The Butterfly Box (6 page)

‘Now?’ he ventured sadly.

‘Now I don’t love you any more.’ She turned to face him. Noticing the hurt cloud his face she added quickly, ‘Love has to be nurtured, not left to rot with

neglect, Ramon. I loved you once, but now I don’t know you any more. I wouldn’t recognize love if it slapped me in the face. All I know is that I’m tired of being alone and you always leave me alone, for months on end. You always will,’ she said and the tears cascaded down her cheeks, one after the other, until they formed two thin streams of misery.

‘So what do you want to do?’ he asked.

She walked timidly over to him and perched next to him on the bed. ‘If you were afraid of losing me, Ramon, you’d stay and write here. You’d change for me. But you won’t, will you?’ He thought about it for a moment, but his silence answered her question. ‘Do you love me, Ramon?’ she ventured.

His shiny conker eyes looked at her forlornly. ‘Yes, I do, in my own way, Helena. I still love you. But I don’t love you enough to change for you. If I stayed here with you and the children I’d shrivel. I’d dry out like a plant in the desert. Don’t you see that? I don’t want to lose you, or the children, but I can’t change,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘I arrive home and the first thing I think about is when I can get going again. I’m sorry.’

They both sat in silence. Helena cried with the relief of having given vent to her feelings. She felt the heaviness lift and the tension ease on her temples.

Ramon sat wondering what she was going to do. He didn’t want to lose her. She was his safety net. He liked to have a home to come back to. Even if he rarely used it, he still liked it to be there. He loved his children. But he wasn’t used to the day-to-day routine of children. He wasn’t a family man.

‘So what happens now?’ he said after a while.

‘I want to go home,’ she replied, standing up again and walking over to the window.

‘You mean to England?’

‘Yes.’

‘But that’s the other side of the world,’ he protested.

‘Why should you care? You’re always the other side of the world and you always will be. What difference does it make where we are? You’ll always be on another continent.’

‘But the children?’

‘They’ll go to school in England. We’ll go and live in Cornwall with my parents.’ Then she rushed to his side and knelt on the floor at his feet. ‘Please, Ramon. Please let me take them home. I can’t bear it here any more. Not the way it is now. Without you there’s no point, don't you see? I don’t belong here like

you do. I would have belonged, I had planned to, but now I want to go home.’ ‘What will you tell them?’

‘I’ll tell them that we’re going home. That you’ll come and see us, the same as you always have. We’ll just live in a different country. They’re young, they’ll accept it,’ she said firmly. She looked at him imploringly. ‘Please, Ramon.’

‘Do you want a divorce?’ he asked impassively.

‘No,’ she replied quickly. ‘No, not divorce.’

‘Just a separation then?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then what?’

‘Then nothing. I just want out,’ she said and hung her head.

His premonition had been right. She was leaving him. She needed his permission to take the children out of the country and he would give it to her. How could he deny her that? Their children were more hers than his if one judged it by the amount of time they both spent with them. She was right, what did it matter where they were, he was always thousands of miles away.

‘All right, you can take the children back to England,’ he conceded

sorrowfully. ‘But first I want to take them to see my parents in Cachagua. I want to give them a family Christmas, so they’ll always remember me like that.’

‘Ramon,’ she whispered, for her voice had gone hoarse with emotion, ‘you will come and see us, won’t you?’ She searched his eyes, afraid that by cutting herself off from him he would no longer make the effort to be a part of their children’s lives.

‘Of course,’ he replied, shaking his shaggy head.

‘The children will miss you terribly. You can’t desert them, Ramon. They need you.’

‘I know.’

‘Don’t punish them for my actions. This is between us as adults, not them.’

‘I know.’

‘Fede loves you, so does Hal. I couldn’t live with myself if you deserted them because of me.’ She sat up abruptly. ‘I won’t go if leaving you means depriving my children of their father. I will sacrifice my own happiness for theirs,’ she said and began to sob.

Ramon was confused. He ran his hand down her blonde hair. ‘I won’t desert them, Helena,’ he said.

She looked up at him with glassy eyes. Thank you.’

Suddenly his mouth was on hers. Without understanding their actions their bodies rebelled against the cold detachment of their minds. They clawed off their clothes like thirsty animals scraping at the ground for water. Helena felt the sharp bristle of his chin against hers and the soft wetness of his lips and gums. For the months he had been away she had only dreamed of making love to other men. She had had opportunities but she had rejected every one for the simple reason that she was the wife of someone else, if only in name. Now she abandoned herself to the touch of a man, even though she felt nothing for him now but gratitude. In these intense moments of intimacy they could have been mistaken for believing their love to have been re-ignited. But Helena knew that sexual pleasure alone was a false love, as illusory as a mirage. She closed her eyes, blocking out the sad reality of her situation and allowed herself to take pleasure as his hands stroked the curves of her body as if exploring them for the first time.

It had been many months since they had last united in this way. They had both forgotten what the other’s body was like. As if she had no control over her impulses, her fingers followed the ridge of his spine and caressed the hair on his shoulders like they used to do when they had been driven by love. She ran her tongue over his skin and it tasted of the sea mingled with the scent of man. When he kissed her, his mouth on her mouth, his face only inches away from hers, she opened her eyes to find his were closed. She wondered whom he was dreaming of and whether he too had had opportunities on his travels. She didn’t want to know. Then he was inside her, awakening her dormant desire that had endured many months of hibernation and she thought no more about the other women he might have had. They both forgot the other as they moved like one writhing beast, oblivious to the low groans that escaped from their throats and the delirious sighs that vibrated deep within their bellies. When they lay sweaty and exhausted, the heady scent of their skin mingling with the sweet fragrance of lavender and rose, they both stared up at the ceiling and wondered why they had allowed themselves to get carried away.

