Five Boys (21 page)

“Your daddy’s home,” she said.

No amount of bunting or bonfires could have prepared Finn for the upheaval which followed. It was as if they had taken a lodger in. Some stranger with big boots who liked to talk and smoke and sit by the fireside. A man toward whom the whole domestic world had turned. The dinner table was suddenly crowded, the conversation seemed to keep Finn out. Bedtimes, mealtimes, even seating arrangements were all suddenly negotiable—all subject to change.

It wasn’t that Finn had no recollection of the man in the armchair. It was just that the memories, when they came to
him, were so fleeting they might as well have belonged to somebody else.

Finn and Lewis continued to peer between the floorboards.

“Are you sure that’s mine,” said Lewis, “with the notebook?”

“I think so,” said Finn.

Lewis looked down, as if beholding mankind from some celestial platform.

“He’s almost
bald,”
he said.

The men returned to their ropes, the Boys took cover and the bombardment started up again, but within a couple of minutes the bells clashed, clattered to a standstill and the Boys could hear the men arguing about who was to blame. One of the fathers suggested having one last go, to see if they could get it right, another suggested calling it a day and having a drink, and in no time at all they were collecting their coats and jackets and heading for the door.

The lights went out and the Boys listened to the voices retreating. Listened to the footsteps on the path. They waited another minute, then crept down the tower’s stone steps and stood and brushed the dust off their jackets. Then they looked around the ringing chamber, which was still sweet with cigarette smoke, to see if their fathers had left anything interesting behind.

“They really hate Howard Kent, don’t they?” said Harvey.

“Everyone hates Howard Kent,” Hector said.

Aldred found the scrap of paper which the men had been studying and held it up to the moonlight …

It looked like a list of coordinates—or a series of sums capable of taxing old Foghorn herself. The other Boys had a glance at it, then carried on looking around. But Aldred wanted to know why these particular numbers were so important, so he slipped the piece of paper into his pocket and vowed to try and make some sense of them later on.

T
HERE WAS NO
warning of the coming of the Bee King. No one saw a pantechnicon pull up outside Askew Cottage or any boxes being carried in. Yet, between the village retiring on the evening of Good Friday and rising the following day, he somehow managed to insinuate himself so successfully into the fabric of the village that when Mrs. Heaney went by just after nine o’clock, having overslept for the first time in eleven years, she walked straight past and was picking up speed on the high street before some barely conscious cogitation ran its course, jammed her brakes on and threw her trip to the post office into reverse.

The cottage had been empty for over a year and Mrs. Heaney had certainly heard nothing of anyone moving in, but when she retraced her steps and stood outside the cottage’s bay window she had confirmation of what she’d only glimpsed a minute before. A smartly dressed fellow was busy opening a tea chest, and as she waited Mrs. Heaney transferred her purse from one hand to the other so that she’d be able to wave at him when she finally caught his eye.

She must have waited in the lane for a full five minutes without him once looking up from his unpacking, but when she finally gave up and went on her way she discovered that the whole village was behind with its chores. The vicarage curtains were still pulled to. The Captain’s arm-chair
was empty. The only life in the high street was the fallen plum blossom as it gently turned and shifted in the breeze.

The door to the post office had a habit of sticking, so Mrs. Heaney threw her little shoulder against it, only to bounce back off it, and bounced off it twice more before it occurred to her that it might, in fact, be locked. She looked at her wristwatch. Tapped it. Brought it up to her ear and listened. Took a couple of steps back until the clock on the church came into view. The clock and her watch both insisted that it was ten past nine, but the state of the village seemed to contradict it and Mrs. Heaney suddenly felt most peculiar, as if finding herself in a dream from which she could not wake.

She gripped the wall to steady herself. Her heart was pounding. Her vision seemed to come and go. And who knows how long that little episode might have lasted had Miss Pye not interrupted it by opening a window just below the gables and thrusting her huge chest out into the day.

She scratched the back of her neck. Squinted up the lane, then down at Mrs. Heaney.

“Are you early or am I late?” she said.

None of the customers that morning knew anything about any new tenants, but having heard all the speculation at the post office few could resist taking a more circuitous route home to take a look. One or two managed to catch a glimpse of the fellow without actually managing to provoke any sort of response, but when Howard Kent marched up to the cottage just after lunchtime and put his nose up to the window he could clearly see him standing on a stepladder, fixing a pair of curtains to a rail at the back of the room. Howard understood what was being asked of him.
He straightened his collar and glanced back down the lane. A dozen other villagers were hanging around the corner.

“Ask him if he’s working for the estate,” hissed Miss Pye.

Howard had once accompanied his father on a similar mission, when, under the pretext of welcoming a young couple to the village the old man had quickly established how long the two of them had been married, where they came from and when they intended returning, as well as giving them a good idea of the sort of behavior expected of them in the interim.

Howard wanted to prove himself to be his father’s son. When the door opened, he thought, he would hold out his right hand. “Howard Kent,” he would say, “pleased to meet you,” obliging the newcomer to do the same. He took a deep breath, knocked and waited. “Pleased to meet you,” he whispered. Imagined the handshake. “Howard Kent. Very pleased to meet you indeed.”

The door seemed to have no intention of opening. Howard decided to knock again. It was only when he stepped back a few moments later to shrug his shoulders at the others that he saw the figure standing in the window, watching, and like Mrs. Heaney’s frustrated wave before it, felt his handshake wither and die at his side.

“Howard Kent,” he announced, trying to think on his feet. “I would just like to …”

The man in the bay window cupped a hand to his ear and shook his head. Howard had to start again.

