After the Storm (12 page)

Grace flapped her beech twig, the air stirred over Annie too. ‘Seems good enough to me,’ she said. ‘But what about you, Annie?’

There was a scrabble of stones and then a splash and Annie was up and over to the water before Tom could cry out his fear, but then she saw that he wasn’t going to. He was sitting up grinning, water dripping from his hair into his face, his body drenched.

‘I think I’ll do a wee while I’m here, Annie,’ he called and splashed her as she stood on the bank laughing. ‘I should have brought the soap and saved meself the trouble of bath-night.’

Annie splashed him. ‘Come on out for your bread when you’ve finished poisoning the fish, you little toad.’ She turned and waved to the other two boys. ‘Come on, you two. Or we’ll eat the lot.’ She was ravenous.

They all lay on the grass, close to the water looking over at the hives where there were a few bees hanging in the air. Tom had taken his pad from Beauty’s saddle-bag and was drawing.

‘So what about this mating you wanted me to see, Georgie.’ Annie peered closer at the other bank.

Georgie pulled at the grass about him, throwing it up into the air and letting it float down. ‘It’s the queen, you see, she mates once in her life on a sunny day. I’ve never seen it happen.’

‘But you’ve been coming for years to help here, haven’t you?’ Grace asked.

He nodded. ‘But I’ve never seen it.’

‘Well, you won’t from here, will you,’ mocked Annie. ‘Their private and personals are a bit too small.’

Georgie laughed. ‘It’s not like that. Hardly anyone has seen it. She leaves the hive on just the right day, circles over it so
she’ll recognise it again and flies way up.’ He pointed with a grass stem. ‘Then the drones come out after her and the lucky one does it there, right up in the air.’

Annie looked up into the sky above the hive. White-streaked clouds seemed miles above them.

‘Lucky old drones,’ Tom murmured.

Don said, ‘Well, I hope he thinks it’s worth all that flapping about, that’s all I can say.’

Georgie looked at them sideways. ‘Aye, it needs to be a bit special. It’s a dance of death really because his gubbins breaks off inside her when he’s done and she drops him off dead, on her way back down.’

‘That’s disgusting,’ protested Grace, her face screwed up. She stood up and made her way down the shallow bank into the stream. She pulled up her skirt and paddled. Her thighs were dimpled and wobbled as she moved.

Annie pinched Don as he started to giggle and frowned at him. He turned his back on her.

‘I’ll tell you something,’ Don leered at Georgie. ‘She’s got to be something for them to chase her around like that with the big black nothing at the end of it.’

Annie wondered at the way death seemed to poke its nose into everything, or did it just feel that way to her at the moment?

‘Is she,’ she asked at last, ‘is she something special?’

‘Aye, she is that,’ answered Georgie. ‘She’s a whopper.’

Again Don looked at Grace and sniggered. Once more, thought Annie, and I’ll pull your bleeding hair out.

Tom had put his pad down and was looking out across at the hives.

‘How though,’ he asked, ‘does one of them get to be so special?’

‘It’s just luck, lad. The queen lays her eggs in small and big cells. The ones in the big cells are fed with royal jelly when they become larvae and the first to become a bee kills the others, the rival princesses, and becomes queen.’

He showed Tom how to make a daisy-chain.

‘And so,’ urged Annie, ‘what about the old queen?’

Georgie looked up, ‘The queen has to leave the hive and find another. That’s when they swarm. She takes some of the bees with her.’

‘That’s what I like to see, the women doing well,’ Annie
called to Grace who laughed and nodded. Her hair was wet from the water where she had been dipping in her hand and patting her forehead.

Georgie looked out from under his brows. He looked like the tailor of Gloucester, Annie thought, with his legs crossed and his fingers busy making slits in the daisy stems to thread through the next link in the chain. Tom was too clumsy to continue with his and turned instead to his drawing.

‘I’ll do something that takes a bit of skill,’ he muttered putting his finger under his nose and thumbing it.

Georgie punched him lightly.

‘It’s only the queen, remember, who has a life of luxury. The workers are all females. They work their guts out in the hive, cleaning and feeding the growing kids and all the drones of course who have to be fit for their only use in life – to fly up to the sky for that big moment.’

‘Quite right, too,’ said Tom, ‘they know their place,’ and he braced himself for Annie’s slap, which came.

