The Hive (10 page)

Well—hey!—it was great so far, the old me-time. Cracking. First day of me-time and it’s like totally wild, guys. Here she was, stuck in her mum’s back garden, waddling about in her dead dad’s wellies, her face veiled, all her flesh covered, reduced to something small and squat and anonymous. She shuffled about on the patio, stabbing the toes of her Wellingtons into the edge of the lawn, waiting. She was starting to feel marginally less nice. God only knew what her mum was fiddling about at. Starting a fire in a watering can, it looked like. For reasons best known to her slightly batty self.

“It’s a smoker,” she called over to Rachel as she worked. “Bees hate smoke, it’s the one thing they’re scared of. So this is how we control them.”

“Really,” Rachel called back. “Gosh. Who knew?” And Zzzzzzzzz, she thought, returning to her boot and the stabbing. Who even cares?

“OK. I think that’s it. We can go in now.” They walked down to the bottom of the garden, automatically falling into the positions established some time back in Rachel’s own infancy and practiced through shopping centers and along beachfronts in the decades since: her mother striding ahead while she shuffled along behind. In turn they went through the small gate. The noise was already loud, but as soon as the top of the hive was opened it became quite overwhelming. Rachel was used to seeing solitary bees, sticking their whatevers in a flower, doing their whatever bee thing. She was quite unprepared for this sight, the sheer impact of thousands of them concentrated together like this—quite a force to be reckoned with. They were almost unrecognizable from the common insects she thought she knew. The single bee, she felt, was a thing she had the hang of. You could either live with it or you could wave it away. But this multitude here was a different organism altogether. It was as if the process of combining was itself transformative. An alchemy. Instinctively she recoiled. Even in her lame protective clothing, Rachel felt really quite acutely vulnerable.

“Right then,” she said briskly. “Jolly good. Everything seems to be in order.” She backed farther away. “Shall we be off then?”

“Don’t be silly, Rachel. We’ve got to check everything first.” Her mum’s voice was transformed too. Softened, sweet, intimate. “Honestly, girls. Listen to her. Didn’t I tell you?” she murmured as she slid out the top frame and studied it.

“What? What did you tell them?” Rachel’s voice was not soft or sweet. A few bees flew out and around her. She stepped back farther, flapped her hands in front of her face and started to hiss at them. “Bugger off. Leave me alone. It’s my me-time, damn it. Me-time.”

“Do be quiet, dear,” said her mum over her shoulder. And then into the hive: “She does come out with some funny things. Even I don’t know what she’s on about half the time.”

“Um, hello? I am here, you know.” Were they actually ganging up on her? That was what it felt like. They were bloody ganging up.

“No one’s interested in you, Rachel.” Now there was a phrase she’d heard before. “They’re only the guards of the hive. Just doing their job.”

Oh. No inverted commas there then. This, this buzzing around like a nuisance, was obviously what passed round here for a proper job.

Her mum put that frame back and slid out another. “Everyone’s got their own jobs here.” She studied the frame and brushed away some debris clinging to the side of the honeycomb. “It’s all highly organized. Runs on a strict routine. And they all take everything in turns. A rota. Some of them stay behind to run the nursery or do the cleaning. Others go out and about, looking for new places to nest or checking for danger.”

“Yeah. Whatever.” She flapped at the bees around her a bit more. “What did you mean by ‘Didn’t I tell you?’ What did you ‘tell’ them?”

“Oh, only that you wouldn’t like it here.” She put that frame back and slid out one lower down in the hive. “Because you don’t like large groups of females. Never have. Not a girl’s girl. Never were. Aha!” She tilted the honeycomb towards the autumnal sun. “There’s the queen. Look. All the worker bees are the same size, but she is much longer. More sleek somehow. Glossier. And looking lovely today, ma’am, if I may say so.”

“What? Honestly, Mother.” Rachel was outraged. “How could you? Talk about me like that?” She could feel actual steam building up in her stupid hood.

“That’s the other job, of course.” Her mother hummed on, ignoring her. “Looking after the queen. There they all are, gathered around her. Cleaning her on one side, feeding her from the other. That’s the life, isn’t it, Your Majesty?”

