by Peter James
Edward began to leaf busily through the pages of the Mail on Sunday, scanning the columns without reading them, as if he was searching for something.
Oliver frowned. Edward continued turning the pages in silence, shovelling his food into his mouth until he had finished, and put his knife and fork down, then he concentrated his full attention on the paper.
Oliver raised his eyebrows questioningly at Frannie and she pointed at the beetle’s remains. When he realized what it was his face darkened. ‘Edward, did you tread on the beetle?’
Edward ignored him and turned another page.
‘Edward?’ Oliver sounded angry. ‘What did you do that for? Why kill it?’
‘Beetles are vermin, Daddy.’
‘They’re not all vermin. And you shouldn’t torture animals.’
Edward simply looked at Oliver as if it were he who was the child.
Frannie saw in the boy’s face the same expression, the same power, that had made the dog tremble and back away yesterday, just as it now silenced his father. It chilled her. In Oliver’s eyes she read both anger and bewilderment.
‘For heaven’s sake, Daddy, I wasn’t torturing him; I was teaching him to play football. Frannie, have you finished? Shall we go and pick some plums now?’
Edward went to the scullery and brought out two wicker baskets with shoulder-straps. He held one for Frannie. She swallowed the rest of her coffee, fetched her boots, then followed him outside.
They walked down a recently mown track beside the brick wall of the vegetable garden. The sun was hot, but the breeze was back, stronger, sucking and releasing the bushes and the leaves in the trees with a sound like distant waves. The grass had been left where it had fallen and had turned to hay in the dry weather; the air was tainted with its sharp, peppery smell and the more acrid reek of the cow-parsley that rose untamed either side.
‘Captain Kirk’s gone away,’ Edward said suddenly, rather offhand.
‘Gone?’ she said, wondering what Oliver had told him.
‘He’s gone away,’ he repeated, then lapsed into silence.
Frannie tried a different tack. ‘Edward, in your photo album in the attic there’s a newspaper cutting about someone called Jonathan Mountjoy, who was killed in America. Did you know it’s there?’
‘Yes.’
‘Did you cut it out?’
He nodded.
‘Why?’
‘I don’t know,’ he said guilelessly.
‘Do you cut out other things from newspapers?’
‘Sometimes.’
‘What sort of things?’
There was no reaction. She looked at him. ‘Edward?’ Still no reaction. He had sunk into silence, leaving her thrown as usual.
She walked on beside him into a large, hopelessly neglected orchard. There were rows of trees laden with fruit, their branches weighted down, some almost touching the ground. Plums and greengages lay all around in the long, weed-strewn grass – wasps, bluebottles and flies crawling over them, burrowing into them. She trod on a plum, felt it squelch beneath her and looked at the mess of brown, overripe flesh. Through a gap ahead she could see rows of apple trees, similarly laden, the fruit looking less ripe.
Edward jumped up and grabbed a low branch and swung down on it, then released it. The tree shook and plums thudded down all around them. One struck Frannie’s head and fell beside her. She picked it up, wiped it on her jeans and bit it. It was soggy and had a faintly rotten taste.
‘The Victorias are the best, Frannie,’ Edward said, and took her hand. ‘Let’s pick those!’
‘What’s the Latin for them?’
Edward did not reply as he walked on, suddenly taking her hand and holding it tightly, hurrying her as if afraid the fruit might disappear. He led her to a cluster of trees laden with large, egg-shaped plums, some green, some yellow with red streaks. ‘These!’ he said.
Frannie picked one and bit it. It was hard and sour.
‘They ripen much later than the others,’ Edward said. ‘You have to look carefully to find the ripe ones. I’ll get one for you!’ He released her hand and scampered ahead, his eyes scanning the branches of the next tree. He looked carefully at one large plum that was a deep yellow colour, curling his fingers around it gently as if worried it was fragile, and then pulled it very slowly, his face puckered in concentration. ‘Here you are!’ He held it out.
