Tell it to the Bees (32 page)

Only when they sat down to drink the coffee, nearly cool in the jug by now, did Jean tell Lydia what was on her mind.

‘I'm worried. About where all my patients, all those ill people, are going,' Jean said.

‘What ill people?'

‘The ones who should be coming in to my surgery, or calling me for home visits.'

Lydia frowned, perplexed. ‘But isn't it a good thing if not so many people are getting ill?'

Jean drank down her coffee and poured another cup. She banged it on the table, coffee gathering in a small pool.

‘I shouldn't have time to do this,' she said. ‘I should be too busy. I should be snatching lunch and longing for a cup of coffee. Like last winter, and the one before.'

‘Maybe people just aren't as ill,' Lydia said again.

Jean shook her head. ‘I bumped into Dr Glover. He told me he's run off his feet. He said he's got quite a few new patients and he doesn't know why.' She stood up. ‘I'll give Jim a call. It's time we went to the pub.'

As the snow settled in over the week, and the town grew accustomed to it, so Lydia felt her sadness settle into something if not comfortable exactly, then at least known and contained. People moved solidly through the icy streets, eyes to the ground, taking care with their footing, and in the same way Lydia moved about with this grief. She kept it steady in her, didn't let it veer off and unbalance her, and she made her own ballast against it. She cooked up rich, dense stews to keep the weather at bay and made buns and cakes to welcome Charlie and Jean back in out of it, and her grief lodged like a pebble next to her joy.

On the Friday, Dot came to the house. It was eight o' clock and she was dressed up: high heels, fresh stockings, a
new dress, Lydia was sure. It was bitter outside and Lydia ushered her in before they had even greeted one another.

‘Nearly broke my neck,' Dot said. ‘Wrong shoes for the job.'

She looked around her, then fished in her handbag and took out a compact.

‘How do my lips look?'

‘What are you doing, Dot?' Lydia said. ‘It's perishing outside and you're dressed for a dance.'

‘I am off dancing. After this.'

‘After what?'

‘Come with me.'

‘I can't, Dot.'

‘Anyway, you could say hello how are you, instead of the third degree.'

Lydia brought Dot into the sitting room. For a minute they sat silent. Dot put her hands out to the fire to warm them, slipped off her shoes and stretched out her stockinged feet.

‘Charlie's upstairs,' Lydia said. ‘I'll call him down, to say hello.'

‘What about the doctor?'

‘She's out on her calls still. The snow,' Lydia said.

‘Got it snug here.' Dot inclined her head to take in the whole room, the whole house.

‘I'll get us a cup of tea.' Lydia made to get up.

‘No, it's all right. Don't call Charlie. I'm not staying long,' Dot said.

‘But it's the first time you've come to see me. Through the snow, and on a Friday night,' Lydia said. ‘Any news? I was thinking about Annie earlier. I miss her. Any news?'

Dot shrugged. ‘Maybe I was wrong on that. She looks quite perky and nothing showing, so far as I can see.'

Lydia nodded, sad for a moment; she couldn't say how.

‘How's Charlie getting on?' Dot said, something over-solicitous
in her tone, Lydia thought. ‘Janie says he comes to school on a bicycle now. She says the other boys are green with envy.'

‘He's fine. He seems fine.'

‘And you're living here now.'

‘I've got my own room, and Charlie has his. Got all his bits and pieces out on the shelves.' Lydia gave a small laugh. She wasn't comfortable, and it was partly this house, being so big and so different. But partly she didn't know why. ‘You know how he likes to collect things.'

She looked down the sitting room where old oil portraits faced one another sternly. ‘My ancestors,' Jean had told her, laughing. ‘Got them to thank for something.' Lydia looked, not seeing them, and turned back to Dot.

‘It's not a social call, is it?' she said.

She watched Dot duck her head, not meet her eye. She watched her look down at her feet. She looked down too. Dot's toenails were painted fresh red. They twitched uneasily, giving the game away, Lydia thought, whatever Dot liked to say.

‘It's not, is it,' she said again. Not a question.

Dot took a breath, gearing herself, Lydia could see.

