Tell it to the Bees (30 page)

Her words hung above the table, and the laugh guttered in Jean's throat. Blood rushed in her ears like white noise and she could feel the heat in her face rise. She stood up, more abruptly than she wanted to, and pushed her chair out from the table. She heard Jim's voice, and Lydia's replying.

‘I'd better go and check outside,' she said. ‘The dark, and Charlie doesn't always … things might be open, and if it rains.'

She didn't know how to excuse herself. The others were shifting, adjusting in their chairs. Before she dug any deeper, she left the room and headed for the welcome cool of the November night.

Out in the garden, Jean realized that she had given the bees no thought in the last few months, and there were things that needed doing in preparation for the spring. She'd decided to increase the number of hives, so there were new frames to make. She was going to do these tasks with Charlie, but tonight she needed the task for herself and, lighting a gas lamp to use in the shed, she set to with a vengeance. It was a relief to work with wood and wire, aligning side struts, working out the slender bee space. Slowly the noise in her ears quietened and the still air was soft like balm.

She'd been daft to think she could keep it wholly secret from them. But what was she going to say? What were they going to say? And she'd left Lydia in there, just marched out.

‘Not true, my love,' she murmured. Did it sound so bad? Mightn't she say just that to Jim? Or to the children?

‘It's not bad,' she said, bringing the hammer down. ‘It's bloody marvellous. The most marvellous thing I could ever have imagined.'

And these words, this acknowledgement, spoken out, brought a rush to her heart, made her heavy with desire. Perhaps Sarah hadn't noticed the affection; perhaps Jim hadn't heard the endearment. Leaning the finished frame against the table, she rested with this thought till Sarah pushed open the shed door. With the plaid blanket from the sitting room round her shoulders, she looked like a refugee, someone rescued, someone you saw in newspaper monochrome.

Should be me wrapped in that, Jean thought, but she said nothing, only picked up two more lengths of wood. Sarah sat down on the end of the bench and pulled the rug tight.

‘I've left the others talking shop,' she said.

Jean nodded and picked up a piece of sandpaper. The
wood didn't need sanding, but she needed to be doing something.

‘At least, Jim is interrogating Lydia about the factory. She seems to know an awful lot about it.'

‘She worked there for ten years, so she would do,' Jean said.

‘Yes, but she talks in a way that … describes things in such a way –'

Jean interrupted her. ‘Probably all her reading. She knows lots of long words,' she said, hearing her own sarcasm, her defensiveness.

Sarah picked up the chisel. She touched her finger to its sharp edge.

‘She's making her way through my father's books now,' Jean said, conscious that she should make amends, but unsure what for. ‘She's an unusual woman. If she'd had my schooling …'

For several minutes neither woman spoke and then they both began together.

‘I'm sorry for …' Jean said.

‘I didn't mean to sound …' Sarah said and they both laughed, relieved, at the collision.

‘What are you going to do at Christmastime?' Sarah said. ‘Does Charlie see his father?'

Jean shrugged. ‘Not at the moment, I don't think so. I haven't got as far as Christmas. I'm glad he could help Meg out with her homework. He's a fine boy.'

‘Jean,' Sarah said in a different tone, less open to diversion, ‘I did hear you, in the kitchen. I'm not mistaken, am I?'

Jean was glad she was sitting down. Even so she could feel her legs weaken, as if someone had put an electric prod to her stomach.

There seemed little point in lying; now it had come to this. She shook her head.

‘No,' she said.

Sarah nodded and took a deep breath, as if at least that was settled.

‘Are you warm enough?' she said. It was true, now that Jean had stopped her furious activity and now the fact had been confirmed, the cold was creeping in through her clothes, pressing against her skin.

‘It's a big blanket,' Sarah said, so Jean shuffled up and they sat together beneath it, watching their breath in the chilly light.

‘It does explain a few things,' Sarah said at last. ‘You've certainly had Jim puzzled.' She laughed. ‘He thinks he has the last word on you, so it's really irritated him.'

‘Well, now he knows,' Jean said flatly.

