earned her trust. He was always there for her. He called her when he said he would, he was never late when he arrived to take her out, he was dependable, reliable and most importantly he put her at the centre of his world. When she accepted his invitation to stay in his father’s chalet in Switzerland she did so with the intention of letting him in.
Torquil’s chalet was nestled into the side of the mountain, surrounded by tall fir trees with a spectacular view down the valley. They stood on the snowy balcony watching the stars glimmer in the clear black sky like cut glass. An incandescent moon lit up the mountains with an almost phosphorescent light, allowing them to see details as if it were day. Torquil took her by the hand and led her into their bedroom where a jubilant fire danced in the grate, fighting off the cold mountain air that entered in through the open window. Then he cupped her face in his hands and kissed her tenderly on the mouth. M want you to remember this moment for ever,’ he breathed.
‘I will.’
‘I want it to mean as much to you as it does to me,’ he said. Too moved to reply she abandoned herself to her senses, taking pleasure from his caresses
and from the warm, wet sensation of his mouth loving hers. She trembled as his hands pulled her shirt out from her trousers and crept up inside, feeling the soft innocence of her skin. He was touched by the knowledge that he was peeling open the petals of an unpicked flower, enabling her to experience physical love for the first time. He traced his fingers over her small breasts, touching her nipples and feeling them swell. He removed her shirt and watched the light of the flickering flames lick her flesh. Then he unbuttoned her trousers and pulled them down so that she stood in her panties, smiling at him shyly.
‘You’re so beautiful,’ he whispered admiringly, tracing with heavy eyes every line and curve of her body. For a moment she floundered with embarrassment, aware of her vulnerability and unsure of what to do. But he seemed to sense her shyness and taking her hands in his he kissed them before leading them to unbutton his shirt and his trousers until he was standing naked and proud before her. He pulled her against him and buried his face in the angle of her neck. Then his fingers ran up the inside of her thigh until they reached the line of her panties. Her legs nearly buckled under her, but he didn’t lead her to the bed but insisted she stand as they slid inside to where her longing lay hot and undisguised. She caught her breath as he stroked her with deft fingers,
watching the colour rise in her cheeks and her eyelids flutter with pleasure. Then when she had lost herself in his rhythmic touch, riding on the delicious waves of an uncharted sea, he swept her up in his arms and carried her to the bed where she was allowed to give in to the trembling of her legs and lie dazed and brazen for him to cover her body with kisses and the sensuous exploring of his tongue. Finally, gently, he entered her to possess her completely.
Torquil lay back and lit a cigarette. ‘I’ve never seen you smoke,’ she said, snuggling up to him.
‘Only after sex,’ he said, drawing the nicotine into his lungs. ‘And only the best.’
‘That was lovely, Torquil,’ she said and blushed at the recollection of her shamelessness.
He drew her against him with his arm and kissed her damp forehead. ‘You were lovely,’ he said emphatically.
‘So were you,’ she replied and laughed.
‘This is only the beginning. I want to take you on a lifetime adventure,’ he said, then looked at her steadily with his pale green eyes. ‘Once again, I know
I’m rushing in. But I know what I want.’ Federica blinked at him in bewilderment. ‘I want to marry you, Fede.’
Federica sat up in alarm. ‘You’ve only known me a few months,’ she protested, wondering what miracle had caused him to love her like he did.
‘But you love me?’ he asked frowning.
‘Yes, I do,’ she replied. ‘But marriage is for life.’
‘And I’m going to love you for life,’ he insisted, pulling her down to lie in his arms again. ‘Marry me, Fede, and make me the happiest man in the world. I know I’m older than you, but that’s just it. I know better what I want and I know what’s best for you,’ he said, kissing her again. ‘You need to be looked after and protected and that’s what I’m going to do. Look after you and protect you. You need never worry about anything again. Love cures everything.’
‘Yes, it does,’ she said, smiling at the intensity of emotion that she felt. ‘I love you so much. I’m just scared.’ She sighed. ‘I watched my parents’ marriage disintegrate. I just don’t want that to happen to me.’
