Tell it to the Bees (7 page)

When darkness fell, the place belonged to courting couples. Sometimes somebody would clear a corner under
a corrugated strip and sleep there for a while. There'd be the remnants of a fire, some newspaper and empty cans. But mostly, after school, the boys had it all to themselves.

Bobby chinked the marbles in his pockets.

‘I'll give you back your best ones if you tell what happened.'

Charlie shook his head. Bobby kicked a can against the bricks.

‘If you won't tell, I get to choose the game.'

Charlie shrugged.

‘Right then,' Bobby said. He leaned back against a wall and stared across the scrubby ground.

‘It's the Blitz. I'm going to be the air-raid warden, and you be the wounded man.'

Charlie nodded.

‘And you wouldn't go into the shelter.'

‘Long as I don't have to run,' Charlie said.

‘And I rescue you, and then I have to go and rescue these other people.'

So they played in the rubble for a while. Bobby found a vast sink, the enamel gone green with mould.

‘We might find a snake here soon,' Charlie said. ‘It's getting warmer. They'll be waking up end of March time. We could put it in here, make a place for it.'

‘What are you going to tell your mum? About your shirt? And why you're walking funny?'

Charlie ran his fingers over the sink. The enamel was slippery and smooth.

‘Don't know. That I tripped by the river. Something.'

He rubbed his green fingers over the tear in his shirt, and then across his trousers. Eventually the boys grew cold and went home.

Charlie and his father had to wait a while at the doctor's, so Robert stood at the magazine table and flipped the
pages. Charlie sat and listened to the gas hiss and wondered whether, if he gave him his favourite shooter, Bobby would look for a snake with him.

Then the door to the consulting room opened and they were called in, and it was a lady doctor sitting behind the desk. She had green eyes and dark, curly hair, but not like Auntie Pam's. The doctor's curls looked like they had just grown like that. Auntie Pam made hers on curlers. He'd seen her in them, like big worms all over her head. The doctor didn't smile much and she asked Charlie, not Robert, to sit down in the chair. Charlie hesitated and looked up.

‘It's Charlie that's here to see me. Isn't it?' she said.

The doctor's voice was firm, and she sounded serious. Charlie nodded.

‘Then you're the one the chair is for. I don't expect your father will mind standing?'

‘Sit down,' Robert said, and so Charlie sat, carefully, into the deep chair.

The lady doctor asked him to tell her what was wrong. He explained about falling near the river and hurting his ribs.

‘And your lip? Did you hurt that in the fall too?'

He nodded. He knew she didn't think it was a fall, but she didn't ask him any more.

‘But it's the ribs that are causing you some pain?'

‘Yes.'

‘I'd better have a look then,' she said.

When she stood up, Charlie saw that she was tall, as tall as his dad. She was wearing a skirt and a jacket made out of rough brown material with green and red checks. His teacher sometimes wore clothes like this. They made him feel itchy, just to look at. Although she wasn't smiling, she didn't look unfriendly and he didn't feel nervous. He noticed that she barely looked at his dad.

She had him stand up and take off his sweater, unbutton
his shirt and then lift his vest, so his chest and back were bare. She rubbed her hands together.

‘They're not very warm, I'm afraid.'

Charlie could feel the blush across his face as she went to touch his ribs. He looked across towards the fireplace. There were some china figures on the mantelpiece and a glass vase, and something that looked like a piece of honeycomb except it was much bigger than the real thing and in an odd shape.

His mother had bought a jar of comb honey once when someone told her it would help his father's hay fever. It was expensive and Charlie hadn't been allowed more than a taste. But the comb had fascinated him. He'd turned the jar around and around at the table, staring through the glass at the impeccable hexagons, until he was ordered on with his porridge.

The honeycomb on the mantelpiece looked as if it was made of wood. Polished, smooth. If he could only get a bit closer.

‘You've got some nasty bruising, Charlie. Now, this might hurt a bit.'

