Tell it to the Bees Read online

  This would be something to tell Bobby about. This was better than the seaside.

  Charlie rested the frame on the board and leaned it over the washtub. Beginning at the bottom, as Jean had done with hers, he began to saw at the wax cappings. The knife cut through them cleanly and the honey began to well up and drift down, heavy and slow. The top eighth of an inch, she had said, so he kept the bread knife as flat to the comb as he could. Honey dripped down from the frame, mixing in the washtub with the cappings. Anxious to finish quickly, Charlie started to saw faster, but Jean put a hand on his arm.

  ‘Keep it steady. No rush.’

  When he had taken the cappings off both sides of the frame, Jean slotted it into the extractor. Charlie turned the handle and the honey was tugged from the comb, spraying the sides in a viscous sheen.

  The two of them worked slowly but steadily through the end of the morning, first uncapping, then extracting. They were happy at their task, absorbed, and when Mrs Sandringham knocked on the shed door and called them out for sandwiches, they emerged into the sunshine sticky and blinking, as if they had been away from the world a long while.

  Harvesting the honey had quietened Jean’s heart. But the day was half gone now and soon, very soon, Lydia would be here, seated at this table.

  ‘The Marstons are coming this afternoon. Sometimes in the past Jim has helped me out with the harvest.’

  ‘Does he like the bees?’

  ‘No.’ Jean grinned. ‘Not really.’

  ‘I’ve been good at helping you, haven’t I?’

  ‘You have.’ Jean wondered how much she liked him because he reminded her of herself. This small determined boy who had become her friend. She looked down the garden, her mind’s eye running on.

  ‘Charlie, what would you like to do when you’re older?’

  She watched him study the table, pick at a flake of paint. His face was fierce when he looked up.

  ‘Not what my father does,’ he said.

  ‘What does he do?’

  ‘Works on the roads, keeping them good for vehicles. Different things, depending.’

  ‘Why not?’ Jean said.

  ‘I’m going to be an insect man when I grow up.’

  ‘An insect man?’

  ‘I heard the word at school. We had it for a spelling test. When I told my mum the word, she smiled because she didn’t think I knew what it meant.’

  ‘And your father?’

  ‘I’m not telling him. Besides which –’ Charlie stopped.

  ‘Do you want to be an entomologist?’ Jean said. ‘Was that the word?’

  Charlie nodded. ‘Our teacher tells us what they mean, the words, and it’s what I want to do. Look at insects, how they live.’

  ‘You’d be good at it, Charlie. You look at things very closely and you don’t give up.’

  For which she was glad. Because his passion gave the alibi for hers.

  And Charlie gave Jean a smile that cut her straight to the quick – the way it took his eyes, the way it drew his lips – so she had to turn away and be busy with her sandwich again.

  *

  By the time the Marston family arrived, Jean and Charlie had finished extracting the honey. They had piled the supers ready for the bees to clean later and Charlie was down the garden, hunched by the pond. He was watching the water-boatmen skedaddle over the surface, each of their legs in a pool of its very own on the water, and every now and then putting his finger in to see them scarper. He didn’t hear the girls until they were almost with him. He didn’t have time to be ready.

  They were dressed in pretty dresses; their socks were white and their sandals were white. They had pink knees and hair in ribbons.

  ‘Jinjin said to us there was a boy down here,’ the taller one said and she stood, arms folded, as if waiting for him to confirm himself.

  When Charlie didn’t reply, she went on.

  ‘She said we were to come and say hello and play.’

  ‘Hello,’ Charlie said. He didn’t want to share the garden with these girls; he didn’t want to be polite.

  ‘Why are you looking at the water?’ said the smaller girl.

  ‘Because there’s things to look at,’ he said.

  ‘We’ve got a pond in our garden,’ the taller one said.

  ‘There’s water-boatmen here, and frogs and dragonflies,’ Charlie said, despite himself.

  ‘We have fish. We don’t like frogs,’ said the smaller girl.

  ‘I’ve been doing the honey harvest with Dr Markham,’ Charlie said. ‘All morning. I was in charge of the extractor.’

  ‘Show me what you’re looking at,’ said the smaller girl.

  She crouched down and Charlie pointed to the water-boatmen.

  ‘Spiders,’ she said.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘They’re bugs. Not the same at all.’

