What’s happened?’
‘It’s nothing to worry about. Not anything like that, but you must come. Outside. Quickly.’
She followed him along the corridor, out into the courtyard and round the side of the building to a spot where they could see straight down the valley, which sloped away towards the sea. There were already a number of people standing about, looking. And then Iris saw what they were staring at: below them, suspended in the air, hung a great dark cloud which writhed and tumbled in the cool air.
‘Look,’ said Digby, pointing.
‘Goodness!’ said Iris. ‘What on earth is it? Not locusts surely?’
‘If it’s a swarm of bees we might be well advised to get out of the line of fire,’ someone said.
‘They’re too big to be bees.’
‘You don’t think they’re bats, do you?’
‘I hope not.’
‘Are they wee birds?’ someone asked.
‘They must be,’ someone else said.
Everyone stood still as the cloud danced closer and closer, until it was possible to discern individual shapes among its mass. Spots of colour on their wings flashed as they caught the sunlight; others were only white, fluttering upward like handkerchiefs blown from a washing line, caught in a current of air.
‘Butterflies!’ Iris laughed, delighted.
There must have been hundreds of thousands of them, some flying only a few inches above the ground, others as high as a three-storey house. They flew up onto the plateau and then on, up towards the pass. It was as if some invisible dam had burst, and the butterflies were flooding the sky in a swollen river of flight. Almost as remarkable as the sight of them was the silence: they moved as soundlessly as a great shoal of fish. By and by, everyone in the building came out to look. Some of the men were holding out their hats, catching the butterflies in them as easily as if they had been shrimping nets, dangled in a shallow rock pool. Iris put her arm through Digby’s and they stood looking together.
The butterflies kept coming for two days. Everyone talked of little else. Teams who ventured up towards the col said the upper slopes were littered with dead butterflies, their wings darkening as they blotted the moisture from the ever-retreating snow. Iris and Digby collected several from the ground in the courtyard and put them in cigarette boxes, to take to Michael. He’d be able to identify them, they were sure.
‘You don’t mind, do you, the way Michael goes on?’ Digby asked her, as they drove down to the coast, a week after the butterflies had stopped, with the specimens on the back seat. ‘I mean, you don’t find it tiresome the way he …?’
‘Heavens, no,’ said Iris. ‘It’s all quite good-natured. Anyway, he’s amusing.’
‘But you’re not …’
‘Oh no. Absolutely not.’
‘Because of your husband?’ asked Digby. It was the first time in their friendship that he had mentioned her marriage.
‘Not actually.’ Confiding didn’t come readily to Iris; she preferred to live than to talk, but she felt she could trust Digby, that there was an understanding between them.
‘Look, the thing is that there’s been someone else. Someone since I was married, I mean. It all came to a head last year, while Edward was out of the country on service. Then things got rather complicated because he was sent away suddenly, and I didn’t know where he’d been posted – this other man, not Edward. Then I saw him, I was sure it was him, on a newsreel and it was all rather frantic, and one way or another that led me to Cairo …’
Digby was silent.
‘Oh dear. Do you disapprove?’ asked Iris.
‘No. It’s not that,’ said Digby.
‘The thing is that I didn’t find him, and now I’m not sure that it would have been a good idea anyway. I’m not sure that I want to know where he is after all. I mean as long as he’s all right. I’ve been trying to forget about him. It was too much, you see. He isn’t free either, his wife’s … well, perhaps we needn’t go into that. Anyway, I … I certainly wasn’t thinking that Michael … I mean, it’s the last thing …’
‘No. I should think not.’
‘You’re the only one who knows. Jimmy doesn’t know anything about it, and I’d rather he didn’t,’ she said, suddenly regretting her unaccustomed candour. ‘It’s all been rather a muddle. I know I’m entirely at fault, but …’
‘No, of course. I’ll say nothing.’
After this she began to see rather less of Digby. Their nightly card games somehow stopped, although they still kept each other company, not talking much, when they both had a day’s leave. In due course Michael went back to London. Among his luggage were several crates full of carefully wrapped insects, the shells of gastropods and of other molluscs, seed pods, snakeskins, and the butterflies his friends had brought him. Personnel changed too up at the Cedars; people came and went. By now there was a staff of some hundred ski instructors. Extra buildings had had to go up, to accommodate the two thousand students who were billeted at any one time. Jimmy offered Iris the opportunity to return to England if she wanted to, but she chose to stay on. Ruth was happily installed at her grandparents’, busy with her school and a best friend whom she evidently adored, to judge by how often she was mentioned in letters. It was rather a wrench, being away from her, but it was better for Ruth to have the continuity of her life in Malvern. Iris had learned to ski herself and found it exciting. Also, somewhat to her surprise, she realised how much she liked to work, to be of use. She was in no hurry to go back, uncertain as she remained about her future with Edward. She rather imagined she might end up alone, although the thought no longer troubled her.
But in the spring of 1944, the commanding officer called Iris into his office to tell her the school would be closing down at the end of the season. Half the staff would go on to Italy, to continue their work there; the remainder would be going elsewhere. He was not able to reveal their destination, he informed her rather pompously. The thing was, there would be no post for her as of early summer. Something could be found for her in London if she liked.
Jimmy already knew of course. He was going to miss the place, his dog especially: a local Alsatian had unofficially adopted him soon after he’d arrived, joining in on training exercises, knocking people over. The dog had become a sort of mascot to them all. The commanding officers came and went, but Jimmy had been here all along; the Cedars was really his thing altogether. He and Iris sat disconsolately in his office, smoking.
‘I don’t know what to do with myself quite,’ said Iris. ‘I’ve grown so used to being here, so fond of everyone.’
‘Mountains have a queer effect on people,’ said Jimmy. ‘I’ve noticed that in the mountains one can very easily come to love almost anybody.’
‘Well, I don’t know about anybody,’ said Iris. ‘I’m not sure if I’d have loved Dumpling, if I’d met him at home.’
They laughed. Dumpling was a thickset Italian who worked in the kitchens. He was notoriously bad-tempered. One breakfast, when someone had asked for an egg cooked for a shorter time, he’d made a fearful scene and shouted, ‘If you no like-a – go lumpy!’ It had become something of a catchphrase about the place.
People were leaving by degrees. Jimmy was the first to go. He was to stop in London before joining some of the others in Canada, he’d confided to Iris. Digby was due to leave the week after. On her final evening, after dinner, Digby knocked quietly on the door of her room.
‘These books belong to you,’ he said, handing them to her. ‘And I’ve brought us a nightcap.’ He produced a flask.
‘I don’t know that I’ve got anything we can drink out of. Will my tooth mug do? We’ll have to share it,