Tell it to the Bees

by Fiona Shaw

  He’d taken Bobby to see an ants’ nest once, a really good one he’d found down the side of the allotments. Lifted these slabs and shown him.

  ‘Look there, and there. See the tunnels and chambers? For food, and there’s the egg chambers, see, and they’re going berserk because we’ve lifted their roof off.’

  The two boys had watched the ants rushing with the white oval eggs in their jaws, tugging them below and into the earth, out of sight, away from the terrible light and the threat.

  ‘They’re gossiping,’ Bobby had said. ‘Heads together, just like my ma and my aunts, heads together.’

  ‘D’you see it now?’ Charlie had said.

  ‘They’re a bit like us, then. Humans. With the gossip and the bother and them all worked up, getting fierce over the eggs.’

  But it wasn’t that at all for Charlie. It was just exactly not that. It was because they were so far from him that he watched them. Because they lived in another world from his. But Bobby was his best friend, so Charlie didn’t answer him.

  It was cold on his bed and he was nearly tempted to climb in under, feel the slow warming through and the slip towards sleep. But that would bother his mum, and his dad might clip him. He didn’t like it when you did things out of turn. Charlie stared at the wall, eyes wide as they’d go, willed himself to see the wallpaper, the line where the roses didn’t meet, petals flying into stems.

  ‘Why’ve you got roses in your room if you’re a boy?’ Bobby had said when he saw it. Charlie didn’t know, but he liked them.

  He couldn’t smell the fish on, which was odd, but he could see it on its plate, done over in flour, ready. He’d go downstairs now. His mum would be glad to see him, and he’d like that, even without the bread and jam. Fish would be a halfway house. Fish would do for now.

  Pushing open the door to the living room, Charlie saw his mother and his father. His father sat at the table, fingertips resting on the evening paper, a beer bottle running rings around the headlines. He’d have been in the pub already. He didn’t look up when Charlie came in, and this was just the same as always. His mother was there too, hands wedged into the small of her back against the length of day. Her apron strings made a butterfly at her waist and there was a dark patch on her left calf where she’d darned the stocking. She didn’t hear Charlie there and this was not the same as always.

  He wondered if they had been speaking before he opened the door, because after a moment with him still saying nothing and his father picking up the beer bottle and drinking from it, his mother crossed the room to the kitchen.

  ‘Hello,’ Charlie said, because otherwise she’d be gone into the kitchen and she still wouldn’t know he was there, and she turned and gave him a bright, bright smile, like he didn’t know what.

  He waited for her to ask him where he’d been, to be cross, to put her hands on his cheeks to feel for the outdoors on him and then put a hand through his hair; to tell him that supper was all but ready and didn’t he know how worried she got, and who had he been with out so late, and was it that Bobby again, she’d have to talk to his mother, and his supper nearly ruined, and would he go and wash, please, look at his nails. But she only walked to him, dropped a peck on his cheek and then went into the kitchen so quickly, to her cooking and the jolly wireless sounds, and pushed the kitchen door to so hard that he turned to his father to see if he’d noticed.

  But his father sat with his eyes on the newspaper, his finger tracking a story. Charlie saw the strong line of his shoulders, the shove of flesh against his collar and the dark bristle of hair that threaded down his neck.

  The bowl of cockles on the table made Charlie’s mouth water. The wince of vinegar on his tongue. He watched as his father’s fingers made delicate work of them, lifting each one clear with a slight shake before slipping it between his lips. Charlie wondered why his father ate them one by one, such little things.

  Friday night food, they were his mother’s treat for her husband, and Charlie knew better than to ask for one for himself. Anyway, he could smell the beer on his father.

  ‘You up to much, then, Charlie?’ his father said without raising his eyes from the paper.

  Charlie wasn’t sure what his father wanted, so he muttered something, and then waited. His father looked up at his son, rubbed his brow as if to clear it of something.

  ‘Getting out, are you? Like boys ought to.’ He picked another cockle from the bowl and Charlie watched a drip of vinegar darken the football news.

