Tell it to the Bees (18 page)

He looked up when there was no reply. But Lydia had walked away, lugging the basket and the bag like dead weights. Charlie stood, taking his hand sharp from the lake as if from some danger so that water spangled the air. He opened his mouth and his voice shouted across the water, lifting the birds, shocking the trees.

‘Mum!'

Lydia stopped dead.

‘Mum!' he shouted again, and his mother turned back and came and held him, arms around his back, his head against her breast so that his ear pulsed with the beat of her heart.

‘Charlie,' she said quietly, just to him, and he felt the fingers of her hand against his ribs. ‘I'm sorry, Charlie.' And then the birds settled and the trees grew calm.

After they had eaten their picnic, Lydia opened the shoulder bag she'd brought with her. Wrapped in several tea towels was Charlie's boat.

‘Thought you might like to sail it here,' she said. ‘I know there's not much wind today. But the pond's too small now.'

So Charlie took the boat to the flat stones and set it to sail, steadying, and then launching it into the breeze with even hands.

They watched it to the middle of the lake, and sometimes the blue fish leaped taut at the wind, and other times it drifted on its canvas plain.

Charlie's thoughts drifted with it, the keel of his mind cutting clear, because right now, beside this lake with his mother, things seemed better. Easier. He wondered whether Bobby had found the snake, and he thought about the bees and the honey harvest. A lot of the supers would be full by now and Dr Markham had set the date for the first weekend in September and had asked him to be her right-hand man. She had shown him the extractor, the uncapping knife and all the jars, washed clean and waiting. She had aprons ready and said it would be hard work. It would be something to tell Bobby about. It would be something to tell his dad.

He dreamed of his dad. He'd even had the same dream a few times, of playing football, being dead good at it, and his dad coming by and seeing him and being proud. The girls at school had stopped with their songs now. Old news maybe, like his dad used to say. But he didn't return. Or if he did it was only to take more things away. His mum didn't lay a third place any more.

‘Going to be a hard job, getting it back.' Lydia's voice broke in and Charlie looked up confused.

‘We'd better start walking round. It's sailing to the farthest point.'

Charlie stared round the lake edge, with its deep reeds and brambles and steep trees dropping to the bank. It would take them an age to get round, especially his mother, scrabbling and scrambling. He looked again at the boat. It was far down the lake now, running with the wind, free.

‘We could leave it here,' he said. ‘Let it sail to where it wants. Maybe another boy will find it.'

Lydia looked across the lake. She looked at her son.

They stood on the stones and watched the little boat sail almost out of sight, then they walked back along the path and through the trees to the road to find a bus home.

It was the last day in school and when the headmaster did his speech, the floor was a sea of fidgets and twists. The hall was warm as warm, and pretty Miss Withers began to fall asleep. Charlie noticed the rock-rock-rock of her head out of the corner of his eye. Some hair had fallen out of its pins and was straggled over her face and he turned away, embarrassed for her.

The headmaster spoke of trial and service. He spoke of boys who had gone before and of the ultimate sacrifice. He pointed to the wooden board with names cut in gold, and spoke of responsibility and reward. The children waited to be released, they waited to be gone; the teachers tutted and dozed and scratched their hot stockings as discreetly as so many pairs of eyes would allow. Finally the headmaster spoke of respect for elders and the holidays ahead, and of the day for their return ready for the new school year, a day so far into the future that it had no meaning for any child sat there, and at last they filed impatiently out and were gloriously away into the long summer afternoon.

The days stretched out endlessly. Charlie had all the time in the world, and it thrilled him and it weighed heavy. His mother was gone early and often working overtime now, taking any spare hours she could as other women took their holidays. She arranged with old Mrs Davis down the street that he could call in on her on an afternoon, if it was
raining, or in case of emergency. She was a kind old lady, but there would have to be volcanoes spewing before Charlie knocked on her door.

So he spent his days around the edges of the town, a sandwich in his pocket for his lunch, maybe a coin for an ice cream. Sometimes on his own, sometimes with Bobby, sometimes in the gang of boys that would gather and knot around the park memorial.