‘Thanks!’ She took it, raised it to her mouth and bit into it. As she did so, something tickled the inside of her lip. There was a strange fluttering sensation in her mouth, then a fierce pain on her inner lower lip. She opened her mouth, spitting frantically. There was a stab like a red-hot needle in the base of her tongue. She tossed her head, spitting again, then again something was flicking backwards and forwards in her mouth; it stabbed her ferociously a second time.
She spat again, then again, tiny fragments of plum flying out. A dark thing came out too, fell, dipping, then rose. A wasp; it flew away unsteadily.
She clamped her hand to her mouth, the pain almost unbearable, pinched her lip between her fingers, then her tongue, to try to ease the excruciating agony. She called out from her throat as another wasp buzzed around her, shaking her head in sudden panic. ‘Edward! Help!’ She pinched her tongue harder with her fingers, pressed her lips tightly together, stumbled forward, her vision blurred with tears. ‘Edward!’ A branch struck her face. ‘Edward!’ Another branch hit her in the eye.
Ammonia for bees, Vinegar for wasps. Her father had said that when she was stung as a child. AB. VW. The thought repeated itself. AB. VW. It became a chant in her head as she stumbled out of the orchard, and back along the path beside the walled kitchen garden, heading as fast as she could towards the house.
AB-VW-AB-VW
Sarson’s vinegar. She visualized the bottle. AB. VW.
Sarson’s vinegar. There was a bottle on each table at her parents’ café. Vinegar and HP Sauce. The pain seared her mouth. She fought back more tears. It was worsening every second.
AB. VW. The words buzzed like a wasp in her brain. Willing herself on, she repeated them over and over in case she got to the house and did not know what to do. Edward was somewhere. She was still carrying the basket for the plums. A keening cry came from deep within her. She pulled her handkerchief out of her pocket and stuffed that into her mouth and stumbled on.
In the orchard, Edward shook another tree, and busily picked the best plums off the ground, checking each one carefully for insects, then laying them gently in the basket, careful not to bruise any, working methodically, remembering he must not fill the basket too much otherwise it would be too heavy to carry.
The house stood ahead beyond the beech grove. The pain would be better after she reached it. The house would stop the pain. Oliver would stop the pain. She ran in front of a young woman posing for her husband’s camera as the shutter clicked. ‘Sorry,’ she said, but no voice came out and the word echoed, trapped inside her brain. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry.
She shook her head from side to side as if this might ease the burning in her mouth. She chewed on her handkerchief. Her lips felt like swollen bladders. Pain ate its way up behind her eyes, down into her gullet.
She opened the front door, charged into the hallway that was pitch dark after the brilliant sunlight, saw Oliver hunched over the kitchen table, phone pressed to his ear, in deep concentration. An egg whisk leaned out of a white china bowl on the table in front of him. The radio was on, the Archers weekly round-up.
‘Eleven?’ he was saying. ‘The eleventh last night?’ He gestured a greeting at Frannie with his left arm, barely acknowledging her, tapping the table thoughtfully with his right index finger. ‘The same symptoms? Does the vet still reckon it’s milk-drop syndrome?’
She turned to Edward for help and was surprised to see that he was not behind her; she thought he had been following her. She opened a cupboard. It was full of china and glass bowls. She shut it and opened another, which was stacked with plates. Then another and stared t
hrough tears of frustration at a wok and an assortment of frying-pans. The pain in her tongue became unbearable. She squeezed it between her finger and thumb.
‘Surely the vet must have some idea?’ Oliver said calmly.
She yanked open another door, her eyes misting. The shelves contained a food mixer and various attachments. She clenched her mouth even tighter over the balled handkerchief, and managed an inarticulate sound.
‘Charles, hang on,’ Oliver said. ‘Frannie – what was that?’
She was desperate, wondering why on earth he couldn’t see her distress. ‘Vrrngigr.’ The handkerchief blotted up her words.
He looked at her properly and stood up, anxious suddenly.
‘Vringar,’ she repeated and lurched towards a cupboard. She turned back towards him, pleading with her eyes.
‘Christ, Charles. I’ll call you right back.’
