Clive moved quickly now, checking the rooms downstairs one by one. I followed him. I felt the slow, sickening panic of a child who loses sight of its mother for a moment in town. Clive didn’t speak but I felt his fear. It was in his short, sharp steps, in the way he swung open each door as if boldly standing up to his own dreaded imagination, in the curt, composed way he enunciated her name—“Maud”—as he entered each room, with intensity but not volume. My mouth was dry. My stomach was dancing. First we checked the downstairs—the potting shed, the shallow pond in the orangery, the steep stone steps descending from the loggia, round the back to the parlor where the meat hooks hang…
There was no sign of her downstairs so we made our way back to the hall. But just as Clive began up the stairs ahead of me, I saw, to my unimaginable relief, Maud at the top, sashaying elegantly down in a green and blue peacock-print evening dress.
“Hello, darlings,” she called halfway down, glowing with exuberance. “Good trip?”
Her dress was cut high and rounded at the neck, and pinched her small waist with a sash. I hadn’t seen her dressed up for a long time. Tight, lace-edged sleeves finished on her upper arm and two lengths of amber-colored beads hung in low loops round her neck, tied together in a loose knot. It was the kind of thing she had worn when she was much younger. Tarnished silver bracelets jangled round her wrists and a quarter-glass of sherry dangled off her right hand. She might have been neglecting the housework but she’d certainly made an effort with herself. Undoubtedly she was striking.
“It looks like you’ve had a party,” said Clive, glancing into the kitchen.
“Oh, I did, darling. I’ve had lots of parties while you were away. And don’t worry about the clearing up. It’s all under control.”
“I’m not worried,” he said, meeting her on the stairs with a kiss.
I was still marveling at her appearance. I was sure I’d never seen her in that dress, yet it reminded me of something. I thought if I stopped trying to think of it, it would spill unexpectedly from my memory sometime soon.
“Did you really have parties?” I asked.
“No, I’m just teasing you, darling.” She made a funny face and held my earlobe, shaking it a little. “Pulling your ear…”
She seemed animated, restless. “I’ve got you a present, Clive. It can be an early birthday,” she said coquettishly, even though his birthday wasn’t this side of the year.
She put her glass on the arm of the settle in the hall and pulled out from under it a large box wrapped in brown paper and tied up with string. She said, “There you are, darling,” and smoothed down the waist, then the sides of her dress with her hands.
“What do you think?” she said. “Do you recognize it?”
He looked down at the parcel. “No. I have no idea. What is it?”
She laughed. “Open it,” she urged. “Go on, open it.”
Clive took out his pocketknife. Deftly, he sliced the string and split off the brown paper. I caught sight of the writing on the box before all the paper had come away.
“It’s a Robinsons trap!” I exclaimed, as the paper fell away.
“So it is,” Clive said plainly.
Then I remembered how openly he’d despised the idea of a Robinsons. He’d made it quite clear he didn’t want one. I realized of course how much effort Maud would have gone to, tracking down the brothers’ company in Kent and ensuring it arrived in time for our return, and I worried—as Clive casually undid the box and laid out the pieces—that he’d be ungrateful.
But he didn’t reject the present out of hand, as I’d assumed. Instead he examined the parts to see how the structure had been designed and muttered disparagingly about any flaws that were instantly apparent to him. Then he set to piecing the thing together before he’d even consulted the instructions. It wasn’t long before he was completely immersed in the assemblage, studying the dynamics and durability of each little part before fitting it into the structure. I began to realize that, in actual fact, Clive was excited. But even then, as he assembled the device, he swore at the ill-fitting bulb and the tiffany of the surround, cheaper than he himself would have used.
Maud offered to fetch him a glass of bitter lemon but I don’t think he heard her. I remember how he stood back, trap partly assembled, almost suppressing a laugh as he said, without taking his eyes off it, “This really is beautiful, beautiful. Thank you, Maud.” He walked round it, at arm’s length, like a dealer checking first the head and then the flanks of a horse he’d acquired. “Look at this. It’s exquisite. Really stunning.” Maud couldn’t have wished for a more effusive reaction or more obvious gratitude, but she went into the kitchen to serve up the supper as if she’d gone off the whole thing.
I followed her in to see if I could help. It was funny to hear Clive next door, muttering half sentences to himself: “Oh, I see.” “Yes, that’s how they did it.” “Interesting…but I can’t believe it stays put.” “The wind’ll whip that.” Sometimes he swore in frustration, I presumed when something wouldn’t fit, and at other times he’d let out a little pitted laugh. The sounds and words came from him unrestrained, as though he were the only person in the world.
Clive was so thrilled with his new Robinsons that, in fact, it turned out to have been a mistake to give it to him before supper. It seemed Maud had worked that out already, the way she called him halfheartedly to the dining table. After we’d sat there for ten minutes it was quite apparent that there was no chance of Clive joining us.
Maud and I sat together and ate. She’d set little posies on the table and dressed it with the family silver as she had years ago. I’d forgotten how good-looking my mother was, even though the dress she wore didn’t suit her age. The neckline was too prim, the waist too pretty and the dainty, lace-trimmed sleeves cut into the baggy skin at the top of her arm, leaving the rest drooping loosely out of it and juddering as she cut up her food. Still, it was easy to see how lovely she’d once been and, even now, I was impressed by how handsome she was with a little effort. She’d given her face some extra color and her eyes were lifted with blue shadowing. She’d pressed her lashes with the lash curler, forcing them upwards, curly and girly. But Maud’s earlier exuberance had subsided. She was quiet and unhungry. She opened a bottle of wine.
Every night I’d ever known, Clive had unfailingly set a moth trap, a simple homemade device, on the slate sill outside the drawing-room window before he went to bed. He called it the Night Watch. It wasn’t for serious collecting, just a daily reference to see which moths had visited during the night, to note what sort of weather and temperature had brought them, or even, in some cases, to forecast weather that was on its way.
The evening that Maud gave him his Robinsons, he set it on the drawing-room sill, replacing the one that had kept the Night Watch for more than a decade. During the night, at times of lighter sleep, I was plagued by anticipation of the rare visitors we would find in this new miracle trap, and in the morning I rushed down first thing to have a look. Clive was already there and he was giving it undue attention. True, the jar was reasonably full, but I could tell in the instant I scanned it that there were no great surprises, no jewels. It might seem insignificant now—as it did to me at the time—but that morning Clive did something I found extraordinary.
Most mornings he scanned the Night Watch quickly, jotted down anything of interest, then released the lot. Very occasionally he found a scarce one worth breeding, or one with a pigment he wanted to assay. Then he’d drop a couple of grams of tetrachloroethane into the jar to sedate them all and pick out the ones he wanted. But that morning he chased around in it with his hands like an amateur, wrecking—I was sure—a number of beautiful specimens. Garden Tigers, Underwings, a Bordered Beauty, Scalloped Oak, some Small Black Arches and several species of Pug were disregarded in the wake of his unfathomable mania. I thought he must be after the Light Crimson Underwing for a source of that iridescent pink, but why not anesthetize the jar first? Instead he spent at least a minute rummaging about, crushing some and damaging others until finally he had hold of a small, unremarkable gray micro-moth that I hadn’t even noticed.