  ‘Are they clever then?’ she said. ‘Like Jinjin says the bees are?’

  ‘They don’t make honey or anything, and they live on their own. You watch long enough, you’ll see one dive. It’s how they get their food. Like tadpoles. Then they suck them empty.’

  ‘You’re called Charlie,’ the smaller girl said, changing the subject. ‘Jinjin told us. But you need to ask us our names.’

  ‘Do I?’ Charlie said.

  ‘It’s good manners,’ she said, shuffling her knees closer to his.

  ‘What’s your name then?’

  ‘Emma. My sister’s called Meg.’

  ‘Are you in special clothes, for doing the bees?’ Meg said. She was standing a little way off now, not looking at the pond.

  ‘No,’ Charlie said. ‘Ordinary ones. But I’ve got a bee suit and bee gloves. They’re in Dr Markham’s cloakroom.’

  ‘Your sandals don’t look very new,’ Meg said. ‘Emma gets my cast-offs, but we both get new sandals for the summer. Otherwise our feet might not grow well. We don’t get cast-off sandals, or last year’s.’

  Charlie looked down at his last-year’s sandals. They were a bit tight, but it was the end of summer now. He’d be needing new shoes for the winter, so these would have to do.

  ‘What else can you see in the pond?’ Emma said.

  Charlie shrugged. ‘Look for yourself. I’m going back to see about the honey,’ he said, getting to his feet and brushing off his knees.

  ‘Jinjin’s talking to our parents. Our father is one of her oldest friends,’ Meg said. ‘Is she a friend of your parents?’

  ‘My mother will be here soon,’ Charlie said. ‘She’s invited for tea.’

  ‘Isn’t your father coming too?’ Meg said.

  Charlie strode away across the grass, his cheeks burning. But Emma caught him up and tugged at his shirt.

  ‘Show me where you did all the honey-making. Please, will you?’

  And by the time they had reached the honey shed, he striding and she walk-skip-walking to keep up, he had relented. He opened the shed door with all the ceremony needed for induction into a sacred rite and conducted her inside.

  ‘He seems a nice boy,’ Sarah said. ‘Where did you come across him?’

  ‘He came into the surgery a few months back. His mother was worried about him. I think he’d been in a fight.’

  ‘And so he ends up helping you with the honey harvest?’

  ‘He was fascinated by my honeycomb, Jim. The one you made for me. So I invited him to see the hives.’

  Jean forced herself to concentrate. She was like a cat with a firecracker tied to its tail, turning at every sound, willing herself to stay seated, to drink tea, to talk with her friends.

  But if Jim and Sarah noticed Jean’s agitation, they said nothing.

  ‘You must always speak quietly to them,’ Charlie said. ‘They don’t like raised voices.’

  Emma nodded and picked at a scab on her elbow.

  ‘You can tell bees things. Did you know that?’

  She nodded again. A daub of honey on the bench shone under the electric light. She touched a finger to it and licked.

/>   Charlie put a hand on the ripening tank.

  ‘One of the best yields ever,’ he said. ‘Dr Markham said so.’

  Emma nodded solemnly. Charlie gave the ripening tank an authoritative tilt. He felt the slow shift of its cargo and set it back on the level. They looked down at the honey. Froth was forming on top.

  ‘Why’s it look like that?’ Emma said, her voice deferential.

  ‘It’s all the secrets,’ Charlie said. ‘The bees hear them and hide them in the honey. Then we get the honey, and the secrets come to the surface and …’ He made a gesture with one hand, closing it tight and then opening his fingers like a star. ‘Whoosh – they disappear into the air.’

  ‘Gosh,’ Emma said, as if she’d only recently learned what you should say on this kind of occasion.

  ‘It’s called evaporation,’ Charlie said, as if to clarify for the six-year-old girl.

  ‘Shall we go out now?’ she said. ‘We could play at something. Do you like playing mothers and fathers?’

  When Jean heard the doorbell ring, she put down her cup and sat very still in her chair. On one side of her, Charlie was telling Emma a story about a grass snake that lived in a sink. On her other, Jim was having everyone guess the number of honey jars they would have this year, and Sarah was telling Meg to eat up her crusts. Through the babble of voices Jean caught the sound of Mrs Sandringham’s shoes on the hall tiles and the slam of the pantry door, caught in the through-draught as she let Lydia in.