  ‘Maybe there’ll be snow soon, and we can take trays out,’ Charlie said, remembering, pleased to have thought of something to say.

  ‘Snow,’ his father said, as though considering the word, and he shook his head. ‘We’d have fun Charlie, wouldn’t we? But not on trays.’

  ‘But on the hill, like before, with Annie? You remember, so fast and off at the end into it, all over, down your sleeves and everything? And Annie got laughing so hard, she couldn’t stand up and you put her back on the tray and gave her a push …’

  ‘Your mother doesn’t like it,’ his father said.

  ‘But it was Auntie Pam who wasn’t pleased,’ Charlie said, frowning. ‘Because Annie brought the tray.’

  Through the kitchen door Charlie could hear his mother moving pans about. He thought about her not liking it, and he wasn’t sure. It didn’t seem the kind of thing she minded. He looked at his dad. He had his head down with the football again, and then Charlie remembered something he really wanted.

  ‘Dad,’ he said, and Robert looked up.

  ‘The Gunfighter’s on at the Regent.’ Charlie said. ‘Bobby said so at school. We could go. Bobby’s going to the four-thirty with his dad.’

  Bobby had been to a Western before with his father and Charlie thought it sounded like the best.

  ‘Why don’t you ask your father?’ Bobby said, and Charlie didn’t reply. But he had now, and he waited to see what his father would say.

  Robert took a swig of beer and set the bottle down on the same ring mark.

  ‘School,’ his father said at last. ‘You behaving?’

  Charlie looked down at the floor and blinked hard. His dad got angry if Charlie showed he minded things. After a moment, he answered.

  ‘Miss Phelps says it’ll be a world war any minute, if we’re not careful,’ he said.

  ‘If we’re not careful?’

  ‘Yes, and then it’ll all be over, with the bomb.’

  ‘How are we going to be careful then? For Miss Phelps?’

  ‘Don’t know. Because it got Lizzie Ashton so worked up, we had to get out our sums then.’

  His father laughed, but it hadn’t been funny. Lizzie Ashton screaming hadn’t been funny.

  ‘We all need to do our sums,’ his father said. ‘Get them wrong, and then where are we?’

  Charlie put Lizzie Ashton’s screams out of his mind.

  ‘Miss Phelps is good at showing us. She’s good at doing sums.’

  ‘Miss Phelps is good at doing sums?’

  ‘But she took Lizzie to the corridor because of the noise, and Miss Withers stood at the front. Everyone thinks she’s pretty, but she’s not as good at sums.’

  ‘Aha, but that’s it, Charlie,’ said his father, his tapping finger making a nubby sound on the table.

  ‘That’s the thing about girls. There’s the ones that are good at sums and the ones that are pretty. You marry the first, and they get your dinner on the table and your children scrubbed and brought up. And you don’t marry the second.’

  ‘But how do you know which are which?’ Charlie said.

  His father gave a hard laugh. ‘Oh, you’ll know that when the time comes.’ He gave him a wink. ‘Only your mother doesn’t agree.’

  ‘So what happens to the ones you don’t marry? Don’t they get to? Don’t they get to have some children?’

  His father tweaked a cockle clear, gave it a little squeeze.

  ‘They’re fine and dandy, Charlie. Fine and dandy. You’ll see. Works out bes
t for everyone.’

  ‘And is Mum …’

  ‘Is what?’

  Something in his father’s voice made Charlie flinch. He shrugged. ‘She’s not so good at sums,’ he said. ‘She’s pretty too.’

  Charlie didn’t know what it was he’d done, but, pushing his chair back, his father stood up and turned an angry face towards his son.

  ‘Did I say she wasn’t? Ever? It’s her who’s done the saying. Did I say she wasn’t?’

  Charlie took a step towards the kitchen. ‘I have to help with the vegetables. Mum asks me to,’ he said, his voice soft with anxiety. His father walked to the living-room door.

  ‘Tell her not to bother waiting up,’ he said.

