Tell it to the Bees Read online

  ‘Do you want a drink?’

  She turned to find a sailor there, his neckerchief tied rakishly, with his brown face above and his white neck below. He was hungry-looking, thin as a wire, with a gaze that flicked over her shoulder and back.

  ‘I’m waiting for someone,’ she said with a shrug, but he didn’t seem to mind and he leaned against the wall next to her, and said something about it saving him the price of a drink.

  She couldn’t place his accent, but he didn’t come from anywhere she knew. She’d have stabbed a guess at somewhere in the middle of the country, which meant above London and below Yorkshire. He wasn’t anything special to look at, but her heart was jumping in her chest and she could feel her body flush. She put her hand to her face in surprise. This had never happened to her before and she was glad of the half-dark to hide it.

  ‘What about tomorrow?’ he said, but in a manner so offhand, so different from her Yank, that she couldn’t tell if he was serious or not, if he really wanted to.

  ‘Maybe,’ she said, trying to match his tone.

  ‘I’ve got a week’s leave.’

  ‘I’m on a late tomorrow. Start at eight. And busy in the day.’

  So the next night they met for an hour and he told her about his ship and the convoys and how boredom and fear snugged in together, making men do strange things while they waited for the U-boats in the middle of the sea. She watched him talk and nodded at the right places, asked the right things, but she couldn’t stop her mind thinking other thoughts all of which went to the same place, which was that she wanted him.

  Robert looked her up and down, as if he hadn’t seen her for an age, and she waited, the cup of tea shaking a little in her hand, till finally he shook his head.

  ‘It’s too late,’ he said.

  Slowly she set the cup and saucer down on the floor. She didn’t want the tea to spill. She had heard his words, but she didn’t understand them.

  ‘Why?’ The word came out almost as a sigh, and she hurried to speak again in a plainer voice. ‘What’s too late?’

  ‘I was so happy, that day. If I’d only known,’ he said.

  ‘It was the day I told you I was pregnant,’ she said, her voice questioning, and he nodded.

  ‘You were going back to your ship, but I was pregnant,’ she said again.

  He didn’t answer, and Lydia leaned back into the wall. She could feel herself trembling.

  ‘It was a good day. And the song. You remember? Every time I heard it after that, I thought of us close there, and of Charlie.’

  She stopped and looked at him. Something in his face was closed. She wanted to reach across and touch him, put her fingers to his cheek as she hadn’t done in so long. She wanted to waken something, in her and in him. Her hands felt empty and awkward at her side. Robert didn’t move, didn’t speak. She waited in the narrow spit between kitchen and bathroom, so close to him they nearly had to touch, and yet without touching.

  She held her breath. It was like that moment before they danced. When all it took was his finger on her hip, or the slight lift of her shoulder and they’d be away, off and away, and nothing more in the world existed, nothing more than their two bodies and the music and the dance.

  When finally he spoke, Lydia saw him say the word, saw the shape of it in his mouth before she heard it, and she felt her palms grow sweaty and her scalp go cold.

  ‘No,’ he said.

  The word was how she imagined a bullet to be. Spoken so precisely, as if it contained no more than its short sound, and then it was in her, exploding, unexpected, fired from a figure in a dark corner she only half suspected was there. The sound was silenced and dense.

  ‘No,’ he said again.

  Then he spoke in a slow flood of anger, his voice at odds with his words, so calm and quiet, as if all this was something he had known so well for such a long while, that saying it was only a matter of letting the sentences out into the air.

  ‘You didn’t have anything left over once Charlie came along. Not for me. It was him from then on. Always picking the damn baby up straight off when he cried. Feeding him all hours of the day and night. Singing to him. Worrying over him.’

  She wanted to put her hands over her ears. Wanted to shut his words out.

  ‘He was my baby,’ she said. ‘Not my husband.’

  ‘But you didn’t want a husband after.’

  You were jealous, she thought. You couldn’t bear it that I loved him like that.

  Robert crossed his arms and widened his stance, as though he were confronting her with something.

  ‘My sister was right,’ he said.

