Tell it to the Bees (25 page)

‘Let me think, please.'

Jean stood up and stepped away, her hands beating the dark in frustration. She went into the kitchen and put on the kettle. A picture of a man standing by a spaceship under a full moon was pinned to a cupboard door. Charlie had signed it with a tiny bee emblem under his name. Jean smiled, and touched it with her finger.

They drank the coffee in silence, hands nursing cups, and then Lydia beckoned Jean in.

‘Let's talk now,' she said. She brought down blankets from upstairs, and they wrapped themselves up on the sofa.

‘So what do you think of my idea?' Jean said.

‘It's not as simple as you think,' Lydia said. ‘For me to work for you.'

‘Why not?'

‘Jean, we come from different ends of the street.'

‘What do you mean?'

‘In fact, you don't even come from a street. You're from a house in the country that just has a name. A beautiful house with gardens all around and a gardener to keep it nice. You probably can't even see another building from the windows.'

Jean shrugged. ‘But that was then. Growing up. I left it gladly. Now we're here, in your sitting room –'

‘Front room.'

‘It doesn't matter what you call it.'

Lydia looked round at Jean.

‘But it does. It matters a lot. That's exactly what matters.' She shook her head, lips pursed with frustration. ‘I don't want to be employed by you,' she said. ‘My kind is always employed by your kind, but us, the two of us, we're not …'

Jean took her hand. ‘But you'd be my companion, my friend, my –'

‘You might know that, and I might. But it's not what everyone else would know. They'd see me doing your cooking and washing.'

‘Sounds like your marriage,' Jean said. ‘Only with friendship added in.'

‘Don't,' Lydia said.

‘It's a means to an end,' Jean said, rubbing her eyes, trying to see again what had seemed so clear, so simple, two hours ago. She stood up out of the blanket and put her hands against the mantelpiece, pushing, bracing against it, needing to feel something firm, unchanging.

‘It's a way to be living under the same roof,' she said. ‘It wouldn't be like that for ever. Just for now.'

‘What about Robert? What about your friends? What about mine?'

‘My friends like you already. Jim and Sarah.'

Lydia laughed a short laugh. ‘But they don't know, do they? They don't know how you've kissed me. And when they do? Besides, they'll look at me differently when they know you're paying my wages.'

Jean turned back to face Lydia.

‘Listen to me. Every week women come to me suffering from nervous exhaustion, or because they can't sleep, bags under their eyes, fatigued, worn out. Or it's their children, especially in the winter. Bronchial conditions, ear infections, weepy eyes. Upset stomachs, diarrhoea. Why? Because their
mothers have to skimp on fresh food, so they're malnourished, more prone to infections. Some get pneumonia.'

‘Stop it.' Lydia put her hands to her ears. ‘You don't need to make a damn speech. You don't need to tell me all this.'

‘I visit them in rooms where the paper is peeling with the damp and fungus is growing on the walls, on the ceiling even. Where the drains are blocked and the toilet doesn't flush and the water from the tap has a funny smell. As often as not the husband's nowhere in evidence; either gone altogether, or drinking the children's health away in the pub.'

‘You're blackmailing me,' Lydia said, her voice furious.

‘And I want to know why the Council hasn't condemned these buildings,' Jean said, ‘or clapped the landlord in prison. I want to know how the husband can hold his head up and why he hasn't been shamed for his neglect. But the women, the mothers, the wives, sitting in my surgery with their handbag clutched to their lap, or laying their child out for me to examine on a bed I can smell the damp from – they think it's their fault.'

Jean stopped.

‘So what do you think would be best for Charlie, Lydia?'

Lydia was silent, and after a minute Jean sat down beside her.

‘Lydia?' she said.

Lydia looked round at Jean, eyes blazing, mouth bitter.

‘That's what I hate about your kind,' she said. ‘Born with a silver spoon. Making out that I can't look after my son properly because I'm from the wrong class.'

‘I don't think that,' Jean said.

Lydia shut her eyes.

‘You haven't even got a child; you've got no idea what it's like.'

She didn't see Jean wince, didn't see the cut she made.

