she believed, at one point, she had truly known happiness. She couldn’t help but wish for something else, something more, something better. She seemed always dissatisfied. But Arthur’s patience was limitless. He felt he understood his wife. She had been neglected and hurt. She needed attention and understanding not severity. He was sure that given time she would soften and allow herself a piece of happiness. He was certain his love was enough.
The wilder Hal became the tighter Helena held onto him. As a child he had been eager to please, though never as accommodating as his sister. Federica had always been self-sufficient. Like her father, she had been happier in her own company. But Hal had always needed his mother and her unwavering attention and if anything had distracted her from him he had soon found ways of getting her back again. But Helena despaired at his sudden change of character, as if he had been possessed by the spirit of someone else. Someone bent on self-destruction.
Hal was far more complex than his mother believed. Like a clear river Hal’s nature was lined with a thick layer of silt accumulated over a long childhood of emotional upheaval. It only needed a bit of agitation for it to churn up and turn the water cloudy. It was his mother’s marriage to Arthur and subsequent
events that set his heart in turmoil. But the seeds had been sown many years before, as a child, that summer in Cachagua.
At the age of four Hal was painfully aware of his father’s obvious affection for Federica. Unable to express his jealousy in anything other than tears and tantrums, Helena had selfishly believed that he sensed the ill ease between his parents and wanted to protect her from Ramon. But Hal longed to be gathered up into the ursine arms of his father and loved like Federica was loved. He felt dejected each time Ramon left the house with his sister and although he had loved his train he had been envious of the attention Federica was given over her butterfly box. When Ramon stayed at the beach house instead of accompanying them to lunch in Zapallar, Hal had taken it, in his own limited way, as a rejection. Ramon barely noticed him and each slight settled into the silt in his character to one day resurface in the form of wretchedness and rebellion. So he had cleaved to his mother like bindweed, suffocating her with his neediness until she could think only of him. Then Helena had failed to tell him that they were leaving Chile for good and promised to give Federica a dog. Hal, unused to being passed over by his mother, took it as a rejection. Desperate not to
lose her he clung to her with all his strength, even managing to sleep in her arms at night, exploiting the emptiness Ramon had left and filling it with a need that replenished Helena’s longing to be loved.
As he had grown up so had his self-awareness. He felt guilty loving his mother with such intensity and suffered terrible mood swings, adoring her one moment and loathing her the next. He made every effort to hate Arthur because his mother loved him, but he had liked Arthur in spite of himself. Partly because of Arthur’s good qualities, but also because his sister hated him and he saw how much her rebellion upset his mother. Hal had always wanted to please Helena so the jealousy bubbled quietly in the pit of his stomach like black tar, to be placated only when he sensed that she didn’t love Arthur like she loved him. Her love for her son was as strong as ever. Arthur gave him the attention his father should have given him and Hal found himself responding to his kindness with a thirst that had built up over the years. He embraced him with the same neediness as he embraced his mother. Arthur made time for him, listened to him, bought him gifts, took him out just the two of them - all the things Ramon had done for Federica and what’s more, Federica despised him. Arthur belonged exclusively to Hal and his mother. It was Federica’s turn
to be out in the cold - until Helena had allowed her to live with Toby and Julian.
From that moment on he felt the painful separation from his sister, whom he looked up to and adored. Once more Federica had received special treatment. He suffered silently, unable to communicate his resentment and distress. So he found comfort in the underworld of drink and cigarettes.
At twenty-one Hal was in his final year at Exeter Art school, studying History of Art. But he somehow managed to fall into a group from the university and for the duration of his course, no one knew he wasn’t a university undergraduate.
He shared a house with five of his new friends, situated in the middle of a muddy field with no heating and electricity which constantly needed to be activated by slotting money into a meter. There were mice droppings in the kitchen drawers and bags of rubbish by the wall outside which no one could be bothered to move. The house was cold in summer and freezing in winter but they lit the fires and slept in thick jerseys. Hal didn’t do any work. He had only agreed to go into further education because he couldn’t make up his mind what he wanted to do. As long as he was in education he didn’t have to. It gave him
three more years to fritter away doing very little.
