Tell it to the Bees (21 page)

Jean forced herself to concentrate. She was like a cat with a firecracker tied to its tail, turning at every sound, willing herself to stay seated, to drink tea, to talk with her friends.

But if Jim and Sarah noticed Jean's agitation, they said nothing.

‘You must always speak quietly to them,' Charlie said. ‘They don't like raised voices.'

Emma nodded and picked at a scab on her elbow.

‘You can tell bees things. Did you know that?'

She nodded again. A daub of honey on the bench shone under the electric light. She touched a finger to it and licked.

Charlie put a hand on the ripening tank.

‘One of the best yields ever,' he said. ‘Dr Markham said so.'

Emma nodded solemnly. Charlie gave the ripening tank an authoritative tilt. He felt the slow shift of its cargo and
set it back on the level. They looked down at the honey. Froth was forming on top.

‘Why's it look like that?' Emma said, her voice deferential.

‘It's all the secrets,' Charlie said. ‘The bees hear them and hide them in the honey. Then we get the honey, and the secrets come to the surface and …' He made a gesture with one hand, closing it tight and then opening his fingers like a star. ‘Whoosh – they disappear into the air.'

‘Gosh,' Emma said, as if she'd only recently learned what you should say on this kind of occasion.

‘It's called evaporation,' Charlie said, as if to clarify for the six-year-old girl.

‘Shall we go out now?' she said. ‘We could play at something. Do you like playing mothers and fathers?'

When Jean heard the doorbell ring, she put down her cup and sat very still in her chair. On one side of her, Charlie was telling Emma a story about a grass snake that lived in a sink. On her other, Jim was having everyone guess the number of honey jars they would have this year, and Sarah was telling Meg to eat up her crusts. Through the babble of voices Jean caught the sound of Mrs Sandringham's shoes on the hall tiles and the slam of the pantry door, caught in the through-draught as she let Lydia in.

Jean closed her eyes. What would Lydia be wearing? Jean had seen so many women undressed. Hundreds of women, their clothes slung over the screen, or folded neatly on the seat of the chair. She'd asked each of them to lie on the couch with a sheet to protect their modesty while she examined them, intimately, impersonally. If the day was chilly, she had the gas fire on, but still the room was never quite warm enough and she always apologized; she understood the instruments were cold, she knew they felt uncomfortable. She'd chatted to them, asked them
questions about this and that, taken their mind off what her eyes and fingers were doing. Afterwards, once Jean had scrubbed her hands and the screen was folded to one side, once the patient was dressed again and seated in a chair, her handbag in her lap like a shield, then they could almost pretend it had all been an unpleasant dream, and the patient could look the doctor in the eye, shake her hand on leaving.

Jean had never stopped to think much about it till now. But now there was a woman she longed to touch, not examine, and a vision flashed through her mind of Lydia behind the screen and Jean with her, touching her, undressing her, feeling her hips, her belly, the curve of her breasts, her nipples. Jean dipped her head …

She gasped and gripped the table with both hands. She had never thought of a woman in this way.

‘You all right?' Jim said, concern on his face.

She nodded, and put a hand to her side.

‘Indigestion,' she said. ‘Too much cake,' and Jim grinned, unconvinced, but polite at the tea table, and returned to his honey jar count.

Steady yourself, Jean told herself. She's just Charlie's mother, come to have tea, and she felt a rush of embarrassment at her thoughts.

When Lydia came out on to the terrace, smiling nervously, her step tentative, the rush of feeling was so strong that Jean didn't dare stand. But Charlie was on his feet and out of his seat in a single movement. He ran to Lydia, his face alight.

‘Come and see the honey,' he said.

Jean watched mother and son; how he took her hand, how she smiled at him and looked him up and down. She watched their intimacy.

‘In good time,' Lydia said, approaching the table, her eyes taking in Sarah and Jim, the two girls.

Jim got to his feet and pulled out a chair for her and Jean made the introductions in a voice that was steady enough.

