The Butterfly Box

by Santa Montefiore

  ‘Mama!’ she cried, skipping up the corridor. ‘Mama.’

  Helena emerged cross-faced and weary, carrying Hal in her arms.

  ‘Where have you been, Fede?’ she asked, running her hand down the child’s windswept hair. ‘Hal’s dying of hunger.’

  ‘We went to the beach. We took Señora Baraca’s dog, Rasta. You know he doesn’t bark any more, he just wanted to be let out to run around. Poor thing. Then Papa swam and I looked after his clothes. Rasta swam, too. Then Papa told me the legend.’

  ‘What legend?’ Helena asked, humouring her daughter as she ushered her into the dining room.

  ‘About Topahuay and Wachuko. The Inca princess. This box was made for her.’

  ‘Really. How lovely,’ said Helena, patiently. She looked up at her husband as he walked into the room, filling it with his presence and the tense atmosphere that had once more returned to the house. They locked eyes for a moment like two strangers curiously looking each other over for the first time. Helena averted her eyes first.

  ‘I want to sit next to Papa,’ Federica announced happily, pulling out a chair and patting the placemat possessively.

  ‘You can sit wherever you like, sweetie,’ said Helena, dropping Hal gently into his chair. ‘I hope you washed your hands,’ she added, remembering the dog.

  ‘Oh yes. Señora Baraca looks like a witch,’ Federica laughed.

  ‘She does, actually,’ Ramon agreed, chuckling, attempting to lighten the atmosphere.

  ‘Well, I hope she didn’t cast a spell on you,’ said Helena, making an effort for the sake of the children. Her throat was tight and her chest constricted under the pressure of having to perform. She longed to talk to Ramon on his own. She needed to release the burden of her thoughts. She needed to resolve the situation. They couldn’t go on like this. It wasn’t fair on either of them.

  ‘Oh no. She was very grateful we had walked her dog for her,’ said Federica.

  ‘I want to see the dog,’ Hal whined, wriggling in his chair with impatience. Lidia entered with the steaming pastel de choclo.

  ‘Fede made this for you this morning,’ said Helena, sitting down at the other end of the table from her husband.

  ‘So I’m told. You’re very good to me, Fede,’ he said truthfully.

  ‘She certainly is,’ said Helena dryly. She would like to have added that he was wholly undeserving of her affection, but she restrained the impulse with a

  gulp of water from her glass. ‘She worked all morning, didn’t you, Fede?’

  ‘Papa hasn't seen his room yet,’ she added and a bashful smile tickled her face.

  ‘What have you done to my room, you naughty monkey?’

  ‘You’ll have to see for yourself,’ she said.

  ‘Fede picked flowers this morning,’ said Hal disloyally. ‘Didn’t you, Fede?’ ‘Mama!’ protested Federica in frustration.

  ‘Have you enjoyed your train, Hal?’ Ramon asked in an effort to distract the child from giving anything else away.

  ‘It’s brightly coloured and goes very fast,’ he said, making ‘chuga chuga chuga chuga’ train noises. Lidia placed a hot plate of food in front of him. ‘I don’t like sweet corn,’ he grumbled, sitting back in his chair and folding his arms in front of him.

  ‘Yes, he does,’ said Federica. ‘He’s just pretending because I made it.’

  ‘No, I’m not.’

  ‘You are.’

  ‘Not.’

  ‘Are.’

  ‘All right you two. Enough of this,’ said Ramon firmly. ‘Hal, eat your corn or you go to your room without lunch or your train.’ Hal scowled at his sister, his brown eyes darkening with resentment.

  Ramon and Helena’s conversation revolved around the children. If the children went silent, which they often did after an argument, they would be forced to talk to each other, which neither wanted to do, not with that false politeness, like a couple of actors in a badly written play. Ramon let Federica tell her mother the story of the Inca princess, only interrupting her when she turned to him for help over some detail that she had forgotten. Ramon was surprised at how much she had managed to remember. Helena listened, turning to answer her son once or twice when he whined ‘Mama’ just to get attention. Federica was used to being interrupted by her brother, she was also used to her mother indulging him by saying ‘What is it, my love?’ in a slow, patient voice. She didn’t mind. One often tolerates things purely out of habit.