  Jean closed her eyes. What would Lydia be wearing? Jean had seen so many women undressed. Hundreds of women, their clothes slung over the screen, or folded neatly on the seat of the chair. She’d asked each of them to lie on the couch with a sheet to protect their modesty while she examined them, intimately, impersonally. If the day was chilly, she had the gas fire on, but still the room was never quite warm enough and she always apologized; she understood the instruments were cold, she knew they felt uncomfortable. She’d chatted to them, asked them questions about this and that, taken their mind off what her eyes and fingers were doing. Afterwards, once Jean had scrubbed her hands and the screen was folded to one side, once the patient was dressed again and seated in a chair, her handbag in her lap like a shield, then they could almost pretend it had all been an unpleasant dream, and the patient could look the doctor in the eye, shake her hand on leaving.

  Jean had never stopped to think much about it till now. But now there was a woman she longed to touch, not examine, and a vision flashed through her mind of Lydia behind the screen and Jean with her, touching her, undressing her, feeling her hips, her belly, the curve of her breasts, her nipples. Jean dipped her head …

  She gasped and gripped the table with both hands. She had never thought of a woman in this way.

  ‘You all right?’ Jim said, concern on his face.

  She nodded, and put a hand to her side.

  ‘Indigestion,’ she said. ‘Too much cake,’ and Jim grinned, unconvinced, but polite at the tea table, and returned to his honey jar count.

  Steady yourself, Jean told herself. She’s just Charlie’s mother, come to have tea, and she felt a rush of embarrassment at her thoughts.

  When Lydia came out on to the terrace, smiling nervously, her step tentative, the rush of feeling was so strong that Jean didn’t dare stand. But Charlie was on his feet and out of his seat in a single movement. He ran to Lydia, his face alight.

  ‘Come and see the honey,’ he said.

  Jean watched mother and son; how he took her hand, how she smiled at him and looked him up and down. She watched their intimacy.

  ‘In good time,’ Lydia said, approaching the table, her eyes taking in Sarah and Jim, the two girls.

  Jim got to his feet and pulled out a chair for her and Jean made the introductions in a voice that was steady enough.

  The conversation started up again and Jean was relieved to see that Lydia was chatting quite easily with Sarah. She watched Lydia sip her tea, one hand resting on the back of Charlie’s chair. Jean put a hand to her brow and shut her eyes. How could she be feeling like this? About someone she barely knew; someone from such a different walk of life; about a woman, for God’s sake.

  She looked beautiful, sitting halfway down the table, her hair lifted from her neck, her cheeks a little flushed. She was wearing the yellow dress Jean loved and a string of dark beads. How concentrated she seemed, as if everything else dropped away when she turned to look at someone. She was serious, listening to Sarah, and then Jean saw a smile cross her face, saw her lift her hand to her neck a moment, then drop it to her lap as though remembering where she was, at tea with strangers. The smile seemed to take Lydia by surprise, and Jean glimpsed what must be the first lines of her older self touching out from her eyes.

  I know that about her, Jean thought. I know how she smiles, as if it were something precious to be stored.

  She wished she had asked Lydia to tea on her own. She wished all the others were gone, that even Charlie was gone, and that the smile and the gesture were only for her.

  ‘Jinjin?’ From somewhere far away, Jean heard her name. ‘Jinjin?’ the voice said again.

  She was staring at Lydia and Emma was saying her name. Now everyone was looking at her, and Lydia was looking at her, her expression telling Jean clear as day that their thoughts were in the same place. She pulled her glance away.

  ‘What is it, poppet?’ she said, stroking Emma’s hair, breaking herself from her trance.

  ‘Charlie told me about secrets in the honey,’ Emma said, ‘and how they come up to the surface and then go whoosh.’

  Jean smiled.

  ‘Will you show us?’ she said to Charlie.

  21

  It was Friday, end of the week, and there were still two hours before the close of the factory day. All around Lydia, women worked doggedly, their thoughts on getting home, getting dinner. Lydia longed for a bath, and maybe a bit of a book. She wanted to see Charlie. She wanted to sleep. Next to her, Dot hummed something Lydia couldn’t make out.

  ‘You got any plans?’ Lydia said, only half listening for the answer.

