Magpie Hall (27 page)

We didn’t go to the police about Josh’s assault. In the end we decided that losing his job was punishment enough — the family tossed him aside without a thought, without any consideration of the loyalty he had felt to the farm and to Grandpa. He was offered a plot of land to buy but he declined. I doubt he could have afforded it anyway, as my parents well knew. It was a token gesture. Perhaps if I’d had some say I would have been more lenient on him and fought for his right to stay, just as Grandpa had promised him, but every time I looked in the mirror I knew that was not possible. It was his wife and kids I felt sorry for. I wondered if Tess was still haunting him, but I got the feeling she had done what she came for.

I finished my thesis that winter: depictions of romantic love in Victorian Gothic novels. I wrote holed up in my flat where it was warm, and avoided the university as much as I could. I needed to get the work out of the way so I could move on with my life. There were no more digressions, no more fantasies to write, and the pages about Henry and Dora stayed in a box under my desk.

I went back to Magpie Hall in the spring, when most of the renovations were finished. I couldn’t face going alone, so I took Charlie with me. The builders had done a beautiful job, with new windows and walls as smooth as eggshells. The rooms were full of space and sunlight; despite a cold wind outside and the absence of a fire, with proper insulation it was as warm inside as a summer’s day. The old carpet, once thick with dust and dog hair, was gone, replaced by wooden floors, stripped back and waxed black, keeping in tune with the style of the house. I surprised myself by wishing we had done it sooner, that we hadn’t let Grandpa go on living in such an unhealthy place. Perhaps he would have lived longer if he’d only
had more warmth; clearer, drier air.

My family had agreed to let me keep the menagerie room as it was, as a point of interest for visitors, they said, but I think they knew it was a valuable collection and they wanted to keep an eye on it. I didn’t mind. In this room at least, I could keep Grandpa’s memory alive.

Before I opened the door, Charlie stopped me with a hand on the doorknob.

‘They found something else,’ he said. ‘In the walls. They weren’t sure what to do with it all, so they just added it to the collection. Grandpa left you all the animals, so we figured these might as well go to you as well. Unless you’ve got any other ideas.’

When I stepped into the room, the first thing I noticed was that it was several degrees colder than the rest of the house. Good for preserving the animals, but it only served to illustrate the difference between the old house and the new. The next thing that struck me was the number of birds that were piled up on the workbench, perhaps fifty of them, maybe more.

I don’t know why I thought they were magpies. The flash of black and white I suppose; maybe my head was still clouded by the story I had written. But I soon realised what they were. Their red wattles had faded and dried like flower petals, and they had different beaks — the curved for the female and the blunter, less showy one for the male. All their beautiful tail feathers, black with a bright white tip, were intact. They were not small birds, but lying there, they looked so vulnerable. Henry hadn’t even bothered to pose each one, to bring it back to life. He had merely swept the huia up out of the bush, like a handful of pebbles, and stuffed them with their wings folded in, their eyes empty and their feet — tagged with luggage labels in Henry’s tight script — tucked into their bodies, for easy storage and transportation. They lay there, looking as dead as could be.

I took one bird back home with me — the huia I had loved as a child. The one that had fuelled all our misconceptions about Henry, causing us to believe that he was different from other men of his time; that he respected endangered birds and the rights of Maori to have their dead left undisturbed. The rest of the collection stayed where it belonged, but I knew I didn’t want those huia in the house. They would have to go to a museum, and the story would come out. Perhaps it would even make enough of a splash to warrant a small column in the local newspaper, just as the bones had.

I placed the huia on a high shelf in my bedroom, where it would be safe from Rita’s drunken guests, and went downstairs to see Roland. I waited while he finished up a job, a man with a shaven head getting his bicep covered with skulls.

‘What was the significance of those?’ I asked Roland, after the guy had left, clutching his antiseptic cream.

‘Said it was for all the mates he’d lost in car accidents. Quite sad, really.’

I thought of Sam. I wondered if he had found work elsewhere. If I’d see him again.

‘What have you brought me?’ asked Roland.

I showed him the book I was holding, and opened it onto the right page.

‘Can you do something like this? Only a bit more stylised?’

He examined the picture. ‘Sure. Give me tonight to work on it. Come back tomorrow first thing. I’ve got nothing on.’

