Shooting Butterflies Read online

  Grace did not wish to face up to the slug incident so it faced up to her instead, at night in her dreams and when she sat in church listening to the things good people did. Putting a poor little slug on an anthill to be eaten alive was not a good thing. Children, however, were supposed to be good, and innocent. Grace, and there was no denying it, was a child. But Grace had also done a very bad thing which meant that she was not good. After pondering this seeming contradiction, she went to her father and said, ‘To you I’m but a child but, know this, I am capable of great evil.’ She had read a book where the hero, a little boy not much older than Grace, had said almost exactly that, only with him it was deeds – ‘capable of great deeds’ – not evil. But she had particularly liked the sentence, memorising it for when it would come in useful.

  Her father had looked at her, shaking his head and laughing. Grace had watched him for a while and then she had walked off. Only the previous day he had whacked her on the thigh for being rude. Now, when she told him she was evil, he just laughed. There were times when things just did not make sense.

  ‘Now, try to be the sweet little girl I know you are,’ her father concluded, getting to his feet. He walked out of the room a little bent, as if he was carrying the trouble that was his daughter on his shoulders. He was Clark Kent today, his dark hair combed into a neat side parting and his bright blue eyes dimmed behind smudged spectacles. But when he took the lead in the Kendall Players’ production of Guys and Dolls, he had whisked his glasses off and his dark hair had fallen across his forehead and he had definitely looked a bit like Superman. Apart from her eyes that were sea-green and almond-shaped like her mother’s, Grace looked like her other, dead, grandmother. So there they were, Grace’s mother looking like a mermaid, her father looking like Clark Kent and a little like Superman, Grace looking like a dead person and her brother looking like a geek.

  The evening before her birthday was meant to be a good time, with everyone having little secrets and being nice just in preparation. But this year something was not right. Like her record player dragging the record half a note behind, the tune was recognisable yet wrong.

  ‘Tell me the story of when you and Mummy first met,’ she said to her father when they were on their own in the sitting room after supper. But her father kept getting it in a muddle. Grace had to prompt him. ‘So there you were, a young man visiting Boston, and there she was, the prettiest girl outside the prettiest doorway in town.’

  ‘Oh yes,’ Gabriel said, ‘the doorway. Your grandfather had it shipped all the way from Dublin although he couldn’t even pay the rent at that time.’

  ‘You thought she was a mermaid …’ Grace had to prompt again.

  ‘Grace, I can’t remember.’

  ‘You always remember.’ Grace’s voice turned shrill with anxiety. ‘You thought she was a mermaid, so you …’

  ‘If your mother is a mermaid, then I’m afraid she is the kind who wants nothing more than to paddle in her goldfish bowl with a nice piece of plastic seaweed and a tasteful plaster shipwreck.’

  ‘I don’t understand what you are saying.’ Grace was close to tears. ‘You fell in love with Mummy, then and there, because she looked like a mermaid and the girls you knew back in England all looked like silly Imogen Jones and she looked like a horse.’

  ‘If I remember right, Imogen was rather a jolly girl. Fun, always laughing. Nothing was ever difficult. I can’t imagine what I thought was wrong with her.’

  ‘She wasn’t a mermaid,’ Grace yelled. ‘That’s what was wrong with her. You wanted a mermaid!’

  She slammed out of the room in search of her mother and tried her. ‘Anyway, you were fed up with living with Roberta O’Reilly …’

  ‘Granny, darling. You’re meant to call her Granny.’

  ‘… because she was always yelling and throwing china, even if it was the ugly cheap stuff, and because Grandpa O’Reilly, God rest his soul, told stories that weren’t true and never stopped going on about the old country when you were perfectly happy with the new one, so when you saw this handsome young man from England …’

  Moira looked at her little daughter who stood there, all indignant in her birthday pyjamas, and she sighed. ‘Grace, isn’t it time you went to bed?’

  Grace turned on her heels and walked upstairs. She had given up on the evening.

