The Butterfly Cabinet Read Online Free Page B
Author: Bernie McGill
does not know why she has been asked to do this, why she has been summoned and made to stand in such a way, but that it is not an ordeal, and for that reason, she will do it. She is a strange girl, hardworking, it is true, but unfathomable. I look at those pale eyes of hers and I cannot tell whether or not she is speaking the truth.
In the picture Julia took of Charlotte, the child is seated beside her dolls’ house, intent on her play, not looking at the camera at all. Her profile is as it was when she was a baby. What is it about an infant’s face that captivates one so? An arrangement of curves and dips to stir the heart, to make one love it.
Yesterday the chaplain paid a visit. He is young and perhaps has ideas of reforming me. He reminds me a little of Harry, our eldest: his narrow frame; his eyes that are dark and serious, well intentioned; his hair that does not behave.
“God be with you,” he said. God be with me indeed. God be with all of us. When he was leaving he stood up and put a book down on the mattress.
“I have no need for a missal,” I said, but he simply nodded and left. When I opened it, the book was empty: pages of lined paper, and the stub of a pencil. Perhaps he thought I would make my confession. Perhaps I will. The warders do not know I have it, or if they do, they choose to ignore it. I have worked a hole in the mattress with the lead and pushed the book inside. When I lie down at night I feel the lump it makes under my head. The princess and the pea.
Maddie
15 SEPTEMBER 1968
There’s odd things happens in this place, Anna. Mrs. Riley, who hasn’t put her foot to the ground this two years or more, who needs a bedpan for her motions, and to be fed every drop of food that goes into her, Mrs. Riley walked past my door last night, and the nightdress near tripping her and her dead to the world. What can cause a person to do that? To think themselves incapable of walking when they’re awake, and fit for anything when they’re asleep! Isn’t the mind a wonderful thing that can fool you?
I like your hair, Anna. Is that the style now? You’ve always had great hair. How do you get it to curl out like that at the ends? Oh, I couldn’t sleep with rollers in my hair at night. Nurse Jenny does mine. She’s very good. Not that there’s much of it to do now. Like feathers on an oul’ plucked turkey! But it was nice, at a time—at least that’s what I was told. Mammy used to say that the fairies must have woven threads of their own into it while I was sleeping, for in among the brown that was the color of hers, there were strands the color of the copper kettle and others that were as yellow as a corn stook. It hung all the way down to my waist, for she said it’d be a sin to cut the light out of it.
My first day at the castle, Mammy helped me pin it all up tight under my cap and it was the oddest feeling walking along, likeI would overbalance if I wasn’t careful, carrying all that weight about on top of my head. That and the strangeness of being shod: I never had shoes on my feet before I came to this house. Shoes change the way you walk, Anna. It took me a long time to get used to them.
I couldn’t tell you what I had for my dinner last night, but other things, things from years ago, I can see like they’re right in front of my face. June mornings, Daddy going out of our cottage in Bone Row with my brothers Sam and William, carrying the drift net. They’d haul the net at dawn, arrive back between five or six in the morning with the smell of bacon drifting out over the lane to meet them.
It was July, I remember, not far into the month, and not long after St. John’s Day and the blessing of the boats. The fleet set off from the harbor just before midday, and headed for the mouth of the river trawling for turbot and sole. Three yawls, the
Ruby
among them, Sam and William and Daddy on board and a ton of stones in ballast for drawing the net astern. The wind fresh from the northwest, a
In the picture Julia took of Charlotte, the child is seated beside her dolls’ house, intent on her play, not looking at the camera at all. Her profile is as it was when she was a baby. What is it about an infant’s face that captivates one so? An arrangement of curves and dips to stir the heart, to make one love it.
Yesterday the chaplain paid a visit. He is young and perhaps has ideas of reforming me. He reminds me a little of Harry, our eldest: his narrow frame; his eyes that are dark and serious, well intentioned; his hair that does not behave.
“God be with you,” he said. God be with me indeed. God be with all of us. When he was leaving he stood up and put a book down on the mattress.
“I have no need for a missal,” I said, but he simply nodded and left. When I opened it, the book was empty: pages of lined paper, and the stub of a pencil. Perhaps he thought I would make my confession. Perhaps I will. The warders do not know I have it, or if they do, they choose to ignore it. I have worked a hole in the mattress with the lead and pushed the book inside. When I lie down at night I feel the lump it makes under my head. The princess and the pea.
Maddie
15 SEPTEMBER 1968
There’s odd things happens in this place, Anna. Mrs. Riley, who hasn’t put her foot to the ground this two years or more, who needs a bedpan for her motions, and to be fed every drop of food that goes into her, Mrs. Riley walked past my door last night, and the nightdress near tripping her and her dead to the world. What can cause a person to do that? To think themselves incapable of walking when they’re awake, and fit for anything when they’re asleep! Isn’t the mind a wonderful thing that can fool you?
I like your hair, Anna. Is that the style now? You’ve always had great hair. How do you get it to curl out like that at the ends? Oh, I couldn’t sleep with rollers in my hair at night. Nurse Jenny does mine. She’s very good. Not that there’s much of it to do now. Like feathers on an oul’ plucked turkey! But it was nice, at a time—at least that’s what I was told. Mammy used to say that the fairies must have woven threads of their own into it while I was sleeping, for in among the brown that was the color of hers, there were strands the color of the copper kettle and others that were as yellow as a corn stook. It hung all the way down to my waist, for she said it’d be a sin to cut the light out of it.
My first day at the castle, Mammy helped me pin it all up tight under my cap and it was the oddest feeling walking along, likeI would overbalance if I wasn’t careful, carrying all that weight about on top of my head. That and the strangeness of being shod: I never had shoes on my feet before I came to this house. Shoes change the way you walk, Anna. It took me a long time to get used to them.
I couldn’t tell you what I had for my dinner last night, but other things, things from years ago, I can see like they’re right in front of my face. June mornings, Daddy going out of our cottage in Bone Row with my brothers Sam and William, carrying the drift net. They’d haul the net at dawn, arrive back between five or six in the morning with the smell of bacon drifting out over the lane to meet them.
It was July, I remember, not far into the month, and not long after St. John’s Day and the blessing of the boats. The fleet set off from the harbor just before midday, and headed for the mouth of the river trawling for turbot and sole. Three yawls, the
Ruby
among them, Sam and William and Daddy on board and a ton of stones in ballast for drawing the net astern. The wind fresh from the northwest, a
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