The Butterfly Room Read online

  Contents

  Posy

  Admiral House, Southwold, Suffolk

  Admiral House: September 2006

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Posy

  Admiral House

  Admiral House: October 2006

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Posy

  Mansion House Bodmin Moor, Cornwall

  Admiral House: November 2006

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Posy

  London

  December: Admiral House

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Six months later

  Chapter 42

  For my mother-in-law, Valerie, with love.

  Admiral House,

  Southwold, Suffolk

  June 1943

  ‘Remember, my darling, you are a fairy, floating silently across the grass on wings of gossamer, ready to trap your prey in your silken net. Look!’ he whispered into my ear. ‘There he is, just on the edge of the leaf. Now then, fly!’

  As he’d taught me, I closed my eyes for a few seconds and stood on tiptoe, imagining my small feet leaving the ground. Then I felt the flat of Daddy’s palm give me a gentle push forwards. Opening my eyes, I focused on the pair of hyacinth-blue wings and flew the two short steps I needed to swoop my net around the fragile frond of buddleia bush on which the Large Blue was currently perched.

  The waft of air as the net landed on target alerted the Blue, who opened its wings in preparation for flight. But it was too late, because I, Posy, Princess of the Fairies, had captured him. He wouldn’t be harmed, of course, merely taken off to be studied by Lawrence, King of the Magical People – who was also my father – before being released outside after enjoying a large bowl of the best nectar.

  ‘What a clever girl my Posy is!’ Daddy said as I made my way back through the foliage towards him and proudly handed over the net. He was crouching down on his haunches, so our eyes – which everyone told us were so similar – met in shared pride and delight.

  I watched his head bend to study the butterfly, which remained stock-still, its tiny legs gripped to its white netting prison. Daddy’s hair was a dark mahogany colour, and the oil he put on it to flatten it down made it shine in the sun like the top of the long dining table after Daisy had polished it. It also smelt wonderful – of him, and comfort, because he was ‘home’ and I loved him more than anything else in my worlds, both human and fairy. I loved Maman too, of course, but even though she was at home most of the time, I didn’t feel I knew her as well as I knew Daddy. She spent a lot of time in her room with something called migraines, and when she was out of it, she always seemed too busy to spend any time with me.

  ‘He’s an absolute corker, darling girl!’ Daddy said, lifting his eyes to mine. ‘A true rarity on these shores, and no doubt, of noble lineage,’ he added.

  ‘Might he be a butterfly prince?’ I asked.

  ‘He might well be,’ Daddy agreed. ‘We shall have to treat him with the utmost respect, as his royal status demands.’

  ‘Lawrence, Posy . . . lunch!’ called a voice from beyond the foliage. Daddy stood up so he was taller than the buddleia bush and able to wave across the lawns up to the terrace of Admiral House.

  ‘Coming, my love,’ he called, quite loudly as we were some distance away. I watched his eyes crinkle into a smile at the sight of his wife: my mother, and unknowing Queen of the Magical People. This was a game only Daddy and I shared.

  Hand in hand we walked across the lawns, smelling the hint of newly mown grass that I associated with happy days in the garden: Maman and Daddy’s friends, champagne in one hand, croquet mallet in the other, the thwack of a ball hurtling across the cricket pitch Daddy mowed for such occasions . . .

  These happy days had happened less since the war had begun, which made the memories of when they did seem even more precious. The war had also given Daddy a limp, so we had to walk quite slowly, which was fine with me because it meant it was longer that he was all mine. He was much better now than he had been when he had first come home from hospital. He had been in a wheelchair like an old person, and his eyes had looked grey too. But with Maman and Daisy nursing him, and me doing my best to read him storybooks, he had got better quickly. These days he didn’t even need a stick to walk, unless he was going further than the grounds.

  ‘Now Posy, run inside and wash your hands and face. Tell your mother I’m taking our new guest to settle him in,’ Daddy directed me with the net as we reached the steps that led up to the terrace.

  ‘Yes Daddy,’ I said as he turned to walk across the lawn and eventually disappeared through a high box hedge. He was heading for the Folly, which, with its turret made of yellow sandy brick, made the most perfect fairy-tale castle for fairy folk and their butterfly friends to live in. And Daddy certainly spent a lot of time in there. Alone. I was only allowed to peep into the small, round room that lay behind the front door of the Folly – which was very dark and smelt of mouldy socks – when Maman asked me to call Daddy in for lunch.

  The downstairs room was where he kept his ‘outside equipment’, as he called it; tennis racquets jostled with cricket stumps and mud-splattered wellington boots. I had never been invited up the stairs that went round and round until they reached the top (I knew this because I’d secretly climbed them when Daddy had been called by Maman to take a telephone call up at the house.) It had been very disappointing to find he had already locked the big oak door that greeted me at the top of them. Even though I turned the knob as firmly as my small hands would allow me, it wouldn’t budge. I knew that, unlike the room below it, there were a lot of windows in the room, because you could see them from the outside. The Folly reminded me a bit of the lighthouse in Southwold, except that it had been given a golden crown to wear on its head instead of a very bright light.