  But her birthday still arrived, right on time, at seven o’clock the next morning. Blue, the red setter, burst through the door first, wispy tail wagging, a big grin on his foxy face; dogs just have to get through a door first. Gabriel followed, carrying a tray with the birthday cup full of sweet milky tea and a vase with a single red rose. Finn came behind, sullen and sleep-swollen. He was on holiday and could not see why he should have to get up early just because it was Grace’s birthday. But Grace heaved a sigh of relief and beamed a smile at them. The world had snapped back into its proper shape and everything was as it should be, almost, because where was Moira?

  ‘Where’s Mummy?’

  Gabriel placed the tray at the foot of the bed and disappeared, returning a moment later with a heap of gift-wrapped parcels. ‘She’s got a bit of a headache, that’s all. She’ll be along in a minute,’ he said. ‘And,’ he winked. ‘I might have forgotten to wake Grandma up, although,’ he raised a small parcel wrapped in creased paper with reindeers on in the air for Grace to see, ‘I’ve got her present for you.’ Grace winked back with both eyes.

  First Grace opened Finn’s present. It was a red kite. Grace was delighted. ‘When can we fly it?’

  ‘In a minute,’ Gabriel said. ‘Open the rest of your presents first. And you have to get dressed.’

  Grace picked up the birthday cup and drank a little. ‘When’s Mummy coming?’

  ‘I told you …’

  ‘Here I am, darling.’ Moira was wearing a dress that matched her eyes, a dress Grace especially liked. Her lips were Princess Grace-pink and her hair was piled up in a golden bun on top of her head. It was just that her eyes were swollen like Finn’s.

  ‘Is your headache better?’

  ‘Headache? I don’t have a headache, darling. I got caught on the phone, that’s all.’

  Grace turned to her father with her mouth open, poised to speak, but he quickly forestalled her by handing her the next parcel.

  Roberta O’Reilly’s present was a camera. ‘A camera for a seven year old,’ Moira muttered. ‘And she’ll be furious we didn’t wake her.’

  ‘She got it free with an electric blanket,’ Finn said. ‘She told me. Anyway, seven isn’t too young for a camera. I’m sure I knew how to use one when I was seven.’

  ‘But Grace is not at all technical.’ Moira caught her reflection in the mirror and wrinkled her little nose; the adorable snub nose that was the sure mark of every heroine in every book that Grace had read, a nose that Moira had not passed on to her daughter. She patted the skin beneath her chin. ‘What is the point, I ask you? You moisturise and moisturise and you moisturise and still you die.’

  Grace turned the small square box in her hands, admiring the frog’s eye Finn said was the inbuilt flash. She raised the camera to her right eye and squinted through the lens as her father spoke. ‘Can we concentrate on Grace’s birthday gifts, Moira … dear.’ The ‘dear’ did not match the look on his face. She lowered the camera and now, as she looked at them, her parents were both smiling.

  ‘Do you see the same in the camera …’

  ‘Through the camera,’ Finn said. ‘There’s nothing in the camera, Clothears.’

  ‘I know that. What you see through the camera,’ Grace frowned at Finn, ‘is the same as you see outside?’

  ‘Jesus, you’re thick.’

  ‘Don’t take the Lord’s name in vain, Finn,’ came a warning voice from Moira and Grace raised the camera and saw her mother’s smile. Weird, Grace thought, but interesting.

  For as long as Grace could remember, her parents had been having ‘words’. Those words were either very quiet, seeping out from between clenched
teeth, or very loud, jetting out of gaping mouths. But Grace didn’t worry because her parents loved each other very much. That’s what they said, every time after they had had words. ‘Now, there’s no need to take on so, Grace. It’s healthy to disagree and you know that Mummy and Daddy love each other very much.’

  But today they did not have words once. First it felt nice but after a while Grace grew uneasy. True, it was her birthday and everyone was supposed to be happy, like at Christmas, but that had not stopped them in the past. Something was wrong. Like a dog, Grace sniffed the air and picked up on an atmosphere thick with unsaid words. Even Finn was being OK. (Last time he had been decent to her it turned out that he had dropped her tortoise from the attic window strapped to a homemade parachute. It had been months before they found the desiccated remains, a pretty shell, suspended from the branches of next door’s maple.) Only Roberta O’Reilly was the same as always. She sat at the head of the table, in the place that was usually her son-in-law’s, having vetoed eating outside in the August sunshine because sun meant sunstroke, and the lazy buzzing of insects meant bites, warmth meant cream curdling and butter melting before they even reached her scones, and the light cooling breeze meant soot coming from next door’s barbecue. Roberta O’Reilly’s mouth was a downward line of disapproval as her small sharp eyes gazed round at her family. ‘I trust that camera won’t be wasted on you, Grace,’ she said, having had to think for a while to find something new and unpleasant to say. ‘Because there is many a child who would give his or her eye teeth for a fine gift like that. Little Patricia was ten before she received a camera.’

