Tell it to the Bees

by Fiona Shaw

  10

  Jean woke early on Saturday. She had slept with her curtains open for just this, to be coaxed from dreaming by the May light flooding the room. But she moved carefully. She had drunk too much the night before and her head protested as she moved from her pillow. Down by her feet, the cat slept on, curled around, one paw laid above an ear.

  At supper with the Dexters last night there had been tennis, which she had enjoyed, and then drinks, which she had not. On the way there, Jim had teased her about the extra man. Who would he be? Where would they get him from this time? Had she got her pearls on specially? Surely they’d used up all the extra men available in the town? Until Sarah had silenced him with a look.

  The extra man proved to be a nice fellow who had confided to Jean, as they made their way to the dinner table, that he had a girl in Birmingham he intended to make an honest woman of. After that, the two of them got on famously, drinking too much whisky and exchanging tales of childhood pranks, adult dreams and favourite jazz tunes.

  Jean stroked a hand around the cat’s warm spine.

  ‘I wish they’d stop thinking that I wanted any extra man,’ she said, and the cat arched ever so slightly and slept on.

  Charlie’s mother was coming for tea today. It had been Sarah who said Jean should ask her.

  ‘If I was her, I’d want to meet this woman my child was spending so much time with.’

  ‘But he’s perfectly happy in the garden. I’ve said he can visit when he wants. He’s not always with me. Usually not, in fact. I only know he’s been because of his notes. I gave him a notebook, and he leaves me messages, about the bees mostly.’

  ‘Not the point. You’re making him a bee suit. He’s going to help you get in your honey crop.’

  ‘Harvest. And it’s not a suit. It’s my old veil and gloves, and a pair of Mrs Sandringham’s son’s old overalls. She’s adjusting them.’

  ‘How old is he?’

  Ten, I think.’

  ‘So still at primary school?’

  Jean nodded.

  ‘Have his mother round for tea, then. Else you might find he doesn’t come to visit any more.’

  Jean had had Mrs Sandringham’s son mend the old wooden gate at the bottom of the garden and oil the latch, so that Charlie could let himself in when he wanted, without needing to come to the house. The garden was bigger than Jean could manage, and she had let this part run wild. Ancient fruit trees took a knotted stand against the ivy and briar roses, brambles and wild raspberries. The grass grew deep and coarse, shot through with tiny wild colours. Buddleia flourished, kicking out from the tumbled stones of some old sheds down one side.

  She knew Charlie loved the way that the door let him in to the wild parts. She had seen it on his face when she’d showed him it all. She’d seen him glance about and recognized his eagerness.

  ‘We had a garden bigger than this when I was your age,’ she said. ‘And some of it grew wild.’

  ‘Did you make dens there?’ Charlie said. ‘Or find strange things?’

  ‘No. I stayed on the lawn.’

  ‘Didn’t you want to?’

  She laughed. ‘Very much, but I wasn’t allowed. Girls weren’t meant to go exploring or get dirty. I had a nanny to stop me.’

  ‘You could have run away from her.’

  ‘I did sometimes, but then I got into trouble.’

  ‘Creatures hide themselves in here,’ he said. ‘I bet there’s all kinds to find.’

  ‘You can come whenever you like. As long as your mother knows, and as long as you’re still my bee-keeping assistant.’

  Jean knew Charlie had taken her at her word on this, though she’d only found him there once in the past few weeks.

  It was about six o’clock one evening and the garden still warm and bright. Jean had got through her list of house calls more quickly than she’d expected, and now she walked down across the lawn towards the burning white may blossom that marked off the end of the tended garden. Coming close to the hedge the noise of the bees was dense in the tumble of flowers, and she stood a moment and let the hum, the incessant din of it, fill her head.

  Walking round the end of the hedge, she glanced at the four hives. Workers were flying in at full tilt, pollen baskets heavy with white pollen. Jean was checking the hives each week now, and the queens were laying up the combs nicely. She’d been showing Charlie how to spread the brood, adding supers to the top of the hives as needed. Very soon the colonies would be built up, and the swarming season would be upon them. She must show Charlie how to clip a queen’s wings, and how to control the swarm. Then it crossed her mind that Charlie wasn’t more than a couple of years older than Meg and she wondered how Sarah would react if she were teaching these things to Meg.

