The Missing World (34 page)

chapter 20

Jonathan lit the cardboard on the second attempt and closed the smoker. In the late-afternoon sunlight the worn brick houses of his neighbours seemed part of a kinder, happier city, and as he headed for the hives, the blunt roar of jets—some days, for no apparent reason, Highbury lay on a flight path to Heathrow—bisected the assorted radios and TVs playing in those golden houses. From a nearby garden he heard a rustling, then a decisive snip. When he had a moment, he must ask Mrs. Craig’s advice about replanting the herbaceous border to benefit his bees. After the scene outside Plantworks, it would be good to have a neutral topic of conversation.

The hives, too, glowed in the sun, but already the shadows were lengthening; rain clouds were massing to the west. In fact it was far too late to be handling the bees. A few hours ago, most of the workers would’ve been out foraging on one of the first warm days of the year, whereas by now they were back inside, clustered around the queen. But he had arrived home to find Bernadette even more businesslike than usual. I should tell you, she’d said, putting on her jacket, that my sister is no longer living with me. And when he asked how he could reach Charlotte,
she claimed to have no idea. Then Hazel, reading on the sofa, kept turning the pages determinedly. The only possible solution was to visit the hives.

He puffed smoke into the hive nearest the house and, indecisively, into the other two as well. While waiting for the bees to grow gorged and sleepy, he tried to decide which one to work on first. That was something, something else, he’d never succeeded in conveying to Hazel, that each hive had a distinct personality; not simply what Maud had called a binary operation, docile as opposed to hostile, but a whole range of complicated, conflicting traits.

He eyed the first hive, whose inhabitants had responded so fiercely to his last visit. He had only to visualise the four supers, filled to the brim by summer’s end, to be reminded that their aggression was combined with excellent nectar-gathering. The bees in the middle hive, with two supers, were unreliable, given to making large quantities of propolis with which, once the hive was sealed, they jammed up the frames; they probably would try to swarm several times in the course of the summer. The third hive, although he had changed the queen last year, remained disaster prone. In January he had found a dead sparrow wedged near the entrance, and twice he’d had to fight off a wax-moth invasion. The bees, however, behaved admirably: the latest queen laid vigorously from May to November, and the hive required less feeding over the winter than either of the others.

Now, bending down at the entrance to the third hive, he saw several winged corpses, then a whole drift of bodies, from darkest brown to clear golden. He scooped up a handful. They weighed nothing, all their instinct and purpose hollowed away to wingless husks. He remembered reading Hazel a passage in which Pliny the Elder described hives made not of reeds or bark but of transparent stone—mica, they’d speculated. And
suddenly, as if the bees were speaking to him, whispering a question with their frail wings, a voice in his head said: What if you’re wrong? What if Hazel’s contempt conceals not its opposite but the same emotion, only more so, magnified a hundred times? What if she actually hates you? He hurled the dead bees towards the wall. Most of the tiny bodies floated down, featherlike, within a couple of feet of where he stood. A few crossed over into Mrs. Craig’s garden.

He was putting the smoker on the shelf by the kitchen door when he realised he was not alone. Gooseflesh rose on his arms. Against the sink leaned a motionless figure.

“You bastard,” Maud said.

On the second attempt he managed to get the veil on its hook. “Maud,” he said, striving for normality. “You startled me. Can I get you a drink?”

“I must have been mad. For months I’ve helped you, aided and abetted you. In exchange I asked one thing, only—”

“Keep your voice down.”

She took a step towards him, and involuntarily he stepped back. “That’s all you care about, isn’t it? Your precious Hazel. She’s next door having a massage, so don’t worry. We’re alone. Why the fuck, Jonathan, why did you tell her? You promised you wouldn’t.”

He longed to clap his hand over her mouth, to throw her to the floor, drag her out of the house. She would lie in the gutter until someone—the Tourette’s boy, perhaps—found her. I mustn’t, he thought, lay a finger on her. He shoved his hands into his pockets and, for additional safety, sat down. The answer was obvious: he wanted to show Hazel how lovable he was—look, Maud loved him—and trustworthy: here he was telling her of his own free will. Surely Maud could understand that. As for his promise, any promise to her was glass on the floor,
dust in the wind. From some drunken session years ago came Alastair’s voice. When in doubt, apologise. Bitches, clients, bank managers, they none of them can resist a chap saying he’s sorry.