She was trying all the cupboards, leaving the doors open. China … glass bowls … frying-pans … and then one full of bottles. Pickles, ketchup, Worcester Sauce, soy sauce, olive oil. Vinegar. She reached in. There were three different kinds: light vinegar, cider vinegar, dark brown vinegar. She took the dark one out, pulled the handkerchief from her mouth, unscrewed the top of the bottle and shook vinegar on to it, soaking it, then pushed it back into her mouth.
The acidity shot straight up her nose and her eyes snapped shut. She coughed the handkerchief out into her hand, staggered to the sink, hung over it and gagged. The taps and the stainless steel basin rolled past her as if they were on castors. She felt Oliver’s hand on her shoulder.
‘What is it, Frannie? What’s happened?’
She looked up at him, trying to speak, but her tongue clogged her mouth and her lips wouldn’t move properly. ‘Wassp,’ she hissed, and closed her eyes. When she opened them again he was holding her face in his hands, examining her mouth.
She tapped her lips then peeled the bottom one back. ‘Wrsspp. Stnnng. In plum.’
‘Wasp? You’ve been stung?’
She nodded feverishly, pointed to two spots on her lips, then her tongue.
‘On your tongue? Oh, God! Did you stumble into a nest?’ His face creased with anxiety and his cornflower-blue eyes seemed to lose their colour.
She breathed in sharply, clenching her eyes shut, then exhaling sharply. Oliver stood it for sixty seconds and then announced, ‘I’m taking you to Casualty. I’ve got some sting-relief stuff upstairs but we can’t put that in your mouth.’ He gently pulled her lips, turning them over, looking inside. He checked the clock on the wall. ‘Actually, no, it might be quicker if I try our doctor, see if he’s in by any chance.’ He picked the phone up.
Frannie opened her eyes. The taste of the vinegar made her gag again and she hung her head over the sink, stared down at potato peelings, the tops of carrots and a teaspoon covered in congealed coffee. The fire in her mouth was getting hotter. She rinsed it out with a glass of cold water and that made it worse.
She caught her reflection in the side of the kettle and tried to examine the marks, but it distorted her face too much to see clearly. She remembered there was a mirror in the hall and went out.
In the dim light, her skin looked pale and lifeless. Mascara ran in black streaks down her left cheek, but she barely registered it. As she leaned closer she was surprised that her lip was hardly swollen at all; just a little puffy. She peeled it back and there were just two tiny red marks that were barely noticeable. She curled up her tongue and could see just a tiny red spot, like an ulcer.
She pressed the handkerchief back in her mouth; the fire cooled just a fraction and the vinegar wrung more tears from her eyes. She wiped them with her sleeve and walked back towards the kitchen, bumping clumsily against the wall, and knocking a couple of pictures.
‘Would you?’ Oliver said into the phone as she came in. ‘She’s really in terrible pain.’
She sat down opposite him. A tear fell on to the front page of the Mail on Sunday and spread in a small grey stain. ‘Bush Gets Tough’, said the blurred headline. She wanted to be tough too, was trying to compose herself, to stop crying.
Oliver hung up. ‘He’ll be here in ten minutes – he only lives at Glynde. He says vinegar is the best thing.’
She closed her eyes, nodding gratefully.
He looked carefully inside her mouth again. ‘You’re not allergic to wasps?’
She shook her head.
‘Your tongue doesn’t look swollen. You can breathe OK?’
This time she nodded.
He put his arm around her shoulder and squeezed her firmly; then he kissed the top of her head. ‘I’m so sorry. Horrible. It’s been a bad year with the wasps, we’ve been plagued by them.’
As she looked up at him, she caught him staring back at her, searching her face carefully with a troubled expression. Searching not for stings but for something else, trying to read her mind. Then he switched focus and she turned her head, startled.
Edward struggled in through the door, his wicker basket laden with plums, holding it with both hands, his face red from exertion as he carried it proudly to his father.
‘See how many I got, Daddy!’
‘Frannie’s been stung by a wasp,’ Oliver said starkly.
Edward looked shocked. He dropped the basket on to the floor, ignoring the plums that spilled from it and ran to her. ‘Frannie, no! Wasps! Are you all right?’ He looked at her face, his eyes wide open, so distraught she thought for a moment he was going to cry. ‘Where?’
