Wild Weekend

by Celia Brayfield

  He made a tent out of his fingers, frowned in what he hoped was a caring manner and was about to reassume all the bankerly gravitas he had discarded so readily when he left the City when the fake-mahogany door of The Pigeon & Pipkin was flung open by an outraged hand.

  ‘Colin! Ollie! Have you had one of these?’ Florian Addleworth stood in the doorway, flipping his hair out of his eyes and trembling more than his lurcher who was shuddering at his heels. Florian held up a piece of paper.

  ‘What is it?’ Colin demanded from his lair in the fireside comer that was not already occupied by Oliver and Bel. ‘Yesterday’s lottery ticket? New directive from Agri-wotsit? Or some other kind of bog-roll?’

  ‘No, this is serious,’ Florian protested. ‘It’s a warning. From some animal rights nutters. They’re going to attack the vineyard. Look!’ He waved the paper at arm’s length, so indignantly that his scarf unwound itself from his neck and fell to the floor and frightened the dog.

  ‘I got one of them,’ observed Jimmy. ‘They stuck it on my gate with some old nail.’

  ‘That’s right,’ Florian agreed. ‘They pinned mine to the vineyard sign.’

  ‘Ridiculous, Florian, dear. You haven’t got any animals, have you? They must have got the wrong farm,’ Bel soothed him. She liked Florian. He had good looks and nice manners. She was of a vintage that diagnosed any young man with long hair and no girlfriend as gay and therefore thought it was rather sweet of him to be still in the closet. Florian was not gay, but not worried to be considered as such by well-meaning women like Bel. After all, it stopped them trying to fix him up with their daughters.

  ‘Of course I haven’t got any animals. Well, except the dog, obviously.’ Florian waved his arms, knocking to the ground the murky print of Constable’s Haywain in a fake-mahogany frame that adorned the pub wall. ‘They mean the bees. They’re off their trolleys. Look at this!’

  He held out the paper again and Colin grabbed it. ‘Bloody ridiculous,’ he declared, sweeping the indictment towards his nose with one vast red hand; the other continued to scrape up the last of his Turkey Mediterrané. ‘That’s the absolute bloody end. Bloody idiots! They want shooting, the lot of them.’

  ‘It’s the equinox,’ said Florian with a fatalistic shrug. ‘Wild chaotic weather, an equinoctial gale forecast tonight, and stress and tension general. All the elements of life are coming into a new psychic balance as night and day approach equal length. So I suppose we should expect some sort of disruption. But really …’

  ‘How can your bees be off their trolleys?’ said Bel.

  ‘Honestly, Colin,’ Lucy Vinny sighed, perching on the nearest bar-stool.

  ‘I’d string’em up if they came on my land,’ he assured her.

  ‘You can’t do that,’ Jimmy warned him, ‘you get prison for that nowadays.’ There was a momentary chill in the bar as the company noted, from the calm and serious tone of his voice, that Jimmy’s ancestors had almost certainly strung up intruders in bygone ages.

  Oliver reached over and took the leaflet. ‘Honey Equals Slavery,’ he read. ‘Boycott Honey and Honey Products. Every Beehive is a Concentration Camp. Millions of bees work until they die of exhaustion every year. Bees make honey to feed themselves and their young; when man interferes with this natural process by stealing honey, he condemns bees to a lifetime of slavery as they work to produce more. We think of honey as a natural, wholesome product but it is in fact created by an artificial process which causes cruelty and suffering. Commercial beekeepers force-feed their insects on sugar syrup … do you do that, Florian?’

  ‘Oh, please,’ Florian sniffed. ‘How would you go about force-feeding a bee? Will somebody tell me that?’

  ‘But is the rest of it true?’ demanded Bel. She was always responsive to the idea of something small suffering but the possibility of life without beeswax polish and royal jelly moisturiser felt distinctly bleak. ‘Do millions of them die every year? It’s all some silly joke, isn’t it?’

  ‘Well, the drones die,’ Florian admitted, assuming his best pedagogic manner. ‘Drone bees are the small sort-of mutants whose sole purpose is to work for the benefit of the hive. They die when they’re no longer needed. Except the drone who mates with the queen. He dies at once, of course.’

