The Butterfly Box (43 page)

‘But you love me?’ he asked frowning.

‘Yes, I do,’ she replied. ‘But marriage is for life.’

‘And I’m going to love you for life,’ he insisted, pulling her down to lie in his arms again. ‘Marry me, Fede, and make me the happiest man in the world. I know I’m older than you, but that’s just it. I know better what I want and I know what’s best for you,’ he said, kissing her again. ‘You need to be looked after and protected and that’s what I’m going to do. Look after you and protect you. You need never worry about anything again. Love cures everything.’

‘Yes, it does,’ she said, smiling at the intensity of emotion that she felt. ‘I love you so much. I’m just scared.’ She sighed. ‘I watched my parents’ marriage disintegrate. I just don’t want that to happen to me.’

‘It won’t, I promise. You won’t ever be scared again,’ he soothed. ‘If you marry me, you’ll be happy forever, I promise.’

‘If you’re sure you want me, then, yes, I’ll marry you,’ she said and laughed

happily. ‘Mrs Torquil Jensen. That has a certain ring to it.’

‘Nothing like the ring I’m going to buy you,’ he said and squeezed her so hard she almost had to fight for air.

Torquil pressed his lips against her forehead before dragging once again on his cigarette. How fortunate he was to have found Federica. Fate had been kind to him. She was perfect in every way. After the choruses of worldly city girls, her innocence enchanted him. Her naivety empowered him and her beauty and grace bedazzled him. With Federica he felt needed and adored. Aware that she was experiencing love for the first time he was touched and honoured that she had chosen him - an emotion that was new to him. He was her hero. She looked up to him, happy for him to make her decisions for her, content for him to always take the lead. Having sailed through life according to the meticulous coordinates set out by his father he was finally asserting control. His father wouldn’t like it. He had always been the dominant presence in his son’s life. Like the all-consuming shadow of a powerful oak tree the force of his nature had seemed inescapable. But in the last few years Torquil had been growing up and out of his father's shade. Every small move away he saw as a victory,

however minute the step. Now he was taking another, larger pace. Federica was
his
choice. No one could control his heart. It felt good.

When Federica returned to London she rang her mother to tell her the news. ‘Mama, I’m getting married,’ she said.

Flelena sat down. ‘You’re getting married?’ she exclaimed in horror. ‘To Torquil?’

‘Well, who else would it be?’ Federica replied and laughed happily.

‘But I haven’t even met him,’ she protested.

‘You will. I’ll bring him down this weekend.’

‘Sweetie, isn’t this all a bit hasty? You’ve only known him a few months.’

‘It’s what I want,’ she said firmly.

Flelena fell silent for a moment. She remembered her own hasty marriage to Ramon and shuddered. ‘You're only eighteen. You’re a child.’

‘No, I’m a woman,’ Federica replied with emphasis and smiled to herself. ‘Have you told Toby?’

‘Not yet,’ she explained. ‘I wanted to tell you first.’

‘Well, call Toby,’ she suggested. ‘I’m afraid this is all too sudden, I haven’t

met the man yet so I can’t make a comment. Why don’t you have a long engagement to give you both time to get to know each other?’

Torquil wants to marry immediately.’

‘Really?’

‘Yes. He’s so impulsive. Mama, we love each other,’ she insisted.

‘Your father and I loved each other too.’

‘It’s got nothing to do with you and Papa. This is me and Torquil, we’re two entirely different people. We both know what we want.’

Helena sighed heavily. As if Federica was old enough to know what she wanted?

When Toby heard the news he was devastated and furious. ‘Julian and I are going up to London immediately to talk to her,’ he told Helena briskly. ‘We’ll take the early train tomorrow. I know I’ve met this Torquil before, so has Julian, and although we can’t remember where, he certainly left a bad taste in our mouths.’ ‘Try to talk some sense into her, Toby, she’s out of her mind.’

‘She won’t marry him, don’t worry,’ he replied.

‘She’s determined.’

‘I know. But she listens to me.’

Thank God, because she doesn’t listen to me any more,’ she replied defensively, remembering with the residue of an old bitterness how she always listened to her father. ‘Where are you meeting her? Won’t she be at work?’

‘No. Torquil’s made her give up her job. She’s languishing in his house in The Little Boltons.’

‘Very nice,’ said Helena tightly.

‘Very,’ Toby agreed. ‘We’re going straight there.’

 

News travelled fast. Polly was appalled and accidentally knocked one of Jake’s model boats onto the floor where it shattered into hundreds of small pieces. When he returned home from work in the evening to find his treasured creation in bits his mouth twitched with rage until he recognized the pain in his wife’s eyes, because they tended to droop like a sad dog when she was unhappy.