‘I'm only saying what I see as a doctor,' Jean said. ‘And what I see again and again is how hard things can be.'

Lydia made no reply.

‘Please,' Jean said. ‘Live with me.'

Still Lydia was silent, eyes shut, lips tight, but there were tears on her cheeks.

‘Don't coddle me,' Lydia said at last, ‘or blackmail me, or patronize me. Don't fool yourself that the best things are easy. More than anything else, for God's sake, don't try and fool me.'

They talked on until exhaustion took them, then slept, wrapped in blankets and one another's arms, till dawn.

Charlie raced all the way across the town, along the streets like his own, past the children like him and the grown-ups in their Sunday habits. The town looked like a Sunday and it smelled like Sunday, too, what with the factory chimney quiet, no smoke out of it, and every now and then the smell of dinner roasting. The day was bright and dry and Charlie went past children kicking leaves into clouds, and others coming from the park. Behind them, flicking the pages of a newspaper, or sucking on a pipe, would be a father. It looked to Charlie as if every boy in the town but him had a father behind him. As he ran he made a fierce face so no one would think he cared.

Annie was the nearest thing Charlie had to a sister and he'd missed her, these last two months. There were four precious jars of honey on his windowsill and one of them was for her. But they didn't go to lunch at Pam's on a Sunday any more, him and his mother; and Annie didn't come and visit them either. That was because of George. Leastways, that's why his mum said it was. So this Sunday he'd made a plan. He'd even written it on a piece of paper, very small, and rolled the paper up and pushed it under the skirting in his room where the wood was split.

He wanted to give Annie the pot of honey and tell her all about what he'd done for the honey harvest, but he wasn't going to cross the town with a jar in his hand, so it
would have to wait a bit longer. Instead he slipped a photo in his pocket to show her. Dr Markham's friend had taken it on the harvest day: Charlie in his bee suit, standing beside a hive. Then he turned the knob on the front door all the way so it didn't make a sound closing, and set off.

Charlie ran as if his life depended on it, only stopping to get his breath back by the waste ground at the head of the street, and to pick up some pebbles. Three boys were standing under the trees along one side. They might have been the same three boys he'd seen all those months ago with the cat, the last time they went to Pam's, when his dad didn't stay for trifle. But if they were, then they looked younger than before, not frightening at all. They looked like boys with fathers who'd go home soon and eat their Sunday dinner.

Charlie was going to throw pebbles at Annie's window from the back yard. That was his plan. He'd throw the pebbles; Annie would look out to see what it was, see him and come down. Somehow she'd smuggle him into her room. He hadn't worked out that bit of the plan yet; he figured they'd have to play that bit by ear. That was something his dad always said.

Then once he was in Annie's bedroom, she'd bring him up a big plate with roast potatoes, meat, cabbage and gravy. He wanted to see Annie, but he was hungry, too. His mum was sick in bed since the day before. He'd felt her forehead today, but it was still too hot and she wouldn't be making any meal. Or if she did, it wouldn't be roast potatoes with thick gravy. So it was a good plan. He thought it was a good plan, though now he was here with the pebbles in his hand, there were butterflies in his stomach.

The alley smelled of old fish. Cats were digging at a pile of newspapers. Charlie walked down to Pam's back yard. He'd been reading one of his mum's thrillers today and now he had a slight swagger to him, his hands in his
pockets. He was Johnnie Delaney checking out the territory in downtown Chicago. Casing the joint before putting the sting on a likely hoodlum. He thought his aunt Pam would make a good hoodlum. She could be scary enough.

Gingerly, Charlie lifted the gate latch. It wasn't locked. He wiped his brow clear of imaginary sweat and pushed. The gate opened noiselessly. So far so good. The yard was empty and there was nobody standing at the kitchen window. Ducking behind the coal shed, he rummaged in his pocket for a pebble, then stepped out, eyes raised to Annie's window. He could see her through the glass; her silhouette familiar, reassuring. Holding the pebble in his fingers, he got the window in his sights and drew back his arm to throw.

‘I shouldn't do that, son.'

