The Hive (4 page)

“Right.” Georgie was talking things through with Hamish. “We can now, at least, traverse the floor. We are, my little love, up on the game.” She put her bottom back against the sink, picked up her coffee again, started to think that actually it was about time she started to think about what anyone was going to actually eat at this wretched lunch…and then noticed the kitchen table. It was almost, in its way, in her view, an art form. Still-life: “Family Breakfast.” Only a true artist could stick the
Beano
to
Girl Talk
to
The Enchanted Wood
to Biff and Chip—bugger it. That should have gone into school—with egg yolk and Frosties and apple juice; all these inanimate objects combined together to create an animated discourse on Nourishment of the Young. It was a masterpiece, really…

But she could also see that it was, in another way, to other eyes, a screaming mess. And the problem, Georgie knew, went deeper than the naked eye was able. A true art historian could take this morning's still-life, scrape away at it and find another, older one: “Last Night's Supper.” And beneath that, there were scores of other masterpieces, “The Sunday Lunch” and “The Party Tea,” going all the way back—Georgie happened to know—to a surface of ingrained glitter entitled “Christmas Six Years Back.”

The thing was that, when the floor was in such a state, nobody would even notice the kitchen table. Now the floor was, well, clear at least, the kitchen table was sort of leaping out at her. Mocking. It had its thumbs in its ears. It was waggling its fingers. It was standing there looking at her, poking out its metaphorical tongue. “Oh dear,” she said to Hamish, who was back in the playpen, filling his nappy with quiet intent, “what on earth have we started?”

Of course, she could just throw the whole lot in the bin, but there was stuff there that was needed. She could only sort it by sitting there like a pathologist and pronouncing life or death on every coloring book and felt pen and all the rest of it, and there just wasn't the time for all that. She still hadn't worked out what she was giving anyone for lunch. She glanced up at the clock. Fine. Not quite twelve o'clock. No panic. Got a while yet. Just time for another creative solution…

Bubba brushed her feet on the mat, coiled her lower leg round the back door, flicked it back into its frame. And suddenly, just like that, she had what she liked to call one of her lightbulb moments. Ding! she thought. Then doubted herself. Did lightbulbs actually go ding? What did she mean? Flash! Or just ta-da! Anyway, the point was, she had a stonkingly bright idea. Her garden was, indeed, very heaven. She didn't want to sound too boasty or anything but she thought it was probably a lot more very heaven than the gardens of any of the other families at St. Ambrose—what Mr. Orchard, bless him, kept calling “our community.” Yikes! Anyway…Why not share it with them in some small but special way? They could throw something magnificent here, which would knock everybody's socks off and raise an enormous amount of money for those poor kids. She had felt so sorry for Bea the other night, at that meeting. All those pathetic little ideas of how to make a few bob here and a few bob there. They'll still be at it with one foot in the grave at this rate—selling raffle tickets at their own funerals, holding a cake stall at the back of the crematorium…

The Greens should make a substantial contribution, and this could be it. A summer ball. For St. Ambrose. The St. Ambrose Summer Ball. She could see it now: a marquee down by the pond…No, by the lake. For one night only, she would allow the pond to be the lake. A Lakeside Summer Ball. A-
mazing!

“Kazia!” Kazia jumped, dropping the iron with a clatter. All Bubba's fault—she didn't normally appear in the laundry
twice
in one morning.

“Sorry—did you burn yourself?—but listen: I've had an incredible idea.” Kazia listened intently as Bubba outlined her grand scheme. It was growing as she spoke: it was already a sit-down dinner for up to two hundred people, with fireworks and dancing and a jazz band by the lake. She was so excited that it was quite a shock when Kazia chucked a bucket of Eastern European cold water all over her.

“Mrs. Green, I'm not so sure…”

God, what was it with these people? Kazia was as bad as Tomasz. Honestly. Meet our live-in couple, Mr. and Mrs. Strindberg—Gloom and Grump. If Strindberg
was
actually Eastern European. Which she might have to check…

“Won't it mean a lot of work?” Kazia studied a rising blister on her finger.