Charlie wondered about the wooden comb. He wondered whether he could touch it. It would be a bit like touching the real thing, only he could fit his finger in these wooden cells. The man who made this, he'd have chisels and sandpaper, and tools to measure with. But the bees did it with their mouths. They made the wax out of their own bodies and then built their perfect shapes. That's what his mum had told him.

‘It might hurt a bit, Charlie,' the doctor's voice said, and then a pain scorched its way through his chest, so that his sight went blue and silver and he cried out.

Her voice was soft in its wake.

‘Must have been quite a fall.'

And in the quiet, his father's voice.

‘Least it's not another one with measles.'

Charlie heard his father's rough laugh, and after it silence. Then the doctor's voice, very low, and sounding like the word had been dragged out of her.

‘No.'

Charlie opened his eyes.

‘That hurt a lot, didn't it?'

The doctor was still crouched beside him. He wouldn't look at her. He looked across the room at the burnished comb.

‘You looking at the honeycomb?' she said.

He nodded.

‘Stop staring.' His father's voice was impatient. ‘Come on and get dressed. You're wasting the doctor's time.'

‘It's all right, Mr Weekes. Go and take a closer look, Charlie, if you want to.'

Charlie took a step, and then paused. How did she know what he was looking at?

‘If you pick it up, you'll feel it's quite heavy. Very different from the real thing.'

Charlie walked across and picked it up. He heard the doctor say something to his father, and his father reply. He counted the cells – seven wide and five deep. Behind him, they went on talking, but he didn't hear. He wasn't listening. He traced the contours with his finger, then the doctor's voice cut in.

‘It's modelled on a piece of comb from wild bees,' she said.

‘So, do they make wild honey?' he said.

‘Charlie, will you tell me how you got these hurt ribs?' she said.

He put the comb back on the mantelpiece and began to button up his shirt. He didn't turn and he didn't reply.

‘Answer the doctor,' Robert said, and Charlie turned then, his face tight, and picked up his sweater.

‘You'll be in more trouble once you're out of here if you don't answer,' his father said, but Charlie knew he only said it to sound proper to the doctor, not because he really cared how Charlie had got hurt.

The doctor was leaning back against her big desk, arms folded.

‘A friend made it for me, because I keep bees,' she said, nodding towards the mantelpiece.

Despite himself, Charlie turned to her, his eyes alive with questions. The doctor smiled, not at him, quite, but more as if she understood something.

‘Have you ever seen a hive?' she said, her face serious again.

Charlie shook his head.

‘The bees wake up about now, with the weather getting warmer. I'll be doing a first inspection soon. You could come and have a look.'

Charlie looked from the doctor to his father, his face a shock of anticipation.

She turned to Robert. ‘With your father's permission.'

Robert stared at Jean, his expression shifting like water. Charlie knew better than to say anything, or make any move. He stood where he was, his sweater still in his hands, waiting.

Robert got to his feet and shook down his jacket, adjusted his scarf, put on his hat. Motioning to Charlie to follow, he walked to the door.

‘All right then. About the bees.'

The doctor's house was huge. Big as a ship. Big as a castle. All on its own, with its own hedge around and a driveway with gravel that wouldn't last a minute if it was on his street. Butterflies kicked up a storm in Charlie's stomach. What if she didn't remember him? What if she didn't really mean it?

He nearly turned around and went, except that a big lady saw him and marched at him like a tank and so he froze instead of running. She wore a thin coat like Auntie Pam did, over the top of everything else, so he could see her dress peeping out at the top and from underneath. You could get an electric shock off Auntie Pam's and when she stood under the electric light, the coat shone like plastic. This lady's had a pattern on it that looked like tongues in blue and red that swirled and flipped about in the wind.

‘It's not anyone that's ill,' he said. ‘It's about the bees. She said I could see the bees.'

And Mrs Sandringham got him by the collar and took him round the side of the house and shouted for the doctor.

She was wearing old trousers and a pullover with holes and she had a scarf around her head. When she got nearer, he saw she was smiling.

