Tell it to the Bees (13 page)

‘I quite like those skirts,' Lydia said. ‘Lots of the young girls are wearing them.'

Pam snorted. ‘Doesn't matter what you like. They're only wearing them to catch the boys.'

‘What's wrong with that?' Lydia said, surprised at her own daring. ‘It's natural at their age. I'd shorten the skirt on this dress if I were younger,' she said, patting the skirt of her yellow dress, bought so long ago during the war.

This caught Pam short and she shuffled the knife and fork on her empty plate.

‘I was running a house at their age and not much choice about it. Not any more than our mother had about dying.
Took all my energy to make sure my brother had cooked food and clean clothes. Not much over for fiddling with skirt hems and such. Good thing Dennis didn't care much for that sort of thing.'

‘There's nothing wrong –' Lydia started, but Pam was on a roll and not about to stop.

‘Teaches you a thing or two, that does. You grow up fast.'

‘Pam,' Lydia said.

‘Girls carrying on like that now, getting their claws into young men,' she said.

‘They can't do it with a hemline,' Lydia said.

‘And we know what men are. You let them look at you, next thing …' She made a gesture with her hands.

Lydia looked over at Annie. The girl had her eyes on her lap, a blush at her neck. Poor girl, Lydia thought.

‘But the girls've only got themselves to blame …' Pam went on.

Lydia glanced at Charlie, but he was picking at something on the side of the table. There was a smile in his eyes and his lips were pursed with effort. He didn't seem to be listening.

‘I knew Dennis all my life,' Pam said. ‘All my life. Not some passing fancy, somebody you have a nice dance with one night. Not somebody you come home with only because –'

‘Mum …' Annie said.

‘What do you know?' Pam said, her voice tight. ‘You were barely more than a baby when he … Where's the justice in that?'

‘Why don't you clear the plates?' Lydia said to Annie. ‘Poke Charlie to help. Bring the dessert in.'

‘Charlie?' Annie said, pulling her chair back, keen to leave the conversation.

Lydia looked across at him again. He hadn't heard.

‘Charlie!' Annie said again, more fiercely. He started
and put a finger to his collarbone, rubbing it slightly, the way he always did when he felt caught out at something.

‘Clear the dishes,' Lydia said.

She saw his glance to Annie as he stood up, and the grin she returned. The two cousins had always been close, even though Charlie's idea of a good time still brought him in with muddy knees, and Annie was a young woman now.

Charlie stood and Lydia handed him the gravy jug.

‘Shouldn't need asking, Lydia,' Pam said. ‘Haven't got maids any more to pick up after you.'

‘I never did have,' Lydia said in a rare moment of defiance. She held her breath for the retort, about how she was above herself, or too good for Pam and her sort.

‘Shouldn't need asking,' Pam said again. ‘Though men aren't cut out for the kitchen. Makes them all thumbs. But then no daughter, so needs must.'

Robert had been out for longer than a cigarette took to smoke, and as soon as Lydia had that thought, she knew he'd gone. Out the yard gate and down the alley, back God knows when, and what did she say to Charlie and to Pam? She served the trifle out and took the spare bowl back into the kitchen.

‘Where's Robert?' Pam said.

‘Must have been late for something,' Lydia said. ‘I expect he went out the back gate.'

‘Not even dessert? Not even a goodbye to his sister?'

Pam's voice was wheedling. If Lydia had been someone else, if her marriage wasn't ending, she might have mentioned that it was Pam who'd brought him up, taught him his bad manners. Instead, she dug down into the red jelly and spooned up the sugar sweetness.

‘Going out this afternoon?' she said to Annie, but the girl shook her head.

‘She's helping me with chores. We'll have a nice chat,' Pam said.

Once the dishes were done, Lydia could leave. Charlie had asked to go to the park, and Lydia wished he could be with her for ever, a child wanting only simple things.

‘Don't go near the water. Be home before dark,' she said, thinking she would walk home alone now.

Pam had been talking the last ten minutes, but Lydia hadn't taken any of it in.

‘Thank you for a lovely dinner,' she said when the talk stopped, keeping her voice steady. ‘I'll see myself out.'

