The Proof: Chapter 4

On a muggy day early in summer, two orange butterflies were chasing each other around in circles. At times they almost touched in mid-air; at others they veered apart, as though preparing to put a violent end to their duel. Their movements were intricately connected, but not in an obvious way: if one of them slowed or changed direction, the flight of the other would change as well, but not necessarily at the same speed or towards the same point. At certain moments one seemed to be attacking the other, making it feint and dodge in self-defence; but then the roles would reverse and the attacker would become the defender, or both would stop for a while and bob up and down as if nothing had happened between them. Although their conflict, or courtship, or whatever it was, took them far and wide, high and low, they always stayed above the same garden. On the L-shaped lawn beneath them a one year old boy was trying to stand up, falling over, then trying to stand up again. Close by, the boy's father was snoring in a deck chair, with his neck bent at an uncomfortable angle above the striped fabric that supported his back. Every so often he emitted a snorting noise and his head jerked upright — only to begin its subsidence once more. At the end of the garden the boy's mother was kneeling by a flowerbed: she was digging up a stubborn weed that kept snapping off above the root, cursing to herself, digging at the weed again.

Charlie saw the butterflies, looping and dancing against the hazy sky. He pointed at them and made a noise no-one seemed to hear, then fell over, his balance upset by pointing. If only he could speak, he would tell everyone what he'd seen. But he had to content himself with crawling towards his father. Jeremy got bigger and bigger as Charlie drew closer, and Charlie could see beads of sweat all over his body. Finally Charlie reached him and stood up to touch his arm.

Jeremy woke with a start. He turned and said "Ah!" still half asleep, but his breath was like a foghorn that made Charlie fall back on the grass. He groaned, clutching his head, then reached for a plastic bottle full of water by the leg of his chair. The water tasted so good and clean that he drank it all, in breathless gulps, spilling trickles down his chin and onto his bony chest. Only then did he look back at the boy, who was sitting on the grass, pointing up at the sky. Jeremy followed Charlie's finger until he spotted the mid-air dance, now more acrobatic than ever. He was immediately fascinated, shifting forwards in his chair to spectate more closely. His eyes began moving all the time, tracking every whirl and flip of the flying insects. Before long his lips were moving as well:

"The incredible beauty and complexity of things," he said, "the way they move and don't move, they way they interact, or intersect, together or independently, a part in the whole, the whole in each part… it's beautiful — yes! But is beauty complex or simple?" He continued like this for some time. Then he paused, smacking his gluey lips open and shut. He fumbled for the empty bottle and drank its dregs of water.

Charlie was flat on his back. When the butterflies had flown above him, he'd tilted his head so far back to see them, its weight had toppled him over. The position upset him and he began to cry.

At the sound of tears, Jeremy stood and walked to his son, managing to look purposeful, despite the pulse hammering at the side of his head. When he got there he picked Charlie up and held him to his chest, rocking from side to side. (This was watched with approval by Kate, who was looking over her shoulder towards them, past the bulk of own kneeling rump). The boy quietened down then clasped his hands around his fathers neck. Jeremy said "do you want to see the butterflies?" in a sing-song voice. When Charlie smiled, his dad hoisted him up in the air.

"Wheeeee!" said Jeremy, as he swept his son towards the flying dance. He said this to encourage the boy to enjoy the ride; but it was also a release for his own excitement.

As they neared the butterflies, Charlie could discern their markings more clearly. They were both the same kind, big black wings with orange bands running across them and blobs of white towards the tips. One was slightly larger than the other, but the way they kept swapping places, changing roles, it was difficult to keep them apart for long. At first they seemed not to notice the approaching observers; but then they darted off, quitting their dance only to resume it a short distance away. This happened several times, with the butterflies always escaping at the last second. Sometimes, instead of flying away from Charlie and Jeremy, they'd fly towards them, splitting apart then reforming on the other side.

Before long, Jeremy was tired of chasing butterflies. Exhausted in fact. Sweat was pouring off him, leaving a wet band beneath the top of his trousers and dark wet patches on Charlie's clothes. He felt a tremble in his arms that suggested he should no longer be holding a child; then a cold spasm running down his neck, draining the blood from his cheeks. He put Charlie down more quickly than he meant to and the boy fell forwards on his hands and knees.

