The Butterfly Box (58 page)

‘What did you tell him?’ Mariana asked kindly.

Federica squirmed in her chair. ‘I told him that I was leaving for Chile, that I didn’t know how long I’d be gone because there was nothing in Polperro to make me stay.’

Mariana patted her knee fondly. ‘Oh dear,’ she sighed. ‘I think you’d better go back and tell him how you feel.’

‘The thing is, I didn’t know how I felt. I didn't dare feel anything for him. I think I said that on purpose, hoping to force him to declare his feelings. But he didn’t. He just looked wounded. I can’t bear it. I’m such a monster. I realize now that I do care for him. I care very much. What if I’m too late?’

‘Why would you be?’

‘Because I called his mother,’ she said, lowering her eyes, ‘she said he had gone away to stay with an old girlfriend and didn’t know when he’d be back.’ ‘Surely you don’t believe he could fall in love with someone else so quickly?’

‘I don’t know. Could he?’ Federica asked, eyeing her grandmother hopefully. ‘My dear, love isn’t something you can turn on and off with a tap. It’s not possible. If he loves you he’ll be waiting for you. If he doesn’t, he won’t. And Fede, if he hasn’t waited he’s not worth the lemon in his
piscol
’

‘What shall I do?’

‘Go back to England.’

‘But I want to be here with you.’

‘Dear girl, Chile isn’t the moon. You just call me when you want to come back and I’ll arrange your ticket, or Ramon will. This isn’t twenty years ago. You’re only fifteen hours away.’ Then she smiled. ‘Perhaps you could bring him with you.’

Federica beamed happily. ‘Oh, Abuelita, I hope so,’ she enthused and embraced her grandmother. Thank you,’ she added seriously, looking into Mariana’s twinkling eyes.

‘No, thank you!’ replied her grandmother, touching her cheek with a gentle

sweep of her old hand. ‘This is the way it should be.’

Chapter 42
Polperro

Helena sat on Toby’s sofa, sharing a packet of chocolate biscuits with Rasta, smarting after her children’s sudden departure to Chile. She munched angrily and imagined their reunion with Ramon and his parents, the beach house in Cachagua and all her memories that lingered there. But by the time she reached the bottom of the packet her thoughts had focused on Arthur and she had barely noticed the digression.

Arthur hadn’t made the slightest effort to communicate with her. Not even during the drama with Hal and their subsequent departure. Not a word. She felt desperately isolated and alone. She missed him. She missed his company and his compassion, but what surprised her most was that little by little she began to miss him for the things that she had previously resented: the jolly way he walked, his enthusiasm and brightness, his round girth and his soft doughy hands. Physically he was nothing like Ramon, but her heart yearned for Arthur and she blamed herself entirely for driving him away.

The last few weeks had been painful as she had slowly weaned herself off

her delusions. The Ramon in her memory wasn’t real. He belonged to a time in the past that had long since dried up and died. She might just as well have been pining for a ghost. All the while she had failed to notice the qualities of the man she had chosen to share her life with, who was real and who needed her. She had been a fool. Like Toby had so wisely said, she never seemed to learn from her mistakes. She was never happy with what she had and only recognized happiness with hindsight. But Arthur had always loved her in spite of her faults. She scrunched up the empty packet and threw it into the fire where it burst into flame and was reduced to ash.

She’d make a new start and this time she’d get it right.

Arthur sat in his office staring out at the blustery street below. It had rained without pause for the last few days, a light drizzle blown about by a vengeful wind. He felt miserable inside, barely able to concentrate on his work, which was unusual as his job had always been an escape from domestic strain. He played about with his pencil, drawing sad faces on his desk notebook. He had told his secretary to take messages; he wasn’t in the mood for telephone calls that might require his concentration. All he could think about was Helena. He

had hoped she might fight to win him back. Sadly he had misjudged her. He had heard nothing but a screaming silence. Had their marriage really meant so little to her?

He stared at the clock on the wall and watched as the second hand ate its way slowly around the face with methodical regularity. The day had dragged. They had all dragged since the night he had locked Helena out of the house. Her cries still resounded in his ears but he didn’t allow himself to feel remorse. He had done the right thing. She hadn’t come back so he was now faced with the bleak reality that she wasn’t ever going to come back. He had to let her go.

Finally he was able to struggle into his coat and leave the office. He struggled against the wind to his car, then struggled with the traffic to drive home. But most of all he struggled with the impulses that implored him to drop his defences and beg her to come home. Every day was a battle, but so far his determination had won.