  ‘I suppose you had to pay for that one,’ Gabriel muttered.

  His mother-in-law turned her large head with a sharp, ‘What was that?’

  ‘I was just saying what a lovely little girl Patricia is,’ Gabriel lied and he and Moira exchanged amused glances. Grace loved it when her parents thought the same thing, even if the same thing was that Grace should be sent to her room or have her pocket money docked. She beamed at them over her tall glass of pink soda.

  Little Patricia was Uncle Michael’s daughter, so Finn and Grace’s cousin. Apparently she was as good as she was pretty, sweet and kind and fair of face with blonde hair and a natural wave. To have a natural wave was a great gift bestowed only on those most deserving. Grace’s hair was dark and dead straight, poker straight, not a curl, not even the slightest wave to be seen. Grace had never met her cousin, who lived far away in Ireland, but if she ever did she would surely hate her.

  ‘Finn,’ Roberta O’Reilly snapped, ‘what is that nasty grabbing? Has no one told you that it’s rude to reach?’

  But even Roberta O’Reilly turned nice, eventually, complimenting Moira on the light-as-air scones and pretending not to notice Finn burping after his second Coca Cola. Her parents continued to smile at each other across the sunlit table, chatting amiably, not having words, not once. It occurred to Grace then that she was dying. It was the only possible explanation. She knew it only too well from her illustrated stories, the dying child surrounded by heavenly light and grown-ups with sad brave smiles across the sickbed. Those leg cramps she got sometimes at night; they weren’t just growing pains, as her mother had airily dismissed them, but signs of some terrible sickness. They all knew about it, all of them, other than Grace herself – until now. Of course they had not been able to bring themselves to tell her. She couldn’t blame them. How do you tell a child that she is about to die? No one noticed the tear that dropped off her thick black lashes and into her jello. Anytime soon she would be dead and they were all making sure her last birthday was bright and full of joy, just as it had said on Roberta O’Reilly’s card. May your special day be bright and filled with joy.

  The phone rang and Finn slipped off his chair and ran into the hall to answer it. He returned moments later. ‘They hung up when they heard me,’ he said. ‘I hate people who do that. And it’s the second time today.’

  Moira stiffened in her chair. ‘It’s happened before?’

  ‘Yup.’ Finn grabbed a chocolate cookie on his way. ‘And once yesterday.’

  ‘Well, well,’ Moira said, smiling at Gabriel. It wasn’t, Grace thought, a very nice smile. They had barely finished tea when the phone went again. Her father looked at her mother. Her mother’s eyes widened, but her voice was quiet when she asked, ‘Why don’t you answer? I’m sure it’s for you.’ And Grace’s father went into the hall so slowly you would have thought he did not want to get to the phone in time. When he returned he looked at no one and said, ‘Wrong number.’ Grace’s mother’s eyes filled with tears, but she got to her feet and said something about ‘games’ in a cheery voice. Grace thought they were all very brave.

  Come bedtime, she was beginning to think they were a little too brave. She lay in bed planning her forthcoming funeral. She had never been to one. When Grandfather O’Reilly died, Finn had been allowed to go, but Grace had been considered too young. Try telling her that this time, she thought with some satisfaction, now she was the dead person. She had learnt about funerals from a stack of old children’s books she’d found in a trunk in the attic. The books had pictures and someone always died. Grace felt she knew just how a good funeral should be. First there would be her little coffin. The smaller the coffin, the louder people cried. Grace wondered if she could ask to be folded double. Then the coffin would be so small even Roberta O’Reilly would weep buckets. And it should be white with brass handles. There would be wreaths of white and pink flowers and much talk of God preparing to receive a new little angel into the heavens. She closed her eyes in the darkness and imagined it all. Soon her pillow was damp with tears. It was so sad. The saddest thing she had ever thought. Suddenly she got frightened. She did not want to lie all alone in a coffin, folded double or not. She did not want to be a new little angel in heaven. She would miss her mother and father, even Finn. And what about her rabbits? Were there rabbits in heaven?

