Shooting Butterflies by Marika Cobbold, published by Allen and Unwin, $29.95, is our Great Read for April.
The remarkable thing about this morning was not that it was Grace’s birthday; after all, that occurred once a year so by the time you got to forty you should have ceased to be surprised. Nor was there much to say about the day itself; she walked down Kensington High Street to get the paper and it was muggy and overcast, the air so heavy with pollution you felt like offering it a hand to rise.
Back home, there was nothing odd about the toaster malfunctioning, Grace’s two slices of white bread getting caught and having to be prised out piece by piece, nor about the tea turning cold before she remembered to remove the teabag. And she had expected cards; she had friends, after all, and Mrs Shield. No, what gave the day it’s unusual quality was that the postman, when he arrived, handed her a present from her dead lover.
She tore open the tattered brown paper parcel with its US stamps, thinking it might be a present from her Aunt Kathleen. Inside was a picture. She lifted it out and turned it the right way, gazing at the painting as if she had found a pink, breathing baby beneath a heap of rags. Outdoors, it was murky; leaden sky, charcoal asphalt, and the dirty white of the concrete building opposite. Indoors, the picture brought its own light.
There was an envelope hidden in a pocket of the wrapping. It had been opened and sealed again with a couple of bits of tape. On it was simply written Grace. It was his writing. She put the envelope down on the table, shook herself and then looked again. It was still his writing. She picked the envelope up and tore it open. Her heart was hammering in her chest as she read on, but her hands remained steady; it was her training.
The painting was the kind of gift – remarkable and utterly right – that he would send her; but two years after his death? Grace was not one of those people who discounted miracles; she just didn’t think them likely. He was dead and, this being life, there would be no resurrection.
She propped the picture up against the back of one of the kitchen chairs. She looked at what he had looked at; there was a time lag of over two years, but they were sharing the view: the house brooding in the background, the dark-haired girl seated by the water’s edge, the figure gazing at her with such longing, and all washed in a light so clear it might have been sieved through a fine muslin cloth. The sea was playing in shades of blue and, beyond, the horizon was endless. Grace had seen such light and such horizons in the past, in other places, but never from a window at Northbourne House. And A.L.Forbes, who was he? She had never heard of a painter of that name, yet this was not some amateur work but the work of a true artist.
She turned the letter over in her hand and it was then she noticed the scribble on the back.
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