  ‘He’s your son too,’ she said. ‘You love him.’

  ‘Pam said it from the first. That you wouldn’t look at anybody else, once he was there.’

  ‘She hates anybody having eyes for anybody. She hated you having eyes for me, in the days when you used to.’

  Lydia looked down at the tea in its circle: tranquil and brown. Still hot. She could pick up the cup and saucer. She could give it to Robert.

  ‘She always said it was unnatural, letting him have his way that much.’

  ‘You’re talking as if he were a stranger,’ she said.

  ‘He’d be my boy if you’d let go of him. You’ve made him like he is.’

  Lydia shook her head, side to side against the wall. Robert’s words bludgeoned her. Like a boxer waiting for his opponent to gain his feet again, he stood waiting.

  ‘Why didn’t you say this before?’ she said at last. ‘You’ve never said it.’

  ‘What was the point?’ He tipped his chin up, his face still combative.

  ‘But why now?’ she said.

  He looked down at his feet, brushed a wrinkle from his trousers.

  ‘You shouldn’t have said that about the song.’

  ‘Charlie’s older now. It’s easier. He’s not tied to my apron strings.’ Despite herself, Lydia couldn’t keep the rise from her voice, the plea. ‘Maybe?’

  Robert ran his hands over his face and up over his wet hair. He looked down at himself, his fresh shirt, his smart new trousers, and shook his head.

  ‘I’m going out,’ he said. ‘Don’t wait up, Lydia.’

  It would be another hour before Charlie was back. The light was still strong and Lydia could hear children playing out in the back alley. But she couldn’t keep hold of her fears, and her sadness fell into the potato water and on to the sausages.

  She closed her eyes. A tune was playing somewhere, on a gramophone maybe, or inside her head. A slow number for the end of the evening, couples so close you couldn’t shine a light between them, swaying like riverweed, lost in each other. She hummed the notes, felt the music in her cheeks, in her hips. What if Dot was here in the kitchen and asked her now, asked her to come out dancing? She’d go like a shot. Get Annie in to mind Charlie, and go. But what about if it was Robert asking? What if she heard his key in the front door and then he came striding into the kitchen and over the lino, this great grin on his face, and took her by the hand, all in time with that tune playing somewhere, and he said, ‘Let’s go dancing,’ or something. Something easy.

  It was her that had always done that. Acted on the spur. Only that once, when Charlie wasn’t more than two, or three maybe, Robert had come in after work, and she never found out why it was. But he’d come in with a wind behind him. She was sticky with bits of Charlie’s egg, sticky with tiredness and he came in with a rush of excitement that had her on her feet with worry.

  ‘Robert?’

  ‘Get his tea finished. We’re off to the Grafton.’

  ‘What’s happened?’

  ‘I told you. We’re going dancing. Pam’s having Charlie for the night. We can fetch him back first thing.’

  ‘Pam?’

  And this once they’d laughed, both of them, because it was such a thought, Pam minding Charlie. Pam minding Charlie so they could go dancing. Lydia wondered what the bargain was, but she didn’t wonder for long. She didn’t
care, not this once, because she’d never have dreamed it in a hundred years, and Charlie would be fine for a night. She didn’t want to know how Robert had done it, what on earth he’d promised. She wiped her son’s face clean and ran upstairs.

  The foyer was jammed, the air dense with smoke and perfume. It had been a lifetime since she’d been here last. Groups of girls camped outside the Ladies, dipping in purses for compacts, giggling in the din behind their hands. Young men swaggered, touching their tie knot, checking their crotch, reeking of Dutch courage. Couples walked in, self-contained, demure, peeling apart to check coats and make-up.

  Lydia breathed deep. She leaned back against the marbled pillar; put her palms flat against its cool. Somewhere behind her Robert was queuing for the cloakroom. Her husband. Her man. She glanced down at herself. The dress fitted like a glove. A tighter glove than before where Charlie had left his mark. But she liked her fuller hips. More curve, less bone. She liked her new-found cleavage.