‘Charlie Weekes. I'm glad you're here,' she said. ‘Come and see what's going on.'

The bees had things to fear in the winter. Mice, which
crept in at the door and ate their sweet food. Woodpeckers that could shred the hive to splinters. Canny blue tits that came tap-tapping at the entrance to snap up any curious bees. Dr Markham told Charlie how the warm February sun could lure them from the hive with a promise, like the ice queen, then freeze them to death. How they could lose their way home in the snow, bewildered by its brightness. He watched her heft each hive to know its weight, and she told him how careful you must be, when it was still wintry, not to disturb the bees or they might kill their queen, though she didn't know why.

She gave him a notebook with a red cover and a leather loop to hold the slender pencil.

‘Might be useful,' she said.

He wrote down that a slice of onion was good for bee stings. He wrote down that bee stings were good for arthritis. He wrote down that honey was heavier than water. He wrote down that you could talk to the bees and tell them about important things. But you must do it quietly, else they might fly away.

Before he left that day, Charlie ran back to where the hives stood. The doctor hadn't told him how he should speak and he wasn't sure how near to be, or what he should say. So in the end he stood at one side and put his head close, as if listening at a door. Covering his mouth with his hand, he told the bees he would be back next weekend and that he was glad now about the fight at school. Then, very quietly, he told them that his mum was sad but he didn't know why.

Lydia cycled through the town with the noise of the wind in her ears and the sight of her son in her mind's eye. The sun shone a thin light and the day promised to be warm, though it wasn't yet. Down the hill and over the criss-cross of streets, past men and women washed and combed and brushed for the day. Hair sliced into lines, scarves tight beneath the chin against the messy air, walking on and on, seeing and not seeing, ready and not ready for daylight business. Or queuing, checking watches, leaning and careful against a corner, rocking on heels still pink from between the sheets. Or heads ducked into newspapers to find a retreat from the rise of the day here and now in this place, these pavements, this weather, this town.

She'd been cross with Charlie this morning. He'd had his breakfast in front of him for ten minutes and not started on it yet and she was impatient with his dreaminess.

‘Get on and eat, otherwise …'

And she'd turned with a shake of the head and gone for more water for the tea, so that Charlie had finished the sentence behind her back.

‘Otherwise I won't grow tall and strong like my dad.'

She hadn't been sure, from the way he said it, whether she was meant to hear him, or not. It was what she used to tell him when he was little, and it was true that she hadn't found the new thing to say now he was bigger. But there
was something in Charlie's tone that sounded bitter, not amused or jokey, and Lydia didn't know how to respond to that. So she'd sat down with the tea and settled on something else instead.

‘Charlie, you're not making yourself a nuisance over the bees, are you?'

Which had got Charlie's head up from the threads of jam he was patterning over his bread. He'd stared at her, his mouth slightly open, in something that looked like alarm.

‘She hasn't said that? She hasn't said it to you?'

‘No, she hasn't. I haven't spoken with her. Haven't clapped eyes on her yet. But you're there every week almost,' Lydia said, and then, trying to make light: ‘I barely see you weekends, these days.'

‘She's said I can go after school today. If I want.'

He waited, eyes down again on his plate till he caught her nod, then he started eating his bread and jam, taking large bites and swallowing fast.

‘Perhaps I better go and get ill,' Lydia said, smiling, watching him, ‘so at least I could meet her. Thank her for her trouble.'

‘It's not trouble,' Charlie said. ‘She likes me being there. I like the bees. I can help her,' and he pushed back his chair to leave the table.

In that way parents have when they need to have the last word, Lydia called as he left the room, ‘Wash your face before you go, and don't forget your dinner money.'

Afterwards, cycling, the early morning wind forced tears from her eyes. They scudded across her cheekbones, reluctant messengers from some unexamined pool. In her bag were a Thermos of tea, a clean pinafore and the square, clean corners of a book. She'd take it out at lunchtime if she could, and dip in like dipping in a stream, let the words carry her somewhere else, anywhere.