  ‘It’s natural with him,’ she told herself, and put the worry away.

  The garden smelled full, as if it had spent the day gathering perfume, and if she were to walk to the bottom, to Charlie’s gate, there would be the last traces of the bluebells beneath the trees, and wild garlic. She took a few steps into the deep, rough grass beyond the hives, thinking to go down and check the fruit trees, and then she noticed Charlie, standing with his back to her.

  His shirt was untucked and his socks were adrift, runkled round his skinny boy calves. He stood with his arms down by his sides, motionless. With his head slightly to one side, he seemed to Jean either entranced or intent. She couldn’t tell. Less than a foot away, a young blackbird pulled a worm from the ground. But Charlie wasn’t looking at the bird. Jean stepped closer. She could see now that the boy was watching something. That for all he looked relaxed, his body was held like a spring, the tendons in the back of his knees jumping, his fingers braced against his legs, index fingers twitching. He reminded her of herself.

  As a child, about Charlie’s age, she had once watched a mouse cross the rug before the nursery fire. It was evening, she’d been reading and a movement had caught the corner of her eye. Without changing her position, she’d dropped the book slightly and raised her eyes from the page. The mouse was squatted back on its hind legs, as if surveying the field. Then it had crouched and run across the hearth in small flurries of movement, lifting its nose before each, black pin eyes sharp and unblinking. She had watched it all the way across and then, as it scampered to the skirting board and beyond her line of vision, she had returned to her reading.

  Jean watched the boy for a minute or more, during which time he made no move. Then she turned and walked back towards the house.

  Charlie had said his mother worked till dinnertime on a Saturday, so they were to come for tea at three-thirty. They would come to the house, but all being well with the weather, tea would be in the garden. Jean had consulted Mrs Sandringham as to the menu, and cucumber sandwiches, a Victoria sponge and ginger biscuits had been agreed on, with lemonade for Charlie.

  As the time for tea drew closer, Jean was surprised to find herself nervous. She changed her tweed skirt for the green shirtwaister dress that Sarah had persuaded her to buy, thinking perhaps it looked less doctor-like. What if Mrs Weekes disliked her, or disapproved? She must think it strange, Charlie making friends with a doctor, and a woman doctor at that. She supposed it was quite strange. Certainly not something she had done before, or anticipated.

  What if Mrs Weekes thought it was unsafe, Charlie working with the bees? She might think that, once she’d seen the hives and all the bees about them. She might think Charlie should be mixing more with children his own age. With boys instead of grown-up women. Jean thought that herself. She had suggested to Charlie he bring a friend to the garden at some point if he wanted.

  ‘You’re worried she’ll stop him visiting,’ she said to herself. ‘That’s why you’re nervous.’

  She had to own it to herself that this boy had become a companion to her in recent weeks, albeit a companion she rarely saw. Or something more than that. Something more like a friend. She laughed. How could a woman in her late thirties make friends with a boy still at primar
y school?

  They arrived on the dot of three-thirty; Jean saw them through the upstairs window. Charlie was washed and brushed, comb-lines still visible through his hair, his shorts pressed sharp. He walked up the drive several strides ahead of his mother, beating at the bushes with a switch, then turning to wait. His mother walked slowly, hesitantly, stopping to look at something in the hedge, changing the position of her handbag.

  Jean knew where Charlie lived. She’d looked it up on his medical notes. She could picture the house, number 43. She’d visited enough of those terraces. Charlie had told her that his mother worked in the wireless factory.

  She watched Mrs Weekes look over at the house and she wondered what Charlie had told his mother. Had he mentioned the dozen tall chimneys? Or the gabled roof? Had he told her there was a driveway at the front? Did she already know the house had tall, sash windows, a cloakroom full of old photographs and wildflower sketches? A stair window of coloured panes? Did she already know that there was one person, just Jean, living in it all?