‘It won’t, I promise. You won’t ever be scared again,’ he soothed. ‘If you marry me, you’ll be happy forever, I promise.’
‘If you’re sure you want me, then, yes, I’ll marry you,’ she said and laughed
happily. ‘Mrs Torquil Jensen. That has a certain ring to it.’
‘Nothing like the ring I’m going to buy you,’ he said and squeezed her so hard she almost had to fight for air.
Torquil pressed his lips against her forehead before dragging once again on his cigarette. How fortunate he was to have found Federica. Fate had been kind to him. She was perfect in every way. After the choruses of worldly city girls, her innocence enchanted him. Her naivety empowered him and her beauty and grace bedazzled him. With Federica he felt needed and adored. Aware that she was experiencing love for the first time he was touched and honoured that she had chosen him - an emotion that was new to him. He was her hero. She looked up to him, happy for him to make her decisions for her, content for him to always take the lead. Having sailed through life according to the meticulous coordinates set out by his father he was finally asserting control. His father wouldn’t like it. He had always been the dominant presence in his son’s life. Like the all-consuming shadow of a powerful oak tree the force of his nature had seemed inescapable. But in the last few years Torquil had been growing up and out of his father's shade. Every small move away he saw as a victory,
however minute the step. Now he was taking another, larger pace. Federica was his choice. No one could control his heart. It felt good.
When Federica returned to London she rang her mother to tell her the news. ‘Mama, I’m getting married,’ she said.
Flelena sat down. ‘You’re getting married?’ she exclaimed in horror. ‘To Torquil?’
‘Well, who else would it be?’ Federica replied and laughed happily.
‘But I haven’t even met him,’ she protested.
‘You will. I’ll bring him down this weekend.’
‘Sweetie, isn’t this all a bit hasty? You’ve only known him a few months.’
‘It’s what I want,’ she said firmly.
Flelena fell silent for a moment. She remembered her own hasty marriage to Ramon and shuddered. ‘You're only eighteen. You’re a child.’
‘No, I’m a woman,’ Federica replied with emphasis and smiled to herself. ‘Have you told Toby?’
‘Not yet,’ she explained. ‘I wanted to tell you first.’
‘Well, call Toby,’ she suggested. ‘I’m afraid this is all too sudden, I haven’t
met the man yet so I can’t make a comment. Why don’t you have a long engagement to give you both time to get to know each other?’
Torquil wants to marry immediately.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes. He’s so impulsive. Mama, we love each other,’ she insisted.
‘Your father and I loved each other too.’
‘It’s got nothing to do with you and Papa. This is me and Torquil, we’re two entirely different people. We both know what we want.’
Helena sighed heavily. As if Federica was old enough to know what she wanted?
When Toby heard the news he was devastated and furious. ‘Julian and I are going up to London immediately to talk to her,’ he told Helena briskly. ‘We’ll take the early train tomorrow. I know I’ve met this Torquil before, so has Julian, and although we can’t remember where, he certainly left a bad taste in our mouths.’
‘Try to talk some sense into her, Toby, she’s out of her mind.’
‘She won’t marry him, don’t worry,’ he replied.
‘She’s determined.’
‘I know. But she listens to me.’
Thank God, because she doesn’t listen to me any more,’ she replied defensively, remembering with the residue of an old bitterness how she always listened to her father. ‘Where are you meeting her? Won’t she be at work?’
‘No. Torquil’s made her give up her job. She’s languishing in his house in The Little Boltons.’
‘Very nice,’ said Helena tightly.
‘Very,’ Toby agreed. ‘We’re going straight there.’
News travelled fast. Polly was appalled and accidentally knocked one of Jake’s model boats onto the floor where it shattered into hundreds of small pieces. When he returned home from work in the evening to find his treasured creation in bits his mouth twitched with rage until he recognized the pain in his wife’s eyes, because they tended to droop like a sad dog when she was unhappy.
‘Federica’s marrying this man,’ she said helplessly.