‘I don't mind what this is,' Dot said. She looked at Lydia, her eyes pleading, like a dog.

‘What what is?'

‘I'm glad you're out of trouble,' Dot said. ‘I mean, since Robert. Somewhere to live for you both that's safe and comfortable. Those floods last month, those houses down there, they're already damp and filthy and now the river flooding. I'm glad you're both safe up here, and not ended up in one of those, and you with your job as well.'

She paused and Lydia waited. Dot was coming to it now.

‘Something's going round at the factory,' she said finally. ‘Pam, of course.'

Dot looked at her knees, at her shoes, her stockings,
brushed at something on her shins. Lydia waited on. Dot took a deep breath.

‘She's saying that Charlie Weekes can't find his mother in her own bed in that doctor's house, and it's not all she's saying. I've waited a while to see if it'd fizzle out, but it hasn't.'

She spoke it in a rush and it seemed to take all the wind from her, as if she were smaller after, shrunken with her bitter news.

It was only the smallest pause after Dot had spoken, a second or two, and then Lydia widened her eyes and laughed.

‘How stupid,' she said. ‘How typical of her.'

‘Yes,' Dot said uncertainly, but her features brightened with Lydia's laughter, and then she smiled and looked relieved. ‘Yes,' she said again. ‘And everybody knows what she is, of course they do. But you know how it is about smoke and fire. People always think …' and she tailed off.

Lydia's thoughts rushed and crashed. What did Pam know? How? What about Robert? What did it mean? Somehow she kept her voice calm.

‘She's always been a jealous one. Thinks Robert's God's gift. She won't like it that I'm all right without him.'

‘I never could stand her,' Dot said. ‘Now you're not there any more, I've a mind to give the old cow what-for next time she opens her mouth.'

‘Don't,' Lydia said. ‘Leastways, not for me. Best just let it die down.'

Soon after the two women said their goodbyes, with promises and pledges for the future. But if Dot's heart was lighter as she tottered into the snowy night on her good-time heels, Lydia couldn't say the same for herself as she stood under the porch light and waved.

The sky was murderous, the day Robert came for Charlie. So black that the mothers at the school gates were pinching up their eyes to spot their own when the school doors opened, then ushering them home with protective shoulders. The snow was melting fast and odds on a white Christmas were lengthening. In the playground the snowmen were defeated, dropped to their knees, eyes and noses slipped, lives ebbing away beneath them. The youngest children, let out first, skittered over treacherous pools of grey slush to their mothers. Beyond the mothers, Robert leaned against the railings, sucking on a cigarette, eyes flicking between pavement and school.

It was the last week before the holidays and Charlie's class, like all the others, was busy in rehearsal for the Christmas performance. Charlie and Bobby were in charge of the sound effects – a bell, a horn, the shut of a door, some nonchalant whistling – and when the bell went for the end of the day, they stayed in the classroom some minutes longer to practise. By the time they had their coats gathered, the playground was nearly empty again, the mothers departed, the older children stomping towards home.

Charlie wasn't thinking of anything very much right then, and certainly not his father. He didn't notice the storm clouds directly, but it crossed his mind that it might rain and he frowned because his mum still wouldn't let
him ride his bike to school and so he had a long walk home. Then he grinned, because Dr Markham had promised a big tree to decorate with proper candles and the tree was coming today.

‘Race yer,' he said and he was off already. Bobby, shouting a protest, was running to catch up. They both knew Bobby was the faster runner, but Charlie still took it for a victory whenever and however he won.

Charlie went flat out across the playground, not minding the slush, laughing at his friend who kept on calling out from behind, went flat out to be first to the gate, till he was there and somebody was blocking his way, so he stopped and waited for the man to move, but he didn't and Charlie began to say ‘Excuse me,' and then he looked up.

While Charlie ran head-down across the playground, Robert had walked slowly towards the gate. His assumed nonchalance was gone now, replaced by an almost feral poise, and he didn't take his eyes off Charlie. He'd been in doubt a moment before. Had he come to the wrong school? Or had Lydia and that woman moved him to a different one? The playground was nearly empty, hundreds of bloody children had come out, and not his. But just as he thought he would go, Charlie appeared, with that daft friend of his.