  ‘Fancy a drink?’ Robert’s voice was soft in her ear, and she took his hand.

  They sat side by side on gilded chairs beneath the lights that were like vast wedding cakes, and watched the flurry and rush of the dancing. Lydia sipped her gin and lemon. Robert leaned towards her again.

  ‘You’re the most beautiful girl in this place,’ he said, and she felt his hand slip over her bosom to rest on her thigh. ‘I’d never have found the like of you in this town.’

  Further down, beyond the bar, a line of girls waited, prinked and nervy. The cowshed. Robert said that’s what they were called, the ones without escorts. They seemed so very young.

  ‘Know any of them?’ Robert said.

  Lydia nodded. There were two she recognized from the factory. One worked in the valve room next door to hers. Now she looked again, maybe neither was any younger than she was. But she had a husband, and a child tucked up, and it set her apart so that she felt old, and shy.

  Now the band had finished their set and for a moment the dancers were becalmed. Then the sax player reached for his pint and the dancers broke apart and headed for the bar, flushed and bright and noisy.

  When the sax player stood up again, Lydia took Robert’s hand and they walked to the centre of the dance floor. She stood, back straight, head high.

  ‘You ready?’ Robert said, and it wasn’t his words that brought her up short, but something from inside herself, kept down till now. A wave of nausea drifted through her quickly, like a summer fog. What if she couldn’t dance any more? Now she was a mother? Not in the way she used to? She gripped Robert tightly, feeling for the bones, holding on. What if she couldn’t get lost in it any more?

  ‘Lydia?’ Again Robert’s voice, clear and solid. She looked up and caught the edge of his smile. The first notes of a song hit the air, the saxophone’s easy complaint, and that was all it took.

  She fell in love with Robert that night, all over again. The music filled the air beneath those wedding-cake lights and they danced inside it, their bodies close, turning and turning, their love suspended in the dance. Until at last the band fell silent and the swaggery boys and whispering girls found their coats and went on their way. Their strength spent and the dance still in them, arm in arm, Lydia and Robert walked home.

  The house was no quieter than any other night, but something else was stilled for Lydia because Charlie was not there. While Robert stood on the back step for a last cigarette, she climbed the stairs and stood for a moment at the door to Charlie’s room. She looked to where his sleeping form should be, the blanket smoothed flat, and then she turned and went to wait for Robert.

  She undressed him as she had the first time they’d made love, sitting on the bed and standing him before her, tugging open his belt, unlacing his shoes, unbuttoning his shirt.

  ‘You know me now,’ he said. ‘No surprises.’

  But she quietened him with a finger to his lips, and slipped her hands over his hips.

  In the morning she’d gone to pick up Charlie. Her better than Robert because he had to be into work first. Besides, she was hungry now, to see her boy. So, in getting over to Pam’s early, she hadn’t so much as washed her face, and maybe there was too much of the night before still on her, she didn’t know. But Pam was in a rage with her, or with her child.

  ‘Thank you for having him,’ Lydia said on the doorstep.

  ‘Mine never woke me in the night,’ Pam said. ‘Nor Robert neither when he was little.’

  ‘We had a lovely evening,’ Lydia said, holding Charlie close. He nuzzled his head into her collarbone and she could smell the sweet child sleep still on him.

  ‘Robert told me it was important,’ Pam said, her voice tight with resentment. ‘He said it was very important.’

  ‘The big band at the Grafton. It was wonderful. For Robert too.’

  ‘You went dancing. I had him so you could go dancing.’ Pam’s voice was disbelieving.

  ‘Our first time since –’ Lydia began.

  ‘He never needed to go before he met you. He’d never have had me watching his child for one of those girls.’

  ‘I’m very grateful –’ Lydia began, but Pam cut her short.

  ‘I’ve got work to get ready for,’ Pam said. ‘Tell my brother I’ll see him on Sunday. And you, I dare say.’

  And she shut the door hard.

  When Lydia heard the front door slam, she had only an instant to wipe her eyes before Charlie was there before her.

  ‘Hello, love,’ she said.

  ‘I’m parched,’ he said. ‘I ran all the way home.’