  She moved like someone in pain. Jean knew the look of it, the hesitancy, the guarded movements. But close as she looked, Jean couldn’t tell where the pain might be. As boy and mother came closer, she guessed that it wasn’t so much in the body as somewhere else.

  Jean wasn’t very careful about her own appearance, and didn’t necessarily notice the finer details of other women’s. But she did take in that Charlie’s mother wore a pale blue shift dress with a pattern of little flowers, perhaps not quite this year’s fashion, but pretty and fresh, that she wore her hair like Katharine Hepburn, and that whatever Charlie had from his father, he had his eyes from his mother. Grey eyes and long, dark lashes that he would be bound to dislike when he was slightly older. That’s where the pain in the woman was too. Behind the eyes. A shadow there that shaded her gestures.

  As she made polite conversation – how nice to be meeting, the weather, tea in the garden – Jean led the way into the house. Mrs Weekes was nervous. It was there in her stiff movements and her short, monosyllabic replies. So Jean moved swiftly, while continuing to talk lightly. She’d learned to do this with patients who were anxious about some procedure or examination, or about undressing before the doctor, and now, walking into her hall, she did it without thinking.

  ‘It’s a house built for lots of people. I took it on with the practice. Silly, living here alone. Except, of course, when there’s a bit of a push on and then my housekeeper, Mrs Sandringham, moves in for a time. So as you can imagine, it’s been a pleasure, and a tremendous help, having Charlie to assist me with the bee-keeping.’

  Jean paused at the far side of the hall to draw breath.

  ‘What about the garden, Dr Markham?’

  ‘I have a man who does the hedges and lawn, and Mrs Sandringham is very good. The rest of it I do myself. But the bees are my kingdom. And Charlie’s now, of course.’

  She would take them straight out on to the terrace.

  ‘The flowers are gorgeous.’

  The irises had been a last-minute thought, cut hastily and thrust in the jug.

  ‘I’m not much of an arranger,’ Jean said.

  ‘My uncle used to grow irises like these. Small purple ones,’ Mrs Weekes said. She bent her head close to them. ‘Reminds me of him. Funny how a perfume can do that. Take you straight back somewhere, or remind you of someone so much.’

  Jean smiled and nodded. Something about the recollection, she supposed, but the woman seemed to have lost her nervousness.

  Her voice wasn’t what Jean had expected. It wasn’t her accent exactly, which wasn’t from round here, but wasn’t unfamiliar either. It was more her way of speaking. She spoke as though she were unaware of what she ought to say, or not terribly interested in it. Instead she seemed to speak straight out of her thoughts.

  None of this went through Jean’s head then. Then it was only the moment’s surprise at something and, almost as a reflex, the glance at Charlie.

  He was stood in the middle of the hall with an expression she didn’t immediately recognize.

  ‘Mum,’ he said in a fierce whisper, and Mrs Weekes looked across at him.

  ‘Aren’t they lovely, Charlie?’ she said, and it was only when he nodded – a small, reluctant nod – that Jean understood. He was embarrassed.

  ‘Charlie, will you show your mother round the garden? And remind me to cut a bunch of irises for you before you go.’

  Jean watched mother and son through the kitchen window, Charlie taking his mother by the hand, tugging at her to be quicker. They were down by the pond by the time she’d taken out the tea things, Charlie pointing at the rushes. He picked something off a stem and held it in his palm for his mother to see, and she looked down at his hand and said something that made him butt her softly at the waist, like a calf with its mother.

  Jean paused, walking down. She had seen these two together somewhere else and she stood absolutely still, trying to place the memory. But it wouldn’t come, and so she carried on towards them, feeling like an extra, a walk-on part. She had an odd sensation that she didn’t quite recognize, and if Charlie or his mother had turned round at this point, they would have seen a scowl on her face. She waited for Charlie to bend to the pond again before joining them.

  The two women stood watching the boy, until Jean felt she should make conversation.

  ‘Charlie said he’s always lived in the town. But I’d hazard a guess that you’re not from round here,’ she said.

  ‘I met Charlie’s father in London during the war. It’s him who comes from the town.’

  ‘So Charlie’s got family here?’