“Oh, Kazia,” Bubba said, putting her hand on the ironing board in a gesture of affection. “You know I'm not afraid of hard work.”

Friendship restored. She trotted into the kitchen and dumped the dirty mugs on the draining board, happy once more.
Now
she had something to get her teeth into. Heavens, was that the time? Twelve o'clock. Where did the mornings go? She was due at this grim-o lunch over at Cold Comfort Whatever any second. She could announce the ball idea right there—that would cheer them all up, bless 'em.
Christ!
She only had twenty-five minutes to tart herself up. Better crack on.

Georgie was bent over the table, gathering up piles of stuff with her arms and shoveling them all into a bin marked
COMPOST
—it was empty for once, and amazingly nonsmelly; well, just the odd whiff of cauliflower leaf and potato peel—when Will burst in from the yard.

“HELLLLOOOOOOO!” He did make her laugh, her husband. Spent all day every day right here on the farm, but whenever he came back into the kitchen—which was only about ten times a day—he was as a Spartan back from Thermopylae, a hero home from the war.

“Two of the most gorgeous beings on the planet, both in my kitchen at once. How lucky am I?” He pulled off his boots, spun them across the floor and picked up Hamish out of the playpen—“Phwoar. Pongeroo, my darling”—and dropped him again.

“Sorry, babe. Just having a bit of a tidy up…”

Will took in the scene of devastation around him and guffawed. “Going well then, I see.” For Georgie, it was one of the beauteous miracles of their marriage that her husband took such delight in domestic chaos. It just cracked him up every time.

He walked up behind her, slapped her quickly on the bottom and pulled her up and into his arms. “Why bother? I came in search of lunch, but now it occurs to me, perhaps we could use our time more wisely…” He nuzzled into her neck, and she leaned back into him.

“Mmmmmmm…” And then that kick of grief again. “I can't!” she wailed. “It's ‘The Wreck of the Deutschland' in here, Hamish's nappy is a health hazard, and I've got all these sodding women turning up in half an hour for a lunch that I haven't even begun to think about and for which I appear to be charging fifteen quid apiece…”

“Doh. Is that all? Then surely a quick shag shouldn't be out of the quest—”

What was that? They swung round together in alarm. It sounded—could it be?—something like a sharp little kitten heel on the flagstones in the yard…

“Golly. Gosh. Um. Hi. Are you OK?”

Bubba's first thought on entering the Martins' home was that she was actually walking into an as-it-happened crime scene. All the signs were there. She recognized them immediately. She did watch a
lot
of detective programs on the telly—anything from
Midsomer Murders
to
CSI.
Loved them; couldn't get enough. As she said to Mark the other night, she was, to all intents and purposes, practically a
policeman,
she knew all the procedures so well.

So there she was, on the threshold of a kitchen that had clearly been ransacked in the most unbelievably
brutal
manner—God, she would hate to have her home violated like that; they'd never been burgled,
so
lucky, touch wood. And there was poor Georgie, gripped in a stranglehold by some
huge brute,
literally
the Gruffalo,
all unshaven and wild and woolly, bushy eyebrows,
exploding
nasal hair, with—she was trying to take in as much as possible for the police report later—filthy, almost
crusty
hands. And there was the baby, being forced to watch—oh God!—from a
cage
…

She was about to go in there, all guns blazing, but something stopped her. Something in the atmosphere…It was sort of…what was it? She wasn't quite sure. Happy. Cheerful. Or something. So she coughed politely—she could still, she reckoned, attack if attack were needed—and made her presence felt.

“Ah,” said Georgie. “Good. You're early”—though without sounding all that pleased. “This is…” she began, to her husband, but her voice trailed away.

“Call me Bubba.” Bubba held her hand out in peace to the huge woolly mammoth person, which guffawed an enormous guffaw.

“Nothing could delight me more.” He roared again. “I'm Will. I gather you're actually paying to come here for lunch. That's a family first. I hope you're not the litigious sort.”

You know what? thought Bubba. He's oddly attractive, this Will—in a noble-savage kind of way. But, golly. Poor, poor guy. Do they really have to live like this? Should we be fund-raising for
them?