What? Not a girl’s girl? Really, what absolute rot. “Is this still because I wasn’t a Brownie? You know, it might be time to look for closure on that one.”

“It’s a shame. Forty years old and still she’s on about the Brownies,” her mum murmured, shaking her head, as she put their hive back together again.

“It’s you who’s always banging on about them.” Rachel was keeping her distance. She was now pinned to the farthest fence. “Anyway, I didn’t like them because of their stupid uniform. I don’t like this lot on account of their venomous sting. It’s not even a valid—”

“Excuse me. I didn’t bring up the Brownies. Or how you never made a team. Or how you had to come back early from that camp because you couldn’t stick the dorm.” She clipped the lid back on the white box and the noise diminished.

“Mother. Stop it,” she whined. Sod the being nice if this was where it got her. “Will you please stop presenting me as some weirdo no-mates?”

“Perfectly sociable, mind,” she added obligingly. But only to the ones still buzzing around outside.

“Well thank you.” Rachel repeated loud and clear: “Yes. Perfectly sociable.” She just wanted to make sure the bees inside had heard it too.

“I don’t know why you’re shouting at them. They can’t hear, you know. I only talk to them out of habit.” She patted the top of the hive affectionately, picked up her smoker and headed back to the house. Oh. Still, Rachel didn’t really want to leave things there. She felt a pressing need to put all that in context; explain to the bees that this was a temporary blip, that she just so happened to be down one husband and one best friend, just at the moment, it could happen to anybody, and that—Christ, no!—her emotional landscape did not normally look quite so barren. But her mum was already off, which left Rachel no option but to fall in and stomp behind.

“So that was fun. Why did I even have to be here anyway? You seem to be managing—”

“Well, it can be dangerous. One shouldn’t ever go in there alone. You never know what can happen with bees. So thank you for your support.”

“You’re welcome.” She might try the nice thing again. “Nothing else much on anyway.” Even that sounded sarcastic, although for once it was actually true.

“Oh good. In that case you won’t mind taking on my chickens.”

“Eh? Hang on a minute. What chickens?”

“The ones I’ve got coming. That nice new couple down the road have promised to knock up a henhouse. I don’t see why it should take them long. That will give you something to do.”

Bubba waylaid Heather, who was in a tearing hurry.

“Heather, can I have a word?” Which sounded more like “E’er, an I a a ur?” Her lips were horribly swollen, uncomfortable-looking. Almost deformed.

“Bubba! Are you OK? Have you been stung?” Heather had stopped in her tracks. She was always hyperreactive to any medical situation. The thing was, in Heather’s opinion, you just never knew…

“No, no, I’m fine. Well. I feel like I have been stung, actually. But there’s nothing wrong with my lips.”

“Sorry? Oh. Well there is, you know.” Heather had started to speak a little louder, was doing her very best enunciation. “I’ve got some Piriton in my traveling first-aid pack.” Guy had taught her never to leave home without it. She started rooting around in her tote bag.

“’O. Eally. It’s perfectly normal on the first day. My problem isn’t my lips, it’s this ball. This Christmas Ball. I had counted on doing it with Bea, to be honest. Between us, we just do tick all the boxes—no getting away from it—and I thought it would be, well,
fun
for us.”

Heather noted the “us.” She wished she was an “us.” Bubba’s only been here five minutes and look at her, ussing away.

“But now, she says, what with her new job, she really can’t and I’m to form a committee! But I don’t really know anyone! Well just a few…You were brilliant with the car boot sale. Would you be on my committee?
Pleeeeeeease?
”

Time was that Heather would have had to beg and connive to even get near a committee. Last year, Bea had thought it “probably for the best” if she just served the refreshments. See how her position had changed since Sunday? Not only was Heather now in that boat. Sisters, she had an oar in her hands.

“Course I will. Love to. But right now I must get on. I’ve got Bea’s children for tea.”