  ‘Yes,’ Mrs Weekes said, and her tone made Jean look round, but she didn’t add anything more. ‘We had an allotment, growing up,’ she said instead. ‘I loved it there. I’ve got pots in the yard now. They’re pretty, but it’s not the same.’

  ‘I’m very lucky,’ Jean said. ‘I don’t really have time to keep it under control, though I think Charlie likes this wild part best.’

  Charlie stood up, hands cupped, elbows dripping pond water.

  ‘Look, Mum,’ he said.

  She lifted his covering hand, and in his palm a tiny green frog sat. She looked at the frog, and the frog looked back.

  She smiled. ‘Reminds me of you.’

  ‘Why?’ Charlie said. ‘It’s an amphibian and it lives in a pond.’

  ‘Because it’s new and very small. When you were barely born you already had fingernails and eyelashes. Tiny but perfect.’

  Charlie winced and wriggled his shoulders, then ducked under her arm and crouched back at the pond’s edge.

  Watching this easy intimacy, Jean knew what the earlier feeling was. She was jealous. Jealous that Charlie showed the small frog in her pond in her garden to his mother first. Jealous because if Mrs Weekes hadn’t been here, he’d have shown it to her. Uncomfortable with the feeling, she became cheery.

  ‘Come on now. The lemonade will be getting warm.’

  Afterwards, Jean couldn’t recall what they talked of during tea. She gave Charlie his beekeeping things – gloves, suit, veil – and his eyes went wide with pleasure.

  ‘It’s Mrs Sandringham you have to thank,’ she said.

  Thinking back afterwards, she fancied that Charlie did a lot of the talking. His mother told him he was like a king sitting there, and they his courtiers, and he laughed with pleasure and Jean smiled to herself, seeing her guests so at ease.

  Later, the two women watched Charlie run full tilt the length of the lawn and disappear from sight, and at some point Mrs Weekes owned to being an avid reader.

  ‘Detective novels mostly,’ she said. ‘But I’ll try anything. Sometimes there’s nothing new in the library, so I’ll pick books out of the General Fiction.’

  ‘Anything you don’t like?’ Jean said.

  ‘The girls all swap romances at work.’

  ‘Charlie told me you work at the wireless factory.’

  ‘Nearly ten years there.’
<
br />   ‘It must be the biggest employer in the town. For women.’

  ‘Not many other places to get work. They know that too. No sick pay, and they’re very tight if you’ve got a child sick, anything like that.’

  ‘I’ve seen a fair few accidents from there,’ Jean said. ‘Soldering burns, wire cuts. That kind of thing.’

  ‘I’ve been lucky so far with accidents,’ Lydia said. ‘It’s dull work, but you need to concentrate. I’ve always been able to do that. Not get distracted.’

  ‘Is that how you read books as well?’

  Lydia laughed.

  ‘I suppose so. How I do most things. Something Charlie’s got from me. He gets lost in things too.’

  She looked at Jean, such a direct look that Jean felt herself blush slightly.

  ‘What about you? Do you like reading?’

  And Jean confessed to having a whole library of books and never reading any of them.

  ‘My father left them to me. Because, even if I didn’t read them, he knew I wouldn’t sell them.’

  ‘And you haven’t?’

  Jean shook her head.

  ‘They have a room all to themselves in the house. Only the cat sometimes for company, when the fancy takes her.’

  They must have talked for quite a while, because eventually Charlie returned, impatient to try his new equipment.

  Putting his mother in the best place to watch, he lit the smoker and puffed it gently to quieten the bees, as Jean had shown him.

  ‘It’s how I got my first stings,’ Charlie said. ‘Annoying the bees.’

  ‘Annoying them?’ Lydia said.

  ‘I didn’t do it on purpose.’ Charlie’s tone was a little weary, a little wise. ‘I just didn’t know how they liked things then. The smoke helps, if you’ve got to interfere with them.’

  Opening the hive, Jean checked the queen, and they looked for any queen cells, and at the pattern of brood growth. They repeated this for each of the other three hives. Jean would nod for more smoke, or lift a hand to signal enough.