Tell it to the Bees

by Fiona Shaw

  The visit hadn’t been easy and, until recently, Jean would have played it over in her mind afterwards, working out what she could have done differently, defending herself from all her self-accusation. But tonight she left the patient where she was; and instead her thoughts travelled, light and slender, strong as a spider’s thread, up over the roofs and gardens, over the factory and the park, across the pond with its first glint of ice, to home.

  As she pulled into the garage, the headlamps lit up Charlie’s bike leaned against the near wall, and the small trestle table covered with bits of rock and pebble, set up for his fossil hunt. A trowel and a sieve were lined up at one end together with a notebook and pencil. She picked up each thing, and then put each back in place. Charlie was careful in his arranging of things, and half of it was play and half of it was deadly serious. She knew because she recognized the same trait in herself.

  So good, this was. This was what it was to be happy. Friday, home, tired, the lights on in the house and somebody else here. Rocks and oddments and Lydia’s bucket of bulbs in a corner, ready for their winter soil, and a kiss to be snatched in the pantry and the promise of this woman’s love.

  Charlie nearly toppled Jean with his sense of importance as she came in, running up close before she’d had a chance to put down her bag.

  ‘They’re coming round now. I thought I could help with it, because she needs honeycomb for her homework, but you’re back so that’s better …’

  He paused and took in Jean, still in her coat and scarf, still holding her black bag.

  ‘If you didn’t mind, I thought I could help her out,’ he went on, more slowly.

  Jean nodded. ‘Good idea,’ she said. ‘Who’s coming round now?’

  ‘And Bobby’s going to come over at the weekend,’ he said, his thoughts in their own gauge. ‘We’re going to make things for the den.’ He paused. ‘Who?’

  ‘Charlie, who’s coming now?’

  ‘Meg and Emma and Mrs Marston. Maybe Mr Marston later …’ but he was already running on, away into the house, marshalling his equipment for the girls, ready to instruct them, to play.

  Jean watched as he ran off and wondered what he understood. The night of the storm, Lydia had been terrified and so angry with herself.

  ‘If he’d seen me in your bed. Imagine if he had.’

  ‘He wouldn’t have understood,’ Jean said, but she knew he understood something already, despite their care and restraint.

  *

  Jean closed her eyes and listened to the noise. Voices, clutter, the flurry of more than one life in the house. The meal was impromptu, a casserole filled out with carrots, potatoes, swedes, to feed the extra mouths, apples stewed up with sugar and raisins to keep the little girls going a while longer.

  Charlie had presented the jar of honeycomb, together with a detailed drawing of a portion of a hive.

  ‘That’s how I met Dr Markham,’ he said. ‘Because I’d hurt my ribs and there was the wooden honeycomb in her surgery.’

  ‘But it wouldn’t help your ribs, would it?’ Emma said.

  ‘No, silly. But he asked about it. Didn’t he?’ Meg said, turning to Jean.

  ‘He did, and we discovered that some great minds have the same passions, and now look where we are,’ Jean said, her swift glance catching Lydia’s cheek, and Sarah’s eye.

  ‘So tell us, Charlie, how the bees make their comb,’ Jim said, and as Charlie told, Jean looked at the faces around the table and basked.

  The conversation turned and turned about. The children got down from the table, Charlie leading the way upstairs. The adults lit cigarettes. Jean brought out the whisky.

  She described a house she’d been to for the first time, and how she’d walked through three rooms between newspapers piled almost to the ceiling to find her patient.

  ‘Corridors made of newsprint and somewhere down them the voice of my patient, telling me to hurry up and to shut the door firmly. She can’t have thrown away a newspaper for decades. Every now and then I’d get a headline in the eye – the top page of a dusty stack – and there were some that took me straight back to my childhood. The General Strike. My mother thought the leaders should be shot, usually over her breakfast coffee.’

  She laughed. ‘When I finally found the patient, we had quite a nice chat and then I examined her, wrote a prescription and left, thinking, well, it’s not how I want to live, but I don’t think she’s mad.’

  Then Sarah told a story about an old lady she’d visited as a child, carrying the basket of groceries for her mother, and Jim asked could he please have some of the stewed apple, now the children had finished with it.

  Lydia fetched Jim a bowl for his fruit.

