Sound of Butterflies, The (36 page)

Thomas had no control over his reaction, but he reacted as he had failed to do many years earlier. He ran forward and pulled George off the boy, twisting his hand inside his collar. George uttered a strangled cry as his collar dug into his throat. Thomas had never hit anybody before, but his fist contracted and he planted a punch squarely on the George’s nose before dropping him on the ground.

‘You evil bastard!’ he shouted at George, who sat snivelling on the ground. Joaquim had pulled up his pants, and now turned and ran in the direction of the camp. ‘He’s just a boy!’

‘Don’t, Thomas.’ George wiped a trickle of blood from his nose, looked at it on his hand and tried to shake it off.

Thomas aimed a kick at his side, but didn’t put his full force into it; he had the overwhelming urge to scare him, not injure him. George leapt to his feet, fumbling in his pocket for a handkerchief.

‘Don’t tell anyone,’ he whined. ‘Please, Thomas, I’ll do anything.’

‘Just leave him alone,’ Thomas said. ‘And for God’s sake, see a doctor.’

George wiped at his bloodied face. ‘A doctor? Yes, you’re right. I’m sick. I need help. Help me, Thomas.’ He started to laugh, uneasily.

Thomas took a step towards him and George stopped laughing. ‘Do you want me to tell Harris for you? Or Santos?’

‘Shh.’ George held out his hands. His handkerchief dangled from one like a white flag stained by war. ‘It’s just our secret. Please, Thomas. I won’t do it again.’

‘You’re pathetic,’ said Thomas. He spat on the ground in front of him. He could tell from George’s face that he knew Thomas wouldn’t tell. He didn’t have the guts.

He left George standing as the darkness fell around him and turned back for camp. A sob rose inside him, knocking the breath out of him. Then the tears came with the evening’s rain.

Thomas had been just a boy, really, although at the time he felt on the edge of manhood. Since then, any sound of a collection of shoes on wooden floors brought back the echo of boys’ voices bouncing down the corridor, which was always cold and smelt of beeswax. Later, when he reached college, the sound came back to him, but the voices that carried above it were deeper, more contained, and therefore quieter. More careful.

It was his Latin master, Mr Lafferty, who introduced him to sugaring. The first night he had permission from the headmaster to keep four of his boys from their beds, and he chose only his favourite boys. Except Thomas. Thomas had not been particularly good at Latin, did not sit at the front of the class with the other three, but Sir knew Thomas was fond of butterflies, from the drawings etched all over his exercise books, and he invited him along.

First they came to Sir’s rooms, which smelled sweet, like toffee, and the other boys — Marcus, with knees constantly grazed and scabbed; Henry, the brainbox, whose gift for Latin had it pouring from his tongue like nectar; and David, who was so shy Thomas had never heard him speak a word to anybody outside of class — stood together, shuffling in a group like calves, chests puffed out at being allowed between the hallowed walls. The inner sanctum.

‘Come in, boys,’ said Sir. ‘First, a drink.’ Four glasses of lemonade were laid out on the coffee table and the boys fell on them, their eyes huge and alive as they drank, taking in their surroundings.

‘And now the magic potion.’ Sir led them into the cramped alcove with a small stove, where they had to stand single file, Thomas at the end, as Sir busied himself and commentated ‘for those at the back’.

A flame woofed as the fire was lit and a pot clanged down.

‘Black treacle first.’

Thomas stood on tiptoe and waved his head about to catch a glimpse of the treacle being poured into the pot, hissing as it hit the heated bottom. Marcus, directly in front of him, did the same. A large pimple bloomed on the back of the boy’s neck, and it kept appearing in Thomas’s line of vision, red and inflamed, with a tiny white eye in the middle, looking back at him.

‘Brown Barbados sugar. All the way from Jamaica. Now we stir it.’ Henry, who stood at the front, was given the wooden spoon, and the line crowded jealously behind him.

‘That’s it,’ said Sir. ‘Just keep stirring until all the sugar crystals are melted. I’ll turn it down a bit, so it’s not boiling. Don’t want you all to be splattered by hot sugar.’ His eye caught Thomas’s then, and he winked at him. Mr Lafferty had a pleasant face, with a broad, soft nose and large eyes that moistened when he recited a particularly poetic line of Latin. His face had seemed strangely familiar at first, until Thomas realised it was because he resembled his cocker spaniel, Goldie. Mr Lafferty even had wavy copper hair.

The sugary smell of the flat intensified and Thomas closed his eyes to breathe it in, felt it coat the back of his throat. He poked his tongue out, just a tiny bit, to see if he could taste it in the air.

‘That’s it, Henry, I’ll take it. Now we pour it …’ Sir paused as he completed the action, ‘… into the tin, and quickly …’ The sound of the pot, banging down into the sink, ‘… add two drops of Old Jamaica rum. Perfect. Just give that another little stir, Henry. That’s right.’

The rum permeated the sweet smell and for a moment Thomas remembered his father’s study in the evening. The smell was not the same, but the burning sensation in his nostrils was.

‘And that’s it. About face, men!’

Grinning, the boys turned and Thomas found himself staring at the three of them.

‘Come on, Edgar,’ said Marcus, who Thomas knew didn’t like him. The boy’s sour breath settled on his face, and Thomas turned quickly and marched out of the alcove.

It was a warm spring evening, with no wind at all as they kept marching, all the way down past the playing fields and into the woods at the bottom. They swung lanterns, not yet lit, and carried a net and a killing bottle each. Thomas knew he was the only one of the boys experienced in collecting; the others were there only as Latin scholars, trying to please their teacher, and this knowledge kept his head up as he walked.