“Sorry,” he muttered. “I don’t know what came over me.” For fear she would read the anger in his eyes, he fastened his gaze on the Amnesty calendar.

“Hazel told me,” said Maud.

She leaned back, arms folded, as if to allow him to assimilate some potent fact. Well, he was thinking, of course.

“What happened in the autumn,” she continued. “Her job offer, the—”

“Don’t.” He leapt to his feet. Even to utter the words in the house seemed fatal. They would leave a trace Hazel couldn’t help noticing.

“And,” Maud went on, not flinching, “I know that Hazel doesn’t remember. It’s the piece of the puzzle she keeps searching for, that would make sense of everything: the flat furnished with all her possessions, her nagging sense that something is out of joint, her antipathy towards you.”

He sank back into the chair. She was draining the honey from his cells, the marrow from his bones.

“So,” she said mockingly, “until I met you, I thought beekeepers were elderly men in Oxfordshire villages. Laurie Lee and all that. It does seem bizarre, keeping bees in North London.”

She moved away from the sink; her feet crossed the linoleum to the back door, returned. “Bizarre,” she repeated. “You’re in your own little world, aren’t you?”

Raising his eyes from the calendar, he saw she had donned the veil. All pretence between them was over. “What do you want?” he said.

She sat down across the table. Through the thin mesh, her
face was both vivid and distant. He smelled sweetness and a film of smoke. “You can’t have two queens in a hive, can you? I want what I can’t have. I also want what I can have. You’re a bright boy. You’ll figure this out.”

Her voice changed, the mocking quality gone. From behind the veil she spoke with unabashed urgency, as if that scanty protection enabled her to drop the guises of irony and anger. “Sometimes I think I’ll wake up one morning and this grotesque feeling will be gone. My life would be so much easier, and so much emptier. There’s no good reason you fell for Hazel rather than me, or why I succumbed to you rather than some other bloke. One of these days, one of us will get off the merry-go-round—I’m betting on Hazel—but meanwhile, here we are.”

She pulled off the veil, leaned across the table, and kissed him. For a few seconds, he resisted, then fury got the better of him. He opened his lips and thrust his tongue into her mouth, ground his face against hers.

“You mean that one?” At the sight of Felicity’s house, each brick outlined in white, Charlotte felt immediately better. “What colour is the door?” she said. “Green?”

“Blue.” Freddie unrolled his window and leaned out. “I thought I might hear him.”

Staring at what must be the living-room, Charlotte spotted the ubiquitous paper lampshade and a poster bearing a well-known admonition to Sisterhood. She would’ve liked to rest her head on Freddie’s shoulder, but he was still dangling out of the window. After making love they’d fallen asleep, and when they woke long after dawn, he had leapt from the bed, announcing he was due to help someone called Trevor. Except for tending the dogs, Charlotte spent the day on the sofa, drinking tea and reading old newspapers, pretending to catch up on peace in Ireland,
famine in Africa. In reality her mind was occupied with the more pressing matter of talking Freddie into letting her stay. Would he mind having her name on the answering machine?

At dusk came a key in the lock and Freddie’s voice. From the way he stooped to pick up the Yellow Pages, Charlotte had understood that he was tired and then, as he put the book back on the shelf, pissed off that it was still on the floor. Suddenly she had a dismaying picture of the kitchen. Bollocks, she thought frantically. Busy? No. Work? Not likely. Poorly? Yes, that was the business with Freddie. Plead a headache. Better yet a migraine, more serious, less like a hangover. As he started to ask a question, something about Hazel, she let her smile vanish and her shoulders droop. At once he became nicely sympathetic. Told her to lie down while he called Felicity. If she wants the dough from Arkansas, he’d said, fine, but he’s too young to leave Agnes. Charlotte agreed; she could not help identifying with the unmet puppy, hustled from pillar to post. Felicity was out, but one of her roommates said she’d be back by nine. So here they were, for the second night in a row, seated in the van, waiting.

Charlotte reached in her bag, drew out an orange, and began to peel it. “I was in a play once about a woman who kidnapped her daughter, but I don’t know what happens in the case of a dog.”

“I think this would be categorised as theft. In Cincinnati I’m sure I could sue for emotional damage—at least to me, if not Arkansas.”

“You’re not damaged.” She handed him half the orange. “Anyway, Felicity doesn’t have any money, does she?”