  As I walked up the terrace steps, I sighed happily as I looked up at the beautiful pale red-brick walls of the main house with its rows of long sash windows, framed by lime-green tendrils of wisteria. I noticed the old wrought-iron table, now more green than its original black, was being set up on the terrace for lunch. There were only three placemats and water glasses which meant that it was just us for lunch, which was very unusual. I thought how nice it would be to have both Maman and Daddy to myself. Stepping inside the house through the wide doors to the drawing room, I skirted between the silk damask sofas that sat around the enormous marble-encased fireplace – so big that last year, Father Christmas had managed to get a shiny red bicycle all the way down it – and skipped along the maze of corridors that led to the downstairs WC. Shutting the door behind me, I used both hands to turn on the big silver tap, then washed them thoroughly. I stood on tiptoe to look at my reflection in the mirror and check for smudges on my face. Maman was very fussy about appearances – Daddy
said it was her French heritage – and woe betide either of us if we didn’t arrive at the table spotless.

  But even she could not control the wisps of wiry brown curls that continually escaped my tightly woven plaits, appearing at the nape of my neck and wriggling out of the slides that did their best to scrape the wisps back from my forehead. When he’d tucked me in one night, I’d asked Daddy if I could borrow some of his hair oil as I thought that might help, but he had only chuckled and twirled one of my ringlets around his finger.

  ‘You will do no such thing. I love your curls, my darling girl, and if I were in charge, they would fly free about your shoulders every day.’

  As I walked back down the corridor, I longed again to have Maman’s sleek, poker-straight mane of blonde hair. It was the colour of the white chocolates she served with coffee after dinner. My hair was more like a café au lait, or at least that was what Maman called it; I called it mouse-brown.

  ‘There you are, Posy,’ Maman said as I stepped out onto the terrace. ‘Where is your sunhat?’

  ‘Oh, I must have left it in the garden when Daddy and I were catching butterflies.’

  ‘How many times have I told you that your face will get burnt and soon you will wrinkle up like an old prune,’ she admonished me as I sat down. ‘You will look sixty when you are forty.’

  ‘Yes Maman,’ I agreed, thinking that forty was so old anyway, that by then I wouldn’t really care.

  ‘How’s my other favourite girl this fine day?’

  Daddy appeared on the terrace and swung my mother round into his arms, the jug of water she held slopping onto the grey stone paving.

  ‘Careful, Lawrence!’ Maman chastised him with a frown, before extricating herself from his grasp and placing the jug on the table.

  ‘Isn’t this a glorious day to be alive?’ He smiled as he sat down opposite me. ‘And the weather seems set fair for the weekend and our party too.’

  ‘We’re having a party?’ I asked as Maman sat down next to him.

  ‘Yes we are, darling girl. Your Pater has been deemed fit enough to return to duties, so Maman and I have decided to have a last blast while we can.’

  My heart definitely missed a beat as Daisy, our maid of all things since the other servants had gone off to do war work, served the luncheon meat and radishes. I hated radishes, but it was all that was left over from the kitchen garden this week, as most things growing there had to go off to the war too.

  ‘How long are you going for, Daddy?’ I asked in a small strained voice, because a big hard lump had appeared in my throat. It felt just like a radish had already got stuck there and I knew it meant I might very soon cry.

  ‘Oh, shouldn’t be too long now. Everyone knows the Hun are doomed, but I have to help with the final push, you see. Can’t let my chums down, can I?’

  ‘No Daddy,’ I managed in a quavery voice. ‘You won’t get hurt again, will you?’

  ‘He won’t, chérie. Your Papa is indestructible, aren’t you, Lawrence?’

  I watched as my mother gave him a small tight smile and I thought she must be as worried as I was because of it.

  ‘I am, my love,’ he replied, putting his hand on hers and squeezing it tightly. ‘I surely am.’

  ‘Daddy?’ I asked at breakfast the next day, dipping my toast soldiers carefully into my egg. ‘It’s so hot today, can we go to the beach? We haven’t been in such a long time.’

  I saw Daddy give Maman a look, but she was reading her letters over her cup of café au lait and didn’t seem to notice. Maman always got lots of letters from France, all written on very thin paper, even thinner than a butterfly wing, which suited Maman, because everything about her was so delicate and slender.

  ‘Daddy? The beach,’ I prompted.

  ‘My darling, I’m afraid the beach isn’t suitable for playing at the moment. It’s covered in barbed wire and mines. Do you remember when I explained to you about what happened in Southwold last month?’

  ‘Yes, Daddy.’ I looked down at my egg and shuddered, remembering how Daisy had carried me to the Anderson shelter (which I’d thought was called that because it was our surname – it had confused me a great deal when Mabel had said her family had an Anderson shelter too, as her surname was Price). It had sounded as if the sky was alive with thunder and lightning, but rather than God sending it, Daddy said it was Hitler. Inside the shelter, we had all huddled close, and Daddy had said we should pretend to be a hedgehog family, and I should curl up like a little hoglet. Maman had got quite cross about him calling me a hoglet, but that’s what I’d pretended to be, burrowed under the earth, with the humans warring above us. Eventually, the terrible sounds had stopped. Daddy had said we could all go back to bed, but I was sad to have to go to my human bed alone, rather than staying all together in our burrow.