Twice now Charlie had seen a snake at the pipe factory. Once basking near an end wall till he surprised it, and another time near the water. He was sure they'd been grass snakes and he still held out hopes of catching one.

‘You've got to be patient,' he said to Bobby. ‘They're shy, won't come out if you move about.'

But Bobby couldn't sit still for long, so mostly Charlie watched on his own.

The boys built a den there deep in the brambles. Charlie had filched some of his father's nails and brought over his hammer and crowbar and saw. His dad wouldn't have allowed it, but his dad wasn't there. There was a passage in, observation post, dug-in shelter with boards and corrugated iron and tarpaulin over, a place to keep equipment and maps, and another for supplies. They'd got supplies in a biscuit tin. A tin of sardines, some crackers and the end of a cornflakes packet. A jam jar to drink from. Bobby had even rigged up something for collecting rainwater. The den took days to build, and they celebrated with a bottle of lemonade, Bobby shaking it up and spraying it over the corrugated iron in zigzag patterns like he said he'd seen them do at his cousin's wedding.

‘We're on our holidays next week,' Bobby said as they drank the remainder. ‘Dad's got the whole of it off. Let's get down here loads before then.'

Charlie dug his heels down into the trampled earth.

‘I know it's got to be top secret, but I want to bring my
dad to see it,' Bobby said. ‘Only him. After he's back from work one evening. I'll get him to stand a foot away, over by the big bush, and you be inside it and he won't know it's there. Only him, Charlie. Cos he's not going to tell anyone else, is he.'

Charlie flipped a marble, watched it roll out of sight. Going home that evening, he saw his own dad. The first time in weeks. He was running, not to be late, and flicking over the day in his head, picking out the things to tell his mum when she asked; picking out the things not to tell her. She'd started asking him again, as if she'd started noticing he was there again and sometimes it was a bit much. Sometimes it felt as if he couldn't get his breath.

He only saw his dad when he was nearly past him. His dad, cigarette in his fingers, head turning to the left and then to the right, like he always did; his walk, like it always was, as if he was one part cowboy and wearing those leather trousers.

All these things his dad did that Charlie had never noticed before, but that he knew him by in the flash of the second he saw him. Just as Charlie knew him by the scar on his finger where the dog had bitten him when he was a boy; or by the way he set off singing in the bath; here he was, walking down the street like he had the right to be here, walking down the street smiling, with a woman on his arm that was not Charlie's mother.

All this Charlie saw and understood in the time it took to run by. All this Charlie saw, and his father saw nothing.

Then he was round the corner and past the pub, which was probably where his dad was heading, running, banging his feet at the pavement, not looking, not caring, only wanting to be gone and free, till suddenly he stopped dead and stood, looking straight out at everything – front doors, net curtains, the moon, a dog – and at nothing at all. He sniffed the air. He could still smell his father, the
cigarettes and hair-cream, and the woman's perfume, and all the mixed-up smells made him sad, made him furious.

Across the street a lady stared at him and he stared right back, stuck his tongue out, and then he was running again.

The air was damp with cooking vegetables when he got in. Lydia had the wireless on, but she must have been listening for him, because he'd barely climbed the stairs when she was there calling up, her voice chirpy as if everything was all right now.

‘Hello. What have you been up to? Did you eat your sandwich? I saw a hedgehog on the way to work, snuffling it was. I said to it: “You're out late, dear.” Wish you'd seen it.'

Charlie buried his face in the pillow. His cheeks were burning and his head pounded. His mother went on talking up the stairs.

‘I've got a nice dinner cooking. Come and read a page of my book to me while I finish off.'

When Charlie went down, she had the book propped open under the two-pound weight, like usual, and she was washing up, humming something.

‘What sort of story is it?' Charlie said.

Lydia turned at his voice. She scrutinized his face and put down the wet brush.

‘What's happened?' she said.

He picked up the book. The writing blurred before him.

