The the butterfly man, p.1
The the Butterfly Man, page 1
PRAISE FOR THE BUTTERFLY MAN
‘We are gradually admitted into a gently paced story that builds to a surprising and moving conclusion. This is one of the very few crime novels that can produce tears.’ Sunday Age
‘This is a convincing, haunting novel about deception, guilt and regret.’ Sydney Morning Herald
‘Risky as the novel’s premise is, Rose uses it as an effective platform to launch an enthralling investigation into the nature of truth and the lies and deceptions with which we live.’ Weekend Australian
‘This is a moving novel about a man’s struggle to say goodbye to those who have come to love him for the lies he has told.’ Canberra Times
‘Exquisitely crafted.’ West Australian
‘Despite the brutal murder that lies at the heart of this impressive novel, the tone of The Butterfly Man is strangely gentle, almost meditative … Rose builds a quietly powerful story.’ Courier-Mail
‘This is a book that deserves to be read and discussed.’ Sunday Tasmanian
‘An intriguing take on an old mystery.’ Brisbane News
‘Rose tells [Lucan’s] story with compassionate conviction.’ Newsweek
‘Thought provoking and the characters are appealing.’ Daily Telegraph
‘Intriguing. Masterful.’ Australian
Heather Rose is an Australian author of seven novels. The Butterfly Man (2005) is her second novel and was longlisted for the IMPAC, shortlisted for the Nita B Kibble Prize and won the Davitt Award for crime fiction in 2006. Her latest novel, The Museum of Modern Love (2016), was awarded the 2017 Stella Prize and the 2017 Christina Stead Prize. Heather also writes for children under the pen name Angelica Banks with co-author Danielle Wood. She lives by the sea on the island of Tasmania.
www.heatherrose.com.au
Also by Heather Rose
White Heart
The River Wife
The Museum of Modern Love
And as Angelica Banks
Finding Serendipity
A Week Without Tuesday
Blueberry Pancakes Forever
For Rowan
A single event can awaken within us
a stranger totally unknown to us.
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
SEPTEMBER 1995
I wake to find a young woman sitting beside me. She is Asian. Japanese. Chinese. I don’t know.
‘Hello, Henry,’ she says, smiling and taking my hand.
I try to take it back but it doesn’t respond.
‘It’s Suki, Henry.’
She has on a red shirt. She has earrings too. Large Indian earrings that move and sparkle.
‘I’m sorry, young lady, but I am not Henry.’
She rubs the back of my hand. Mine looks awfully white and I can’t feel anything.
I can see she is determined to be kind.
‘Where the dash am I?’ I ask, too tired to put much bite into it.
‘You’re at home in your own bed, Henry,’ the girl says.
Rain splatters across the windows. Trails of water bead and run down the glass. I don’t know the view. The sea is far away beyond a sort of forest. Clearly not England. Over the trees half a rainbow appears. The rain is easing. My mouth is parched and my lips are cracked. My teeth feel big in my mouth.
She helps me swallow a few mouthfuls of water from a glass. It’s awkward and she has to hold my head.
She says, ‘Now, how about a gin?’
‘Splendid,’ I reply. ‘Pink.’
She leans forward and whispers, ‘You’ve got ten minutes to go.’
She speaks like a colonial. Must be an Australian. Don’t know any Australians.
We both observe the bedside clock. 10:50.
‘Ah, yes,’ I concur. Never before eleven.
The girl reaches over and adjusts the buttons on the clock. She turns it to face me. Now it says 11:03.
‘My how time flies . . . ’ she remarks. ‘You’re a funny one. Lili says you never drank gin before.’
‘Before what?’ I ask but she is already gone. I can hear her footsteps descending a wooden stairway. I close my eyes. There is a bad ache coming on in my head. Can’t seem to keep my eyes open.
The girl has returned with a glass. Not crystal but a decent tumbler nevertheless. She has mixed it well. The colour of the drink matches the two tablets she shows me.