Jake shook his head, ‘There are more model boats but only one Federica. I hope she knows what she’s doing,’ he said quietly.
‘She thinks she’s marrying her father,’ said Polly. ‘According to Ingrid, who hears it all from her girls, the man’s forty years old and looks just like Ramon.’ ‘Handsome devil then,’ he said.
‘Devil being the operative word, I fear,’ Polly replied gravely.
Helena was giving herself a manicure when she heard the newsflash on the radio. She wasn’t concentrating, half listening and half dreaming herself out of her mundane existence. But the words focused her thoughts into one small point that sent cold panic slicing through her veins with the violence of freshly sharpened knives.
The train that Toby and Julian had taken to London had crashed.
Chapter 31
Cachagua
Estella screamed and sat up in bed, staring into the darkness and panting in terror. Ramon was wrenched back from the hot African jungle into the cold fever of his lover’s nightmare. He stretched out his hand and switched on the light. He sat up and drew her into his arms, stroking her damp hair and murmuring words of reassurance. ‘Mi amor, it’s a bad dream, nothing but a bad dream,’ he said, feeling the thumping of her heartbeat vibrate against his body like a terrified creature desperate to break out. ‘I’m here, my love, I’m here.’
‘I dreamed of death.' she said, still feeling the icy claws of fear scratching at her skin.
‘It was just a dream.’
‘It’s a premonition,’ she replied steadily. ‘It’s the second time I’ve had it.’
‘Mi amor, you’re frightened of something, that’s all.’
‘It will happen a third time,’ she said, holding him tightly around his shoulders with trembling arms. ‘Then it will happen for real.’
Ramon shook his head and kissed her neck. ‘So, who died in your dream?’
he asked, indulging her.
‘I don’t know. I didn’t see his face,’ she replied, blinking away her tears. ‘But I fear it was you.’
‘It’ll take more than a dream to kill me off,’ he joked, but Estella didn’t smile.
‘Perhaps it was Ramoncito,’ she choked. ‘I don’t know.’
‘Look at me,’ he said, holding her gently away at arm’s length. ‘Look into my eyes, Estella.’ She stared at him with the hollow eyes of the tormented and watched him smile at her with love. ‘No one’s going to die. At least, you can’t predict a death in a dream. You’re anxious about something and it’s playing with your subconscious. Perhaps you’re worried about my trip to Africa.’
She nodded and sighed as the light in the room dispersed the dark horrors of her dream and slowly brought her mind back to reality. ‘Perhaps,’ she conceded.
‘I’m only going for a few weeks,’ he said. ‘I haven’t been away for a long time.’
‘I know. You’ve been a wonderful father to Ramoncito,’ she said and smiled.
‘And a good lover to you?’ he asked, raising his eyebrows and smirking.
‘And a good lover to me,’ she repeated.
He cocked his head to one side and frowned. ‘You know I’ll never leave you,’ he said. ‘You have no reason to be insecure. I’ll always love you.’
‘I know. And I will always love you, too.’
When Ramon turned out the light and gathered Estella into his arms she was unable to sleep. Not because she was no longer tired, but because she feared that she might dream of death for the third time, thus making it happen in reality. Her mother had once told her that she had predicted her own mother’s death in a dream. Three times she dreamed that her mother lay dying in front of a pink house. As she knew of no pink house she didn’t worry and forgot all about it. But a few weeks later her mother died of a heart attack tending to the honeysuckle that grew up the side of their white house. It was sunset and the wall glowed a warm, radiant pink. Estella lay fretting until sleep overcame her. When she awoke at dawn she realized to her relief that she hadn’t dreamed at all.
When Ramon had finally divorced Helena, Estella had hoped that he would marry her. This hope she guarded secretly, not even telling her parents. But to
her dismay he never mentioned marriage. He was contented the way things were. He was free to come and go without the psychological bind of a contract.
