The Beloved Girls

by Harriet Evans

  This swarm did not move, and the Reverend did not ask them to move. With the last of his money he bought from a friend of Ned Watchet’s a skep, a hive made of willow reeds, coiled into the hive shape. He caked it with the salty mud from the flats on the beach. Then he kneeled down in the chapel and he said a prayer over them. Standing in the empty space, the sound of the gentle, menasing humming outside, he blessed the bees for finding him, for visiting him, and he asked them to stay. He made a pact with them, in fact.

  I will protect you with this vow: if anyone tries to remove you, the Devil will remove them. If anyone takes more than his share of your honey, the Devil take them. If anyone comes here and lies to you, and does not tell you their secrets, the Devil will see his heart’s desires and strike him down. Half for us and half for you, else the Devil take us all.

  There are those who say he did not invoke the Devil, but it must be true, because of what happened.

  That Sunday, and the following, still no one came. And he said the words again, and by now the bees were settled inside the tombs and inside the skep, which he set upon the ground outside the chapel and they did not like being disturbed. They were angry bees, and it remains true to this day.

  Finally, he went into the village and bought a slab of sugar and set it upon the wall beside the chapel, and the bees were grateful, but still no one came.

  A month went by and he waited at the chapel door to welcome his flock, but no one came, and now Reverend Diver grew angry. He was brown from summer sun. ‘I wish I hadn’t helped you,’ he screamed at the bees, and only Watchet heard him, and he was used to his madness by then.

  Then it was the end of summer, 24th August, feast day of St Bartholomew, patron saint of bees and glovemakers, and Reverend Diver came early to the church, his eyes downcast, sunken in their sockets. He stood by the door, waiting.

  And then he felt a hand on his arm, and up he jumped, almost out of his wits. There was Ned Watchet and his wife Lily, and their two children. ‘We thought we’d worship with you today,’ he said. ‘Seeing as how the Reverend Culney’s been taken ill.’

  And as he was seating them inside the small space, he heard a cough, and there was young Amabel Turleigh, the fresh young governess over at the Hall, with Augusta Dawson, the formidable housekeeper, and Amabel could not meet his eye, for she was desperately shy, but Mrs Dawson told him she’d risen that morning with a sudden desire to worship the Lord.

  ‘Come, Mrs Dawson,’ he said, kindly. ‘Come in and be seated. God is here.’

  ‘Come child,’ Mrs Dawson said briskly to Amabel, who raised her eyes to his, blushing furiously, and the Reverend chucked her under the chin.

  ‘You are safe here, my dear,’ he said, his finger resting underneath her jaw for a moment. ‘Be not afraid.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ she said, and Mrs Dawson watched, approvingly, but old Ned saw this, and was troubled.

  And more behind them, the Locksleys over at Larcombe Hall, for the curate had been taken ill there too, paralysed in the night they said, and then Pauly Goddard and his family, they’d walked all the way from Tors Head, and more and more until the tiny chapel was full, then finally out of the woods the lepers came, and they stood at the window, and the others watched them with respect, and said nothing, everyone listening to Caradoc Diver preach. He found he had to shout to be heard over the sound of the bees.

  ‘Today a miracle has happened,’ he called, to them all. ‘You came, in faith, to worship our Lord, to stand together, on this last summer day, you came in love, to show him your devotion, and you came because I – I asked it.’

  There was a fresh honeycomb inside one of the tombs. He reached inside and tore off some of the paper-thin comb, and ate it. The sugar burned his tongue, the back of his mouth, and he gave some to old Ned, who closed his eyes.

  ‘’Tis good honey,’ the older man said, nodding.

  The Reverend Diver thought suddenly of the bees, and the pact he had made, but then brushed it aside. He stared instead at the faces of the congregation, packed so tight in, staring at him. He had them. He had them now. ‘Come, take some. Here, and here.’ Glancing at Mrs Locksley’s scandilized expression he said: ‘It is not the communion, Mrs Locksley. It is an honest declaration of thanks for what God has provided. For does not Milton say: Let us with a gladsome mind?’

  And he tore of a small piece of the comb, and handed it to her, and when she tasted it, her eyes were lit from within with golden fire, and she smiled.