The sky was not yet dark but a deep indigo, and every tree gave off a mauve light. Rabbits scampered away from them as they approached and a bat squeaked as it flapped past them.

Mr Lafferty stopped by a larch tree. ‘This will do,’ he said. ‘Quiet now, everyone.’

The boys, who had been silent anyway, pushed their fists onto their lips, just to be sure.

Sir dipped a paintbrush into the tin of sweet mixture and smeared a large patch on the trunk of the tree. He stepped up to the next tree and did the same, and then the next.

‘That ought to do it,’ he said.

‘What do we do now?’ whispered Henry.

‘We wait,’ said Thomas, and Mr Lafferty nodded and smiled at him before lifting his hand and ruffling his hair.

‘I knew we should have brought you,’ he said, and the other boys looked as if they might just want to kill Thomas. But Thomas didn’t give a hoot.

The dusk darkened into night around them. Close by, an owl called, then swooped with a flurry of wings as it caught a mouse. The outline of the larch trees against the sky began to fade and merge.

‘That should do it,’ said Mr Lafferty. ‘Hold your lamps out.’ He lit them one by one and they approached the first tree.

The sticky mixture shone in the lamplight. Caught on the trunk was a collection of writhing insects: woodlice, centipedes, beetles and huge slugs, which, when Thomas looked closer, were covered with hundreds of tiny mites running back and forth across the vast flanks of their host.

A murmur of disgust arose from the other boys, but Thomas pushed his face as close as he could. In the middle of the mayhem sat a large death’s head moth. The skull on its thorax stared open-mouthed back at Thomas and his heart flipped.

It became a weekly outing throughout spring and into the warm summer. The other boys grew bolder, and began to take almost as much pleasure as Thomas in the catching of the moths. Mr Lafferty showed them how something so big and brutish could have a delicate iridescence to it, such as the elephant hawk moth, with its shimmering of pink and green, and the startling colours of the red underwing.

One night, Mr Lafferty bid the boys split up. ‘So we might discover the diversity over a large area. I’ll blow my whistle when we are to meet again.’

‘On our own, sir?’ asked Henry.

David, who never said a word, just hugged himself with definite fright at the prospect.

‘You will be fine, men,’ said Mr Lafferty. ‘Just don’t stray past the boundaries of the forest and you won’t get lost. Follow the sound of my whistle.’

Thomas had no fear. The thicket in which they stood was relatively small. He had never been allowed out in the dark on his own, and he relished the opportunity to move through the undergrowth, stealthy as a fox.

They fanned out as the last of the light began to drain from the sky. They each carried their own can of sugar mixture now, as well as the net and killing jar. Thomas walked for a few minutes until the path was too murky to see, and stopped to paint the trunks. Then he waited.

When he had collected four beautiful specimens, he turned the lantern off again. He pretended he was a fox and slunk low to the ground, trying to force his senses to the front of his mind to guide him. He sniffed the air but could only smell the molasses and rum in his tin. The moths flickered in the jar in his hand; he felt the vibrations through the glass. Perhaps there wasn’t enough cyanide in there to kill them all. His ears, which he imagined pricked in anticipation above his head, caught a cracking sound off to his right. He stopped and crouched lower. His eyes had grown accustomed to the dark now — besides, he was a fox, and he was after his prey. He moved noiselessly along the path towards the sound. As he went further, he heard a new sound, a low moan, and another, snuffling sound. A large figure stood only a few feet away.

He struck a match. In the flare of the match head, he saw Mr Lafferty. He stood tall while a boy — it was David, poor, quiet David — crouched beside him, his hand wrapped around the teacher’s penis, moving it back and forth. The boy looked at Thomas in surprise, and his face was wet with tears and snot. Mr Lafferty’s hands were on David’s head, stroking his hair, and his eyes opened at the sudden light. The jar of moths slipped from Thomas’s hand and smashed on a tree root. There was a fluttering of huge wings; the moths flew towards the light and hit Thomas in the face. He brushed them away, but they came again, into his eyes, his ears, his mouth. The match fell to the ground, spent, and Thomas ran until he heard the teacher’s whistle calling him back. He hesitated for a moment then ran on, back to the school and to his safe bed.

‘And what became of the boy?’ asked Clara. She had come to his room to find him beating at the moths that crowded around his lamp. He had cried then, leaning into her breast, until she asked him to tell her about the moths. He couldn’t tell her about George, though; not yet.

‘David never looked at me or spoke to me. The other boys went out sugaring a few times, but it all stopped when the weather went cold. Mr Lafferty had a new team of boys the following year, and the year after that. I could see it in their eyes, always at the end of August. But I never did anything.’

‘What could you have done?’

‘I could have told somebody. A parent. A teacher.’

‘No, Thomas. You mustn’t blame yourself.’

‘I should have confronted Lafferty about it. Threatened to tell.’

‘You were only a boy.’

‘Yes.’ But he was not a boy now. At least he had put a stop to it this time, saved one little boy. But had he made sure George would leave Joaquim alone? What about the next boy, and the next?

‘And the moths?’

‘I can’t look at them now without remembering. They give me shivers. I actually feel it on my skin. A prickling sensation. They make me feel sick.’

Clara moved forward to embrace him but he stopped her. ‘What about your husband? You shouldn’t even be in here.’

She made a hissing sound through her teeth. ‘He’s dead drunk. He and Dr Harris have been drinking all afternoon. He won’t be awake until morning.’

‘All the same, Clara, I don’t feel comfortable about this. Not after …’ he wanted to tell her about what had happened with Manuel, how he feared for his safety. But the words would not come. Clara was neglected enough by this man; he didn’t want to worry her further.