Read Online Shooting Butterflies by Marika Cobbold - Free Book Online Page B

holiday in the sun,” he said.’
    â€˜He was right.’ Jefferson sat up. ‘I couldn’t believe it when Cherry said she was going. It’s like there’s no consciousness.’
    Grace sat up too. ‘Jefferson.’ She took his rough boy’s hands in hers. ‘I bought fur … once. I never got to wear it but I might have if … if something hadn’t got in the way. So you see,’ she lowered her eyes, ‘I’m not … conscious either, not the way you mean it.’
    Jefferson looked back at her, his brow furrowed. ‘That’s different,’ he said finally, pulling a chunk of grass up by its roots. ‘It’s OK, Grace.’ He was smiling and she could feel his warm spearmint-gum breath. ‘You’re different.’ Grace did not ask him how, or why. Instead with a little sigh of contentment, she lay back down in the grass.
    A while later she took pictures of him asleep in the shade, resting on his front, one knee drawn up and his arms above his head. He was nineteen and perfect and she, who was eighteen, wept because, in her experience, that which was perfect came back to haunt you from the far side of loss. She knelt down and brushed her lips against the soft hollow of his young boy’s neck, tucking a lock of dark hair behind his ear. ‘Come, wolves and giant birds,’ she whispered, ‘come, storms and angry winds. I’m here and you can’t hurt him.’ The dappled light from the branches and leaves above formed shifting patterns across his sleeping form. She got to her feet and shot close to a roll of film.
    Grace and Jefferson were jumping, laughing and as naked as God had created them, into the cool water of the wide, lazy-flowing river that divided the town from the woods beyond. She twisted round in the water, dived and surfaced right by him, shaking thewater from her hair, sending a cascade of droplets like a spinning wheel around her head. She dived again, swimming beneath him slinky as a seal, stretching her hand up and touching the soft slippery skin on the inside of his thighs. This time they surfaced together, wide-eyed and out of breath. Without a word they swam towards land. He lifted her up and she wrapped her legs around his hips and leant back against the bank, closing her eyes against the bright sun.
    â€˜And Jefferson always such a
good
boy.’ Della Parker was complaining to her friend Jan Miller while they were in the queue at the mart. Della was shocked and she was angry and she didn’t mind who heard what she had to say, and that included Aunt Kathleen blushing by the cereal aisle. ‘You would think a person would be spared that kind of sight, practically in their own back yard and in the middle of the morning with the kindergarten walking by on their nature ramble. I tell you, it’s that girl. We’ve all heard about the way those Europeans carry on.’
    Aunt Kathleen had responded by saying loudly to her friend Susie, ‘It’s good to see the boy so happy. There was no end to his moping after that Cherry Jones went away.’
    But to Grace she said, ‘It’s not that I expect you young people to be angels, but did you have to be so … well … public about it?’
    Grace was too proud of her happiness to be embarrassed, although she was sorry to have upset Aunt Kathleen. She wanted to ask her if it was common to feel holy when you made love, but she did not know how to go about broaching the subject. She made a very pretty apology in the form of a photograph of the house framed with freshly picked roses. ‘I know the roses won’t last,’ she said. But Aunt Kathleen had already forgiven her. Grace was in far worse trouble with Jefferson’s mother. She too blamed Grace, that English girl with the unfortunate mother, and she told Kathleen all about it. ‘But I shall keep my opinion to myself, Kathleen. As Jim pointed out, the more you