The Beekeeper's Daughter

by Santa Montefiore

  She soon settled into the rhythm of married life. Instead of cooking and washing for her father, she was baking and darning for Freddie. Without Arthur to cultivate the garden she attended to it herself. It wasn’t long before she was weeding and planting, pruning and deadheading just as Arthur had done before her. She missed him dreadfully, but looking after his beloved bees and gardens made her feel connected, because if he lived on, he would surely be there, among the things he’d loved the most.

  In the spring of 1939 Rufus married Lady Georgina at her family estate of Thenfold in Hertfordshire, the Dowager Lady Penselwood suffered a fatal heart attack in the vegetable garden, and Hitler marched his army into Czechoslovakia.

  War was on everyone’s lips, and the Fox and Goose vibrated with young men declaring loyalty to king and country with patriotic zeal and foolish naivety. Among them was Freddie. “Everyone’s signing up,” he told Grace and his mother. “Even your friend Rufus Melville is going to fight,” he added to Grace. Grace felt a cold and clammy dread in the pit of her stomach and didn’t know whether it was on account of Rufus or Freddie. “It’s going to be exciting. I’m going to join the Dorset Yeomanry,” he declared proudly. “We’re not going to let the Germans invade. We’ll sacrifice our lives for England’s green and pleasant land.”

  May had gone pale, for she remembered the first war and the fathers and sons who had gone off to fight with the same bravado, never to return. But Freddie knew nothing of war, and to him and other young men like him it promised adventure and excitement and a welcome release from the parochial monotony of their ordinary lives. Arthur had never spoken about the Great War, and Grace knew from the way he had averted his eyes and drawn his lips into a thin line that war was unspeak­able. She took Freddie’s hand, but he was high on excitement and patriotic fervor and barely noticed it. Grace was suddenly gripped by a terrible fear. If she lost Freddie, she’d have nothing left.

  As the clouds of war grew increasingly dark on the horizon, Grace tried to live as she always had, with joy and optimism. Yet the pleasure she derived from the trees and flowers, the birds and bees, was tinged with melancholy because war threatened everything that was beautiful. She felt vulnerable and afraid, and however much she focused her attention on the moment, as her father had taught her to do, the future invaded like the tentacles of an octopus, to drag her deep into her fears.

  Then, one afternoon in early summer, Freddie cycled up to the cottage and shouted through the kitchen window with urgency. “Grace! They need you up at the Hall. There’s a swarm and you’re the only one who knows what to do with it. Lady Georgina is beside herself. You must hurry.” Grace took off her apron, tied up her hair, and shut Pepper in the kitchen. Freddie was waiting for her with her bicycle.

  “She hasn’t been stung, has she?” Grace asked, climbing on.

  “No, but she’s in a right panic.”

  “Are you coming with me?”

  “I’ll come with you to the house, then I’d better get back to the farm.”

  “We’ll cut through the woods, it’s quicker that way.” They cycled off together. “Have they come to live down here now?” she asked.

  “Lord Melville wants her in the country now there’s going to be a war. It won’t be safe in London.”

  “I’m still hoping it won’t happen.”

  “Don’t waste your energy, Grace. It’s happening all right, and it’s going to be soon.” He grinned at her. “You could join the Wrens.”

  “Someone will have to keep the farm going while you boys are busy playing soldiers. I’ll take your job, and then when the war is over they’ll give me Mr. Garner’s job and you’ll wish you never went off to fight.”

  “I’d like to see you laboring away in the fields.”

  “I think I’d enjoy it, actually.”

  “Mr. Garner’s talking of getting in some livestock. Cows for milk and pigs for ham.”

  “They already have chickens.”

  “And you’ll have to look after them all.”

  “Lady Georgina and me looking after pigs and milking cows!” She laughed heartily. “Now that’s a funny thought.”

