The Honey Queen (26 page)

Seth looked relieved to have a bit of sympathy.

‘I think,’ he said, as if he was revealing some great secret, ‘that Frankie would like me to get started myself but I’m no good with my hands. I’m more of an ideas man.’

‘Of course you are,’ agreed Lillie. ‘Architects don’t do the actual building work. I expect what Frankie really wants is for you to be doing something that would make you happy and content,’ she went on, venturing a bit into unknown territory here. ‘But you and I could have a look and see what we could do …’

Lillie knew how to paint and garden, but that was her limit. Sam had taken care of everything practical around the house, and now that he was gone, Martin and Evan were there. She could understand Frankie’s irritation at Seth’s inability to do anything with their home. Especially when Frankie was clearly such a practical person that she’d probably start on pulling down dividing walls herself, given the time and a sledge hammer.

The basement where Seth and Frankie, and now Lillie, lived was the best part of the whole place, a self-contained apartment that had been kept in reasonable condition, but when Lillie stepped through the door that led into the ground floor she saw that the rest of the house was a very different state of affairs. Each of the lovely, high-ceilinged rooms had been divided into a series of bedsits, all cobbled together with ugly wood and with old-fashioned sinks stuck in all over the place. There were horrible little two-bar electric fires in the beautiful old fireplaces and Lillie thought it was a miracle the whole place hadn’t burned to the ground years ago.

The first floor was the same, if not worse. It was as if the previous landlord had had a competition with himself to see how many single rooms he could make out of four large elegant ones. Some of the bedsits only had half a window, the original rooms having been ruthlessly cut in two with cheap boarding dividing up the room. In those cases, the window itself was nailed down lest the two occupants argued over having it open. ‘I suppose they were able to exchange notes between bedsits,’ Lillie laughed. ‘Although they could have just talked through the partitions. But it’s a beautiful house,’ she added hastily, as she saw her brother take it all in with a gloomy face. ‘And such an exciting project for an architect like yourself.’

Seth ran his finger along the peeling paint on a lovely and original heavy door.

‘We had so many plans for it,’ he said sadly.

Lillie peered out of the half-window onto the jungle below. Seth joined her and looked down. He said: ‘I had this wonderful design for extending the kitchen and creating a conservatory which would link with an open-plan living room. Then I’d drawn up plans for hard landscaping in the garden. I know I’m not a landscaper but I’ve worked with enough of them …’ His voice trailed off.

Standing at the window, hands in his pockets and shoulders slumped, he had been the picture of dejection. For all of a millisecond, Lillie wondered what she’d got herself into. At home, the person in need of rescuing had been her. Here she felt as if she needed to rescue Seth and Frankie and possibly even their marriage. She wasn’t a meddler, not by any standards. Never had been, even with Martin and Evan when they left home. She’d always let them make their own mistakes and been there in the background to lend support and guidance.

That was how she’d been raised: by a wonderful mother and father who loved her enough to let her go.

In bed each night, she’d wondered if she would have been a different person if her birth mother hadn’t given her up to the nuns for adoption.

People had to learn by their own mistakes. And yet this was different. This wasn’t a mistake, this was a crisis, a disaster. Seth needed her. Frankie needed her. They were circling each other like the walking wounded, each locked in their own prison of pain: Frankie wondering where her vibrant husband had gone and Seth hating himself for what he’d become but feeling helpless to change it.

No, there was nothing else for it: Lillie had to step in. Silently she looked up. Her husband Sam was definitely up wherever he was.
Is this what you sent me here for?
she whispered. Behind the house she could see the neat lines of the allotments and beyond that the wasteland that was being turned into a park. There was great industry going on in the allotments. People moving about, wheelbarrows being shifted along, digging, weeding, whatever.

‘Did you ever grow things?’ Lillie asked Seth. ‘Did our mother grow things? Was that something you did?’ There were so many things she didn’t know. Her own tomato plants used to groan with the weight of beautiful tomatoes and she made her own chutney in the autumn, and as for the fig tree, beautiful, old, curving and just outside her own kitchen window, she used to love to sit under it and reach up for a giant juicy fig.