Rachel’s hands were deep into the pockets of her aviator jacket. There was a bite in the air today, the afternoon darker even than just last week. Nice bowl of soup for tea, she thought. Just the ticket. Come on, Poppy. Hurry up before I’m nobbled.

“A’el!” It was that Bubba. No, it was a caricature of that Bubba—Gerald Scarfe? From the school of, definitely—bearing down upon her. Huge, Jaggeresque lips air-kissed each cheek. She was trying to say something urgently, but Rachel couldn’t quite make out any of it…until the word “committee.” The word “committee” Rachel heard loud and clear.

No. That’s what she would have said. Before she had been so ruthlessly deconstructed in The Psychiatrist’s Bee Hive. She might have said, “I’d love to. But I’m already an artistic adviser. I don’t think I could take on another thing.” But now she felt she had probably better join something, and sharpish, if for no other reason than to shut her mother up. It might be too late for her to link hands and skip round a toadstool, but she could, she supposed, with a heavy heart, help out with weird Bubba’s stupid ball.

So she just said, “I’d love to.”

“Great. The Copper Kettle. Friday. Straight after drop-off.”

“Lovely,” Rachel lied. And then in the new spirit of Mason glasnost, she went further still: “How have your children settled in here, then?”

And Bubba was off. Everything was amazing. It was actually official: Milo and Martha were the world’s happiest children. St. Ambrose was the world’s best school, their last snobby prep school was the world’s worst. St. Snobbo’s said Milo had “problems.” As it happened, he was probably gifted. If you have an exceptional child, you just can’t beat a state primary. The teachers were wonderful, the other children were so special. The whole family just loved, loved, loved it. So many of her friends had said to her, state school? Was she actually
mad?
With everyone there so
rough
and
sweary?
She must need her
head
examined. But in fact it turned out that the people here didn’t actually seem to be too rough and sweary
at all.

“Oh look,” said Rachel, sidling away. “There’s my daughter.”

Heather was still waiting at the door. Where were they all? She needed to get the tea on…Ah. Here came Maisie, and just behind her came Colette, holding all three of Bea’s children firmly by the hand.

“Oh, thanks, Colette,” said Heather, darting forward. “They’re all coming home with me tonight.”

“Oh no they are not.” Colette sidestepped Heather neatly. “It’s my night. Bea said it was my night.”

“But it’s my night. I’m sure. She said…”

“It’s my night,” spat Colette. And then she half ran, half frog-marched the Stuarts towards her car, her own boys scrambling along somewhere behind.

Scarlett looked over her shoulder. “If only they’d made two of me!” she called out to Maisie, smiling sweetly.

“Maisie, love, I’m so sorry. I can’t think what happened. There must have been a mix-up.” Heather could hardly bear it when Maisie was subject to emotional pain. They were like those identical twins separated at birth: when Maisie was hurt, Heather was in screaming agony. The pain was building within her now. Her breath was shortening. Her brain giddy with adrenaline…

“Mummy, I couldn’t care less. Honest,” said Maisie, in a voice that she somehow controlled to make it sound completely normal. “Is Mrs. Green around?” Maisie spotted Bubba, and skipped over. “Excuse me, but, well, I thought you ought to know: Milo’s crying in the boys’ changing room and he won’t come out.”

B
ubba looked around the table and felt a flush of pleasure. Meetings were her favorite thing, always had been—they just were the perfect showcase for her own, specific skill set. Yet she hadn’t been to one for absolute yonks. That was the thing about domesticity: no meetings. Unless you counted telling Kazia what to pick up in Waitrose. Anyway, now here she was, and it was just like old times: Bubba in the chair, surrounded by eager slaves just waiting to carry out her every wish—only kidding! OK, so the Copper Kettle was not exactly the sort of state-of-the-art committee room to which she was used. The waitresses were actually wearing pinnies and mobcaps, which was a total hoot. And there were no piles of fresh fruit and bottles of water provided for them on the table. Instead, Jo was tucking into an iced bun the size of her head. No waitress had approached the table since she’d arrived. She was in serious danger of death by thirst. But otherwise, yeah: business as usual.