Charlie jumped and stared. His father stared back, eyebrows raised in a quizzical expression, ash dripping from the cigarette between his fingers. Up at her window, Annie looked down, her face pale, her mouth an ‘O', her eyes unblinking.

‘Dad!' The pebble still in his hand, he ran at his father, butting his head into Robert's stomach, wrapping his arms around his middle, breathing in the smell of him. For a moment, a whole moment, Charlie held him tight. Then Robert's hands were on his arms and Charlie could feel his fingers pulling him off, holding him away. He felt his old, cold dismay and wished he could be a different boy, so his father would hug him.

‘This'll be a surprise to Pam,' Robert said, drawling slightly with the cigarette between his lips, keeping Charlie at arm's length, looking him up and down. ‘Grown a bit since I last saw you, I swear you have. Don't know if there's enough in the oven for such a big extra mouth.'

He chuckled, and Charlie didn't speak. He looked at his father's face, searched it for something he couldn't have
put a name to. He glanced up at the house. Annie was still at the window, and she was pointing down, mouthing something.

‘Lost your tongue?' Robert said. ‘Must have something to say, sneaking up like this.'

He let go of Charlie and took a long draw on his cigarette, tossed the stub in the corner, and tugged another from the packet in his breast pocket.

‘Mum's sick,' Charlie said. ‘It's why I've come here.'

‘Sorry to hear it, Charlie,' Robert said, lighting up.

Charlie watched him and waited.

‘What are you staring for?' Robert said, and Charlie shrugged and looked at the ground. ‘Pam wasn't expecting you, but since you're here …' Robert didn't finish the sentence, just stood there, smoking.

Charlie looked across towards Annie again. ‘Can I go in, Dad? Annie's in her room, I can see her in the window.'

Robert slouched back on his heels and shook his head.

‘No you don't. Since you've turned up unannounced, may as well make the best of it. Tell you a bit sooner than I'd planned, that's all.'

Charlie's heart jumped. Perhaps his dad had changed his mind. Perhaps he was going to come back home.

‘We made a den, Dad. We've got supplies in there, and a map. You couldn't see it was there from the path, not even from a foot away. Bobby's dad said …'

But Robert wasn't listening. He was turning away, walking back to the house. Charlie watched his father, uncertain, until Robert beckoned impatiently. Tugging the pebbles from his pocket, Charlie followed him and the pebbles dropped and bounced over the yard.

The kitchen was empty of people and humid with boiling vegetables, and Charlie could smell the meat from the oven. His stomach turned over with hunger and excitement. Robert walked straight through and into the next
room, and Charlie followed. Pam was standing at the table close-shouldered with another woman Charlie didn't know, and they were speaking in low, women's voices as they laid the cutlery and the cruets.

Robert put a heavy hand on Charlie's shoulder. ‘Look what the cat brought in,' he said.

The two women turned.

‘Charlie!' Pam said, and he saw a blush rise fast on her face, which he didn't often see on an adult. ‘What on earth are you doing here?'

‘I said you might not have enough dinner for an uninvited guest,' Robert said.

‘Specially not with his appetite,' Pam said, recovering herself. ‘Doesn't know how to be grateful, your boy.' And the wash of resentment, which Charlie knew so well but never understood, crossed her face.

But it was the other lady that Charlie stared at. She didn't look much older than Annie and she had on shiny black shoes with heels and her hair all primped like a film star and he could smell her perfume from where he stood. But he was certain he'd seen her before, and she was looking back at him as if he ought to know her, smiling at him as if he ought to smile back.

Robert stepped forward and took the lady's hand, then lifted it at Charlie.

‘Meet the future Mrs Weekes,' he said.

Charlie was confused. ‘But that's my mum,' he said.

‘No, Charlie. Mrs Weekes is my wife and Irene here is going to be Mrs Weekes soon as we can make it so and you can pay her some respect.'

Charlie shook his head slowly from side to side. He didn't understand, and then he did. He felt his limbs go rigid, and slowly he turned to face his father.

‘She's not ever going to be Mrs Weekes. I hate her,' he said, and he turned for the door. But Robert got him by the
scruff and lifted him from the floor, and he spoke in a voice clenched with rage.