‘So, Charlie,' Robert said.

Charlie looked up at his father's face, pale with cold, eyes glancing over Charlie's shoulder and back again. Charlie glanced back. Bobby had stopped a yard short of the gate. Bobby looked at him, a waiting look because this was Charlie's next move and he, Bobby, was sticking clear.

Charlie was out of breath. Exultation still beat hard in his chest.

‘It's the Christmas show and we're doing all the sounds, me and Bobby. We were practising,' he said. Then: ‘Why're you here, Dad?'

He felt guilty, he didn't know why, with his dad here,
and saying about the show sounded silly, babyish, soon as it was off his tongue.

‘Because you're coming back with me today.' And Robert turned and began walking, crossing the road at a slant, not looking, not waiting, just walking.

The two boys stood by the railings and perhaps if the rain hadn't started up, then they'd have stood there for ever. But it was so heavy, so fast, that it struck them into action, shrugging their shoulders like they saw men do against the weather, pulling on their caps.

‘Will yer?' Bobby said, and Charlie nodded, because how could he not.

He had to run to keep up and not once did his dad turn for him, slow his pace, or tip his head to say, ‘Come along.' Robert walked without looking and he pulled Charlie behind him, like a man pulls a cur on a leash, paying him no heed and sure that he'll follow.

They walked for twenty minutes; Robert ahead, hands in pockets, collar up, hat pulled low against the rain, the boy behind. Charlie followed his father's back and he marked the streets as they went by.

‘That's Foley Street and left at the end and on some for the chip shop. Now that's Church Street with no church, and along Monkton Street …' and so on.

He marked the streets and he didn't think. Only his body moved. There was nothing surprising about this to him, about his father at the gate or feeling he'd done something wrong, or following behind with his thoughts in his feet and his head empty. It was what he had expected, somewhere in his stomach, in his gut.

One hand in his trouser pocket, he cupped himself for warmth. After they had walked for fifteen minutes, his father stopped before a house with a brown door, unlocked it and went in, Charlie behind him.

They stood in a small front room, awkward, nearly
touching, in the space between the table and the settee end, and for a minute Robert was at a loss. They were here, his goal accomplished, his plan done, and it had been easy. But he hadn't paid much thought to what came after. It hadn't occurred to him that he needed to. That there would be Charlie stood bang up to him, holding his satchel and looking at the wall as if he'd never seen this man who was his father before. He hadn't planned for this, and he should have, because the one reliable thing about this boy was that he'd never behaved like a boy ought, never behaved like Robert when he was a lad, and here they were again.

‘Put down the bloody satchel,' Robert said. ‘I took an hour unpaid to get you here. Stop staring at the wall.'

Charlie dropped the satchel and looked down at his shoes. He looked up at the settee and the table and he didn't know what to do; he'd never known what to do to stop his father's rage.

Taking Charlie by the shoulders, Robert looked hard at his son. Checking for signs, he told himself, but the boy didn't look much different. Skinnier maybe, but he was always short on flesh. The way Charlie stood there like that, it could have been his mother. She could make him angry just by standing. Provoke him by it. Robert shook his head and looked away. This wasn't how he'd imagined it.

‘Come on, and I'll show you round.'

Following behind, Charlie looked at a kitchen and a scullery; he stood on the back step and stared out into the December dark. He climbed the stairs and looked at the bathroom and a small back bedroom.

‘This is yours,' Robert said in the kind of rough voice Charlie knew for affection. ‘The bricks are just for now, till I get something better done.'

Charlie looked and saw a bed and a chair, a small table and a cupboard. At the foot of the bed, two short planks
made a pair of shelves, blocked up with bricks at either end. He went and stood at the window.

Opposite, there was a woman bent over a sink, only the top of her head visible, and looking back towards him from an upstairs room, an old man who seemed to be adjusting his braces. Charlie shut his eyes and when he opened them, the old man was gone and the woman replaced at the sink by a young girl, arms reaching towards the taps.