Outside Charlie and Annie stood close together. Annie was still catching her breath, hands on hips, chest heaving. She must have run round from the back alley so her mother didn't see her. Lydia saw her slip something red into Charlie's trouser pocket.

‘Please, Aunt Lydia,' she said, and Lydia raised a finger to her lips.

Annie threw a flash of smile and squeezed Charlie's shoulder. ‘Go on,' she said, and Charlie was off, running like only boys can.

Lydia kissed her niece on the cheek and walked slowly home, carrying the bowl empty of trifle, and the dishtowel folded neatly inside.

At home, everything was as Lydia had left it. Only of course Charlie wasn't there, because he was delivering a note for Annie and playing in the park.

The note was for a boy. Lydia was sure of that, and even with all her own worries, she hoped Annie would enjoy herself before her mother found out. Because it was only a matter of time, however careful Annie was, and then who knew what trouble there would be.

Robert wasn't there. Of course he wasn't. She knew he wouldn't be, but still she felt pained because of it and she cried out, standing in the dusty hall.

She opened the door into the living room and there was the Sunday mess and Charlie's clutch of toys and pieces of paper in a corner. In the kitchen the bowls on the draining board were dry.

She touched things. The table, the easy chair, a glass Charlie had drunk some milk out of, a watercolour picture they'd been given when they married. It was a highland scene with a stream and rocks. She'd never really looked at it. Now she saw there were sheep grazing, very small, just dabs of paint, and what might be a man – a stroke of grey paint by one of the rocks. The sun was behind a cloud, though the muddy yellow fringe hinted at its coming out. She didn't like the picture, and decided to get rid of it soon.

She sat on the sofa. It smelled of Robert. The cushions bore the mark of him. His body, his life in the house.

He'd nailed the photos to the wall. He'd chosen the fire irons. The neatness of the newspaper pile, the way the logs were stacked ready for autumn, the matchboxes at each end of the mantelpiece – these were all pieces of him, all pieces she had cherished. She'd laughed with her friends about his odd arrangings because they were part of her man. Now she wanted them gone, away.

If Charlie had been there beside her, if he'd known about all this, he'd have said it was like the
Mary Celeste
. His teacher had told the story recently, and he'd come back home haunted and watching the ordinary things around him differently for a day or two.

But she couldn't tell him, the boy that he was.

She pictured herself wrapping the fire irons in Robert's newspaper and strapping them to her bike, together with the photographs and the neat matchboxes. Then cycling to the oxbow field on the outskirts of town and tipping them over to join the old mattresses and bits of iron. How good that would feel.

Soon she'd have to ask her friends to laugh at that, and they would. They would, and they'd have someone buy her another drink and they'd lift their glasses to tell her they knew how she felt. But that was for later. Now she couldn't speak, not even to herself.

She sat on the floor by the window with her knees drawn high to her nose, hands around her shins, and watched the bar of afternoon sunlight pull across the room. She marked its movement inch by inch, over the carpet, picking out the fray of fibre, a crumb, till it edged on to her knee, settled on her thumb, and slowly moved its rays across her body. An ache grew in her back and her fingers were stiff with holding. She noticed, with a kind of pride, that the sunlight didn't warm her.

Lydia didn't know how long she sat there for, rigid and cold. She felt she was in some other place where thoughts and feelings had been burned away. Resolved to make no move for herself, to stay put in her discomfort, her pain was like ice. There was no consolation.

So when the doorknocker clapped through the empty air, the first thing she felt was relief. Because she must answer the door. It might be Charlie, it might be anything, and someone else had made her decision for her. She could stand up and straighten her aching body. She could move her limbs and rub the blood back to her hands again.

It wasn't Charlie at the door, or any of the emergencies that sit in a mother's library of fears. It wasn't Robert with a change of heart, or Pam to shock her with words of comfort. Jean Markham stood on the pavement, a duffel coat around her shoulders like an afterthought, a brown paper parcel in her hand.

‘I hope I'm not disturbing your Sunday,' she said, and she gave what looked to Lydia, even in her numb state, like a nervous smile.

Lydia shook her head. She looked at the other woman, and then her heart jumped.

‘It's not Charlie?'

‘No, nothing to do with Charlie. I'm sorry, I should have said.' Jean lifted the brown paper parcel again. ‘I'm not here as a doctor. Something I thought you might enjoy.'

