Shooting Butterflies (40 page)

She started as Cherry laughed the kind of lean-back, hands-on-the-hips, mouth-wide-open laugh favoured by Joan Crawford in so many films. ‘I never could understand what he saw in you back then and you certainly haven't improved … God, what a mess.' Cherry threw her head back and laughed some more.

‘Different minds think alike,' Grace said but she automatically put her hand to her hair. It would be a mess, piled up any old how and fastened with a chipped old clip.

‘And this place.' Cherry made an exaggerated play at looking around. ‘So this is his little lovenest. Pigsty, more like.'

‘I wasn't expecting anyone. Had I known you were coming I would have lit twenty scented candles and chucked the shag-pile rug by the fireplace.' Grace thought she should not have said that. After all, Cherry was the injured party here and as such was the one entitled to the rude remarks. She noticed that Cherry's nails were perfect, filed into neat ovals and painted a ladylike pink. Grace hid her hands, red and stained with development fluid, behind her back. ‘So what can I do for you?'

There was another Joan Crawford laugh. Quite right too; it had been a stupid thing to say.

‘Now, let me see.' Cherry was marching back and forth between the table and the back door. ‘Oh yes, not fucking my husband would have been a good start … notice I am speaking in the past tense. As it is, you can have him.'

Grace stared at her. ‘What do you mean,
I can have him
?' Cherry was playing some kind of game, it was obvious. Grace felt as if the warmth was retreating from her body, down past the forehead and the lips, pausing in the throat, down again past the chest and the stomach. ‘You have to excuse me.' She sank down on the small bench by the wall. Cherry was smiling at her like someone about to grant you your most foolish wish. Midas would have seen that smile just before everything around him began to turn into cold hard gold.

‘I mean exactly what I say.' Cherry was quite calm now; her fists had unclenched and the tension left her shoulders. When she spoke again her voice was normal, conversational. ‘You can have him. The arsehole is dying.'

Cherry had kept him in the car, like some cumbersome delivery. ‘It's OK, dear,' she crooned, waving to the figure slumped in the passenger seat. ‘You can come out now; she'll take you.'

As Grace gave a little yelp of distress, Cherry turned to her with a smile that was almost motherly. ‘Don't get upset now. I mean, isn't this what you've wanted all these years, my husband? OK, so he's not – how shall I put it – he's not quite the hunk he was. The hospital gave him a wig although he refuses to wear it. It's been
worse. But I agree, white is not a very flattering shade for him.' She shrugged. ‘So he's all yours, although I can't help thinking it's just a little bit pathetic, don't you think; a grown man allowing himself to be bundled off like …' her eyes narrowed but the smile remained like a sweet wine turned sickly ‘… like some … thing surplus to requirement. Still, they say all men are babies. And stop snivelling.'

‘I'm sorry.' Grace rubbed her eyes. ‘I don't, as a rule.'

Cherry ignored her and carried on talking. ‘Of course he tried, rather belatedly, to be a man, refusing to come inside. He said he didn't want to add to the pressure on you.' The smile gave up the fight against the hatred in her eyes and faded. ‘It doesn't seem he trusted you to pick up the pieces. And I wouldn't blame you if you refused to take him. He'll need a lot of care. And it will get worse, that much we know.' Her tone was brisk as if she was going through the care instructions with a pet minder. ‘There'll be a lot of that … you know … embarrassing stuff. And I never had you down as the nursing kind. More of a career girl, aren't you, Grace?' Grace could smell the alcohol on her breath. She hung back as Cherry opened the car door and poked her head inside, saying in her brisk matter-of-fact voice, ‘There, you're all right. Didn't I say she'd have you?' She backed out again, stumbling slightly as her heel sank into a soft bit of ground. The lawn was full of those; old holes dug by Pluto to hide his treasures, but never quite filled in.

‘Good old Grace,' Cherry said, wobbling on her heels as she hit another hole. ‘Always there, panting for a crumb of love to come her way.'

‘I expect you're standing on a bone,' Grace said, her eyes wide and fixed on the man in the car who was her lover, who was Jefferson like she had never wished to see him.