  Finn’s room smelt of farts and dirty feet. He was asleep, face down, the blanket and sheet kicked right to the bottom of the bed. She walked up to him and shook him hard. ‘Pigface, wake up.’

  ‘What?’ Finn’s fair hair stood on end and he rubbed his eyes. ‘What do you want?’

  ‘Pigface, am I going to die?’

  He turned on the bedside light. ‘Yes.’

  Grace burst into disconsolate tears.

  ‘Don’t be silly. Everyone’s going to die,’ Finn said.

  ‘But I’m dying now,’ Grace wailed.

  ‘You’re not.’

  ‘Am.’

  ‘Not.’

  Grace opened her eyes wide, wiping them with the back of her fist. ‘I’m not?’

  ‘You’re so dumb. Why should you be? There’s nothing wrong with you.’

  ‘There isn’t?’

  ‘No. Apart from being a typically annoying little brat and usually that isn’t fatal.’

  ‘Fatal?’

  ‘Dead-making. Now go back to bed.’

  ‘Promise I’m all right?’

  ‘Let me have your camera all tomorrow and I will.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then I won’t.’

  ‘You will too. Promise I’m not dying.’

  ‘Let me have your camera all tomorrow?’

  ‘OK then.’

  ‘You’re not dying, Clothears; promise.’

  Back in her own room Grace was wide awake. She did not trust Finn. His own camera had got broken at the beginning of the holidays and he had been nagging her all day about using hers for some experiment. He might have said she was not dying just so that he would get the camera. She took it out of its cardboard box, turning it in her hand. She had taken two pictures earlier in the day, both of the cake, but she had had help. Her grandmother said that little Patricia, in spite of not even having owned a camera until she was ten, had been taking beautiful pictures from a much younger age.

  Grace, still awake, sat on her bed, the light on, fiddling with the loaded camera, when raised
voices reached her from downstairs. Instead of hiding her head under the pillow to muffle the noise, Grace wandered outside and downstairs, lured by the comforting sound of her parents having words.

  She stood in the doorway in her birthday pyjamas, the camera still in her hand. Her parents did not notice her being there. ‘I told you it didn’t mean anything,’ her father said. He said it in that tired loud voice he used when he had to say the same thing over and over again. ‘And you said you forgave me. We were starting again, that’s what you said. One day, that’s all you managed.’

  ‘I tried, you … you pig.’ Moira’s voice was quiet. ‘God knows, I tried.’ She was still wearing her pretty dress. Gabriel’s dark hair was falling across his forehead. Grace was proud of how handsome they looked. None of the other children had such young good-looking parents. And they weren’t tearful and good and planning a funeral, they were cross. Grace felt a warm feeling all over as she raised the camera to her eye and clicked the button just as her mother raised her hand. As the flash went off they both turned round.

  ‘Grace, what are you doing up?’ Moira snapped. ‘Back to bed this minute. And put that camera away.’

  Grace padded off happily. Pigface had not lied. In return he used up all the rest of the film. Gabriel took it in to be developed. All three of Grace’s pictures had turned out well. She held up the picture of her mother and father for everyone to see. She was proud of herself. ‘Look,’ she said, ‘I managed without help.’

  Nell Gordon: After her mother’s death in a single-vehicle car accident, Shield and her family returned to England. When Shield was ten her father remarried and the new family settled in the Home Counties village of Northbourne.

  Grace and Noah Blackstaff were sitting cross-legged on the rug in front of the open fire in Noah’s grandparents’ house, playing Monopoly. Noah was banker. Grace should really be at home but coming back from school she had paused outside her own house and looked in at Mrs Shield, who was taking a tray of biscuits from the oven. She was wearing extra-long oven gloves on both hands because she burnt herself so often everyone was beginning to get annoyed with her. In the sitting room were the ladies, waiting to be fed. Grace could see poor Marjory and Mrs Daly and two more. All Mrs Shield’s friends were really kind to Grace.