Shooting Butterflies

by Marika Cobbold

  ‘As long as that Leica keeps dangling I know you’ll be all right.’

  ‘I don’t ever want to use emotional blackmail, you understand? I just need to complain a little and for you to say you understand how hard it is for me and how much you admire me for coping so wonderfully.’

  ‘You say it so much better than I could ever hope to do. And don’t hit me. No, darling, of course I understand. But has it occurred to you that it’s not that easy for me either, being apart from you?’

  ‘For you it’s different. You’ve got your children; all that family activity.’

  ‘And you have your work, which you love as if it were your family, and you have your stepmother and lots of friends. Now,’ he kissed her briefly on the lips, walking her backwards towards the bedroom as he spoke, ‘now, do you think I could take you to bed?’

  ‘You’re selfish and insensitive with a one-track mind and the answer is yes.’

  They were down in Northbourne walking in the rain. Jefferson had wanted to see where she had gone after she left Kendall, where she had grown up. ‘You’re at an advantage,’ he had said. ‘You know exactly where I come from. You even knew my parents.’

  ‘I was disapproved of by your parents; that’s slightly different.’ He opened his mouth to protest and then clamped it shut and smiled. ‘Good boy,’ Grace said, smiling back. ‘Not trying on the bullshit. Anyway, as it would prove complicated, in fact impossible, for me to introduce you to my parents, I’ll show you Mrs Shield.’

  To Mrs Shield she had said only that a friend from the US was visiting and could they come for lunch. ‘Stay the night,’ Mrs Shield had offered before trying to find out about Jefferson. Grace would only tell her that she knew him from her summer in Kendall and that they had kept in touch.

  ‘He isn’t that boy you were so broken up about?’

  ‘No, no, of course not.’ Grace had come a long way from the days when she could not tell a lie.

  ‘The one who changed your mind about going to Cambridge.’

  ‘He didn’t change my mind, I did.’

  ‘Ha! So it was him.’ Grace just sighed, shifting the receiver from one ear to the other. ‘What’s that, dear? You disappeared. Anyway, he had one of those funny Christian names that sound like a surname. I remember at the time thinking how very odd Americans must be to look at a tiny wee baby and say, “I know, let’s call him or her Anderson or Harrison or Maddison … and as for Ladybird …”’

  ‘Well, his name ain’t Ladybird,’ Grace had reassured her. ‘Jefferson is a good friend. I thought you might like to meet him, that’s all. But there’s no point if you’re going to be asking questions all the time. He wants to see the area so if we could stay the night it would be great. But we’ll be off first thing the next morning. We have to get back to London.’

  There was another reason for Grace not wanting to linger at Mrs Shield’s. She just knew that there was a limit to how long she could sit in the same room with Jefferson and not be found out as a woman who adored him. In his presence she was not entirely herself. There she was now, sitting so primly on the very edge of the sofa in the beamed and floral sitting room of Mrs Shield’s little cottage, her eyes as moony as a heifer’s and her smile smug and greedy both at once. And there she was giggling and talking in a girly voice. Mrs Shield was no fool. She kept shooting Grace meaningful little glances. ‘You might as well be semaphoring,’ Grace hissed at her when Jefferson excused himself to go to the bathroom.

  ‘And so might you, my girl.’

  Grace meant to frown but it turned into a big grin instead. ‘I’m happy, Evie. I sit here knowing that at any moment now he’ll reappear through the door and that simple fact is enough to … don’t laugh … to make my heart sing.’ Grace was crossing and uncrossing her long legs as she spoke, inspecting her newly painted, already chipped nails, as fidgety as a five year old.

  ‘Oh Grace, you have got it bad.’ Mrs Shield moved right up close on the sofa. ‘But dear, just don’t get hurt again. There’s been enough of that.’

  Grace smiled and then she sighed. ‘I don’t know that I have much say in the matter.’

  Touching Grace lightly on the shoulder, Mrs Shield said, ‘Remember that you do have a say in how you take what comes your way.’

  ‘I saw a shrink once and that’s exactly what she said.’

  ‘All shrinks, as you call them, say that.’

  ‘And you would know.’

