Five Boys (22 page)

A collective gasp came up from the congregation. In fact, the fall seemed to provoke more excitement among the villagers than it did the bees, a few of whom flitted over
their new quarters but, generally speaking, seemed not the least bit perturbed. The Bee King removed his jacket and placed it over the bees in the wheelchair. Then he took hold of its handles, backed out of the crowd and departed, leaving everyone standing around in silence, as if they had just witnessed a miracle.

Mrs. Mercer and Aldred helped Mr. Mercer home between them, one doing her best to explain how she had come to give his wheelchair to a complete stranger and the other trying to explain how he had come to leave him hanging on the gate. The organist was deeply disgruntled, but didn’t have enough breath in him to complain and they were almost home, with him wheezing and spluttering, when it dawned on Aldred what the swarm of bees had reminded him of—it looked just like he’d always imagined Mr. Mercer’s bad lung to be.

There was no attribute more important to the Five Boys than bravery and nothing seized upon with quite as much relish as the apparent lack of it. But so much of their time together was spent pretending to be brave when they were actually frightened it was hard to know how brave or cowardly they really were, and as he sat in his bedroom on that Sunday afternoon Aldred wished only that he had enough courage to rattle the key in the saucepan and see if any bees appeared.

He had given the key a thorough examination. Its handle was more ornate than his own but its bit and shaft were much the same. The longer he looked at it the more he was tempted to keep it—saw in it the beginnings of a bunch of keys capable of opening every lock and gate that Fate might put in his way—but within a couple of hours he was carrying
the key and pan around to the Bee King’s cottage, due in part to a fear that any magic in their owner’s hands might be a curse in anyone else’s and in part to the fact that it would give him the opportunity to see if the fellow had any more bee tricks up his sleeve.

He knocked at the door. Waited a minute, then knocked again. He shielded his eyes up against the window. The room was empty, except for a couple of tea chests with books and other smaller boxes piled beside them and some others, sitting unopened by a wall. A few odds and ends were laid out on a table including a piece of equipment which looked like some sort of electrical lamp, and Aldred was twisting his head to try and get a better look at it when he saw someone walk past the window in the garden at the back.

He picked up the pan and key and slipped down the side of the cottage, but by the time he got to the garden gate the Bee King had disappeared. Aldred might have entered the garden a little faster if it hadn’t been for all the beehives on the lawn. They had louvered sides, were about the same size as a doll’s house (without the windows) and raised off the ground on wooden legs, but Aldred had no way of knowing whether the bees were home.

“Hello,” he said and was ready to turn and run when the Bee King popped up among the hives.

“I’ve got your pan,” said Aldred and held it up, but the Bee King just stared at him.

“And your key,” said Aldred, and held that up in the other hand.

The Bee King looked like a giant who had just been interrupted while terrorizing a village. Aldred was trying to keep an eye on all the bee houses in case their inhabitants
suddenly decided to leap out at him. The Bee King had still not said a word.

“I’ll put them on the path,” said Aldred and did so, then began to sidle back toward the gate.

“Come here,” the Bee King said, and beckoned Aldred toward him.

Aldred took a breath, then stepped tentatively onto the lawn. Either he’d managed to tap some new resources of bravery or was just doing as he was told, but as he approached the hives he could feel his whole body tingle with anticipated stings. He tiptoed between them, until he reached the Bee King, who placed a hand on his shoulder and looked deep into his eyes. Then, just as Mr. Mercer pushed down on him on Sunday mornings, the Bee King pushed down, and kept on pushing until he sank between the hives.

The Bee King crouched down next to him.

“Listen,” he said.

Aldred listened but could hear nothing except his own fearful breathing. Then listened harder and managed to pick out a low hum coming through the hive’s white wall. The Bee King’s face was just a few inches away. He asked Aldred what he reckoned that sound was. Aldred thought hard but couldn’t come up with anything.

The Bee King put his lips to Aldred’s ear.

“The honey factory,” he said.