‘Oh,' Lydia said, puzzled, and then, as though remembering what you should do if a visitor called, she asked the doctor in.

Jean put the package on the living-room table.

‘I thought, after you'd gone, how silly it was, my having all these books and not reading, and your being a reader and wanting books. I've brought you a couple.'

Although in general she was good at seeming cheerful, Lydia couldn't summon herself this time. She had no
defence against this kindness from someone so close to being a stranger to her. She looked at the parcel, her name and address in neat ink on top.

‘I was going to leave it with a neighbour if you'd been out,' Jean said.

‘Thank you.'

‘Wasn't exactly sure what you liked to read. So it's a couple of novels. One of my father's favourites, Wilkie Collins, and one by George Gissing because I liked the title.'

‘You're very kind,' Lydia said.

Jean frowned. ‘It's not kindness. You're helping me out. I feel that I ought to read some, for my father's sake. You're doing me a favour.'

Lydia closed her eyes to try and stop the tears, but when she opened them, a rogue drop fell and blurred the edges of the ink. She made a smile.

‘I don't … it's …'

Jean shuffled her feet.

‘I'm talking too much. I'm sorry for disturbing you. Please accept the books, if you haven't already read them. Or if you have I can choose different ones. Or you could –' Jean stopped herself mid-sentence.

‘I haven't read them,' Lydia said. ‘I'd like to.'

‘Good, then. Keep them as long as you want. I won't fine you for returning them late,' Jean said with a laugh.

‘Thank you,' Lydia said again.

‘Come and get some more whenever you like. Thank God my father enjoyed reading novels. Unusual man. Or send them back with Charlie, and take your chance with my choosing.'

Lydia stood silently, and her visitor, anxious that she had outstayed herself, tapped the books gently and turned to go.

‘I'll leave you in peace,' she said.

‘Dr Markham, could you …' Lydia said, because suddenly she didn't want her to go. ‘Wait while I unwrap them.'

So the doctor waited while Lydia opened the parcel, unknotting the string and untucking the corners, careful with this stranger's gift. She picked up the topmost book: green cloth covers, gilt lettering, and in the front, in a swooping hand:
James Markham, July 14th, 1890
.

Lydia ran her finger down the soft curve of the page edges. She opened the book and read a sentence. Jean watched her, saw pleasure in her eyes, saw her mouth relax.

‘It's a beautiful book,' Lydia said. ‘Lovely to hold.'

‘My father would be pleased somebody was reading it,' Jean said. She knew there was something very wrong for Lydia, and she knew she couldn't ask. Enough to have raised that smile, she thought, and she left.

Dead trouble now, Charlie, the boy told himself. Dead trouble.

He had torn Annie's note out of his notebook as carefully as he could because the notebook was precious and shouldn't have ragged edges. He'd stuffed the note down his sock and now it itched. He shuffled a shoe against his shin, dug a toe into the thin grass on the side of the pitch. He'd deliver it safely for Annie's sake. He'd sworn to. But right now he didn't know how he was going to manage it. He picked up a pebble kicked clear in the soil and rubbed it clean. It felt good in his fingers. Small, round.

‘Pocket stone,' he said, and slipped it in. He'd lost one the week before. He suspected his mother, going through the washing. She didn't understand about stones.

The sun had come through late today, and the world was picked out sharp in the wake of the rain. The piles of sweaters acting as goalposts, sweet wrappers stuck in the grass, and off behind him, higher up, the trees and near them a girl with a skipping rope dancing on the rise of the hill.

Squinting against the strong light, Charlie watched the football game and murmured Annie's description to himself.

‘George. Curly brown hair. Grey eyes. Birthmark on his left cheek. Like a leaf. Say my name and you'll know it's him.'

The players were in their own kingdom a million miles away. They were jerky figures at the far end of the pitch,
making darts and shifty runs, their hollering voices small and thin, and Charlie couldn't see their eyes, or cheeks, or anything much of that kind. He didn't know how long they'd been playing for, or when they would stop, and the waiting made him nervous. There were other boys around, older boys than him, scuffing up the grass, shouldering each other. If he stood there long, he'd get noticed.