The Honey Queen (16 page)

Lillie hoped fervently that Seth’s father had known about it all; at least then, Jennifer would have had someone in whom to confide those doubts and fears.

‘Are you all right?’ asked Seth, anxious because Lillie was standing white-faced, staring fixedly at the house.

Perhaps it had been too much for her, he thought. She’d lost her husband so recently and now, coming here to the place where their mother had lived – well, it would be overwhelming.

Lillie turned to him and smiled. Some of the colour returned to her cheeks.

‘I’m fine,’ she said. ‘I’m glad we came. I needed to see it and I sort of understand it now. Being here makes it more real. I can imagine life then, I can imagine the fear she must have felt, and the courage it took to give me away.’

‘I thought you were going to faint,’ said Seth, relieved.

‘No,’ said his sister. ‘But I’m ready to go home for a cup of tea.’

‘Right,’ he said. ‘I’ll take a quick photo. Do you want to be in it?’

Lillie paused, then shook her head. ‘Better if I take the photo,’ she said. ‘Then you can be in it. I was only here in our mother’s heart. That’s the way it should stay.’

Seth is going to attach the photo of the house for me, Doris. Martin and Evan will be thrilled to see it, too. They think I can do a high-speed trip through the past and send all the photos instantly. But I want to take my time. Seth and I are feeling our way, you see, and going back to those times is very emotional.

I can understand why my mother did what she did. In her place and in those times, I’d have done the same. What choice was there? We still can’t find out who my birth father was. Seth and I have looked through all his mother’s papers and there’s nothing from that time. She wasn’t a letter writer and didn’t keep a diary. I guess we’ll never know.

On a lighter note, complete strangers still talk to me all the time – it’s clearly not just a Melbourne thing. I already know more people in Redstone than Seth does. I’ve gone to the shops a few times on my own and when Seth came with me today, he was astonished at the number of locals saying ‘Hello, Lillie, how’s the jet lag?’

I’ve found two great new pals, Seanie and Ronnie. The pair of them spend all day sitting at the bus stop every day. I don’t think they travel anywhere. They just sit there, admire whoever’s passing and chat in between smokes. They remind me of some of the old guys on the books at the Vinnies – or the St Vincent de Paul society, as they call it here.

Seth said he’d never noticed the two guys before. Seth isn’t a noticer, not the way you and I would notice things.

There’s a sweet bakery here that you’d just adore. Heavens, I have to watch out. All those kilos I lost from our five-mile walks, I’ll put them all right back on again. I’ve started to go in there with Seth to buy fresh bread, maybe a cake, and then we grab a coffee to go. The couple that run the place are trying for a baby. Poor Sue’s had four goes at IVF with no success.

Yes, people are still telling me things. When I told Seth on the walk home that I’d had this lovely but quite personal chat with Sue (I didn’t want to tell him exactly
what
she’d said. She didn’t say it was a secret but I felt she wouldn’t want people who came into the shop to look at her and know her business) he looked at me in amazement. ‘But why would she reveal such personal details to someone she barely knows?’

‘I have that sort of face,’ I told him. ‘It happens to me everywhere. If a day goes by when I don’t hear at least one secret, I start to worry.’

I’m not sure he knows what to make of me, but he’s glad I’m here and that’s enough for the moment.

Seth and I have drawn up a list of things that I want to do while I’m here. Like visiting my mother’s grave and seeing her relatives in Kerry, even though Seth says there’s not many of them left.

And we’re going to clear out the garden. Yes, it’s really a job for the combined forces of Martin, Evan and at least five other huge blokes, but right now there’s just me and Seth. I’ll try and get my hands on some young fellow who needs a bit of work for a few dollars. Seth is too shell-shocked to think about it himself.

I’m working on getting him interested in beekeeping. I know, don’t say it: he’s not Sam and there’s no point making him take up Sam’s hobbies. But bees are so calming. Taking care of them is the closest thing to meditation you can get, Sam used to say. Let’s see if they can work their magic on my brother.

You’d love Frankie, his wife. She’s the type of person who could run the country, given half a chance. With so much on their plate already, you’d think she’d be giving me the evil eye and saying ‘When are you going home?’ but instead she’s gone out of her way to make me feel welcome.