  • • •

  When Freddie and Grace arrived at the house Mr. Swift, the keeper, was waiting for them with the new head gardener, Mr. Heath. Mr. Swift had known Arthur for years, and when he saw Grace he smiled affectionately. “Ah, Grace, not a moment too soon. Her ladyship has withdrawn inside.” He chuckled, for Mr. Swift was a wise and mellow man, as Arthur had been. “You’d have thought the Germans had invaded,” he said in a quiet voice. “A lot of fuss about nothing, if you ask me.”

  “You’d better come round to the back of the house, Mrs. Valentine,” said Mr. Heath, his country accent wrapping itself around his vowels like soft squirrels’ tails. “There’s a cloud of bees. A black cloud. Swarming all over the garden. Quite a sight, it is. Don’t know what you’re going to do with them.”

  “Let’s have a look and I’ll tell you,” Grace replied.

  Freddie disappeared to the farm and Grace followed the two men round to the back of the house. The gardens looked splendid. Fat flowers shone in the sunshine and the leaves on the trees were still a bright, phosphorescent green. The lawn had recently been cut, and cat’s ear and chickweed grew among blue cranesbill and white campions on the bank leading up to the paddock. For a moment she forgot her purpose and slowed down to admire the magnificence of the gardens which had once been her father’s domain.

  At the back of the house was a large terrace where Lady Georgina had clearly been sitting only minutes before, for her magazines were strewn on the table along with a pretty china teapot, a delicate cup with its saucer, and a little jug for milk, while the cushions had been placed on all the chairs and benches for her comfort. Music still resounded through the house from a gramophone inside, but the record was stuck and the notes kept repeating themselves.

  The cloud of bees was still swarming in front of the wall where purple clematis grew in abundance and honeysuckle infused the air with its warm and fruity perfume. Grace put her hands on her hips and looked up to a place just below the second-floor windows. There, as she had anticipated, was a bundle of bees about the size of a rugby ball. To the untrained eye they looked as if they were simply climbing on top of each other in a desperate struggle to get inside the bricks, but Grace knew better. “They’re protecting the queen, trying to find a new nest for her,” she told the men. “She’ll be beneath that cluster.”

  “Lady Penselwood won’t want a nest in her wall, Grace,” said Mr. Swift. “You’ll have to get rid of them somehow.”

  “Lady Melville won’t come outside until they’re gone,” added Mr. Heath. “She’s right scared of bees.”

  Mr. Swift took off his cap and raked his weathered fingers through gray woolly hair. “They don’t look like they’re planning on going anywhere tonight.” He replaced his hat. “So, what are you going to do, Grace?”

  “I could do two things. I could rattle some tins to drown out the sound of the queen, which would make them all disperse. But I think I’ll go home and return at sunset with my protective clothing. By then they will have formed a big ball of sleepy bees and I’ll simply swipe them off the wall and put them in a basket. I might see if I can make a new hive. Just depends what sort of bees they are. We’ll soon find out.” She remembered one of her father’s sayings: A swarm in May is worth a load of hay. A swarm in June is worth a silver spoon. A swarm in July isn’t worth a fly. In which case the swarm would take to their new home very happily.

  “Right, I’ll tell Lady Melville,” said Mr. Swift.

  “She won’t be coming out again this afternoon,” Mr. Heath added.

  “Then you can tell the maid that it’s perfectly safe to come outside to clear away the tea. They’re not going to sting anyone. They’re far too busy with their nest,” said Grace. “Right, I’ll make my way home
and return when it starts to get dark.”

  Grace walked with Mr. Heath back to her bicycle. “Your father was a gifted man,” he told her gravely. “I have great admiration for him.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Heath. He loved this place.”

  “I can tell. The gardens have been cherished, that’s for sure.”

  “I’m the gardener at home now. Dad taught me well, but I’ve still much to learn.”

  “If you’d like to come up here from time to time, I’d be happy to give you advice. What with the war coming and everything, the young men will be going off to fight and we’ll be short of gardeners. I’ll be grateful for your help as well.”