He smoked because all the other boys smoked and besides, it kept him warm. He drank because it made him forget his worthlessness and his mother, who called him every day to check that he was all right and to dig her clutches in deeper as her husband failed to fulfil her. Alcohol gave him confidence. While the effects lasted he was as charismatic, enigmatic and self-assured as Ramon Campione. During those fleeting hours he even looked like him.
The lows were unbearable. His insecurities would invade the armour the drink had built around him and gnaw at his self-esteem more venomously than before. When the money dried up Helena gave him more, without questioning why he needed it. She didn’t ask Arthur, she just gave him what Arthur gave her. When that was no longer enough he seduced Claire Shawton, a mousy girl with a thin, pallid face and long, skinny legs because her father was Shawton Steel and there was no shortage of money in her bank account. Keen to hold on to the dark, impenetrable Hal, Claire gave him money for his drink and his cigarettes, his gambling and his extravagance.
‘I’m not an alcoholic,’ Hal explained to her when she protested. ‘It relaxes me. I’ll pay you back, I promise. I’m having trouble getting around the trustees,
that’s all.’ But there were no trustees because there wasn’t a trust. Only Helena’s blind generosity.
Claire Shawton’s uses extended only as far as her bank balance; sexually she couldn’t begin to satisfy Hal. He went about his sexual adventures with the same destructiveness with which he confronted everything else in his life. He slept with dozens of girls, promised them devotion and commitment, then dropped them as soon as they wanted a relationship outside the bedroom. Claire knew of his transgressions but instead of closing her cheque book and walking away she gave him more money and received the kisses that followed with pitiful gratitude.
When Hal returned to Cornwall for the holidays Arthur noticed immediately that he was gaunt and pale, unable to sit still or concentrate for very long. He slept most of the day and stayed up watching videos until the early hours of the morning. When Arthur approached Helena on the subject she excused him by saying that he was overtired, studying too hard and needed the holidays to rest.
‘Don’t hassle him, Arthur, he’s very sensitive about it,’ she said
proprietorially. ‘He’s got no confidence as it is. Let me deal with this.’
Once again Arthur rolled his eyes and backed off. Helena had been cold and distant in the last few months. She was prone to moods, adoring one moment, aloof the next, but he was used to that. He wasn’t used to the consistent ill humour that now seemed to dominate her personality. Like a diminishing candle, her affection for him seemed to be getting noticeably less and less as each day passed. If he didn’t do something the flame would go out altogether. But he didn’t know what to do. In despair he wondered whether she was seeing someone else.
Helena was seeing someone else. She was seeing Ramon. When she closed her eyes at night and when her mind drifted off by day and finally when she lay in the rough arms of Diego Miranda, she saw the awesome face of Ramon Campione. The only man she believed she had ever loved. She ha
d cried enough bitter tears of remorse to sink one of Diego’s ships. She had looked back on her life and recognized her mistakes. Mariana had been right, you often don’t know what you have until it is gone.
She knew where Ramon was. But she hadn’t heard from him in years. She
hadn’t even bothered to find him to tell him about his own daughter’s wedding. She now wished she had. It would have been a good excuse. Now there was no reason to call him.
Helena hadn’t gone out of her way to have an affair. She hadn’t even considered it, or desired it. Her heart was somewhere in the past, barely concentrating on the present at all. She had been in the pub in Polperro with Arthur, one cold summer Sunday, when a strange young man with long black hair and deep black eyes had accidentally knocked into her, pouring her glass of red wine all over her pale cashmere sweater. She had lost the little patience she had, not so much with him, but with life and the misery of it all, flinging her arms in the air and swearing furiously.
‘I’m so sorry,’ he exclaimed, turning to the barman in desperation. The barman handed him a dishcloth and he proceeded to dab at her chest in his confusion. ‘I cannot apologize enough,’ he said when Helena stared at him in horror.
‘Your accent,’ she stammered. ‘Where are you from?’