  ‘Good heavens,’ said Bel, now concerned to distance herself from any connection with any species of black widow.

  ‘But the queen lives on for years. The rest of the drones die off in the autumn because the workers just shove them out of the hive. I mean, they’re pretty tough on their own, bees. Then the workers kind of chill out over the winter, living off the honey. So I suppose that bit is right. But they always make masses more than they need. I mean, bees are like that. They just … buzz about being busy. That’s what they do. Nobody forces them. If they weren’t happy they’d just fly off, wouldn’t they?’ He appealed to Lucy.

  ‘I can’t believe I’m hearing this,’ Lucy said. ‘Of course they would. Don’t take any notice, Florian. Idiots.’

  ‘I suppose they are right in one way. I mean, it isn’t natural, is it? Not completely natural, it can’t be.’ Bel patted her hair by way of apology for these harsh words.

  ‘Not, it’s not natural and from the bees’point of view it’s a damn sight better than natural.’ Lucy Vinny thumped down her glass in exasperation. ‘The natural way would be for the natural predators to steal the honey and smash up the bees’nests in the process. Birds and bears and things. Much worse than man.’

  ‘Terrible mess,’ agreed Colin. ‘Seen it on the telly.’

  ‘I thought I was quite nice to my bees,’ said Florian. ‘They’ve got the best hives money can buy, all fitted with wood inside, no plastic or anything. And plenty of flowers, planted specially. What more can you do for a bee, anyway?’

  ‘We haven’t got any bears in Suffolk,’ added Bel, who had decided she was happy to promote any conversation that was not about how much money she owed people and what she was going to do about paying it.

  ‘AASS,’ Oliver read from the back of the leaflet. ‘Anti Apian Slavery Society. Active in this area now. Bee Oppressors Beware. The Slaves will Fly Free. Don’t they fly free now?’

  ‘They got to fly free,’ Jimmy pointed out, concerned that these newcomers might have missed the point. ‘Otherwise they don’t find any flowers to get any pollen to make any honey.’

  ‘Of course they fly wherever they want,’ said Florian. ‘I’m not exactly keeping them in the hives with razor wire and attack dogs, am I?’

  ‘AASS. Arse,’ Colin chuckled. ‘Sounds about right, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake. Give that to me,’ Lucy reached out for the leaflet. ‘I’ll take it to the police after I’ve finished this afternoon. Whoever these people are, they can’t go about the countryside threatening damage.’

  ‘Fat lot of good that’ll do.’ Colin had finished his food and was polishing his plate with a piece of bread. ‘Nearest police must be in Ipswich now. Too busy with shoplifters and parking tickets to come out here. If I was you, Florian, I’d go for the dogs. Keep the loonies at bay. Real dogs, I mean. That lurcher of yours wouldn’t scare a kitten.’

  Oliver noticed that his mother was showing signs of distress. Her forehead was wrinkled and she seemed to be shrinking down in her seat. The momentary sparkle she had managed when Lucy spoke of bears had fizzled at the mention of attack dogs. The idea of violence on top of bankruptcy was sending her into panic mode.

  ‘Time we headed home,’ he said, getting up to settle the bill. Toni, from the pool room, favoured him with a malevolent stare before turning her back as they left. Even the attendant Goths winced a little at such rudeness.

  ‘It’s all a bit much, isn’t it?’ said Oliver as they drove back to The Manor House. ‘Never mind. They’re just a bunch of nutters.’

  ‘I do mind.’ Bel was looking sadly out of the window, uncheered by the cascading primroses in her son’s hedge-banks. ‘Sometimes I think the world’s just gone ma
d. Slave bees. And,’ she drew a shuddering breath and tried to catch Oliver’s eye, never having entirely understood that a person driving a car needs to watch the road, ‘what are we going to do about the money, Ollie, dear?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Oliver found he had neither the energy nor the hardness of heart to give his mother’s debts any more thought at that moment. ‘Never mind. Something will turn, up.’

  In his years as a banker, he had found that this observation, for all it had origins in the deeply flawed personal philosophy of Wilkins Micawber Esq, was usually close to the truth. For some people, things had an extraordinary propensity for turning up. Look at the farm, that had turned up. And the pigs. And … well, things went in threes, too. I can’t believe I’m trying to believe this, said what remained of Oliver’s capacity for rational thought. Outside, it began to rain.

