The Butterfly Box (19 page)

‘We need to have a talk, Estella,’ she said, leading her into the sitting room. Estella knew she had been discovered and the beads of sweat collected on her brow. It was all over, for sure, she thought, and her chest constricted with panic.

‘I have taken the opportunity to talk to you tonight as my husband is not here. Woman to woman,’ said Mariana, smiling kindly at the trembling girl who perched on the edge of the sofa in discomfort.

‘Sí, Señora Mariana,’ she replied obediently.

‘You are pregnant, are you not?’ she asked, her grey eyes resting on Estella’s swollen stomach. She noticed the girl lower her eyes in shame and a large tear roll down her beautiful face. ‘I’m not angry with you, Estella.’ Estella shook her head in despair. ‘Surely this young man you’ve been seeing will marry you?’

‘I don’t know, Señora Mariana, he has gone,’ she stammered.

‘Wherever has he gone to?’

‘I don’t know, Señora Mariana. He’s just gone.’

‘Might he come back?’ she asked gently, observing the girl's obvious distress and feeling her heart sag with pity.

‘He promised he would. I believe him.’

‘Well, that’s all we can do, can't we? If you believe him then so do I,’ she said and smiled sympathetically. ‘We must find someone to replace you while you have your baby. Don Ignacio and I will be leaving for Santiago in a few days and won’t be returning until October. That will be near the time when you

have your child, I imagine. Please don’t cry, dear, we'll muddle through. If he promised to come back I’m sure he will. You’re too beautiful to leave in this condition,’ she said, patting Estella’s shaking hand.

‘You were right, Nacho, she’s pregnant,’ said Mariana later when her husband returned for dinner.

Ignacio rolled his eyes and nodded. ‘So I was right,’ he said.

‘Sadly, yes,’ she replied and sighed heavily. ‘What should we do?’

‘Who’s the father?’

‘She didn’t say.’

‘Did you ask?’

‘Well,’ she shrugged, ‘I tried to.’

‘The point is will he marry her?’

‘Of course not, he’s scarpered, hasn’t he?’ she said crossly, folding her arms in front of her. ‘It’s really not fair.’

‘It’s the way it works in their world,’ he said, dismissing her class as a group of uncultivated savages.

‘It shouldn’t be. She’s so beautiful and charming, what sort of a man would do that to her then run off?’

‘It happens all the time in their world. There’s no honour among thieves.’

‘Really, Nacho, they’re not all like that.’

‘No?’ he challenged. ‘I’ll bet you they are. In their world women are victims. That’s the way it is. She’s no different. She’ll have her baby, go back to her family in Zapallar and eke out a living somehow.’

‘Nacho!’ Mariana exclaimed in horror. ‘You’re not going to fire her?’

‘What do you want me to do?’ He shrugged.

‘She can work for us
and
look after her baby,’ she suggested calmly.

‘We’re not running a charitable organization here,’ he retorted firmly. Mariana noticed his ears go red, usually a sign that he was on the verge of losing his temper.

‘I can’t bear her to lose her livelihood as well as her fiance. We can’t be so heartless, Nacho.
Mi amor
, let’s not talk about it any more, we have five or six months to think about it.’

He nodded gruffly and watched her walk out onto the terrace. The problem with people, he thought to himself, is that they take no responsibility for their actions. Ramon is just as bad as Estella’s lover, he concluded, he brings

Ramon had slept with several women since he had left Chile and yet he still couldn’t erase the sweet memory of Estella that dogged his mind and refused to give him any peace. On top of that he felt guilty. He had told her to wait for him. He knew she would. The right thing would be to write and put her out of her misery and yet he couldn’t. He didn’t want to lose her. He wanted to keep the door open in case he woke up one of these mornings with the urge to go back to her. Sometimes he woke with a gnawing longing that racked his loins as well as his conscience and yet he managed, every time, to persuade himself that he couldn’t love her the way she wanted to be loved, the way all women wanted to be loved. Just like Helena. He couldn’t be there for her. He couldn’t be there for anyone.