‘Spain.’ She felt her stomach turn over and her head spin with a strange sense of deja vu. He sounded just like Ramon. When she gazed into his eyes
she believed they too resembled Ramon’s, until in her state of yearning she believed he was Ramon’s shadow, split from him by magic, all the way from Chile.
‘Diego Miranda,’ he declared, extending his hand.
‘Helena Cooke,’ she replied. ‘I used to live in Chile,’ she added, forgetting the wet stain on her sweater.
‘Really?’ he responded politely. ‘You must speak Spanish.’
‘Yes, I do,’ she enthused, her voice hoarse with excitement. ‘But I haven’t spoken the language for many years.’
‘You never forget a language like Spanish.’
‘No, I think you’re right,’ she agreed, drifting on the music in his voice that seemed to call her from the misty shores of the far-distant past. ‘What do you do?’
‘Shipping.’
‘Ah, the Armada.’ She laughed.
‘Something like that,’ he replied indulgently. ‘Please let me give you my address so you can send me the bill.’
‘Bill?’
The bill, for the dry cleaning,’ he said, frowning at her in amusement.
‘Oh, yes, the bill.’ She giggled, watching him smile and feeling her stomach turn all over again. ‘Do you live in Polperro?’
‘No, just passing through.’
‘Oh.’ She sighed, trying to hide her disappointment. ‘Where are you staying?’
‘With friends.’
‘Sightseeing?’
‘Yes.’
‘How strange,’ she recalled, shaking her head. ‘I met Ramon sightseeing too.’
‘Who’s Ramon?’ he asked.
‘Another life,’ she said, brushing it off and smiling through the memory. ‘I took him around the old caves and smuggling haunts. The places you can’t find in guidebooks.’
Diego’s eyes twinkled with interest. ‘Really?’ he said, then grinned at her from under his thick Spanish eyes. ‘I’m afraid I’m following the map.’
‘You mean, your friends aren’t showing you around?’
‘They don’t have time, they work,’ he said, watching her mouth curl up at
‘If you want a guide, I could show you some of the places very few people know about. I grew up here, you see,’ she explained.
‘I would be honoured,’ he replied, kissing her hand and bowing.
She gave him a wide, carefree smile before she was distracted by Arthur’s insistent waving from the other end of the pub. ‘Oh God!’ she sighed irritably. ‘I completely forgot about him. Don’t worry,’ she responded to his inquisitive frown, shaking her head. ‘Meet me here tomorrow at eleven.’ He nodded in understanding and raised an eyebrow, unable to believe his luck. He had noticed her rings and her husband’s concern. He was Latin after all.
Diego was surprised by Helena’s enthusiasm for an affair and imagined she had had many. She drove him around the coast and allowed him to make love to her on the cliff in the car overlooking the sea. Later she invited him home to her house where she took him to her bed. She enjoyed the firm way he handled her, the confident way he kissed her, the sensual way he caressed her. She closed her eyes and demanded that he speak to her only in Spanish, then she projected her mind across the waters and across the years to a time when
The first time Arthur had trouble turning the tap in the shower he had been surprised. Helena always left it dripping. The second time he was perplexed. The third time his intuition told him that another man had used it. He leant back against the wall to steady himself as his heart plummeted to his feet. In the last few days Helena had been friendlier, happier, she hadn’t snapped at him or ignored him. She had embraced him with fondness and quite obviously guilt. He let the hot water pound onto his skin, drowning out the screaming in his head that refused to give him peace to think rationally.
He had believed her detachment to be rooted in her anxiety over her troubled child. Worrying about Hal had become a full-time occupation. He hadn’t understood it as a symptom of her waning affection for him. He worshipped her. Sex had never been a problem; they had loved and laughed together in bed even during the difficult times. He was sickened at the thought of her giving herself to another man. He was wounded by her blatant rejection of him in spite of all his efforts to please her.
