Shooting Butterflies

by Marika Cobbold

  Usually Grace watched Jefferson return to his wife and family with heavy-hearted acceptance that this was how it had to be. There were those first few hours of gut-wrenching pain to get through once the door had closed behind him and she felt as empty as if her insides had walked right out with him. And there was the constant nagging fear that something might happen while they were apart: an accident that she would know nothing of until it was too late, because she had no right to know, not even to know if he was dead or alive. But the pain and fear would ebb. She would remind herself that she was far from unhappy living on her own and that there were times when she could not imagine living with anyone, not even Jefferson. She would think sacrilegious thoughts, like maybe Cherry being sick was not the reason for Grace and him not being together all the time, but that secretly they both suspected that their love was the kind best protected from the everyday and that therefore this full-time love in a part-time relationship was all they dared take on. But eventually her emotions would settle like the sea at night. She would return to a contented equilibrium: in love, busy, achingly lonely at times, but doing all right until the next time they met up.

  But this time it was different. This time as he turned round having closed his suitcase, he had a pleading look in his eyes. The last time she had seen a look like that was when Angelica took Michael to a birthday party. The little boy had stood with them in the doorway, surveying the large hall teeming with noise and movement, the pushing and shrieking and giggling of a mass of little boys and girls, and he had turned and looked up at his mother with an expression as if to say, ‘Don’t make me do this.’ But he was a brave and proud little boy so after that look he had straightened his shoulders and joined the fray.

  Jefferson, bag in hand, straightened his shoulders and walked out of the bedroom. She followed behind, her lips clamped shut on a small calm smile, her heart thumping. Grabbing hold of him, clinging to his arm and weeping, ‘Don’t. Don’t leave. Stay with me and give us a chance, please’, was not an option.

  Bollocks! Grace, dreaming her past, heard the words as clearly as if Nell Gordon was in the room. Nell Gordon, that smug cultural regurgitator, that second-guesser of other people’s lives, who flattered herself that she understood it all because she knew the ‘truth’, when every sane person knew that there was no such thing, just a flock of perceptions, as similar and different, as ever present and elusive, as the birds in the sky.

  Bollocks, bollocks, bollocks. There she was again. And you’re telling me I distort the picture. That little scene of domestic bliss was one big lie, wasn’t it?

  Grace was tired but she still could not sleep. She was not averse to the idea that there was such a thing as telepathy and, if there was, maybe Nell Gordon was tossing and turning in her bed.

  What kind of day were you having when you decided to deconstruct my life, eh? Bad, I wouldn’t mind betting. A dearth of interesting material and you with a deadline and probably little Tristram’s birthday party to organise and at least three launches to attend. Do you have a file marked Subjects For That Desperate Day, that day that comes in every journalist’s life when there’s inches and inches of empty columns to fill and nothing to fill it with? And I sympathise with you, I really do. You’re not some tabloid hack. You’re a serious writer on the arts pages of an important broadsheet; you can’t just make up some natty little piece about the vicar and the golf-club secretary. But Nell, why me? I who, after the furore and the applause, after my own personal chariot ride between triumph and disaster, withdrew into what my father used to call a becoming silence? Why pick on me?

  But all right, it had been a game that first summer they spent together on the Cape. She and Jefferson had wanted to act out what might have been if, that other, long-ago summer, he had chosen Grace. They had wanted to let their love, poor sinner that it was, out of the shadows and hold it up to the light. They had wanted to have people walk by and say, ‘There go Grace and Jefferson,’ as if such a couple really had a right to be. So they had pretended to their neighbours. So they had lied. They had played house, watering the plants on the porch of the little cottage at the edge of town, just steps from the beach and the roar of the ocean. They had given Pluto his morning bowl of warm milk and wheat as if that was how they had always looked after their dog. So what? They never lied to themselves or each other; all they had done was dip their toes in a dream.

  That time – four weeks in a borrowed house on the Cape – was the longest they had together in their six years.