  ‘If something’s going to turn up, it’d better hurry,’ his mother said. ‘We need it by Tuesday.’

  ‘Then something will turn up by Tuesday.’ I must be out of my tiny fucking mind.

  Brueghel, Dante, Brian de Palma – no artist who has ever lived has conceived a scene as hellish as Junction 4 of the M25, the orbital highway that lies around the neck of London like a noose, on any given afternoon, from about four o’clock onwards. At three on the afternoon before a bank holiday weekend, it looked like the ninth circle of hell. Dido, Clare and Miranda, cocooned in Miranda’s car, were approaching the busiest intersection of the busiest road in Europe at the busiest time of the year.

  For miles around in all directions, chains of cars inched ever-so-slowly onwards towards the ultimate standstill at Junction 4. Outside the vehicles a sadistic drizzle fell through the exhaust fumes, dissolving enough chemicals to create acid rain. In the sky, the sun seemed to be paling at the sight of this atrocity and began to withdraw its light. Inside the cars, children grizzled, couples fought and solitary drivers picked their noses and thought about suicide.

  They drove, if it could be called driving, through desolate half-streets, the fresh new suburbs of seventy years ago now dying a lingering death as the road sucked out their life. The once-neat houses were crusted with the black grime of vulcanised rubber.

  The windows that once had opened to let in fresh air from nearby green fields were now sealed against the ceaseless roar of engines and the toxic blast from the exhaust pipes. People still lived here, Clare noticed with surprise, and some still had daffodils blooming in their gardens, though the petals, seen through a miasma of vehicle filth, were not yellow but a dingy green.

  Clare looked out on pebble-dash and stone cladding, peeling paint and cracking plaster, rusting cars in weed-choked drives, pale faces at dirty windows. She had time to waste, a new sensation. Her thoughts, seeking any focus except the disaster of her speech, were drifting. Who could possibly live here? People who couldn’t live anywhere else. The poor. The marginalised. The desperate. Those with no purchasing power. The people she had never considered before.

  The people she did not need to consider now. Politics, she reminded herself, was about having the power to do what the electorate wanted you to do. Not trying to find solutions to questions like why it was necessary for some people to live in the ninth circle of hell. Nor placating a bunch of tree-hugging hippies. Her mistake. Never again.

  Dido did not look out of the windows. She knew she couldn’t bear the view. All those dirty grey houses with their gallantly neat gardens and the gloomy hulks of caravans and conservatories around them. It would only make her cry. She had a book, Gucci-Gucci-Goo, with a pink and blue cover sprinkled with butterflies and babies, and she read it as if her life depended on it. Imagine, pretty pink books with people having babies in them, instead of just moaning about their boyfriends. Maybe a baby would be rather sweet. Babies were getting really must-have, really to-die-for. Suppose she had a baby with Florian – yes, a good thought. It would have her legs, obviously, and her hair, but maybe his adorable nose, with all those freckles. They could get married, have a wedding in a country church with little bridesmaids in flowery frocks and posies tied on the chair backs .…

  The humiliating memories of yesterday refused to fade, so Clare decided to read some of her documents. She issued something close to a smile in Dido’s direction as she twisted in her seat and reached into the back of the car for the case of papers she had brought with her to fill up those fearful long afternoons of a holiday. So annoying, that Miranda was still friends with this Dido creature. But not as bad as it could have been. Clare admitted to herself that she was feeling a little bruised. Too bruised to start in on the bonding process straight away. With Dido along, Miranda seemed a bit more relaxed, anyway.

  Clare began reading the first document, a set of proposals for incentives and penalties which would induce farmers to give up their land for building. A wave of nausea hit her at once. Damn! Her official car never gave her motion sickness, but this stupid thing her daughter had was obviously not so well designed. She sighed and put down the report.

  Millimetre by millimetre, the car gained the ramp of the slip road leading to the M25 north. The sky was black, the drizzle relentless.

  ‘Are you sure this is the right way?’ Clare asked Miranda.