  ‘So how are you finding it, working here?’ Sarah said as Lydia passed her some apple. ‘She’s not playing her jazz records at all hours I hope?’ Sarah said, and before Lydia could reply, Jim interrupted.

  ‘Anyway, if she causes you any trouble, you’ll have to give me a call. I’m her oldest friend, and that comes with certain privileges and responsibilities.’

  ‘Jim,’ Jean said, his words touching and exasperating her. But Jean knew that there was another, unspoken conversation going on here, a quizzing of this unusual friendship. She often forgot about their differences now; Lydia a factory worker and herself a doctor, middle class to the marrow. She forgot that in the normal scheme of lives, even their friendship was unusual. Housekeepers didn’t sit down to supper with their employers. Not like this.

  Lydia took a sip of her whisky and Jean watched her wince. It wasn’t a taste she was used to and she put the glass down with a degree of certainty that suggested to Jean she might be a little drunk. Then she grinned, as if resolved upon something.

  ‘She is a good employer,’ Lydia said. She put a hand to her neck and turned to find Jean’s eyes. ‘Only,’ she said, tapping a finger to the table, her expression serious, or was it mock-serious, ‘only she does have this habit.’

  Jean broke in, banging her glass on the table in melodramatic fashion.

  ‘I need more whisky, if my housekeeper is going to give away my trade secrets,’ she said, pushing the glass towards Jim. ‘Come on then, what is it that I do?’

  Lydia frowned slightly, as if running through a list of recollections. ‘I’ll mention the gravest,’ she said, ‘and leave the minor ones for another time.’

  ‘Which is?’ said Jim, grinning.

  ‘You’re enjoying this too much,’ she said.

  ‘Which is that she’s very good with her patients. Diligent, attentive, thorough, never turns anyone away, even if she’s about to shut up shop. But she will overfeed the fish. Every time she walks through the waiting room, she dips a finger in the fish food and sprinkles it over. I’ve seen it happen a dozen times. I swear, those fish swim to the top when they see her coming now.’

  ‘That’s outrageous,’ Jean said, smiling. She loved this edge of humour that surfaced in Lydia nowadays.

  Lydia raised her hands, palms upwards, affecting a disingenuous shrug. ‘The fish will simply sink under their own weight soon,’ she said.

  ‘And that’s simply not true, my love,’ Jean said, laughing. ‘It’s an atrocious lie.’

  Her words hung above the table, and the laugh guttered in Jean’s throat. Blood rushed in her ears like white noise and she could feel the heat in her face rise. She stood up, more abruptly than she wanted to, and pushed her chair out from the table. She heard Jim’s voice, and Lydia’s replying.

  ‘I’d better go and check outside,’ she said. ‘The dark, and Charlie doesn’t always … things might be open, and if it rains.’

  She didn’t know how to excuse herself. The others were shifting, adjusting in their chairs. Before she dug any deeper, she left the room and headed for the welcome cool of the November night.

  Out in the garden, Jean realized that she had given the bees no thought in the last few months, and there were things that needed doing in preparation for the spring. She’d decided to incr
ease the number of hives, so there were new frames to make. She was going to do these tasks with Charlie, but tonight she needed the task for herself and, lighting a gas lamp to use in the shed, she set to with a vengeance. It was a relief to work with wood and wire, aligning side struts, working out the slender bee space. Slowly the noise in her ears quietened and the still air was soft like balm.

  She’d been daft to think she could keep it wholly secret from them. But what was she going to say? What were they going to say? And she’d left Lydia in there, just marched out.

  ‘Not true, my love,’ she murmured. Did it sound so bad? Mightn’t she say just that to Jim? Or to the children?

  ‘It’s not bad,’ she said, bringing the hammer down. ‘It’s bloody marvellous. The most marvellous thing I could ever have imagined.’

  And these words, this acknowledgement, spoken out, brought a rush to her heart, made her heavy with desire. Perhaps Sarah hadn’t noticed the affection; perhaps Jim hadn’t heard the endearment. Leaning the finished frame against the table, she rested with this thought till Sarah pushed open the shed door. With the plaid blanket from the sitting room round her shoulders, she looked like a refugee, someone rescued, someone you saw in newspaper monochrome.