‘You’re an addict,’ she says.
‘What’s this?’ I ask.
‘For the pain in your head, Henry. Here, I brought you a straw.’
She puts the tablets on my tongue. She slips the straw into my mouth. I gulp and swallow the tablets down. They are big and I nearly empty the tumbler.
The sharp rush of effervescence is exquisite. It’s Gilbey’s. I’d bet my life on it. A black and white bird glides past very close to the glass. Its feathers are shining as if it has been cleaned and buffed.
‘Magpie,’ says Suki.
I look about me. There is a cream couch in the window. On my left there is a large wooden cabinet and a chest of drawers. A blue blanket is folded at the foot of the bed over a pale cream bedspread. I glimpse a bathroom beyond the bedroom.
‘Where am I?’ I say to the girl.
‘You’re home, Henry,’ she says. ‘In your own bed. We moved you back upstairs last weekend, just the way you wanted.’
‘Do I know you?’ I ask.
‘Of course you do. I’m Suki,’ she says. ‘Lili’s daughter.’
‘Lili?’ I say.
‘Lili,’ she says.
‘Who is Lili?’
‘You live here with her.’
She goes over and opens the cupboard. She fiddles with a stereo. Chopin fills the room. Nocturne in E. A rush of pictures come with it. A woman with the same black hair as this girl, tomatoes growing on vines in a garden, a yacht half built, this girl getting out of a car with a child by her side, a small boy with curly hair.
Something about the image gives me a sudden sharp pain.
‘What the dash is this?’ I ask.
‘I’m sorry. You usually love me to play it. Don’t be upset.’
‘Where am I? What on earth has happened to me?’
She walks over to me, leans forward and kisses me on the forehead. I can see she’s upset, but she smiles at me.
‘You had a bad turn last week. A stroke actually. You haven’t been yourself since then.’
I gaze at her dark eyes. She reminds me of someone but I can’t think whom.
‘Close your eyes. Just rest . . . ’
And I do. Whatever she has given me has taken all the kick out of me. I feel it numbing the pain in my head. My arms, my legs, everything seems to be so heavy. I close my eyes and fall slowly like a feather on the wind.
I wake. A bedside clock says 3:17.
‘Hello?’ I call. My voice sounds feeble.
There are footsteps coming up a stairway. It’s a girl in a red shirt. She’s Asian. Japanese. Chinese. I don’t know.
She says, ‘Hello, Henry’ as if we are old friends. She looks very young. Twenty-one. She offers me water through a straw.
‘Damn thirsty all right,’ I say. ‘Most kind.’
‘Did you sleep well?’ she asks.
‘I’m afraid I’ve forgotten your name,’ I say.
‘Suki.’
‘Really? That’s most unusual. Are your parents foreign?’
‘Yes, Henry.’
We both stare out the window at the river far below.
‘It’s come out lovely now,’ she says. ‘You’d never know it. Not a cloud in the sky all the way down to the peninsula. Could almost see the surfers on Roaring Beach.’
‘Roaring Beach?’
‘Yes. That one way away in the distance.’ She turns and smiles at me, rearranges the tissues beside the bed and refills the water from a glass jug.
‘Lili will be back soon, Henry. She’s just picking up Charlie from school.’
‘I’m not Henry, you know.’
‘What makes you say that?’ the girl asks, straightening the covers and refolding a blue blanket at the foot of the bed.
I do not reply.
‘Pretty certain you are Henry Kennedy. You certainly look like him and you’re in his bed, just like you were yesterday and the day before that. You’ve lived up here for years. You even built this house.’
‘That’s preposterous! Don’t know the first thing about building. Look at these hands!’
I try to lift them up but only the left one will move. To my surprise it has calluses and scars and looks like a labourer’s hand, not my hand at all.
‘It’s okay,’ says Suki. ‘You’ve just forgotten. Sort of forgotten who you are.’