It wasn’t quite the top team. Heather was on the far side with Rachel, Georgie and Jo. Colette and Clover were opposite. Bea had promised to try and come, but she did have a “mare of a morning,” apparently. Bubba still hoped she would make it, though—just for that bit of input she could properly trust.

“So…”

She was planning to start with a small rallying speech. She had this gift, well known in the world of HR, for team-building.

“Shall I take the minutes?” interrupted Heather.

“Oh God, you’re
gorgeous,
” said Bubba. “But I think that so restricts the
spirit?
We want to be loose? Let it flow? Find those ideas. Kick them about and straight out of the…whatever.” Informality had always been one of her trademarks as a boss: it drew people together, in her experience.

“Oh. ’K then.” But for some reason Heather looked crushed. Utterly crushed.

“Right. Anyway. The thing is, this ball is quite some undertaking, and while I can manage a lot of it myself, what is so great and fabulous about St. Ambrose is the sense of community and everyone helping everyone else which you just don’t get in the private sector, or at least not the bit of the private sector we’ve just escaped from, which felt like the breakout from Alcatraz quite literally because everyone there was so stuck up—”

Rachel and Georgie suddenly got the giggles but Bubba pressed on. She might have to separate those two.

“—especially if your child is that tiniest little bit different which you would think they would want to celebrate but no.”

An ancient mobcap—possibly older than God—came to the table. Finally. “Long skinny latte for me, please.”

The mobcap looked uncertain. “Black or white?”

“Tell you what, Roz,” cut in Jo. “Bring us a pot of coffee and a jug of milk and we’ll do the rest.”

Bubba was gobsmacked. It was extraordinary: Jo actually seemed to know this person. Which meant that there were just two degrees of separation between Bubba and a mobcap! Actually, it was rather wonderful the turns her life was taking at the moment. She really relished its new depth and its breadth and its texture—

“Shall we crack on?” asked Rachel.

“Where was I? Yes: the caterers. Now—”

“Hiya. Made it at last,” said Jasmine. “Budge up.”

“Sorry we’re late,” added Sharon. “Bea says she’s going to try and pop in but you know, now, with her job, it’s”

“just juggle, juggle, juggle,” finished Jasmine, sighing.

“When I am Prime Minister,” pronounced Georgie, “the use of the verb ‘to juggle’ will be restricted to those with proven employment in the circus profession—”

“Shall we crack on?” Rachel said, a bit louder this time.

“Yes. The caterers. Bea has given me a steer on this, which is really,
really
kind of her. They’re called ‘A Moveable Feast.’ I don’t know if anyone here knows them?”

“Well, I’ve passed their snack van in the lay-by on the way up to the motorway,” offered Georgie.

“I
think
that must be a different one, though I really value your input. Bea seemed to think there was a school connection? Someone actually in the St. Ambrose community?”

“I’ll bet it’s to do with that Pam, the dinner lady, you remember, who was sacked by the old head over something or other. All very hush-hush it was,” chipped in Clover. “At your peril, if you want my opinion. At your peril.”

“I don’t think so,” said Bubba. She was starting to feel quite cross. “Bea is hardly going to recommend someone unreliable, is she? No one,
no one,
cares about this school and its kids like Bea.” Was it her imagination or was there negative energy building up here? She was hypersensitive to negative energy. If only Bea would arrive. “Does anyone use any other caterers, then, for their own general entertaining? That they would like to recommend?”

“Enterwhatting?” said Jo.

“Lolz,” yelped Sharon.

“Rofl,” squeaked Jasmine.

“There we are then.” Time to get firm. “A Moveable Feast it is. Now. Pressing forward. The music. Any suggestions?”

They all sat in silence for a bit, and then Jo of all people sprang to life. “Do you know what?” She sprayed bun crumbs everywhere. “I’d forget my own bum if it wasn’t so enormous. Course I do. Wayne. Wayne’s my mate,” she said to Georgie. “Good bloke. Look after his mum over in the care home. Terrible old trout. He owes me one.” And then back to the table: “Yeah, Wayne’s all right. Sorted. He’ll do it.”