Georgie had moved away to the table, where she seemed to be putting the strangest things in the compost bin. Felt-tip pens? Bubba was only just getting to grips with the whole compost
scene
—she and Tomasz had had more conversations about it than she would like to remember—but she was pretty sure you
couldn't
compost a felt-tip pen. Still, they were all farmers round here. They must be greener-than-one, she
supposed
. But you'd think: Felt pen?
Toxins?

“Oh, sorry,” she said to Georgie's back. “Am I the first? What can I do? Chop something! Let me chop!” She looked around. It was funny, but it seemed, oddly,
foodless
…“Isn't this lovely?” She and Kazia always had everything
out
by this stage in the proceedings.

“Chop?” Georgie turned round. She was pink from the exertion of composting all those toys and so on, her hair was on end—she looked, in Bubba's opinion, seeing her in her home environment for the very first time, really quite bonkers. “We're not quite at the chopping stage, thanks anyway. More at the—um—picking stage. Will, can you entertain…” her mouth opened, flapped like a codfish, but nothing came out, “for me, while I just nip out to the greenhouse?”

There were two things in this life that gave Georgina Martin a profound sense of existential contentment. One was walking around with a child—one of her own, obviously—tucked into her hip. The other was the growing and picking of her own fruit and veg, on her own patch of land, for immediate cooking by her and consumption by her loved ones, in her very own farmhouse kitchen. She wasn't quite sure why. She didn't really these days have the time required to think this kind of stuff through. She guessed it was to do with anchoring herself—vertically to the landscape beneath her feet, laterally to the generations that flanked her; establishing her position in the cosmos, her connections to the past and the future.

Humming quietly, she walked back through the yard with a basket full of future lunch. She was completely engrossed in totting up the elements she had—pitch-perfect cherry tomatoes, purple basil, figs, plus tiny beetroot, thyme, shallots and garlic—and how they might be combined together to form a coherent whole. Those that can, cook; those that are completely hopeless need a recipe book—that was her philosophy. She remembered the blackberries that the kids had picked and the mascarpone in the fridge. Simple, stylish, delicious. Hamish could have the leftovers. Perfect.

So she was actually, consciously, smiling when she looked up to see the cloven hooves of a flock of mutton dressed as lamb clip-clopping across towards her. Sharon, Jasmine, Heather—well, Heather was, to be fair, more mutton dressed as mutton…But who the hell was that with her? Colette? Colette, in her yard, done up like she was off to some sodding cocktail party…

OK. That was it. She was the victim of some hilarious bloody practical joke by Bea, and she wasn't putting up with it for another second. If they thought she was giving houseroom to every loser and loony with a kid at St. Ambrose they had another think coming. “Oi!” she was about to say. “Hop it! Bugger off out of here!” But Will, unfortunately, got there first.

“Hey, Heather.” Kiss, kiss. “Great skirt.” He was having a high old time. And: “I don't believe we've met. I'm Will Martin,” he swung round with a gesture of openness towards the back door, “and you are very, very welcome.”

Georgie thought she might actually hit him.

Jo's bottom—not an insignificant thing, everyone agreed, but as that didn't seem to bother Jo it didn't seem right for anyone else to add it to their burden of worry—was protruding from the cupboard under the sink. Hamish's little neat one was beside it. They were both in search of something. “Come on, Hamish.” Jo's voice was muffled by the U-bend, but her irritation with the baby could clearly be heard. “There must be an ashtray somewhere. Else where does your mother stub her cigarettes out?”

Bubba leaned against the fridge, wondering if she was ever going to be offered a drink. Heather was laying the table—someone had to—while chatting happily to Georgie over one shoulder.

“How many are we?” She opened the drawer of the enormous kitchen table in search of paper napkins, shut it swiftly and gulped.

“How would I know?” Georgie was chopping shallots in a frenzy. She flung open the fridge—Bubba dived out of the way just in the nick—grabbed the butter, slopped olive oil into a wide-bottomed pan and lit the gas beneath. She picked up a mortar and pulverized three garlic cloves—smash, smash, bash—and tossed them in. “Why would anyone bother to tell me?”