It was dark when he arrived home. Gloomily he wondered what he was going to eat that night. He pictured a bowl of cereal or a plate of cheese and biscuits and speculated on the television schedule - there was rarely anything worth

watching. Then he noticed the lights on in the house. The cleaner who came twice a week had obviously forgotten to switch them off, which was the least she could do seeing as there was so little work to be done. Helena had needed tidying up after her; Arthur did not. The place was as neat and as dead as a museum. How he longed for his wife’s chaos to ruffle the life back into it.

He put his key in the lock and the door. When he stepped inside the aromatic smells from the kitchen reached his nostrils and he recognized at once the familiar whiff of Helena’s roast chicken. His breath caught in his throat as his heart accelerated with hope and reserve, in case he should find it a dream and wake disappointed. Without taking his coat off he walked unsteadily up the corridor. He could hear the sound of footsteps and the light clatter of utensils as someone walked about behind the closed door. He dreaded opening it and his trembling fingers hesitated on the handle, aware of the terrible anguish that would follow if he were to discover not his wife but the cleaner, or his daughter or anyone else.

Then he assembled his courage and opened it. When he lifted his eyes he found Helena peering into a steaming saucepan, dressed in a pair of suede trousers and silk shirt protected by her grubby cook’s apron. He blinked at her

in amazement. She replaced the lid and turned to face him. Her heavily applied mascara could barely conceal her remorse. She smiled at him nervously. But when she recognized the longing in his expression she regained her confidence and walked over to him and drew him into her arms.

Neither spoke. They didn’t need to. Arthur pulled her against him and breathed deeply into her softly perfumed neck. They held each other for a long time, appreciating as never before the power of their love. Finally Helena pulled away. She looked into Arthur’s shiny eyes and whispered tearfully, ‘I’ll never behave like that again.’

Arthur stared down at her with intention. ‘I know,’ he replied gravely, ‘because I won’t let you.’

Ramon waved as the car carrying Federica to Santiago airport disappeared up the sandy track, leaving behind it a cloud of dust and a cheerful sense of accomplishment. He smiled at her until she was long out of sight and recalled that heartbreaking moment twenty years before when she had waved tearfully goodbye not knowing when she would see him again. But now she was a grown woman she would decide when she would return. He was deeply proud

of her and grateful, for they had embraced not only as father and daughter but as friends. He had handed her his manuscript to give to Helena and told her she could read it on the plane. She had embraced her grandparents, Ramoncito and finally Hal. But her tears hadn’t been of sorrow but of joy because they had all found each other again and as Mariana said, ‘Chile isn’t the moon’ - it was farewell not goodbye.

Then Ramon drove up to the cemetery to talk to Estella. Ramoncito didn’t want to go because he was in the middle of a highly competitive chess game with Hal. Tell her I’m with my brother,’ he said proudly and Ramon smiled at him and nodded. Chess was a language they both understood.

Ramon parked the car in the shade and walked across the long shadows towards Estella’s grave. It was early evening and the rich smells of grass and flowers rose up on the air to mingle with the intangible sense of death that haunted the tranquil cliff top. He paused as he often did at the graves to read the inscriptions chiselled into the stone. One day I’ll come up here, he thought, and never go back. The certainty of death didn’t frighten him, on the contrary, it gave him a feeling of peace. After all, in an uncertain world it was the only thing one could be sure about.

As he approached the tall green pine tree he saw Pablo Rega sleeping against the headstone with his chin tucked into his chest and his black hat pulled low over his eyes. He greeted him cheerfully with the intention of waking him. But Pablo didn’t stir. He remained as still and lifeless as a scarecrow. Then Ramon knew that he had made his final journey and crossed himself. He crouched down and felt the old man’s pulse just to be sure. There was no movement in his veins, for his spirit had left his decrepit body and joined those of the people who had gone before him, like Osvaldo Garcia Segundo and, of course, Estella. At that thought Ramon felt an acute twinge of envy. He was aged and alone. His sons would no doubt fall in love just like he had, but Ramon was too old to love again. Estella had tamed his fugitive heart and it would always belong to her.

He would spend the rest of his life living on the memory of love.

Federica watched the Andes mountains simmer below her window as the plane soared into the sky with a rumble that shook her to the bones. She yearned to stay. Like Hal she felt she belonged in Chile, it was in her blood. But she longed for Sam and her longing nearly choked her. She compared the childish

infatuation of long ago with the mature love she now felt for him and deduced that her marriage to Torquil had been vital. Without it she would have continued to search for her father in the arms of other men, like Torquil, and she would never have realized that she was a victim of her own making and always had been. Sam had liberated her and she hadn’t even thanked him.