‘Not me,’ Seth replied. ‘There was farming in Mam’s background – as with most people in the country – but she only grew flowers. She loved roses.’

‘Oh, me too,’ said Lillie, touched at this link with her mother. ‘You could grow a lot in that garden down there,’ she said. ‘That’s something we could certainly make a start on.’

She’d given up trying to persuade him to make a start on the house – at least for the time being. Each time she’d suggested that they do a bit of wallpaper stripping, or knocking down a partition, or hiring a builder’s skip to chuck some of the rotten carpets in, his face would take on a rabbit-in-the-headlights look of sheer terror.

‘Let’s at least try,’ Lillie said, determined to breathe some enthusiasm into her brother. ‘Come on, it’s such a nice day, why don’t we take a walk round the garden and start making a list of what we need and what we have to do?’

The garden cheered Seth up somewhat, partly because it was a balmy March day and the sun was shining, but also because Lillie kept unearthing real plants underneath the weeds.

‘What a lovely hydrangea!’ she’d exclaim. ‘Totally hidden here – we’ll have to move that.’ And then a little further on: ‘Oooh, this looks interesting …’

Lillie was quite enjoying herself, poking back the briars with Emer’s hockey stick – the only piece of equipment she could find in the house suitable for jungle exploration, given that there was no machete. ‘Just look at those beautiful fuchsias against the wall. They’ll give you lots of colour, we might free a bit of space for them to breathe.’

Halfway down the garden she turned to him and said, ‘We should draw up a bit of a garden plan, just something rough but enough to give you and Frankie something to start with.’

Lillie was careful with her words because she wanted Seth to see this as his and Frankie’s project: not hers. She would be going home eventually, and they needed to be able to look after this garden themselves, to
own
it.

The garden contained a frothing mound of red-hot pokers and a few laurel bushes, not to mention enough nettles to sting the entire population of Redstone. Lillie had come prepared this time and was wearing jeans and thick socks.

‘You can keep your stinging bits to yourselves,’ she told the nettles, whacking them back with Emer’s hockey stick. ‘The soil looks good, you know,’ she told Seth, digging a bit with the tip of the stick. ‘Emer doesn’t use this any more, does she?’ she added suddenly.

‘No,’ Seth laughed, and Lillie smiled at the sound. ‘She dropped out of hockey during the exam years and never went back.’

‘Good. I’d hate to wreck it.’

Lillie poked the earth some more. ‘It’s not stony topsoil or anything but proper, decent earth, Seth.’

‘Maybe we can forget about the house and live in the garden,’ he said, with added irony this time.

‘Too chilly,’ said Lillie, determined not to let him sink into introspection. ‘Though the copper beeches would make a lovely shelter.’

At the end of the garden was an arch leading to a small walled-off garden. Seth and Frankie hadn’t ventured into it since the day they came to view the property with the estate agent.

‘It was nearly dark, so we only poked our heads in,’ he said now. ‘Basically, it’s more brambles with a few trees in one corner.’

Lillie led the way over to it now, bashing nettles and briars out of her way with the hockey stick. The arch had a rusted gate, which was stuck in a half-open position.

As she passed through, Lillie felt a little shiver of anticipation, as if this place was somehow important and she should pay attention.

Sam’s mother, a second-generation Irishwoman named Maeve, had once talked to Lillie about instinct. Lillie had been a young mother then and worried over Martin’s spiking temperature, but she didn’t want to take him to old Dr Howard without good reason. The doctor was notorious for sending people home with a flea in their ear if he felt they’d wasted his time.

Maeve lived only a few doors away, and she’d taken in Martin’s fevered face and bright eyes, and seen how distressed Lillie was.

‘What’s this telling you – in here?’ she said to Lillie, pointing to her stomach. ‘What’s it telling you? And here?’ She pointed at her heart.

‘That Martin’s sick and he needs the doctor,’ said Lillie instantly.