  ‘Darling, what a delightful story. And the box is now yours. You are a very lucky little girl,’ said Helena. She didn’t add ‘and I hope you’ll look after it’, as other mothers would, because she knew Federica was more responsible about

  things like that than she was herself.

  ‘I thought we could drive up to Cachagua for a couple of weeks,’ Ramon suggested casually as if everything were normal, as if he hadn’t noticed the change in Helena’s countenance. ‘Spend Christmas with my parents. They’d love to see you and the children.’

  ‘Oh, yes please, Mama!’ squealed Federica in delight. She loved staying with her grandparents. They had a cosy, thatched house overlooking the sea. Helena wished he hadn’t brought it up in front of the children. They needed to talk first. He hadn’t consulted her. Now if she said they couldn’t go, she’d disappoint them. She couldn’t bear to disappoint them. Hal gazed up at her with hopeful brown eyes.

  ‘Yes! Yes!’ he cried, knocking his fork on the table. He also loved staying with his grandparents. They bought him ice creams and took him for pony rides up the beach. His grandfather read him stories and carried him about on his shoulders.

  ‘Okay, we’ll go to Cachagua,’ she conceded weakly. ‘Ramon, I need to talk to you after lunch. Please don’t disappear off with Fede again.’ She tried to sound casual so as not to alarm the children. She knew in her mind what she wanted to say to him and feared that her thoughts might seep through her words and betray her.

  ‘I won’t,’ he replied, frowning at her. There was something final in the tone of her voice and he didn’t like it. Women always had to tie everything up with bows. Everything had to be worked out. Helena was like that. She was incapable of just going along with things and seeing how they turned out. She had to make decisions and formalize them.

  After the first course, for which Ramon thanked his daughter by kissing her pale forehead fondly, she skipped out with Lidia to put the final touches on the welcome home merengon de lucuma. While she was out Helena and Ramon talked to Hal, anything rather than talk to each other. Hal began to show off with all the attention and started singing a song he’d learnt at school about a donkey. Both parents watched him, anything rather than watch each other. Finally, the door opened and in walked Federica holding a white meringue cake with a single candle flickering on top. Hal sang Happy Birthday. Ramon and Helena both laughed and for a moment the strain in Helena’s neck and chest lifted and she was able to breathe properly.

  Federica placed the cake in front of her father and watched as he blew out the candle. Hal clapped together his small hands and giggled as the candle caught alight again as if by magic. Ramon pretended to be surprised and blew at it again. Both children laughed at the joke, certain that their father was truly baffled by the inextinguishable flame. Finally, he dipped his fingers in his water glass and pinched the wick. The flame was smothered and smoked away in protest. ‘Welcome home!’ he read out loud Federica’s curly girlish handwriting, written with brown icing sugar onto the white frothy cream that resembled a choppy sea. Thank you, Fede,’ he said, pulling her into his arms and kissing her cheek. Federica stayed on his lap while he cut it. Hal waved his teaspoon at the cake, catching a bit of meringue on the end, which he then hastily put into his mouth before anyone could tell him not to. Helena pretended she hadn’t noticed. She was too tired to use the little energy she had left for her talk with Ramon on her mischievous child.

  After lunch Federica reluctantly joined Hal in the garden while her parents went upstairs to talk. She wondered
what they needed to talk about and resented her mother for dragging her father away. She carried the box into the garden and, sitting under the shade of the orange trees, she opened it and reflected on the story her father had told her.

  ‘Can I see your box?’ Hal asked, sitting down beside her.

  ‘Yes, if you’re careful.’

  ‘I’ll be careful,’ he said, taking it from her. ‘Wow!’ he enthused. ‘It’s very pretty.’

  ‘Yes, it is. It used to belong to an Inca princess.’

  ‘What’s an Inca?’ he asked.

  ‘The Inca were a race of people who lived in Peru,’ she replied.