“Fabulous contribution. Thanks, Jo.” Bubba would have loved a bit more information, but she did find Jo a bit intimidating. She was one of those people who could suddenly turn on one. “So could I
possibly
task you with reaching out to, um, Wayne? See if he’s free? Would you
mind?
”

“Listen here.” There we are. Bubba knew it: Jo had turned. “Read my lips. I said Wayne’ll do it. And Wayne’ll do it. This is starting to get on my nerves.”

“Sorry. Great. Lovely. Wayne it is. Now then. The theme.” This was the part where Bubba felt on the firmest ground, actually. She was brilliant at themes. Loved them. Any opportunity. Last time they had a curry, she wore a sari and turned the kitchen into Kerala. It had worked really, really well.

So it was odd that this was the point at which Bubba seemed to lose the meeting. Totally. Sort of mislaid the whole process somehow. She started her pitch about how she wanted a paradise beach theme, because that was what she had planned when it was a summer ball and she had a vision and a dream. And when she had a vision she had to stick with it, when she had a dream she could not give it up. And then Bea arrived. And then everything became a blur. There was a lot of argument about Christmas. And England. And the climate. And the snow upon the ground and the robin on the twig. As if any of those things had anything to do with people dressing up and having a glam night out and just tuning up that party vibe. And suddenly, before Bubba had any idea what was going on, Bea was saying, “Right then. We’re all agreed. Compromise time. The theme is the English Seaside in Winter.”

“Hang on a minute!” Bubba was yelping as if in pain. “Hold that thought. If we can just walk this one back up the agenda a bit—”

But Rachel and Georgie were giggling, so loudly this time, so disruptively that Bea couldn’t even hear her yelping and just pressed on to the next thing as if she was in charge, and not Bubba at all. “Now,” she said to the table. The table which had been Bubba’s table. Once. “Another thing I want to suggest—I mean, just a suggestion, it’s not
my
gala, so it’s not
my
decision—is an Auction of Promises, which can raise such a lot of money. Of course, I couldn’t possibly get one together, already got enough balls in the air as it is, but it will only take a nanosecond of somebody else’s time—”

“I’ll do that, Bea,” said Colette, sounding keener than she had sounded all morning.

“Thanks
ever so,
Col,” said Bea. “You’re awesome. You know the sort of stuff we usually go for. But I thought, this time, as we’re lucky enough to have Bubba on board these days, she could get one of her smart London friends to offer something? Dinner with a celebrity, perhaps?”

“Huh? I don’t know any ce—”

But everyone was suddenly oohing and aahing and looking at Bubba with a bit of respect for once and Bea said, “There we are! You can’t refuse now! Listen to the excitement. Time for you to share. Dinner with a Celebrity Friend of Bubba’s.” Sharon did a drumroll on the table. “It’s the Big Draw.”

And then Bea was off, and most of the others left after her. Colette had to sort out some cellulite. Sharon and Jasmine had their garden business to tend to. Georgie had to get Hamish from playgroup. Jo had to go and sleep off her night shift. And Heather was telling her to turn that frown upside down. And Clover said she should keep it exactly where it was because this, in her view, had all the makings. And Bubba had a funny feeling. A feeling she wasn’t used to, and couldn’t quite identify. But one that, she decided, felt a bit like the feeling one might have after one had been run over by a very,
very
large vehicle.

Rachel sat alone waiting for a coffee she didn’t really want. She had wanted to scarper the minute that ludicrous meeting finished, but everyone else had had the same thought. And poor Bubba looked so pathetic and dejected that it seemed a bit mean to just dump her. Heather had taken her up to the counter to pick a large confection of trans fats and carbohydrate in which she might seek some sort of solace.

She looked about her. The café was hot and steamy. A real English-seaside-in-winter sort of rain was bucketing down on the people outside, and evaporating off them once they were in. It was packed in here—there was not a free seat at the tables around the counter or in the two rooms behind—and yet it wasn’t noisy. And it wasn’t noisy, Rachel realized, because it was packed with quiet, well-behaved women. Well, that wasn’t quite true. At the table next to her there was one man with his wife, sunk in marital silence. His large hands held a delicate pastry fork with which he gave his cream puff the occasional doleful prod. Otherwise, it was as if she had stepped into the pages of a nineteenth-century novel; one in which the menfolk were all away at war, at work, or just had something better to do.