  There was a pause and then Dot said, ‘I’m not taking “no” any more.’

  Lydia turned to look at her. She was binding wire around and around, the thinnest wire you could imagine, with a pair of tiny long-nose pliers.

  ‘No to what?’ Lydia said.

  ‘And if you don’t come, I’ll wonder what on earth the point is, of being your friend any more.’

  ‘Dot!’ Now Lydia was listening properly. ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘Fancy way of saying it, maybe. I could simply have said I’ve about had enough.’

  Dot didn’t look up from her task. You couldn’t when you were doing that kind of work or you lost it and then the wire was wasted. If the supervisor was anywhere near, you’d have the cost of it docked from your wages.

  Lydia waited and when Dot was finished, she asked again.

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  Dot stared at her. Her face was different to how Lydia had ever seen it before. No affection visible. No sympathy. Lydia’s heart banged in her chest.

  ‘Dot? What is it?’ she said, her voice almost lost amid the hard, sharp business of factory noise.

  Dot took a big breath, seemed to draw herself up, as if she had a whole speech prepared, and Lydia saw a flash of something softer cross her eyes and disappear before she spoke again.

  ‘It’s a speech, this,’ Dot said. ‘So bear with me.’ She paused. ‘All right. You won’t help yourself,’ she said at last, ‘that’s what it is, and I’m about done trying to do it for you. You won’t look after yourself. Eat properly, sort out your rent, go out to the pictures, anything, and I’ve had enough. It’s not only you you’re doing it to, Lydia. Not only you you’re hurting.’

  ‘Charlie needs me –’ Lydia began, but Dot broke across her.

  ‘Yes, he does. He needs you to show him that you’re worth treating well. So this is it. Come d
ancing tonight with the girls like you used to; show Charlie, show yourself. Or else maybe you should go and find yourself another best friend.’

  ‘I’m going dancing,’ Lydia told Charlie when she got home. He didn’t say anything, but when she got upstairs, the factory day washed from her face and arms, she found her favourite dress, her high-heeled red shoes and her best lipstick laid out, and Charlie sitting on the bed, swinging his legs with pride. She smiled.

  ‘You’ll be all right,’ Lydia said. ‘Annie’s going to look in.’

  ‘Can I have fish and chips then?’ he said, and Lydia laughed and clipped him a kiss on the top of his head.

  Charlie stayed on the bed as she changed, playing with her beads, watching as she undressed to her slip, as she unclipped her stockings and found new ones. They’d always had this time. She liked to have him there, though there had been scant opportunity for it recently. But he was growing up. He looked at her differently and she could feel herself colour with the knowledge of his gaze.

  She put the dress on – crossing it over her bosom, having Charlie tie it behind – then clipped up new stockings, fastened the ankle straps on her shoes and painted her lips.

  ‘How do I look?’ she said, picking up the hem, doing a half-twirl.

  ‘So pretty,’ he said, but there was something in his voice.

  ‘But what?’ Lydia said.

  ‘But who sees you looking pretty now? Except me?’

  So pretty. That was what Robert used to say. That’s where Charlie had it from, though Robert hadn’t said it to her for a very long time. She wondered when he’d stopped. She thought it must have been when he’d started saying it to some other woman.

  The thought made her draw breath, the air punched from her. She’d known this in her body for a long time, but she hadn’t allowed it to take hold in her mind. So pretty … What a smasher … Cute lady. He must have got that one from the Americans. He used to call her all those things in their first years, when Charlie was still a baby and they had been in love. It had been good then. Easy. She remembered how they had laughed about Pam. How he had warned her of his jealous sister and said he would protect her, and at first she hadn’t believed him. She remembered how it had been, being a stranger to the town. But Pam hadn’t mattered; the town hadn’t mattered, because Robert came home to her. They had their baby boy, and their own pleasures. The sweet tea he brought to her in bed each morning; soaping his back when he came home filthy from the roads; Charlie’s baby laugh as Robert tossed him in the air. The way Robert touched her neck, her arm, small touches when he passed by, reminders that she was his. Then at night they had each other in their bed bought new on HP, laughing at Pam asking them what did they want with such a big one. If Lydia had regrets then, they were no more than the unavoidable ones. That you chose one person, and so you couldn’t choose another. Or so she’d thought.