Shooting Butterflies (29 page)

‘Grief lasts as long as there are people willing to pay hourly fees. Anyway, didn't you tell me yourself that the reason you found it so difficult to get over the death of your mother was that you were too young to remember what she was like. It's the loss of a dream you're grieving over.'

Grace had not expected such understanding. ‘I never knew you could buy a heart at Harvey Nic's,' she said.

But Angelica herself was in love. She had reached the mellow stage when the all-engulfing flames of passion had died down to a manageable warm fire, but had not yet been doused by the cold water of realisation that life with Nick was much the same as it had been with Tom and Derek.

‘You are so sane, so cool-headed and firm, but when you meet a man you disappear into the nearest phone box as Wonder Woman and emerge in your mother's pinny. I don't get it, Angelica.'

‘Of course you do.' Angelica looked at Grace, all wistful smile and sad eyes. ‘No woman is a prophet in her own heart.'

‘I
think
I understand what you are saying, sort of. I just wish you'd stop trying to please these men whose nature it is to remain displeased, whose very lifeforce seems to spring from discontent.'

There had been no way of pleasing Tom, because in his eyes how could anyone fool enough to love him be worthy of respect? And then there was Derek who fell in love with an independent career woman in killer heels and pillar-box-red lips, only to wipe down her lips with a damp cloth and hand her some comfy flats the moment she was his. That was before running off after the next woman with a bright-red come-hither smile and stiletto heels. And now there was Nick. Angelica always hoped things would change for the better. Hope saved lives, hope was the greatest gift given
to mankind, but hope was also a knave. Hope makes us carry on. Hope makes life possible. Hope, Grace thought, was what made her stomach lurch whenever she glimpsed a tall loose-limbed man with dark auburn hair or heard a male voice speak in a soft East Coast accent. Another name for Hope was Dumb-chip. But this time, as it happened, the Dumb-chip was not so dumb after all.

Nell Gordon:
The rekindling of an old love affair led to renewed heartache.

She slipped on a leaf. It can happen in autumn if the leaves have fallen suddenly and not been cleared and rain has followed, turning them to a soapy mush. She was coming out from the dentist who had told her that she was lucky her teeth were as white as they were but also that if she did not stop chewing tobacco they would soon be as yellow as an old dog's. ‘What about polishing?' Grace said. She did not like the thought of giving up the tobacco. You needed both your hands for the camera so cigarettes were often not an option. But she needed tobacco in some form or another. She imagined that it kept her alert. Grace had a horror of inertia, ever since those days, as black and still as a forest mere, that had followed her miscarriages.
The universe rewards action. The roots of evil grow in sloth
. She repeated such little mantras to herself daily to kick herself into action and to keep going. And then there was nicotine which did its part.

She had had two cavities and on her way home she was walking without attention, her tongue teasing the outline of the fillings. She stepped on the leaf and lost her foothold, falling face down on to the pavement, her hands busy protecting the Leica. She lay there hurt and dizzy until someone put out a hand and helped her to her feet. Blood was trickling from her nose and forehead. She felt sick. A voice said, ‘Are you all right?'

‘Yes,' she said, still unable to focus, still bleeding. ‘Absolutely spiffing, thanks very much,' and she hobbled off hanging on to the railings for support. ‘Shall I call an ambulance?' the someone called after her. Grace just raised one hand in the air, waving off the suggestion. She knew there was a café just yards away. She
would sit down. Have a cup of tea. Check in the mirror to see if her nose was broken.

Stars of gold and red shot across her blurred vision. Later, because it amused her, she took a photograph of a brilliant night sky and called it
Pain
.

She had washed the blood off her face and hands and was sitting at a table by the window with her pot of tea for one, a jug of milk and the miniature pot of honey she carried in her handbag, when she noticed someone walk past outside, stop, walk back, walk off again only to return, stare in through the glass at her and enter.

‘It's not?' the voice said. Grace was too sore to bother turning her head. ‘Grace? Grace Shield.'

Soft male voice, East Coast American. Now she did look up. ‘Jesus!'

‘Not exactly. Have another guess.'

