The Butterfly Box (33 page)

‘The tragedy is that they do,' said Julian.

‘Ours is that we don’t,’ Toby laughed, patting his friend on the back.

‘When I come and live here, can I bring Rasta?’ asked Federica, who was still sitting quietly on the floor.

Toby and Julian both turned to look at her together.

‘Good God, I forgot you were there,’ said Toby in surprise.

‘Of course you can bring Rasta,’ said Julian, then he looked at Toby. ‘When’s she moving in?’

Chapter 23

Just when Helena thought she would never be able to make up her mind whether or not to marry Arthur, she received a telephone call that decided her future for her.

‘Helena, it’s Ramon, I’m in London.’

Helena’s stomach turned over at the sound of his granular voice, a voice that held within it the resonance of too many memories. She floundered, not knowing what to say, wanting to be furious but not having had the time to rouse her fury.

‘Helena?’ He repeated into the silence.

‘What do you want?’ she asked coldly, playing for time.

‘I want to see my children,’ he replied.

‘You can’t,’ she said simply, fumbling for her cigarettes, remembering Arthur’s advice to breathe deeply when she was nervous, but it was all she could do to breathe at all. She was not going to allow him to revive Federica’s distress; she was just beginning to get over him.

‘Helena, you can’t prevent me from seeing my own children,’ he replied. ‘I

received a letter from Fede. She needs me.’

‘Like a hole in the head, Ramon,’ she said sarcastically, placing the cigarette in her mouth and lighting it unsteadily.

‘You’re angry.’

‘Of course I’m angry, Ramon. I haven’t seen you for seven years,’ she snapped, blowing the smoke out into the mouthpiece. ‘Bloody hell, Ramon! Who do you think you are?’

‘Calm down,’ he said, then inhaled deeply. His tone was irritating.

‘For God’s sake. You’re a useless father. I’m surprised Fede hasn’t forgotten about you. She damn well should have. My brother’s been more of a father to her than you ever were. You can’t come back here after seven years and expect us all to embrace you. You chose to rush off again and you chose not to come back. If you’re regretting it, too bad.’

‘So, who’s Arthur?’ he asked.

She dragged heavily on her cigarette. ‘My fiance,’ she replied smugly.

‘That’s what Fede feared.’

‘So that’s why you’ve come is it? Fede’s knight in shining armour, what a joke.’

‘I’m coming down whether you like it or not,’ he said.

 

‘Fine, but I won’t let you near the children.’

 

‘If you want to deprive your own children of their father, that’s up to you, but I’m coming anyway.’ He put the telephone down.

Ramon put his bag into the back of the black Mercedes and asked the driver to take him to Polperro. Then he sat in the back and brooded. It had been too easy to let them slip away. How the years had passed without him noticing the relentless passage of time. He had been too happy with Estella and Ramoncito to throw his thoughts across the ocean. Helena and the children had been like nagging stones in his shoe. He was always aware that they were there yet never got around to doing anything about them.

Estella loved him unconditionally like a child, tenderly like a mother and unpossessively like a friend. With her he didn’t feel the need to leave all the time, on the contrary, he travelled with speed looking forward to the day when he would be embraced in her warm arms again. Sometimes, when he was far away, alone with his thoughts, he would wake to the smell of roses and believe that she had come to relieve the increasing monotony of his solitary

wanderings. Other times he would hear the whisper of the sea or the laughter of a stream and have to pause a moment to recall Estella’s honey voice and her joy. As Estella’s gentle features supplanted those of Helena, Federica and Hal, he found himself forgetting that they had ever existed. How easy it was to forget.

Mariana wrote to her grandchildren with enforced regularity in order that she didn’t forget. Helena sent her photographs when she remembered and Mariana dutifully enlarged them, framed them, and gazed at them with determination, fearful that if she didn’t remind herself to look at them at least once a day she might wake up one morning to find that she hadn’t thought about them in years. In her mind’s eye they were still the little children they had been that last summer in Cachagua, in spite of the photographs that captured their growing up and their growing away. Her other grandchildren visited regularly. She now had twenty-four, making it all the more difficult to remember the two she had loved the most.

