Shooting Butterflies Read online

  Back home, she agreed to use the lift. ‘At least you’re in the right place,’ Grace said. ‘You have everything at your fingertips and a resident nurse.’

  Mrs Shield put a chubby finger to her lips. ‘The walls have ears.’ Once they had got inside the flat she explained, ‘It’s different when you really need to use it all. It’s not good to be seen to be incapacitated in any way. And I’ve got my commitments. Old Mrs Thompson relies on my Wednesday visits and now I can’t drive. And then there are the Lifeboats. I always do the Lifeboats.’

  Mrs Shield had known about the rules when she moved to the Gardens. The most important dictated that anyone who became too sick or frail to look after themselves would be asked to leave; Northbourne Gardens was not a nursing home. This rule, like most, was popular with everyone to whom it did not apply.

  ‘I’m sure someone else will fill in for you. And a broken rib could happen to anyone at any age, if that’s what’s worrying you. Look at me, I fall over all the time.’

  ‘You don’t break your bones,’ Mrs Shield said, sinking down into her chair with a grimace of pain. ‘Oh my dear, couldn’t you stay just until I’m a little more mobile?’ Before Grace had had a chance to formulate her excuses, Mrs Shield went on, ‘Please, Grace, you don’t understand what it’s like. People round here are vultures. They hover round if you’re the slightest bit unwell, just waiting … I’ve got a garden view. There’s a queue for garden views.’

  Grace inhaled on her cigarette as she thought about what to do. She was having four weeks off from her work for a London charity for the blind. She had planned some weekends in the country with various friends and there was any number of people to catch up with and things she had hoped to do with her free time back in London. She was still thinking of a way to get out of staying in Northbourne when the phone rang. It was for Grace, her agent Angelica Lane. ‘There you are.’

  ‘Thank you for the card. And when will you stop sending photographic ones?’

  ‘When you become sensible. Now, what about the papers?’

  Angelica was surprised when Grace replied that she would like to track down the journalist, Nell Gordon, and ram her fist into the woman’s big mouth before turning her inside out like a glove.

  ‘What’s the matter with you? It’s publicity and you know what they say …’

  ‘Yes, thank you, I do know, but that doesn’t mean I agree. There’s definitely such a thing as bad publicity and this was it.’

  There was a pause, then Angelica spoke again with the determined cheer normally reserved for the terminally ill. ‘Anyway, great news; I’ve sold one of the photos in your Illusions of Love series this morning. It’s been months since anyone bought anything of yours. I bet you there’ll be more on the way. And don’t tell me the extra income won’t be welcome. Daisy phoned; she’d read it too and …’

  ‘I have to go,’ Grace said and put the phone down. She turned to Mrs Shield, who had been leaning against the sofa back pretending not to listen. ‘I’ll stay a few days.’

  Mrs Shield’s pale eyes brimmed with tears. ‘Thank you, darling, that’s a great relief.’

  ‘And I could pop over to Northbourne House. There’s something I want to ask Louisa. She is still there, isn’t she?’

  ‘Of course she is. And I meant to tell you, I saw Noah the other day.’

  Noah, the Blackstaffs’ Canadian grandson, Grace’s childhood playmate. Noah, irritatingly cheerful, always busy doing something: digging holes, learning tricks on his bike, running faster than anyone else, riding his pony. Noah, with his shock of wheat-blond hair and those slanted amber-colour eyes, a chunky little boy growing into a lanky adolescent. Last time she had seen him they had both been nineteen.

  ‘I did tell you Arthur Blackstaff died, didn’t I? It happened just before I moved back to the village. I missed the funeral. Someone should have let me know. I can’t be expected to keep up with everyone who dies.’

  ‘I didn’t write to Louisa. I meant to.’

  ‘One always does, dear. But you haven’t seen her since you were a girl. She wouldn’t expect to hear from you. Anyway, she’s almost a hundred. She most likely wouldn’t have remembered who you were even if you had written. That’s why Noah is here: to sort things out before the house goes on the market. And to write Arthur’s biography for the exhibition. It’s a retrospective.’ Mrs Shield nodded. ‘I shall have to go, of course. I can stay overnight with you.’ She shifted in her chair, pulling a face and putting her hand to her chest. ‘I think I shall have to take those painkillers after all, dear.’