The two of them crouched there, listening, for a moment. Then the Bee King took Aldred’s hand, opened out the fingers and pressed it gently against the hive. After a while, Aldred sensed some tiny vibration, like a natural engine. He could feel it quietly rumbling against his hand, and was imagining the hundreds of factory workers inside
when the Bee King raised his fist in the air and brought it down hard onto the roof of the hive.

Aldred jumped. Striking a hive seemed like just about the last thing you’d want to do when you were standing right next to it. But to his amazement no bee tornado came spinning out to envelop them and he didn’t have to go screaming down the lane. All that happened was that the hive’s low hum rose in a growl of irritation, then died back down.

The Bee King looked at Aldred. “The roar of the hive,” he said.

Aldred nodded.

“If the roar rises and falls like that, the bees are happy,” the Bee King said. “But if they roar and keep on roaring there’s something up with them.”

Aldred nodded again.

“And do you know what the bees are saying when they roar and keep on roaring?” the Bee King asked.

Aldred shook his head.

The Bee King threw his hands up to the heavens.

“The queen is dead,” he wailed.

A
T FIRST
, the village found it hard to generate much affection for the Bee King. Indeed, they found it hard to cultivate any sort of relationship with a man so determined to have nothing to do with them. He had made his feelings toward uninvited callers clear from the outset and on those rare occasions when he was seen out and about in the village it soon became apparent that he was not one to loiter needlessly in the street.

The Captain was varnishing a three-decker’s masthead on Tuesday when he saw the Bee King coming down the lane. He was wearing an old tweed suit, patched at the cuffs and elbows, with a basket in his hand. The Captain kicked off his sleeping bag and hurried over to the window but, having got to his post, couldn’t quite bring himself to raise his arm. It wasn’t the fear of hostility that stopped him or the humiliation of being ignored. He could just tell by the way the fellow was moving that there was no getting in his way.

Even Miss Pye, who considered herself peerless when it came to interfering in other people’s business, privately conceded that she couldn’t recall coming up against such unresponsive stuff. From the moment he walked through the door of the post office she did her best to crack him, tried every trick in the book—softening him up with a barrage
of idle chatter regarding the weather and the state of her guttering, then trying to catch him off guard with quick-fire questions about his job, his retirement from it, whether he had any family in Devon … any family at all. None of which got the merest peep out of him. It was, she told Mrs. Heaney, like banging your head against a brick wall, and that just because the man had a way with bees wasn’t to say he had the first idea about communicating with the rest of humanity.

But right from the start the Bee King’s relations with the village’s children were nothing like as frosty as those with its elders, and when Aldred approached him to ask if he might make a second visit and bring the other Boys along, the Bee King agreed, on the understanding that they arrive promptly at two o’clock. So, on Saturday afternoon all five Boys waited by the war memorial, with Hector and Finn claiming that some fellow with a few bees was not worth getting all excited about and Lewis insisting that they’d be hard-pressed to find a better way of spending a Saturday than in the company of thousands of bees, capable of stinging or swarming at any time.

Harvey was wondering aloud how many stings it might take to kill a man and what sort of twitching agonies such a death might entail when the hand on the church clock shuddered into the perpendicular and, after a moment’s contemplation, sent out two solid chimes into the day, whereupon the Boys set off, with Aldred, Lewis and Harvey racing up the hill and Finn and Hector doing their best to lag behind.

When the Bee King opened the door it was the Boys’ first chance to have a good look at him. He wasn’t especially tall or broad, but certainly had a presence about him,
as if it would take a train to knock him down, and as he didn’t seem in any great hurry to start up a conversation Aldred took matters into his own hands and introduced the other boys. As each one’s name was called out he felt the beekeeper’s eyes sweep up and down him, as if, even at this late stage, they might be found wanting and turned away. Then, just when the Boys were beginning to feel quite self-conscious and wonder how much more scrutiny they could stand, the Bee King waved them in, led them down the hall, through the living room, still cluttered with tea chests, through the kitchen, which was practically bare, and out into the garden, where the hives sat whitely and brightly in a tidy horseshoe, like tiny hotels looking out over a bay.