  He was out of breath and his eyes were big with excitement. She saw the earthy dust on his hands and pale streaks of yellow on his arms. His face was so bright and alive, it made her chest hurt to see it, and she turned away and stared out across the back yard at the gate and the dustbin and the flowerpots of old dock and dandelion.

  She heard him open a cupboard and then he was next to her and she could feel his rapid boy gestures, turning on the tap, filling a glass with water, and she could smell the garden and his young sweat.

  She turned and kissed him lightly on the forehead, but she wanted to wrap him to her, hold him tight so that he would never go.

  ‘Is tea nearly ready?’ he said.

  ‘Did you have a nice time, in the bee garden?’

  ‘I’m going to be her assistant. I’ve not to wear shorts when we take the top off the hives, on account of the stings, but it’s all right if I’m just looking. She said she could get me my own suit in a little while.’

  ‘Tea’s ready in ten minutes. Go and wash, Charlie.’

  The pond was still, the surface dull with twilight. In the time it had taken Lydia to walk here, the sky had slipped from a thin blue to something deeper and she could see the first stars.

  The park was next to empty. In thirty minutes they would lock the gates. She had the pond to herself. She bent down and dipped her finger in the water. Ducks were dotted like small, oval rocks on the grass, heads tucked in, though here and there she saw the glint of a weather eye on her.

  She wondered if Charlie would want to sail his boat this year. He was growing up in fits and starts, sometimes still her little boy and sometimes not any more.

  Lydia felt a terrible weight on her shoulders, as if the clear sky had opened the way for all her grief. She wept, not only for her marriage, but also for her father lost to her, and for her dead mother, and for the memory of her uncle’s voice, sunk beneath the cold Atlantic.

  She crouched by the pond, motionless, until pins and needles forced her to stand, and then she found a bench to sit on. She wouldn’t have been able to say what changed, or why, and perhaps it was nothing more than the memory of the day’s warmth in the wood of the bench that eased her spirits. But as she sat, she thought of what she loved. Odd thoughts of planting the pots in the yard for summer flowers, of beginning a new book, when anything might happen; of laughing so hard, she made herself cry; of the grit of sand between her toes on a beach; of the taste o
f roasted chicken. Most of all, she thought of Charlie.

  A bird flew across the pond. It looked like the spirit of something in the evening light, and it was a spirit that spoke in two voices. The first was rough and urgent, shouting a sharp ‘keew, keew, keew’ over the water. Then the bird landed, perching on the No Paddling sign on the far side of the pond, and Lydia heard the second voice. It was yearning and low, an owl’s ‘whoo, whoo’, that caught at the hairs on the back of her neck.

  They watched one another, bird and woman, till the park bell rang out, and the bird spirit rose on its wings again and was gone.

  Charlie was in bed asleep when Lydia got in. She lifted the comic from his chest and bent to kiss him. His hair smelled of trees. As she tucked the covers round him, he opened his eyes.

  ‘Mum,’ he said.

  She put a finger to her lips. ‘Sleep tight my love,’ she said.

  ‘I forgot to say before. Dr Markham says will you come for tea on Saturday.’

  Lydia smiled at him. ‘That’ll be lovely, Charlie. Now sleep.’

  9

  Go in close, walk slowly, tread lightly. Don’t crush the grass, walk through it. The bees know you by your walk.

  They are busy now, they will not stop. Careful where you stand. They’ll bump you otherwise, air dodgems, making their bee-lines, each coming back with a sack full of pollen, belly full of nectar.

  A bee sting hurts, but it’s not the end of the world. You shouldn’t pull it out, though. Dr Markham had shown him what to do. How to scrape it, with your fingernail or the hive tool, and it hurt still then, but not so badly.

  He spoke to the bees in a low voice, so as not to alarm them. Made it smooth and flowing, like the smoke he pumped from the smoker. They knew his voice now. He fancied that they knew it for its colour and its smell, as they knew the flowers. He would speak to them of the garden and what he thought the weather would do, and sometimes he told them other things too.