Tell it to the Bees

by Fiona Shaw

Dot looked at her strangely.

  ‘Why would I tell him anything? I don’t even like him.’

  Lydia nodded, but Dot’s voice was far away and Lydia’s skin was clammy with fear.

  ‘Let go of my arm,’ Dot said. ‘What’s got into you?’ She rubbed at her arm. ‘I’ll be out in bruises tomorrow. You won’t be able to keep it a secret for long. He’ll find out soon enough. A sister like Pam. You know that. Anyway, he might be pleased. What with him not giving you a penny. Takes the pressure off.’

  ‘But he mustn’t know,’ Lydia said in a low voice.

  ‘So did you ever hear from your dad?’ Dot said, changing the subject.

  Lydia shook herself like a dog coming in out of the rain, as if to clear Robert off. She nodded. ‘He said I could come back and keep house for him if I wanted, but he wouldn’t spare a penny for me otherwise.’

  ‘Nice,’ Dot said. ‘Clear.’

  Lydia went on, her voice artificial and breezy, as if she was simply explaining what the weather was like outside.

  ‘I’d gone to London when the war got going. The money was good in the munitions factory, but it wasn’t what Dad had wanted. He already had a life lined up for me, right down to the pattern on my apron. A life and a husband. Pleasant enough fellow. He’d been Dad’s apprentice. Would have taken over the business. I’d probably have married him if Robert hadn’t sung so sweetly. If I hadn’t fancied him so hard. If I hadn’t got knocked up so fast. God knows, things might have been better with him.’

  ‘Except you wouldn’t have had Charlie,’ Dot said.

  Lydia nodded slowly. ‘That’s the clincher, isn’t it?’ she said. ‘I wouldn’t have had Charlie.’

  Dot laughed. ‘So you’ve got your father on one side not forgiving, Pam on the other and your sod of a husband in the middle. Nest of vipers.’

  They sat down and got out their tools, ready to start the afternoon shift.

  ‘What does Charlie think of it all, then? Going off to live in a posh house?’ Dot said.

  ‘He’s happy. Near his beloved bees. With all that garden.’

  The forewoman was making her way towards the switch, an eye to the clock, while the women waited. Dot fiddled with the handle on her screwdriver, looking up at Lydia, then down at her lap, then up again while they waited for the shift to start.

  ‘I’m going to miss you, you daft thing. Lucky for you, with your doctor. I didn’t know she was such a good friend,’ Dot said, but the conveyor belt had started, its clatter rising, and the room was too noisy now for any reply to be heard.

  Lydia brooded through the afternoon on what she should say, but by the time they knocked off, she still didn’t know how to answer.

  Thursday was Lydia’s final day. After ten years’ work, the factory gave her the last day off, and a teapot in yellow and green.

  That evening Dot called by to help her with the packing.

  ‘Pam’s been sniffing around,’ she said. ‘Wanting to know this, wanting to know that.’

  ‘What did you tell her?’

  ‘Not a blinding thing.’ Dot opened one of the bags she’d brought and began to fill it with plates, wrapping them in newspaper, piece by piece.

  ‘It’s making her quite cross,’ she said. ‘Silly, because she’ll find out pretty soon, but I think sod it, why should I tell her anything?’

  ‘She doesn’t have to see me any more,’ Lydia said. ‘Now Robert’s left me, and I’m not working at the factory.’

  ‘But it won’t stop her wanting to know. Charlie’s still her nephew.’

  Lydia snorted. ‘Not so as you’d notice. She’s horrid to him.’

  ‘Maybe that’s because he’s her nephew,’ Dot said. ‘Maybe he reminds her too much.’

  Lydia looked round at Dot. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Well, he’s the spit of Robert, isn’t he?’

  Lydia nodded. ‘Sometimes it’s strange, seeing the man who’s left me in the face of my boy,’ she said.

  ‘Maybe that’s what Pam feels too. She’s always gone on about being like a mother to Robert, bringing him up singlehanded and that. She thinks he’s her boy. But he went and left her for you.’

  Lydia paused in her packing. Dot’s words made her shiver.

  ‘She’s his sister, not his girlfriend. And anyway, then she might be fond of Charlie, him looking so like his dad,’ she said.