  Should be me wrapped in that, Jean thought, but she said nothing, only picked up two more lengths of wood. Sarah sat down on the end of the bench and pulled the rug tight.

  ‘I’ve left the others talking shop,’ she said.

  Jean nodded and picked up a piece of sandpaper. The wood didn’t need sanding, but she needed to be doing something.

  ‘At least, Jim is interrogating Lydia about the factory. She seems to know an awful lot about it.’

  ‘She worked there for ten years, so she would do,’ Jean said.

  ‘Yes, but she talks in a way that … describes things in such a way –’

  Jean interrupted her. ‘Probably all her reading. She knows lots of long words,’ she said, hearing her own sarcasm, her defensiveness.

  Sarah picked up the chisel. She touched her finger to its sharp edge.

  ‘She’s making her way through my father’s books now,’ Jean said, conscious that she should make amends, but unsure what for. ‘She’s an unusual woman. If she’d had my schooling …’

  For several minutes neither woman spoke and then they both began together.

  ‘I’m sorry for …’ Jean said.

  ‘I didn’t mean to sound …’ Sarah said and they both laughed, relieved, at the collision.

  ‘What are you going to do at Christmastime?’ Sarah said. ‘Does Charlie see his father?’

  Jean shrugged. ‘Not at the moment, I don’t think so. I haven’t got as far as Christmas. I’m glad he could help Meg out with her homework. He’s a fine boy.’

  ‘Jean,’ Sarah said in a different tone, less open to diversion, ‘I did hear you, in the kitchen. I’m not mistaken, am I?’

  Jean was glad she was sitting down. Even so she could feel her legs weaken, as if someone had put an electric prod to her stomach.

  There seemed little point in lying; now it had come to this. She shook her head.

  ‘No,’ she said.

  Sarah nodded and took a deep breath, as if at least that was settled.

  ‘Are you warm enough?’ she said. It was true, now that Jean had stopped her furious activity and now the fact had been confirmed, the cold was creeping in through her clothes, pressing against her skin.

  ‘It’s a big blanket,’ Sarah said, so Jean shuffled up and they sat together beneath it, watching their breath in the chilly light.

  ‘It does explain a few things,’ Sarah said at last. ‘You’ve certainly had Jim puzzled.’ She laughed. ‘He thinks he has the last word on you, so it’s really irritated him.’

  ‘Well, now he knows,’ Jean said flatly.

  Sarah shook her head. ‘I’m not sure he does. He was surprised you left the room so fast, but he didn’t seem to know why. Men hear things very differently from women, Jean. Even Jim, who’s better than most, and knows you as well as anyone. I don’t think he heard you. At least, not as I did.’

  ‘But you’ll tell him,’ Jean said. ‘You’ll have to.’

  ‘Does anyone else know?’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘God, Jean, you don’t take the easy route, do you?’

  ‘I didn’t choose this bit,’ Jean said. She drummed a finger on the wood. ‘You know what they call people like me?’

  ‘Couldn’t you go to prison?’

  ‘If I was a man,’ Jean said. ‘I’ve always felt sorry for those men when I’ve read about them in the newspaper. But now I am one, if you know what I mean.’

  ‘She’s from such a different background,’ Sarah said in a solemn tone. ‘Doesn’t that make it even harder?’

  ‘Not so as I’ve noticed,’ Jean said, annoyed. Then she caught Sarah’s expression and before she could squash it, a giggle rose in her throat and she heard Sarah snort, and both of them were helpless with laughter.

  ‘We should go back in,’ Jean said at last. ‘Jim must be thinking something odd has happened by now. The children will turn into pumpkins soon.’

  ‘But it has!’ Sarah said. ‘Something has happened.’

  ‘Are you shocked?’ Jean said.

  Sarah looked at her steadily. ‘Yes … I don’t really understand. But I don’t think your love is wrong, and I’ll defend you against all comers.’

  ‘Do you think I’ll need knights in armour?’ Jean said, amused.

  ‘If this gets out, you’ll need more than knights, Jean. If this gets out, have you thought what it’ll do? To your professional standing? Your friendships? Have you thought what it’ll do to that boy?’