  The Reverend Culney over at Larcombe never recovered from what had ailed him that morning. He was found dead outside his cottage, face down in a rose bush. So those from Larcombe stayed with Reverend Diver. They had tasted the honey, and rumours soon began to abound about its properties. Some said there was magic in it, or a madness, that it made you invincible, that it sent you crazy. But still the congregation swelled.they came, and others joined them.

  Reverend Diver was grateful. He reaped the benefit of the bees. He called the chapel St Bees, though it had been dedicated to St Dunstan, an abbot who had apparently several times defeated the Devil. His congregation swelled. It was rumoured that he had cured the lepers in the woods. But this was a rumour I believe was set about by him, the lying Devil.

  Smart people, Lord and Lady Lowther and so forth, started to come.

  The Reverend I think wanted to be part of history. That is why he set up the ceremony he called the Collecting, to give thanks for the resurrection of the parish and the saving of lost souls, every year at the end of the summer, on St Bartholomew’s Day. No one needed to wreck any more. The crops did not fail. The harvest was always good. But there were no more lost souls rescued from the sea, as the Reverend had been begged by Lady Lowther not to risk his own body down there. So the bodies lay pinned on dark spikes through winter and summer, visible from the cliffs above, cut to ribbons by the storms as the months went by.

  At the end of summer every year on St Bartholomew’s day came the procession of villagers, holding beeswax candles. They came up from the old, now-abandoned church in Larcombe through the winding lanes and paths through the wood, high up onto the cairn called the Vane Stones up on the hill where they had lit a beacon to warn of the approaching Spanish Armada over two hundred years ago, then through the garden down to the chapel. The villagers sang, softly, and people who heard it always said it sounded like angels, walking towards you through the old pathways. My own grandmother tells of how as a girl she came across the procession, in the lanes, and the sound of it drove her to follow up, up onto the plain where stood the chapel, and it is there she first saw my grandfather.

  Those who were there report that they felt the presence of God, laying His light on them, that they felt His touch upon their shoulders. And then to the chapel, where the Reverend removed the combs from the recesses in the walls, giving the honey that came from them to the assembled guests – some say the ceremony took on a certain Bacchanelian aspect at this point, and madness ensued, others say that is greatly exaggerated. They certainly used the silver spoons Lady Lowther had had commissioned for Caradoc Diver as a gift. But still, some whispered it was sacriligeous, like a taking of communion.

  The Reverend Diver was well-known, and if the shameful business with the young governness who went missing and who was found up by the Vane Stones was of interest to some and if Lady Lowther’s absence from the home for six months was remarked upon by no one but noticed by all and if he had a temper and ego that grew through the years, well, people were grateful enough for the miracle of God’s presence and the effects of the honey they felt to say nothing more of it. I myself know what both those events were about and leave it to the reader to draw his own conclusions. Everyone who was present at the Collecting when Diver presided over it claims extraordinary events took place. That the Reverend called up the Holy Spirit, that He was there, he answered them, he held them close, they felt all worry and hunger and illness disappear, all because of Reverend Diver.

  And then one day,
without word to anyone, he hanged himself in the church.

  Ned Watchet found him, but he never revealed what was in the note he left behind. As Ned was cutting him down, he was found by the churchwarden, who fainted clean away at the expression on the dead man’s face.

  They said, in the village, and in the surrounding countryside, that he had been seen muttering to himself out in the lanes and up on the moor late at night in the long summer twilight. They said that he lured the bees using dark magic. That he took too much of their honey, for if you don’t leave enough for winter they have nothing to live on, for why else do they make it if not for themselves? Wasn’t that the pact he’d made with them, and with the Devil, to leave them their honey?

  I am sorry to say some said the little governness had been in an ‘interesting condition’ when they found her. They said the bees drove Diver mad, that their droning bored into his brain and helped him lose his senses. The five handbells were scattered at his feet. Ned gathered them up, and polished them, and put them back in the bible box of his old master, and the candlesticks and the spoons, and left them in the house.

