The Butterfly Room Read online

  ‘But they bite us,’ I had said, slapping one away.

  ‘It’s in their nature, yes,’ he’d chuckled. ‘Without them though, lots of species of birds wouldn’t have a steady food source and their populations would plummet. And if the bird populations are affected, it has repercussions on the rest of the food chain. Without birds, other insects like grasshoppers would suddenly have fewer predators, and they would keep multiplying and eating all the plants away. And without the plants . . .’

  ‘It would take away food from all the herb-vores.’

  ‘Herbivores, yes. So you see, everything hangs in a delicate balance. And one small beat of a butterfly’s wings can make all the difference in the world.’

  I thought about this now as I chewed on my sandwich.

  ‘I’ve got you something special,’ Daddy said, reaching into his rucksack. He pulled out a shiny tin and handed it to me.

  I opened it up to see dozens of perfectly sharpened pencils in all the colours of the rainbow.

  ‘Whilst I’m away, you must continue with your drawings so that when I come back you can show me how much you’ve improved.’

  I nodded, too happy with my present to speak.

  ‘When I was at Cambridge, we were taught to really look at the world,’ he continued. ‘So many people walk about blind to the beauty and magic around them. But not you, Posy, you already see things better than most. When we draw nature we begin to understand it – we can see all the various parts and how they are joined together. By drawing what you see and studying it, you can help other people understand the miracle of nature too.’

  When we arrived home, Daisy scolded me for getting my hair wet and bundled me into the bath, which I thought didn’t make sense as she was making my hair wet all over again. Once Daisy had put me to bed and shut the door behind her, I slipped out again and got out my new coloured pencils, stroking the soft yet sharp tips of them. I thought that if I practised hard enough, by the time Daddy came back from the war, I could show him that I was good enough to go to Cambridge too – even if I was a girl.

  The next morning, I watched from my bedroom window as cars began streaming along our drive. Each one was full to bursting with bodies; I’d heard Maman explain that all her friends had pooled their petrol coupons to make the journey from London. Actually, she called them ‘émigrés’, which, because she had spoken French to me since I was a baby, I knew meant ‘emigrants’. In the dictionary it said this was a person who moved from their original country to another. Maman said that it felt as though the whole of Paris had moved to England to escape the war. I knew this wasn’t true of course, but there always seemed to be more of her French friends than Daddy’s English ones at the parties. I didn’t mind at all, because they were so colourful, the men with their bright scarves and jewel-coloured smoking jackets, and the ladies with their satin dresses and slashes of red lip paint. Best of all, they always brought me presents, so it was like Christmas.

  Daddy called them ‘Maman’s bohemians’, which the dictionary said meant creative people like artists and musicians and painters. Maman had once been a singer in a famous Paris nightclub, and I loved listening to her voice, which was deep and silky-smooth like melted chocolate. She didn’t know I was listening of course, because I was meant to be asleep, but when there was a house party, that was impossible anyway, so I’d creep down the stairs and listen to the music and the chatter. It was as if Maman came to life on these nights, as if she was pretending to be an inanimate doll in between the parties. I loved hearing her laugh, because when we were by ourselves, she didn’t do that very often.

  Daddy’s flying friends were nice too, although they all seemed to dress alike in navy and brown so it was hard to tell them apart. My godfather Ralph, who was Daddy’s best friend, was my favourite; I thought he was very handsome, with his dark hair and big brown eyes. There was a picture in one of my storybooks of the prince who kisses Snow White and wakes her up. Ralph looked just like that. He also played the piano beautifully – before the war he had been a concert pianist (before the war, simply every grown-up I knew had been something else, except for Daisy, our maid). Uncle Ralph had some illness that meant he couldn’t fight or fly planes in the war. He had what the grown-ups called a ‘desk job’, although I couldn’t imagine what one did with desks except sit behind them, which is probably what he did. When Daddy was away flying his Spitfires, Uncle Ralph would come to visit Maman and I, which really cheered us both up. He would come to Sunday lunch and then play the piano for me and Maman afterwards. I had realised recently that Daddy had been away at the war for four of my seven years on this planet, which must have been miserable for Maman, with only me and Daisy for company.