He wondered who it could possibly be. But Arthur wasn’t stupid. He wished
he were because it was all too easy and therefore too painful. He had noticed her talking to the dark foreigner in the pub. She had returned to the table crimson-faced and distracted. She had kept looking over at him, watching him, lowering her eyes coyly when he returned her stare. Arthur hadn’t liked it, but he had indulged her. There was nothing wrong with a harmless flirt if it made her feel happier, more attractive.
She had left with Arthur in a buoyant mood and talked all the way home in the car. Usually she stared bleakly out of the window responding to his attempts at conversation in monosyllables. But he hadn’t suspected anything. He hadn’t imagined she could be so devious.
After despair came anger. He thrust the palm of his hand against the wet tiles of the shower room as his lungs filled with fury, causing him to wheeze in torment. He thought of their first kiss, their first touch, their wedding day and their initial marital contentment and felt nothing but hatred and loathing. Then he recalled with precision the many hurtful things she’d said to him, the uncaring manner in which she had treated him and bit his lip with self-loathing. He had taken it all because he loved her. But now he had suffered one humiliation too much.
‘I will never forget the face of the Polperro beauty.' Diego said, running his finger down Helena’s face, where it lingered on her satisfied lips before following the line of her chin, pulling it towards him and kissing her.
Helena sighed with pleasure. ‘When do you leave?’ she asked, carelessly revealing the desperate whine in her voice.
‘Tomorrow.’
‘Tomorrow?’ she repeated, the sweat breaking out on her forehead and nose. ‘You mean, that’s it?’
‘You know your problem?’ he said, shaking his head at her.
‘What?’ she replied, pulling away in offence.
‘You’re too needy.’
‘Needy?’ she retorted. ‘I’m not needy.’
‘Yes you are, mi amor. You’re needy and it’s suffocating. You’re like an overwhelming octopus. Once in your arms a man feels he can’t escape.’
‘How dare you,’ she snapped, climbing out of the hotel bed.
‘Helena, mi amor, I’m not criticizing you,’ he insisted, smiling in amusement at her sudden change in humour. ‘You�
��re a beautiful woman. You’re fun, too. I’m sure you break hearts all over Cornwall.’
‘But not yours.’
‘Helena,’ he said indulgently. ‘Come here.’ She walked sulkily back to the bed where she sat down on the edge and allowed him to caress her hair. ‘You’re like a fallen angel. You found me because you were lonely. You’re a discontented woman, any man can see that. But don’t worry, there will be others.’
‘What do you mean, others?' she exclaimed in disgust.
‘Other men. Surely, mi amor, I’m not the first man you have betrayed your husband with?’
‘Well, of course you are. What do you think I am? A whore?’
‘Please, don’t misunderstand me,’ he said quickly, attempting to correct his error.
‘I want you to go,’ she said icily, suddenly regretting that she had ever met him. Hearing the echoes of Ramon’s indifference resound across the years she wondered why she had only remembered the magic.
‘Helena.’
‘I do. Now!’ she continued, getting up and throwing his clothes at him. ‘I wanted you because you remind me of someone. But I’ve been a fool! You’re
as much of an illusion as he is. I’ve been dreaming, but I’ve now woken up.’ Diego squinted at her, trying to understand what she was saying. ‘Get out!’ ‘Come on, Helena. Don’t be cross,’ he cajoled, reluctantly standing up. ‘At least let us part as friends.’
‘We were never friends in the first place,’ she replied. ‘We were lovers, but now that is gone, we are nothing.’
‘What happened to this “illusion”?’
‘He never really existed,’ she snapped. ‘Just like you.’
‘You’re too desperate, Helena. You drive men away.’
‘Go!’
‘It’s true. But we made good love,’ he said with a smirk, pulling on his shoes. ‘You’re a desirable woman, Helena Cooke.’
‘I don’t want to see you ever again!’ she shouted after him. The door slammed and he was gone. ‘God, what was I thinking?’ she exclaimed to herself, sinking into the chair. All that remained was the unmade bed and a heavy sense of self-disgust. She held her head in her hands and heaved with fury. How dare he think she would betray her husband with just anyone? How could she have been so misguided? She thought of Arthur and was suddenly filled
The Butterfly Box Page 48