  A year earlier Jefferson had left his Manhattan law firm to take up a post teaching law at Redfield College, New Hampshire. Cherry had been going through an especially bad patch and he thought that moving back to small-town New England might help her. And for a while the drinking stopped. Jefferson drove her to AA meetings in another town, near enough to reach in half an hour, far enough away from the tittle-tattle tongues of neighbours. But come February she was a regular instead at that town’s only karaoke bar. The call came one evening from a man named Dwight, who asked for her to be collected as she was hogging the mike again, and there had been complaints.

  He phoned Grace in London. ‘What am I doing?’ he groaned. ‘What am I doing with my life?’ This was her moment; the moment when he was weak and she could make him come to her and stay. ‘Grace, Grace, are you there? Can you hear me? I was saying …’

  ‘I’m still here. And Jefferson, my darling, you’re being good. You are staying because your wife is sick and would get sicker still if you weren’t there. You’re staying because if you left, your children would not just lose you, they would most probably lose her too. Now just don’t ask me my opinion too often because it’s possible that I shall not always be this good myself.’

  ‘I don’t know that either of you are exactly good,’ Angelica had said. ‘I mean, you are committing adultery.’

  Grace, who had been sitting at her kitchen table resting her forehead in her hands, looked up at her with tired eyes. ‘I know, Angelica, I do know that. But how good do you want me to be?’

  ‘No, how good do you want to be?’

  ‘Don’t ask silly questions. Like most people, I want to be good but I also want my own way.’

  So when a friend of hers, an American photographer called Dylan Lennox, had suggested a house swap, Grace had called Jefferson up to say she had the chance to spend the summer not more than two hours’ drive away. She had been working all year so she had money to fall back on and there were at least two famous writers, both known as reclusive, living on the Cape whose portraits were always sought after. ‘I think by now they’re bored with being out of the limelight and dying to have someone hunt them out.’

  The plan had been for Grace to spend the summer in the house on the Cape and for Jefferson to visit when he could: the odd weekend and the annual week he ‘walked the trail with a couple of the guys’. Then came their stroke of luck: Cherry had announced her intention of taking the girls to visit her parents in Florida. She was tired of the rain, she said, and the way people kept sneaking looks at her when they thought she couldn’t see. Jefferson was happy. The girls would be fine with their grandparents to help care for them. They were excited about going away, especially as they had been promised a trip to Disneyland. Jefferson made up some story about extending his walking tour while he had the chance, saying, because he thought it would please Cherry who watched Oprah a lot, that he felt some quiet time communing with nature might help him find his spirit. Cherry always said he did not have one, and if he did, it was buried so deep it might as well not be there. To Grace, Jefferson said that was unfair; his spirit just ran and hid when Cherry was around.

  Cherry certainly did not suggest that he come with them. Without him she was her parents’ princess once more, free from any adult responsibilities. ‘You’re always watching me, as if you’re just waiting for me to do something wrong. I sometimes think that’s what makes bad things happen; you watching and expecting the worst.’ Then she went off on her
holiday.

  That’s how Grace and Jefferson got their time together in the cottage on the Cape.

  Louisa

  Viola has been sent away. Arthur tells me, stone-eyed, that I am entirely to blame for her banishment. I weep and beg him to at least tell me where she has gone but he refuses. ‘You should have thought, perhaps, about the consequences for your friend before you decided to flaunt your perversion to the world.’

  I put my arm up across my face, trying to shield myself from the words. But he goes on. Betrayal. Depravity. Moral corruption. Bad seed. Inherited weakness. Then he leaves me weeping on the floor.

  I beg him to let me see my children, but he refuses.

  Sir Charles has told him they are best kept away. He shows the doctor my painting. ‘I don’t understand why,’ I say. ‘He won’t like it.’

  ‘You might think this amusing, Louisa, but I assure you there is nothing amusing at all about your situation. I am working hard on your behalf to make sure that when you come out of this, you will still have some friends.’