Helena was too embarrassed to look at him and covered her steaming body with the bedspread in shame. A ridiculous action after he had tasted it so intimately. She fumbled in the bedside table drawer for a cigarette. Finding one she lit it with a trembling hand and inhaled impatiently. How strange it is, she thought, that we can be as close as two people possibly can be then suddenly,

in the space of a second, lie here side by side but thousands of miles apart. She looked over at him and he turned to face her.

That was nice,’ he said.

‘Yes, it was,’ she replied tightly.

‘Don’t regret it, Helena. It’s okay to indulge in the pleasures of the flesh, even if you feel nothing but physical desire.’

She inhaled again. ‘I don’t regret it,’ she said. She didn’t know whether she did or didn’t. Had she really made love without love? She waved the thought away with the smoke. It no longer mattered. She was going home.

Ramon watched his wife dress in the dim light of the bedroom. Neither spoke. The smell of cigarettes masked the lavender Federica had pressed into the linen and the garden flowers she had so lovingly picked and placed on his bedside table in the shiny blue vase. The messy bed was all that was left of their passion. He wondered if there was anything left of their love. Then he heard Federica’s soft voice singing in the garden and he realized that his children were the physical expressions of a love they had once happily given to each other, and he shuddered at the thought of being without them.

Helena’s body was still firm and slim with that translucent pallor that had first attracted him to her twelve years before. She was now thirty years old, too young to be on her own without the attentions of a loving man to nurture her. When he had found her on those cold Cornish beaches she had been young and ready to sacrifice everything just so that she could be near him. They had travelled the world together, united by his thirst for adventure and her desire to be loved. It had worked until domesticity drove them apart. He watched her brush her long blonde hair and pin it onto the top of her head. He preferred it

when she wore it down her back. Once it had reached her waist. Once he had threaded it with jasmine. She had been beautiful then. Now she looked tired and her disenchantment drained her face of colour so that her pallor, once so alluring, no longer glowed but lay stagnant like a diminishing waterhole in the dry season. If he didn’t let her go there’d be nothing of her left.

She caught him watching her in the mirror but she didn’t smile like she once would have done.

‘When do you want to go to Cachagua?’ she asked.

Tomorrow. I’ll call my parents, tell them we’re coming.’

‘What will you tell them?’

‘About us?’

‘Yes.’

He sighed and sat up. ‘I don’t know yet.’

‘They’ll think I’m heartless. They’ll blame me,’ she said and her voice quivered.

‘No they won’t. They know me better than you think.’

‘I feel guilty,’ she said and stared at her reflection.

‘You’ve made your decision,’ he said impassively and got to his feet.

Helena wanted him to beg her to stay. She had hoped he would fall to his knees and promise to change like other men would. But Ramon wasn’t like other men. He was unique. It had been his uniqueness that she had fallen in love with. He was so self-sufficient he didn’t need anyone. He just needed the air to breathe, his sight to take in all the wondrous places he travelled to and a pen to write it all down. He hadn’t needed her love but she had given it to him, desiring nothing in return except his acceptance. But it is human nature to always want more than one has. Once she had won his love she wanted his freedom too. But he had been unwilling to relinquish it. He still was. He had been as difficult as a cloud to pin down, she should have known he would never change, that there would come a time when she would be alone, for the world possessed his soul and she hadn’t the strength to fight for it any more. But she still wanted him to fight for her. How could he still love her but refuse to fight for her? He made her feel worthless.

Helena stepped out into the garden, squinting in the white glare of the sunshine, to find Hal asleep in the shade of an orange tree while Federica sang to herself on the swing. She knew Federica would be broken-hearted leaving Viña, but her parents’ separation would hurt her so much more. Helena watched her

swinging in the sun, ignorant of the dark undercurrent that swelled beneath her perfect day. When she saw her mother standing in the doorway she leapt off the swing, picked up her magic box from the grass and ran towards her.

‘Have you finished talking to Papa now?’ she asked.

‘Yes, I have, sweetie. We’re going to Cachagua tomorrow,’ she replied, knowing how happy that would make her.

Federica grinned. ‘I told Hal the story of the Inca princess. He’s asleep now.’ She laughed. Hal lay on his back, his arms and legs spread in blissful abandon, his chest gently rising and falling in the afternoon heat.

‘Well, let’s not wake him,’ Helena said, watching her child with tenderness. Hal was so like his father. He had Ramon’s dark hair and conker eyes without that maddening glint of self-sufficiency. Federica was happier on her own but Hal needed constant attention. He was the part of Ramon she had loved and been allowed to hold on to. Hal needed her and loved her unconditionally.

Federica skipped into the house to find her father in the sitting room, talking on the telephone in Spanish. She walked up to him with her box and perched on the armrest, waiting for him to finish so that she could talk to him. She listened to the conversation and realized he was talking to her grandmother. Tell

Abuelita about my box,’ she said excitedly.

‘No, you tell her,’ he said, handing her the receiver.

‘Abuelita, Papa’s bought me a box that once belonged to an Inca princess . .

. yes, a real princess ... I will, I’ll tell you tomorrow ... so am I ... a big kiss to you,
yo tambln te quiero,
¹
she said and blew a kiss down the telephone, which made her father chuckle as he took back the receiver.

‘We’ll see you in time for lunch, then,’ he said, before hanging up. ‘Right, Fede, what shall we do now?’

‘I don’t know,’ she replied and grinned, for she knew her father always had something planned.

‘Let’s go into town and buy your grandmother a present, shall we?’

‘And buy a juice,’ she added.