  Arthur Blackstaff had been a famous artist in his day. A.L. Forbes had painted Grace’s picture at Northbourne House, so the Blackstaffs must have known him. If Noah was writing a biography of his grandfather, then he might have come across Forbes. Finally, she told Mrs Shield about the picture from Jefferson.

  Mrs Shield pursed her lips. ‘So that’s why you were so out of sorts when you arrived yesterday. That man has never been anything but trouble. Even now, after he’s been dead for two years, he manages to upset you.’

  ‘Don’t go there, Evie.’

  ‘Go where, dear?’ Her brow cleared. ‘Oh, I meant to tell you, Doctor Llewellyn had read the piece about you and so had Hazel, that’s his receptionist; and Percy Witherspoon, he’s two flats down the corridor, told me to say how sorry he was … you know, about your difficulties. He had no idea, he said. What’s that noise? Oh Grace, you’ve started grinding your teeth again.’

  ‘That’s quite enough, thank you. Now, if you’ll excuse me I’ll just go and make a call to Mrs Williams, my neighbour, to ask her to feed the cat.’

  ‘You don’t have a cat.’

  ‘You’re right, I don’t. So I’ll just go and lie on my bed for a while and think about all the people in this world who are feeling sorry for me. Bastards!’

  Nell Gordon: Even as a young child Grace Shield showed signs of the morbid streak that came to categorise so much of her work.

  The mother placed the fireguard in front of the dying fire and told the boy to mind his sister. She wouldn’t be long, she said, but she was gone for ages and the boy grew bored sitting there with the baby. She, as always, seemed perfectly content just to watch. She was podgy. She was almost four, not really a baby at all, and she could speak perfectly well, but most of the time she chose not to, although you could hear her when she was alone in her room, talking and singing to her toys.

  ‘Silly old baby,’ her brother said. She was no fun; difficult to tease because she was too stupid to notice. ‘You’re just a big silly baby.’ He glared at her and was rewarded with a wide smile that lit up her big eyes. Her mouth was like a rubber band, stretching wider than you had thought possible.

  He decided to try to make her cry. For such a baby she hardly ever did. He stuck his tongue out, but the stupid old baby just giggled. He jabbed her hard right in the softest bit of her round tummy. Her smile gave way to confusion as the pain registered. But she had soon recovered and was smiling again at her funny older brother. He gave her a shove and she toppled backwards, banging her head on the floorboards. For a second the smile remained fixed on her chubby face, but as she realised he had meant to hurt, her eyes flooded with tears. He thought she looked like a great beetle, her arms and legs waving around as she struggled to get up, and he laughed his high clear choirboy’s laugh; she always was a clumsy baby. Now she got on to her hands and knees, her fat bottom sticking up in the air, and next she had poddled off to get her comfort, a brown velveteen puppy called Father. She had barely begun the cuddle when the brother was by her side, making a grab for the puppy. She ran, the puppy close to her chest. Being chased, even in fun, scared her and although she knew, really, that it was only her big brother coming after her, she panicked, scenting a pack of wolves or maybe Red Indians on horseback, whooping and whirling their bows and arrows in the air. She stumbled and fell and, as she lay sprawled on the floorboards, he grabbed Father and swung him round his head, shouting
triumphantly as he ran off towards the fire. Dangle, dangle. Father, held by his stubby tail, dangled for his life. His plump little owner struggled to her feet and went to his rescue. Dangle, dangle, close to the fire. ‘Hot dog,’ the brother laughed. ‘Hot dog, hot dog.’

  With an anguished yelp, the baby snatched her puppy and swung her little fist at her tormentor, sending him tumbling on to the fireguard and into the fire, barbecuing his freckled cheek on the grid of the guard.

  ‘She’s obsessed with that toy,’ the father was saying on the landing outside the children’s bedrooms that night. ‘And why does she call it Father? Why not Daddy or Gabriel if she had to call a velveteen dog after me?’

  ‘I asked her that,’ the mother said. ‘It’s nothing to do with you. She’s called him after Father O’Toole because, she says, Father O’Toole is important. It seems to make sense to her.’ The mother sighed. ‘She’ll have to be punished. She’s quite old enough to know that what she did was very naughty.’