Sarah shook her head. ‘I'm not sure he does. He was surprised you left the room so fast, but he didn't seem to know why. Men hear things very differently from women, Jean. Even Jim, who's better than most, and knows you as well as anyone. I don't think he heard you. At least, not as I did.'

‘But you'll tell him,' Jean said. ‘You'll have to.'

‘Does anyone else know?'

‘I don't think so.'

‘God, Jean, you don't take the easy route, do you?'

‘I didn't choose this bit,' Jean said. She drummed a finger on the wood. ‘You know what they call people like me?'

‘Couldn't you go to prison?'

‘If I was a man,' Jean said. ‘I've always felt sorry for those men when I've read about them in the newspaper. But now I am one, if you know what I mean.'

‘She's from such a different background,' Sarah said in a solemn tone. ‘Doesn't that make it even harder?'

‘Not so as I've noticed,' Jean said, annoyed. Then she caught Sarah's expression and before she could squash it, a giggle rose in her throat and she heard Sarah snort, and both of them were helpless with laughter.

‘We should go back in,' Jean said at last. ‘Jim must be thinking something odd has happened by now. The children will turn into pumpkins soon.'

‘But it has!' Sarah said. ‘Something has happened.'

‘Are you shocked?' Jean said.

Sarah looked at her steadily. ‘Yes … I don't really understand. But I don't think your love is wrong, and I'll defend you against all comers.'

‘Do you think I'll need knights in armour?' Jean said, amused.

‘If this gets out, you'll need more than knights, Jean. If this gets out, have you thought what it'll do? To your professional standing? Your friendships? Have you thought what it'll do to that boy?'

Deep in their conversation, Lydia and Jim barely noticed the others' return. Jean caught phrases like ‘repetitive frequency' and ‘transmitting valves' and there was much nodding between the pair and an occasional ‘mm' of acknowledgement. She filled the sink with hot suds and dirty dishes while Sarah rounded up sleepy children. Emma began to cry with exhaustion, which brought the conversation to a swift close.

‘Take care, my friend,' Sarah said as she hugged Jean goodnight.

‘We must speak again,' Jim said to Lydia. ‘Delicious supper.'

Once Charlie was in bed and the house put to rights again, the two women sat, stunned, at the kitchen table.

‘So is the cat out then?' Lydia said.

Jean hit her forehead with the heel of her hand and groaned.

‘I'm sorry. It was so stupid,' she said. ‘I suppose I was too relaxed.'

‘It was the most exciting sentence I've ever heard,' Lydia
said. Reaching out, she stroked the back of Jean's hand. ‘In front of your friends, to call me your love.'

‘Sarah heard, and Jim didn't,' Jean said.

‘What did she say?'

‘She asked what if people find out.'

‘Was she horrified? Or disgusted?'

‘No. But taken aback. And she doesn't understand.'

‘Nor do I,' said Lydia. ‘But there it is. It's as real as the wood in this table.'

Jean gripped Lydia's hand, making a fist with it. ‘What would we do? If people found out and …'

‘Listen,' Lydia said, lifting their hands, banging them down, so that the warm band of her wedding ring jagged into Jean's knuckle.

‘All your medical training means you go in and in to something and worry out the cause. Is it this? Is it that? Rule things out till you get to the centre of it. But maybe we need to do the opposite thing. Maybe we need to go and find the centre of it somewhere else. The centre for us, I mean.'

‘You're sounding like one of your detectives,' Jean said, ‘after he's hit the whisky.'

‘I'm serious, Jean. Your father's got a shelf full of books about travelling, about people living their lives somewhere else. We can do that too. Go and live somewhere new.'

Jean saw how Lydia's chin was set strong and fierce.

‘Make a virtue of necessity.' She squeezed Jean's hand. ‘We could go anywhere, us and Charlie. People always need doctors. France, or Italy; America even. But listen,' she said, banging their hands on the table, ‘the only person who knows so far is Sarah, and she's your friend, not your foe. Be calm.'

When Lydia came to her bed that night, Jean wrote out her love with a fingertip across her lover's shoulders, making the letters round and even.

‘Don't use long words,' Lydia said, her voice gruff with tiredness. ‘I won't understand them.'