  I sat on my window seat and craned my neck through the window to watch Maman greet her guests on the sweeping steps that led up to the front door below me. She looked so beautiful today, in a midnight-blue dress that matched her lovely eyes and, as Daddy joined her, slipping an arm around her waist, I felt very happy indeed. Daisy arrived to put me into the new dress she had made for me out of a pair of old green curtains. As she brushed my hair, then tied just a little of it back with a green ribbon, I decided I wouldn’t think about Daddy going away again tomorrow, when a silence like before a thunderstorm would settle back on Admiral House and us, its residents.

  ‘Ready to go down, Posy?’ Daisy asked me. I could see she was red-faced and sweating and looked very tired, probably because it was very hot indeed and she had to make food for all these people with no help. I gave her my sweetest smile.

  ‘Yes, Daisy, I am.’

  My real name wasn’t actually Posy; I was named after my mother, Adriana. But as it would be far too complicated to have two of us answering to it, it had been decided to use my second name, Rose, after my English grandmother. Daisy had told me that Daddy had started calling me ‘Rosy Posy’ when I was a baby, and somewhere along the way, the second half of the name had stuck. Which was fine by me, because I thought it suited me far better than either of my real names.

  Some of Daddy’s older relatives still called me ‘Rose’, and I would answer of course, because I had been taught that I always answered adults politely, but at the party, everyone knew me as Posy. I was hugged and kissed and little net parcels of sweeties tied up with a ribbon were pressed on me. Maman’s French friends favoured sugared almonds, which in truth I didn’t like very much, but I knew how hard it was to find chocolate because of the war.

  As I sat at the long trestle table which had been placed on the terrace to seat us all, and felt the sun beat down on top of my sunhat (which only made me hotter), and listened to the chatter around me, I wished every day at Admiral House could be like this. Maman and Daddy sitting together in the centre, like a king and queen holding court, his arm draped around her white shoulder. They both looked so terribly happy, it made me want to cry.

  ‘Are you all right, Posy darling?’ Uncle Ralph, who was sitting next to me, asked. ‘Damned hot out here,’ he added, whisking a spotless white handkerchief out of his jacket pocket and mopping his brow.

  ‘Yes, Uncle Ralph. I was just thinking how happy Maman and Daddy look today. And how sad it is that he has to go back to the war.’

  ‘Yes.’

  I watched as Ralph studied my parents and thought he suddenly looked sad too.

  ‘Well now, with a fair wind, it will be over soon,’ he said eventually. ‘And we can all start to get on with our lives.’

  After lunch, I was allowed to play some croquet, which I did surprisingly well at, probably because most of the adults had drunk quite a lot of wine and wobbled the ball all over the place. I’d heard Daddy saying earlier that he was emptying the last of the wine cellar for the occasion, and it looked like most of it had been emptied into the guests already. I didn’t really understand why adults wanted to get drunk; to my mind they just became louder and sillier, but maybe when I was an adult, I would. As I walked across the lawn towards the tennis court, I saw a man with his a
rms draped around two women lying under a tree. All three of them were fast asleep. Someone was a playing a saxophone alone up on the terrace and I thought what a good job it was that we didn’t have close neighbours.

  I knew I was lucky to live at Admiral House; when I had started at the local school and been invited round to tea by Mabel, a friend I had made, I had been amazed to find that her family lived in a house where the front door led straight into the sitting room. There was a tiny kitchen at the back, and an outside lavatory! She had four brothers and sisters who all shared the same tiny bedroom upstairs. It was the first time I had realised that I came from a rich family, that everyone did not live in a big house with a park for a garden and it was quite a shock. When Daisy collected me to walk me home I asked her why this was.

  ‘It’s the roll of the dice, Posy,’ Daisy had said in her soft Suffolk accent. ‘Some people get the luck and others don’t.’

  Daisy was very fond of her sayings; half the time I didn’t understand what she meant, but I was very glad that the ‘dice’ seemed to have rolled me into the lucky pile and I decided that I needed to pray harder for everyone that didn’t get in.

