Tell it to the Bees (36 page)

The woman nodded slightly, so Jean shut the door behind them and they stood in the hall.

Still the woman hesitated, though Jean could see agitation in her movements, fear in her face. She saw her look around, more than a glance, as though searching for something.

‘Is somebody ill?' Jean said, and as if called back to herself, the woman nodded.

‘My daughter,' she said. ‘She's very ill.'

‘Who is her doctor?' Jean said. There was something familiar about this woman's face, but Jean knew she was not a patient of hers. ‘It would be helpful –'

The woman cut her off. ‘It must be you,' she said.

Jean leaned against the table. She was exhausted. She
didn't want to hear of anybody else's difficulties. She didn't want to see anybody else's difficulties.

‘It must be me,' she repeated. She was too tired to help this woman over whatever trouble lay in the saying. So, not unkindly, she waited.

The woman looked down at the ground and then along the tiled floor till her gaze met Jean's shoes.

‘My daughter is bleeding,' she said, lifting her head, looking Jean full in the face.

‘Severely?'

The woman nodded.

‘Then you should take her to the hospital at once,' Jean said. ‘Phone for an ambulance. You can do so from here, if you want to.'

But the woman shook her head. ‘I can't.'

‘Why have you come to me? I don't know you,' Jean said.

The woman stumbled slightly and put out a hand. She was very pale.

‘Sit down,' Jean said and, when the woman had sat down, ‘Tell me your name.'

‘Mrs Cranmer,' the woman said. ‘Pam Cranmer.'

It was no more than a minute till she spoke again, but there was a girl bleeding the other side of the town and time had changed its texture. Into the silence, Jean said ‘Annie,' and she saw Pam's nod. She knew immediately that whatever she did next, she would wish she had done differently.

‘You know that I can't help you,' she said at last. She stayed standing. ‘You must take her to the hospital.'

Pam stayed silent.

‘When did it start? How soon after?' Jean said.

‘About fifteen minutes after the woman had gone. I went to find her. But she wouldn't come back.'

Jean looked at her watch. ‘It's eleven forty-five now. How long has she been bleeding for?'

‘It's an hour.'

Pam sat on the chair with her hands on her lap. She sat straight and she breathed evenly; her colour returned a little. She answered the questions in a neutral, quiet voice. But she was brittle, as if she would just crack.

Jean looked at her, and then she thought of Lydia, sleeping above them. She thought of what this woman had done.

‘What did the woman use?'

Pam's head jerked back, as though Jean had struck her.

‘What?' she said.

Jean turned away, impatient. ‘What did she use? Knitting needles?'

‘I don't know,' Pam said.

Now rage broke in Jean, cuffing her hard, swinging blows to her abdomen and she turned to Pam, came close to her, so that she could smell the wool in her coat and the hairspray under the headscarf. She spoke in a voice not her own, intimate and brutal.

‘You don't know? Where were you?'

‘I didn't watch.'

‘But you like sharp things. You like seeing what they do. You like poking things in and scraping them about and making people bleed.'

She remembered how Lydia had sat in the kitchen earlier that day, answering when she was spoken to, her fingers straying again and again to the photograph on the chair arm beside her, so that its corners were rubbed to grey paper now.

Pam's hands turned on her lap, squirming like blind things. Jean would pick her up and snap her.

‘Maybe she used a crochet hook to try and get it all out. Always popular. Every home has one. Do you like that thought? Your daughter, your precious daughter and a crochet hook?'

Pam was turning her head to this side and that, her eyes closed, her breath coming in short gasps.

‘Or maybe a pickle spoon. Then you don't have to get your fingers dirty on the jar.'

Picking up her doctor's bag, she dropped it at Pam's feet.

‘You've taken everything you can away from us. Taken Lydia's son from her. Destroyed my practice. Now, now you want me to pick this bag up, put on my hat and coat, and come in the night to see your daughter. I would be struck off for this. I could go to prison.'

‘Lydia loves her.'

Pam's voice was a blade in the air. It stopped Jean, held her on a point. She stepped away, back towards the wall. From somewhere Pam had gathered this voice, this sharp, thin force.