Mariana also hoped he would formalize his relationship with Estella. Over the years she and the mother of her grandson had become firm friends. Slowly the divisions imposed upon them by the nature of their places in the world fell away and they were free to live as equals. Estella included Mariana in the life of her son, calling her regularly in Santiago and enjoying her secret visits when she spent the long summer months in Cachagua. At first Mariana had longed to tell Ignacio about Estella and Ramoncito, but little by little she grew accustomed to her secret and it no longer troubled her.
Ramoncito was now eleven years old. He was dark haired and olive skinned like his parents, with the rich, honey eyes of his mother. He was carefree and independent like Ramon and sensitive like his mother, yet his nature was his alone and given to him by God. He was a child who gave only pleasure. He was contented to listen to his father’s rambling stories and collect shells on the beach with his mother. He sat talking to the tombstones with his grandfather and indulged both grandmothers with stories of his adventures with his young friends. He hadn’t inherited his father’s impatient desire to travel nor
his selfish need to satisfy his own longings at the expense of those of the people he loved.
Mariana said that he had been blessed with the best of both parents and she was right. She often saw Federica in the honesty of his smile and in the trusting innocence of his eyes, and she wondered whether Ramon saw it, whether he remembered and she consoled herself that she remembered for him. As long as she was alive, Federica and Hal would never be forgotten.
Ramon loved his son with an intensity with which he had once loved Federica. He still loved his daughter and often, when he was inventing stories for Ramoncito, his heart ached with nostalgia, because Federica had loved his stories too. Then he recalled that painful moment when his own negligence had reared up to throttle him with remorse.
He had seen her. Bicycling down the lane on her way home, her face aglow with happiness and exertion combined, ignorant that the man who passed her in the black Mercedes was her father. He had commanded the driver to stop the car at once. Federica, hearing the car screech to a sudden halt, had braked her bicycle and turned around, squinting into the sun. For a few moments, which seemed painfully long in his memory, he had watched her with longing,
fighting the impulse to open the car door and run towards her, to sweep her off her feet like he had always done when she had been a child. She was no longer a little girl. She was still small in stature, small for a thirteen-year-old, but her limbs were long and her face tha
t of a young woman; slim, angular, proud. He had suppressed an inner groan that threatened to break out into a desperate cry. Federica was on his lips and he had had to struggle in order to swallow her name. She had shielded her eyes against the sun with her hand, one foot on the pedal, one on the tarmac. Her hair was long and flowing in the wind. She still had the hair of an angel. La Angelita. But he had remembered what Helena had told him. Federica was happy without him. If he had embraced her as he had desired, his embrace would have been full of false promises. Promises of commitment, promises of devotion but above all the promise to prevent Helena from marrying Arthur and he knew he couldn’t do that. So, faced with promises he could not fulfil he had sadly asked the chauffeur to drive on. He had owed it to Helena to leave her free to marry Arthur and live in peace with her children.
He had returned to Chile consumed with regret and remorse. If only he had begged her to stay, nothing would have changed. He would still have a
relationship with his children. But that wasn't enough of a jolt to open his heart to what he had had and lost, for he had returned into the rose-scented arms of Estella and Ramoncito and once again Federica had retreated into the recesses of his mind where her cries for him could no longer be heard.
Estella told her mother about her nightmares. ‘I’m afraid.' she said as her mother lay in the armchair like a fat seal, fanning herself with an Hispanic fan. ‘I’m afraid that Ramon’s going to die in Africa.’
Maria dabbed her sweating brow with a clean, white panuelo that her mother had made for her and considered her daughter’s problem with care. ‘You must go and visit Fortuna,’ she said after giving the matter some thought.
To read my future?’ Estella replied anxiously. She had often heard people speak about Fortuna for she was the only black person anyone had ever seen. It was said that her father had survived a shipwreck when a cargo carrying slaves had sunk off the coast of Chile. Her mother had been a native Chilean who had taken him in and nursed him back to health. Fortuna lived in a small village up the coast and when she wasn’t lying in the sun watching the world pass her by she read people’s fortunes for a small fee. How she survived on so
The Butterfly Box Page 38
