Shooting Butterflies (33 page)

‘You were right,' I say later to Arthur. ‘I was a fool for ever thinking I could be anything other than an amateur, and an indifferent one at that.'

‘No, not at all, my dear,' he says, taking my hands in his and lifting first one, then the other to his lips, kissing each and every one of my fingers. ‘It's never wrong to strive. What's wrong is not to accept when one has reached one's limitations. And you know
how stern, how uncompromising Donald Argyll is. He was asked to judge you alongside professional artists, men of note. Had he seen your pictures in the context of a lady's accomplishments his judgement would have been made accordingly.'

‘You mean it would have better befitted the crime?' I try to smile.

He laughs. ‘No, Louisa, not at all. What I'm saying is that the fault is not with your work but with your aspirations.'

A few weeks later he returns from a couple of days in London and tells me that he has talked again to Donald Argyll. ‘He asked me to give you his regards and to tell you that if you feel a need for a creative outlet you should consider textile work. He told me, and this is praise indeed from a man like Argyll, that you have an interesting way with colour.'

‘Could he not have said that at the time?' I mumble but I do not make an issue out of it. His other comments made it quite clear what he thought and so did Arthur's reaction. He had been ashamed at the poor quality of my work; that's why he had looked angry. I think that was what affected me most … that my husband thought my work so poor he was ashamed. But my failure as an artist had served the purpose of bringing Arthur and me closer together. I could not have enough of my husband when he spoke to me in such a good-natured interested manner; as if we were truly friends and confidants. How could I have been so ungrateful, so unfair, the way I had almost hated him lately? Look at him, so handsome, so gentle and caring. I step towards him and put my arms round him, resting my cheek against the rough tweed of his coat. He quickly frees himself with a shrug and a small laugh.

Of course he had his moods and his tempers. But I had known that when I agreed to marry him. He had told me himself, as he knelt before me in the wet grass that had quite destroyed his white flannel trousers, that he was a tricky fellow. That's how he put it: ‘I'm a tricky kind of a fellow, given to all kinds of moods and tempers. I want you to know what you're taking on, Louisa my darling, my solemn Madonna.' He said I reminded him of medieval panels of a stern yet serene Mary, staring out at the world and its pain and sorrow with unblinking eyes.

I store away the good moments and, during the bad, indifferent days, they sustain me.

I'm expecting once more. I wish I were not. I fear the pregnancy will destroy the new closeness between us. After Lillian was born Arthur confessed that he did not much like the way a woman's body changes in pregnancy. ‘Of course I know it's not your fault,' he added, ‘it's nature's way, but I would be lying if I said it was attractive.' And I know that he is jealous of the love I give my children although he will never admit it. He is a good man at heart and he wants his children to have a good and loving mother. The problem is that he also wants a wife who loves only him.

When John is born it is obvious from the moment the cord is cut that something is wrong. The midwife shakes her head and tuts before catching my eye and trying a wan smile. Later my new son's father and grandmother bend over the crib and stare down him, finding nothing to say. They don't stay long.

‘You'd think they'd ordered beef and been given tripe,' Jane says to Nanny. They are just outside my open door but she doesn't bother to lower her voice. I can hear Nanny rebuking her, saying this is no time for glib remarks.

I know he will not live. And I know why. He will not live because his own mother wished it so. I had wished it from the moment I knew of his existence. I had railed against every extra inch on my waist and every vein showing on my breasts; oh, I hated the child growing inside me for keeping my husband out of my bedroom and alone at night I had whispered poison. ‘I don't want you, do you hear? You're ruining everything.' I wished the life from my baby through the days and weeks of red rage, through the orange weeks of smouldering resentment and the charcoal months of bitter melancholy. And I was heard. Now I gaze down at my transparent child, and I weep. ‘Be careful what you wish for because one day it might come true.'