The conversation started up again and Jean was relieved to see that Lydia was chatting quite easily with Sarah. She watched Lydia sip her tea, one hand resting on the back of Charlie's chair. Jean put a hand to her brow and shut her eyes. How could she be feeling like this? About someone she barely knew; someone from such a different walk of life; about a woman, for God's sake.

She looked beautiful, sitting halfway down the table, her hair lifted from her neck, her cheeks a little flushed. She was wearing the yellow dress Jean loved and a string of dark beads. How concentrated she seemed, as if everything else dropped away when she turned to look at someone. She was serious, listening to Sarah, and then Jean saw a smile cross her face, saw her lift her hand to her neck a moment, then drop it to her lap as though remembering where she was, at tea with strangers. The smile seemed to take Lydia by surprise, and Jean glimpsed what must be the first lines of her older self touching out from her eyes.

I know that about her, Jean thought. I know how she smiles, as if it were something precious to be stored.

She wished she had asked Lydia to tea on her own. She wished all the others were gone, that even Charlie was gone, and that the smile and the gesture were only for her.

‘Jinjin?' From somewhere far away, Jean heard her name. ‘Jinjin?' the voice said again.

She was staring at Lydia and Emma was saying her name. Now everyone was looking at her, and Lydia was looking at her, her expression telling Jean clear as day that their thoughts were in the same place. She pulled her glance away.

‘What is it, poppet?' she said, stroking Emma's hair, breaking herself from her trance.

‘Charlie told me about secrets in the honey,' Emma said,
‘and how they come up to the surface and then go
whoosh
.'

Jean smiled.

‘Will you show us?' she said to Charlie.

It was Friday, end of the week, and there were still two hours before the close of the factory day. All around Lydia, women worked doggedly, their thoughts on getting home, getting dinner. Lydia longed for a bath, and maybe a bit of a book. She wanted to see Charlie. She wanted to sleep. Next to her, Dot hummed something Lydia couldn't make out.

‘You got any plans?' Lydia said, only half listening for the answer.

There was a pause and then Dot said, ‘I'm not taking “no” any more.'

Lydia turned to look at her. She was binding wire around and around, the thinnest wire you could imagine, with a pair of tiny long-nose pliers.

‘No to what?' Lydia said.

‘And if you don't come, I'll wonder what on earth the point is, of being your friend any more.'

‘Dot!' Now Lydia was listening properly. ‘What are you talking about?'

‘Fancy way of saying it, maybe. I could simply have said I've about had enough.'

Dot didn't look up from her task. You couldn't when you were doing that kind of work or you lost it and then the wire was wasted. If the supervisor was anywhere near, you'd have the cost of it docked from your wages.

Lydia waited and when Dot was finished, she asked again.

‘What are you talking about?'

Dot stared at her. Her face was different to how Lydia had ever seen it before. No affection visible. No sympathy. Lydia's heart banged in her chest.

‘Dot? What is it?' she said, her voice almost lost amid the hard, sharp business of factory noise.

Dot took a big breath, seemed to draw herself up, as if she had a whole speech prepared, and Lydia saw a flash of something softer cross her eyes and disappear before she spoke again.

‘It's a speech, this,' Dot said. ‘So bear with me.' She paused. ‘All right. You won't help yourself,' she said at last, ‘that's what it is, and I'm about done trying to do it for you. You won't look after yourself. Eat properly, sort out your rent, go out to the pictures, anything, and I've had enough. It's not only you you're doing it to, Lydia. Not only you you're hurting.'

‘Charlie needs me –' Lydia began, but Dot broke across her.

‘Yes, he does. He needs you to show him that you're worth treating well. So this is it. Come dancing tonight with the girls like you used to; show Charlie, show yourself. Or else maybe you should go and find yourself another best friend.'

‘I'm going dancing,' Lydia told Charlie when she got home. He didn't say anything, but when she got upstairs, the factory day washed from her face and arms, she found her favourite dress, her high-heeled red shoes and her best lipstick laid out, and Charlie sitting on the bed, swinging his legs with pride. She smiled.

‘You'll be all right,' Lydia said. ‘Annie's going to look in.'

‘Can I have fish and chips then?' he said, and Lydia laughed and clipped him a kiss on the top of his head.