  Charlie heard his coat fetched from its hook and the scuff as he pulled on his shoes. Then the frill of cold shuffling the newspaper pages, chilling his knees, and the door slam and the quiet. He was gone.

  Lydia had her book propped open with the two-pound weight. On the hob, the potatoes boiled. Charlie looked down at the floury water. He warmed his hands in the steam, though they were cold again afterwards. Next to the hob was a plate with three pieces of steak.

  ‘It’s Friday, Mum.’

  ‘Treat.’

  ‘What for?’

  Lydia chopped at the potatoes. Charlie went and stood beside her, leaning in against her waist. He felt her apron ticklish against his shin.

  She nudged him with her elbow and swept the potato pieces into a saucepan.

  ‘Hungry?’

  He shrugged.

  ‘School all right?’

  ‘Dad said could you keep his supper over till later.’

  Lydia didn’t reply. Charlie looked at the book. ‘I could read to you,’ he said, picking it up. ‘From where you got to. Page ninety.’

  Lydia closed her eyes. Then she smiled. ‘Go on then.’

  He hefted the book in his hand, as if its worth could be felt in its weight, and started to read:

  Slowly the world returned, black and cold. But where was he? No voices, no motor cars. Not a bird’s cry, not a dog’s bark. He tried moving his hands. Pain shot through him and he lay still again.

  They came so quietly, he didn’t hear until their whispered voices were just above him like snatches of a bad dream.

  ‘He’s alive.’

  ‘Get him up and hold him.’

  Someone lifted and he screamed in agony.

  ‘Where’s the Rigger, Georgie?’

  The question came again and again, different voices speaking into the icy quiet, till the pain felled him and everything was still against the soil.

  Charlie read carefully. He stumbled occasionally, but Lydia didn’t interrupt. She carried on with what she was doing, taking care to be quiet. So she scrubbed the carrots more tenderly than she might. And laying them out on the chopping board, end-to-end like so many bodies, she was gentle with the knife.

  But an action is an action, however it is performed, and in the end Lydia’s carrots were as sliced in one way as they would have been in another. After a short time she put a soft hand on the book.

  ‘I might not make gravy,’ she said.

  Charlie lifted his eyes. He smiled and nodded his understanding. It was what his father liked, and his father had gone out. Sometimes his mother would put the wireless on and dance a little, but she wouldn’t do that tonight either. She didn’t dance very much any more.

  ‘But read me some more,’ she said.

  ‘What’s a rigger?’ he said.

  Lydia crunched up her forehead, thinking.

  ‘We don’t know yet. But I’d hazard a guess that it’s a nickname.’

  So Charlie read on a while longer, leaned back against the counter, as his mother got the supper ready. He read slowly and sometimes, if he asked, Lydia helped him out on a word. He didn’t know what they were up to, but soon his head was full of figures monstrous in the London smog, and the plight of Georgie, who sounded like a gentleman and who was worried about catching the 6.48 boat train for Boulogne.

  Lost with his mother in this strange, half-lit world, he forgot for a time that his father had gone out and that his mother had been crying when he came in.

  5

  The month before Christmas was bitter and wet. The sky lay low and grey on the town, pegged like a blanket to the hills in the west and dipping down in the east to meet the sea. By day people muffled themselves against it as best they could, buttoning coats high, pulling hats low down on the brow, tying plastic headscarves tight beneath the chin. Fires were banked high and reluctant children wrapped up, so that the town was full of swaddled figures. But each night, when the river mist rose and the sky dropped down below the trees to greet it, then people were caught unawares. The damp air eased between sheets tossed and loosened with dreams, kissing uncovered throats, slipping in with unguarded breaths to lie snugly in the lungs and wait for day.

  Jean knew how the air did its work, and she was either strong or lucky, but her health stayed clear while her waiting room was filled during those winter months with people sickened by the lowering sky.

  With the bees asleep, and the days cinched in so tight you could barely draw a proper breath, Jean dug herself into her work and waited for the coming of spring. She knew how the winters took her and it was best to be busy. Her time was filled with surgeries and clinics, with the impersonal light of hospital wards and the intimate fug of illness that brought her into people’s homes.