  The next morning, I had found Daisy crying in the kitchen, but she wouldn’t say what was the matter. The milk cart didn’t come that day, and then Maman had said I wouldn’t be going to school because it wasn’t there any more.

  ‘But how can it not be there, Maman?’

  ‘A bomb fell on it, chérie,’ she’d said, blowing out cigarette smoke.

  Maman was smoking now too, and I sometimes worried that she would set her letters on fire because she held them so close to her face when she was reading.

  ‘But what about our beach hut?’ I asked Daddy. I loved our little hut – it was painted a butter yellow, and stood at the very end of the row so if you looked the right way, you could pretend that you were the only people on the beach for miles, but if you turned the other way, you weren’t too far from the nice ice cream man by the pier. Daddy and I always made the most elaborate sandcastles, with turrets and moats, big enough for all the little crabs to live in if they decided to come close enough. Maman never wanted to come to the beach; she said it was ‘too sandy’, which I thought was rather like saying the ocean was too wet.

  Every time we went, there would be an old man with a broad-brimmed hat walking slowly along the beach, poking the sand with a long stick, but not like the one that Daddy used to walk with. The man would have a large sack in his hand and every now and then he would stop and begin to dig.

  ‘What is he doing, Daddy?’ I’d asked.

  ‘He’s a beachcomber, darling. He walks along the shore, looking in the sand for things that might have been washed up from the ships out at sea or carried here from distant shores.’

  ‘Oh, I see,’ I’d said, although the man didn’t have a comb of any kind, and certainly not like the one that Daisy dragged through my hair every morning. ‘Do you think he’ll find buried treasure?’

  ‘I’m sure if he spends enough time digging, he’s bound to find something one day.’

  I had watched with growing excitement as the man had pulled something out of the hole and brushed the sand off it, only to see that it was an old enamel teapot.

  ‘How disappointing,’ I’d sighed.

  ‘Remember, my darling, one man’s rubbish might be another man’s gold. But perhaps we are all beachcombers in a way,’ Daddy had said, squinting in the sun. ‘We keep seeking, hoping to find that elusive buried treasure that will enrich our lives, and when we pull up a teapot rather than a gleaming jewel, we must continue to search.’

  ‘Are you still searching for treasure, Daddy?’

  ‘No, my Princess of the Fairies, I’ve found it,’ he’d smiled down at me and kissed me on the top of my head.

  After a lot of nagging, Daddy eventually gave in and decided to take me to a river to swim, so Daisy helped me put my swimsuit on and pushed a hat onto my curly hair, and I climbed into Daddy’s car. Maman had said she was too busy preparing for the party tomorrow, but that suited me fine, because then the King of Fairies and I could welcome all the creatures of the river to our court.

  ‘Are there otters?’ I asked, as he drove in the opposite direction of the sea and through the rolling green fields of the countryside.

  ‘You have to be very quiet to see
otters,’ he said. ‘Could you manage that, Posy?’

  ‘Of course!’

  We drove for a long time before I saw the blue snake of the river hiding behind the reeds. He parked the car, and together we hiked to the riverbank, Daddy carrying all of our scientific equipment: a camera, butterfly nets, glass jars, lemonade and corned beef sandwiches.

  Dragonflies skimmed the surface of the water, disappearing quickly as I went splashing in. The water was deliciously cool but my head and face felt prickly and hot beneath my hat, so I threw it onto the riverbank where Daddy had now changed into his bathers too.

  ‘Any otters that were once here have surely scarpered at all this noise,’ Daddy said as he strode into the water. It barely reached his knees, he was so tall. ‘Now, look at all this bladderwort, shall we take some home for our collection?’

  Together we reached into the water and pulled out one of the yellow flowers to reveal its bulbous roots. Lots of little insects had been living in it, so we filled a jar with water and then put our specimen inside it for safekeeping.

  ‘Do you remember the Latin name, my darling?’

  ‘Utri-cu-la-ria!’ I replied proudly, getting out of the water and sitting down beside him on the grassy bank.

  ‘Clever girl. I want you to promise you will keep adding to our growing collection. If you see an interesting plant, press it like I showed you. After all, I’ll need help with my book while I’m away, Posy.’ He handed me a sandwich from the picnic basket and I accepted it, trying to look very serious and scientific. I wanted Daddy to know he could trust me with his work. He’d been something called a botanist before the war and had been writing his book for almost as long as I’d been alive. He would often lock himself in his Folly to do some ‘thinking and writing’. Sometimes, he’d bring the book back to the house and show me some of the drawings he’d made.

  And they were wonderful. He explained how it was all about the habitat we lived in and there were beautiful illustrations of the butterflies and insects and plants. He’d told me once that if just one thing changes, it can throw everything out of balance.

  ‘Look at these midges, for example,’ Daddy had pointed to an annoying cloud of them one hot summer night, ‘They’re crucial for the ecosystem.’