‘Right then, off you go,’ said Maeve. ‘And find another doctor when this is over. Old Howard’s been doing it too long, he’s jaundiced and bitter at the world. He’s no good for looking after young kids – or their mothers, for that matter. He won’t trust you, although he should. A mother knows when something’s wrong with her child, and a smart doctor realizes that. So trust your gut and your heart, Lillie. They won’t steer you wrong.’

Trust the wise woman inside, Lillie thought now. The wise woman who helped her see the truth. Lillie had stopped listening for a while, but the wise woman was definitely telling her something now. There was something special about this little walled garden.

Lillie took Seth’s hand and they went in together.

The stones that made up the walls were very old, Lillie could see, and clearly pre-dated the house itself. In one corner stood a magnolia and a few apple trees, one of which looked diseased. But the other trees were magnificent. Comparatively recently, there must have been a small kitchen garden in the middle, although now only wild garlic grew. But it was so silent, utterly insulated from the noise of traffic, a little magical spot hidden from outside view.

It would, Lillie realized with excitement, make a perfect place for a couple of hives. They could be set away from the trees, which would suit the bees, yet still be beautifully sheltered. If she closed her eyes, she could imagine the pagoda-styled hives that Sam had used. WBCs, he used to call them.

Lillie had helped him choose those because they were the sort she could recall seeing with her mother Charlotte, in a garden many years ago.

I see that you’re in cahoots with the wise woman, Sam
, she said to him in her head.

‘Seth,’ she said aloud, ‘have you ever thought of becoming a beekeeper?’

P
eggy knew it in her bones long before her brain allowed itself to accept the possibility. She was pregnant.
You’re pregnant, you know you are
, the little voice in her head said to her reflection in the old-fashioned bathroom cabinet in her green tiled bathroom. The face in the mirror did not turn around and say,
Don’t be ridiculous! You’re imagining it. You’re imagining that your breasts are larger and feel tender, and you’re imagining that it has been almost exactly six weeks since your last period
.

She’d worked it out many times in her head: her night with David had occurred mid-cycle, the most fertile time for a woman. Four weeks ago.

The face in the mirror looked the same as usual, except for the fear in her eyes.

It’s stress, she told herself. Periods are often late if the person is stressed. And starting a new business is stressful.

She sat with her calendar and worked out the dates. No matter which way she worked it out, she’d made love with David in precisely the most fertile segment of her fertility cycle. And her cycle was as reliable as the Angelus bell tolling before the television news at six every evening.

No matter how often she had silent conversations with herself, mind racing over every
other
possibility, she always came to the same conclusion. She was pregnant.

If the breast tenderness and the two-weeks late period hadn’t been enough to tell her, waking early every morning needing to throw up was the final giveaway. She’d hoped that this sickness might be a long-running bug, because surely nobody got morning sickness this early? But a few hours on the Internet told her that morning sickness and its arrival or otherwise was as varied as babies themselves.

When the nausea and the dry retching were finally over, she’d step glumly into the shower and try to wash away the way she felt. This never worked no matter how much grapefruit Body Shop shower gel she used. It was one of her few treats and now she couldn’t even enjoy that. Pregnancy did that to people, she knew: made scents they loved suddenly smell dreadful.

She didn’t have many indulgences, she thought tearfully. Nice shower gel and plants to brighten up the cottage. Ferns in the bathroom and kitchen, pansies in the living room and a small, grocery-store orchid in her bedroom. They helped, but they couldn’t make the house beautiful. Her little rented cottage was stuck defiantly in the 1950s. From the aqua-coloured fittings in the bathroom – complete with black-and-white flooring, naturally – to the gingham curtains – red – in the kitchen, it was like living in some crazy offshoot of
Mad Men
. The kitchen and the bathroom were cute and her bedroom was absolutely adorable with a tiny balcony that looked out over a handkerchief of a garden, helpfully covered in gravel. But the rest of the house could be a little depressing, especially the living room with the orange tweed couches and the strange wallpaper that looked as if a few random children had scrawled along it with orange and brown crayons. It had probably been wildly hip sixty-odd years ago, Peggy knew, and it was a complete miracle that the whole place had stayed so clean. The letting agent had explained that a little old lady had lived there for a long time and had never changed a thing.