Tell it to the Bees (37 page)

A key was in the front door. Charlie should get up or he'd be seen there, listening.

‘She's made sure of it,' he heard his father say.

The front door opened and Irene came in. Her eyes were bright with Christmas and she had her arms full.

‘Charlie!' she said, a greeting.

He stood slowly, like an old man, but made no reply. The blood smudged his sleeve. As Irene pushed the front door closed, his father appeared.

Robert looked from Irene to Charlie and back again. Charlie could smell the alcohol now.

‘You been listening,' he said, to Irene as much as his son.

‘Listening to what?' she said.

‘Pam's here. You better come in.'

And without another glance to Charlie, Robert went back inside and the door was closed.

Irene was crying when she came to his room. Crying and shaking her head. She held something out.

‘Here,' she said, giving him the pack of cards. ‘Nothing much else, is there?'

She picked up his satchel, gathered his few ends of clothing into it, and put it into Charlie's arms.

‘Go down to your father,' she said.

Pam stood in the kitchen doorway and his father was slumped in the chair. Charlie waited. He watched the tinsel shift in the draught. It made a shivering, metallic sound.

‘Go on,' Pam said to Robert softly, more like he was the boy here.

Robert beckoned to Charlie. He walked closer, to an arm's length. His father stared at him and he waited, light on the balls of his feet, for a swipe or a sharp word.

‘Get him out then,' he said.

It was early in the afternoon and the light was sliding from a pale blue sky. This time of year, the dark came sharp as a flick-knife, quick between the ribs of the day. Lydia turned the pages of the book she still couldn't read. She felt leaden. She would be glad of the night.

She looked out of the window. Jean had been tired today, her mood strange and electric. Now she was in the garden, repairing some hive frames. Since breakfast she had been busy with tasks that didn't need to be done. Or at least not now. Not the day before Christmas.

Earlier Lydia had put a hand to her shoulder carefully, as if something about her would throw it off.

‘Jean?' she said.

And when Jean turned to her, even as their eyes met, her glance had slipped off and gone elsewhere.

Lydia hadn't heard her go out in the night, but she had seen blood on her blouse in the morning. Though Lydia had asked her, Jean wouldn't say where she had been, or what had been wrong. Several times the telephone had rung and Jean had been quick to answer it, speaking in a low voice, turning away if Lydia was there. Once it had been Sarah and Jean had beckoned Lydia over to speak. But Lydia could hear the little girls in the background and it was unbearable, and so she had said she was sorry and put down the receiver.

Lydia tapped on the glass, and gestured with her fingers.

‘Going for a walk,' she mouthed, and she took her coat from the hall and went out.

The road was always quiet. Few houses and, not so far beyond, fields.

Lydia strode, commanding her legs to walk fast, not caring that she stumbled in the coming dark, not caring to find a rhythm. She walked upwards into the night till she was out of breath, and finally she turned back, towards the litter of lights below. It was hard to keep her head up, too hard to look out, and Lydia kept her eyes on the road. She didn't see the figures till they were quite close.

She heard the woman's voice first, soft, enquiring. A question, Lydia could hear that. And she looked up to see two figures walking up the hill towards her, a young woman, and beside her, a small boy, head down, trailing something. For a split second she didn't recognize him. The boy paused to answer, lifted his head. Then her heart was in her throat and the blood roared loud in her ears. But she couldn't move, she couldn't breathe, she couldn't speak.

As if in slow motion, she saw him drop what he carried – a satchel, her mind told her somewhere, unimportantly – and then she saw him gather himself up and run.

Out of the shadows he ran towards her and she stood and waited. Behind him the young woman also stood and waited and another, unimportant thought crossed her mind, that she must be Robert's.

But now Charlie was in her arms and she didn't think any more.

The sky sat upon their shoulders, so low and so grey, and their movements in the cold day were thick and imprecise. The ground was soft with the rain, and earth soon clodded their boots. The hives were heavier than Jean remembered.