In fact, she and Seth have been pleading with me to stay for a few more weeks at least. I think it suits them to have another person around the place. I want to pay for my stay but they keep saying they’re insulted by the very idea. So I’m doing a lot of cooking, and Frankie’s very grateful. She works so hard and she seems so tired.

Plus, they’re going through that dreaded
second phase
. I remember how hard it was for me and Sam when the boys left home. We were at each other’s throats for a whole year! I feel guilty about it now; it’s as if we wasted that precious time, hating every moment we spent together. I have to keep reminding myself of that talking to I got from Viletta at the time. She sat me down and told me it was just a case of marriage and life entering into the second phase, where you’re past the young love and the running around with the kids bit, and it’s back to being a couple again. Only this time you’re older and, not beating around the bush here, grumpier (typical Viletta!). Plus, you’re teetering on the edge of being menopausal – which doesn’t help when you need to patch things up and move on to the next stage.

That’s where Frankie and Seth are right now, with the added pressure of money problems and a house that’s falling apart around them.

I can’t give Seth the lecture Viletta gave me because he’s not up to hearing about how you have to work at marriage, and I don’t spend enough time with Frankie to get on to the subject – but I will. And no, I won’t be interfering! I can hear you say it across the world, Doris! I’m just going to explain how it was for me and Sam. It’s always easier when you know it’s not just you, that everyone goes through it.

OK, that’s enough of the deep stuff. Even though it’s spring here, it’s still incredibly cold. I miss our long walks by the sea but we’ll have plenty of time for that once I’m home. In the meantime, I’m happy. Sam’s with me. I can really feel his presence here. The bees were his idea – yes, I know you think I’m crazy, Doris. I’m not, I promise. The other morning when I was in Redstone I went into an antique shop, hoping to find a gift for Seth and Frankie (they refuse to let me contribute towards my upkeep, so I have to make do with buying groceries and cooking meals). The guy in the shop was putting something in a display case: a golden locket with a bumble bee on it. As soon as I saw it, I knew it was a message from Sam.

Bees
, he was telling me, clear as if he was standing next to me.
Get Seth into beekeeping.

Then I went into the organic vegetable shop and they had all these jars of local honey with the beekeeper’s number on the label. So I rang him. He said he’d be delighted to give Seth a few pointers, tell him a good course to go on – he’d even donate a couple of hives. Turns out he’s getting a bit old and is finding ten hives a bit too much to cope with. I offered to buy his hives, but he said, ‘Absolutely not. No money is to pass hands. They will be a gift: that way, the bees will be happy.’ I never heard that one before, even in all the years Sam was beekeeping.

So, I’m happy. I’ve people to take care of and that always makes me happy, doesn’t it?

Now, tell me all your news. Is Lloyd still keen on my Dyanne? I’ve emailed her. You’d have thought I’d piloted a space shuttle around Mars; she wrote back:
Gran, you’re on email!
So I told her I’m a silver surfer. She’s sent me a couple of emails since, but they’re all about school and home – no mention of boys. Guess she thinks I’d be shocked. Kids today, they think we don’t know what it is to fall in love! We could tell her some stuff, couldn’t we, Doris?

F
rankie’s doctor, Felix, was a calm, gentle man her own age who’d seen her through one pregnancy and the early years of Alexei’s adoption when he’d seemed to pick up every bug going.

‘I’m too young for this menopause thing,’ she said to Felix with irritation after what felt like a month in the waiting room one evening after work.

‘Actually, menopause is – as I’ve no doubt you’ve read – precisely a year after your last period,’ Felix informed her calmly. ‘And you’re still having periods.’

‘Well peri-menopause or whatever,’ said Frankie grumpily. She didn’t want to be having this conversation, it was inherently depressing.

‘Let’s do the blood test to check your hormones, and a thyroid test. We should probably take your blood pressure as well. Then we’ll know what we’re dealing with and we can discuss the options.’

‘Let’s discuss the options now,’ Frankie said miserably. ‘I’m not in the mood to wait. It could be stress, you know. I am stressed.’

‘Why?’ said Felix.