And as Lydia curled away into her dreams, Jean slipped a hand between Lydia's legs, buried her face in her hair and smiled into the dark.

It rained for a solid week at the end of November, from the far hills where Jean and Lydia had walked, down to the town, and beyond, to the plain where Mrs Sandringham and her sister pulled potatoes from waterlogged fields. It was joyless rain from a blank sky. By the time it was done, it had forced the river far beyond its normal banks.

Charlie went with Bobby to the big bridge after school and they leaned over the parapet and stared at the angry mess of water rushing under the arches.

‘You'd see a corpse if you looked for long enough,' Charlie said. ‘It's a known fact.'

‘There's just bits of wood and trees,' Bobby said. ‘There aren't any bodies. How come there'd have to be a body?'

‘Because,' said Charlie patiently, ‘murderers often tip their victims into fast-flowing rivers and then the body gets bloated so it can only be recognized by its teeth, and anyway it's miles from where it started by the time someone sees it, so that helps the murderer get away.'

‘But if nobody's been murdered, there won't be any bodies,' Bobby said.

‘There will, because murderers like the rain. It brings them out, like rats.' Charlie tossed in a stick and the boys watched it get sucked below the surface in a second. ‘The body might not surface for miles and miles. Like the stick, it gets dropped in and then disappears.'

The water roiled and churned and the boys leaned further. They saw a dead fish, flipped this way and that, silver belly nipping the light. Then they saw something and Charlie said it was a dog, and Bobby a sheep, but anyway it was enough with its matted pelt and limbs flung about.

‘Let's go,' Bobby said.

‘D'you want to try my bike?' Charlie said, because they both knew he'd won the argument and he could afford to be magnanimous.

So they left the angry water and got threepence of chips, and Bobby rode Charlie's bike up and down by the fountain in the park till he had to go home.

Charlie was about to go home too when he heard his name called.

‘Charlie Weekes, look at you.'

Wheeling round, he saw Annie on the far side of the fountain, arm hooked in with another girl's. Cycling slowly towards them, he affected as much two-wheeled nonchalance as he could muster, sitting back in his saddle, one hand in his pocket, coming to a small skid-stop.

‘That's quite a bike,' Annie said. ‘I hope you came by it in a proper fashion.'

Charlie flushed and Annie's friend giggled.

‘Got to go,' she said, and with a peck to Annie's cheek she strode off with that swinging girl's walk that somewhere in himself Charlie knew would be important to him one day.

‘It was a present,' Charlie said defensively.

‘You're such an only child,' Annie said. ‘I was teasing.'

‘Dr Markham gave it to me. For getting to school.'

‘Lucky boy,' Annie said. ‘Give us a croggie home then. I'm knackered.'

‘But you're too big,' he said. ‘Won't you be embarrassed?'

‘I don't much care,' Annie said. ‘I think it's you that's the embarrassed one.'

‘What if Auntie Pam sees you?'

‘She's got worse to see than that,' Annie said, but more to herself than to Charlie. ‘Come on, I'll be careful of your precious bike. I haven't seen you in an age. I'll buy you a KitKat if you get me all the way home.'

It took all Charlie's strength and concentration to cycle Annie home, so it was only as they freewheeled down the alley that he remembered what had happened the last time he'd been to the house.

‘Is Auntie Pam …' he began, because he wasn't coming in if she was there.

‘She won't be home for another hour. She told me to get the dinner going. So I'll start on the food and you can sit and tell me how you're getting on.'

She opened the back door and let them in.

‘My feet are sodden, so yours must be worse. Give me your shoes or Aunt Lydia will accuse me of causing your death when you get pneumonia.'

It was so easy, talking to Annie. He sat on the kitchen stool, his back against the wall, eating his KitKat while Annie made him tea and toast. While he told her all about everything, she scrubbed potatoes, fried onions and laid the table for tea, only interrupting with the occasional question.

Once the tea was on, Annie sat down opposite and started filing her nails.

‘Do you all have tea together?' she said.

And Charlie explained how Dr Markham often had to eat late, and how she had to go out on call at night and had a bell rigged up in her bedroom so she could hear if anyone rang at the front door.