  I wasn’t sure that my teacher, Miss Dansart, liked me very much. Even though she encouraged all of us to put up our hands if we knew the answer to the questions, I always seemed to be the first to do it. She would roll her eyes a little and her lips would make a funny shape as she said, ‘Yes, Posy,’ in a tired voice. I’d once heard her talking to another teacher in the playground as I was turning one end of a long skipping rope nearby.

  ‘Only child . . . brought up in the company of adults . . . precocious . . .’

  I had looked up ‘precocious’ in the dictionary when I got home. And after that, I’d stopped putting up my hand, even if the answer burned in my throat as I held it inside.

  At six o’clock, everyone woke up and drifted off to change for dinner. I went into the kitchen, where Daisy indicated my supper.

  ‘Bread and jam for you tonight, Miss Posy. I’ve got two salmon that Mr Ralph brought to deal with and I can’t make head nor tail of them.’

  Daisy chuckled at her own joke, and I felt suddenly sorry for her because she had to work so hard all the time.

  ‘Would you like some help?’

  ‘I have Marjory’s two young ’uns coming in from the village to set the table and serve tonight, so I’ll be all right. Thanks for asking,’ she said as she threw me a smile. ‘You’re a good girl, you are.’

  When I’d finished my tea, I slipped away from the kitchen before Daisy could tell me to go upstairs and get ready for bed. It was such a beautiful evening, I wanted to go back outside and enjoy it. As I stepped onto the terrace, I saw the sun was hovering just above the oak trees, sending slants of butter-coloured light onto the grass. The birds were still singing as though it was only noon and it was still warm enough to be comfortable without a cardigan. I sat down on the steps, smoothing my cotton dress over my knees and studying a Red Admiral that had settled on a plant in the sloping flower bed that led down to the garden. I’d always thought that our house was named after the butterflies that hovered so prettily in the bushes. I’d been terribly upset to find out from Maman that it had been named after my great-great-great (I think it was three ‘greats’, or maybe four) grandfather, who had been an admiral in the navy, which wasn’t nearly so romantic.

  Even though Daddy had said Red Admirals were ‘common’ round here (which was what Maman called some of the children in my class at school), I thought they were the most beautiful butterflies of all, with their vibrant red-and-black wings and the white spots on the end of them, which reminded me of the pattern on the Spitfires Daddy flew. But that thought made me sad because it also reminded me that he was going away again to fly them tomorrow.

  ‘Hello darling girl, what are you doing out here all alone?’

  The sound of his voice made me jump, because I’d just been thinking about him. I looked up and saw him walking towards me across the terrace, smoking a cigarette, which he threw to the ground and stamped on with his foot to put it out. He knew I hated the smell.

  ‘Don’t tell Daisy you’ve seen me, will you, Daddy? Or she’ll send me straight to bed,’ I said hurriedly as he sat down on the step next to me.

  ‘Promise. Besides, no one should be in bed on a heaven-sent evening like this. I believe June is the best month that England has to offer; everything in nature has recovered from its long winter sleep, stretched and yawned and unfurled its leaves and flowers for us humans to enjoy. By August, its energy has burnt out in the heat, and it’s all ready to go to sleep again.’

  ‘Just like us, Daddy. I’m happy to get into bed in the winter,’ I said.

  ‘Exactly, darling. Never forget that we are inextricably entwined with nature.’

  ‘The bible says that God made everything on Earth,’ I said importantly, having learnt this from my scripture lessons.

  ‘Indeed, although I find it hard to believe he managed it in just seven days,’ he chuckled.

  ‘It’s magic, Daddy, isn’t it? Like Father Christmas being able to deliver presents to all the children in the world in one night.’

  ‘Yes it is, Posy, of course it is. The world is a magical place and we must all count ourselves lucky to live in it. Never forget that, will you?’

  ‘No, Daddy. Daddy?’

  ‘Yes, Posy?’

  ‘What time are you leaving tomorrow?’

  ‘I must catch the train after lunch.’

  I studied my black patent shoes hard. ‘I’m worried you might get hurt again.’