  As a suicide, the Reverend could not be buried in the churchyard. At Ned’s suggestion the remains were taken up onto Exmoor, to the Vane Stones high up overlooking the sea, and buried there.

  There was often trouble at the village after his death. Larcombe became a black place, where the Good Leper Inn was notorious along the coast and smuggling and all sorts were rife. Reverend Diver’s name became sanctified. He was not to be insulted. Vicars would not stay up at Vanes. The house was too lonely, too cold, too wild, but mainly far too grand – how had he persuaded the Church to build such a palace! Still, the bees came back every year, some in greater years than others.

  In the end the Church of England was glad to sell it off. My family, the Hunters, had some connection with the house. My great-grandfather Hunter was a beekeeper of some renown and had made money in the mines in Somerset. His father had taken part in the Collecting ceremonies as a boy and had often talked about them with wonder. Great-grandfather Hunter wished to out-do his father, and could find no greater solution than to buy this house. When another bad storm, as bad as the Great Wave before it, destroyed the roof of the chapel, a month after he bought Vanes he did not take it personally. He kept the tradition of the Collecting going, preserved the house, fitting it out with Victorian flourishes. By the time Charles Hunter, my brother, was born in 1925, the ceremony was long re-established. This summer I will, along with my sister Rosalind, take the part of one of The Beloved Girls who process at the rear of the procession, symbolizing the purity of our mission, of the honey, of our lives here. It is our honour and duty to keep it going. I myself am happy to do so only as long as we Hunters understand the rules: half for us and half for them, else the Devil take us all.

  Sybilla Pamela Hunter

  Vanes, Somerset, 1938

   ¶

  Chapter Seventeen

  When Merry returned from Larcombe she found me there, amongst the stones, staring at the pamphlet, legs stretched out to catch the sun, and she laughed at my serious face. ‘Don’t believe everything in it,’ she said, but I knew she didn’t mean it. I was shaken by it, in a way I couldn’t explain. I wanted to ask her: Don’t you feel trapped by it? By the history?

  But I didn’t. We talked for a while as Merry pottered about picking up stray stalks and dead bees inside the chapel, sweeping them up onto an old piece of stiff card then flinging them aside, about what she’d bought at the village, about what we’d eat that night, about whether we’d watch Cagney and Lacey or a repeat of The Paul Daniels Magic Show.

  When she had finished tidying she kissed the stone wall, and I felt most strongly then her connection to the landscape, and the chapel, and this piece of earth upon which we stood, and the fact I was an outsider here, was not like them. A tall bronze candlestick was propped outside the door. Charles had forgotten to put it away.

  ‘I’ll leave it there, and we’ll collect it later,’ Merry said, but she must have forgotten, and it’s a shame, when I think of what happened later. I didn’t give her the pamphlet back, and she didn’t ask me about it again.

  She had bought us each a Feast ice cream from the village shop, and we sat and ate them, being silly and light-hearted, doing stupid voices. Merry was much more relaxed when she wasn’t with the others and could be her own person, and I remember this afternoon she was just really funny. We finished our ice creams and staggered up the chalk path, still giggling at her impression of Aunty Ros arriving at a Letham’s school reunion. I could hear ringing in my ears, and then, underneath it, the sound of splashing. We turned into the pool.

  There, sitting at the edge, caramel legs splashing lazily into the green water, was Kitty, her hands up over her head, retying her scarf over her hair. Her body was arched, her eyes were closed, face turned to the sun. In the water stood Joss and I saw him looking at her, at her breasts, then down to her legs. He saw us a split second after we saw him, and splashed his sister with water.

  ‘Hi!’ He leaped out, grabbing one of the ragged patterned towels and wrapping it around him. ‘How was the walk?’

  ‘Great,’ said Merry, undoing her sundress. I stiffened in horror, then I saw her swimming costume was underneath, and I chastised myself for being such a little prude. ‘We got Mummy’s sugar, and we picked up the pork loin. I’ll dash it inside, actually.’ She kicked the dress away, and then, picking up the heavy string bag, swung it over her shoulder. ‘Janey, are you going to swim?’

  ‘Oh,’ I said. ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’ll fetch your swimmers then.’

  ‘OK. Thanks.’