‘Federica’s marrying this man,’ she said helplessly.

Jake shook his head, ‘There are more model boats but only one Federica. I hope she knows what she’s doing,’ he said quietly.

‘She thinks she’s marrying her father,’ said Polly. ‘According to Ingrid, who hears it all from her girls, the man’s forty years old and looks just like Ramon.’ ‘Handsome devil then,’ he said.

‘Devil being the operative word, I fear,’ Polly replied gravely.

Helena was giving herself a manicure when she heard the newsflash on the radio. She wasn’t concentrating, half listening and half dreaming herself out of her mundane existence. But the words focused her thoughts into one small point that sent cold panic slicing through her veins with the violence of freshly sharpened knives.

The train that Toby and Julian had taken to London had crashed.

Chapter 31

Cachagua

Estella screamed and sat up in bed, staring into the darkness and panting in terror. Ramon was wrenched back from the hot African jungle into the cold fever of his lover’s nightmare. He stretched out his hand and switched on the light. He sat up and drew her into his arms, stroking her damp hair and murmuring words of reassurance.
‘Mi amor,
it’s a bad dream, nothing but a bad dream,’ he said, feeling the thumping of her heartbeat vibrate against his body like a terrified creature desperate to break out. ‘I’m here, my love, I’m here.’

‘I dreamed of death.' she said, still feeling the icy claws of fear scratching at her skin.

‘It was just a dream.’

‘It’s a premonition,’ she replied steadily. ‘It’s the second time I’ve had it.’

‘Mi amor,
you’re frightened of something, that’s all.’

‘It will happen a third time,’ she said, holding him tightly around his shoulders with trembling arms. ‘Then it will happen for real.’

Ramon shook his head and kissed her neck. ‘So, who died in your dream?’

he asked, indulging her.

‘I don’t know. I didn’t see his face,’ she replied, blinking away her tears. ‘But I fear it was you.’

‘It’ll take more than a dream to kill me off,’ he joked, but Estella didn’t smile.

‘Perhaps it was Ramoncito,’ she choked. ‘I don’t know.’

‘Look at me,’ he said, holding her gently away at arm’s length. ‘Look into my eyes, Estella.’ She stared at him with the hollow eyes of the tormented and watched him smile at her with love. ‘No one’s going to die. At least, you can’t predict a death in a dream. You’re anxious about something and it’s playing with your subconscious. Perhaps you’re worried about my trip to Africa.’

She nodded and sighed as the light in the room dispersed the dark horrors of her dream and slowly brought her mind back to reality. ‘Perhaps,’ she conceded.

‘I’m only going for a few weeks,’ he said. ‘I haven’t been away for a long time.’

‘I know. You’ve been a wonderful father to Ramoncito,’ she said and smiled.

‘And a good lover to you?’ he asked, raising his eyebrows and smirking.

‘And a good lover to me,’ she repeated.

He cocked his head to one side and frowned. ‘You know I’ll never leave you,’ he said. ‘You have no reason to be insecure. I’ll always love you.’

‘I know. And I will always love you, too.’

 

When Ramon turned out the light and gathered Estella into his arms she was unable to sleep. Not because she was no longer tired, but because she feared that she might dream of death for the third time, thus making it happen in reality. Her mother had once told her that she had predicted her own mother’s death in a dream. Three times she dreamed that her mother lay dying in front of a pink house. As she knew of no pink house she didn’t worry and forgot all about it. But a few weeks later her mother died of a heart attack tending to the honeysuckle that grew up the side of their white house. It was sunset and the wall glowed a warm, radiant pink. Estella lay fretting until sleep overcame her. When she awoke at dawn she realized to her relief that she hadn’t dreamed at all.

When Ramon had finally divorced Helena, Estella had hoped that he would marry her. This hope she guarded secretly, not even telling her parents. But to

her dismay he never mentioned marriage. He was contented the way things were. He was free to come and go without the psychological bind of a contract.

Mariana also hoped he would formalize his relationship with Estella. Over the years she and the mother of her grandson had become firm friends. Slowly the divisions imposed upon them by the nature of their places in the world fell away and they were free to live as equals. Estella included Mariana in the life of her son, calling her regularly in Santiago and enjoying her secret visits when she spent the long summer months in Cachagua. At first Mariana had longed to tell Ignacio about Estella and Ramoncito, but little by little she grew accustomed to her secret and it no longer troubled her.