The following morning I put on a vintage 1950s halter dress splashed with flowers to go with the brightness of spring. It showed off my tattoos nicely. I was always given curious looks when I dressed like this: the juxtaposition between the pretty, old-fashioned
dress and the sailor tattoos confused some people. Then I fussed about completing the look: curling my fringe under, applying liquid eyeliner to my top lids, flicked out at the sides, red lipstick, and red high heels that clacked down the stairs to the tattoo shop. Roland sat in the only sliver of sun that would penetrate the building all day, and would soon be lost behind the hills. He unfurled his long body when I appeared and pulled out a piece of paper from his pocket. He squinted at it through his little round glasses before handing it over.

‘Is this what you had in mind?’

His design had captured perfectly the essence of what I wanted to convey.

‘It’ll take a couple of visits, at least. I’ll start with the outline today, then we’ll book you in for the shading.’

I took off my cardigan and lay face down on the padded table, my head in a pillow that smelled of lavender. Roland shaved the area on my back, just above my shoulder blades, then rubbed it with Vaseline. I felt the whisper of paper as he transferred the sketch onto my skin, and I wished that gentle caress was all I would feel. Even after ten tattoos I had never really got used to the pain. Perhaps this would be my last. I couldn’t imagine what more I could want or need, or where I would put another.

‘Starting now.’

I closed my eyes and pressed my face into the crook of my arm, smelt the sharp tang of sweat that suddenly sprang up. Beside me, Roland would be dipping his needle into the tiny pot of black ink. I heard the hum of the tattoo machine start up and waited for the buzz, for that first scorching sting; I concentrated on my breathing so I wouldn’t flinch.

Usually Roland worked silently, to be able to focus, but I preferred
it when he talked. It took my mind off the pain, so I was glad when he spoke.

‘You know, I have something to tell you.’

I waited for him to go on, breathing in through my nose, out through my mouth until the pain was at a point where I could imagine it turning to heat and dissipating.

The needle shut off as he refilled it. He wiped my back with a cloth.

‘I’m shutting up shop. Moving to Wellington.’ He started up again and I forgot to breathe. I flinched as the needle went in.

‘How come?’ I asked.

‘Business isn’t doing so well. This place is changing. Haven’t you noticed? It’s all couples now, with kids. All the cafes that are springing up. They’re like cold sores, don’t you think? It’s just not the place for misfits and freaks any more.’

‘So what’ll happen to the building?’

‘Sorry, love.’ He stopped working again, patted my shoulder. ‘You’ll probably have to move out.’

I nodded and kept my face buried. Took a deep breath.

‘You okay?’ he asked.

‘I’ll be fine,’ I said. I thought of my little flat up there, stuffed with ephemera. It was probably way overdue for a cull anyway. It’d do me good. It would be an impossible task to pack it all up and move somewhere. It was true what Roland said about the port. Rents were hitting ridiculous heights. I’d be lucky to find a room in a house with a whole lot of people for that price.

‘I’ll be fine,’ I repeated, and gave in to the pain.

When he had finished, I stood up, feeling woozy. Roland took my arm to steady me, and led me over to the mirror that took up one wall of the back room. It was surrounded on all sides by photographs
of Roland’s work — patches of skin, red and raised and freshly inked, shining with Vaseline, including my magpie, which had now moulded to my wrist and become a part of my body.

‘You ready?’ he asked. I nodded and he held up another mirror behind me, so I could see his work. And there it was, just as I had imagined, curving gently with the contours of my back, the arc of its beak cupping my shoulder blade. The delicate outline of its wattle awaited the colour that would bring the huia to life and make it sing on my body forever.

I am grateful to the following people: Julia De Ville, for allowing me to use aspects of her life and work to build my story, and for sharing her knowledge of taxidermy; Mark at Ink Grave, for answering my questions on tattooing and letting me watch him work; Gillian Arrighi, for information on nineteenth-century circuses; Gareth Cordery at Canterbury University, for letting me sit in on his inspiring lectures on the nineteenth-century novel, thereby changing the course of
this
novel forever; the New Zealand Society of Authors and the Lilian Ida Smith Trust; Creative New Zealand for a generous grant and again, along with Canterbury University, for the Ursula Bethell Residency in 2008 — it gave me freedom and space and resources that would not have otherwise been available to me; my editors, Harriet Allan and Anna Rogers, and my wonderful agent Vivien Green; my crew, Kate
Duignan, Katy Robinson and Susan Pearce, for incisive criticism and much love and encouragement; Richard Lewis, Paul Cunningham and Hannah Holborn, all of whom I am yet to meet face to face but who have become trusted early readers; Sharon Blance and Brence Coghill; the Brunette Mafia; Christchurch City Libraries and Under the Red Verandah cafe for unwittingly providing me with an office away from home; Ros Henry for a sharp editorial eye and again, along with David Elworthy, for helping out tirelessly with family matters so I could write; Thomas Rutherford, for patiently sharing me; lastly, and most importantly, Peter Rutherford, without whom writing this novel really wouldn’t have been possible, and to whom it is dedicated.