Ramon sat on the old rickety train that cut through the arid western Indian desert on its way to Bikaner. The sun blazed down upon the roof of the train, cooking up a sweltering heat inside that smelt of sweat and the intoxicating aroma of spices that clung to his nostrils and made his throat dry. The compartment was crowded with the dusky brown faces of men in turbans of saffron and fuchsia, their dark-eyed children watching him with innocent curiosity and giggling behind grubby hands. They knew he was a foreigner in spite of his homespun kurta pyjamas and chappals. When he had entered at Jodhpur he noticed the women arrange their veils in front of their aquiline faces with an almost ethereal movement of their long bejewelled fingers to ensure their modesty. Their timid eyes were at once lowered behind their veils like exotic birds in mist. After a while they forgot he was there, watching them with the scrupulous gaze of a voracious storyteller and they chattered away among themselves in a language he didn’t understand. He loved Indian women. He was enchanted by their delicate femininity and their virtue, the graceful way they moved behind their glittering saris, bright flowers against so dry a desert. He didn’t prey on these women, they were paragons of virtue, but he found the mysterious theatre of their world too compelling a spectacle to tear his eyes away from them. He felt that if he made too abrupt a movement they would fly off to settle in the green leaves of one of those banyan trees that miraculously survived in such barren terrain.

The dust entered through the windows like thin smoke and settled wherever

it could. A bony old Indian sat cross-legged in the corner under a scarlet turban and unloaded his tiffin box, arranging the aromatic food and utensils around him with the ritual of a priest. He had taken up two seats in spite of the weary passengers who crowded the corridors for lack of places. A small child watched the man arrange his food, dribbling with hunger and hopeful that if he stared hard enough the man might offer him a bite.

Suddenly the train screeched to a frantic halt. Ramon looked out of the window through the horizontal bars. The compartment erupted out of its somnambulant state into confused chatter as the passengers left the train to see why it had stopped. Ramon watched them all spill out onto the desert like ants. Soon the heat grew too intense for him to stay inside without being fried alive and he too joined them to choke in the dust under the sun. As he descended he noticed a beautiful European woman move through the crowd with the gracelessness of a mule walking through a herd of elegant sambar. Just like Helena, he thought to himself and guessed she must be British. She was striding impatiently towards the throng that had gathered around the railway track. Her face was pinched with irritation and yet she still managed to look down her nose with a haughtiness more at home in the days of the Raj. She wore a pair of white trousers and knee-high riding boots, revealing long legs and a shapely bottom.

He grinned to himself and strode up to her. ‘Do you want some water?’ he asked in English. She blinked at him from under her hat that resembled a pith helmet.

Thank you,’ she sighed, taking the bottle from him. After gulping down a large swig she exploded into complaints. ‘What the bloody hell has happened? The train was late leaving and now we’ll be late arriving. Nothing goes when it says it will in this country.’

Ramon laughed. ‘This is India,’ he said, looking her up and down.

She narrowed her pale blue eyes and scrutinized him back. He could have been Indian but his accent gave it away.

‘Angela Tomlinson,’ she said, extending her hand and looking at him steadily-

‘Ramon Campione,’ he replied, taking it.

‘Spanish?’

‘Chilean.’

‘More exotic. I’m afraid I’m from England,’ she said, smiling at him. ‘That’s

not very exotic.’

‘Only to the British,’ he said. She laughed and wiped her freckled face with a firm hand. ‘I think England’s very exotic.’

‘Well, you must be the only one. Aren’t I lucky to have found you!’ she chuckled.

‘I imagine it’s an animal on the line, or a person,’ he said, squinting into the sun but he couldn’t see past the multitude of Indians clamouring to see for themselves what had fallen onto the track.

‘How horrid. Will it take long?’ she asked, screwing up her nose in distaste.

‘Why are you in so much of a hurry?’

‘I’m meant to be in Bikaner already. Meetings, you know. I’m boringly punctual, I’m afraid. Hate to keep people waiting.’

‘What’s your business?’