Slowly they lifted, slowly they manoeuvred. Every so often she would stop and look around her, as if storing up her fill of it against the future.

Charlie ran about, helping, and Lydia came out for a while, wrapped up in Jean's old coat.

There was everything left to do, and nothing at all. They had come to their decision in an instant three months ago but spoken of it to nobody, not even Charlie, till they knew they could go. Now they were leaving and, for the time being, they would take only what they needed.

Jim drove the car slowly across the silent Sunday town. Behind, in the trailer, the four hives and Charlie.

‘You found someone quickly, for the hives,' Jim said.

‘Yes.' Jean looked out at the town.

‘You've gone already,' Jim said. ‘Haven't you?'

‘I didn't choose it.'

‘You chose something. Are you taking the cat?'

‘She'll like it. The heat. The insects.'

‘And us?'

‘You'll visit. For ages. We'll visit.'

They sat in the kitchen and drank coffee. Lydia sat with them. She wrote on a list, and crossed things off. Sometimes she smiled at what they said, but she didn't join the conversation. This was not her farewell.

Charlie was in and out, buzzing, excited. Often, Jean saw, he would brush by Lydia, or pause, and she would put a brief hand on his hair or drop a kiss to his shoulder. Jean saw that till he left the room, Lydia's eyes didn't leave him. She wouldn't let him go.

‘You have money enough,' Jim said.

‘I'll write before we're on the street,' Jean said.

‘
Viale
, not street. Or
strada
.'

‘What will you do?'

‘I will not worry,' Jim said.

‘We'll be careful. It'll be easier in a foreign country.'

‘You're a doctor. Everybody sees you.'

Jean shook her head.

‘Only if they need to. We'll be careful. We'll be strange already, for being English.'

‘And I will not miss you in the Red Horse on Thursdays. I will find another oldest friend to put in your place.'

The doorbell rang and Lydia went to see.

‘You know there was a whip-round at the factory,' Jean said. ‘Like they do when a girl gets married.'

‘That's a nice gesture,' Jim said.

‘Pam organized it. She left the money in the porch with a note. Lydia didn't show it to me, but it made her cry a little.'

‘Does she know what happened?'

‘She knows that Annie lost her baby. Nothing else. She's been round with Annie every day almost. Made her promise that she'll visit us before the year is out.'

‘Do you think she will?'

Jean shrugged. ‘I don't know. But I don't think Lydia could bear to go without the promise.'

She got up and fetched the jug of coffee.

‘Lydia's learning the language so quickly. More quickly than me,' she said. ‘We have a book. But I've done my other homework. I've written some letters and made some telephone calls. I can practise over there and I've established that there are plenty of sick people. English-speaking sick people. So I'll get to work on them while I'm learning new words.'

‘Then you are as set as you can be, though it might take some getting used to. A foreign country and foreign ways. What about here? Have you cured everybody here?'

‘Everybody who will be cured.'

Sarah and the little girls came at lunchtime and Charlie showed the girls the four squares in the grass where the hives had been.

‘They're like windows,' he said.

‘What to?'

‘It doesn't matter, so long as you can look through them.'

He chased them to the bottom of the garden, roaring like a lion; and a while later they went home.

They packed Charlie's shelves that evening, each thing wrapped in old news till the holdall was full. Though it was late now, he swore he would not sleep. Lydia turned off his light and went downstairs.

‘Is he excited?' Jean said.

‘He said it would be like a new world to look at. He said you had told him so.'

Jean kissed the woman she would leave her life for, run away for.

‘He's right,' she said.

They stood an arm's length apart, Robert rocking slightly, Charlie standing stock-still. The street was quiet. There was that same pause now that they do in the films, and Charlie thought how strange it was that it could really happen like that.

‘What do you want?' Robert said at last.

For a moment Charlie thought perhaps his father didn't know him. But something about the way Robert crossed his arms and waited answered that.

‘I wanted to see you,' Charlie said.

Robert leaned his shoulder against the doorframe. His mouth was a piece of string and on his jutting chin was the forgotten haze of an old man's stubble. He put out his hands, like a performer when he's done a trick.

