Pool by Justin D'Ath Page A

not even sure if there was a key. He tugged the interior door open and switched on the light. Everything appeared to be just as he’d left it on Thursday, except for the absence of his second trap. Wolfgang brushed away a European wasp buzzing around his head. What had his father been doing in here anyway? Wolfgang was about to turn and leave when he noticed a flash of colour inside the remaining trap. What on earth? He crouched and lifted the trap gently onto its end. There was a butterfly inside it – a faded and very battered common brown.
    Wolfgang carried the trap outside and set the butterfly free. It fluttered away, brown and yellow in the slanting fingers of sunlight that poked through the grevilleas growing beside the driveway. It was possible that he might have overlooked one butterfly in his traps on Thursday evening, but two?
    Dad, thought Wolfgang, what have you been up to?
    He returned the trap to the shed and removed the baited cloth. Normally he did this when he returned from a collecting trip, but on Thursday he’d forgotten. Careless. Then something occurred to him: perhaps his father had used fresh baits. The coarse-weave cloth was still slightly sticky. He sniffed it. The alcohol had long since evaporated, but he could still smell the apricot jam he’d been using lately. Not his father’s work then – the old man had always sworn by honey.
    The wasp was back, circling Wolfgang’s head. It could smell the jam, too. Wolfgang stood and batted the insect away. He wasn’t fond of wasps, but they didn’t scare him as they did some people. There were two wasps, he realised. One was still circling, the other crawled along the top edge of one of the partially open louvres in the small window above him. No, there were three! A third yellow and black wasp had just landed on the trap.
    How were they getting in?
    Wolfgang pulled on the stiff, cob-webby window lever until he could see between the frosted panes of glass. Aha! A section of the flywire had pulled out of its frame, leaving a triangular hole roughly the size of his hand. Another common brown – this one in better condition than the one he had just released – hovered just outside the opening.
    So the old man had been right. Wolfgang had caught the black butterfly.
    It had flown in through the window and found its way into the trap he’d carelessly left baited.

33
    Audrey phoned later and invited Wolfgang to her birthday party.
    ‘I thought it was last night,’ he said.
    ‘It was supposed to be last night, only I wasn’t there,’ said Audrey. ‘Will you come?’
    ‘If you want me to.’
    ‘I wouldn’t be inviting you if I didn’t want you to.’
    ‘I’ll be there,’ Wolfgang said. He played with the telephone cord. They hadn’t had a chance to talk at the cemetery that morning. ‘Audrey, I’m sorry about yesterday.’
    ‘That’s okay. I’m sorry about the other night.’
    ‘It wasn’t your fault. You got a headache.’
    ‘I didn’t have a headache,’ Audrey said in a small, guilty voice. ‘I got scared.’
    ‘Scared?’ he said. ‘Of what?’
    ‘Of the pool.’
    ‘But you go there almost every day.’
    ‘I don’t go in the pool,’ Audrey said.
    Wolfgang remembered the day she’d walked down the ramp and put her face under the water, and how disappointed she’d been when her sight wasn’t restored. ‘I think your dad’s right,’ he said. ‘That whole Marceline Flavel thing was a put-up job. They probably arranged it to con people into coming here – you know, to get more tourists. There’s nothing miraculous about the pool.’
    ‘The water slopes, doesn’t it?’
    ‘Apart from that. Father Nguyen more or less admitted there are no such thing as angels.’
    Audrey was silent.
    ‘Are you still there?’ Wolfgang asked.
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘Well, um ... What time’s the party?’
    ‘Around seven, seven-thirty. It’ll be mostly rellies, but they’re a pretty friendly bunch.’ There was a short pause.