She stared back at him warily, and pointed at her mouth. Her expression was accusatory.
‘In the plum? In the one I gave you?’
‘Ysh.’
His face crumpled as if it had been deflated and his voice rose into a whine. ‘There wasn’t; there couldn’t have been! Frannie, there couldn’t, I was really careful – I nearly bit one with a wasp in once and I always look. Frannie, I’m sorry, does it hurt a lot?’
She nodded.
He turned to Oliver. ‘I picked it, Daddy, specially for Frannie.’ A tear ran down his cheek, and in spite of her pain Frannie suddenly felt a heel for her attitude. ‘I did,’ he said.
She reached her arm around him and hugged him. Then she buried her face in her free hand as the pain once more became unbearable.
The doctor examined each of the stings diligently and, with profuse sympathy, asked her if she had any allergies, then gave her an injection of hydrocortisone. He told her the pain might continue for a while and to take aspirin.
She spent the rest of the morning in a lounger beside the swimming-pool that was secluded from the prying eyes of visitors by a topiaried yew hedge. Edward stayed close to her as if he had personally taken charge of her recovery, lapsing into long periods of silent concentration on his Game Boy, to Frannie’s relief, enabling her to read the papers.
A page of the Sunday Times on the ground beside her lifted in the breeze and rolled over with a crackle. She looked up and watched Edward, bent intently over his machine, biting his lower lip in concentration and pushing the buttons. She heard the faint tones of the synthetic music and the muffled explosions, and continued to watch him, as if she could somehow understand him by doing so. She needed to solve the enigma of how he could be so warm and alert at times, then suddenly switch off completely, seeming to be elsewhere. It was disturbing. Despite her earlier resolve, she hadn’t liked to raise it with Oliver, because she sensed that she might be treading on forbidden territory.
Maybe there was nothing sinister about it. Maybe it was his mother’s death that had caused it. The trauma of seeing his mother decapitated. She wondered how she would have reacted in the same circumstances. Perhaps Oliver was fortunate the child had kept his sanity at all.
She replayed in her mind the moment when Edward had picked and handed her the plum. Saw again the innocence in his face. Tried to compare it to the innocence of his expression on the boat yesterday.
He glanced at her suddenly, and she lowered her eyes to the pool. S
he watched the pipe that stretched beneath the surface, and the automatic cleaner working its way busily up and down. An unappetizing scum of froth and dead flies had gathered in one corner.
I hope you’re not planning to sleep with my daddy.
Her unease was growing.
Edward was regarding her with his warm brown eyes. ‘How are you feeling now, Frannie?’
‘A little better,’ she said.
‘Would you like to have a go with my Game Boy?’
‘Sure.’
‘I’m going to kill every wasp I ever see,’ he said.
She smiled. ‘You don’t have to do that.’
‘I’m going to,’ he said darkly. ‘You’re my friend. They’re going to be sorry for what they did to you.’
The sun went behind a cloud, and she shivered as a sudden sense of fear swamped her. She remembered the beetle from a few hours ago. And the words Edward had used as he opened the matchbox. This is my new friend.
She remembered how he had parted company with it.
CHAPTER TWELVE
They had lunch in the courtyard. The sun shone intermittently between increasing spells of cloud. Oliver had cooked the chicken well, it was moist and lightly flavoured with tarragon, but eating was painful for Frannie and instead she drank too much of the ice-cold rosé. Edward waged a relentless war against the wasps, somewhat to Oliver’s irritation, trapping them beneath upturned glasses, crushing them with his fork, and drowning one in his glass of Coke. Then he put down his knife and fork, leaving his food almost untouched.
‘This chicken tastes funny, Daddy. What have you put in it?’
‘A herb called tarragon.’
Edward screwed up his face. ‘You always muck things up when you gourmet them.’ He turned to Frannie.
Frannie smiled and saw that Oliver looked rather crestfallen. She wondered if his wife had been a good cook.
‘There’s gratitude!’ he said. ‘Back home for twenty-four hours and he’s already criticizing my cooking.’ He glared at his son with a mock-fierce expression. ‘OK, Paul Bocuse junior, why don’t you rustle us up something next time?’