The Beekeeper's Secret

by Josephine Moon

  Dougal thought in silence for a few moments and Tansy waited. ‘Rebecca and I had had a good run before Leo came along,’ he said. ‘I know we hadn’t been together long when she fell pregnant, and I know we were young, but everything changed once Leo arrived. We fought all the time. The sleep deprivation, the crying, the stress, the pressure on me to achieve at uni, go out and find work and make money, the crushing responsibility of creating a life for him . . .’ He trailed off. ‘We resented each other. Lost interest in each other.’

  ‘But you were so young,’ Tansy said. ‘You were only twenty when he was born, virtually a teenager. Anyone would struggle.’

  He shrugged a shoulder. ‘Maybe.’

  ‘And now you’d have a totally different experience. It could be wonderful,’ she said, a glimmer of hope in her voice, romantic visions of shared parenthood floating around her mind. But he looked unconvinced.

  ‘Do you remember when we first talked about this, early on in our relationship, when I said I didn’t want more children? That time we were in the car on the way to the movies?’

  She shook her head. ‘Vaguely.’

  ‘You said that it was one of the great things about living in a country like ours, that you could make whatever choices you wanted and it was perfectly acceptable.’

  ‘Yes, I do remember that.’

  ‘And you said that there was no point putting the cart before the horse, that you needed a man before you could have a baby and it wouldn’t work the other way around.’

  She nodded. ‘That’s true.’

  ‘I told you that you’d have to make a clear choice.’

  ‘And I did.’

  ‘So can you explain to me what’s changed?’ His voice was soft, wanting to understand.

  ‘I’ve changed. I was younger then. What was important to me then is different to now. I’m the youngest person in my family. Everyone is older than me. I want some young blood; I want to know that life will continue after me.’

  ‘Your sister has children. Doesn’t that count?’

  ‘I get the feeling I’m not particularly important in Rose’s life anymore, let alone her kids’ lives.’

  ‘Then change that, and maybe it would be enough,’ he tried.

  She shook her head. ‘The simple fact is that I made a choice then but now I want to make a different choice.’

  They sat in silence for a few moments, looking at each other sadly and sipping their drinks carefully.

  ‘Where does this leave us?’ he asked. ‘Are you saying . . .’ He swallowed and his face crumpled up the way it had when he’d told her his father had died. ‘Are you saying you want out of this relationship?’ His voice cracked on the last word and she reached out to take his hand, fighting off a wave of panic herself.

  ‘No. But at the same time I just don’t know what to do,’ she said. ‘It’s an impossible situation.’

  They clung to each other for a while, desperate for some miracle answer, then they let go. Tansy pulled tissues from her purse and blew her nose. ‘You know what? We don’t need to do anything right now. Let’s just give it some time, okay? You’re leaving in a few days and I’m emotional and confused. Maybe the space will help us see things more clearly. Let’s not rush anything.’

  Dougal nodded and threw back the rest of his drink. ‘Promise me you’ll come to Canada,’ he said, his eyebrows low over his dark eyes. ‘At some point, whenever you’re ready. But promise me this isn’t it. This isn’t the end.’

  ‘It’s not,’ she said, the tears slipping down her face again. ‘It’s not the end. I promise I’ll come to Canada.’

  16

  The truck that lumbered up the slope to Richer Street on the western boundary of Toowong cemetery was loud enough, but the clanking and booming necessary to unload the massive excavator from its back and ease it to the road was something else. The noise was appalling, and George cringed with every scrape and heave of an engine and bang of the tilt tray. Already, a cluster of residents living across the road had gathered on the footpath to watch the commotion, probably connecting the dots pretty quickly as to what was going on at this time of night in the cemetery.

  Floodlights illuminated the section of mildewed graves and tombstones leading towards the priest’s final resting place. There were two police cars and several men in uniform overseeing the action and keeping people at bay, two journalists, a stray jogger and a dog walker, and a court official carrying loads of paperwork, his mobile phone clutched like a weapon, ready to pull the trigger and call for the judge at the slightest hint of trouble.