  ‘Doctor and priest,’ Jim had joked once. ‘You’re the only ones invited into the bedroom.’

  ‘For God’s sake, Jim.’ Jean had been a little irritated at the time, but it was true that sometimes a shiver did run across her skin when she crossed a threshold.

  Mostly, when she visited her patients, she’d find the best linen out, on the bed and on the patient. The bedroom would have been tidied, and even the sickest person would have had a warm flannel over them before they saw the doctor. So when she lifted a wrist for the pulse or bent close to listen to a heartbeat, she was most likely to smell soap, and sometimes fever, and sometimes, unavoidably, the smell of death.

  But occasionally she’d push the door open and there would be a glimpse of something else. It might be nothing more than a nightgown tossed over the end of the bed, or a drawer ajar. Or an unplumped pillow, still moulded by the head that had slept there. Or the room would carry the stale, intimate odour that eventually she grew to recognize.

  Jean’s parents had cultivated the romance of their marriage to the exclusion of all others, including their children, and made few bones about it. All through her childhood there had been conversations in which her mother and father would remind her of her place. Her father, reading an article in the newspaper about a ship foundered on rocks, would remark on how strange it was that the children should be got off first.

  ‘I’d have been beating all back to get you to safety, my love,’ he’d say.

  And his wife would respond in kind: ‘But if you drowned saving me, then there would be no point in living.’ This would often be followed by Jean’s father rising from his chair to kiss her mother at length on the mouth, while their daughter continued to eat her soft-boiled egg, or haddock in white sauce.

  Jean had always known that the door to her parents’ bedroom was not only shut, but usually locked, the key turned against all comers. Only dire emergency warranted a knock on the door, and on the rare occasion on which she had knocked, she’d been too scared to do more than stand on the threshold and cry, glimpsing behind an irritated parent the altar of their rough and tumbled double bed.

  Perhaps this was why she didn’t pursue Jim’s remark about doctor and priest as she would normally have done. But neither did she examine the feeling these bedroom visits gave rise to, which was some strange mixture of embarrassment and envy.

  Jean spent Christmas with Jim and his family. There had been a token invitation from her mother, but she wasn’t expected to accept it, and she declined, as always, with a professional
excuse.

  ‘Only unmarried GP in town. Makes sense for me to be on call on Christmas Day,’ she said.

  Her mother made no reply. This was old history. Nothing new to be said.

  Jean was free on New Year’s Day to do whatever she wished. Without any particular reason, she decided that she wanted to feel the weight of the sky and to see no one.

  She’d have travelled to the sea, if it had been the right sea. But the beaches nearest to this town were all wrong, with their pavements of rock and their crumbling earth cliffs.

  Driving out of the town, Jean thought of her childhood coast with its deep hinterland of marsh and brackish lakes, and miles of dunes before you reached the sea. She longed to whittle time as she did then, spending the day hidden up, snug inside the sand, in sight of no one. Make a driftwood fire for warmth, this time of year.

  She headed out for the hills. A beat was playing in her head, something by Duke Ellington, left over from the night before. She was determined to walk hard today; she had a route planned that meant she would have to, once she’d set out, if she were to get back to her motor car before dark. She’d walk herself out of the mood she was in, and into something different.

  Last night everyone had laughed and toasted in the New Year, and Jean had swung around a dozen faces and kissed them. But later, home in her bed and lying in the dawn, curled around her own belly, hands tucked warm between her legs, she had cried her loneliness into the pillow before she slept. That’s why today, the first day of the year, she was determined to walk herself straight again.

  Jean had a lot of sympathy for other people’s sadness. It accompanied illnesses and accidents into her surgery every day and she knew better than to set them up on a scale. The death of a father was a terrible sorrow for one person, but liberation for another. A son failing grammar school entrance, a daughter who played loose, a miscarriage, the failure of the potato crop – you couldn’t set a scale to the sadness by knowing what gave rise to it. She didn’t understand why some were struck harder than others, but she knew that it was so.