“Thanks. That never keeps my fellow citizens from litigation.” He pointed. “There’s one of her roommates, Nicole.”

A tall woman with a backpack was approaching the house.
She inserted a key, leaned a shoulder to the door, and, finally, pushed her way inside. “Drove me nuts, that lock,” murmured Freddie.

“Could we ask her about Arkansas? Make a pre-emptive strike?”

She longed for Freddie to hold her hand again or squeeze her thigh; he hadn’t even kissed her in the hall. Now he simply gave her a look. “That would put Nicole in a weird position, and me too. How’s your head?”

So that was why he was so distant. “Better, much better. The fresh air helps.” She swallowed the last segment of orange and licked her fingers. “Aren’t you scared, though, of seeing Felicity?”

“Totally. The truth is, she can be pretty intimidating. While the rest of us are bumbling around, she knows exactly what she wants.”

“Like my sister.
Oh
.”

“What is it?”

“You asked about Hazel? I just realised, now that I’m not with Bernie, she won’t be able to reach me.”

“Well, we’d better stop by and—” He broke off and opened the door. “Here we go.”

Charlotte assumed he meant the woman in the yellow oilskins, but she walked on, leaving a small figure with a mass of springy hair standing before the house. Remembering her own last encounter with Walter, Charlotte slumped in her seat. As Felicity commenced the battle of the lock, Freddie greeted her from a respectful distance. Although he towered over her, his entire posture indicated that he didn’t plan to take advantage of his size. He stretched out a hand, spread his arms—the gestures of pleading, Charlotte knew too well. Felicity looked down at the key and said something, still without turning around. Perhaps she feared her resolve might vanish if she saw his face.

On their way over Charlotte had asked if it wasn’t hard to drive again. And how, Freddie said. I didn’t get behind the wheel for ten years. That was another reason not to be in America. Here it seems okay, because everything’s on the wrong side anyway. He had paused to change gear. Do you think you’ll act again? This was the question all her friends asked—Bernie, Cedric, Brian, Ginny, Jason, Mr. Early, even Bill, the TV repairman—but somehow, on Freddie’s lips, the effect was quite different. I don’t know, she’d said. It’s all I’ve ever wanted to do. He smiled. Lucky you.

Now Felicity was pounding on the door while Freddie kept talking from his respectful distance. Presently the door opened and, across the street, Charlotte heard it slam. She was tempted to rush over and throw her arms around Freddie. He stood there waiting. I’ll count to a hundred, she thought, and then, come hell or high water, I’ll go and help him.

At nineteen, the first drops of rain rolled down the windscreen. At thirty-one, a man jogged past wearing a reflective vest. At fifty-six, a pizza-delivery scooter chugged by. At seventy-two, the door opened. Charlotte caught the barest glimpse of a lighted interior, Felicity’s dark hair. Once again it slammed shut. Freddie remained rooted to the pavement. Watching him, Charlotte knew that she couldn’t rescue him, that somehow he had to find it in himself to turn away from the house, from Felicity, and walk back across the street. She closed her eyes.

Before Charlotte could question him—she was exclaiming over the squirming Arkansas—Freddie announced he was off to the corner store, to get a paper for the floor. Probably there was one in the back of the van, but he needed a few minutes alone to recover from Felicity’s thunderbolts. In their early days, she’d told him about her last boyfriend, a lecturer at the LSE; what a
jerk, Freddie had thought. Now he felt a wave of solidarity with his predecessor. The two of them would hang side by side in Felicity’s rogues’ gallery.

“What do
you
want?” she’d snapped.

“Felicity, I’m sorry.”

“And I suppose you think that makes everything better.” She began to list, in painful detail, his many shortcomings.

He was about to interrupt—what’s the point of an autopsy if you already have a diagnosis?—when a remark of Charlotte’s came back to him. I knew it wouldn’t change anything, she’d said, describing her last encounter with Walter, but I couldn’t stand that it was so easy for him. Felicity, he thought, as he pushed open the shop door, certainly understood that impulse.

The newspapers, not surprising at this time of night, were almost gone, but they had an
Evening Standard
, nice and thick. Moving on to the fridge, he chose a pint of milk and a bottle of Lucozade. Might perk Charlotte up, though already she seemed better than when he’d arrived home to discover her pale and wan, the flat still in chaos. He went over to pay.