Charlie stayed on the bed as she changed, playing with her beads, watching as she undressed to her slip, as she unclipped her stockings and found new ones. They'd always had this time. She liked to have him there, though there had been scant opportunity for it recently. But he was growing up. He looked at her differently and she could feel herself colour with the knowledge of his gaze.

She put the dress on – crossing it over her bosom, having Charlie tie it behind – then clipped up new stockings, fastened the ankle straps on her shoes and painted her lips.

‘How do I look?' she said, picking up the hem, doing a half-twirl.

‘So pretty,' he said, but there was something in his voice.

‘But what?' Lydia said.

‘But who sees you looking pretty now? Except me?'

So pretty. That was what Robert used to say. That's where Charlie had it from, though Robert hadn't said it to her for a very long time. She wondered when he'd stopped. She thought it must have been when he'd started saying it to some other woman.

The thought made her draw breath, the air punched from her. She'd known this in her body for a long time, but she hadn't allowed it to take hold in her mind. So pretty … What a smasher … Cute lady. He must have got that one from the Americans. He used to call her all those things in their first years, when Charlie was still a baby and they had been in love. It had been good then. Easy. She remembered how they had laughed about Pam. How he had warned her of his jealous sister and said he would protect her, and at first she hadn't believed him. She remembered how it had been, being a stranger to the town. But Pam hadn't mattered; the town hadn't mattered, because Robert came home to her. They had their baby boy, and their own pleasures. The sweet tea he brought to her in bed each
morning; soaping his back when he came home filthy from the roads; Charlie's baby laugh as Robert tossed him in the air. The way Robert touched her neck, her arm, small touches when he passed by, reminders that she was his. Then at night they had each other in their bed bought new on HP, laughing at Pam asking them what did they want with such a big one. If Lydia had regrets then, they were no more than the unavoidable ones. That you chose one person, and so you couldn't choose another. Or so she'd thought.

She didn't know when all this was lost. But the start of it must have been when Robert touched another woman on the arm, smiled and said, ‘So pretty.' She could imagine that now. Then there were the new words he spoke when he came home late, or was angry with her attention, or didn't want to touch her. She could see now how those moments were notched up, one by one, into something that couldn't be recovered.

‘That baby gets all your love. Pam warned me, and she was right. You don't fit in; you don't understand. You don't want to. I should have married a local girl.'

But she didn't know how long it took for it all to be lost between them.

‘So pretty,' Charlie said, and it was strange and sad to hear him use those words.

Lydia was still upstairs when Dot knocked on the door. When she stood at the top, all done out, Dot clapped her down and Charlie clapped too, his boyish face bright and smiling.

There was an edge to the air, the first cut of autumn. Lydia told Dot what Charlie had said.

‘Too sharp by half, that boy of yours,' she said. ‘Can't you just get dressed up for yourself, if you want to?'

‘You know what he means,' Lydia said.

By the time they reached the Grafton, Lydia's reluctance
had gone. She was hungry to dance. She could feel it in her, the small ball of adrenalin in the pit of her stomach. She chafed with impatience as the others took time with makeup and drinks and finding a good spot to watch from.

‘Haven't seen you out there for a good while,' Dot said. ‘They won't know what's hit 'em.'

‘Come on then,' said Lydia.

There was a big band playing, rows of trumpets and saxophones done up smart in bow-ties and red jackets, lifting the brass high and ducking it down. The dance floor was full, couples jiving, skirts swinging, no space to move into, no room to find your step.

The two friends made their way in. Lydia was nervous now, holding back a little.

‘It's a long time since I last did this,' she said. ‘I'd forgotten it was so busy.'

Dot took her hand.

‘Come on,' she said, ‘you've got this far.'

Then they were in the thick and Lydia's senses were full with the smell and the noise and the pulse of it. They began to find their feet, Lydia leading, Dot being the girl, and all at once Lydia was away, inside the music, dancing, flying. Her body was alive, the music ran through her, the rhythm beat in her blood and she had no thought of anything, of anyone. Just herself and the dance.