  ‘But she isn’t, is she,’ Dot said flatly. ‘Home truths, Lydia. She isn’t ever going to forgive your Charlie for looking like her boy.’

  ‘Quite the philosopher,’ Lydia said abruptly, pulling open the cutlery drawer. She gathered up a rackety handful and dumped it into a box. The shot and clatter of metal felt good. She let the sound die and turned to her friend.

  ‘Sorry, Dot. Not your fault.’

  ‘Watch your back,’ Dot said. ‘She’s got her knives out for you.’

  ‘I hate her for taking it out on Charlie,’ Lydia said. She gathered up another handful. ‘In fact, I just hate her,’ she said. ‘First time I’ve admitted it. If it wasn’t for Annie. Don’t know how she got through so well, with a mother like that.’

  ‘Doesn’t look that well on it at the minute,’ Dot said flatly. ‘And I’m not sure her mother’s even noticed.’

  ‘Annie?’ Lydia looked round. Something about Dot’s tone tugged her out of her own rage. ‘What’s up with Annie?’

  ‘At a guess, I’d say she was pregnant.’

  Lydia bit her lip. ‘And you think Pam hasn’t noticed?’

  ‘Odd, isn’t it? A woman who can’t leave anybody alone, least of all her own daughter. Maybe Pam doesn’t want to notice. Maybe she hopes it’ll go away.’

  ‘You’re sure?’

  ‘Sure as you can be when you see a girl throwing up in the toilets and who won’t meet your eye when you ask her, is she all right.’

  ‘But not showing,’ Lydia said.

  ‘I’d say barely in there,’ Dot said. ‘She looked right as rain last week. But if I was Pam, I’d be setting up to collar that young George before he disappears in a puff of smoke.’

  ‘Except she doesn’t like young George. He’s the last thing she wants for Annie.’

  ‘Perhaps that’s why Annie headed straight for him, then,’ Dot said. ‘It’s what I’d have done with a mother like that.’

  30

  Outside a new dark was falling, a dark Charlie didn’t know yet. He walked carefully, wheeling the bike. Like everything else here, the street lamps had bigger kingdoms and the pools of shadow between them fell wider and deeper than he was used to. He pushed the bicycle over the gravel and on to the pavement. It was quiet here. He could hear the sound of his own feet and the noise of the wind in the trees. On this road there were no clutches of gossiping women home from the factory, no children running between the houses, or playing out. There were no other boys with bicycles. He couldn’t smell any other dinners cooking. He couldn’t even smell his own, though he’d only just shut the door on it.

  Straddling the bike, Charlie looked out on the road. His road. He’d walked along it dozens of times visiting Dr Markham, but it was different now, now that he lived here.

  The bicycle was his. A gift. Leant up against the shed that afternoon, brand-new, with three gears, front and back lights and a label tied to the handlebars: ‘Should help with the journey to school.’ When he found his mother and asked her was it really for him, she caught him by the cheeks, which he didn’t like her doing any more, and said it was, but it was Dr Markham he had to thank. Then she kissed him on the forehead and said his supper would be ready in an hour, so to be back by then.

  It was freezing outside and Charlie wrapped his scarf tighter, rubbed at his fingers and pushed off. He’d ride the bike up and down a few times, get the hang of the gears, then maybe go to Bobby’s house. He’d like to see Bobby’s face. This was something of his that Bobby would really want.

  The road stretched away for ever, with empty trees and deep grass verges, and big houses behin
d hedges. Charlie cycled harder, faster up the hill. Pushing the pedals, he looked into the dark and imagined that his dad was just ahead there, by that tree, in front of that house, or round the corner, leaning back, waiting to see him, to see his son Charlie. He sat straighter and set his jaw firmly in case, so his dad would see how strong he’d got, and how fast and able. He let himself imagine it for a time and then, because it was hurting, he stopped.

  ‘Stupid,’ he muttered, and then he tried other words.

  ‘Damn and bloody fool. Bloody stupid.’ But the words didn’t work and he shook his head.

  ‘I hate you,’ he said. ‘I hate you. I hate her. I hate her stupid face and her hair. I hate her stupid name. I hate her name and she won’t ever be Mrs Weekes. Ever.’