Having heard all about Aldred’s visit the previous Sunday, Harvey and Hector went straight over to a hive and stood to attention, ready to crouch and listen to the bees. But the Bee King ushered all five of them down to the bottom of the garden and through the open door of the shed, followed them in, dragged an old blanket from a shelf and laid it over the threshold, so that when he stepped back out and closed the door and slid the bolt across, the Boys were effectively sealed inside.

He strode back up to the cottage and the Boys peered through the window after him.

“Where’s he off to?” said Heck.

“He didn’t put me in here last time,” Aldred said.

The Boys had been in plenty of sheds over the years and this one was not much different from the others, being generally airless and packed with tools and other odds and ends, but with the sweet pungency of honey mixed in with the smell of creosote. While they waited, the Boys occupied themselves by looking for a jar which might contain something
poisonous and by speculating on the possible uses of various long-bladed knives. An old Golden Syrup tin, like the one they had dropped on the fire in the allotments, had a label stuck to it, which said, “Frow’s Mixture.” The one next to it rattled rather curiously when it was shaken but had a lid that didn’t want to come off. The more they looked the more beekeeping equipment they discovered. A large metal drum with a winding handle poking out of it was tucked under a bench and a set of chrome tubs and sieves were stacked beside it which were as vast and shiny as the double-handled pans and geysers in the kitchen at the back of the village hall.

The longer they waited the stuffier the shed was getting and soon the Boys had the uncomfortable feeling that they were breathing in the same hot air they had just breathed out. Lewis became more and more agitated, especially when Hector began to wonder aloud what would happen if the shed caught fire. So when the Bee King finally reappeared there was considerable relief. At least, the Boys
assumed
that it was the Bee King, for the man was shrouded by a veil which hung from the brim of an old straw boater and was tucked under the collar of his jacket. He was utterly cobwebbed. The turnups of his trousers were stuffed into his boots and every other cuff and opening was securely buttoned up. Only his hands were bare. In one he carried what looked like an old paint burner and in the other a miniature crowbar.

He crept between the hives in a ghostly fashion, stopped in front of the shed window and looked in at the Boys, but the veil, which was like the muslin their mothers used when making jam, meant they couldn’t tell who he was staring at. He flipped the lid back on his burner. Slid a hand into a
jacket pocket and brought out what appeared to be a chunk of stale bread. He held it up, so that the Boys could see it.

“Pugfoist,” he said.

He pulled a box of Swan Vestas out of a trouser pocket. Gave it a rattle. Pushed its small drawer open, nipped a match between finger and thumb. Struck it on the side of the box and once its flame had flared and settled, held it under the lump of fungus until it glowed and began to smoke. Then dropped it in the can and clamped the lid back down on it.

“… to subdue the bees,” he said.

He squeezed the small bellows at the back of the canister and the smoke at the spout went from a trickle to a thick, gray plume. Then he turned and carried his can of smoke and his little crowbar over to the nearest hive.

The Boys were perfectly insulated in their shed and some distance from the action, but when the Bee King pumped some smoke into the slit at the bottom of the hive there was no mistaking the sudden intensification of sound. It was like an engine revving. The Bee King placed the smoker on the ground, positioned his feet and lifted the hive roof off. Beneath it was a folded blanket, similar to the one he had used to block up the shed door. He laid this on the grass, took up his smoker and, after a couple of preparatory squeezes, pumped an inch or two of mist across the exposed top story. He stood back and let the smoke sink between the bars, then moved back in and began to dismantle the hive, one floor at a time.

If the bees which enveloped their master were of the subdued variety the Boys could only imagine what sort of mood they would have been in without the smoke, for as soon as the hive was opened up the air was thick with them;
they rattled off the shed window and gathered in great clumps on the Bee King’s jacket and veil. The cottage, visible a minute earlier, was instantly obscured by a gauze of bees. And yet the Bee King seemed to have found his element and moved among them with absolute ease.