‘Hotels. I’m a consultant. We’re constructing a new hotel, the one I’m to stay in will be much less glamorous I should imagine.’

‘But infinitely more charming,’ he said, imagining the kind of monstrosity her company was constructing.

She smirked flirtatiously. ‘What takes you to Bikaner?’

The tides.' he replied. She looked at him, impressed.

‘That’s all?’

‘That’s all.’

They stood chatting for a while, during which time a dead cow was dragged off the track and laid out on the sand for the flies and birds to peck at. Slowly the weary passengers wandered back to the train and into the throbbing heat of the carriages. Ramon followed Angela into her first class carriage and the train lurched back into motion once again. First class wasn’t all that different from the crowded carriage he had been travelling in before, the aroma of spices and wafts of dust invaded the compartment, which was also overcrowded with chattering Indians and desperately hot. Angela sat beside the window allowing the wind to cool her down. She closed her eyes and let it wash over her. She reminded Ramon in a strange way of Helena and he found himself wondering about her and his children. He was so far away it was difficult to imagine them in England, settling into Polperro, forgetting that he ever existed. But Angela possessed the same gracelessness as Helena, that very same directness that belonged only to the British and he found himself, in spite of his efforts, missing her.

Angela had arrived too late for her meeting. ‘God, I’ll be hung, drawn and quartered,’ she complained, fiddling with her watch in agitation.

‘You’re not going to change the time by playing with it,’ said Ramon, ushering her past the throbbing crowd of people and into a taxi, where a wizened old man sat at the wheel of a dusty car embellished with tinsel, carrying on his shoulder a small grey monkey who played with the swinging pack of plastic gods that hung from the mirror.

‘I know. It’s just so unlike me,’ she whined.

‘Look, this is India. They’ll know the train was late - nothing runs on time. You can have your meeting tomorrow. One of the many reasons I could never work for anyone else is because I couldn’t hack someone controlling the way I spend my time,’ he said.

‘Lucky old you,’ she exclaimed.

‘Why don’t you branch off on your own?’ he suggested.

‘I’d be far too lazy and irresponsible.’

‘Sometimes it’s fun to be irresponsible.’

‘Yes.’ She sighed and caught him looking at her intensely. ‘I suppose you’re going to invite me out for a drink now?’

‘If you like.’

‘I think I need one.’

‘Good.’

‘Let’s go to my “infinitely more charming” hotel,’ she said and laughed.

‘Good idea. I hadn’t thought about accommodation.’

‘Just going with the tides.’

‘Exactly.’

‘Well, darling, you’ve been washed up on my shore,’ she said and placed her hand on his. ‘Lucky me.’

Making love to Angela only reminded Ramon of his wife and of Estella. Her English accent made his stomach lurch with the memories of his last few days with Helena and consequently turned his thoughts to his children, yet the scent of her body and the taste of her skin only encouraged him to miss Estella by virtue of the fact that Estella tasted infinitely sweeter. It was a disappointment. He may as well have been a horse for she rode him furiously with the stamina of a professional jockey. When she was satisfied she had flopped onto the bed and fallen asleep like a man. He looked across at her pale blotchy

skin and knotted hair and knew that he couldn’t spend another minute in her bed. He got up, dressed and left without so much as a goodbye note.

He walked out into the sultry night air. The dawn was already seeping gold into the cracks in the sky and the monkeys were skipping on the rooftops, chasing one other across the shadows. He felt melancholic. Bad love always made him morose and he craved the poetic love of Estella. Sitting under the vast desert sky he pulled out of his rucksack the pen and paper he had stolen from Angela’s hotel room and began to write to Federica. He wrote with the intention of it being read by Helena. He missed her, which was strange, as that feeling had been covered in dust for many years due to lack of use. He had never missed her before. But he missed the idea of her. She was no longer there for him. He felt he couldn’t just ‘rock up’ like he used to. He missed Federica’s adoring face. He even missed Hal whom he had never really bonded with. His base camp had gone. Now he had nowhere to go home to. Not even in his dreams.