‘Charlie.' Lydia's voice was measured but insistent. ‘What happened?'

‘Just played.'

‘Who with?'

‘Bobby.'

‘Did you finish the den?'

He nodded.

‘Bobby's bringing his dad to see it.'

‘Ah,' Lydia said. She paused, then asked, ‘Anything else happen?'

He held the book and stared at the daze of small black letters.

‘Charlie,' she said again, softly.

He looked up at her.

‘Did you meet anyone else?' Lydia said, and he looked at her eyes to see if she knew. Then he slammed the book to the ground. There was a moment between them before he yelled, ‘Your books are stupid,' and he ran from the room.

Later Lydia came up to find him. She sat on his bed and stroked his hair.

‘Will you let me see your den?' she said.

‘Don't know.' The feel of her hand stroking his head was good and he shut his eyes again.

‘I know I'm not your dad, but …'

‘You have to crawl, then you have to crouch. In one place I can nearly stand up, but you couldn't.'

‘Are there different bits to it then? Different rooms?'

‘I suppose so. But you don't have rooms in a den.'

‘No, of course not.' Lydia thought for a moment. ‘What about you taking me to see your den and then me taking you to Fontini's for ice cream?'

‘Why?'

‘Why not? We're not getting much in the way of holiday, what with me working all the time.'

‘Will you wear perfume? Like you do going out with Dad?'

Lydia looked at him, puzzled.

‘If you want me to, yes.'

‘And paint your nails?'

‘Charlie?' Lydia said.

He didn't say anything.

‘Charlie?' she said again.

He shrugged. Then, in a throwaway kind of voice, ‘Maybe Dad would come back if …'

‘If what?'

He wouldn't look at her.

‘If I painted my nails again and wore perfume?' she said.

She rubbed her hands across her face, as though to clear her mind.

‘Have you seen him today?' she said, and after a pause Charlie nodded.

‘And perhaps he wasn't on his own?'

Charlie didn't move.

‘Was he with another lady?'

‘You don't know any of the things I do,' he said.

Charlie would have struggled if he'd had to think back later about what he filled his time with in those next weeks. Much of it he spent on his own. Some days, as long as it was dry, he would let himself into the doctor's garden. First of all he would go and talk to the bees, each of the four hives, let them know he was there and tell them anything important that had gone on. Quickly and quietly. He tried to speak to them in the way they understood. The rest of the day he would spend on his own, watching insects or clouds, inventing schemes and stratagems in the tangled privacy beyond the hives. Although he didn't once see Dr Markham, he would leave something for her each time, with a note telling her where he had found it and anything else about it he thought was interesting. Like the skeleton of a dragonfly nymph, sharp feet clinging for dear life to a reed, which he placed on the garden table and covered with an empty flowerpot. Or an owl pellet, its oval black surface shiny like varnish, from under the oak tree at the bottom of the garden, placed beside the watering can in the greenhouse. He knew she would like
these things and that she would know what he thought about them.

Some of the other days he spent in the park. Most of the boys who gathered there were older than Charlie and already running on the edge of adolescence, one moment picking stubs from the paths to roll into dangerous-looking cigarettes, the next pulling faces at the park attendants or chasing the pigeons. Charlie hung about at one corner of the group, affecting his own slouch, torn in his own way. He watched the young boys with their boats on the pond and for two pins he would have run down the hill and joined them. But he'd left his boat for someone else to find and he couldn't go back.

He went out to the woods beyond the town. Robert had taken him and Annie there on a couple of Sunday trips a few years back, Charlie riding proud on the crossbar of his father's bike.

The first time, when they arrived, they stood beneath the green ceiling of trees and Robert didn't know what to do. He shuffled his feet and said that his own father used to bring him and Pam here on a Sunday, as if that somehow explained his doing so now.

‘I can't imagine Mum here,' Annie said. ‘All the earth and undergrowth.'

Robert grinned. ‘Wasn't her favourite place,' he said, ‘but Father insisted.'