  ‘I don’t expect she meant her brother to fall into the fire,’ the father said.

  The baby lay trembling in her bed. What would her punishment be? In her brother’s fairy-tale books people had their tongues cut out. But the grown-ups kept telling her to talk, so they probably wouldn’t want to do that. In those books they also rolled people down hills in barrels of a thousand nails. Her brother had explained that it meant barrels with nails hammered through so that all the spikes were on the inside sticking into you as you rolled. But she was fat and the only barrel she knew of was the barrel of wooden bricks in the nursery. She would never fit and her father always said that they did not have enough money, so they would hardly go out and buy a new one, just for her. In some ways she was clever for her age, so she knew that a thousand nails as well as a barrel would cost a lot. Then she remembered another line in her own book of stories. ‘You will lose the thing you love best.’

  She yelped in distress and clutched Father to her chest. That would be her punishment! They would take Father from her. She lay stock still, as if by not moving, by staying absolutely silent, they would not be found. Once she heard footsteps approach on the landing, pausing by her door. Then it went quiet. But as the minutes ticked away on her red clock she could bear it no longer. What if she did it herself; the punishment? They might leave it if she got there first. She felt calmer now. When the idea came into her head she felt scared but she knew too that she had found the right thing to do. She climbed out of bed, Father in her arms, and padded downstairs listening out for voices or steps, but all was quiet. She found the right room although it was dark. Once in there she dared to put the light on. The box of extra-long matches lay on top of the mantelpiece. She placed Father on the floor at a safe distance before dragging up a chair and clambering up on the seat to reach. She lit the match at the third strike and only hesitated a moment before putting the flame to her cheek.

  Her screams woke everyone up.

  At kindergarten, Sister Francis, the youngest and prettiest of the nuns, looked at her with kind eyes. ‘Poor wee thing, she looks like an angel who’s had a bad landing, so she does.’

  ‘Angel,’ Sister Joseph sniffed. ‘Have you seen her brother? No, she’s a little devil, more like.’

  ‘We don’t like Sister Joseph, do we?’ Grace muttered in Father’s floppy velveteen ear.

  Nell Gordon: Her parents’ marital problems marred an otherwise idyllic childhood in New Hampshire.

  Once upon a time up a neat shingle drive there stood a white clapboard house with blue painted window frames and a blue door. The house lay on Brook Street and Brook Street was in Kendall. Kendall was a small town in America, a clapboard and red-brick and ivy town, a place for skating on the pond on winter’s days and swimming in the lazy river in the summer, a soda-parlour and neighbourly kind of town where every mother made her child a new costume for Hallowe’en.

  In the white house on Brook Street lived a mummy and a daddy and a big brother and a little sister. The mummy was beautiful as a mermaid and the daddy was handsome and strong. The brother was a pain in the butt and the little sister was as pretty as a princess and just as lucky, with her lovely yellow and white room and her own swing in the yard. The mother and father loved each other very much. They always said so. And they loved their children and wanted only what was best for them. The mother’s name was Moira and the father’s was Gabriel. The brother was christened Finnian but his little sister called him Pigface. The little sister was called Grace, such a good name for a princess. When Pigface wanted her attention he called out, ‘Oi, Clothears!’ Pigface was at boarding school in England during term-time, which was lucky, although for some reason Grace and her mother cried at the start of each new term. ‘Women,’ the father said to Pigface and then they both shrugged and drove off in the station wagon towards Boston and the airport. Grace would run as far as the end of the street and wave at the departing car and Pigface would always be waving back with a look on his face like he didn’t want to leave all that much.

  But now it was the holidays. Grace was preparing for her forthcoming birthday. She liked the word forthcoming; it seemed to make an already important occasion even more so. She used the word often, making the ‘o’ in forth long and drawn out. She had already decided which pyjamas to wear for waking up on the day; and for later she would be wearing her best dress, of course: the white one with red polka dots and a wide red sash to tie round the waist.