Ramoncito was now eleven years old. He was dark haired and olive skinned like his parents, with the rich, honey eyes of his mother. He was carefree and independent like Ramon and sensitive like his mother, yet his nature was his alone and given to him by God. He was a child who gave only pleasure. He was contented to listen to his father’s rambling stories and collect shells on the beach with his mother. He sat talking to the tombstones with his grandfather and indulged both grandmothers with stories of his adventures with his young friends. He hadn’t inherited his father’s impatient desire to travel nor

his selfish need to satisfy his own longings at the expense of those of the people he loved.

Mariana said that he had been blessed with the best of both parents and she was right. She often saw Federica in the honesty of his smile and in the trusting innocence of his eyes, and she wondered whether Ramon saw it, whether he remembered and she consoled herself that she remembered for him. As long as she was alive, Federica and Hal would never be forgotten.

Ramon loved his son with an intensity with which he had once loved Federica. He still loved his daughter and often, when he was inventing stories for Ramoncito, his heart ached with nostalgia, because Federica had loved his stories too. Then he recalled that painful moment when his own negligence had reared up to throttle him with remorse.

He had seen her. Bicycling down the lane on her way home, her face aglow with happiness and exertion combined, ignorant that the man who passed her in the black Mercedes was her father. He had commanded the driver to stop the car at once. Federica, hearing the car screech to a sudden halt, had braked her bicycle and turned around, squinting into the sun. For a few moments, which seemed painfully long in his memory, he had watched her with longing,

fighting the impulse to open the car door and run towards her, to sweep her off her feet like he had always done when she had been a child. She was no longer a little girl. She was still small in stature, small for a thirteen-year-old, but her limbs were long and her face that of a young woman; slim, angular, proud. He had suppressed an inner groan that threatened to break out into a desperate cry. Federica was on his lips and he had had to struggle in order to swallow her name. She had shielded her eyes against the sun with her hand, one foot on the pedal, one on the tarmac. Her hair was long and flowing in the wind. She still had the hair of an angel.
La Angelita.
But he had remembered what Helena had told him. Federica was happy without him. If he had embraced her as he had desired, his embrace would have been full of false promises. Promises of commitment, promises of devotion but above all the promise to prevent Helena from marrying Arthur and he knew he couldn’t do that. So, faced with promises he could not fulfil he had sadly asked the chauffeur to drive on. He had owed it to Helena to leave her free to marry Arthur and live in peace with her children.

He had returned to Chile consumed with regret and remorse. If only he had begged her to stay, nothing would have changed. He would still have a

relationship with his children. But that wasn't enough of a jolt to open his heart to what he had had and lost, for he had returned into the rose-scented arms of Estella and Ramoncito and once again Federica had retreated into the recesses of his mind where her cries for him could no longer be heard.

Estella told her mother about her nightmares. ‘I’m afraid.' she said as her mother lay in the armchair like a fat seal, fanning herself with an Hispanic fan. ‘I’m afraid that Ramon’s going to die in Africa.’

Maria dabbed her sweating brow with a clean, white
panuelo
that her mother had made for her and considered her daughter’s problem with care. ‘You must go and visit Fortuna,’ she said after giving the matter some thought.

To read my future?’ Estella replied anxiously. She had often heard people speak about Fortuna for she was the only black person anyone had ever seen. It was said that her father had survived a shipwreck when a cargo carrying slaves had sunk off the coast of Chile. Her mother had been a native Chilean who had taken him in and nursed him back to health. Fortuna lived in a small village up the coast and when she wasn’t lying in the sun watching the world pass her by she read people’s fortunes for a small fee. How she survived on so

little money no one knew, but some said she was supported by an old man whose life she had saved by predicting an earthquake which would have killed him had he not left his house on her instructions.

Estella returned home to sleep on her mother’s advice. Ramon was sitting in his study tapping his thoughts into a computer. The evening was calm and melancholic, flooding the coast in a soft, pink light. Estella decided not to tell him about Fortuna, although the books he wrote were filled with mysteries and magic. She feared he might think less of her. Fortune-telling was very much associated with the suspicions of the under-classes. She crept up behind him and wound her arms around his neck. He was pleased to see her and kissed the brown skin on her wrists.

‘Let’s walk along the beach, I need some air,’ he said, leading her out by the hand. They walked through the strange pink light and kissed against the rhythm of the sea. ‘I’ll miss you when I go tomorrow,’ he said.

‘I’ll miss you too,’ she replied and frowned.

‘You’re not still worrying about your dream, are you?’ he asked, kissing her forehead.

‘No, no,’ she lied. ‘I just wish you weren’t going.’

‘I’ll be in Santiago tomorrow night, I have to see my agent in the afternoon. I’ll fly out Thursday night. I’ll call you from Santiago and I’ll call you from the airport.’

Then I’ll just wait,’ she sighed.