  ‘Why do you have to go?’ Hilda had asked, pouring chai tea into a thermos for him, a compromise they’d made on coffee.

  ‘I don’t, actually,’ he admitted.

  She looked at him, stricken. ‘Then why on earth would you go voluntarily?’

  He shrugged. He wasn’t sure himself except that it just felt right. He was shepherding this case. He’d called for the exhumation, based on a scrap of evidence and a lot of instinct. His reputation was on the line, as was his pride. But so too was his sense of duty to all the people he was trying to help via this investigation.

  He leaned against his car and looked up at the stars—faint, due to the light pollution created by the bustling madness of the city just a stone’s throw away, but still visible, still there. Looking down on everything. Distant, but accessible if you knew how to look. Like God.

  His fingers fished in the pocket of his trousers for an antacid, but all he found were the remains of the wrapper. He must have gone through a whole roll today. Again. Perhaps he should see his doctor and get a script for something stronger.

  The excavator lumbered awkwardly between the graves, the boom and arm top-heavy in front of the driver’s cab, and pitched and swayed as it rumbled over uneven ground, like some monstrous, drunken praying mantis. It screeched and clanged and roared. Its handlers on the ground shouted and waved. The driver braked suddenly as the arm narrowly avoided knocking a tall marble cross off an elaborate headstone. George grimaced. They could certainly do without complaints of damage.

  A low branch of an overhanging fig tree was ripped from the trunk and crashed to the ground as the blue digger adjusted its path, and he heard the audience on the footpath yell out at the vulgarity of it all.

  But finally the beast came to a halt at the foot of a long concrete-topped grave. The driver shifted the gears and the engine noise dropped to an idling rumble. George took a deep, relieved inhalation and raised himself off his car, began to pick his way carefully up to the site. The court official was there, checking his paperwork, cross-checking with one of the officers, checking and double-checking that they had the right plot. George stopped a few metres away, puffing from the climb, and waited.

  At last everyone was satisfied. They stepped back, and the court official raised two fingers to his forehead and then flicked them straight out in a salute to the excavator driver, and rapidly repeated the gesture to give him the go-ahead.

  The beast revved its huge engine. Now, free of the need to climb hills or tiptoe through graves, its true mechanical beauty shone through. Its arm and bucket effortlessly plucked off the grave’s concrete top and placed it gently to the side. Then its strong claws pierced the ground and carved up the earth in a matter of minutes.

  George’s blood pressure rose and he wiped at sweat around his neck.

  Another pause while three men in high-viz shirts and hard hats attached chains to the arm before climbing down into the open grave, disappearing below the ground, harnessing the exposed coffin.

  A helicopter flew overhead, the noise offering some distraction from the wait. A few of the residents from the street began to inch forward, and one of the blue-shirted officers moved towards them, hands raised, signalling them back again.

  Eventually, the men hauled themselves out of the grave and stepped clear of the excavator. With another roar of the engine, the chains pulled taut and the coffin came bumping and swaying up from bel
ow, rising into the air, clods of dirt falling from it.

  And George felt a strange sense of calm to know that, finally, all the truth would come out.

  17

  ‘Hello?’ Rose’s voice was uncertain, distant due to the car’s microphone, and fragmented, fighting to be heard over her children’s chatter. The school run, Tansy realised, checking the time on her own car’s dashboard.

  ‘Hello,’ Tansy said, genuinely happy to hear from her sister. ‘How are you?’

  ‘Yeah, you know,’ Rose said. ‘Another day, another marathon.’

  ‘What’s going on?’ Tansy’s voice was loud in her own ears. She hated talking on hands-free. It was always so stilted and functional, not relaxed and intimate, especially with an audience listening. ‘Hi, everyone,’ she called. A mishmash of hellos and babble answered her.

  ‘I’m just dropping the kids off but was hoping you might be around today. I thought I might come up with Amy and we could have lunch or something.’ Rose sounded down and anxious; Tansy sensed she had something she needed to talk about.

  Rats. She was already on her way to see Maria as they’d planned. And with their relationship so new, and with Maria on the verge of confiding in her, she didn’t want to cancel their meeting today.

