her that.’