‘Oh no, I know exactly who I am, I can assure you. Been a frightful bother having to keep it to myself.’
She sits down beside me.
‘What’s your name, young lady?’
‘Suki.’
‘Suki. It’s a nice name once you get used to it.’
A wave of nausea runs through me and I go suddenly cold. A terrible ache is coming on in my head.
She reaches for a packet on the bedside table and flips two pink tablets from it.
‘What’s
‘Morphine.’
‘I say, do I need it?’
‘Yes, you do. Doctor’s orders.’ And then she adds, ‘You’re very ill, Henry. You had a stroke nine days ago.’
‘Ah.’
She holds the cup and straw while I swallow down the tablets. I rest back into the pillows. She begins straightening the covers.
‘Is anyone about, Suki?’
‘No, we’re quite alone.’
‘They’re still looking for me. They’ll never stop.’
She smiles and sighs. ‘You’re very safe, Henry.’
‘Never safe. Must be vigilant. Never safe.’
‘Come then, who’s really lying in your bed? Not a criminal, I hope? Royalty? I always wanted to know someone famous.’
‘Not famous, dear girl. Notorious.’
‘Really? You? Why?’
‘I am Lord Lucan,’ I whisper desperately. ‘Yes, Lord Lucan! All these years. But they’ve never found me. You must make sure they don’t, Suki. You must keep watch.’
‘I will, Henry.’
Pulling a tissue from a box the girl wipes my mouth. She does not appear surprised.
‘Have I told you this before, young lady?’
‘Yes, Henry,’ she says, leaning forward and smoothing the sheet across me, ‘you tell me every afternoon.’
ONE YEAR EARLIER
Lili would be on her way home. Soon her car would appear up the driveway. When she walked towards the house the afternoon light would catch her face, her beautiful oriental face. Normally I’d meet her at the door. I’d kiss her and help her carry her books and papers to the kitchen. We’d make tea or open a bottle of wine. If the weather was fine we often went out on the balcony. Sometimes we walked in the garden and our words blew away in the wind. And sometimes we made love and rose late in the evening to share supper and catch the nine o’clock news.
But today I had become dangerous. I wanted to confess. I wanted to tell her stories I had held back all these years. I wanted at last to be free of the seventh of November, 1974. And I wanted to be free of today. As if in the telling there would be a cure. But I also knew nothing I could say now would change this last fate of fates. Nothing I could give, or do, or say. I had played all my cards. My kitty was empty. And the die had rolled against me.
It would hurt her. All of it. I knew that. I must pull myself together. She must not be harmed. Not Lili. She must be kept safe.
I took a mark upon the horizon and watched the clouds moving east. A dour wind forged on the slopes above us had buffeted the house since early morning. Sharp moments of bright blue sky fractured the heavy, grey cloudbanks. Jack Frost weather. The wattles were in bloom, festooned in iridescent yellow, their fragile blossoms scattering in bright yellow gusts when the wind broke through the forest, rushing across the paddock, over the forested hills and down to the river.
I’d thought lately of chopping the wattles down. They were a fire hazard, and a falling hazard, too, being so close to the house. Jimmy said they only lasted thirty years or so – nature’s way of making sure the baby gum trees got shade to grow strong. Lili liked the wattles. Said they were pretty. Loved the carpet they made after a wind. I imagined Lili naked on the carpet of yellow petals. Lili in my arms with the wind blowing down upon us and one of the trees falling and crushing us. Not Lee-Lee but Lily. The fragrant Lili Birch.
I remembered suddenly I was meant to make dinner. Lili was bringing someone home. She’d rung at lunchtime, before my appointment. Who had she said? Someone, a woman from work? Yes, perhaps that was it. I’d call and see if we could cancel. Tell her I’d had a hard day, forgot all about picking up provisions for dinner.
Walking back though the open balcony doors to the phone, I dialled Lili’s mobile.