  ‘I’d love to but I’ve got an appointment I can’t get out of.’ She didn’t want to start lying to Rose as well, but now was clearly not the moment to tell her sister about Maria, over squabbling children—there was some sort of argument going on about a cheese sandwich—and reception that stuttered in and out. ‘Can we do it tomorrow?’

  ‘No, sorry. I’m due at the school for a reading assistance program.’ Rose sounded disappointed.

  There was a moment’s silence as Tansy struggled to know what was best to do, while simultaneously exiting the highway at the turnoff to Eudlo.

  ‘Look, it doesn’t matter,’ Rose said, forcefully cheerful.

  ‘I’m truly so sorry,’ Tansy said. ‘It’s been too long. I’ve got lots to tell you about.’

  ‘Yes, me too.’

  ‘Is everything okay? You’ve been a bit off the radar lately.’

  ‘There’s a lot going on,’ Rose admitted, and Tansy knew for sure there was something important her sister needed to discuss.

  ‘Can you call me tonight? We could have a good chat then?’

  ‘Um, yeah, okay,’ Rose said unconvincingly.

  ‘But just quickly, before you go, I need to tell you that Dougal is leaving for Canada on Saturday.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘For work, and it looks like he’ll be needed there for up to two years. I’ll be going too,’ Tansy added, though it didn’t seem real.

  ‘Wow. How do you feel about that?’

  Tansy sighed. ‘It’s complicated. I’d like to tell you all about it tonight if we can. We told Mum last night and I didn’t want you to find out from anyone else.’

  ‘Yes, of course,’ Rose said. ‘Okay, I’ll try and call you tonight. Clearly we have a lot to catch up on.’

  ‘Excellent, looking forward to it.’

  Maria took the white box from her niece. ‘Fortune cookies?’

  ‘Dougal and I were at a bar last night and they were handing them out. Things have been unsettled lately so I didn’t want to tempt fate and open any myself. I could do without dire predictions of hair loss or planes falling from the sky right now.’

  Maria cracked open the brittle, puckered pastry of a cookie and pulled out the slip of paper from inside. In pale blue writing, her fortune was cast. It is very possible that you will achieve greatness in your lifetime.

  ‘Well, that’s a good one to get,’ Tansy said.

  Maria pondered the prediction. It seemed highly unlikely, given her past. Still, at this moment, there was a part of her that wanted the fortune cookie to be right so much that she was willing to believe in miracles. She put down the cookie crumbs and paper and resumed preparing her bits and bobs to make soap. Soap making wasn’t particularly difficult, but it was fiddly and you had to get the timing just so. It was best to have all the pieces of the puzzle laid out before you began.

  ‘What do you mean, things have been unsettled?’ she asked Tansy. And actually, now that she looked at her, her niece’s eyes held the look of someone who’d just received bad news.

  ‘Dougal’s leaving for Canada this Saturday.’

  ‘For how long?’ Maria lined up her bottles of essential oils—today she’d chosen rose, lemon and sandalwood—and the other ingredients to go with each one: cochineal and rose petals to go with the rose, freshly grated lemon zest with the lemon oil, and honey, nutmeg and cinnamon with the sandalwood.

  ‘We’re not sure. It’s a work relocation for up to two years. I was supposed to be going with him in a couple of months’ time. But the timing was suddenly brought forward and he only got a week’s notice. Now he’ll be gone for my birthday and the reunion, and to top it off we had a huge, ugly fight.’

  ‘Do you want to talk about it?’

  ‘I want a baby and Dougal doesn’t,’ Tansy said flatly.

  ‘I see.’

  Tansy filled her in on their situation and Maria listened and sympathised but really wasn’t sure what to say that could help, though she was touched that Tansy trusted her enough to share such personal feelings.

  ‘And now my mother’s come to stay because her marriage is in trouble,’ Tansy concluded.

  Maria chose her words carefully. ‘I’m sorry to hear that.’