  Grace’s face lit up. “I’d love to. Do you really mean that?”

  “I really do,” he replied with a smile. “Me, Mr. Garner, and Mr. Swift will be the only men around, being old and not fit to fight.”

  “I would think that was a blessing.”

  “I fought in the Great War, Mrs. Valentine, and I wouldn’t want to fight in another, but my heart cries out for those young men who don’t know the horrors of it, blind with patriotism and a misguided sense of romance. There’s nothing romantic about war.”

  “I’m afraid my Freddie is one of those young men.”

  “I hope he has an angel watching over him, then.”

  “So do I, Mr. Heath.”

  As she took up her bicycle once again her mind turned to Rufus and she wondered where he was. She thought of him going off to fight and her heart contracted with fear. It wasn’t so very long ago that they had chatted on the lawn. He had called her Little Bee. She remembered now.

  • • •

  Later, when Grace returned in her protective clothing carrying a woven skep, she noticed Rufus’s Alfa Romeo on the gravel at the front of the house and her stomach flipped over like a pancake. She hoped someone would tell him she was outside with the bees and perhaps he’d be inspired to come out and talk to her. With that thought, she almost skipped round to the back of the house.

  No one had cleared away Lady Georgina’s magazines or her tea, but they had stopped the music. It was dusk now. The air was balmy and heavily scented with all the sweet-smelling flowers in the garden. Mr. Heath had taken it upon himself to bring round a ladder, but there was no one ready to hold it for her. Until Rufus appeared like a phantom, and then, suddenly, nothing else seemed important anymore. Not the bees, not Lady Georgina’s fear, not war.

  “Well, you do look scary in that costume,” he said, chuckling softly as the end of his cigarette blazed scarlet in the half-light.

  “It’s my beekeeping costume,” she replied, heart pounding at the sight of him, so tall and elegant in a velvet dinner jacket and velvet slippers embroidered with the crest of the lion and dragon.

  “Of course. You’re the beekeeper.”

  “There’s a swarm.”

  “So Georgie tells me.” He looked up at the roof. “They seem to have gone to bed now.”

  “Which is why I’m here to take them to their new home. I have a hive ready for them at the cottage.”

  “You clever thing! How are you going to do that?”

  “By putting on my hat, taking this skep here, and literally wiping them off the wall. They’ll come away in a ball.”

  “And how are you proposing to take them back to their hive?”

  “I was going to walk.”

  “You were going to walk? In the dark?” He arched an eyebrow.

  “It’s not dark yet. I was hoping to get home before it’s dark.”

  He smiled and his teeth shone white against skin made brown by the impending night. “But now you’re talking to me.”

  She laughed nervously. “Yes, that might delay me a little.”

  “So, if you’re delayed because of me, it’ll be my duty to drive you home.”

  “Really . . .” she began.

  “I insist,” he interrupted crisply, then sighed wearily. “Anything to avoid going into the drawing room. Mama and Georgie are having a heated discussion about what they’re going to do when war is announced. It’s very tiresome. Pigs or goats or sheep or cows? Neither of them knows one end of a cow from the other, so really it’s a case of the blind leading the blind. Papa is in his study, building a model boat, and me: well, I can hardly stay listening to those two geese, can I? Not without losing my mind. So here I am, at the service of the beekeeper and very happy about it, too. Tell me how I can help? Perhaps I can delay you a little longer with my ineptitude.” His soliloquy had rendered her speechless. She stared at him, her face full of astonishment. “You do need help, you know. If only to hold the ladder as you climb its dizzy heights.” He threw the remains of his cigarette into the hellebores.

  “Yes, the ladder,” she replied at last. “Goodness, you sound desperate.”

  “I am, Grace. If Grandmama were still alive, I’d have sought refuge with her. She would have understood.”

  “I’m sorry about your grandmother.”

  “So am I. Very sorry. I miss her every day. I imagine you miss your father, too.”