‘So. Here I am,' he said. ‘Not very hard to find, eh?'

‘I heard about Pam,' Charlie said. ‘Annie told me. I'm very sorry.'

Robert shrugged. ‘Quick's best.'

Charlie nodded.

‘She visits you over there, doesn't she?' Robert said.

Charlie nodded.

‘Took your time, coming to pay your respects,' Robert said. ‘Took your bloody time.'

Lives on his own, drinks on his own. That was what Annie had written, and Charlie could feel the drink in the
air like a mood. There were stains on his father's trousers and his cardigan was grubby.

‘Annie looks in, though,' Charlie said, surprised by pity. ‘Calls in to see you. I know that.'

Robert shrugged. ‘So why've you come back?'

Charlie told himself that he'd turned up here and his father had had no warning. That he was an ill man, and lonely. He told himself that he had gone away a child and come back a man.

‘Like I said, I wanted to see you.'

‘Nobody wears suits like that in this town. Get in before I die, is it?'

Charlie shook his head, because he didn't want it to go like this. Somewhere behind him he heard the sound of someone running, light, urgent footsteps. They were coming down the street.

‘Let's go and have a beer. Or a coffee,' he said. ‘Get off the doorstep, anyway.'

The afternoon sun trailed a dirty finger over the front window. Charlie felt cold. The sun had no heat here, no warmth.

Robert turned. ‘I've got my tea on,' he said, and he walked back inside, stoop-shouldered.

His steps were awkward and slurred. There was nothing left of the swagger Charlie had tried to copy as a boy.

Charlie stood undecided. He put a hand to the bag on his shoulder, felt the jar of honey.

What are you going to do, Charlie? he said to himself.

Behind him the running steps drew closer and he turned. A boy ran down the centre of the empty street as if his life depended on it, legs flying, running like a demon, one arm like a piston, the other holding something, a box or a boat, tight to his side. He was close now, but he didn't see Charlie, a man in a suit on a doorstep. Didn't look, at any rate. His eyes were wide and his breath was quick, and he might be
running to anywhere. He might be running from anything. He was just a boy going by, perhaps ten years old, in trainers and scruffy jeans.

Charlie turned back to follow his father.

‘You bastard,' he said quietly.

The house was cold and unchanged, ornaments, curtains, tables and chairs. It smelled of old smoke and old food. In the kitchen Robert spread margarine on two slices of bread and poured orange soup into a bowl at the blue Formica table. He didn't look up. Charlie watched him sit down and dip his spoon, lift it to his mouth and suck. Watched him light a cigarette and lean it in the ashtray, waiting.

‘Still eating your cockles?' Charlie said.

‘You bring me some? In that pansy bag?'

Charlie took out the jar of honey and set it down beside the ashtray.

Robert picked up his cigarette, jabbed it in his mouth. He drew hard, pulling the glow towards him.

‘I don't want to know about your fucking honey,' he said.

Charlie stood quite still. His legs were shaking and his mouth felt dry. It had come to it.

‘No, you never wanted to know,' he said.

Anger shook his body, shook his voice. An old anger he knew too well, that had him whisper to the bees all those years ago.

‘She took you away from me.' Robert's voice was plaintive, wheedling and he seemed to shrink into his chair. ‘I had no choice,' he said, speaking each word slowly, separately.

‘You always had a choice.' Charlie's voice was rough, peremptory. ‘You could have written. Asked Annie. Done something.'

He walked over to the sink and looked out at the yard. The back gate was half off its hinges. He willed his father to speak. To say that he'd tried. This was the hope that
had brought Charlie so far, and he held his breath in the dingy kitchen.

Come on, he thought. Please.

But when he turned back, his father only sat on, slumped, his cigarette burning up towards his fingers.

The boy in Charlie pleaded to go. But he was an adult now, a man taller than his father, and he had come a long way to ask this question.

‘The day you sent me back,' he said. ‘Why did you do it?'