Mariana hadn’t told Ignacio about her visit to Estella’s beach house. She knew his ears would go red with fury. He’d not only be angry but disappointed

and she didn’t know whether his heart would be able to contain the excess of emotion without breaking. But she was unable to forget about her grandchild. She spent long evenings wandering up and down the beach, gazing out to sea, wondering what to do. She was certain that Estella would dry up with neglect, that Ramon would spend more and more time travelling, leaving his son to grow up fatherless just like Hal and Federica. When she had returned to Cachagua the morning she had visited Estella, she had been so angry with Ramon for his carelessness that she had sent Gertrude home and spent the rest of the day furiously polishing all the floors and furniture in the house. When she was through she had collapsed onto the bed and woken up at lunchtime the following day much to Ignacio’s surprise as well as her own, for he had been unable to wake her. Anxious evenings on the beach had ensued where she bit all her nails down to the quick and lost so much weight she had to buy herself a whole new wardrobe when she returned to Santiago. Ignacio believed she was suffering from missing Helena and the children and did his best to comfort her. But she couldn’t be comforted.

Finally, at the end of January she had returned to Estella’s beach house, pale-faced and grim, not knowing what she was going to say, only that she had to

say something. Estella noticed at once Mariana’s distress and burst into tears on the veranda.

‘Is it Ramon?’ she choked impulsively, staggering towards her, her eyes at once welling with despair. ‘Is he all right?’

Mariana was so moved by Estella’s tears that she embraced her. ‘Ramon is fine, Estella. It is you and my grandchild I’m worried about,’ she said, releasing her.

Estella stared at her with glassy eyes. ‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered. ‘I forgot myself.’

‘I knew already,’ Mariana replied kindly.

‘You’d better come in then.’

Mariana was no longer curious about the house or surprised by its size. She recognized Ramon’s typewriter on the desk and the first pages of a manuscript piled neatly beside it. Ramon had never been tidy, nor had Helena, but Estella kept the place as immaculate as she had kept Mariana’s house. Estella showed her into the sitting room, which was light and spacious with pale Venetian blinds drawn half way down the French doors to keep the room cool. She admired the elegance of Estella’s taste. The floor was covered with brightly woven

rugs from India, she had filled the room with large pots of geraniums and fairy roses and the bookshelf was a library of European writers, philosophers and biographers. Mariana noticed that Ramon had taken the most exquisite pictures of Estella and their son and placed them in silver frames on every surface. Wherever her eye rested she was able to follow her son’s travels around the world - a Brazilian balanganda in silver to induce fertility, a Greek icon of Saint Francis from a monk on Mount Athos and an African spear from a tribe he had befriended deep in the African jungle. Together Ramon and Estella had made a warm home for themselves.

Estella sat opposite, staring at Mariana with limpid eyes.

‘I’m not here to chastise you, Estella,’ she said, following her instincts, feeling her way. ‘I worry for you, that’s all.’

‘How did you find out?’ Estella asked boldly.

‘At Christmas when I visited you, I left forgetting to give you the gift I had brought, so I turned back.’

‘Oh,’ said Estella, nodding sadly.

‘I heard you call your child Ramoncito, then it all made sense.’

‘Yes.’

Mariana got up and walked over to where Estella sat uncomfortably on the edge of the sofa. She sat down next to her and looked at her with understanding. ‘I’m a woman too, I know what it is like to love a man. I love Ignacio. He’s difficult to say the least. But I love him in spite of his sometimes irksome nature. I know Ramon well enough to realize that it was he who seduced you. I don’t blame you. I pity you. I’ve watched his marriage disintegrate. Helena couldn’t cope with his wanderings. Can you?’

Estella’s face glowed like a rosy apple and she smiled the smile of a woman contented with her lot. ‘I love Ramon. He loves me. That is all that I ask. I don’t want to imprison him in the home. I just want his love. I’m happy, Señora. Happier than I've ever been.’

‘I believe you,’ she said, touching the young woman’s arm. ‘But, what do your parents think? He’s still married to Helena.’

The spring drained away from Estella’s face and it acquired an autumnal sadness. ‘They have disowned me,’ she stated simply, flatly, as if she had built an inner barrier of indifference in order to prevent herself from hurting any more. ‘I’m so sorry,’ said Mariana. ‘If there’s anything I can do.’

‘No, no,’ Estella replied. ‘There’s nothing anyone can do.’

‘Have they seen your child?’

‘No.’

‘If they were to see him ..

‘They won’t come anywhere near the house.’

‘Do they know who the father is?’

‘They do, and they don’t care. My father wants Ramon to marry me . ..’

‘I see.’

‘I’m happy. They should be happy that I’m happy, but I bring disgrace on the family,’ she said and her eyes glistened against her will.