  ‘Have you heard from Viola?’

  ‘No, and I don’t expect to.’

  ‘And you’re sure she left no message for me?’

  There is a pause before he replies, ‘No.’

  ‘I don’t believe you, do you hear? You are lying.’ I realise that I am shouting but I cannot stop myself. ‘You’re lying, do you hear? She wouldn’t leave without a communication of some kind.’

  * * *

  I am better. There is no storm inside me now. But still Sir Charles is not satisfied. ‘Mrs Blackstaff,’ his expression is stern, ‘were you aware, at the time, what effect your … exhibition,’ the word is bracketed between two raised eyebrows, ‘would have on your husband, on your friend, Miss Glastonbury?’

  ‘Your friend Lady Glastonbury’s daughter.’

  ‘Were you aware, Mrs Blackstaff, of the harm you were doing?’

  I am too exhausted to explain or to try to please. It would have been easier, of course, if I had possessed the gift of dissembling. A few tears on the great man’s country tweeds, a helpless flapping of hands and murmured expressions of grief and regret might have helped my cause.

  I want to see my children, so for his next visit I try to think of an explanation that might satisfy him. There would never be time for the whole truth and he would never accept that I was proud, still, of my work.

  ‘I mourned my baby. You see, I killed him.’ (Sir Charles jots down probably delusional in his small black notebook.) ‘No, you don’t understand.’ I put my hand out, touching his lightly. He shies away. For a week now no one has actually touched me or allowed me to touch them. No caresses from Arthur, no sticky kisses from my small children. I yearn to be touched.

  ‘Voices are telling you that you killed your child?’

  ‘Yes. No, not voices, not in the sense that you mean. I’m talking of an inner voice. You have an inner voice, don’t you, Sir Charles? An inner voice that tells you the truth?’

  ‘We are not talking about me, Mrs Blackstaff.’ He is writing in his book; his hand, pale and stubby-fingered with a covering of silky black hair across the knuckles, moves fast across the page.

  He can upset my calm like no one else. I feel the heat rise in my cheeks as my heart pounds, harder and harder, until I fear it will burst free from the confines of my ribcage. Numbness spreads from my shoulder down my left arm. I have to stand up. ‘Stop that writing,’ I shout.

  ‘There is no need for aggression, Mrs Blackstaff.’

  I sit back in the chair and try to turn my thoughts inwards, towards far more pleasing images than that of Sir Charles with his long face where every feature pulls downwards, but I know something bad is happening. I hear what I say but he seems to hear something different.

  ‘It was the only way I could find relief. When I paint it’s as if the work itself is the answer to all the questions. The accusing voices cease.’ I look at him, searching for some glimmer of understanding in his eyes, but there is none. ‘My husband turned away from me when I needed him most. In the past I have made excuses for him, but no more. To him I was always in the wrong. I never got it quite right, Sir Charles. What was it about me that I never got it right? I thought I might go mad, asking, asking myself that question.’ Sir Charles scribbles away in his notebook. Subject exhibiting signs of paranoia, mentioning being in conflict with the rest of the world that in turn is colluding against her.

  I am desperate for him to understand ‘Then there was Viola.’ I feel my jaw relax into a smile and my eyes soften as I speak her name. ‘She was a rock. She heard me. She melted the ice around my heart.’ I lean towards him, willing him to look me in the eyes, but his gaze keeps slipping off my face.

  ‘I admit that I knew I was causing mischief by showing my work the way I did, the night of the unveiling of my husband’s great canvas, but I’m afraid that at that moment I did not care.’ I realise I’m speaking loudly again, so I lower my voice. ‘I don’t often get angry, Sir Charles. And I’m not proud of what I did. But I had to do something. You must understand, Sir Charles, that I had been in prison and I had to get out. I didn’t care whether or not the sun rose in the morning or set at night. I did not care about eating or dressing or even washing. And the worst of it was that when I lost John I lost the others too. Or so it felt. Even when they were in the same room with me I heard their little voices as if in the distance. I wanted to reach out and hold them but it was as if an invisible wall was in the way. Then, suddenly, it was not there any more, that wall. I could not stop talking, running, hugging my children; oh, it was as if I was living all the life I had missed out on.’ I look up at him. ‘But, Sir Charles, I am quite myself now.’

