Tell it to the Bees (33 page)

‘Am I staying here then?' Charlie said, without turning.

He heard his father move his feet about and then the sound of him fishing out a cigarette, the rush of a match flare and the long breath out.

‘We'll have some fun, Charlie. I've written to your mother. I've said to send your clothes and that.'

Things warred in Charlie. Rage, fear, bewilderment. He turned round. His father leaned in the doorway, easy with his cigarette.

‘Why?' Charlie said.

Robert shrugged.

‘Why not?'

‘But she was doing my costume tonight,' Charlie said. ‘I've got to be there.'

‘Well you won't be.'

It didn't make sense to Charlie, his dad just wanting him now. He didn't understand.

‘But you haven't got time to look after me,' he said, and this was heading into different territory, and he didn't want to, but he couldn't avoid it.

‘Won't be just me,' Robert said, his tobacco ease shifting, darkening. ‘Will it?'

Charlie was backed up against the bed, the metal frame pressing into the backs of his knees. He was light-headed and his legs felt wobbly. His mum always had something for him to eat when he got in, some bread and jam, or a bun
sometimes. He sat down on the bed, the springs jinging beneath him.

‘Could I have something to eat, please?' he said.

‘Won't be only me, will it,' Robert said again. ‘Remember? And she'll be a good thing for you after what's been …' He stopped. ‘She'll be back soon,' he went on, ‘and the sooner you get used to each other, the better.'

Charlie put his hands down on the bed, pressed his arms into his sides. Carefully he looked round to the doorway, to his father planted there. If he tried to run, he'd never get through. He pictured his mother standing in the middle of the kitchen floor, waiting. He saw himself come through the door, and her relief and then her crossness.

‘She'll be worried by now,' he said.

Charlie sensed, rather than saw Robert move and when his father spoke next, standing hard up by the bed, his voice was clenched in the back of his throat and coming down on Charlie like splinters of sound that cut lines over Charlie's flinching skin.

‘It's about time you got some proper bringing-up. If she's worried, that's her lookout. She should have thought about that before she went and took up with the doctor.'

‘No!' Charlie shouted, because this was too sharp. ‘Dr Markham is kind and my friend and she's given Mum a job, too. Because of her we didn't have to be flooded like the others.'

Charlie stopped. His father would hit him now; and worse, he'd shut the door and leave Charlie in this strange room that wasn't his. He waited, but Robert made no move, only said again: ‘She'll be back soon.' He took hold of Charlie's arm and pulled him to standing. ‘Wash your face. She won't want to see you crying.'

In the bathroom Charlie splashed water on his face. He stood on tiptoe and his face appeared, climbing up from the white tiles, red-eyed like the troll beneath the bridge. It
was strange to see his father's shaving brush and the little mirror he liked to use in its stand, because although there was no shaving brush at Dr Markham's, Charlie hadn't really thought of his father doing his shaving somewhere else. Beside the brush were pots that Charlie recognized as women's pots, because his mother had one of them just the same. Charlie shivered; the pots, sitting there neatly, minding their own business, brought something home.

Walking slowly down the steep stairs, down to his father, hands shrugged deep into his pockets, Charlie began to hum. He didn't know the song, it was just one of the tunes Dr Markham liked to play on the gramophone and it would come drifting up to Charlie as he drifted into sleep. He didn't really even know that he was humming now. His eyes were planted on the centre of the stairs where an orange pattern curved and thrust all the way down. Charlie hadn't noticed it on his way up. It was horrid, something that would climb and strangle you when you weren't looking, when you were just walking down the stairs. So he hummed the tune like a magic weapon and stepped carefully down.

He found his father sat at the table, waiting, and on a plate some buttered toast and beside it a glass of milk.

‘Growing, boy, you must be hungry,' Robert said, and Charlie sat and drank.

It was the first time Robert had ever fed his son. He'd never even bought Charlie an ice cream from the van. Feeding children was a woman's job. He watched the boy.

‘Better for that?' he said and Charlie, eyes on his plate, nodded.