‘Why don’t you show them Ramoncito? Their hearts will soften, I promise you. He’s so adorable. He’s a little angel. Can I see him again?’

Estella showed Mariana into the little room where Ramoncito was quietly sleeping in the cool shadows. She ran a finger down his soft cheek and felt the emotion gather in her throat and in her eyes that stung with tears. ‘Take Ramoncito to see them,’ she said.

‘Shall I tell Ramon that you came?’

‘No,’ Mariana replied firmly. ‘It will be our secret. He will let me know in his own time. But if there is anything I can ever do for you, please don’t feel too

afraid to call me. You know where I am. I won’t impose on you any more.’

Estella touched Mariana’s hand and smiled. ‘I want you to come. I want Ramoncito to know his grandmother,’ she said and her lips trembled.

Mariana was too touched to reply. She nodded her head, swallowed hard and blinked away her gratitude.

The following evening Estella braced herself for the most difficult task of her life. She wrapped Ramoncito in a woollen shawl, packed enough food and clothes for a week and laid him on her parents’ doorstep with a note which said, simply,
‘l need your love.
¹
Then she turned and walked away. As she reached the bend in the road she almost repented and ran back to reclaim him, but she remembered Mariana’s words and continued up the track with a heart of lead but a mind hardened with resolve. After a suffocating couple of hours, during which time anxiety clawed at her conscience like a crow trying to scratch his way out, she could bear it no longer and hurried back along the coast to where her parents’ house nestled against the hillside.

Ramoncito was no longer on the doorstep. Terrified that he might have been taken by a stray dog or a thief she crept up to the window of the house, holding

her breath so as not to give herself away. At first, when she looked through the glass she saw nothing but an empty room. Then just when an inner sob began to choke her, Maria wandered into the room with the baby safely wrapped in her solid arms. She was smiling broadly and the tears were falling over her old cheeks in rivers of joy.

Pablo Rega sat on the grass next to his friend, Osvaldo Garcia Segundo, and began to talk, as he always did, with poetry and candour.

‘My old heart has softened, Osvaldo.
Si,
Señor, it has. Maria returned home to find Estella’s bastard on the doorstep. She had just left him there. Just like that. With a note. As if we’d be in any doubt as to who the child belonged to.’ He chuckled and shook his head, playing with the Virgin pendant that clung to his chest. ‘He’s very small, I was frightened to touch him until Maria placed him in my arms - for the love of God, Maria, I said, if I drop him the devil will take him. But she just laughed and cried again. His smile is mine, so Maria tells me, God bless the poor lamb if he resembles me. A lot of good that’ll do him! You’d be right to ask what I did. I should have sent him back to his mother. But Maria wouldn’t hear of it. There she was with the baby in her arms,

loving it as if it were her own, tears of joy running down her face. I’d be a monster to send him back. I’m not a monster, just a tired old man with little to live for but life. Ramoncito is another life, another transient life to suffer and die on this earth. What the devil is it all for? You know, Osvaldo, s/' Señor, you do. If you could speak from beyond the grave you’d probably give me a few pointers. Perhaps my old ears are too blocked with earthly concerns to hear you.’

Now Ramon sat in the car and watched the city trail off into verdant English countryside. He thought of Ramoncito, now six years old, almost the age Federica had been when he had waved her goodbye that hot January morning all those years ago. He looked back over the years and recalled how Ramoncito had healed the relationships between him and his mother, Estella and her parents. Pablo Rega was still suspicious of him, though. He had developed a habit of nervously playing with the pendant around his neck in the same way that one would hold up a cross when faced with a vampire, but at least he loved his grandson and embraced his daughter as before. His own father was ignorant of the child who walked around, not more than four miles from his summer house, with his own blood pumping through his veins and his own genes set

to father a whole new generation some day. But Mariana had insisted he shouldn’t be told. It was their secret, between the three of them.

The right moment will come,’ she had told Ramon, ‘but let me tell him in my own good time.’ Six years had gone by and she still hadn’t told him. Ramon wondered whether she ever would.

Helena sent the children up to Toby’s cottage. ‘Ramon’s appeared. I don’t want him to see them,’ she told her brother over the telephone.

‘What? Ramon’s in England?’

‘Yes.’

‘My God,’ Toby exclaimed, sitting down. ‘After all this time, what’s he suddenly turned up for?’

‘To see the children, so he says.’

‘Just like that, out of the blue?’