The Butterfly Box(36)

Chapter 9


Ramon walked up the beach and experienced for the first time in his life the hollow pangs of bereavement. It was evening and he was alone. He hadn't even been able to take Rasta for a walk, for without Federica there didn’t seem much point. So he had walked past the dog’s small prison looking the other way and ignoring the animal’s excited breath and husky barking. His heart ached with remorse and self-loathing and yet he didn’t consider changing his ways as Helena had asked him to. He hadn’t even offered to try. He wallowed in his misery, enhanced by the natural melancholy of the dying day. He turned his weary eyes to the sea and tried to imagine their new home in England. He remembered Polperro and the first time he had seen Helena. He imagined it the way it was then.

He sat on the sand and rested his elbows on his knees looking out over the choppy Pacific Ocean that stretched out before him, untamed and free. He had been like the sea then, going wherever the tide of his imagination took him. Those were the days when he was young and adventurous and blessed with immortality. Or so he had thought. He could do anything he wanted. So he had

travelled, sometimes sleeping under the stars, other times boarding with strangers generous enough to take him in. He had been born into a world of privilege and yet money had never meant a great deal to him. As long as he was on the move he was happy. At first he had written poems, which a friend of his father’s, who owned a small publishing firm in Santiago, had published for him. It had been immensely exciting seeing his work in print for the first time, with his name in big letters, positioned in the bookshop window for all to see. But he didn’t care too much for fame either, he was happier wandering the world unnoticed. Then he had written a collection of short stories, inspired by his adventures and embroidered with his fantasies. After that he was no longer an unknown in Chile; he began to be recognized. His book sold in bookshops all over the country. His picture appeared in El Mercurio and La Estrella and alongside the articles he wrote for various magazines such as Geo Chile. His desire to be creative was insatiable, nothing could pin him down. He’d stay in Chile long enough to see his family and then he’d be gone again, as if he were afraid his own shadow might catch up with him.

When he first met Helena he was writing a piece for National Geographic about the historic sights of Cornwall. He had been inspired to write the story

having met a weathered old seaman who had grown up in St Ives before joining the Navy and finally ending up in Valparaiso. He had woven a compelling tale of the land of King Arthur and Ramon had been struck with the urge to go to see it for himself. He hadn’t been disappointed. The villages and towns were stuck in the past as if the modern world had not yet discovered them. The houses were whitewashed and built into the rich green hills that fell sharply into the sea. The bays were solitary coves haunted by the ghosts of smugglers and shipwrecks. The roads were little more than narrow, winding lanes lined with tall hedgerows scattered with cow-parsley and long grasses. He had been enchanted. But if it hadn’t been for Helena he would only have scratched at the surface.

Helena Trebeka had been sitting on the quayside in Polperro when Ramon had first seen her. She was slim, carefree, with long wavy hair of such a pale blonde that he was immediately struck by it. He sat down to watch her, making mental notes in order to put her into one of his stories. He imagined she was the granddaughter of a smuggler. A girl with a wild nature and rebellious inclination to do exactly as she pleased; he wasn’t far wrong. She caught him staring at her and stared back in defiance. Not wanting to offend her he walked

over and placed himself next to her so that their legs dangled over the edge together.

‘You’re very beautiful, like a mermaid,’ he mused, smiling at her. She was caught off guard. Englishmen were never that poetic or daring and most of the men she knew were afraid of her.

‘Well, I’m sorry to disappoint you, I have legs not fins,’ she said and smiled back vivaciously.

‘So I see. Much more practical, I should imagine.’

‘Where are you from?’ she asked. He spoke with a heavy accent and his black hair and brown skin were new to her, as were the leather moccasins he wore on his feet.

‘I’m from Chile,’ he replied.

‘Where’s that?’ she asked, unimpressed.

‘In South America.’

‘Oh.’

‘There is a world outside Polperro, you know,’ he teased.

‘I know,’ she said tartly, not wanting him to think her provincial. ‘So what are you doing here in my little town?’ she asked, unable to curtail her curiosity.