“The name’s
Kent,”
he said. “Howard
Kent,”
and this, at least, seemed to penetrate the glass.

“And I’m just calling … to welcome you to the village …”, he said, then petered out.

The bridge between welcoming the stranger and extracting
some personal information had somehow got washed away. Howard couldn’t work out how that had happened and when he looked back at the window the man was gone. He turned to face the door and straightened his collar again, but the longer he waited the better he appreciated how the meeting was at an end.

The walk back down the lane to the other villagers was deeply uncomfortable. They were all eager to hear how he had got on. Miss Pye had closed the post office early.

“What’s he up to?” she said.

Howard smiled to himself, as if he and the Bee King had just had a most illuminating conversation, and kept on smiling as he walked right past the assembled villagers and headed home.

His neighbors stood and watched him march down the high street.

“What do you make of that?” said Mrs. Heaney.

Miss Pye folded her arms under her bosom and shook her head.

“Spurned,” she said.

The Bee King’s performance the following day more than compensated for Howard’s failure. The newcomer’s absence in the pews had been widely noted and once the week’s devotional duties were out of the way the villagers gathered in the churchyard, where speculation about the fellow continued apace.

The Reverend Bentley stood and nodded by the door as the last of the congregation filed out into the sunshine and was already looking forward to his Sunday roast when a metallic clatter came down the lane and extinguished every conversation in its way.

The worshippers turned and saw the Bee King striding down the lane toward them, a metal spoon in one hand furiously rattling the saucepan in the other. He had his head held high but wasn’t hanging about. He looked like a drummer who had become separated from the rest of a marching band. This, at least, was how the Reverend Bentley saw it. Miss Pye saw only a madman banging a saucepan on Easter Day. But whatever they made of him, the villagers all found themselves drawn across the graveyard to try and get a better view.

Over the years Mr. Mercer had come to appreciate how a congregation liked something a little uplifting to help them to their feet and accompany them to the door, and as they left the church this morning Aldred pumped out Mr. Mercer’s gallant attempt at “For All the Saints, Who from Their Labors Rest.” When the organist lifted his fingers from the final chord the echoes multiplied in the rafters until they were soaked up by the stone. He pushed the stops back in, got to his feet and took Aldred’s shoulder, but when they opened the back door found their way blocked by the selfsame worshippers they’d just cleared from the pews.

Aldred plowed down the path with a determination that had old Mr. Mercer gasping and tottering from side to side. A strange noise came rattling through the trees—which, to Aldred’s ears, sounded like a poor imitation of Mrs. Fog’s bell first thing in the morning, but seemed to be just as effective at pulling people in.

By the time the Bee King stopped rattling his pan half the village was in the lane beside him and the rest were hanging over the wall. Such a crowd might have been expected to elicit some sort of explanation, but the Bee King was so wrapped up in his own quiet incantation he
seemed almost oblivious to them. He spoke as if trying to calm a frightened animal and stared up into the branches of a tree. One by one the villagers followed his gaze. But it was only when one old man grew frustrated and called out, “What’s he
looking
at?” that the Reverend Bentley, who was down at the front, said, “Bees, Mr. Pearce. He’s got a swarm of bees.”

This news got a mixed reception. Most of the villagers were intrigued and tried to get a better view. One or two hastily left the scene. Miss Pye announced that she was about to faint, which certainly animated the Captain, who had come out to see what all the fuss was about and would have liked nothing better than to have Miss Pye land on top of him, but by the time he was anywhere near her the postmistress had been propped up against the wall by Miss Minter and was having her face fanned with her hat.

Mr. Mercer arrived at the side gate to find both his wife and his Bath chair missing—had no choice but to dispatch his assistant to try and track them down. Aldred set off with only the best intentions. He knew very well how little Mr. Mercer liked being on his feet. But when every man, woman and child was gawping up at a tree he found it hard not to stop and have a look himself.

The swarm hung there like a great dollop of molten toffee. A few bees still fizzed about it, but the general impression was of a single, breathing thing. It looked almost hairy—as if it had been dropped in the dirt. Was about a foot thick at the top, tapering to a rounded tip a couple of feet below and was clustered around a wishbone in the tree’s branches, pulling the bough down toward the ground with its weight.

Snagged on the branches, the swarm reminded Aldred of
his mother’s knitting when it was rolled up and tucked down the side of an armchair. But there was something deadly about it, something worrying in the way it bubbled and festered, as if it was brewing up some evil intent. The whole village stared up at it, enraptured, including Mrs. Mercer, who leaned against her husband’s Bath chair. Aldred had never seen such serenity on her face and when the Bee King turned and whispered something to her she nodded almost unconsciously, as if there was more of her up in the tree than there was on the ground.

Aldred pushed his way through the crowd until the bees were directly above him, and when the Bee King turned and handed him his pan and spoon he accepted them with the same composure he employed around the church—which threatened to slip when he noticed that the Bee King had been striking the pan not with a spoon but with a key of a similar vintage to his own.

The Bee King took Mr. Mercer’s Bath chair from his wife and pushed it forward. Picked Mr. Mercer’s walking stick from the seat and lifted it, handle-first up into the tree. Hooked the branch where the swarm had settled and drew it down. The bees’ wings glinted as they emerged from the blossom. The whole bundle shifted and glistened in the sun. Then, when the branch was at its very limit, the Bee King checked the wheelchair’s position, gave the branch a firm cuff with the heel of his hand and the swarm fell into the wheelchair with about as much fuss as a packet of tea being emptied into a caddy. A shower of blossom followed, like a blessing.