  “Yes, I do. I visit him as often as I can.”

  His face softened and he looked at her intently. “Do you? Do you really?”

  “Yes. He’s only in the churchyard.”

  “How sweet you are, Grace,” he said gently.

  “Don’t you visit your grandmother?”

  “Not since her funeral.”

  “Why not?”

  “I’ve been busy in Bovington, I suppose.” He looked at his feet. “I don’t like churches or graveyards, Grace. That’s the truth. I find death appalling.” He raised his eyes and smiled at her sadly. “Am I a brute for not going to visit her?”

  “Of course you aren’t. She’s not there anyway.”

  “Really? Then where is she?”

  “With you.”

  “I admire your certainty. I do hope you’re right, Grace.”

  “I’m sure Dad is with me. I like to think of him in our garden or with the hives. I’m sure he’s in all the places he loved the most.”

  “You married,” he said suddenly.

  “Yes. Thank you for the flowers. It was really very kind of you.”

  “I’m glad you got them. Were they big enough?”

  “They were enormous.”

  He beamed, pleased. “Good.”

  “And for your letter when my father died. Really, you’re much too attentive. I don’t feel I can give anything back.”

  “I don’t want anything back, Grace.”

  “Well, it’s terribly kind of you, anyhow.” There was an awkward pause, but Grace was quick to fill it. “You married, too. I forgot to congratulate you. Silly of me.”

  “Yes, we’re both married.”

  Grace was sure she sensed a heaviness in those words. “Yes, isn’t it lovely,” she replied, ashamed that her voice sounded flat.

  He looked at her with affection, as if her naivety amused him. “So, tell me what to do. I’m your assistant now. The ladder? I suppose there’s no stopping you scaling it like a squirrel.”

  “Yes, the ladder. I need to climb it to get to the bees.”

  “Then I’ll hold it for you so it doesn’t wobble. Nothing worse than a wobbly ladder when one’s at the top of it.” He chuckled and bent down to lift it off the grass. Once he had set it securely against the wall of the house, as near to the bees as possible without disturbing them, he turned to Grace triumphantly. “How’s this for service?”

  “It’s perfect.”

  “Are you going to climb with that basket—or skep, as you call it? Shouldn’t I hold it for you until you’ve reached the top?”

  “I can manage, thank you.” With that she stepped closer and put her foot on the first rung. Rufus was right beside her now. She could smell the lime scent of his cologne and th
e tobacco on his breath.

  “Do be careful up there,” he said.

  She began to climb. Rufus held the bottom of the ladder and watched her as she ascended towards the ball of sleeping bees. “Are you there yet?” he asked. “Don’t fall, I can’t promise I’d catch you, though I’d try my damnedest.” When she reached the bees, she steadied herself, placed the basket beneath them, then swept them deftly off the wall with the other hand. Rufus watched as she maneuvered with both hands off the ladder and held on to the bottom of it with all his strength. “Grace, you’re making me very uneasy down here. What the devil is Mr. Heath doing, leaving you to risk your life like this? Hurry up and come down. I insist. I won’t have you up there a minute longer.”

  When Grace reached the bottom, she was laughing so much that her stomach was hurting.

  “What are you laughing at?” he asked indignantly.

  “You,” she replied. “You were going on and on . . .” She laughed again.

  “Well, you worried me, that’s all.” He watched her put the lid on the basket. “Did you get them all?”

  “All of them.” She took off her hat. “Thank you, Lord Melville.”

  “Rufus. Dear God, we know each other well enough to use our first names. I told you to call me Rufus six years ago. Besides, I can’t call you Mrs. Valentine. That’s absurd. I’ve just saved your life.” Now he smiled with her. “You’re mocking me, Grace.”

  “You should hear yourself.”

  “I’m showing you concern. You should be grateful.”

  “I am, very grateful. You’ve made my day.” He couldn’t know how true that was. They both laughed together.