  Deep in their conversation, Lydia and Jim barely noticed the others’ return. Jean caught phrases like ‘repetitive frequency’ and ‘transmitting valves’ and there was much nodding between the pair and an occasional ‘mm’ of acknowledgement. She filled the sink with hot suds and dirty dishes while Sarah rounded up sleepy children. Emma began to cry with exhaustion, which brought the conversation to a swift close.

  ‘Take care, my friend,’ Sarah said as she hugged Jean goodnight.

  ‘We must speak again,’ Jim said to Lydia. ‘Delicious supper.’

  Once Charlie was in bed and the house put to rights again, the two women sat, stunned, at the kitchen table.

  ‘So is the cat out then?’ Lydia said.

  Jean hit her forehead with the heel of her hand and groaned.

  ‘I’m sorry. It was so stupid,’ she said. ‘I suppose I was too relaxed.’

  ‘It was the most exciting sentence I’ve ever heard,’ Lydia said. Reaching out, she stroked the back of Jean’s hand. ‘In front of your friends, to call me your love.’

  ‘Sarah heard, and Jim didn’t,’ Jean said.

  ‘What did she say?’

  ‘She asked what if people find out.’

  ‘Was she horrified? Or disgusted?’

  ‘No. But taken aback. And she doesn’t understand.’

  ‘Nor do I,’ said Lydia. ‘But there it is. It’s as real as the wood in this table.’

  Jean gripped Lydia’s hand, making a fist with it. ‘What would we do? If people found out and …’

  ‘Listen,’ Lydia said, lifting their hands, banging them down, so that the warm band of her wedding ring jagged into Jean’s knuckle.

  ‘All your medical training means you go in and in to something and worry out the cause. Is it this? Is it that? Rule things out till you get to the centre of it. But maybe we need to do the opposite thing. Maybe we need to go and find the centre of it somewhere else. The centre for us, I mean.’

  ‘You’re sounding like one of your detectives,’ Jean said, ‘after he’s hit the whisky.’

  ‘I’m serious, Jean. Your father’s got a shelf full of books about travelling, about people living their lives somewhere else. We can do that too. Go and live somewhere new.’

  Jean saw how Lydia’s chin
was set strong and fierce.

  ‘Make a virtue of necessity.’ She squeezed Jean’s hand. ‘We could go anywhere, us and Charlie. People always need doctors. France, or Italy; America even. But listen,’ she said, banging their hands on the table, ‘the only person who knows so far is Sarah, and she’s your friend, not your foe. Be calm.’

  When Lydia came to her bed that night, Jean wrote out her love with a fingertip across her lover’s shoulders, making the letters round and even.

  ‘Don’t use long words,’ Lydia said, her voice gruff with tiredness. ‘I won’t understand them.’

  And as Lydia curled away into her dreams, Jean slipped a hand between Lydia’s legs, buried her face in her hair and smiled into the dark.

  32

  It rained for a solid week at the end of November, from the far hills where Jean and Lydia had walked, down to the town, and beyond, to the plain where Mrs Sandringham and her sister pulled potatoes from waterlogged fields. It was joyless rain from a blank sky. By the time it was done, it had forced the river far beyond its normal banks.

  Charlie went with Bobby to the big bridge after school and they leaned over the parapet and stared at the angry mess of water rushing under the arches.

  ‘You’d see a corpse if you looked for long enough,’ Charlie said. ‘It’s a known fact.’

  ‘There’s just bits of wood and trees,’ Bobby said. ‘There aren’t any bodies. How come there’d have to be a body?’

  ‘Because,’ said Charlie patiently, ‘murderers often tip their victims into fast-flowing rivers and then the body gets bloated so it can only be recognized by its teeth, and anyway it’s miles from where it started by the time someone sees it, so that helps the murderer get away.’

  ‘But if nobody’s been murdered, there won’t be any bodies,’ Bobby said.

  ‘There will, because murderers like the rain. It brings them out, like rats.’ Charlie tossed in a stick and the boys watched it get sucked below the surface in a second. ‘The body might not surface for miles and miles. Like the stick, it gets dropped in and then disappears.’

  The water roiled and churned and the boys leaned further. They saw a dead fish, flipped this way and that, silver belly nipping the light. Then they saw something and Charlie said it was a dog, and Bobby a sheep, but anyway it was enough with its matted pelt and limbs flung about.