  He didn’t want to go to Bobby’s any more and he turned and let the bike freewheel down the road, murmuring under his breath, feeling how it got easier and easier.

  ‘I hate you, I hate you, I hate you.’

  He remembered the night that they’d come back from the sea. He’d been telling his mother a story, something funny, but she hadn’t seemed to hear him.

  ‘You know we’ve got to move?’ she’d said when he stopped talking. ‘That we can’t stay here?’

  They were eating fish and chips. Charlie was famished and happy. His box of treasure was at the foot of the stairs, waiting, not opened yet.

  She spoke and he looked up at her, not understanding, and she picked a chip off the newspaper and started to study the crossword.

  ‘But we live here,’ Charlie said.

  He watched his mother find a pencil in the drawer and write in an answer.

  ‘It’s because there’s only the two of us here now,’ she said.

  ‘But I’ve always lived here. Since I was a baby.’

  ‘I don’t earn enough on my own to pay the rent,’ she said.

  She began to write in another answer, but she was holding the pencil very tight, he could see that, and maybe the fat from the chips had got into the paper because the pencil wouldn’t make a mark.

  ‘Why isn’t my dad paying any?’ he said.

  She looked down at the pencil.

  ‘I hate him,’ Charlie said.

  ‘Now, Charlie,’ she said, but she was making shapes across the newspaper, digging into it, zigzag shapes, like lightning coming down.

  Charlie wasn’t hungry any more. He pushed his chips away.

  ‘I can get some money then,’ he said. ‘I’ll get a paper round, or run messages for the bookies on a Saturday. Mikey in my class does that.’

  His mother shook her head.

  ‘You’re too young and, anyway, it wouldn’t be enough, my love.’

  ‘But you’re working in the factory all the time,’ Charlie said, ‘except for being ill and after. You can’t work any more.’

  Then his mother had explained about Dr Markham’s offer.

  Charlie left the bicycle against the shed and went around the side of the house through the side gate and into the garden. He went carefully in the dark, over the terrace, down on to the lawn, down beyond the beech hedge. Laying his hands on the rough, damp wood, he put his cheek to the hive.

  ‘Remember me,’ he said, and he made his voice smooth as smoke. ‘Don’t wake up, just listen out in your dreams, bees, and you’ll hear.’

  He cupped a hand around his mouth and spoke slow and low.

  ‘My father is dead.’

  He waited, and the bees still slept.

  ‘I hate him. He’s dead. Now you know.’

  He had his own bedroom in Dr Markham’s house, and his own name on the door, carved in metal like the doctor’s name on her door. He had his own desk, and shelves on the wall that went up higher than he could reach. All the things he’d ever found could go there. For the best things, the smallest, most special ones, Dr Markham had given him a wooden box. It was a box that used to be hers, for her most special things. It had gold lines set into the wood and tiny drawers. There was a tiny shell still in the corner of one of the drawers. Dr Markham had told him it was for luck. It was pink, like his finger, and ridged like a washboard. He kept the box on the table by his bed, and some of the drawers he left empty for the future.

  Charlie thought the shell had already brought him some luck. When he went to school in the morning, his mother stood on the doorstep and smiled and blew him a kiss that he pretended not to see. She didn’t go to the factory and then come home in the dark so tired that he was frightened, when she fell asleep, that she wasn’t going to wake up.

  It was odd, how happy she was in Dr Markham’s kitchen, in Dr Markham’s house, but Charlie was glad of it. Glad that she sang songs again; glad she didn’t cry any more; glad she had her book propped open with a weight again. He didn’t need to worry any more, when he wasn’t there.

  Sometimes in the evening, if it could be early enough, they all ate supper together and that made him happy too. His mother would tell stories about the factory to make them laugh, and Dr Markham would tell stories about doctoring so that his mother put her hands over her ears. But most often he ate his tea on his own; though his mother often sat with him, he felt sad.

  ‘Are you happy, Charlie?’ his mother would ask, and he always said yes, because he wanted to see that look on her face, made for him and no one else. But perhaps if it had been dark, then he’d just have shrugged.

  Charlie’s bedroom was next to the study, and then there was the bathroom. There were big tiles around the bath in blue and white and if Charlie pinched his eyes nearly shut, they looked like the sea. When you ran the water, it made the walls groan.