Georgie tells me that today the baby is ‘very well, it seems'. I had held John in my arms only moments before and had seen no improvement in his tiny waxen face. I whispered, ‘I love you,' even
as I knew I was too late. But I also know that Georgie is trying to cheer me up the best he can, so I nod and smile and say yes, maybe he is right, maybe John is better this morning. ‘Lillian wanted to come and say hello but when Nanny told her she could go for a ride in the big wheelbarrow she did that instead.'

‘That's fine,' I tell him. ‘Not everyone likes little babies the way you do.'

‘But you and I, we like them very much.' He climbs up on my bed to sit next to me. After a moment he clambers on to his hands and knees and peeks over the edge at the baby in his crib. ‘If you promise to get well I shall show you my toys,' he says.

‘That's a good kind boy,' I say.

‘He is looking at me but he won't smile. Why won't he smile at me?'

‘He is too little. He hasn't learnt how to yet.'

Georgie tugs at my sleeve. ‘But he's staring. It's rude to stare.
You
look.'

I lean across the bed and I have to clamp my hand over my mouth to stop the scream.

Jefferson stood on Grace's doorstep on a fine mid-winter day, a shiny brown leather suitcase in his hand. She stared at him as if he was a photograph come to life. ‘You haven't muddled up the days, have you?' he asked as he stepped inside. ‘You
were
expecting me?'

She shook her head, then changed her mind and nodded. She kept her distance and he didn't encroach. ‘Are you OK?' He lifted his hand and traced a smile in the air. Now she took a step towards him, walking into his arms.

Later, after he had had a shower and something to eat, she tried to explain. ‘You leave and go back to your family and it hurts; it really hurts, here.' She frees one hand, bashing her chest with her clenched fist. ‘I toss and turn in bed. I wake up sweating, my heart racing from all the devils chasing my sleep. My work suffers because wherever I point my camera I see you. My mind is not on what I'm doing, only on what
we did
, what
we
will do. I am a poor friend because while I listen I am only thinking of you. It's hopeless, this love; it sucks the life out of me.'

‘Do you really mean that?'

‘Yes, but it's worth it as long as you will still love me when all that's left of me is a little desiccated gnome with a Leica dangling round her neck.'

‘As long as that Leica keeps dangling I know you'll be all right.'

‘I don't ever want to use emotional blackmail, you understand? I just need to complain a little and for you to say you understand how hard it is for me and how much you admire me for coping so wonderfully.'

‘You say it so much better than I could ever hope to do. And don't hit me. No, darling, of course I understand. But has it occurred to you that it's not that easy for me either, being apart from you?'

‘For you it's different. You've got your children; all that family activity.'

‘And you have your work, which you love as if it were your family, and you have your stepmother and lots of friends. Now,' he kissed her briefly on the lips, walking her backwards towards the bedroom as he spoke, ‘now, do you think I could take you to bed?'

‘You're selfish and insensitive with a one-track mind and the answer is yes.'

They were down in Northbourne walking in the rain. Jefferson had wanted to see where she had gone after she left Kendall, where she had grown up. ‘You're at an advantage,' he had said. ‘You know exactly where I come from. You even knew my parents.'

‘I was disapproved of by your parents; that's slightly different.' He opened his mouth to protest and then clamped it shut and smiled. ‘Good boy,' Grace said, smiling back. ‘Not trying on the bullshit. Anyway, as it would prove complicated, in fact impossible, for me to introduce you to my parents, I'll show you Mrs Shield.'

To Mrs Shield she had said only that a friend from the US was visiting and could they come for lunch. ‘Stay the night,' Mrs Shield had offered before trying to find out about Jefferson. Grace would only tell her that she knew him from her summer in Kendall and that they had kept in touch.

‘He isn't that boy you were so broken up about?'

‘No, no, of course not.' Grace had come a long way from the days when she could not tell a lie.

‘The one who changed your mind about going to Cambridge.'

‘He didn't change my mind, I did.'