  ‘I know everything,’ Mrs Shield said.

  ‘I like her,’ Jefferson said the next morning, after they had managed to prise themselves away from Mrs Shield’s bear-like embrace. As they drove off down the short drive Grace wondered how it was that, when you said goodbye, her stepmother always managed to look half the size she’d seemed when you arrived.

  ‘I’ll tell you a secret,’ Grace said, ‘I like her too.’

  ‘Why is it a secret and why, when you speak of her, do you call her Mrs Shield and not “my stepmother” or her first name or even Mother?’

  ‘Childhood stuff, inevitably. I spent years after my mother died secretly waiting for her to come back. I had not been allowed to see her at the hospital but I had overheard my father telling Aunt Kathleen that she was “disfigured beyond recognition”. I clung on to that phrase, thinking it had been a case of mistaken identity; all my favourite books back then were big on mistaken identity. I had it all worked out: the memory loss, the years of aimless wandering. When she didn’t come back I started blaming it on Mrs Shield, telling myself that my mother knew her place had been taken by someone else. Oh, I was a muddled child, and cross. I called her Mrs Shield as a way of spiting them both, her and my father, and to keep my distance, I suppose. But I grew older and stopped thinking my mother might come back. I got used to Mrs Shield. I grew fond of her; I even remember the exact moment of recognition: I was sitting at the kitchen table at The Gables, doing my times tables, and she was making my tea. I looked up at her and there she was, the way she always was at five o’clock when I got back from school, standing by the stove in her ghastly pink frilly Doris Day apron. And I loved her for it, for always being there. I wanted to make her happy in return so I decided that I was finally going to call her Mummy. But when it came to it I just couldn’t. I tried Evie and that’s what I call her to her face, but I had grown used to Mrs Shield.’

  ‘I’m the antithesis of always being there,’ Jefferson said quietly.

  Grace took her left hand off the wheel, raising it to his cheek, holding it there for a moment. ‘Yes, you are. But that’s all right; my expectations have gone down since childhood.’ He laughed but he squeezed her hand hard.

  Once they reached Northbourne, Grace parked the car on the verge outside a large white-rendered 1920s house, the kind that would have looked more at home in the London suburbs than in the country. ‘That’s where we lived, that’s The Gables.’

  ‘Nice house.’

  ‘Mrs Shield loved it. It was a real wrench for her to leave but the place had got too large. It’s funny how we talk about a house getting too large, as if it had changed overnight in some teenage growth spurt, emerging suddenly with all the curtains too short and not a single piece of furniture that fits.’

  ‘And you, did you mind her selling up?’

  ‘I suppose I do have a certain sentimental attachment. All those happy childhood memories. I could show you the spot under the large rosebush where Finn and I buried our pets, until eventually the little bodies were stacked so high we had to take our funerals to the lilac hedge … only kidding. And look, there’s the oak, just over there, from where I fell and broke my arm when I was ten. And you see that little shed in the corner, that’s where I locked Finn up and forgot, going off to stay the night at Noah’s house, so Mrs Shield called the police and reported him missing …’ Grace turned to him with a radiant smile. ‘Such happy days.’

  ‘Sounds as if you were a truly revolting kid.’

  ‘Oh I was; everyone said so.’