  ‘No fear, darling. As your Maman says, I am indestructible,’ he smiled.

  ‘When will you come back home?’

  ‘The minute I get leave, which shouldn’t be too long. Look after your mother while I’m gone, won’t you? I know she gets miserable here by herself.’

  ‘I always try to, Daddy. She only gets sad because she misses you and loves you, doesn’t she?’

  ‘Yes, and golly, Posy, I love her. The thought of her – and you – is all that’s got me through when I’m flying. We hadn’t been married for long when this blasted war began, you see.’

  ‘After you’d heard her singing in the club in Paris and fallen in love with her that minute, then whisked her off to England to be your bride before she could change her mind,’ I said dreamily. My parents’ own love story was far better than any of the fairy tales in my storybooks.

  ‘Yes. It’s love that makes the magic happen in life, Posy. Even on the drabbest day in the depths of winter, love can make the world light up and look as beautiful as it does now.’

  Daddy gave a deep sigh, then took my hand in his large one. ‘Promise me that when you find love, you will grab hold of it and never let it go.’

  ‘I promise, Daddy,’ I said, looking at him earnestly.

  ‘Good girl. Now, I must be off to change for dinner.’

  He dropped a kiss on top of my curls, stood up and walked back into the house.

  Of course, I didn’t know at the time, but it was the last proper conversation I would ever have with my father.

  Daddy left the next afternoon, and all the guests too. That evening, it was very hot and the air felt thick and heavy when you breathed, as if all the oxygen had been sucked out of it. The house fell silent – Daisy had gone on her weekly trip to take tea with her friend Edith, so there wasn’t even the sound of her grumbling or singing (out of the two, I preferred the grumbling) over the washing-up. Of which there was a lot, still stacked on trays in the scullery waiting to be cleaned. I had offered to help with the glasses, but Daisy said I’d be more trouble than I was worth, which I thought was quite unfair.

  Maman had taken to her bed the minute the last car had disappeared beyond the chestnut trees. She had one of her migraines, apparently, which Daisy said was a posh word for a hangover, whatever that was. I sat in my room, curled up on the window seat positioned over the portico at the front of Admiral House. This m
eant that, if someone was expected, I was the first one to see them arrive. Daddy called me his ‘little look-out’, and since Frederick, the butler, had gone off to fight, I was usually the one who opened the front door.

  From here, I had a perfect view of the drive, carved between lines of very old chestnut and oak trees. Daddy had told me that some of them had been planted nearly three hundred years ago when the first Admiral had built himself the house. (I found this thought fascinating because it meant that trees lived on Earth almost five times longer than people, if the Encyclopaedia Britannica in the library was right and the average human life expectancy was sixty-one for men and sixty-seven for women.) If I squinted hard, on a clear day I could see a thin line of greyish-blue above the treetops and below the sky. It was the North Sea, which lay just five miles away from Admiral House. It was frightening to think that one day soon, Daddy could be flying across it in his little plane.

  ‘Come home safely, come home soon,’ I whispered to the dark grey clouds that were pressing down on the sun as it set, about to squash it like a juicy orange (I hadn’t tasted one of those for a very long time). The air was still and there was no breeze wafting through my open window. I heard the rumble of thunder in the distance and hoped Daisy wasn’t right and God wasn’t angry with us. I could never work out whether He was Daisy’s cross God or the vicar’s kind one. Maybe He was like a parent and could be both.

  As the first drops of rain began to fall, soon turning into a torrent as streaks of God’s anger flashed across the sky, I hoped Daddy had arrived safely at his base, otherwise he would get very wet indeed, or worse, struck by lightning. I closed the window because the sill was getting wet and then realised my tummy was rumbling nearly as loudly as the thunder. So I went downstairs to find the bread and jam Daisy had left me for supper.

  As I walked down the wide oak stairs in the gloomy dusk, I thought how silent the house was compared to yesterday, like a nest of buzzing, talkative bees had arrived, then left just as suddenly. Another clap of thunder roared above me, breaking the silence, and I decided it was a good job I wasn’t a scaredy-cat about dark and thunderstorms and being alone.