  ‘What happened to the princess?’ he asked.

  ‘Didn’t you listen to my story at the table?’ she said, smiling down at him indulgently.

  ‘I want to hear it again,’ he said. ‘Please.’

  ‘Okay. I’ll tell you again,’ she agreed. ‘But you must listen and be quiet or I won’t tell you.’

  ‘I’ll be quiet,’ he said and yawned sleepily. It was very hot, even in the shade. The low hum of bees in the flowerbeds and the distant roar of the sea were a soothing backdrop to the languid hours of siesta time. Federica placed her arm

  around Hal’s body and let him rest his head against her.

  ‘Once upon a time in deepest Peru,’ she began and Hal closed his eyes and looked into a strange new world.

  Ramon followed his wife upstairs. Neither spoke. He watched her walk down the corridor with her shoulders stooped and her head hung. As he approached his room the scent of lavender reached his nostrils and reminded him of his mother’s house in Cachagua. As if sensing his thoughts Helena told him that Federica had prepared his sheets with fresh lavender from the garden.

  The room was breezy and clean and smelt also of oranges and roses. He cast his eye around the place they had shared for the best part of seven years of their twelve-year marriage, but he didn’t feel he belonged there. In spite of Federica’s flowers and loving preparation it was his wife’s room and the coldness of her demeanour told him that he was no longer welcome.

  He placed his suitcase on the floor and sat on the edge of the bed. Helena walked over to the window and looked out across the sea.

  ‘So, what do you want to talk about?’ he asked, but he knew the answer.

  ‘Us,’ she replied flatly.

  ‘What about us?’

  ‘Well, it’s just not the same, is it?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I’m tired of pretending to the children that everything’s fine. It’s not fine. I’m not happy. It’s all very well for you, travelling the world like a gypsy, writing your books of stories. But I’m the one trapped here in this house without you. Without any support. I’ve brought these two children up almost single-handedly,’ she said and felt the strain in her neck rise to clamp her head in its vice.

  ‘But you always knew that was my life. You didn’t have any expectations. You said so yourself. You gave me freedom because you understood that I couldn’t survive without it,’ he said, shaking his head and frowning.

  ‘I know. But I didn’t know how it was really going to be. In the beginning we travelled together. It was a dream. I loved it and I loved you. But now . . .’ Her voice trailed off.

  ‘Now?’ he ventured sadly.

  ‘Now I don’t love you any more.’ She turned to face him. Noticing the hurt cloud his face she added quickly, ‘Love has to be nurtured, not left to rot with

  neglect, Ramon. I loved you once, but now I don’t know you any more. I wouldn’t recognize love if it slapped me in the face. All I know is that I’m tired of being alone and you always leave me alone, for months on end. You always will,’ she said and the tears cascaded down her cheeks, one after the other, until they formed two thin streams of misery.

  ‘So what do you want to do?’ he asked.

  She walked timidly over to him and perched next to him on the bed. ‘If you were afraid of losing me, Ramon, you’d stay and write here. You’d change for me. But you won’t, will you?’ He thought about it for a moment, but his silence answered her question. ‘Do you love me, Ramon?’ she ventured.

  His shiny conker eyes looked at her forlornly. ‘Yes, I do, in my own way, Helena. I still love you. But I don’t love you enough to change for you. If I stayed here with you and the children I’d shrivel. I’d dry out like a plant in the desert. Don’t you see that? I don’t want to lose you, or the children, but I can’t change,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘I arrive home and the first thing I think about is when I can get going again. I’m sorry.’

  They both sat in silence. Helena cried with the relief of having given vent to her feelings. She felt the heaviness lift and the tension ease on her temples.

  Ramon sat wondering what she was going to do. He didn’t want to lose her. She was his safety net. He liked to have a home to come back to. Even if he rarely used it, he still liked it to be there. He loved his children. But he wasn’t used to the day-to-day routine of children. He wasn’t a family man.

  ‘So what happens now?’ he said after a while.

  ‘I want to go home,’ she replied, standing up again and walking over to the window.

  ‘You mean to England?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But that’s the other side of the world,’ he protested.