Frankie felt irritated with him for being so reasonable.

‘The basics,’ she snapped. ‘Money, worrying about the future, the whole nine yards. Seth’s lost his job and that puts a certain pressure on me to pay the bills. The house is a pressure too.’

‘The house?’ he said.

‘The Money Pit. We moved into this old house and we were going to do so much to it and now we don’t have the money. It’s like living in hell. We’re in the basement and the rest of the place is a disaster zone of horrible bedsits. I lie in bed at night thinking about the state of the place over me: damp, with smelly, rotten carpets and awful old walls that haven’t been stripped in donkey’s years.’

‘Right, financial pressure, that’s a huge issue. And Seth losing his job, yes, I can see that would make you stressed,’ said Felix, still being Mr Calm.

Suppressing the urge to bash him with her handbag and say ‘No shit, Sherlock,’ Frankie replied: ‘So I mightn’t be peri-menopausal at all? I might just be normally stressed.’

She liked that idea a whole lot more than the menopause one. Stress was a far better prospect than a one-way trip on the Old Woman Express.

‘The blood tests will tell us,’ Felix said. ‘But there are lots of ways of coping with stress.’

‘You’re going to suggest Mindfulness, aren’t you?’ said Frankie beadily.

Felix laughed. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Actually I was going to suggest finding a hobby, something that would help you relax.’

‘I don’t have time for hobbies,’ Frankie said. ‘I haven’t bothered with hobbies since … I can’t remember when. I’ve always been too busy looking after the children or working. Hobbies? Who has hobbies?’

‘Lots of people do. Painting, gardening—’

She interrupted him. ‘You should see the state of our garden! It needs a mechanical digger then a fleet of experts to plant things before you could even think about any actual gardening a normal person could do.’

‘Doing up the house could be a relaxing hobby?’ Felix suggested, unperturbed.

Frankie started to laugh and felt the rage and resentment flood away. ‘Felix, you are funny. I’m just being a bad-tempered old cow. I’m sorry, this is all you need when you’ve got a waiting room full of really sick people.’

‘People don’t just come to the doctor when they’re straightforward sick,’ Felix reminded her. ‘And being peri-menopausal is something you need to deal with. Hormone imbalance is no fun, so we’ll find out what the results say and I’ll ring you, OK? And think about that hobby thing,’ he added as she got up to go.

‘Yes, Felix. By the way, how many hobbies do you have?’ Frankie stood at the door, grinning.

‘Touché,’ Felix said, smiling. ‘But give it some thought anyway. It would be good for Seth too, having something to occupy him. You know the effects of not working on the male psyche.’

‘Oh yes,’ she said grimly. ‘I could write a book about it. Thanks, Felix. Bye.’

Seth
. If only he did have something to occupy him. He could have done some voluntary work, maybe offered himself as a mentor for young architects – but all the young architects had left the country. There was no one left to mentor. So instead he’d given up on life and now she had to deal with the fallout.

At least he’d picked up a bit since Lillie had come. But she wouldn’t be staying for ever, and then what would they do?

Frankie decided she’d best warn Lillie about her mother well ahead of dinner.

‘Madeleine is very energetic,’ she said on Saturday afternoon as they sat beside the French windows with pale spring light beaming in on them. Energetic was a good word, Frankie decided. Her mother had been on the phone several times since Lillie had arrived, dying to be invited over.

‘Seth says Lillie’s the image of his mother,’ Madeleine had said excitedly. ‘Jennifer was a fine-looking woman. I think we’ll get on like a house on fire. I told Seth I want to drive her to Dublin for a few days’ sightseeing and that kind of thing. Bring her to a show. It’d be great.’

‘Seth told me your mother’s very lively,’ Lillie replied. ‘I’m looking forward to meeting your parents, they sound wonderful. Your sister Gabrielle and her husband are coming too?’

Lillie was being polite, Frankie thought.

‘They are,’ she agreed. ‘Look, what I’m trying to say is that Mum’s great but she has all these plans for you and I don’t want you bamboozled into going on a mad trip with her. She’s talking about taking you to see the Book of Kells and Glendalough and—’

‘That sounds wonderful.’