The Adonis Blue by Rosemary Carr
‘I’ve made us some tea,’ called Fergus, placing two mugs of steaming hot nectar on the patio table.
Margaret, secateurs in hand, looked up from the rose bush she was deadheading on the far side of the garden.
‘Be with you in a minute,’ she called back, flicking a strand of grey-blond hair out of her eyes, ‘I just want to finish what I’m doing here.’
Wiping her brow with the back of her gardening glove, she wondered why she was still so surprised to find her husband at home during the day. He had been retired for almost six months, yet she still expected him to leave the house before seven in the morning to catch the train up to town, not getting back again until late. When the boys were young, he didn’t see them from one weekend to the next and at times she felt as if she had brought up the family by herself. Now he was in the house all the time.
‘I thought you needed to go out today,’ she said as she strode down the garden towards him, taking off her gardening gloves and picking one or two stray pieces of greenery out of her hair.
Fergus, who had his head in a newspaper, didn’t reply. Margaret regarded the top of his balding head with contempt.
‘Fergus,’ she snapped, ‘I thought you said you had to go to the bank today?’
‘I do,’ he replied, his unshaven face appearing over the top of his broadsheet, ‘I thought maybe you could run me in to town later.’
Silently, Margaret sat down opposite him, swinging her legs up on to one of the empty chairs between them. It wasn’t running him down to the bank she minded, it was the assumption she had nothing better to do that bugged her. Was she being difficult? She didn’t intend to be. She was, or so she told herself, too used to being on her own. Doing her own thing. She took a sip of tea. It tasted sweet. Fergus always put far too much sugar in for her taste. No wonder they were both putting on weight.
‘Well at least give me an idea what time you want to go,’ she said, discreetly tipping the contents of the mug in to the flower bed beside her.
‘Well I’m not ready yet.’
Margaret took a deep breath and counted to ten. She didn’t want to argue. They had been arguing too much of late, and over the pettiest of things. Last night they had fallen out over which bottle of wine to drink, the night before over what to eat. It was never ending. She swung her legs back down on to the ground and was just about to return to the more companionable silence of her roses when a butterfly landed on the back of her hand. Brilliantly blue, Mediterranean blue, it seemed to glow from within like a delicately patterned, Chinese lantern. Margaret, who knew a little about butterflies, almost dared to believe it was an Adonis Blue, but as it flew away, its white-tipped wings catching the midday sun, she guessed she was probably wrong. It was probably just a Common Blue.
***
‘I was thinking,’ Fergus began, folding up his newspaper and throwing it down on to the table, ‘we should take a holiday, go somewhere special.’
Margaret, who envisaged two weeks of constant arguing, picked up the newspaper and began to read.
‘I was thinking about a safari,’ he persevered, ‘what do you think?’
His suggestion, like the lavender scent that wafted across the garden every now and then, was carried away by a late summer breeze. It may, she supposed, have landed somewhere else, on someone else’s lawn, to be picked up by an unsuspecting gardener who would wonder why he was thinking about lions and zebras. The thought made her smile, if only momentarily.
‘I can always go away on my own,’ Fergus complained, getting up to go back inside.
Margaret didn’t reply. Instead she nonchalantly turned the page of her newspaper. Incomprehension flashed across Fergus’ face.
‘I don’t know who you think you’re fooling with that newspaper,’ he snapped, ‘both of us know you can’t read a thing without your glasses on.’
Looking back, Margaret would wonder what might have happened to their marriage if she hadn’t have laughed. Would they each have gone their separate ways, on separate holidays, never to do things together again?
‘You know, I think a safari sounds like a wonderful idea,’ she announced, standing up and collecting the mugs together.
Fergus looked as if was about to say something, but then changed his mind.
‘Come on, then’ Margaret said, ‘let’s go in to town together and make some plans over lunch…what do you say?’
Just as they were about to go inside, the butterfly landed on the edge of the table, opening its wings to the warmth of the late summer’s sun.
‘You know, I think I’m right,’ Margaret said aloud, ‘I think it is an Adonis Blue after all.’
Rosemary is currently studying Creative Writing with The Open University and lives in North West London with her husband and son.