Cherry looked down for a moment, moving an inch to the side. ‘What are you babbling about? What bone? What the hell are you doing, having bones lying round the yard? Are you renting from the Addams family or something?'

Grace giggled. Leaning back against the sun-warmed bark of the maple tree, she could not stop. Then Jefferson got out of the car. He moved slowly like someone with a stiff back but he walked all
the way up to Grace, taking her in his arms, holding her tight, whispering, ‘I'm sorry, my darling, I'm sorry.'

‘Sweet.' Cherry spat out the word as if it was a bad prawn. ‘Now, if you'll excuse me, much as I'd like to hang around here watching my husband make out with a gawky brunette, I'd better be off.' She paused, gazing at Jefferson, summing him up, before saying, ‘You see,
I
have a life.' She opened the back of the car and grabbed a small suitcase, dumping it on the ground before getting in and driving off, whipping up the gravel with the back tyres.

‘What's going on? Jefferson, for God's sake, what's going on?' There was a whine in Grace's voice – she could hear it herself – as if she was eight years old and someone had played a mean joke on her.

‘Let's go inside,' he said and picked up his bag.

‘It's not true, is it?' Now she was pleading. ‘I know I've been worried, but you kept saying you were OK. You are OK, aren't you?' She walked alongside him into the kitchen, babbling her questions, and then she burst into tears.

He sank down on a chair and took her hand. At first he would not look her in the eyes. ‘I'm sorry, Grace, but I didn't
know
, at first.'

‘What didn't you know?' She held her breath, eyes closed, as if when the answer came she could avoid it.

‘About the cancer.' His sigh was so heavy she half expected it to fall with a thud to the floor instead of drifting off into the ether. ‘And this kind, bronchial carcinoma, it moves fast. I've had chemo. It didn't work. I don't want any more. I want to be left alone.'

‘You're way too young for lung cancer. They must have got it wrong. Have you sought a second opinion? Angelica has a friend who's a cancer specialist at Mount Vernon. It's one of the best places. I'll call her.'

He was shaking his head. ‘No, Grace. I've had second and third opinions. And it is rare, I've been unlucky.' He smiled at the understatement. ‘But smoking and asbestos; that'll do it. You remember that summer I worked in Greg's Building and Hardware? I handled asbestos all the time. You remember how I used to come in from the back covered in dust? That was asbestos. It was used everywhere in those days, especially on the farms.'

Grace stared at him. Pictures and questions collided in her head until she put her hands up to her ears and screamed, ‘No, no, no, no, no!' She sank down on her knees before him and wept.

‘How could you not have told me? It was cruel. I knew something was wrong. I pleaded with you to tell me. Couldn't you see how unfair you were being, keeping such a thing from me? You even cancelled your trip. I don't understand; didn't you need me?' She pulled out a tissue from her pocket and blew her nose. ‘Your wife knew, your family, your friends. And me … am I so irrelevant?'

‘Grace, please.'

‘Don't “Grace, please” me. And if Cherry hadn't taken matters into her own hands, what then?'

They were sitting on the porch watching the world go by, two lovers side by side; picture-book nice, but for the fact that one of them was not going to survive the year. Grace kicked back against the wooden plank floor, sending the hammock swinging. He was trying to explain. He had been ill for some time but had refused to consider that something could be seriously wrong. Finally a friend on the faculty staff had, quite literally, taken him by the hand and brought him to see the college doctor. Several examinations had followed; hours and days spent waiting for results, hoping against all his instincts that the news might be good. It never was. ‘I had a scare, years ago, when I was barely thirty. They sent me off for a brain scan. The daffodils were out all over the hospital grounds. I remember thinking that by the time I next walked past them, in an hour or so's time, I might have been given a death sentence. When I was told everything was fine I waited for the relief to surge over me, but I just felt numb. I walked outside and the sun was shining. There were the daffodils and that's when I got happy. I did what everyone does at such times; I told myself that never again would I worry about the little things, the trivia, but that from then on I was going to live for the bigger picture. Of course things returned to normal pretty quickly.' He smiled and the smile was such a poor imitation of his usual wide grin that Grace had to look away. Jefferson, a little more distant already, as people are who are preparing to leave, stroked her hair absentmindedly. ‘We're so damn ungrateful, aren't we? And stupid. God must despair. Well, of
course He must. He gives us these gifts of insight and we hold them in our hot little hands for a moment or two before dropping them and forgetting we ever had them. Anyway, I kept remembering that walk in the sun amongst the daffodils as I sat waiting in some reception area or another, and later, when they put me in more private spaces reserved for those whose misfortune brings them special privileges, I went over that miraculous moment when I got my life back, over and over, pretending that it would happen like that again. But there's no miracle in the pipeline this time. They gave me the option of treatments while telling me that none would make me well or even significantly better. I have excellent insurance,' he smiled and shook his head, ‘the doctors wouldn't let me go without trying at least some of their best, their latest and most promising treatments, but in the end they had to.'

