The Butterfly Cabinet (29 page)

Will you sing me the sea, Anna, will you, will you sing me the sea?

The Butterfly Cabinet
is a work of fiction inspired by real events that occurred at Cromore House, the home of the Montagu family of Portstewart, on the north coast of Ireland in 1892. On the evening of 13 February, the family doctor was called to the house, where he pronounced three-year-old Mary Helen Montagu dead by asphyxia. At the inquest that was held in the house the following Monday, the child’s mother, Annie Margaret Montagu, gave evidence that on the Saturday, she had tied the child’s hands with a stocking to a ring on the wall of “the wardrobe room,” locked the door and left her alone for three hours. The assembled jury returned the verdict that she did “feloniously kill and slay the said Mary Helen Montagu” and returned her for trial at the Derry assizes, bail having been accepted. Following a magisterial inquiry at Coleraine Police Barrack, which was adjourned to Coleraine Courthouse, fresh charges were brought under the Act for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children regarding the treatment of three of the family’s other children. Several servants gave evidence. Following accusations of a biased jury, the case was eventually heard on Monday 3 April at the Four Courts in Dublin, where Mrs. Montagu was found guilty of manslaughter and sentenced to twelve months’ imprisonment. She gave birth to a child in Grangegorman Prison in the summer of 1892 and was released in April 1893.

Sincere thanks to: the Arts Council of Northern Ireland and to Damian Smyth, to the Creative Writers’ Network, Belfast, and to mentor Damian Gorman; to the Tyrone Guthrie Centre at Annaghmakerrig; to the staff at Portstewart and Coleraine Public Libraries and the newspaper archive at Belfast Central Library; to Gregory O’Connor, archivist at the National Archive in Dublin, and to the Ecos Centre, Ballymena, for access to the butterfly collection on loan from the Ulster Museum. Thanks also to: the staff at Flowerfield Arts Centre, Portstewart; to the Flowerfield, Ballycastle, and Jane Ross writers’ groups; to Heather Newcombe and the facilitators at the Let Me Take You to the Island writing festival on Rathlin, especially Joan Newmann, Kate Newmann and Ted Deppe.

Thank you to my brilliant first readers, Una Kealy, Bridgeen McAlister, Alice McGlone and Zoë Seaton, and for listening on the beach, Sheena Bannon and Joan Grier-Mulvenna. I wish to acknowledge Sharman Apt Russell’s inspirational book
An Obsession with Butterflies
and Hugh Kane’s selections from the
Coleraine Chronicle
in
The Flood Tide
and
Ebb and Flow
. Huge thanks to my UK editor Mary-Anne Harrington and to my U.S. editor Wylie O’Sullivan, both of whom have eyes that see differently to other people’s; to my agent Clare Alexander; and to Anna Stein of Aitken Alexander Associates, New York. Thank you to
Zoetrope: All-Story
magazine and particular thanks to the NEELB mobile library service (c. 1975–1985) for bringing the books.

Bernie McGill was born in County Derry in Northern Ireland in 1967, the youngest of ten children. She received her BA and a master’s in Irish writing from Queen’s University Belfast. For twelve years she managed a professional theater company, and more recently has worked as a part-time teacher and lecturer (in English, creative writing and Italian) and occasionally works as a freelance fund-raiser for the arts. In 2008 her story “Sleepwalkers” won the
Zoetrope: All-Story
Short Fiction Contest. Other short stories have been shortlisted for a number of awards (Bridport, Seán Ó’Faoláin, Michael McLaverty, Brian Moore, Orange/Northern Woman) and published in
Brand, Fortnight, Verbal
and
Northern Woman
magazines and in
The Belfast Telegraph
and broadcast on BBC Radio Ulster. Her work has also been anthologized in
My Story
(BBC/Blackstaff, Belfast, 2006) and in
The Barefoot Nuns of Barcelona and Other Stories
(Greer Publications, Belfast, 2005). She has been a recipient of an Arts Council of Northern Ireland Individual Artist Award on three separate occasions. In 2006 her stage play
The Weather Watchers
was produced and toured throughout Ireland. In March 2010 her script for the musical production
The Haunting of Helena Blunden
was produced and toured Ireland. She is married and has two children and now lives by the sea in Portstewart, Northern Ireland.