The Greek name for a butterfly is Psyche, and the same word means the soul. There is no illustration of the immortality of the soul so striking and beautiful as the butterfly, bursting on brilliant wings from the tomb in which it has lain, after a dull, grovelling, caterpillar existence, to flutter in the blaze of day and feed on the most fragrant and delicate productions of the spring. Psyche, then, is the human soul, which is purified by sufferings and misfortunes, and is thus prepared for the enjoyment of true and pure happiness.
THOMAS BULFINCH, Mythology: The Age of Fable
Drinking was another way to swerve through the dark, although the initial reason I drank was to still myself. Here was the larger world I had dreamt of, but just as I had rushed through childhood, the world seemed now to rush through me and kept me in a flutter. I felt too insubstantial to hold my place. The bright loud room had opened its door, but to make my way through that loaded air felt like pushing through waves.
Cara’s father had a cupboardful of lurid dusty bottles brought back from holidays abroad. Boyish and medicated, he had had two heart attacks before the age of forty and was given to outbursts of fury and subsequent outbursts of love. He did not often drink and routinely accused his children of stealing his alcohol behind his back. (Janey’s mother made notches in the labels of her sherry and vodka bottles, which Janey topped up with water, whereas when my mother noticed the whisky disappearing, she said something so gentle that I never took anything again.)
‘He wouldn’t notice if we just took a little of each.’ Cara found an empty medicine bottle which Janey and I helped her fill with all the colours and flavours that the cupboard contained. It settled into a bitter brown syrup much like cough linctus.
We set off for the youth-club disco but decided to drink the bottle at the recreation ground first. We wanted, needed, to be drunk before we arrived. It must have been spring because I remember being struck by the softness of the evening. We sat on the swings feeling ironic and grown-up, and passing the sticky bottle back and forth, and we sang hard comical versions of the songs of the slow dances – ‘If You Leave Me Now’ and ‘Have You Seen Her?’ – laughing at the very idea of them. I felt grown-up enough to act the child and swung higher than anyone. The darkness rose and fell around me and then concentrated itself into a series of slamming doors as my vision blackened. I hadn’t even noticed myself getting drunk and now I could hardly see.
The youth club was shockingly well lit but the music was loud and I loved the music and there were my friends, Tina and Julie and Dawn, and I loved them. The room fell away but the music stayed in place and I loved the music so I danced and all the while kept laughing because I had not stopped swinging and falling and was further outside myself than I had ever been and Julie who I wanted so much to be my friend was dancing with me and we stepped towards each other and back and clapped and turned and stepped together again and she was laughing too and I threw my head back and then fell forward into Julie’s smile and when I looked up people frowned and turned away and someone was shouting and my face was wet and I couldn’t see.
I was led to a bathroom where the woman who ran the youth club held a cloth against my face, which was covered in blood. Julie’s teeth had sliced across my nose. There were voices behind me, ‘Is it broken? Has she broken her nose?’ When I heard that, I looked into the mirror and tried to focus through my drunkenness and shock, sure I would see a monster. My nose was unchanged and the face I saw was mine but this was not a reflection. It was too far away, more like some inner self that had slipped free and looked back at me now with my own fundamental sadness.
My mother was called and came to take me home. She reacted as she always did to such emergencies, with detached practicality, and I was so grateful that she was neither furious nor distressed that I didn’t realise till later how much I wanted someone to reassure or punish me. Nor did I think about the possibility that she was simply controlling her feelings. I didn’t yet know that that was something we can do. Nothing was said. If ever anything was said in such situations, it was said once and quietly, and it had more impact than any amount of yelling would have done.
The bleeding stopped and she explained that I had not broken my nose and would not need stitches. She taped the cut together with what she called a ‘butterfly dressing’ and I stared into the mirror again, amazed that these two thin strips of plaster could hold me together.