A few were younger than her, with babies in buggies and bottles that needed warming. But the rest, they were all late middle age. Elderly, some of them. The next stage on in life from the motley members of the English Seaside in Winter Ball Committee. The seniors to their juniors; Lower Sixth to their Upper Third.

She listened to the women behind her. She couldn’t see them, didn’t know them, could only hear the age in their voices, but their topic of conversation—that was instantly familiar.

“And in the end it was just the coursework that let her down…”

Of course. The children. Or possibly—they were definitely that little bit older—the children’s children? Or the children’s godchildren or the children’s children’s in-laws or the children’s children’s next-door neighbors. The A-level results of children they would never know were being shared with people to whom they could have no meaning. And yet everyone was riveted. Nobody was standing up and saying, “Enough. I do not know this girl. I am not interested in her offer from Leeds. Cease forthwith your tiresome prattle. Now, have you read the new McEwan?” Nope. They were rapt. They were genuinely worried about her retakes. Delighted with her A star. Crossing fingers that she chucked the dodgy boyfriend. They were actually prolonging the tiresome prattle with informed and interested questioning. It was just like Rachel’s mum and her friend Mary and the wretched Queen of the Canadian Ice Rink, being played out again and again all over this coffee shop and—Rachel had a horrible feeling—all over the Home Counties.

She was desperate to get out of there and back to her desk. Subsumed with a desire to do something creative, substantial, that would pull her up and out of this…well, it was a dependence culture, wasn’t it? Were they any better than the people government ministers were always banging on about on the
Today
program who were dependent on benefits? It seemed not, just then, just there, to Rachel. They were parasites—living on the lives, the news, the emotions, the progress of others. If they were so bloody interested in A levels, why didn’t they go off and bloody take some?

Was this how her own future was going to play out? Years dominated by her children’s schools to segue into years talking about somebody else’s schools? The rest of her life yawned before her like one long double period of French on a Friday afternoon. She reached behind her chair for her coat. She had to get out of there, get going, get on. She had just got her arm in her sleeve when Heather, Bubba, three coffees and a slab of chocolate brownie came back to the table. She took her arm out again, defeated.

“Oh great. Lovely. Thanks.” She picked up the teaspoon and stirred. “Just a quick one.”

“You do realize,” began Heather, “that this time next year we’ll be getting ready for our SATs.”

A noise—a sort of death rattle—came out of Rachel’s throat.

“You OK, Rach? Mmmm?” Heather’s eyes were soft with concern.

Be nice, said Rachel to herself. Just be nice.

“Oh fine. Yeah. Just, you know…SATs. All that…”

“Well, you’ve got nothing to worry about.” Heather turned to Bubba. “Her Poppy’s on Top Table!”

“Anyway,” Rachel burst in. “When’s our next rung on the lunch ladder? It’s been a couple of weeks. It’s the only time I actually eat these days, you know. I might just starve to death, not that you’d care.” Rachel was doing her best cheerful smile, but Heather was not even meeting her eye.

“Um. Well. Bea’s doing one the Friday after half-term.”

“Great…”

“She. Um. Was wanting to restrict numbers I think. So it’s just invitation-only this one. You know, what with her job…”

So she really has dropped me, Rachel realized with a thump. I was just like all the others, all along. There had always been this kaleidoscopic pattern to Bea’s social life: people hitherto unnoticed emerging from the shadows, brought into the light, spinning in the golden glow of being Bea’s new friend. Until something or other happened and they spun off again, back to the shadows, slightly stunned, wondering where it had all gone wrong. Rachel had witnessed it for years, in an unconcerned, disconnected sort of way—a mortal who somehow believed in her own immortality, even though the evidence of death was all around. OK, so she’d lasted the longest, had a good innings, as they said. But now look at her—come a cropper and cast out like the rest of them. Well, well, well.