‘Ha! So it
was
him.' Grace just sighed, shifting the receiver from one ear to the other. ‘What's that, dear? You disappeared. Anyway,
he
had one of those funny Christian names that sound like a surname. I remember at the time thinking how very odd Americans must be to look at a tiny wee baby and say, “I know, let's call him or her Anderson or Harrison or Maddison … and as for Ladybird …”'

‘Well, his name ain't Ladybird,' Grace had reassured her. ‘Jefferson is a good friend. I thought you might like to meet him, that's all. But there's no point if you're going to be asking
questions all the time. He wants to see the area so if we could stay the night it would be great. But we'll be off first thing the next morning. We have to get back to London.'

There was another reason for Grace not wanting to linger at Mrs Shield's. She just knew that there was a limit to how long she could sit in the same room with Jefferson and not be found out as a woman who adored him. In his presence she was not entirely herself. There she was now, sitting so primly on the very edge of the sofa in the beamed and floral sitting room of Mrs Shield's little cottage, her eyes as moony as a heifer's and her smile smug and greedy both at once. And there she was giggling and talking in a girly voice. Mrs Shield was no fool. She kept shooting Grace meaningful little glances. ‘You might as well be semaphoring,' Grace hissed at her when Jefferson excused himself to go to the bathroom.

‘And so might you, my girl.'

Grace meant to frown but it turned into a big grin instead. ‘I'm happy, Evie. I sit here knowing that at any moment now he'll reappear through the door and that simple fact is enough to … don't laugh … to make my heart sing.' Grace was crossing and uncrossing her long legs as she spoke, inspecting her newly painted, already chipped nails, as fidgety as a five year old.

‘Oh Grace, you have got it bad.' Mrs Shield moved right up close on the sofa. ‘But dear, just don't get hurt again. There's been enough of that.'

Grace smiled and then she sighed. ‘I don't know that I have much say in the matter.'

Touching Grace lightly on the shoulder, Mrs Shield said, ‘Remember that you
do
have a say in how you take what comes your way.'

‘I saw a shrink once and that's exactly what she said.'

‘All shrinks, as you call them, say that.'

‘And you would know.'

‘I know everything,' Mrs Shield said.

‘I like her,' Jefferson said the next morning, after they had managed to prise themselves away from Mrs Shield's bear-like embrace. As they drove off down the short drive Grace wondered how it was that, when you said goodbye, her stepmother
always managed to look half the size she'd seemed when you arrived.

‘I'll tell you a secret,' Grace said, ‘I like her too.'

‘Why is it a secret and why, when you speak of her, do you call her Mrs Shield and not “my stepmother” or her first name or even Mother?'

‘Childhood stuff, inevitably. I spent years after my mother died secretly waiting for her to come back. I had not been allowed to see her at the hospital but I had overheard my father telling Aunt Kathleen that she was “disfigured beyond recognition”. I clung on to that phrase, thinking it had been a case of mistaken identity; all my favourite books back then were big on mistaken identity. I had it all worked out: the memory loss, the years of aimless wandering. When she didn't come back I started blaming it on Mrs Shield, telling myself that my mother knew her place had been taken by someone else. Oh, I was a muddled child, and cross. I called her Mrs Shield as a way of spiting them both, her and my father, and to keep my distance, I suppose. But I grew older and stopped thinking my mother might come back. I got used to Mrs Shield. I grew fond of her; I even remember the exact moment of recognition: I was sitting at the kitchen table at The Gables, doing my times tables, and she was making my tea. I looked up at her and there she was, the way she always was at five o'clock when I got back from school, standing by the stove in her ghastly pink frilly Doris Day apron. And I loved her for it, for always being there. I wanted to make her happy in return so I decided that I was finally going to call her Mummy. But when it came to it I just couldn't. I tried Evie and that's what I call her to her face, but I had grown used to Mrs Shield.'

‘I'm the antithesis of always being there,' Jefferson said quietly.

Grace took her left hand off the wheel, raising it to his cheek, holding it there for a moment. ‘Yes, you are. But that's all right; my expectations have gone down since childhood.' He laughed but he squeezed her hand hard.

Once they reached Northbourne, Grace parked the car on the verge outside a large white-rendered 1920s house, the kind that would have looked more at home in the London suburbs than in the country. ‘That's where we lived, that's The Gables.'