  ‘Yes. She’s fretting today because she’s supposed to be at the parish leaders council tonight. She seems to get a lot of esteem from her role there. I think she feels like she’s a bigger part of the church than just an everyday parishioner.’ Tansy took a deep breath, waved a hand and adjusted the dusk-pink-coloured scarf at her neck. ‘You know what? You are the perfect excuse for me to get away from all that right now. I’ve got no in-home appointments for the next three days, and if Dougal is busy elsewhere then I intend to spend my time here, listening to your stories. We have a lot to catch up on and I don’t want to lose another moment. I can deal with what’s going on at home when I get home. Right now, I just want you to tell me everything.’

  So, the time had come. Maria had agreed to tell Tansy everything, and now she had to go through with it. She laid out the two-kilogram slab of white goat’s-milk soap on the chopping board and chose her sharpest carving knife. Making soap from a base product was something she once thought of as indulgent. It was far more expensive to make soap this way—not that she ever kept her beautiful creations. But making soap from scratch was a time-consuming and potentially dangerous activity.

  She suspected few people realised that soap was made by mixing lye—a caustic solution that would burn holes through a tea towel and burn your skin—with water to create a heating, fuming chemical concoction. You had to warm up your vegetable oils (or, in the old days, whale blubber), while watching for the lye mixture to cool down to the same temperature, and mix them when they had reached equilibrium. Then you added all your other mixers, like herbs and colours, and after that it had to cure for weeks. No, as much as she liked the idea of being able to do everything on her own, this was one thing on which she conceded.

  The knife carved slowly through the soap block under her firm pressure. And when she placed the pieces into the stainless-steel bowl and popped it over the saucepan of water on the stove, it struck her, as it always did, how similar the process was to making chocolate—melt, add ingredients, stir, pour, allow to set, pop out of moulds, and wrap up in pretty packaging.

  She straightened the silicone moulds—a blessed invention that made it infinitely easier to get the soap out—on the bench, biding her time before she had to face Tansy’s questions. ‘What do you want to know?’

  ‘Of course I’m dying to know why you no longer speak to my mother and Aunt Florrie. But I suspect that would be a difficult place to start.’

  Maria didn’t say anything, thinking that it was probably t
he least difficult place to start.

  ‘So let’s start at the convent,’ Tansy said, actually rubbing her hands together. ‘I bet you have so many stories and so many memories. But let’s begin with something random. Tell me what Christmas in the convent was like.’

  This was going to be a long conversation. The rest of the soap making would have to wait until it had her undivided attention. Once the soap base had melted, it needed focus and swift handling. ‘I’ll put the kettle on,’ Maria said, removing the soap from the stovetop. ‘I think better with a cup of tea in my hand.’

  Christmas time in the convent was one of the harder things for Maria to get used to. When she’d lived at home, and especially before her father died, the house had been awash with the smell of baking for what seemed like a whole month before the actual day. Her mother had been a prolific baker. She’d lived through the depression, of course, and had once confessed to Maria that one of the worst things about it was the sugar rationing; she had a terrible sweet tooth. She liked to soak the dried fruit in rum for weeks before baking. She relished the chance to make gingerbread men dusted with icing sugar, rolling out the dough and letting the girls eat the raw offcuts. The butter came from their neighbour’s cow’s milk, hand-churned by Elyse, and it gave the batter a warm yellow hue. Butter had never tasted as good since then. Store-bought butter today was like solid fat, but handmade butter had such a rich luxury to it.

  The lead-up to Christmas Day always involved many visitors—neighbours, church members, family and her father’s work colleagues. New tins of tea would arrive, in festive designs. And the house would be alive with moving whispers and secrets of gifts that had been bought or made for other members of the family, who weren’t supposed to know of them but inevitably found out through the secret conversations the sisters held in bed in the dark.

  Maria especially loved the Christmas Eve dinner they shared just as a family of five. Her dad would kill one of the geese, and her mother would roast it with spuds and turnips. They ate by candlelight and sang carols at the piano. The next day, visitors came all day long. They would sit around the twenty-seater table (which was actually two separate tables pushed together with three tablecloths on top), eating hot chicken sandwiches and playing cards. It was always loud, with lots of laughter and often an argument—frequently started by Enid, it had to be said—which was quickly settled by their mother.