As Jeremy took deep breaths and rubbed his temples, Charlie crawled towards a daisy that stuck up above the grass.

"Aha!" said Jeremy, a minute later, when his nausea had faded, "You're wondering why the daisy is growing in the grass, and why even though there's only one of them, it's growing ever so well?" He had learned how to ask such questions in a baby-friendly voice, singing them up and down. At first Kate had been opposed to this, wanting to know why he couldn't say normal things like "who's a clever little boy?" and "does Charlie want his blanket?"; but he'd managed to convince her that the tone was all that mattered.

"You probably think nature favours a monopoly, and if grass is the species best suited to this kind of terrain there should be only grass here, don't you Charlie?" Charlie smiled when he heard his name, a big gummy smile that now had teeth in the middle, on both the top and bottom rows. "But not at all!" exclaimed Jeremy, "nature favours diversity and flux, she wants all things to be dappled and pied and ordered in a mixed up pleasing way! Although whether there is anything inherently pleasing about nature is difficult to tell" — he had lapsed into his normal voice — "that is, perhaps we've just evolved to see nature as pleasing because it is materially advantageous to do so…" While he rambled on, he began to tickle Charlie underneath the arms. The boy shrieked and rolled on his back.

Soon the tickling reached that flexible border where pleasure turns into pain; but Jeremy was sensitive to this, so he gave Charlie time to pant and recover. Then he said: "let's go talk to mummy!" and picked Charlie up around the waist.

On the way, the butterflies flew in front of them. As if jealous of the attention the daisy had been getting, they performed their most balletic stunts, dipping and weaving around each other. They swooped so close that Charlie reached out a hand to catch one. But Jeremy said: "let's go talk to mummy!" and carried on walking.

Kate had finished digging weeds. When Jeremy and Charlie arrived behind her she was picking dead petals off a plant — a Speedwell, whose pretty red flowers rose in a column from a spray of green leaves. "Hiya boys," she said, turning to smile at them. She was still on her knees. "There's mummy," whispered Jeremy in Charlie's ear. "Hi sexy," said Charlie! But really it was Jeremy who'd said it, holding Charlie in front of his face and pretending to hide behind him. "Do you come here often?" continued the boy in a bad ventriloquist's voice. Kate wasn't fooled: "I see you," she replied to her husband, craning her neck sideways. Jeremy moved the other way, keeping the boy as a shield between them. Then they started to dodge this way and that, Kate always trying to catch Jeremy out, pretending to lean one direction then switching to the other, while he tried to anticipate her and keep himself hidden from view.

This was fun for Charlie to a certain point, but it soon became overstimulating. His face crumpled in a frown and he began to kick his legs in the air. Kate stopped moving at once and reached up to hold his ankles. But Jeremy still wanted to play: he lifted Charlie out of her reach and started tilting him from side to side, saying "nah nah na nah nah" from somewhere behind his back. She glared fiercely at her husband and he tilted the boy much faster, flinging him at worrying angles to the left and right, until he threw up his tiny arms and screamed. When she realised Jeremy was deliberately goading her, Kate looked at him with quiet comprehension and pain. Immediately, Jeremy put Charlie down on the grass.

Charlie was dizzy. It was just as well his father had placed him on his hands and knees, not on his feet, or he would have fallen over straight away. He looked around with wide eyes at the unmowed grass, which from his perspective was incredibly tall. When his head stopped spinning, he began to crawl away from his parents: he was too young to know they were arguing, but something about their tone encouraged him to leave.

"Why do you always have to act like an idiot?" asked Kate. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, just don't start fucking whinging okay," Jeremy replied.

Charlie crawled further into his jungle and the sound of their voices got quieter. The different textures of daisies, buttercups, weeds, patches of clover and bright yellow dandelions folded beneath his hands and knees, then slowly stood up behind him.