‘Yes. But I’ll think of you every minute and if you close your ears to the rest of the world you just might hear me sending you messages of love.’ He kissed her again, holding her tightly around her slim waist. Later, when he made love to her in the watery light of the moon that reflected off the sea and shimmered in through the window of their room, he tasted the roses on her skin and smelt the heavy scent of their intimacy and knew he would take them with him across the world and savour them when he was alone.

The following day Estella and Ramoncito waved goodbye to Ramon and watched his car disappear up the hill in a cloud of glittering dust. Ramoncito then skipped off to school with his
mochila
on his back filled with books and a box of sandwiches, which Estella had made him for lunch. He turned to wave at his mother, who stood at the foot of the road, and blew her a kiss. She blew one back and then remained there a while, smiling with tenderness at the

unguarded affection of her son which never ceased to amaze her.

She hadn’t dreamed about death again. She had floated on the memories of Ramon’s lovemaking and had awoken with the radiant complexion of a satisfied woman. But she still felt fearful and because of that icy fear she decided to go with her mother and visit Fortuna.

Pablo Rega watched them dig the grave. It was hot and the earth was hard and dry. He leant on the gravestone of Osvaldo Garcia Segundo and chewed on a piece of long grass while they toiled at the other end of the graveyard. ‘It’s a good position, that,’ he told Osvaldo. ‘Overlooking the sea, like you.
Si,
Señor, overlooking the sea is a prime spot. Imagine being stuffed back there without a view. I’d like to be here, where I can see the sea and the horizon. Gives one a feeling of space, of eternity. I like that. I’d like to be part of nature. What does it feel like, Osvaldo?’ He breathed in the scent of the dark green pine trees and waited for a reply, but Osvaldo had probably never been a man of words. ‘This place is getting pretty full,’ he continued. ‘Soon there won’t be any more room and they’ll have to start digging up old graves like yours. There’s a good chance I’ll be buried on top of you, then we can talk for eternity.’ He chuckled.

Estella and her mother arrived by bus and walked directly to Fortuna’s small house, which stood just off the dusty road. There were no flowers or bushes, just dry sandy ground and rubbish, which Fortuna scattered around the house - not to ward off the evil spirits as people suspected but because she was too lazy to throw things into a bin. Her house smelt of rotting food and sour milk and Estella and her mother found themselves having to disguise their grimaces by smiling in order not to offend the old woman. Fortuna sat outside on a large wicker rocking-chair, watching the odd car pass by, humming old Negro spirituals her father had taught her as a child. When she saw Maria she laughed from her belly and enquired after Pablo Rega.

‘Still talking to the dead?’ she asked. ‘Hasn’t someone told him that they can't hear him? They don’t hang around you know, they fly off into the world of spirits the moment they leave this godforsaken earth.’

Maria ignored her and explained that her daughter had come to have her future read. Fortuna stopped rocking and sat up, her expression sliding into the serious guise of a wise woman conscious of the responsibility that came with

her gift.

She asked Estella to sit down and pull the chair up so that they faced one another with their knees almost touching. Maria flopped into another chair and pulled out her Hispanic fan. Fortuna took Estella’s trembling hands in her own soft fleshy hands that had never experienced a day’s hard labour and pressed the pads of Estella’s palms with her thumbs. She pulled her mouth into various strange shapes and closed her eyes, leaving her lashes to flutter about as if she had no control over them. Estella looked at her mother anxiously, but Maria nodded to her to concentrate and fanned herself in agitation.

‘You have never been so happy,' Fortuna said and Estella smiled, for it was true, she had never been so happy. ‘You have a son who will be a famous writer one day like his father.’ Estella blushed and grinned with pride. ‘He will channel his pain into poetry that will be read by millions.’ Estella’s smile disintegrated as the icy claws of fear once more scratched at her heart. Fortuna’s eyelids fluttered with more speed. Maria stopped fanning herself and stared at her with her mouth agape. ‘I see death,’ she said. Estella began to choke. ‘I can’t see the face, but it’s close. Very close.’ Fortuna opened her eyes as Estella pulled her hands away and heaved as her throat constricted, leaving

barely any room for the air to reach her lungs. Her mother threw herself out of her chair with the agility of a much slimmer woman and thrust her daughter’s face down between her knees.

‘Breathe, Estella, breathe,’ she said as her daughter gasped and spluttered, fighting the fear that strangled her. Fortuna sat back in her chair and watched as mother and daughter struggled against the inevitability of her prediction. Finally, when Estella began to breathe again, her choking was replaced by deep sobs that wracked her entire being.

‘I don’t want him to die,’ she wailed. ‘I don’t want to lose him, he’s my life.’ Maria pulled her daughter into her large arms and attempted to comfort her, but there was nothing she could say. Fortuna had spoken.