  Grace’s Aunt Kathleen and Uncle Leslie lived in the same town, but they could not come to the party because they were away. Roberta O’Reilly was there, though. She was Finn and Grace’s grandmother, Moira’s mother. It was hard enough, the children thought, to believe that Roberta O’Reilly was their grandmother, but to think she was actually someone’s mother was close to impossible. She had only been in the house for a couple of days, but already she was causing trouble.

  ‘You spoil her, Moira,’ she said, sending a spiteful look in Grace’s direction. ‘There’s nothing good that comes from spoiling a child.’

  ‘Daddy says you think the sun shines out of Uncle Michael’s backside,’ Grace said, returning the look with a long hard stare of her own. ‘That means you spoil him.’

  Roberta O’Reilly was large apart from her feet that were small but so fat that they spilt over the edge of her navy-blue court shoes. She had washed-out fair hair curled tight and brushed away from her face. Her eyes were mean and her fat cheeks looked as if they could slide down her face at any time. Those cheeks turned bright pink and wobbled as she looked at Grace’s father and at Moira, that child’s mother. Then they all looked at Grace. Grace, who sometimes rode her bicycle so fast down the hill that she knew for sure it would end up with her crashing into the hedge; Grace, who had to clamp her hand tight over her mouth in church to stop herself from shouting, ‘Bugger, bugger, bugger baby Jesus and the Holy Ghost’; Grace, who always walked too close to the edge of the river where it was at its deepest and most wild.

  ‘Grace.’ Her parents spoke in unison. But Grace was too far gone to heed the warning. ‘And it’s really funny that you think that about the sun shining out of Uncle Michael’s backside, because Daddy says Uncle Michael is a pompous fool who talks through his arse. Arse,’ she added helpfully, ‘is the same as backside.’

  Grace, the offender, the bad girl, a mosquito child all eyes and teeth and knees, got sent to her room, which was absolutely fine with her because she had lots to do. She had to change the sign on her door, for a start. At the moment it read Trespassers will be persecuted – ‘it’s prosecuted, Clothears,’ Pigface had said. But Grace had assured him that hers would be persecuted. (She had been reading about Bloody Mary in Finn’s schoolbook.) But for tomorrow, her birthday, there had to be a different sign. When it was all done and stuck to her door, it read Trespassers will be welcome.

  There was a knock on the door. It was her father. He knocked on his children’s doors even when he was angry. It was useful because it gave them time to hide stole
n goods, stub out cigarettes or blow out small fires. Finn had shown Grace how to smoke during his last holidays. He said that his friend Nathan’s little sister could blow smoke rings already. But, for now, Grace was doing nothing worse than work on her sign.

  He perched on the end of her bed. ‘Grace, you know that what is said within a family should never be repeated outside. Not even to grandparents. In fact, especially not to grandparents. We must be able to trust each other to be discreet. Do you know what discreet means, Grace?’

  Grace nodded hastily. ‘It’s still my birthday tomorrow?’ she asked nervously.

  ‘Of course it is. But no more talking out of turn, Grace. Can I rely on you for that? If we can’t trust each other, who can we trust?’

  ‘God,’ Grace said.

  ‘Yes.’ Her father dragged out the word. ‘Of course we can trust God, but I’m talking about here on earth. So try to be a good girl, Grace, especially during your grandmother’s visit.’

  Grace hung her head. She wanted to be good. It was just that sometimes she could not help giving things a stir, that was all. Like the time she put the slug on the anthill. She had been very young, no more than five, and she had regretted doing it ever since, even having nightmares about it. But at the time, there had been the slug, all plump and sticky, and there had been the anthill, all hungry and busy. One thing had led to another. The slug landed neatly on top of the anthill. Grace wiped her sticky hands on her dress and squatted down to watch. Her eyes grew round. Now she really wanted to rescue the slug, but when she put her hand out to pick it up she couldn’t bring herself to touch it, it looked so horrible oozing desperate slime under a crust of tormenting ants, so instead she ran away and was sick. Afterwards she tried to pretend the whole thing had never happened. But as Grandmother Roberta O’Reilly always said in that satisfied voice she used for pronouncing doom, ‘Sweep a thing under the carpet and sooner or later it’ll trip you up.’ Grace’s father had explained that sweeping something under the carpet was a figure of speech meaning not facing up to something.