He was tense, course he was. They hadn't seen each other for a few months and you get out of the habit of it, of being a father, or a son. They hadn't seen each other except for that time at Pam's when he'd wanted Charlie to
be polite and nice, like he could be if he chose, and pleased to meet Irene, pleased that his dad was making a proper home again. But Charlie was so damn rude, and he'd had a look on him that was so like one of Lydia's, it had made Robert furious. Still, perhaps the women were right, perhaps he had been a bit heavy-handed that day.

Robert put his hand flat on the table, fingers out, and slowly slid it towards Charlie's plate till his fingertips nearly touched the rim. This was an old game. Two pieces of toast were still stacked, and Charlie was eating a third. Smoothly, like a snake in a nest, Robert caught a piece beneath his fingers and dragged it away across the table towards him. This was Charlie's cue to yell out, to stop him if he could, and sometimes Charlie won and sometimes Robert would slip the food in his mouth at the last minute, laughing at Charlie's rage.

Today he didn't mind about eating it or not, he just wanted to remind the boy that here they were, father and son again. But Charlie didn't yell out or grab, he only watched, and his eyes dropped to his plate again. So Robert put the toast back, though the smell of the melted butter had his taste buds going, and he got up and went to the window. He was jittery. Could do with a cigarette.

Remember what she said, he told himself. The boy's done nothing wrong.

‘We'll have fun,' he said again to Charlie.

He listened out. He'd hear her before he could see her, that clip-clip her heels made.

He lit up. He hadn't been able to sit still, ever since Pam had told him. He shook his head. You couldn't undo what was done, but if he'd known then. Christ, if he'd known then, he'd have taken a torch to that doctor. He looked back to the table. Charlie was still eating, on to the last piece. He was quite a good-looking lad, skinny but decent proportions. Could be strong when he was bigger. Not badly
co-ordinated either. Handy with a ball if he'd put his mind to it. Robert was determined, now he had him here and away from his mother, that Charlie would put his mind to it and less of his fancy notions.

The silence in the room was beginning to beat in his ears. He stared through the window, willed her to be back soon.

‘She'll get the dinner on when she's in,' he said aloud, to break the pressure, ‘so that'll do yer till then.'

That day going to the doctor's, he hadn't wanted to take Charlie in the first place. The boy only had a few bruises. It was Lydia had badgered him into it, what with him off for the day he couldn't remember why.

Robert knew Charlie had been in a fight. You didn't get bruises like that by colliding with some slippery steps, or whatever nonsense it was the boy had said. He'd been pleased, though he hadn't said so to Lydia, because it meant the lad was showing some spirit at last. But she'd gone on at him till he'd given in, so he'd taken Charlie to the doctor's surgery and the doctor was that bloody woman.

He should have seen it. He should have spotted what was going on. All that stuff about bees. She knew what she was up to from the start. She was too bloody nice. Wouldn't get a man behaving like that. Gave him the creeps. He should have got up and gone that day, taken Charlie with him. He should have punched her in the face, woman and all.

Charlie had finished the toast and was watching his father, pale-faced and blinking.

‘Well?' Robert said. ‘Long time no see. Tell me what you've been up to. How's that pretty teacher been getting on, then?'

But he didn't hear the reply because he was thinking now. Once Irene was in and could watch the boy, he must be on with the next bit of the plan.

They'd talked it through, Pam and him, guessing at what Lydia would do, where she'd go when Charlie didn't come home, and what they needed to say to keep her off.

‘Better if she hears it from me,' Pam said. ‘I'll keep my cool, make sure she understands right.'

So he needed to be over to Pam's and tell her he'd done it. Because, whatever he'd said to Charlie, he hadn't written Lydia any kind of letter, and when she couldn't find the boy anywhere else, that was where she'd end up. Then she'd get it from Pam, good as if he'd told her, perverted bitch. If she was worried meantime, it was less than she deserved.

Charlie listened to his breath, the tiny whistle as he breathed in, felt the pull through his nose and down his throat. His hands were heavy on his lap, so heavy now that he couldn't imagine lifting them, and they were fused with his legs. He couldn't feel where his legs ended and his hands began, or the other way around. On the other side of the room, his father looked out of the window and smoked cigarettes and muttered. His father had asked him about a teacher, but he hadn't listened to the answer, so Charlie stopped speaking mid-sentence and since then he'd sat like this, perfectly still.