Kate leapt to her feet. "And why do you always drink so much?" she said to her husband, "then you get like this the next day," she went on, accompanying the word this with a gesture that took in Jeremy's slouching body, his slack jaw, his coarse language, even his foul-smelling breath. Jeremy was stuck for an answer. He resorted to mimicry: "why do you always drink so much?" he said, with his face screwed up in a sneer and his head bobbing from side to side. He glanced down the front of her top.

Charlie stopped for a moment, pushing himself onto his knees with the long grass reaching up around him. His hands dangled idly on the ground and he had a vacant look on his face, as if he was waiting for something to happen. Just then, one of the butterflies, finally detached from its partner, flew over his head. It swooped low, tracing the contour of his skull with its wavering flight. He crawled after it as it fluttered away.

His parents were still arguing. Kate was thrusting her short neck forwards, jabbing the air with her finger, and Jeremy was stepping back; his eyes were apologising, his arms kept flapping apart — as if she were pressing a button that opened them. "You think you're so clever, don't you?" she said, "Well you're not, you're just a selfish little boy who never thinks about anyone apart from himself!" Jeremy looked hurt now, eyes ready to fill with tears. But Kate hadn't finished: "You don't even care about your own bloody son do you? You're just sorry you're not the only child in the family any more!" Afterwards they were silent for a long time, apart grom a trembling breathless sound issuing from Jeremy. Finally Kate said "I'm sorry. I really am. I shouldn't have said that." Now she made a sound like the one from Jeremy, quavery, many breaths crammed into one. For a while Charlie heard sentences being started then broken off, words like listen, and let's not, and why are we; then a warm humming sound and a wet kind of smack. After that he heard nothing at all.

He had other things to concentrate on anyway. The butterfly was just ahead of him, skimming over the tips of the long green stems and the yellow flowers. He tried to accelerate, pumping so hard with his hands and knees that he slowed down instead. Eventually he gave up and sat down, ready to burst into tears. A second later the butterfly landed beside him, on a long blade of grass that bobbed up and down beneath its weight. He watched mesmerised, expecting it to take off and fly away. But it never did, not even when a slight breeze blew from one side and combined with the bobbing to make its perch sway round in a circle. The butterfly was so still, in fact, that it seemed to have grown from the stem — like a flower or a colourful, papery fruit. Charlie leaned forwards until its wings quivered under his breath. Then he cried out and clapped his hands. The butterfly vanished inside them.

Kate and Jeremy finished kissing and disentangled from their embrace. Kate was saying that her lips were hurting, they'd kissed so hard it hurt her lips, and Jeremy was saying that he was hurting too but somewhere else. He smirked and ran his hand lightly over her bum, and she tweaked him through his trousers. Suddenly they remembered to look for Charlie.

Charlie was quite far away now; he seemed not to hear when they called his name. He was sitting in the overgrown grass, looking at his hands, which were clenched into little balls. "Charlie?" said Kate; "Charlie?" said Jeremy. When they reached their son they squatted beside him, stroking his hair and touching his shoulders. Charlie was still intent on his fists. "Whatcha looking at?" asked Jeremy. When the boy made no response, Kate took his hands and gently opened them. His palms were marked with black and orange dust.

"What's that?" asked Jeremy.

"What's on your hands Charlie?" asked Kate.

They always spoke to him as if he could respond. They thought this might encourage his intellectual development, which his father in particular was monitoring closely. Charlie looked away from them to an empty patch of grass.

"What's that?" asked Jeremy again, this time pointing at the grass.

"Butta!" said Charlie. His parents gasped at each other. He raised his hands up, palms downward, like some kind of infantile prayer. "Butta?" said Kate, her voice pitched unnaturally high. "Butta?" said Jeremy, pointing excitedly at the grass. Charlie dropped his arms as if he'd forgotten they were there. "Fie," he said.

"Butta — fie."

"Butterfly!" chorused his parents. They were smiling, almost crying. They lifted the boy up and held him between them, kissing him, patting his back. They laughed and clapped, telling each other how they'd always remember the day when Charlie spoke his first word. Their jubilation drowned out a rustling sound from the lawn near their feet. It was a pair of ruined wings, flapping in the grass.