Winner of the NZSA Hubert Church Award for Best First Book of Fiction at the 2007 Montana New Zealand Book Awards, and translated into seven foreign languages.

In 1904, the young lepidopterist Thomas Edgar arrives home from a collecting
expedition in the Amazon. His wife Sophie is unprepared for his emaciated
state and, even worse, his inability — or unwillingness — to speak
.

Sophie’s genteel and demure life in Edwardian England contrasts starkly with the decadence of Brazil’s rubber boom, as we are taken back to Thomas’s arrival in the Amazon and his search for a mythical butterfly. Up the river, via the opulent city of Manaus — where the inhabitants feed their horses champagne and aspire to all things European — Thomas’s extraordinary, and increasingly obsessed, journey carries him through the exotic and the erotic to some terrible truths.

Back home, unable to break through Thomas’s silence, Sophie is forced to take increasingly drastic measures to discover what has happened. But as she scavenges what she can from Thomas’s diaries and boxes of exquisite butterflies, she learns as much about herself as about her husband.

‘Rachael King has written a wonderful novel … which sets a new standard for first-time writers in this country.’
Herald on Sunday

‘So lucidly does she write you can easily imagine the sweat dripping down your back and the night noises in the jungle. She knows how to tell a story too … The story hums along. I read this book in two days, such was the grip it had on me.’
North & South

‘Not just readable but entertaining, imaginative and funny.’
Sunday
Star Times

‘Engaging and tremendously well imagined [and] … a ripping yarn. A natural-born writer, King’s prose flows as strongly as the Amazon, rich with easy lyricism … This is a complete meal of a novel, ambitious and well planned.’
The Australian Literary Review

‘[Rachael King’s] mesmerizing combination of narrative, diary pages and letters reveals the true terror that Edgar experienced in the Amazon, where he witnessed one man’s inhumanity to his own people … a captivating story.’
The Washington Post

‘King’s easy narrative moves back and forth from the stultifying social confines of early 20th-century England to the sultry and seductive world of the rainforest … Rich and evocative,
The Sound of Butterflies
is an enjoyable debut.’
Financial Times

‘There’s a potent array of material here: a love story, exotic settings, sex, travel, colonialism, some disturbing scenes of abasement and brutality, and, at the heart of the book, the mystery of Thomas’s silence. Tension builds and as the novel goes on, King’s narrative is well paced.’
The Listener

‘With her first novel, Rachael King proves herself one of our most promising writers. Her intelligent gaze snags on quirky details of personality or place or on mostly forgotten history, and spins captivating and provocative stories from them.’
Next Magazine

‘… an impressive novel filled with lyrical prose and clearly defined characters. The seductive setting gradually draws the reader into the hot, dangerous world of the Amazonian rainforest … The portrait of a man driven mad by his quest for perfection … is most convincing and had this reader up until the early hours. I look forward to King’s next novel.’
The Christchurch Press

‘
The Sound of Butterflies
fuses Edwardian gentility with obsession, murder, and a glimpse of the giddy excess of the Brazilian rubber boom … It’s convincing, told in prose as opulent as one of Thomas’s specimens.’
The
Observer

‘In this debut novel about love, betrayal and devotion, King offers a vibrant portrayal of a jungle inner-world and the characters who roam
within it… Sensuous descriptions and multidimensional characters carry the novel. Gross displays of wealth, intense bloodlust and the immense beauty and danger of the jungle enrapture, providing a sharp contrast to the tightly-corseted society of early 20th-century England. As Thomas’s quest for his perfect butterfly becomes a symbol for flawlessness that does not exist, both he and Sophie must learn to live with their imperfections and adopt a more real, honest love. As lush and captivating as the jungle in which it is set.’
Kirkus Review