The Butterfly Box

by Santa Montefiore

  The dust entered through the windows like thin smoke and settled wherever

  it could. A bony old Indian sat cross-legged in the corner under a scarlet turban and unloaded his tiffin box, arranging the aromatic food and utensils around him with the ritual of a priest. He had taken up two seats in spite of the weary passengers who crowded the corridors for lack of places. A small child watched the man arrange his food, dribbling with hunger and hopeful that if he stared hard enough the man might offer him a bite.

  Suddenly the train screeched to a frantic halt. Ramon looked out of the window through the horizontal bars. The compartment erupted out of its somnambulant state into confused chatter as the passengers left the train to see why it had stopped. Ramon watched them all spill out onto the desert like ants. Soon the heat grew too intense for him to stay inside without being fried alive and he too joined them to choke in the dust under the sun. As he descended he noticed a beautiful European woman move through the crowd with the gracelessness of a mule walking through a herd of elegant sambar. Just like Helena, he thought to himself and guessed she must be British. She was striding impatiently towards the throng that had gathered around the railway track. Her face was pinched with irritation and yet she still managed to look down her nose with a haughtiness more at home in the days of the Raj. She wore a pair of white trousers and knee-high riding boots, revealing long legs and a shapely bottom.

  He grinned to himself and strode up to her. ‘Do you want some water?’ he asked in English. She blinked at him from under her hat that resembled a pith helmet.

  Thank you,’ she sighed, taking the bottle from him. After gulping down a large swig she exploded into complaints. ‘What the bloody hell has happened? The train was late leaving and now we’ll be late arriving. Nothing goes when it says it will in this country.’

  Ramon laughed. ‘This is India,’ he said, looking her up and down.

  She narrowed her pale blue eyes and scrutinized him back. He could have been Indian but his accent gave it away.

  ‘Angela Tomlinson,’ she said, extending her hand and looking at him steadily-

  ‘Ramon Campione,’ he replied, taking it.

  ‘Spanish?’

  ‘Chilean.’

  ‘More exotic. I’m afraid I’m from England,’ she said, smiling at him. ‘That’s

  not very exotic.’

  ‘Only to the British,’ he said. She laughed and wiped her freckled face with a firm hand. ‘I think England’s very exotic.’

  ‘Well, you must be the only one. Aren’t I lucky to have found you!’ she chuckled.

  ‘I imagine it’s an animal on the line, or a person,’ he said, squinting into the sun but he couldn’t see past the multitude of Indians clamouring to see for themselves what had fallen onto the track.

  ‘How horrid. Will it take long?’ she asked, screwing up her nose in distaste.

  ‘Why are you in so much of a hurry?’

  ‘I’m meant to be in Bikaner already. Meetings, you know. I’m boringly punctual, I’m afraid. Hate to keep people waiting.’

  ‘What’s your business?’

  ‘Hotels. I’m a consultant. We’re constructing a new hotel, the one I’m to stay in will be much less glamorous I should imagine.’

  ‘But infinitely more charming,’ he said, imagining the kind of monstrosity her company was constructing.

  She smirked flirtatiously. ‘What takes you to Bikaner?’

  The tides.' he replied. She looked at him, impressed.

  ‘That’s all?’

  ‘That’s all.’

  They stood chatting for a while, during which time a dead cow was dragged off the track and laid out on the sand for the flies and birds to peck at. Slowly the weary passengers wandered back to the train and into the throbbing heat of the carriages. Ramon followed Angela into her first class carriage and the train lurched back into motion once again. First class wasn’t all that different from the crowded carriage he had been travelling in before, the aroma of spices and wafts of dust invaded the compartment, which was also overcrowded with chattering Indians and desperately hot. Angela sat beside the window allowing the wind to cool her down. She closed her eyes and let it wash over her. She reminded Ramon in a strange way of Helena and he found himself wondering about her and his children. He was so far away it was difficult to imagine them in England, settling into Polperro, forgetting that he ever existed. But Angela possessed the same gracelessness as Helena, that very same directness that belonged only to the British and he found himself, in spite of his efforts, missing her.