  ‘I see,’ he says.

  But to Arthur he says much besides. They stand not more than a foot from my door talking as if neither of them cares that I might hear. Sir Charles speaks words like persecution mania, suppressed grief, hysterical temperament and moral insanity.

  I knew that I had hurt Arthur gravely but I still expected him to speak up in my defence. ‘You failed to tell me, when I first treated Mrs Blackstaff, that both her parents were suicides.’ It is Sir Charles speaking still.

  ‘She comes from bad stock. I should have realised. But I was young. She was a dashed handsome woman, Sir Charles. Ah well, there’s no greater fool than a lovesick fool, what?’ Their voices trail off as they move down the corridor.

  I get up from my chair and follow them. In the past I have complained of feeling invisible but now I’m glad of it as I listen, unobserved, at the top of the stairs.

  ‘I never considered that she might be seriously ill. Is it something I have done? You must tell me the truth. I can live with it. I have to live with it. I am not a man to shy away from my responsibilities.’

  ‘My dear fellow, of course you’re not. And you must remember that you have nothing at all with which to reproach yourself. There is obviously an inherited weakness and a moral weakness too, I am sorry to say. The death of your younger son greatly exacerbated the problems already there. Your wife is calmer now. The mania has subsided, as has the severe melancholy which it followed. However, I believe a period of supervision and treatment is desirable. Of course I could attempt to treat her in your home but in view of the presence of two impressionable young children I strongly recommend that Mrs Blackstaff be admitted to the Harvey Clinic. It’s an excellent private facility and she will be under my direct care. We have recently introduced a treatment pioneered by my esteemed Hungarian colleague, Doctor László Meduna, whose belief it is that there exists a biological antagonism between the illness grand mal and psychosis. I have found the treatment most effective when undergone by patients such as your wife.’ There is a pause. In the silence I hear the beating of my heart, so hard, so loud I think they must find me out at any moment but they don’t even look up.

  ‘You’re right,’ I hear Arthur sigh. ‘The wellbeing of my children must come before all else; there can be no questi
on of anything other. I cannot allow them to be further exposed to their mother’s … their mother’s perversion, but an institution …’ From my place above I see how he rakes his hair with his strong fingers; fingers that, not so very long ago, travelled across every inch of my body as he whispered, ‘Let me worship at your shrine.’

  How comical that sounded now, how very comical; and I can’t help myself, I burst out laughing; and although I’m quick to cover my mouth, it’s too late: they’ve seen me.

  My husband’s face is an upturned plate. ‘My God, Louisa, what are you doing?’

  I can’t stop laughing.

  ‘I’m afraid that you have no choice,’ Arthur tells me. ‘You can agree to go or you can be sectioned. I’m sorry to sound harsh but, whether or not you can see it now, we all have your best interests at heart.’

  ‘The children; I can’t go away, they need me. I’m not ill, Arthur. I admit I have been acting somewhat out of character and I’m sorry, sorry for embarrassing you and …’

  ‘Louisa, it’s not a matter of saying sorry. You’re not well, which is why no one is blaming you. But you need looking after in a way that we can’t manage here and, quite frankly, I don’t think that you are a suitable person at present to be looking after our children.’

  ‘Arthur, don’t say such things. I’m their mother; I love them.’

  ‘You said that you had asked yourself many times in the past months whether they would not be better off without you. Sir Charles told me that you yourself had expressed doubt about your suitability to be in charge of young minds.’

  ‘I didn’t mean it, not like that. Please, Arthur, you must not take the confidences I have given you and turn them against me like this. I have doubts, but we all do, don’t we?’