‘She's always encouraged her. Annie wants to be a teacher. She won't be able to if –'

‘But it's you that has stopped her. Lydia has told me. At every turn.'

‘Lydia never understood. My parents died, I brought my brother up. My husband died, I brought up my children. I've worked in that factory all my life.'

‘And Annie shouldn't want something else?' Jean shook her head. The conversation was mad. A girl was bleeding, maybe to death.

‘I'm calling the ambulance,' she said.

‘Please.' Pam was on her feet as she cried, reaching for Jean's sleeve. ‘For my child,' she said.

‘No!' Jean shouted and it echoed off the tiled floor and the cold walls. She listened, but there was no noise from above.

She left the hall and walked into the kitchen. Muted light streaked beyond her, washing the floor, casting her shadow out ahead. She burned with rage, her body coiled with it,
her muscles were sprung tight. She turned in the empty room, and turned again, as though there were something to be found in there that would help her. But the room gave nothing away and, if only for the cool of it, she went to the sink and turned on the tap. The water fell over her hands, drawing her down, calming her. She stood, and something opened in her mind. An idea. Perhaps a choice.

The water ran over her knuckles, her fingers. She turned her hands over and it pooled in her palms, running down her arms, wetting her sleeves. She stood very still and waited, ordering down her rage, ordering down her battering self, to draw out this timid thought. On the draining board she saw cups and pans, objects from another time. An empty honey jar up-ended, the label just visible, the ink run on Charlie's careful hand. She picked up the jar, then set it down again.

‘My price,' she said.

They found Annie on the kitchen floor, gathered in like an animal, knees drawn to her stomach, eyes dull. The sheets beneath her were soaked with blood. Blood slashed the floor.

Quickly Jean ordered Pam to ready the table again, to boil water, to find stronger light, and quickly she went to the girl, stroking her forehead, speaking low to her, and gently.

‘Annie,' she said, ‘I'm Dr Markham. Charlie's friend. I'm going to stop the pain and the bleeding. Squeeze my hand, so I know you can hear.'

They lifted the girl to the table. Jean looked at Pam.

‘Don't forget,' she said, her glance steady. Then: ‘Hold her. She needs you.' And she began.

Charlie went to the river with Bobby on Christmas Eve. It was the morning and he had all day. The sky was very blue and the shadow of the moon still hung in it.

Charlie said they should cross the blue bridge and go to the weir because there could be a body caught above. They clambered to it, slipping past the Danger sign and the red stick man tripping on his thin red line, and looked hard for bodies, or other things, above the sluice. They reached down to the water with their sticks, turning over the river's leavings like women at a jumble sale. The December sun shone on the back of their heads. The noise was glorious, crashing through Charlie's head. He couldn't hear himself think and he shouted back into it, loud as he could.

When they had had enough, they walked, swaggering a little, to the pipe factory and ate the chocolate sandwich biscuits Bobby had brought from the Christmas tin. He said when he was rich, he would have a speedboat and an aeroplane. Charlie said he would go to the Amazon, or maybe to Australia.

Their den was nothing now. A strip of corrugated iron, some rotten boards and a couple of rusty tins. The tarpaulin was gone, and the tin of sardines. Snakes were summer dreams too. So they found a different place and Charlie brought out the matches coaxed from Irene, newspaper and some strips of kindling and they lit a fire for winter.

‘I've got to go by dinnertime,' Bobby said. ‘My cousins'll be there. My mum said I'll be in trouble else.'

Charlie put his hands out to the fire.

‘You at your dad's?' Bobby said.

‘We could get some chips. Bring 'em back here,' Charlie said, as if Bobby hadn't spoken. ‘Irene gave me a shilling.' He flipped it up for proof.

They'd built up the fire so that it flamed high. You couldn't see the flames in the sunlight; you could only see the air bend.

‘They'll be gone in a couple of days,' Bobby said. ‘My cousins. After Christmas.'

Charlie shrugged. ‘Bye then,' he said.