  Angela had arrived too late for her meeting. ‘God, I’ll be hung, drawn and quartered,’ she complained, fiddling with her watch in agitation.

  ‘You’re not going to change the time by playing with it,’ said Ramon, ushering her past the throbbing crowd of people and into a taxi, where a wizened old man sat at the wheel of a dusty car embellished with tinsel, carrying on his shoulder a small grey monkey who played with the swinging pack of plastic gods that hung from the mirror.

  ‘I know. It’s just so unlike me,’ she whined.

  ‘Look, this is India. They’ll know the train was late - nothing runs on time. You can have your meeting tomorrow. One of the many reasons I could never work for anyone else is because I couldn’t hack someone controlling the way I spend my time,’ he said.

  ‘Lucky old you,’ she exclaimed.

  ‘Why don’t you branch off on your own?’ he suggested.

  ‘I’d be far too lazy and irresponsible.’

  ‘Sometimes it’s fun to be irresponsible.’

  ‘Yes.’ She sighed and caught him looking at her intensely. ‘I suppose you’re going to invite me out for a drink now?’

  ‘If you like.’

  ‘I think I need one.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘Let’s go to my “infinitely more charming” hotel,’ she said and laughed.

  ‘Good idea. I hadn’t thought about accommodation.’

  ‘Just going with the tides.’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘Well, darling, you’ve been washed up on my shore,’ she said and placed her hand on his. ‘Lucky me.’

  Making love to Angela only reminded Ramon of his wife and of Estella. Her English accent made his stomach lurch with the memories of his last few days with Helena and consequently turned his thoughts to his children, yet the scent of her body and the taste of her skin only encouraged him to miss Estella by virtue of the fact that Estella tasted infinitely sweeter. It was a disappointment. He may as well have been a horse for she rode him furiously with the stamina of a professional jockey. When she was satisfied she had flopped onto the bed and fallen asleep like a man. He looked across at her pale blotchy

  skin and knotted hair and knew that he couldn’t spend another minute in her bed. He got up, dressed and left without so much as a goodbye note.

  He walked out into the sultry night air. The dawn was already seeping gold into the cracks in the sky and the monkeys were skipping on the rooftops, chasing one other across the shadows. He felt melancholic. Bad love always made him morose and he craved the poetic love of Estella. Sitting under the vast desert sky he pulled out of his rucksack the pen and paper he had stolen from Angela’s hotel room and began to write to Federica. He wrote with the intention of it being read by Helena. He missed her, which was strange, as that feeling had been covered in dust for many years due to lack of use. He had never missed her before. But he missed the idea of her. She was no longer there for him. He felt he couldn’t just ‘rock up’ like he used to. He missed Federica’s adoring face. He even missed Hal whom he had never really bonded with. His base camp had gone. Now he had nowhere to go home to. Not even in his dreams.

  He wrote a story for Federica about a mysterious girl who followed him about on his travels. ‘She must be an angel,’ he explained, ‘for her hair is long and flowing and the colour of clouds at sunrise. She’s beautiful, not only on the outside but on the inside, which is the most importa
nt and the most rare. I first saw her in a dream. My longing for her was so great that when I awoke she was sitting on the end of my bed, watching me with pale, luminous eyes filled with affection. And so she has accompanied me everywhere. Up the Himalayan mountains where yaks roam the snowy peaks down to the huge lakes of Kashmir where large exotic birds feast on flying fish, catching them in the air and carrying them off into the sky. She enjoys all the wonders of the world just like me. She makes me very happy. Now I realize, of course, after many days and nights travelling in her company, that she isn’t real at all, but imaginary. I realized only after I had tried to touch her and my arms went right through her, rather like a ghost. But she isn’t a ghost because I know she really lives in Polperro with her mother and brother Hal. So I don’t try to touch her any more, I just watch her and smile. She smiles back and that to me is the most miraculous part of all.’

  Chapter 13

  Polperro

  ‘How’s Federica getting on at school these days? Better?’ asked Ingrid who was bent over her easel painting a portrait of Sam reading on the lawn. ‘Blast!’ she exclaimed hotly. ‘I’m so much better at painting birds.’

  ‘Fine,’ Molly replied absentmindedly, concentrating on the daisy chain she was making.

