The Hive (6 page)

Clover spoke through a mouthful of rice. “Why on earth would you ask Georgie what books you've read, Heather? We all know you're scatty,” she raised her eyebrows to the rest of the table, “but…”

“Well actually…” Heather drew herself up and smiled a small, smug smile, “we were at school together.”

“Yup.” Georgie settled Hamish in his high chair beside her. “And she was a pain in the arse then like she's a pain in the arse now.”

Will wandered through in his socks. “Look at this. The Long and Leisurely Ladies' Lunch.” He tousled his son's hair. “It's another world for you lot, in here. Another world…”

“That's right. It is. So you can sod off out of it,” said Georgie cheerfully.

“I will when I've found my mucking-out boots.” He leaned over and swiped a baby beetroot. “Have you seen them?”

“Umph.” She had a fork to her lips and a spoon to Hamish's. She cocked her head. “Dishwasher…”

Munching loudly, Will padded over there, opened the door and rooted about for a bit. “It's quite full in here, babe…Ah, here we go. My wife—right as ever.” He pulled his head out again and beamed proudly over to the table. “You can't fault her.”

Bubba looked at Will, at Georgie, at the dishwasher and back again. Bea smiled a particular smile—the same smile that a pope would smile on first looking upon a miracle, say, or Stephen Hawking an alien. A smile that said: There. See? I
knew
it!

Then Will tapped the boots sharply against the dishwasher, stood patiently while the mud fell off all around him and with a cheery “Smell ya later, ladies!” headed out the door.

Preparation time:
5 minutes

Cooking time:
none

“Get stuck in, everybody. In a charming, rustic sort of way.”

Bea leaned over the huge bowl of blackberries and took a handful. “I won't, thanks anyway, Georgina. I'd better be getting on. Gosh. We can't all sit around all day. See you at school later.” She gathered up her silent phone and left.

“You sit down, Georgie,” said Rachel. “I'll put the kettle on. Who's for tea? Coffee? Lesbian?”

“Thanks, Rach.” Georgie scooped Hamish out of his high chair. “I'd better just take this one off for his nap.” She knew even before she said it that Heather would leap from her seat and all but rip the child from her arms. Sure enough:

“Ooh, let me.” Heather leapt from her seat and ripped the child from her arms. “He'll come with me, won't you, my gorgeous?” They headed for the thick oak door that separated the warm sunny kitchen from the dark fridge-freezer that was the main house. “We're the best of friends.”

Hamish was the best of friends with all mankind, was the truth. If Myra Hindley walked in now he'd nuzzle her neck and share his rusk. But let Heather think she was special; she needed the boost.

And Georgie needed the rest. She sat down, closed her eyes and started to drift away. She could hear the others exclaiming over the blackberries—they were damned good, their blackberries—and wondering what she had put in the mascarpone. But it was like the sound of seagulls when you're lying against a harbor wall, or a tractor in the fields at harvest: it was distant, coming from somewhere else, beyond.

This was what happened to her, these days, whenever she stopped and the kids weren't around and Will wasn't there to make her laugh. It happened the other night in that ghastly meeting. It wasn't that she nodded off exactly; it was that she went into some sort of suspension, like a computer going on standby, Georgie imagined: she'd gone to screensaver. Her body just wouldn't waste its energy on this lot; it was storing it up for the only stuff that mattered.

“Wanna ciggie, love?” Jo was nudging her, but she was too far away. She couldn't come back yet.

“Owp! We seem to have lost our hostess.”

“Look at her, she's knackered. Leave her to it.”

“God, it's
awful.
Look at the
state
of it all.” Georgie knew that voice: that was the ridiculous Blubber person, sounding like she was on some fact-finding mission in a Third World country. “Can they just not
afford
any help?”

“Oh, they're loaded.” Heather was back downstairs then. So Hamish must have gone off all right. That was good. Georgie could sink a bit farther down now. Down, down…“She just won't do it. And we just can't understand why.”

Can't we just? thought Georgie. And that'll be because I'm not mug enough to tell you. She might not know everything about the female condition, she would admit that. But this much she did know: she knew what not to talk about with her fellow woman. And number one on that list was any suggestion, not even the merest hint, of marital or domestic contentment. She knew not to say that her husband still liked to have regular sex with her. She knew never to suggest that she might also rather like having regular sex with him. She wouldn't let on to a living soul that Kate was on grade-five piano. Or that Sophie had started Dickens. Or that Lucy was great at gym. And she would never, ever in a gazillion years admit to anyone that she had her whole little setup exactly as she liked it.