  ‘Sounds like your grandfather,’ his mother said, but he’d never met his grandfather, so he didn’t know if that was true.

  The bath was long, so long, he could lie with his head back and float and listen to his heartbeat till the water was tepid and his skin was white at the edges.

  His mother’s bedroom was across the landing, next to Dr Markham’s. It was only a little room, with a bed like his, so that her counterpane had to be folded to fit. Dr Markham said it used to be a dressing room, where all the clothes were kept, and that’s why it had such a big wardrobe, and two doors: one out on to the landing, and the other through to Dr Markham’s bedroom. His mother put her chair against this door because there wasn’t anywhere else to put it, and her clothes left half the wardrobe empty.

  The first day they moved into Dr Markham’s house, Lydia had told Charlie to come and find her if he needed to, night or day, it didn’t matter. She’d gripped his shoulders so he’d know she meant it. Since they moved there, Charlie had woken in the night a few times. Twice he’d heard Dr Markham go out to a call, the motor car pulling away into silence, but the other times he couldn’t have said what it was that woke him. Except that it wasn’t nightmares and he wasn’t upset, so he’d lain there with his eyes open, listening to the dark, till sleep had caught him up again.

  But the night of the thunderstorm was different. Charlie was deep under when the first clap of thunder dug him from his dreams and flung sleep against the bedroom wall. It woke him so suddenly that for a minute he didn’t know where he was, or whether he was sleeping or waking and he lay rigid against the sheets, eyes seeing nothing, hands over his ears, heart pounding, while the darkness echoed. Then the noise died away and there was silence. No rain, no wind, no nothing. Turning on to his side, he tucked his hands beneath his head, safe between the pillow and the cool sheet, and closed his eyes again.

  Years ago, frightened by another storm, Charlie had scrambled down the stairs and found his parents on the sofa. Snuggled between them, head on his mother’s lap, feet snug beneath his father’s elbow, he’d fallen back to sleep, cradled in the sound of their conversation, cocooned against the storm.

  And when the lightning broke now from the sky, cracking Charlie’s eyelids open, filling the room with its blue dance, he was scared again, fear chasing up and down his body, and he longed to be there, tucked inside his parents’ voice
s.

  ‘Mum,’ he cried out, but his voice was small inside the weather.

  Heart racing, he got out of bed and opened his bedroom door. The storm had its eye on the house and the landing shook with thunder; the windows rattled with rain.

  Charlie tugged open Lydia’s door and made for the bed.

  ‘Mum,’ he said, his voice calmer now he was here, now he was close to her, and he reached down to the covers to put his hands on her shoulder, to shake her awake. But the bed was unslept in, the counterpane pulled tight over the pillows.

  Charlie froze and for a second everything felt far away from him and he stood quite alone. Then he cried out again into the chilled, hard air for his mother.

  Seconds later, Lydia was there with him, her arms around him, holding him tight to her. Charlie buried his head against her, dug his fists into her sides.

  ‘I was scared,’ he said, ‘and then you weren’t there.’

  ‘But I am now. Sshh, sshh, it’s all right,’ she said, sitting down on the bed with him and rocking him in her arms. She smelled of sleep.

  ‘Don’t walk under pylons when there’s lightning,’ she murmured.

  ‘Dad,’ Charlie said sleepily. ‘It’s what Dad says.’

  They stayed like that till he was drifting and then she picked him up to take him back to his bed. In this half-sleep, his eyes heavy, Charlie saw that the chair with his mother’s clothes over was moved and the door to Dr Markham’s room open.

  ‘Is Dr Markham there?’ he said, as Lydia tucked him into his bed and she stroked his hair and shushed him back to sleep.

  31

  The roads were empty and Jean drove fast to get home. Her mind ran with the wheels, steering tight to the straightest, fastest route. She was a woman in love. There was no point in taking the corners gently or pretending any different, not to herself at least.

  The last visit on her list that day had taken Jean out beyond the edge of town, and she was tired now, her eyes weary. As she drove along the narrow lanes, the trees dipped in at her, their empty branches veering into the headlights, and she glimpsed strange creatures that slipped away beyond the spoons of light from the headlamps.