There was the framed photograph that had sat on her mantelpiece, showing Minnie with her daughter and her husband. Her husband was holding the little girl in his arms and she was blowing bubbles that drifted over Minnie’s face. As a child Daniel had marvelled at this picture, because of Minnie’s youth. She was slimmer, with short, dark hair and a large white smile. He had to look carefully at the photograph to find her features as he knew them.
At the bottom of the box, Daniel’s fingers found something cold and hard. He finished his beer as he liberated the object from the cardboard depths.
It was the porcelain butterfly, its blue and yellow brighter than he remembered. It seemed cheap. There was a chip on the wing but it was otherwise undamaged. Daniel held it in his palm.
He thought about her gathering up these things and putting them aside for him, about her illness and how that would have manifested. He imagined her asking the nurse to help her sit up in her hospital bed, so that she could write to him. He could almost see her, making small sighs at the effort, the shine of her blue eyes as she signed the letter, Mam. She had known then she was dying. She had known that she would never see him again.
He tried hard to remember the last time he had spoken to her. All these years but never a birthday or a Christmas passed without her cards and phone calls. Last Christmas he had gone skiing in France. She had left two messages and sent a card with a twenty-pound cheque inside. As he always did, he deleted the messages, ripped up the cheque and put the card straight into the bin. He felt a twinge of guilt at the aggression implied in these acts.
It would have been on his birthday in April when he had spoken to her last. He had been in a rush; otherwise he would have checked and seen her number before he picked up the telephone. He had been late home from work and was now late for dinner.
‘It’s me, love,’ she had said. Always she spoke with the same familiarity, as if they had seen each other only last week. ‘I just wanted to wish you happy birthday.’
‘Thanks,’ he had said, the muscle in his jaw throbbing. ‘I can’t talk now, I’m trying to go out.’
‘Of course. Going somewhere nice, I hope.’
‘No, it’s a work thing.’
‘Oh, I see. And how is your work? Are you still enjoying it?’
‘Look, when are you going to stop?’ he had shouted. She had said nothing. ‘I don’t want to speak to you.’
Daniel remembered waiting for a response before he hung up. She might have known about the cancer by then. He had hung up but then thought about her for the rest of the night, his stomach tight with anger. Or had it been guilt?
The music from the funeral was still lilting in his mind. He remembered Harriet’s accusing tones, as if it had been his fault, as if Minnie had been blameless. Daniel doubted that she would have told Harriet what she had done. Harriet thought he was ungrateful, but he was the one who had been wronged.
Now, Daniel held up the butterfly to look at it. He remembered standing in Minnie’s kitchen for the first time and holding a knife to her face, the hard, unflinching look in her eyes. It was that he had first loved about her: her fearlessness.
Daniel’s thoughts turned to Sebastian. He wondered what the boy had seen in him, why he had insisted on him as his lawyer. He stroked the butterfly one more time with his thumb and then placed it gently on the coffee table.
10
‘Look,’ said Daniel, waving to Minnie from the yard. ‘I’m feeding him!’
He stood with his feet together, feeding a carrot to Hector the goat. He had been at Minnie’s nearly a year now and felt a strange comfort in the muddy back yard and cluttered kitchen. He liked his jobs and he liked the animals, although Hector was only just starting to accept him.
She knocked on the window. ‘You be careful! He can be crafty.’
The small Brampton school was better for him too. He had been given lines a few times and the strap once – for knocking over a desk – but he had also been given a gold medal for English and a silver one for maths. Minnie was good at maths and liked to help him with his homework. Pretty Miss Pringle, his teacher, liked him, and he was on the football team.
Minnie banged on the glass again. ‘Watch your fingers.’
Daniel heard the telephone ring and Minnie disappeared from the window. It was May and buttercups and daisies were scattered amid the long grass that edged the house. Dizzy butterflies floated from bloom to bloom and Danny watched them as the carrot became shorter. Heeding Minnie, he pulled his hand away when the stump became too small. Hector lowered his head and finished the carrot, stalk and all. Gently, Danny stroked the goat’s warm short hair, withdrawing his hand and backing away every time the goat lowered his head.
‘I’ll get you another one later,’ he said.
He was getting on well with Minnie now. On the weekends they would have a laugh together. One day after market they had made a tent in the living room using her foldaway table and a bundle of sheets. She had brought her old jewellery box down to use as treasure and crawled inside with him, pretending they were wealthy Bedouins. She made him fish fingers for tea and they ate them in the tent with their hands, dipping them into ketchup.
Another day they had played pirates and she had made him walk the plank blindfolded off the footstool in her living room. He liked her laugh, which always began with three big booms and then turned into a cackle and a giggle and would go on for several minutes. Just watching her laugh made him smile now.
Last weekend they had decorated his bedroom, and Minnie had let him pick the colour. He chose a pale blue for the walls and bright blue for his door and the skirting boards. She had let him paint with her and they had spent the whole weekend with the radio on, stripping away the rosebuds and painting the walls.
The door to the house slammed and Minnie stood there with one hand on her forehead.
‘What’s up?’ Daniel asked.
He now understood Minnie’s face. Often she would frown when she was perfectly happy going about her work. When she was worried or angry, her frown would vanish and her lips would turn down slightly.
‘Come in, lad, come in. Tricia’s just off the phone. She’s coming to get you.’
Despite the warm summer breeze and the fact that he had been sweating as he went about his afternoon chores, Daniel felt suddenly chilled. The sun was still high in a sky of aching blue, but he felt the shadows creep as if cast from his own mind over the yard, darkening the hue of the butterflies as they toyed with petal and bud.
Daniel rested one hand on Hector again, and the old goat started away, skipping to the length of his rope in the dried-mud yard.
‘No, I’m not going. M’not leaving … I’ll …’
‘Hold yer horses, will ye. I don’t think she’s going to move you, but there’s a meeting set up with your mum.’
Minnie stood in the doorway and clasped her arms. She looked at Daniel with her lips pressed together.
The air seemed noisy to Daniel suddenly; the bees roared and the chickens screamed. He pressed his hands over his ears. Minnie came to him but he twisted away from her and into the house. She found him curled behind the piano in the living room, which was where he went when he felt like this. He didn’t feel like this a lot now.
He watched her feet as she approached, fat in dirty slippers, and then saw her ankles appear as she sat in the chair nearest the piano.
‘You don’t have to go, love, it’s your choice, but I think it might be best. I know it’s unsettling. Long time since you saw her, isn’t it?’