Sister Dorothy stubbed out her cigarette and said regretfully ‘I’ll tell you now about the boy who sent me towards that street light.’ (Anselm had wondered about him. A sympathetic hotelier had given him a bed for the night.) ‘He was named after his grandfather — a revered man in the household.’
‘To use the language of the day’ said Sister Dorothy wearily ‘the lad discovered that his namesake had interfered with a neighbour’s child. It was the word he used when he told his mother, who didn’t believe him … and when he told his father, who couldn’t … so the lad went to the police. The victim denied it, so the lad was ostracised. Then, one morning, Granddad took a train to Scarborough and walked into the sea, leaving his medals on the beach.
‘That’s why he left home,’ mumbled the old nun, ‘why he had to.’ She was heavy with remorse, not wanting Anselm to see the place into which he’d stumbled (the place where, unknown to her, Anselm had found the lawyer’s graiclass="underline" a win against the odds). ‘He wouldn’t tell anyone who he was,’ she admitted, quietly ‘It’s Elizabeth’s tale all over again. Start afresh, I said. Use your other name. I’ve often wondered what became of young George.’
19
Charles Glendinning’s interest in Lepidoptera did not extend to catching examples for display. They belonged out of reach. And because they rarely kept still, occasions of extended observation were rare, always unforeseen and thereby on each count, prized. Perhaps, then, it was out of respect that Charles had acquired several antique collections: long, shallow boxes lined with green baize, fronted with glass. The specimens were laid out in neat rows, each with a label bearing a name in brown copperplate. These cabinets lined the walls of Charles’s study. It had always been known as the Butterfly Room.
After parking the VW in the back lane, Nick moved through a dark and silent house to find his father. His lungs were tight, as if they were too small for the job. With a shaking finger he pushed open the door to the study Charles was leaning over a display cabinet, hands behind his back, his face artificially bright from phosphorous illumination.
Nick let the door clip shut. He wanted to be a child again, to sit on someone’s knee, and to be told it was just a dream; to be ushered back into a world without demons. The leather armchair was cold to the touch.
‘That tench was nauseating,’ said Charles, without shifting his gaze. ‘The wine, on the other hand, was divine.’
‘Dad,’ said Nick, ‘I’ve just met Graham Riley’
Charles placed an arm on either side of the cabinet under review His knuckles turned white. The examining gaze, however, remained intact. He is a man preparing himself, thought Nick, wanting him to be strong and bigger than his own revelations.
‘That,’ said Charles faintly ‘was a remarkably foolish thing to do.’
Yes, it was, thought Nick. And now I know what I do not want to know. It did not belong in the garden of their shared memories. Every year they’d gone to their cliff-top cottage at Saint Martin’s Haven, facing the Jack Sound and the island of Skomer. As a boy he’d follow his father in the dark of summer nights, shining his torch on the island’s protectors, a militia of toads. They’d sat on the paths, fat-necked and smiling. Once, his mother had come. They’d gone looking for these lazy squaddies but had halted, awestruck before a patch of heathland lit by glow-worms.
‘He said Mum was no better than him …’ Nick was pleading for the innocence of Skomer, the Barrier Reef, Christmas Day … all of it. He wanted the lot restored. He wanted his father to tell him something that would put things back into position.
Charles had closed his eyes. He was like a man praying, horribly fervent and yet strong. Nick had always seen the duffer — the gentleman with raised eyebrows in the provincial museums of half-term holidays — but never this. This was a different kind of strength, and it was not the kind he was looking for or wanted.
‘Did I ever tell you how I met your mother?’ asked Charles ingenuously.
‘Of course,’ said Nick, wanting to scream. Charles’s employer had retained Elizabeth to bring a claim for money paid under a mistake of fact — that is to say Charles had authorised payment of a cheque to an individual notwithstanding the countermand of the person who had drawn it. Elizabeth won on a technicality. The same day Charles rang her chambers, he sent her flowers … he did all the things that he’d thought he was constitutionally incapable of doing. Such was the transforming power of forgetting yourself, and being unable to forget someone else. Such was the received wisdom.
‘Well, let me tell you another version,’ said Charles. He motioned to his son with his hand — warmly like he’d done upon the heath on Skomer.
Nick came to the display cabinet and looked down at the specimens, lined up and labelled. His father’s arm was suddenly heavy on his shoulder.
‘See this one, top right?’ With his free hand Charles pointed through the glass to a butterfly with large, dark reddish-purple wings trimmed with a buttery gold. Reserved but ardent, he said, ‘This lady came to be known as White Petticoat and Grand Surprise. The labels suggest that she’s naughty … a shameless gal, a trickster. She’s had lots of names. They tell you something, but they never quite capture her.’ He glanced at Nick, as he used to do in those fusty museums. ‘She’s not a city girl. She likes the woods … willow, birch and elm.’
‘Where’s she from?’ Nick scarcely heard himself, because he thought his father had gone raving mad.
‘Another land, far away … she’s a rare vagrant.’ He looked more closely drawing Nick down with him. ‘She has another labeclass="underline" the Mourning Cloak. But when she was first sighted in Cool Arbour Lane’ — his voice dropped, as if he’d come to the secret — ‘she was called the Camberwell Beauty.’
Charles was holding his son tightly across the shoulder, but all the time he looked down into the cabinet of phosphorescent light. His grip was almost fierce. There was no escape.
‘Your mother was a Grand Surprise,’ said Charles, confidingly ‘She moved warily as if she’d been netted once … and was forever mindful of where she’d been. When I first saw her at court, I had to follow her. There was something about her eyes, the movement of her arms. So I tracked her progress. Nothing could keep me away neither nettles nor thorns, and I went through the lot, barelegged without a net, never wanting to trap her, only hoping to be near by That’s how it was when we got married. I had to keep my distance, all scratched and swollen.’ His grip on his son eased, but only slightly ‘But when I least expected it — many years later — she came to me … I could barely breathe; I could only look at her broken wings with wonder, with astonishment, that she could still fly and that she had deigned to rest on me.’ His blue eyes began to move, checking labels. ‘Nothing Riley told you could come between me and the love I have for your mother.’
Gently Charles pulled Nick round, placing a hand on each of his son’s shoulders. ‘The mother you knew has vanished, I know, and I grieve for you. But if you just wait’ — he was distressed, but strong in this newly discovered way — ‘the labels — those tabs that hang on what we’ve done, that can never sum up who we are —they’ll all fade and find their place. And then someone infinitely more wonderful will appear.’
Charles strode across the room to a drinks cabinet and poured two glasses of scotch. ‘Will you drink to that?’ he asked.
20
At any one time,’ said George distractedly ‘there were roughly ten of us living in that squat.’
He picked up a jigsaw piece and angled it towards a small lamp. The map of the known world was almost complete.