  I stood awkwardly clutching one arm. Joss on my own was fine, but the two of them together made the dynamic different. Kitty stayed where she was, her head lolling from side to side, the patches where Joss had splashed her bikini dark red. She was humming something, half singing under her breath. She giggled to herself, and I looked at her, curiously. Joss came and stood next to me.

  ‘We’ve got the place to ourselves, this afternoon. Mummy and Dad are at lunch.’

  ‘Oh. Where?’

  ‘Over at the Lord Lieutenant’s, somewhere towards Taunton. Big swish lunch, PF loves that kind of thing.’ He gave a funny laugh.

  Kitty reached up behind him and took a swig from a bottle.

  ‘Give it here,’ said Joss, and he came towards her and stroked her shoulder, and then drank from it himself. ‘Janey?’ he said, proffering it to me. I still didn’t like the taste of white wine. It reminded me of the disaster of the school ball. Of being out of control and unable to stop throwing up. Hating it. Feeling utterly ridiculous that yet again I’d read the rules wrong.

  ‘Yeah, go on,’ I said, trying to sound nonchalant. I took a gulp of it, wincing at the too-sweet, rancid taste.

  ‘Have a good glug. Don’t want Merry seeing it,’ said Kitty. She nodded at me, head still rocking from side to side. Her lips were parted, bottom lip caught between her white teeth. She drank from the bottle again, a dribble of liquid running down into her ear, and she giggled and wiped it away and managed to make that seem cool. Joss was watching her again with this strange, glazed look, and then he blinked, and turned to look at me, handing me the bottle, and I drank again from it. The story of the Reverend Diver, and Pammy’s urgent, queer little voice were still insistent in my ear, like they were both alive, real, calling to me. I could feel the hit of white wine, ice-cold, deadening and heavy on my empty stomach.

  ‘Let’s put music on,’ said Joss, clearing his throat into the silence, and tinny acid music started playing. Synthesised sound, repetitive, a lone woman’s voice soaring over the top, the repetition below it lulling one into movement . . . I remember feeling the beat drumming itself through me.

  Unlikely as it seems, I was a good dancer and I knew I was. Daddy had been a great dancer, but so had Mummy – they both loved jazz. Daddy in particular. In the early years of their dating, Daddy had taken m
y mother to Ronnie Scott’s to see Humphrey Lyttelton and Vic Price. Dancing reminds me of Daddy, and the few times I’d seen them both happy together.

  So I started swaying from side to side, moving one shoulder up and down, feeling the warmth of the late-afternoon sun on my face too. I patted my headscarf, another beautiful floral sixties pattern edged with gingham, which Sylvia had made for me. I felt a light arm on my shoulder, and Joss was next to me, and we were moving together.

  I loved the music, pulsing, beating through me. Then someone had pushed Joss away, his arms from around my waist loosened, and Kitty was dancing with me. I could feel her thighs pressing against me, her arms round my waist, her breasts pressed against me. She moved – she was erratic, and I saw from her eyes she was properly drunk again, and I looked at the bottle next to us on the floor and saw it was almost empty. Joss came between us as she pulled me closer to her. I hadn’t been anywhere near her since she shook my hand: to be this close to someone so beautiful, so thrillingly sophisticated was almost as intoxicating as the wine. I breathed her in, unable to believe it, and then she put her hands up, and undid the scarf around my head, pushing the material away. She ran her fingertips over my patchy scalp, slowly, curiously. Her skin was cool. I felt as though I was coming alive again.

  ‘It’s growing back,’ she said softly, almost to herself.

  We carried on dancing together, swaying slowly, as Joss put his arms around both of us.

  ‘Yes, girls,’ he said, slowly. ‘So . . .’

  I wanted him to go away. Where was Merry? We three carried on dancing, swigging from the bottle, and it was wild, wildly strange. By now the alcohol was pumping through my bloodstream, and I felt on the edge of something, almost completely uninhibited. Kitty’s finger was now hooked through the strap of my sundress, her other hand still on my waist, she was laughing, her white teeth glinting in the sun. Joss dived into the water – and she leaned over, that melting voice like honey in my ear: