Tell it to the Bees (28 page)

‘They're meant to be men in the Bible, but they look like pairs of girls to me,' Jean said.

And since the church was empty, they stole a kiss.

When they left the cottage, Lydia sat in the front of the
car and Charlie, in the back, looked out of the window and didn't ask how long till they were home. He'd cried a little, Jean knew. But, returning, he had his mother in view and, beside him on the seat, garnered from the endless beach, he had a box of treasure.

Dot stood stock-still. She shook her head. ‘I'm telling you, there must be a man. Look at you.'

Lydia smiled and shrugged, but her heart jumped.

‘Maybe you don't know you've met him yet.'

They stood facing one another as people thronged past, faces grey-green under the strip-lighting. Irritated elbows caught at them, somebody muttered that it was a stupid place to stand and talk.

Lydia glanced high, beyond the sea of hurrying heads. Below the ceiling, thin strips of window draped in cobwebs gave out on to sky. In all her years here, she'd never noticed the windows before.

‘There isn't a man. Really there isn't,' she said, and something in her soul sang as she said it.

This corridor smelled as it always did, of hot rubber and old sweat. All the years she'd worked in the factory she'd hated it, but now she was going, she almost liked it. She breathed deep. Only one day left, and then she'd hand back her pinafore and her tools, and cycle away for the last time.

‘But being offered a nice place to live, and a new job. It is a bit of a turnaround,' she said.

That was a daft piece of understatement and Lydia felt herself blush, though under the nauseous shine of the factory lights she hoped it wasn't visible.

The bell rang and the two women turned as a reflex and merged into the flood, hurrying back to work.

‘You've told them you're going?' Dot said.

Lydia nodded. ‘Mr Evans did look a bit surprised, since I'm not still ill, or pregnant. Said they'd always found my work satisfactory and good luck in the future.'

‘You lucky so-and-so. No more clocking on, no more going mad with boredom, no more canteen meals.'

‘You'll have to keep me filled in on the gossip,' Lydia said.

‘When are you out of the house?'

‘I've started packing. We're moving over the weekend.'

‘Does Robert know?'

Lydia felt her head spin and the blood rush from her face. She took hold of Dot's arm.

‘Don't tell him anything. Please,' she said.

Dot looked at her strangely.

‘Why would I tell him anything? I don't even like him.'

Lydia nodded, but Dot's voice was far away and Lydia's skin was clammy with fear.

‘Let go of my arm,' Dot said. ‘What's got into you?' She rubbed at her arm. ‘I'll be out in bruises tomorrow. You won't be able to keep it a secret for long. He'll find out soon enough. A sister like Pam. You know that. Anyway, he might be pleased. What with him not giving you a penny. Takes the pressure off.'

‘But he mustn't know,' Lydia said in a low voice.

‘So did you ever hear from your dad?' Dot said, changing the subject.

Lydia shook herself like a dog coming in out of the rain, as if to clear Robert off. She nodded. ‘He said I could come back and keep house for him if I wanted, but he wouldn't spare a penny for me otherwise.'

‘Nice,' Dot said. ‘Clear.'

Lydia went on, her voice artificial and breezy, as if she
was simply explaining what the weather was like outside.

‘I'd gone to London when the war got going. The money was good in the munitions factory, but it wasn't what Dad had wanted. He already had a life lined up for me, right down to the pattern on my apron. A life and a husband. Pleasant enough fellow. He'd been Dad's apprentice. Would have taken over the business. I'd probably have married him if Robert hadn't sung so sweetly. If I hadn't fancied him so hard. If I hadn't got knocked up so fast. God knows, things might have been better with him.'

‘Except you wouldn't have had Charlie,' Dot said.

Lydia nodded slowly. ‘That's the clincher, isn't it?' she said. ‘I wouldn't have had Charlie.'

Dot laughed. ‘So you've got your father on one side not forgiving, Pam on the other and your sod of a husband in the middle. Nest of vipers.'

They sat down and got out their tools, ready to start the afternoon shift.

‘What does Charlie think of it all, then? Going off to live in a posh house?' Dot said.

‘He's happy. Near his beloved bees. With all that garden.'

The forewoman was making her way towards the switch, an eye to the clock, while the women waited. Dot fiddled with the handle on her screwdriver, looking up at Lydia, then down at her lap, then up again while they waited for the shift to start.

‘I'm going to miss you, you daft thing. Lucky for you, with your doctor. I didn't know she was such a good friend,' Dot said, but the conveyor belt had started, its clatter rising, and the room was too noisy now for any reply to be heard.

Lydia brooded through the afternoon on what she should say, but by the time they knocked off, she still didn't know how to answer.

Thursday was Lydia's final day. After ten years' work,
the factory gave her the last day off, and a teapot in yellow and green.

That evening Dot called by to help her with the packing.

‘Pam's been sniffing around,' she said. ‘Wanting to know this, wanting to know that.'

‘What did you tell her?'

‘Not a blinding thing.' Dot opened one of the bags she'd brought and began to fill it with plates, wrapping them in newspaper, piece by piece.

‘It's making her quite cross,' she said. ‘Silly, because she'll find out pretty soon, but I think sod it, why should I tell her anything?'

‘She doesn't have to see me any more,' Lydia said. ‘Now Robert's left me, and I'm not working at the factory.'

‘But it won't stop her wanting to know. Charlie's still her nephew.'

Lydia snorted. ‘Not so as you'd notice. She's horrid to him.'

‘Maybe that's because he's her nephew,' Dot said. ‘Maybe he reminds her too much.'

Lydia looked round at Dot. ‘What do you mean?'

‘Well, he's the spit of Robert, isn't he?'

Lydia nodded. ‘Sometimes it's strange, seeing the man who's left me in the face of my boy,' she said.

‘Maybe that's what Pam feels too. She's always gone on about being like a mother to Robert, bringing him up singlehanded and that. She thinks he's her boy. But he went and left her for you.'

Lydia paused in her packing. Dot's words made her shiver.

‘She's his sister, not his girlfriend. And anyway, then she might be fond of Charlie, him looking so like his dad,' she said.

‘But she isn't, is she,' Dot said flatly. ‘Home truths, Lydia. She isn't ever going to forgive your Charlie for looking like her boy.'

‘Quite the philosopher,' Lydia said abruptly, pulling open the cutlery drawer. She gathered up a rackety handful and dumped it into a box. The shot and clatter of metal felt good. She let the sound die and turned to her friend.

‘Sorry, Dot. Not your fault.'

‘Watch your back,' Dot said. ‘She's got her knives out for you.'

‘I hate her for taking it out on Charlie,' Lydia said. She gathered up another handful. ‘In fact, I just hate her,' she said. ‘First time I've admitted it. If it wasn't for Annie. Don't know how she got through so well, with a mother like that.'

‘Doesn't look that well on it at the minute,' Dot said flatly. ‘And I'm not sure her mother's even noticed.'

‘Annie?' Lydia looked round. Something about Dot's tone tugged her out of her own rage. ‘What's up with Annie?'

‘At a guess, I'd say she was pregnant.'

Lydia bit her lip. ‘And you think Pam hasn't noticed?'

‘Odd, isn't it? A woman who can't leave anybody alone, least of all her own daughter. Maybe Pam doesn't want to notice. Maybe she hopes it'll go away.'

‘You're sure?'

‘Sure as you can be when you see a girl throwing up in the toilets and who won't meet your eye when you ask her, is she all right.'

‘But not showing,' Lydia said.

‘I'd say barely in there,' Dot said. ‘She looked right as rain last week. But if I was Pam, I'd be setting up to collar that young George before he disappears in a puff of smoke.'

‘Except she doesn't like young George. He's the last thing she wants for Annie.'

‘Perhaps that's why Annie headed straight for him, then,' Dot said. ‘It's what I'd have done with a mother like that.'

Outside a new dark was falling, a dark Charlie didn't know yet. He walked carefully, wheeling the bike. Like everything else here, the street lamps had bigger kingdoms and the pools of shadow between them fell wider and deeper than he was used to. He pushed the bicycle over the gravel and on to the pavement. It was quiet here. He could hear the sound of his own feet and the noise of the wind in the trees. On this road there were no clutches of gossiping women home from the factory, no children running between the houses, or playing out. There were no other boys with bicycles. He couldn't smell any other dinners cooking. He couldn't even smell his own, though he'd only just shut the door on it.

Straddling the bike, Charlie looked out on the road. His road. He'd walked along it dozens of times visiting Dr Markham, but it was different now, now that he lived here.

The bicycle was his. A gift. Leant up against the shed that afternoon, brand-new, with three gears, front and back lights and a label tied to the handlebars: ‘Should help with the journey to school.' When he found his mother and asked her was it really for him, she caught him by the cheeks, which he didn't like her doing any more, and said it was, but it was Dr Markham he had to thank. Then she kissed him on the forehead and said his supper would be ready in an hour, so to be back by then.

It was freezing outside and Charlie wrapped his scarf tighter, rubbed at his fingers and pushed off. He'd ride the bike up and down a few times, get the hang of the gears, then maybe go to Bobby's house. He'd like to see Bobby's face. This was something of his that Bobby would really want.

The road stretched away for ever, with empty trees and deep grass verges, and big houses behind hedges. Charlie cycled harder, faster up the hill. Pushing the pedals, he looked into the dark and imagined that his dad was just ahead there, by that tree, in front of that house, or round the corner, leaning back, waiting to see him, to see his son Charlie. He sat straighter and set his jaw firmly in case, so his dad would see how strong he'd got, and how fast and able. He let himself imagine it for a time and then, because it was hurting, he stopped.

‘Stupid,' he muttered, and then he tried other words.

‘Damn and bloody fool. Bloody stupid.' But the words didn't work and he shook his head.

‘I hate you,' he said. ‘I hate you. I hate her. I hate her stupid face and her hair. I hate her stupid name. I hate her name and she won't ever be Mrs Weekes. Ever.'

He didn't want to go to Bobby's any more and he turned and let the bike freewheel down the road, murmuring under his breath, feeling how it got easier and easier.

‘I hate you, I hate you, I hate you.'

He remembered the night that they'd come back from the sea. He'd been telling his mother a story, something funny, but she hadn't seemed to hear him.

‘You know we've got to move?' she'd said when he stopped talking. ‘That we can't stay here?'

They were eating fish and chips. Charlie was famished and happy. His box of treasure was at the foot of the stairs, waiting, not opened yet.

She spoke and he looked up at her, not understanding, and she picked a chip off the newspaper and started to study the crossword.

‘But we live here,' Charlie said.

He watched his mother find a pencil in the drawer and write in an answer.

‘It's because there's only the two of us here now,' she said.

‘But I've always lived here. Since I was a baby.'

‘I don't earn enough on my own to pay the rent,' she said.

She began to write in another answer, but she was holding the pencil very tight, he could see that, and maybe the fat from the chips had got into the paper because the pencil wouldn't make a mark.

‘Why isn't my dad paying any?' he said.

She looked down at the pencil.

‘I hate him,' Charlie said.

‘Now, Charlie,' she said, but she was making shapes across the newspaper, digging into it, zigzag shapes, like lightning coming down.

Charlie wasn't hungry any more. He pushed his chips away.

‘I can get some money then,' he said. ‘I'll get a paper round, or run messages for the bookies on a Saturday. Mikey in my class does that.'

His mother shook her head.

‘You're too young and, anyway, it wouldn't be enough, my love.'

‘But you're working in the factory all the time,' Charlie said, ‘except for being ill and after. You can't work any more.'

Then his mother had explained about Dr Markham's offer.

Charlie left the bicycle against the shed and went around
the side of the house through the side gate and into the garden. He went carefully in the dark, over the terrace, down on to the lawn, down beyond the beech hedge. Laying his hands on the rough, damp wood, he put his cheek to the hive.

‘Remember me,' he said, and he made his voice smooth as smoke. ‘Don't wake up, just listen out in your dreams, bees, and you'll hear.'

He cupped a hand around his mouth and spoke slow and low.

‘My father is dead.'

He waited, and the bees still slept.