 
; He pulled her close. ‘I was really angry with my parents when they sold up,’ he said. ‘I knew I was being selfish, and illogical too as I had left home about ten years earlier, but I still gave them a hard time. It was absolutely too much for them to cope with: six bedrooms and that large yard, and all my poor old mom had ever really wanted was one of the neat and modern handy little apartments on the outskirts of town with a view of the river. But I behaved as if it was their duty to remain the same – same them, same home, same rituals – just for me while I was free to move on and change as much as I wanted.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter how old we get, in the relationship with our parents we’re all arch-conservatives. Still, I really didn’t mind Mrs Shield selling The Gables. I was perfectly happy there, but I always thought it rather a dull house. Anyway, the really big wrench was leaving Kendall. There I could stroke a wall and think, my mother touched this exact place, my handprint is resting on hers, she walked these stairs, and cooked my dinner in that kitchen; you know the kind of thing. After that I stopped being too attached. Maybe once you’ve been pulled away roots and all, it gets easier the next time it happens. Actually, I wanted to live in Noah Blackstaff’s house. He was this kid I hung out with. His father was dead. It’s actually his grandparents’ place but he stayed with them in the long holidays. The old people still live there, in that large, wonderfully gloomy old house down the lane. And Noah had the ghost. It wasn’t his father or anything, but any ghost was better than none, in my opinion. And he wasn’t even that interested. It just seemed unfair. He had Northbourne House, a ghost and a famous grandfather. The old boy’s an artist; a bohemian, for heaven’s sakes. Of course, Arthur Blackstaff is a very Home Counties bohemian; just enough cloak and wide-brimmed hat to fit the image to a tee at the same time as riding to hounds and knowing how to eat soup properly. Looking back, I think he was always pretty conservative – you know, the kind of guy who would pat you on the back with a “Bad luck, old chap, there but for the grace of God” if you told him you had syphilis, but would blackball you if you had Aids.’

  ‘You have a different definition of conservative round here.’ Jefferson kissed the top of her head. She loved that he was tall enough to do that; it was nice, sometimes, to be allowed to be small. ‘I have to admit I’ve never heard of the guy.’

  ‘He used to be all the rage, as Mrs Shield would say. Mostly with the kind of people who aspire in vain to a set of ancestors for their walls. No, I’m being unfair; there’s more to him than that. In his day – strange expression, that – he managed to be both popular and highly regarded by the critics.’

  ‘I take it you’re not a huge fan?’

  Grace shrugged. ‘It’s ages since I saw any of his stuff, but no. His are the kind of paintings that shout this is a horse; oh, it is so exactly like a horse, every detail is right, every horsy inch of it, and yet … yet I don’t feel it. But take Picasso’s bull. I know he started off with every detail of that animal, every muscle and sinew, but when he had finished he was left with just a few lines that just screamed bullness.’

  ‘I don’t really get Picasso.’

  ‘You haven’t seen enough, that’s all. When you have you’ll fall in love with him, I promise.’

  ‘I’m in love already. There’s no room for Pablo. In fact I believe that right now I’m experiencing the very essence of inloveness. So, who’s the ghost?’

  ‘Was. It’s not been seen for ages.’ Grace lowered her voice to not much more than a whisper. ‘She walked the gardens at night, keeping to the shelter of the trees. She was tall and slender in her flowing white robe and her hair rippled like moonshine all the way to her waist. Only one person saw her face, an old poacher, and he said she had the face of the Madonna. He swore off poaching after that, and never had another drink.’

  ‘My darling, are you making all of this up?’

  ‘No.’ Grace looked up at him and shook her head. ‘Not a word.’

  ‘But no photographs, I suppose, of the ghost?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘As a matter of interest, has anyone ever captured a ghost on film?’

  ‘Some say they have. But looking at the pictures, you can’t tell for sure. It could be a wisp of steam, a trick of the light or just jiggery-pokery. I think mostly you have to content yourself with trying to catch a spirit. If I have caught the spirit of a subject of one of my portraits, then I will have done well.’

  ‘I can’t even take a decent snapshot. Truth is I’ve never been that interested in trying.’

  Grace turned round and raised her arms, cradling his face in her strong hands, looking him straight in the eyes. ‘You know something?’

  ‘What?’ He looked back at her, unsure suddenly.

  ‘Don’t look like that,’ she exclaimed. ‘So stricken.’ She kissed him on the lips and on the tip of the nose and on each cheek, tanned even now, in mid-winter. ‘I was just going to say that you’re allowed not to be fascinated by the same things as I am.’

  He smiled, a little embarrassed. ‘Yeah, sure. But I feel like I should know more, that’s all. I want to share in your kicks.’

  ‘Lots of people don’t get it. I have friends who never even take a camera on holiday because they feel it comes between them and the experience. For me, it’s the opposite. To me, everything is floating, unreal, until I’ve got my shots.’

  ‘You sound like a druggie.’