‘You're not explaining why you didn't tell me. When were you planning to? At your funeral?' She slapped her hand over her mouth. ‘God, Jefferson, I'm so sorry. I didn't mean to …'

He took her hand and put it to his cheek. He looked at her, smiling.

‘It's not funny, it's not funny,' she wailed.

‘It is, just a bit.'

They sat in silence for a while. Then she had to ask again, ‘Why, even if you didn't want to travel to London, didn't you ask me to come over to you? We could have met in Boston, anywhere.'

‘Grace, I was ashamed. Well, look at me.' He faced her, flapping his hand at his chest, agitated. She had to look away for a moment; it was her heart he was breaking with that flapping hand. ‘I wanted to tell you. More than anything, I wanted to, but, Grace, I could see the way Cherry and the girls looked at me, with a mixture of pity and … distaste. Day by day it was as if I lost a little of myself to the illness. Everyone treated me differently. People didn't see me any more; they saw my illness, this terrifying, ugly illness eating me alive.' He put his hand on hers. ‘I spoke to you on the phone, I read your letters and wrote mine to you, and I was still me, I was still,' he looked down, an embarrassed smile on his lips, ‘I was still this handsome, sexy fellow who could look after
you
– not that I ever did.'

‘But I would have had to have known, sooner or later. When, Jefferson, if Cherry hadn't taken matters in to her own hands? And when did she find out about us?' In the turmoil of emotion one other question nagged at her. Why had he led Cherry to the house, gone along like an obedient child and allowed her to invade their home with her hatred and spite? But she said nothing; this was not the time.

‘I suppose it was some kind of deathbed confession. I just wanted everything out in the open. I don't know how I could have been so naïve, so stupid, but I imagined that she might understand. I'm ashamed to say it but I even thought she might be grateful to me for staying with her all these years.' He shook his head. ‘Unbelievable as it sounds, I thought she owed me some
care
. Grace, how could I have dumped myself on you now?' He looked away. ‘Don't you think I know how I was never there for you?'

She tried to silence him, putting her finger against his lips that were chapped and hot, but he moved her hand away gently and carried on. ‘You know it's true. My record is appalling. I dumped you back then. I lived my life and never once got in touch to ask after you. When we meet again, I help myself to you like a greedy child to a bowl of strawberries, helping after helping, but where have I been when you've needed me? Then, when Cherry tells me to get the hell out of her life, I let her drive me here to you.' He gave a bitter little laugh. ‘I'm not allowed to drive any more. Now how pathetic am I?'

‘You tell that so well,' Grace said. ‘But, actually, you've got it all wrong. Do you want to hear my story?' He gave a small shrug.

‘When I was not much more than a child, inexperienced, thinking it was beyond me to find someone to care about, I met a boy who was the most beautiful thing, inside and out, that I'd ever seen, and I loved him without question and for a while he returned that love and I discovered sides to me that I had not known existed: tender and loving and womanly. I lost him, but I never lost what loving him had taught me. The years went by and I met him again and now we were grown up and we loved each other and, because of that, my life when it isn't sad is wonderful.'

* * *

While he napped Grace unpacked his bag. He hadn't packed himself, that was clear. She had always found it touching the way he took such care of his things: shoe trees in his shoes, sweaters carefully folded, jackets hung on good hangers. Here his clothes had been just stuffed into the bag any old way, with no thought to what they would look like at the other end. At that moment Grace hated Cherry – for that, if nothing else.