  ‘Why should you care? You’re always the other side of the world and you always will be. What difference does it make where we are? You’ll always be on another continent.’

  ‘But the children?’

  ‘They’ll go to school in England. We’ll go and live in Cornwall with my parents.’ Then she rushed to his side and knelt on the floor at his feet. ‘Please, Ramon. Please let me take them home. I can’t bear it here any more. Not the way it is now. Without you there’s no point, don't you see? I don’t belong here like

  you do. I would have belonged, I had planned to, but now I want to go home.’ ‘What will you tell them?’

  ‘I’ll tell them that we’re going home. That you’ll come and see us, the same as you always have. We’ll just live in a different country. They’re young, they’ll accept it,’ she said firmly. She looked at him imploringly. ‘Please, Ramon.’

  ‘Do you want a divorce?’ he asked impassively.

  ‘No,’ she replied quickly. ‘No, not divorce.’

  ‘Just a separation then?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then what?’

  ‘Then nothing. I just want out,’ she said and hung her head.

  His premonition had been right. She was leaving him. She needed his permission to take the children out of the country and he would give it to her. How could he deny her that? Their children were more hers than his if one judged it by the amount of time they both spent with them. She was right, what did it matter where they were, he was always thousands of miles away.

  ‘All right, you can take the children back to England,’ he conceded

  sorrowfully. ‘But first I want to take them to see my parents in Cachagua. I want to give them a family Christmas, so they’ll always remember me like that.’

  ‘Ramon,’ she whispered, for her voice had gone hoarse with emotion, ‘you will come and see us, won’t you?’ She searched his eyes, afraid that by cutting herself off from him he would no longer make the effort to be a part of their children’s lives.

  ‘Of course,’ he replied, shaking his shaggy head.

  ‘The children will miss you terribly. You can’t desert them, Ramon. They need you.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Don’t punish them for my actions. This is between us as adults, not them.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Fede loves you, so does Hal. I couldn’t live with myself if you deserted them because of me.’ She sat up abruptly. ‘I won’t go if leaving you means depriving my children of their father. I will sacrifice my own happiness for theirs,’ she said and began to sob.

  Ramon was confused. He ran his hand down her blonde hair. ‘I won�
�t desert them, Helena,’ he said.

  She looked up at him with glassy eyes. Thank you.’

  Suddenly his mouth was on hers. Without understanding their actions their bodies rebelled against the cold detachment of their minds. They clawed off their clothes like thirsty animals scraping at the ground for water. Helena felt the sharp bristle of his chin against hers and the soft wetness of his lips and gums. For the months he had been away she had only dreamed of making love to other men. She had had opportunities but she had rejected every one for the simple reason that she was the wife of someone else, if only in name. Now she abandoned herself to the touch of a man, even though she felt nothing for him now but gratitude. In these intense moments of intimacy they could have been mistaken for believing their love to have been re-ignited. But Helena knew that sexual pleasure alone was a false love, as illusory as a mirage. She closed her eyes, blocking out the sad reality of her situation and allowed herself to take pleasure as his hands stroked the curves of her body as if exploring them for the first time.

  It had been many months since they had last united in this way. They had both forgotten what the other’s body was like. As if she had no control over her impulses, her fingers followed the ridge of his spine and caressed the hair on his shoulders like they used to do when they had been driven by love. She ran her tongue over his skin and it tasted of the sea mingled with the scent of man. When he kissed her, his mouth on her mouth, his face only inches away from hers, she opened her eyes to find his were closed. She wondered whom he was dreaming of and whether he too had had opportunities on his travels. She didn’t want to know. Then he was inside her, awakening her dormant desire that had endured many months of hibernation and she thought no more about the other women he might have had. They both forgot the other as they moved like one writhing beast, oblivious to the low groans that escaped from their throats and the delirious sighs that vibrated deep within their bellies. When they lay sweaty and exhausted, the heady scent of their skin mingling with the sweet fragrance of lavender and rose, they both stared up at the ceiling and wondered why they had allowed themselves to get carried away.