  ‘Oh, I am pleased. It can’t be easy moving to a new country and having to make friends all over again.’

  ‘She was very quiet at first, but Hester says she’s happier now. She’s more Hester’s friend,’ said Molly, who was a couple of years older and bored by their childish games.

  ‘The summer term is always much more fun anyway,’ said Ingrid, sitting back on her stool and exchanging her paintbrush for her cigarette that smoked in its elegant lilac holder on the table beside her. ‘Sam darling, don’t move a muscle,’ she instructed, putting the monocle to her eye and studying her painting in detail.

  ‘Mum, I haven’t moved for the last hour, why would I want to move now?’ said Sam, who was lying on his front reading Maupassant’s Bel Ami, unamused at being disturbed. Ingrid grinned at him from under the wide brim of her sunhat.

  ‘It’s a precaution, darling. I don’t want you to ruin my picture.’

  ‘Is it any good?’

  ‘Quite. But it would be better if you were a seagull or a hawk.’

  ‘Sorry,’ he replied and the beginning of a smile tickled the corners of his petulant mouth.

  ‘Federica fancies Sam,’ said Molly, putting down her daisy chain and patting Pushkin who lay panting beside her in the heat.

  ‘She’s got very good taste,’ said Ingrid, lifting her eyes over the easel and smiling at her son with pride.

  ‘What do you think, Sam?’

  ‘I simply don’t think, Molly,’ said Sam, irritated.

  ‘You seem to think about everything else,’ she said.

  ‘Perhaps, but I don’t think about Federica Campione.’

  ‘Darling, she’s a very sweet girl,’ Ingrid interrupted.

  ‘Exactly. A girl,’ said Sam. ‘If I fancied anyone she would be a woman, not a

  girl’

  At that moment Hester skipped out onto the lawn followed by Pebbles the Vietnamese pig and cradling a snuffling hedgehog in her arms. ‘I think Prickles is better now.' she announced. ‘He can walk again.'

  ‘Thank Heaven for that. Have you fed him?’ Ingrid asked, momentarily looking up from her work.

  ‘Yes. He drank all his milk. He’s still covered in fleas, though. Nuno says you shouldn’t have brought him into the house, he says he’s been scratching ever since.’

  ‘Your grandfather’s very impressionable. If you hadn’t told him about the fleas he wouldn’t be scratching.’

  ‘Fede’s coming for tea,’ said Hester.

  ‘Good.'

  ‘Her mother lets her bicycle now.’

  ‘About time too. She’s somewhat overprotective. Mind you,’ said Ingrid thoughtfully, her paintbrush poised, ‘after what that poor child has been through it’s hardly surprising.’

  ‘What has she been through?’ Hester asked innocently.

  ‘Well, she’s had to leave her home and start again in a new place,’ said In-grid.

  ‘She hasn’t seen her father since she left Chile,’ said Molly, plucking another daisy from the overgrown lawn. ‘I don’t believe she’s even received a letter from him. I bet he’s really horrid.’

  ‘You can’t call someone horrid when you don’t know them, Molly. Anyway, I don’t think he's intentionally horrid, just selfish and irresponsible.’

  ‘Poor Fede,’ Hester sighed. ‘She talks about her father all the time.’

  ‘I bet he doesn’t think about her ever, or her mother. Have they divorced?’ Molly asked dispassionately.

  ‘Goodness no!’ replied her mother, licking the end of her paintbrush. ‘They’ve just separated. I’m sure they’ll get back together in the end. I imagine it was hard for Helena living out there. It’s not England you know.’

  ‘Helena will probably fall in love with someone else,’ said Molly, relishing the idea of a scandal.

  ‘You’ve been reading too many romantic novels, darling,’ Ingrid laughed, shaking her head at her daughter with the same indulgence that had allowed all

  her children to behave exactly as they pleased all their lives.

  ‘Hester.' said Molly. ‘Is or isn’t it true that Fede fancies Sam?’

  ‘Leave it, Molly.' said Sam, without looking up from his book. ‘Mum, if they don’t shut up I’m going to read in the orchard.’

  Ingrid sighed. ‘Girls.’