When the air hostess came up the aisle with the newspaper Federica took one just to have something to look at, even though she didn’t understand the Spanish. She flicked it open and glanced at the first page, relieved to be able to concentrate on something other than her tormented thoughts of Sam. When she saw a photograph of the frozen body of a young Inca girl discovered in the Peruvian Andes she caught her breath and sat up in astonishment.

She turned to the man sitting beside her and asked him if he spoke English. When he replied that he did, she asked him if he would be very kind and translate for her. He was only too happy to engage in conversation with his pretty neighbour and began to read it out loud.

Federica bit her thumbnail as she listened. The mummy was that of a young woman, preserved by the cold conditions of the mountains for five hundred years. She wore a fantastically elaborate cloak made out of the most intricate

weave, her hair was still studded with crystals and on her head she still had the remnants of a headdress made of white feathers. It was believed that she had been sacrificed to the Gods. When the man handed her back the paper Federica studied the face of the young girl. She relived the horror of her last moments in the words of her father’s story.

‘Clasping the box to her breast she was dressed in exquisitely woven wools, her hair plaited and beaded with one hundred shining crystals. Upon her head was placed a large fan of white feathers to carry her into the next world and frighten the demons along the way. Wanchuko was unable to save her.’

After a few attempts to make conversation the man realized that she wasn’t going to respond and returned to his book, disappointed. Federica sat staring into the face of Topahuay as if she had seen the Resurrection itself. All these years she had believed the legend in spite of her reasoning that had told her it was a myth. She smiled to herself. Perhaps the butterfly box was magic after all.

Sam woke up early due to the restlessness in his soul and walked across the cliffs with the dogs. He could see the first stirring of spring in the emerging

buds that endowed the forest with a vibrancy which seemed to waft through the branches like green smoke. But it did little to lift his heavy spirits. He pulled his coat around his body but the cold came from within and he shivered. He hadn’t heard from Federica since she had left the week before and he had the terrible premonition that she might never come back. After all, she had said so herself, there was nothing to keep her here. The potency of those words was in no way diminished by the frequency with which he thought of them and they still managed to debilitate him.

He still hadn’t thought of anything to write. It had been years, literally, since he had quit his job in London to make use of his creativity, as Nuno had put it. But his creativity was barren. He had tried once or twice to begin a novel but his mind had drifted to Federica, which had only resulted in the most morose poems about unrequited love and death. So he had picked out books from Nuno’s library and instead of writing he had sat in the leather chair and read. Anything rather than surrender his thoughts to the rapacious appetite of his anguish.

Alone on the cliffs in the fragile light of dawn he considered his options if Federica was never to come back. He had to face it. He couldn’t allow himself

to wallow in self-pity indefinitely. After all, wasn’t that what he had taught her by way of the notes? Like a doctor he wasn’t too keen on his own medicine. He had to pull himself up, decide on something to write, buy a cottage of his own, perhaps a dog and a pig and crawl out of his self-imposed exile.

Federica’s journey wouldn’t have been as long or arduous if it hadn’t been for her feverish impatience that caused her chest to compress with anxiety and her head to ache by the force of her will attempting to change things that it couldn’t. The plane was forced to circle Heathrow Airport for twenty minutes before finally landing with a bump. She felt sick from worry as much as from the relentless spiralling of the plane, then hiccuped all the way on the tube to the railway station. It was cold and drizzly, the usual grey skies of London - a cheerless spring. She just managed to catch a train where she sank into a seat by the window and watched the monotonous grey city outside. She closed her eyes for a moment only to open them a few hours later stiff and groggy to find herself passing through the familiar countryside of Cornwall.

As her eyes traced those verdant fields she recalled her long walks with Sam and wondered what she was going to say to him when she saw him. She hoped

he’d have returned from Scotland. She knew she’d go out of her mind with frustration if he wasn’t at home. Silently she began to rehearse the conversation. ‘Sam, there’s something I have to tell you ... no, that’s too crass . . . Sam, I love you ... no, I couldn’t, I just couldn’t. . . Sam, I realized the notes were from you and came back especially . . . no, no, horrible . . . Sam, I can’t believe it’s taken me this long to realize that I love you ... no, I can’t, I just can't be so blunt. Oh God!’ She sighed, ‘I don’t know what I’m going to say.’