He got some chips and went back to the weir, but bigger boys were there, and a dog with a studded collar. He didn't like the look of the dog. He walked back across the town, taking his time. The streets were busy. Women with full baskets, children running about, men drifting into pubs. At first Charlie kept himself busy by looking, but twice, and then a third time, he thought he saw his mother so he set his eyes to the pavement, only looking up to pick his way.

He didn't want to see her. He didn't want to think about her. His mind raged, and he banged his knuckles along the church railings so that they were black and sore. He hated his dad. But he didn't know what he felt about his mum except that if he saw her, he would hold on to her and the police would have to drag him away because he'd yell and kick and smash to stop it happening.

Slowly he walked back, taking the long way through the park. There was nobody else there. He kicked into dense piles of leaves, mulched down by winter. ‘Take that. Take that!' till his shoes were glistening and picked all over with earth. He spoke under his lip like the detectives did in the thrillers.

‘Gonna hunt that no-good deadbeat right outta town,' he muttered. ‘Ain't that right, my friend?'

Charlie could smell the beer when he opened the front door, and he could hear the shouting. A man's voice – his father's – and a woman's. His mother's? He shoved down the narrow hall and turned the door handle, his heart thudding and his courage high. He would hit his father, he would strangle him, he would kick him between the legs. But as he pulled the door open, he heard not his mother, but his aunt. It was Pam, and she was shouting at his father. Charlie stopped, the door ajar. The argument went on. They hadn't seen him. He pulled it to again, stepped back and leaned against the wall.

His aunt adored his father. He'd never heard her like this before. She didn't like his mother, but she adored his father. Now they sounded very angry, and his father was drunk. Charlie knew about listening at doors. It wasn't safe, and so he started to climb the stairs.

But Pam's voice was so loud he'd have heard it in the attic, if they had one.

‘You took him because you were angry. You don't even like him.'

‘That's because of her.'

‘No. You haven't liked him any better this week, and she's nowhere near.'

Charlie couldn't help hearing. He sat down on the stairs.

‘Don't tell me how I feel,' his father said. ‘You're always telling me how I feel.'

Chairs were being pushed and a bottle banged down hard, and then Pam's voice.

‘My daughter damn near died last night.'

‘Her fault. Should learn to keep her legs shut.'

There was no sound for a moment, and then Pam's voice again.

‘What about you? You haven't had your fly done up these past five years. You can't blame Lydia for finding somewhere else to warm her hands. It's only because you like this girl when she's upright and making the tea as well as fucking her that you've come to this. What's more, I bet you like her better when she's not going soft over your little son.'

‘You've changed your tune a bit. Since when did you care how Lydia felt? And anyway, so what?' His dad's voice, a bit shaky.

‘So I bloody brought you up, and I've defended you against all comers all your bloody life, especially when they were telling the truth about you. You've never had a thought for anybody but yourself, and everybody knows it. Though it took your wife longer than most to find out. I can't help loving you, you're my own blood, but you're selfish to the bone. Now I'm asking you to do something for me.'

Then there were more noises and something from his dad like a curse, and Pam's voice again.

‘I'm asking you to do something for my daughter. Give her a half-chance at respectability. You don't want your son here, except you're too bloody proud to admit it.'

Charlie put his arms around his knees and brought them up close. Pam went on like a road drill, and he wanted to put his hands over his ears, and he wanted to listen.

‘There was a price, Robert. That doctor came to my house and I promised her. I had to promise her.'

‘The price. My son for your daughter.' His father's voice was muted, as if maybe he had turned away.

‘You don't want him here,' she said again. ‘You want Irene to yourself.'

Charlie waited, and now Robert spoke as if he were picking up the words one by one and threading them on.

‘He's not my son,' he said.

Charlie pulled at a scab on his elbow. Make it hurt, make it hurt was in his fingers.

‘Not how my son should be,' Robert said.

Charlie dug his nail in and lifted the scab crust. Tears came to his eyes. Beyond him, the voices still spoke. Catching the scab between his fingertips, he tugged. Blood rose, a small dome of red.