‘Hello,’ she said, almost before it rang.
‘You driving?’ I asked.
‘Almost home.’
I heard her car beyond in the trees as it came up the road.
‘Are we still having people over for tea?’
‘They’re right here with me,’ said Lili.
‘Ah.’
‘What’s the matter?’
‘Nothing. So who is it?’
‘It’s a surprise, Henry. It’s a big surprise.’
She did not sound excited. It was hard to tell sometimes with Lili. Her television presenter’s voice remained evenly modulated, expressive yet impenetrable.
I opened the door and walked out onto the stone entranceway. I watched as her Karmann Ghia came into the clearing. Instead of parking in the garage, she pulled up on the gravel. She opened the door and stepped out, pulling her bag behind her. A young woman emerged from the other side of the car. The wind blew her hair across her face.
Lili said, ‘Henry, I’d like you to meet my daughter Suki.’
She looked at me and I looked at her and I’d never known Lili was a mother. My Lili.
Suki closed the door, looked around and then back at me and said, ‘Howdy.’
Dark-haired like Lili, wearing a thin shirt and a suntan, her face a curious version of her mother’s. Behind her the seat was pushed forward and out leapt a small boy with a head full of sandy curls. He looked like neither Suki nor Lili.
He grinned and said, ‘Cool, smell that.’
Lili walked around the back of the car and stood beside him.
‘Charlie, this is Henry. Henry, this is my grandson Charlie.’
I breathed. I walked. I shook hands. I kissed Lili’s cheek. I put her car away. I carried bags. I maintained eye contact. I tried to forget the appointment I’d had this afternoon and the letter in my pocket.
‘It helps,’ Geraldine Holloway had said as she handed me the envelope, ‘to have it all written down later, when you’re thinking about it, trying to explain to loved ones.’
It was unlikely I was going to forget the words of Doctor Geraldine Holloway, FRACP. ‘It’s not good, Henry,’ she had said. ‘I’m very sorry.’
‘They got me, then,’ I said.
‘Who?’ she asked. The CT scans on the light box illuminated the outline of my head and the grey shape of brain. Within the brain were dark marks revealing the swelling where tumours no larger than small coins were growing and multiplying.
‘The odds,’ I said. ‘The odds that I would get to be an old man.’
I took off my jacket and hung it by the back door, leaving the letter in my pocket. It would have to wait. The diversion caused by these sudden visitors would allow me time to gather my thoughts. I had been unsettled, unnerved. I had considered some kind of confession. It was the rash sort of thing only an amateur would do. Fool! Henry Kennedy did not confess. Henry Kennedy had nothing to confess. It was Lili Birch who had a confession to make.
Suki had her mother’s straight-backed walk. She had Lil’s ivory skin and the same sleek, Asian hair, but she was taller than Lili, much taller. She wore hipster pants swirled with green and blue. Lili’s delicate features were larger and more awkward on her face. She had silver rings on her fingers and in her bellybutton. Her heels were cracked above the flat leather of her sandals. She watched me like an animal afraid of being taken in an unexpected attack. Her son, if indeed he was her son, was nothing like her. The boy never stopped chattering like an overexcited monkey. And where had he got that hair?
Lili and I prepared dinner. She had brought home a roast of beef. My favourite.
‘I clean forgot to go to the shop,’ I said.
‘I had a feeling you’d forget.’
‘Would I normally be forgetting?’
Lili looked at me. ‘Are you okay?’
‘Well, would I?’
‘Well, lately, yes. Sometimes.’
I wanted to say, What? What have I not remembered? I wanted to shake her and say, What have you noticed? And what about yourself? Did you just forget to tell me you had a child? And a grandchild? Did it just slip your mind?
Instead I said very calmly, ‘Where have you been hiding her all these years?’
Lili glanced briefly at Suki. The girl was on the rug in front of the open fire. She could not have heard my question but she looked over at us.