“Hey. Why don't we have a good clear-up while she's asleep? There's only half an hour till pickup. If it doesn't get done now it'll still be here at Christmas…”

She did have an au pair once, and she was brilliant. Absolutely brilliant. The whole house was a new pin and there was no need for them to do anything. So they didn't. The children were either out in the garden or in their rooms and she, Georgie, well…she had all day to do whatever she wanted. And it was as if her whole family had been blown apart—this great, pulsing, vital organism just split into lots of simple, pointless little cells, capable of only the lowest form of existence, never connecting with each other at all.

“Blimey. The dishwasher's a no-go, that's for sure…”

“OK. Sleeves-up time. Come on, girls. Clover? Cloth. Catch!”

So she sacked Whatsername. And, yes, she had been up to her ears ever since. And some people found her housekeeping wanting. She would admit that there were one or two things that she never quite got round to, though ought. But the kids got their chores back. And every evening, they were not just together during supper but before—when one was peeling the potatoes and another laying the table. And after, when Will docked an iPod and they danced around the washing-up. That nightly ninety minutes was the copingstone of their family life. But she wouldn't let on about that to this lot.

She heard Clover lumbering to her feet, saying, “It's my day to pick up the twins and keep them at home until Dave gets back. I'd better slip away.”

Then the sound of the back door closing, and retreating, stomping steps across the yard. It was Jo who broke the silence: “God, life, eh? First they lose their lovely mum to cancer, then they've got to have tea with that miserable old cow.”

“Jo. That's a
terrible
thing to say.”

“Mebbe. But it's what you're all thinking…”

Georgie found the energy to prize open one eyelid. There was Bubba at her sink, having a Petit Trianon moment, holding up that green scourer as Marie Antoinette might a fan. “I haven't done this for ages! Do you know, it's rather good
fun?
”

Then someone hit the iPod, and the song they'd had last night—“Dancing in the Moonlight”—started up where it had left off. Immediately, Rachel was flicking her hips and jiving with the risotto pan. She was a cool little groover, that Rachel. Jo started head-banging away. Heather was—what was Heather doing? It looked like, sort of, early ballet…Bubba's neat little buttocks were twitching along while she washed. Colette—well, there was a surprise—slipped quietly out the door.

And Georgie reckoned she'd got just about ten minutes. Ten minutes left to give in to a nice, quiet snooze…

Bea was standing in the playground with Colette, being fully debriefed on the day's events. They each had an eye on a cluster of Year 5 girls nearby. At the center of it was Bea's eldest, Scarlett. She was going to lend her Sylvanian squirrels out just for that evening, and she was trying to decide to whom. The potential candidates gathered around, each desperate to be the chosen one.

“Georgina! What a success. You really got things off to a flying start.”

“As usual, all the hard work comes down to the likes of
moi.
Here you go.” She handed Bea a fistful of notes. “I'm pretty sure there were twelve of them, but there was only a hundred and fifty quid in the pot at the end of it. Someone's on the fiddle. Perhaps we should call the fraud squad in.”

Colette had the grace to look shifty. Bea was merely puzzled, and said to no one in particular, “Well I was only popping in. I didn't eat anything, obviously…” Then her phone rang. She gave a little jump, snapped it open and vanished.

Poppy Mason pulled away from the cluster and approached Georgie.

“Hi, Pops. How're you doing? Where's my rabble?”

“Josh went out with Daddy last night. Just the two of them. To the football.”

“Oh. O-K…”

Then children flooded out of school, parents in from the car park. And they were swamped.

“Georgie! Back with us! Wasn't that fun?”

“No. It was a bloody nightmare.”

“And—ahem—did you notice anything—ahem—different about your kitchen when you woke up?”

“Yeah. It looked a lot better. 'Cause you lot had all buggered off out of it. Thank the Lord.”

H
ave you heard?” Heather and Maisie were standing on the corner, already waiting. There was no longer any pretense of bumping into Rachel and Poppy every morning. They were now clearly visible—waiting, fidgeting—from Rachel’s cottage door. With narrowed eyes, she had just been able to make out Maisie throwing sticks into the conker tree, the sheaves of papers in Heather’s hands and the toes of her trainers, tapping.

“You’ll never guess!” The girls assumed forward formation; the four began their progress. “Bea. Has. Got a job!”