‘But don’t they ever get out?’ Annie persevered.

‘Oh aye, they’re off out after nectar or pollen, like the one we saw, then they rush back to roll their sleeves up to make the honey and wax.’

Annie was red with anger and flounced up to join Grace in the stream. The pebbles hurt and she wobbled. ‘Just like Betsy it is. Work, and nothing else. It’s a bloody disgrace.’ She raised her voice so that the boys could hear. ‘It’s a bloody disgrace, I tell you.’

‘Calm down, hinny, you’ll stampede the pony,’ drawled Georgie.

‘Never,’ called Don. ‘Never will that pony stampede anywhere. Just look at her.’

‘It’s a him,’ snapped Annie, and scrambled out of the water and marched away across the meadow, away from the hives. She picked a bunch of black-eyed daisies.

‘Only take a few from each clump,’ shouted Georgie. ‘Helps them to make up their numbers.’

‘Can’t you think of anything but breeding?’ she retorted and their laughter restored her humour.

She collected a few buttercups, then saw the smoke from a train as it appeared and ran along the track way off into the distance. She could hear it surprisingly well and wondered
where it was going; what the world was like away from here. I had forgotten, she thought, that there was anything apart from the streets, from the pits. She looked around the meadow. I must come more often and perhaps one day I will get clean away from here.

‘Come on, then,’ called Tom. ‘Let’s see who likes it and who doesn’t.’

Annie wondered what he meant and then remembered the buttercups hanging limply in her hand.

Yellow bounced off all their throats and they licked again at the remains of the bread and dripping and pretended it was butter. She threw the buttercups on to the water and watched them float out of sight.

Grace dried her legs as she sat down near Tom. Don had moved along the bank and was trying to play ducks and drakes with flat pebbles but the water was too fast-flowing. Tom was drawing a picture of the willow tree and Georgie had finished his daisy-chain.

Annie turned from them and looked across towards the train but it had gone. The oaks at the end were absolutely still, there was no breeze at all.

‘Did you see any clover?’ Georgie asked, as he rose to his feet. He came to her and tossed the chain over her head. It was so long that he looped it over her a second time.

‘Better than pearls any day, lass,’ he said and strolled away, head bent, searching. He stopped and called her over. Crouching he pulled out the clover petals from the plant between his thumb and forefinger and sucked the moist white ends. She moved over and watched as he did it. He pulled out some more and handed them to her but they loosened and showered to the ground as she reached for them.

‘You do it,’ she said.

She wanted to watch his strong brown fingers against the soft pink and white and see how he had not bruised them at all. He held it to her mouth and she sucked. She was not sure if she could taste the clover at all but she had felt his fingers against her lips and her tongue had caught the essence of his skin.

‘It’s nectar,’ he said. ‘The bees like it.’

By four the mating had still not burst into the air and Annie felt a disappointment as sharp as Georgie’s. Don was restless
and paced round Georgie who dug into his bait-bag and brought out a jar sealed with muslin.

‘It’s honey-comb,’ he said and untied the string around the top, peeled back the muslin and, using a spoon from the bag, levered out a piece of honey-dripping comb. He gave it first to Annie and she felt her face flush. He smiled, then passed pieces round to Tom and Grace. Don and he shared the last. The white comb was waxy and stuck in her teeth. The honey was sweet and sticky. Some had dripped on to her leg and she scooped it up with her finger and licked it. Tom looked at a piece of comb he had saved. ‘It’s perfect,’ he said. ‘Look at that shape. It’s quite perfect.’

Don took a mug of water from the flask, though it was lukewarm by now, and swallowed.

‘There’s got to be money in this,’ he said and Annie sighed.

‘Sorry, Don,’ Georgie said disappointing him. ‘It’s too cold up here really. You’ll have to make your fortune elsewhere. Try the horses.’

Don strutted about. ‘I reckon I could be a jockey.’

‘Well, you’re small enough,’ chipped in Grace, and Annie was glad that she had got her own back on him. She had thought Grace had seen his earlier sniggers. He was small enough an’ all, she thought – that’s a good idea of the lad’s.

‘There’s money in riding,’ he continued, ignoring Grace. ‘You get to hear of all the best tips.’

