I begin to Create and Evaluate once again, quickly, the possibilities of the door knocker being banged at one minute and yet at the next there’s no one there. Then a curious movement at the turn of the drive catches my eye and I see a shadow, now another, racing behind the laburnum hedge. I am being watched. Children. They dare each other to come close to the house of the Moth Woman and an exceptionally brave one must have mustered the courage to bang the door knocker. The shadows shift and disappear out of sight behind the conifers and along the Tunnel Walk to the brook.
I review the day just because I can; sixty-nine degrees and rising, clear and dry. I suck my middle finger and hold it up to check the light wind—east to northeasterly. The wind seems faint, almost still, but that’s what people forget—it’s not about the wind. It’s the air currents that count, and often they run paradoxically to the wind. The rising heat and falling humidity point to thermals, and I notice the treetops are rustling, so at twenty-five feet it’s moderately gusty, far stronger than at ground level. Yes, I’d say strong, dry, upper thermals. A shiver of excitement runs up my back.
Today is the perfect day for catching rare immigrants.
For a prolific catch of immigrants—quantity, not quality—you’d wait for the south southeasterly air currents that blow them from the Med and across the Channel in their thousands, sailing effortlessly on the thermal smells of Spain, France and Portugal. On this type of current, I’d head straight to the poor patch of forgotten scrubland just behind the beach café at Branscombe. It’s an unnoticed little spot, often strewn with litter, but protected from the wind by the giant chalk cliffs guarding the sea, a warm oasis of wild petunia, viper’s bugloss and knapweed, a first-stop welcome for weary southern visitors. I remember a hot summer night, on a day that brought smells from Moroccan markets, when Clive and I trapped more than fourteen hundred moths on the dump behind the café. We anesthetized the entire catch with 20ml potassium phosphate and enlisted a local committee to help us count and log them.
But today’s brood wouldn’t be for quantity but scarcity. It’s an unusual current, a hot east to northeasterly, which by tonight will bring many a rare species from southern Scandinavia and northern Europe, including the Clifden Nonpareil and the Bedstraw Hawk. I wonder where the Dorset and Somerset moth hunters will be grouping later, where they will join forces and head. I can almost feel the buzz of phones ringing round this small, exclusive group of people, arrangements firmed up for this evening’s hunt, all other engagements canceled, nothing too important to miss this great night of all nights of the moth-hunting season. Some will head for the high heaths of Ratnedge Deveril, or to the wetter lowlands—the bog in the Furze-brook Reserve, the meadows at Barton’s Shoulder, the clump of willows at Templecombe. It’s been a long while since I’ve hunted. I wonder if today’s hunters still know that the eastern edge of the Mawes Fir Estate was bordered by a footpath, just above Oakers Wood, where a few last elms huddled in a peaceful copse, having somehow escaped disease. The rare Norwegian Dogtail always found it and the next day, when news of the previous night’s catches flushed through the moth community, Oakers Wood would often turn out to be the Dogtail’s only sighting in the entire country.
It’s as I stop my musings and start to close the door on the exceptional day that my eye is drawn to something on the ground. There, on the worn flagstones, I see a heap of freshly mutilated moths, victims of an unkind massacre.
I bend over them. It’s the product of last night’s collection—fresh, spring specimens. I can feel the warm sun through my nightgown and I sit down on the smooth flagstones, like a little girl, to sort my prize. I make little piles, arranging them into residents and nonresidents, commoners, newcomers, crossbreeds, mutants and unviables. Among them are Tigers, Underwings, a Pug, two Marbled Carpets and three types of Hawk—beautiful specimens, recently emerged and vibrant. There’s nothing particularly surprising, perhaps the Carpets are usually farther south, but I’d really like to know where and how they were caught. They must have gone to more than a little effort because I presume it’s from at least two different locations; there’s a couple of Vapourers, which would never cohabit with the Satins and the Underwings. But the real delight for me is a Puss Moth caterpillar that I find all curled up at the bottom of the pile. Now, the Puss Moth is common around here, but it’s still my favorite. It’s the nearest you can get to communicating with a caterpillar. It has a soft coat, zigzagged in green and brown, and when you stroke it, it wriggles and squirms with pleasure. When it gets angry it hisses and waves the two hairlike protrusions on its tail and, if it’s in a real temper, it’ll spit at you.
It’s been a long time since I’ve had the chance to examine a fresh collection. The children who made me this offering have no idea of the delightful distraction they have given me on this particular Monday morning. They will be assuming, perhaps, that because I have bred moths (even, perhaps, bred some of these moths’ forefathers), nurtured their pupae in my cellar and witnessed their first flight in my attic, to discover them half mutilated on my doorstep would make me recoil in horror. They are wrong, of course, for we naturalists strive for the greater proliferation of the entire lepidoptera genera, not for the survival of individuals. The children may be surprised to know how many moths I’ve gassed and pinned; how many caterpillars I’ve rolled, still alive, to squeeze out their insides, reinflating them with wood chip to give them structure; how many peaceful cocoons I’ve dug up and cut open from under the roots of poplars, apples and crack willows. But all of this for a scientific cause, for a greater understanding of and insight into a little-known insect.
3:05 p.m. (by my digital wristwatch)
I am inching along Vivien’s landing, on the other side of the double doors, still in my nightgown and bed socks, and I can feel the pressure of the whole unfamiliar space crowding in on me. I have spent much of the day finding the courage to be here, to check on Vivien myself.
I can see that her door is wide open and I stop on the landing outside it. From this angle I can’t see her, but I can see a slice of her room: the end of her bed and the far corner. Shoes and slippers are stacked up on top of each other in the corner. Next to them I see a little basket and a rug, which I presume are for Simon, and a large plastic Mother and Child attached to an electric cord, which makes me wonder if it lights up or preaches when it’s plugged in. Lifting my gaze to a shelf on the wall, I see a bookstand—the seat of an ugly green marble toad—and next to that, to my delight, an ornate little carriage clock. I’ll be happy to have that clock, I think. You can never have enough clocks. Then I admonish myself for the inappropriate thought outside a dead woman’s room. The clock is at an oblique angle, so I have to move closer to the door frame and peer in for several seconds to read the time. Ten to four. I check it against my wristwatch—much too fast. I tut.
“Ginny, come in.”
A surge of terror. My heart thuds within its cage, and I freeze—right there by the door. The marble toad stares mockingly at me. Oh, my God, she’s not dead! She didn’t drink her milk after all. Every part of me is tight with a fear I’ve never known before. I had been utterly convinced she was dead. Is this her ghost talking? I can’t concentrate enough to think. Am I relieved or frustrated? I had thought I couldn’t bear to see her dead but to see her alive when I think she’s dead feels far worse.