  ‘Yes, this is the right way,’ Miranda replied, gritting her teeth.

  ‘Aren’t we going heading for the west side of London? I thought we were meant to be going east?’

  ‘To go east, you go west first. Otherwise you have to go through, which you can’t do any more since the Central Pedestrian Zone was created. Going through would take twice as long.’

  ‘Surely …’

  ‘Miranda’s brilliant at directions,’ Dido put in. ‘I’d be completely lost around London without her.’

  ‘But if we’ve got to go east …’

  ‘If you don’t believe me, why don’t you ring up one of your drivers and ask him?’ Miranda snapped. ‘You haven’t driven yourself anywhere for fifteen years, Mum. What would you know about it?’

  Clare reminded herself that the purpose of this weekend was to bond with her daughter. ‘Of course, you’re absolutely right,’ she said, making it sound as warm as she could. ‘I do apologise, Miranda. Sincerely, I do. I made a mistake and I’m really …’

  While Miranda’s attention wavered, a van cut in ahead of her and immediately braked hard. ‘You’re not making some corporate damage-limitation statement,’ Miranda snapped, stamping on her own brakes just in time. ‘Just … let me drive, OK?’

  ‘OK. Actually, you’re driving very well.’

  ‘Gee, thanks.’

  ‘You’re an ace,’ Dido told her, her eyes never leaving the page. ‘I’d drive through Africa with someone like you.’

  Outside, the drizzle graduated to rain, of the sort that England often experiences on the eve of a major public holiday, the persistent, monotonous, interminable downpour from a uniformly dark grey sky, the rain that is an eternal continuum of precipitation, the rain whose beginning nobody remembers and whose end nobody can imagine, the rain which English people describe, with doom in their hearts, as having settled in for the night, which is a traditional national understatement, because they mean that it will probably keep on raining like this for ever and if, by some fluke, it ever stopped raining, they would all be too depressed to notice anyway.

  In front of Miranda, a white rental van barged into the lane as if its driver couldn’t live unless he advanced that exact ten feet at that precise second. Three people were squeezed into the front seat, the passengers apparently semiconscious with boredom, their heads lolling and eyes half-closed.

  And it was only 3.17pm on Thursday afternoon and they were only just at the foot of the slip road leading up to the M25 northbound. Still to come was the M11, which would lead to some other motorway whose number Miranda, as Little Miss Perfect, had written down on her route notes which were held to the dashboard by a little magnet with a built-in light. Little Miss Perfect could never, ever, afford to get lost. Especially no
t with her mother on board.

  The van carried thirty-eight urban foxes, all sedated for the journey by Carole. Some were sitting and swaying groggily. Most were lying, muzzles on paws, only their eyes rolling in panic. Several had vomited. One or two were trying to stand and falling against the sides of their cages of heavy-duty plastic. There was some whining, some growling and every now and then an outbreak of howling. The smell was intense.

  Carole, who was driving the van, felt distinctly sick but said nothing. It was natural for animals to smell and a few hours of discomfort was nothing when they were going to be released into the wild to live a good, honest, natural life at last. And she was going to make her name as a result of a new initiative in animal activism. That was important, too.

  In fact, she was taking part in two exciting new initiatives. The Transport Officer had pointed out that if the fox repatriation programme picked the right spot, the AASS team could mount a combined operation and the van wouldn’t have to come back to London empty.

  ‘Are you sure this is the right way?’ one of the AASS team asked as Carole made the imperceptibly slow turn on the northbound slip road. ‘Aren’t we supposed to be going east?’

  ‘You have to go west to go east from this side of London,’ she explained patiently. He wasn’t to know, he was the vegan from Los Angeles who was a member of the original Anti Apian Slavery Society of America. His name was Ashok and he was impressively healthy and absolutely hardline about the veganism. People naturally looked up to him for these qualities. Carole was ashamed of herself for disliking him.

  The other one was the Video Guy – the cameraman who was to record the historic events of the weekend. He was squeezed up against the passenger door; his eyes were closed and he hadn’t said anything. Maybe he was asleep. Carole was aware of the camera in a case at his feet, in the same way that she might have been aware of a rattlesnake. She could never lose the gut feeling that a camera was something deadly.