  ‘Yes, it’s true. Ever since he rescued her from the ice,’ Hester replied, unable to resist her elder sister.

  ‘Girls, Sam is trying to read. I’m sure he’s very flattered that Federica has taken a shine to him, but really, he’s fifteen years old and has much more important things to think about than the infatuations of a six-year-old child.’

  ‘He should be grateful anyone fancies him at all.' added Molly, who always liked to have the last word. Sam ignored her and turned the page.

  ‘What glorious sunshine!’ exclaimed Nuno trotting out onto the lawn. “‘As night is withdrawn from these sweet-springing meads and bursting boughs of May/” he said, surveying the tranquil scene before him.

  ‘Robert Bridges, 11 Nightingales11' said Sam casually, turning another page of his book.

  ‘Quite right, dear boy,’ said Nuno, nodding his approval with the slow

  inclination of his head as if he were on the stage.

  ‘You must be thinking of Italy, Nuno, weather in this country is usually foul whatever the month,’ said Molly sulkily.

  ‘Oh dear! Moody Molly is like a grande nuvola obscuring the sun. I simply cannot tolerate the whining of a capricious child.’ He sniffed. Molly rolled her eyes and smirked at Hester. ‘Don’t think I don’t see the silent communication between you and your accomplice,’ he added, glaring at them in mock anger. ‘You’ll both be shot at dawn. Now, Ingrid, let’s see your opera d’arte.’ He leant over his daughter’s shoulder and peered at the canvas with great self-importance. ‘Not bad, our Italian masters might not celebrate your achievements with a glass of Chateau Lafitte in Heaven but neither would they recoil in horror,’ he said slowly in the clipped Italian accent that he had cultivated over so many years he was now unable to speak without it. ‘There is no mistaking that it is Sam, my dear, only which end is his head and which end are his feet?’

  ‘Oh for goodness’ sake, Pa, go and scratch somewhere else,’ Ingrid sighed, inhaling her cigarette once again in a gesture of dismissal.

  ‘On that not so pretty subject I might add that animals with fleas are not

  hygienic to have in the house. I am being driven mad by scratching and no amount of bathing will relieve me. The hedge pig has to go.’

  ‘Hester, you’ll have to let Prickles go,’ she sighed.

  ‘What an unimaginative name for a pet,’ said Nuno disapprovingly, straightening himself up. ‘With a name like that he’s no
t worthy of being invited into the house in any case.’

  Federica was fast becoming a regular visitor to the Applebys’ rambling manor. At least her name was Italian so she was immediately embraced by Nuno who remarked that with a name like that she was not only ensured great beauty and charm but also a touch of mischief which, he added imperiously, was as vital as a dash of Tabasco to the most enticing spaghetti napoli.

  Hester was thrilled to have found a new friend. She had always trailed behind her elder sister, Molly, who bossed her around because she was older and cleverer then dismissed her when she found better company at school. Federica made Hester feel important. She cycled eagerly up the lane to see her almost every day and gratefully allowed her to take the lead. They indulged in childish games without the inhibitions that crept in when Molly was around.

  They clambered down the cliffs to the hidden bays and coves where they would find caves to hide in and share secrets. The sea was different in England, dark and murky, filled with seaweed and smelling strongly of salt and ozone. But Hester showed Federica how to love it, how to build castles in the thick sand and how to find shrimps and crabs in the many rock pools that collected during the high tides. They built a raft for the lake, fashioned fishing rods out of sticks and toasted marshmallows on the fires they were only allowed to build if supervised by an adult. As winter thawed into spring and the days lengthened and warmed, their friendship blossomed with the apple trees.

  Sam had O levels to take at school. He didn’t do much work. He didn’t need to. He was by far the cleverest boy in the school and looked on most of the other children as either slow or just plain stupid. He rarely read the books he was supposed to, preferring to read nineteenth-century French authors such as Zola, Dumas and Balzac that his grandfather Nuno gave him. He still managed, somehow, to come top of every class, even maths, which he didn’t consider himself very good at. With sandy blond hair, large intelligent grey eyes and a smile that curled up at the corners, he was charismatic and arrogant. He