Grace stared at him. ‘Jefferson?'

‘That's it. Can you believe it? How long has it been?'

‘If you are real and not a hallucination, sit down and order some tea.' She was trying not to stare at him while she worked out how she felt; there were too many emotions running through her all at once for one to stick right away.

Jefferson McGraw sat down opposite Grace at the table in the café by the dentist. ‘You look a bit bashed about. Are you OK? Grace, can I take you to see a doctor?'

‘No, it's all right. It's just I was wondering if I was unconscious or something.'

‘You don't seem unconscious.'

Angelica had once said that if Grace ever did meet Jefferson again she would wonder what on earth she had seen in him. Angelica had been wrong. Grace scrabbled in her bag for her cigarettes, offering him one. He took it and offered her a light in return. She inhaled and gave him a pale smile. He grinned back, the wide-open smile she remembered so clearly.

‘How about that?' he said. ‘Of all the people in all the places …'

‘Good,' she said.

‘What?'

‘A hallucination would have come up with something a bit more original.' For a second coming something a little more startling is usually required.'

‘I like clichés,' he said, just as he had back when they were lovers. ‘They're so true.'

She must have hurt herself quite badly, because for no reason her eyes filled with tears. She turned away and pretended to blow her nose, actually wiping her eyes. Jefferson shot her a concerned glance as he moved his hands from the table to his knees and then he raised the right one to the back of his head in a stretching yawning movement as if about to scratch an itch. As their eyes met he lowered his hand to his side. Next he placed it on his hip in ‘Hello, sailor' fashion before turning the fist around to inspect the nails. He raised it again, this time to scratch his ear. Grace knew how he felt. You spend most of your life perfectly comfortable with your hands, then comes a moment when they take on a life of their own, popping up everywhere like the snout of an over-excited dog.

‘You never ordered,' Grace said. ‘Shall I get you some tea?' She realised that she was staring, and quickly looked over at the waitress. He said he would love some. Grace wondered how anything could seem so impossible and so normal both at once; she, him, together, on an autumn day in London. She chatted on, the words coming faster and faster as she avoided his gaze. ‘You won't believe this, but I've been seeing you. Of course it can't really have been you … can it? So what are you doing in London? You don't live here, do you?' Now she looked straight at him, he was sitting, back to the window, askew in the chair, long legs crossed, playing with his packet of Marlboros. The sun appearing from behind a cloud picked out the auburn glints in his hair. He always had understood the importance of lighting.

‘I'm over visiting clients. We've opened an office over here. I come over about once every two months. So it probably was me you've been seeing.'

‘Animals?'

‘Pardon me,' he said.

‘Your clients.'

‘No, no, I wouldn't say that. They're rich, most of them, I suppose, but that doesn't make them animals.'

Grace's forehead was throbbing and her nose felt as if it had grown two sizes. ‘Aren't you a vet?'

‘A vet?' He laughed. When she did not laugh with him he checked his watch. Her gaze followed his. She knew that hand: average size, long square-tipped fingers, clean nails bitten right down. And that hand knew her, every inch of her. She felt the heat in her cheeks and looked away. ‘It's almost lunchtime,' he said. ‘I think you should have something to eat.'

‘I'll dribble.'

‘You never used to.'

‘I've been to the dentist.' She opened her mouth wide.

‘Have some soup,' he said, glancing at the menu. Then, ‘Are you sure you shouldn't go see a doctor? Head injuries are not to be trifled with.'

Her eyeballs felt as if they were being slow-baked in their hollows. She blinked and blinked again. ‘What is to be trifled with?' she said, feeling suddenly and unaccountably sad. ‘Life, death, people, feelings, head injuries, pets, livers, hearts? Really, when you think about it, there's very little that can be trifled with. Or you could say that as life is essentially impossible – I mean, who would believe it – there's everything to be trifled with. I'll have a chicken sandwich. I'll chew on my good side.'

‘Not feeling dizzy, wanting to throw up?'