‘You’ve never ridden though, Don,’ Annie pointed out. ‘Would they take you d’you think and what’ll Da say? He wants you to do something important or take over the shop when it’s doing well again.’

‘Well, it won’t go well, will it, the pair of them drinking all the stock. And don’t you or Tom go telling him before I’m ready.’

‘As if we’re likely to try and talk to him about anything.’ She glanced at Tom and he shrugged. ‘If it’s what you want to do though, we’re at your side, aren’t we, Tom?’

Tom nodded. ‘It’d be a grand life, Don, all that fresh air.’

Annie saw that he had, in his drawing, draped the willow fronds in the water, though they stopped just above in reality. His version was better.

‘Hold it up a minute, Tom,’ she instructed and put her head on one side and studied it.

‘He’ll be an artist when he’s older,’ Grace said. ‘He can come and hang his pictures in the library when I’m in charge.’

Tom beamed and put his pad down, tearing out the sheet and giving it to Grace. ‘You can put it on your wall if you like.’

‘Queen bee then, is it, Annie?’ Georgie teased.

She looked at him, then the others, then out over the stream, seeing the way the water eddied round the boulders and sucked at the bank as it went on round the lower bend. Then she grinned and twirled her daisy-chain at Georgie. ‘With these pearls, what else could I be?’ She let them drop. ‘But I’m telling you, I’ll be off to another hive and things will be a sight different there, just you wait and see.’

‘A revolution,’ grinned Georgie.

‘And not before time,’ breathed Annie. ‘The women will live a little, just you wait and see.’

And then it happened.

Over beyond the beck, in the baking heat, the bees left the hive in a long meandering trail, round and round and then up. High into the air, towards the sun.

‘Georgie,’ screamed Tom, but he had already seen and in one lithe movement was up and on the bank, standing still, his head raised as he watched. Everyone watched, for what seemed like hours. Annie strained to distinguish the queen and her lover, who would soon be cast to the ground. She winced at the thought of dying at the peak of love, plunging to the ground, the children safely made but never to be seen by you. She stood with her hands clasped as the bees settled back into their hive and only the sentinels remained, buzzing like always above.

No one moved and still no one spoke until Georgie sighed and turned. ‘That was something I shall never forget,’ he said and his mind was on his face and that was something that she would never forget.

She moved her arm round Tom who had come to stand with her. The shadows were lengthening rapidly. The willow cast itself well over to the other bank. She squeezed him to her as Georgie and Grace packed up their picnics.

‘Remember this,’ she whispered fiercely. ‘Remember that something happened here today that someone really wanted.’

She looked again at the hives. ‘It shows that things can go right, bonny lad.’ She felt wonderful, full to her throat with success.

‘It’s been the best day of my life, it has,’ she said.

Annie sat on her knees beneath the bedclothes pulling on her liberty bodice whilst trying to keep the blanket hooked on to her thin shoulders. Bye, it was freezing, the bodice felt cold, damp and prickly and too small which only added to her irritation. At 13 she was still wearing the same one she had worn at 11. Oh God, the thought, I shall have to stick me legs out to get me stockings on, but she was a suspender short.

Throwing on a blouse and wool jumper which had thinned at the elbows she wriggled into her skirt and, bracing herself against the chill, slipped out on to the rug, its knotted rags knobbly beneath her feet. More by feel than by sight she hunted, but it was no good; she lit the oil lamp and there beneath the bed it lay amongst dust which lifted and floated before her probing fingers. The rubber was dry and cracked. As perished as I am, thought Annie, as she clambered into her boots, fingers stiff with cold.

There was a heavy dust hanging all over the house these days; it seems as dead as the rest of us, she sighed, and peered out of the ice-frosted window. It was going to be a mite cold out on that football field she thought as she scratched and filled her nails with ice. Serve the silly beggars right!

She stamped downstairs to the bathroom, thankful as always that Joe had a bathroom put in when he was living here. It was cold but at least she didn’t have to break the ice in the privvy, though the torn-up bits of paper were no silk stockings on her bum.

She was reluctant to start the day; another Saturday, another pie-day and Tom not even here. She kicked the bathmat. He was only supposed to be at his Aunty May’s on Wednesdays but it looked as though it was creeping into Fridays too. She
missed him. Missed him pushing past her to the basin in the morning, missed his chatter and his smiles.