When the woman came in, Charlie watched his father kiss her full on the mouth and put his hand on her bottom. She had on high heels like his mother wore to go out on a Friday and a clingy dress that meant you could see the shape of her very well. Her bosom looked like two cones, but Charlie had it on authority from Bobby that that wasn't natural; it was the brassière that made them like that.

Charlie saw at once why his father put his hand on her bottom, what with the bosom and heels and the very red lipstick, and other things about her that Charlie recognized.
He didn't know how he recognized them, but he did. He felt them in his bones, though if anybody had asked him, he couldn't have described what they were. Charlie saw that she had more of these things he couldn't name than his mother did, and he hated his father for choosing her instead.

‘Irene, listen,' he heard his father say, pulling her to the window. She turned and smiled towards Charlie at the same time as his father took her by the arm, and Charlie stared down again, at the plate with its crumbs. Their voices murmured for a minute or two, and then they stopped and the woman walked over to Charlie and kneeled by his chair.

‘Pleased to meet you. My name's Irene.' She paused, but Charlie didn't say anything, and then she went on. ‘Robert's got to go out for a bit, and I'm going to cook tea. Sausages. You'll like sausages, won't you?'

Charlie looked over at his father. He was putting on his coat, finding his hat, and as hard as Charlie looked at him, he couldn't get his father to look his way. Only at the last, before he went out, did Robert turn to his son.

‘It's all for you, this,' he said. ‘So you do as she says.'

‘He'll be good as gold,' the woman said, and Charlie could tell that any minute now she'd pat him on the head. ‘We'll have a nice time, getting to know each other.'

Then with a last scowl at his son, Robert was gone. Charlie sat on the chair and, quiet in his head, he hummed his tune again and tried not to wonder.

Neither of them spoke in the car. Jean drove slowly and hesitantly, not because the road was icy, though it was, or the car in some way failing. But because the future had become fearful and it was hard, driving into it. The streets were empty and glistened in the headlamps with a million pricks of ice where the day's melt had frozen again under the stars. Beside her, Lydia sat very still.

Jean stopped the car a street away, as they had decided, and with a last look to her, Lydia got out.

She walked the length of the street as though she had never walked it before, past the waste ground and past all the houses with their eyes curtained against the cold. For a minute she stood in front of Pam's door, then she lifted the knocker.

Pam didn't say a word. She only stood, arms folded over her flowered bosom, looking down on Lydia from her step above.

‘I'm looking for Charlie,' Lydia said in a quiet voice.

‘You would be.'

‘When he wasn't home from school,' Lydia said. She waited. ‘Bobby told me –' she said, but Pam interrupted.

‘Bobby?' her voice sharp as acid.

Lydia went on. ‘He said Robert had come to the school gates and taken Charlie with him?' her voice rising to an appeal, despite herself.

‘Well, since you know it from Bobby, I don't see why you're here asking.' Pam turned away, back towards the inside. ‘Excuse me, Lydia,' she said, spitting the name as if it tasted bitter. ‘I've got better things to be doing than –'

‘Where is he, Pam?' Lydia's voice wasn't loud, but it cut through the street air, and it made Pam glance back. ‘Where is he?' Lydia said again, before Pam could shut the door on her. ‘Where is he?' and her voice was getting louder now.

‘Stop it!' Pam said. ‘For God's sake. The whole street.' With another glance out, she gestured her in, pressing flat to the wall as Lydia passed, as if fearful of catching something.

Lydia stood at the end of the hall, neither staying nor leaving. Above her, the stairs rose. On her left, the door was open, but she didn't go in.

‘He's not here,' Pam said.

The smell of dinner was thick and Lydia's gorge rose. She pictured what she'd left. They'd put the tree up in the living room and Sarah was there with the girls, making paper chains and cutting out stars. Leaving, she'd walked outside through square pools of light that fell from the windows. The house was like a beacon.