  She laughed. ‘I’ve got a habit, that’s for sure. But it’s a way of working things out too, little things like life. We all need that: some kind of black box explaining what’s actually going on. When I’m behind the lens I see differently, I see more. Things begin to make sense even if the sense is just me taking a picture. Of course, there’s the fact that I’m bloody good at it – photography, that is. I mean, who doesn’t like doing something they’re good at?’

  ‘Maybe then you’ll understand my choice of career. When I strapped the leg of an injured rabbit once, I made such a hash of it the poor bunny ended up being carted off for an amputation. Working as a defence lawyer on my first big case, on the other hand, I saved a guy’s arse – said arse having been headed firmly in the direction of the electric chair.’ He paused. ‘Though if you ask me, I’d say the rabbit was the better man.’

  They went for lunch at a place some fifteen miles from Northbourne. ‘Worth it?’ Grace asked as they arrived. The sun turned the old brick of the house a red-pink, ivy clambered up the walls between the leaded windows and just yards from the porch was the river where a swan made its regal progress, seven grey cygnets in her wake, through a noisy group of ducks making way like courtiers. ‘Worth it,’ he said.

  After lunch they went for another walk. Jefferson was carrying the Leica. He looked through the lens then he asked Grace, ‘What should I be thinking about if I were to take a picture right here?’

  Grace stopped and looked around. ‘I tend to think in terms of three components.’ She pointed to a woman standing on the small bridge some ten yards away. ‘You see her? OK, so she is our first component. The backdrop of the bare branches of the trees reaching into the river and the old barn is our second component. But there is more to come, I reckon. I’m never quite sure why I know this, but I’m usually right. There’s a third component and it will make my picture. She’s waiting for someone? You sense her impatience in the way she paces up and down a tiny area of the bridge. And the little smile that plays at the corners of her mouth; again it’s as if she is expecting something good. So we wait and see if I’m right. You have to be both patient and ready to move fast, which is why,’ she said by way of an apology, ‘I got into the habit of chewing tobacco.’

  ‘I’m sorry I made you give that up.’ Jefferson was looking at the woman on the bridge.

  ‘No, you’re right, it’s a disgusting habit.’

  ‘It wasn’t the aesthetic aspect; you’re my girl, yellow teeth or not.’ He leant across and gave her a quick kiss. ‘It’s your health I’m thinking of. Cigarettes are bad enough, bu
t that shit you chew …’

  ‘Which is why I don’t do it when you’re around.’

  Jefferson looked at her. ‘When I’m not around?’

  ‘Look, take what you can get.’ Grace took the Leica from him and pointed it at the woman.

  ‘Won’t she mind you staring and pointing that thing at her?’

  ‘She won’t notice. She’s in her own world.’

  ‘And what about her privacy?’

  Grace lowered the camera for a second and turned to look at him. ‘What about it?’

  ‘It’s that easy, is it?’

  ‘It has to be if I’m to go on working. Look, she’s frowning now and she can’t stop glancing at her watch. Before, she was gazing out across the water; now she’s looking over her shoulder at the road. Who do you reckon she’s waiting for?’

  ‘A guy?’

  Grace nodded. ‘Perhaps.’

  But they were wrong. A woman in her sixties came round the corner, bent low as if she was walking against a strong wind. She was pushing a baby in a buggy. Her steps were quick and full of purpose, her sturdy legs were clad in thick navy tights under a pleated plaid skirt in grey and beige, and on top of that she was wearing a green quilted jacket. Her face was broad and her short grey hair sprang back from her forehead as if trying to get away. As she walked she kept looking over her shoulder. The woman on the bridge relaxed into a smile as she ran towards them and up to the buggy, lifting the child into her arms and kissing him and holding him close. The older woman looked uncomfortable. Her stern expression softened only once, when the child grabbed at the young woman’s hair, getting his tiny fingers caught. She laughed as she gently untangled him. The boy pulled back in her arms, his gaze locked into hers, and then he too laughed and Grace got her picture.

  Later she showed Jefferson the finished photograph. ‘If you wanted an illustration of true happiness,’ she said, ‘that picture is it.’

  ‘And what if, after we left, that old woman took the child away again? What’s your truth then?’