‘No more than usual. It's just having seen you all those times and then us bumping into each other like this. It's like fearing being mugged or getting cancer; we fret, tell ourselves that it's bound to be our turn next but when it is – our turn, I mean – we stand there, amazed, aggrieved, our hands raised skywards asking, “Where did that come from? Why did this happen to me?”'

‘Mugging, cancer and me; that's nice.'

She smiled into her cup and then looked straight at him, holding her gaze steady. You could barely see it but he flinched and then he flushed pink. He gave her an uncertain smile. He had filled out a little, especially round the jaw. It suited him. His mouth was as firm as she remembered and still stretched impossibly when he smiled, and his bright-blue eyes had that perky watchful look
that she had loved; the look of a puppy told to lie still, watching, waiting, ready for action at the first sign of anyone willing to play. And there she was, as angular as ever, same straight hair falling to her shoulders, still pale but with more freckles from more years in the sun. And her skin was not as young as his. She had crow's feet from all that squinting into the lens. Still, she imagined that to a passer-by they looked good together, although she might come across as a little stern, someone who would give that easy-looking guy a hard time.

‘So what do you do, if you're not a vet?'

He looked puzzled for a moment then he sat back, laughing indulgently at the boy he used to be. ‘Of course back then I wanted to become a vet.'

‘You were going to open a wildlife clinic where people could bring in injured and sick animals and have them treated free of charge.' She could hear the faintly querulous tone to her voice, the voice of someone who had been told the restaurant was all out of wild strawberries and knew they must try to be adult about it. ‘I really loved that about you.' She should not have said that because now they were both embarrassed. Whatever would she come up with next?
Oh, and then you cheated on me with that pink-bubblegum girl and broke my heart, leaving me alone and pregnant, although I miscarried of course.

Grace became dogged, the way she often did when in a tight spot. ‘I never thought you would change your mind about being a vet. You were passionate about it.' There was that reproachful tone to her voice again.

This time he noticed it too. ‘You sound as if I've let you down.'

All the times she had thought of him on seeing an injured animal on the road. She had to smile then as she remembered all those long-ago fantasies of her turning up at his practice with a little crushed body in her arms, him striding towards her and relieving her gently of her burden. And it had been a good match: she took pictures of suffering and he relieved it. She blushed just thinking about it now. Why could she not just have masturbated like a normal person?

‘Actually, I'm a lawyer.'

‘A lawyer! So you wouldn't have healed that poor little animal, you would have sued it for dripping blood on your corporate carpet.'

‘What animal? Which carpet?'

‘Oh, never mind.'

He asked her, ‘What do you do?'

‘Photographer.'

‘So one of us stuck to our youthful passions.'

She lit another cigarette before remembering to offer him one. ‘Thanks. Actually, my wife thinks I've given up.'

Of course he was married. It was entirely to be expected. Even Grace had been married, for a while. ‘Children?'

He nodded, looking proud, as if he was about to haul out a wallet full of snapshots. ‘Three girls.'

And our boy. But all she said was, ‘Three girls, goodness. And what about their mother?'

He cleared his throat, not quite looking at her as he answered. ‘Actually, you know her. It's Cherry. We got married.'

Grace thought about it. ‘That's good,' she said finally.

He looked relieved. ‘You think so?'

‘I do. At least you didn't break my heart over some passing fancy.'

He had always been touchy-feely, quick to empathise. Now he leant forward and, in a quick gesture of sympathy, put his hand over hers as it rested on the table. ‘I didn't really break your heart, did I?'

Grace withdrew her hand and gave him a straightforward sensible look as she lied, ‘Of course you didn't. We were young. I was upset at the time, but a broken heart …' She inhaled on her cigarette and smiled through the smoke. ‘It's the usual inflation of words: a cold is the new flu, a headache is a migraine, a man doing his job is a hero and England's collapse at cricket is a tragedy.'

She could see that he did not quite believe her and that he was concerned. His face, although conventionally handsome, owed its particular charm to its mobility, the way feeling was translated into expression. She had not realised until years later, when she did fashion shows of models whose faces looked like still photographs even in life, that she had shown precocious
skill in capturing that liveliness in those early photographs of him.