At once Rachel felt a sharp flash of pain, located somewhere in the region of her own pride. Or, at least, where once she used to keep her pride back when she had some…For years, Bea had not only told her everything, she had told her first, before anyone else. And it had always been a source of simple amusement—nothing more—that, once Bea had dispensed some snippet of something, people would then hover around Rachel in the hope that she might pass it on to them. Sometimes, she could almost look down on herself in the playground and snigger at the way she would have to dole out the news to a hungry multitude, second-in-command of the Information Food Chain: “Spain, I gather, they’ve just booked it”; “Yes, late last night. So tanned!” And now where was she? Hearing about Bea from Heather, of all people. That was quite some declassification: she wasn’t even the creature at the bottom of the food chain these days. She was now just some lowly parasite feeding thereon…

Rachel still had no idea what she had done to deserve any of this, but one thing was for sure: she would refuse to show much interest. “Um. Oh.” Anyway, in her world, jobs were not quite the exotic objects of dazzled wonder that they were in Heather’s. She even happened to have one herself, which just about summed up their utter banality. And though she had never asked, she did have a sneaking suspicion that Heather didn’t stop people in the street to tell them about it. But, clearly, this job was different.

“It’s hot news. I saw it on Facebook last night.”

“Bea announced it on Facebook?” Did anyone round here—except, of course, the children—plan to grow up anytime soon?

“No, Bea didn’t. I’m still waiting to be accepted by Bea on Facebook. I’m ‘Pending.’” Heather shrugged. Pending didn’t seem to bother her. She was fine with “pending.” Better, obviously, than being dropped from a great height. “But Colette—I’m friends with her—”

“Hey. Congrats.” Funny, she always seemed to be congratulating Heather at the moment. Just one stupendous triumph after another. It was like walking into school with Alexander the Great. “To think, I knew you when you were nothing.”

“Aw. You are sweet. I was pleased. Anyway, Colette changed her status to ‘Colette is very proud xxx.’”

“And what’s all this then?” Rachel indicated the papers that Heather was clutching.

“Posters. Bea wants people to make as many cakes as they can, for us to sell at the Car Boot Sale. She says if we run a tea and coffee stand there, well, that could be another really, really good, positive source of income for the school.”

Enough. Rachel was suddenly overwhelmed by a deep yearning for the sophisticated company of the two ten-year-olds ahead.

“Hey, girls.” She skipped lightly to catch up with them. “What’s up?”

“Look at my conkers,” said Maisie proudly.

“You know that big box the washing machine came in?” Poppy’s eyes were gleaming. “I’m going to make a Dalek suit!”

“And you know Mr. Orchard?” chipped in Maisie. “Destiny in Year 3 told us why he’s come here.”

“He fell in love with a pop star.”

“And the pop star was going out with a footballer.”

“Our Mr. Orchard? Well, who’d have thought it?” said Rachel.

“I know! And the pop star loved Mr. Orchard.”

“Who can blame her?”

“So the footballer thumped him. Bash.” Poppy pressed her little fist into her cheek. “He said, ‘Mr. Orchard, you must never be seen in Chelsea again.’”

“And so Mr. Orchard came to St. Ambrose.”

“Ah yes,” Rachel sighed. “The old pop star/footballer/primary-school educator triangle. Is there nothing new under the sun?”

“Is that quite common then?” Heather was alongside them now, and genuinely interested. “I’ve never seen it in the paper…”

“That reminds me! Guess what, guess what? You’ll never guess this one,” gabbled Maisie. “Scarlett’s mummy’s got a job!”

To the bulk of the community of St. Ambrose, rushing into the playground and then rushing out, it was a morning just like any other. But to a little section of it—a section that was now gathered, agitating, in the corner under the big beech tree—it felt like the dawn of a new, and very different, world: Bea was wearing clothes.

Bea had turned up in some sort of sportswear every morning since Scarlett was in Reception. And yet here she stood, today, transformed; in her professional finery of sharp jacket, knee-length skirt and nude tights, elevated slightly—just her heels or, perhaps, some sort of podium, or possibly just the moral high ground—and swinging her bunch of keys, smiling down upon the merely gym-bound.

“PA-slash-manager with the promise of some PR. Thank you
so
much.”

And “That’s right. For a TV chef. You’ve had your hair cut! Satellite at the moment, but we’re hoping…”

Scarlett stood to one side, swinging her book bag and adding the footnotes. “I know, she does so much! But she’ll manage. She always does.” She turned to Rachel: “I
love
your boots.”

“Thank you, Scarlett. What’s your mum up to over there? She looks like a bride about to throw her bouquet.”

“Oh, she’s just choosing who’s going to take us home for her tonight. It’s so sweet. Mummy’s going to be so busy now, but she says
everyone
will want to do their bit.”

That was it for Heather. She was off, flying over to the beech tree as fast as her Nikes would carry her, waving her hand in the air, scattering posters across the tarmac and calling, “Bea? Bea? Is there anything I can do, Bea?”

“Well,” said Rachel to the girls. “It looks like I’d better do my bit and deliver you both into school.”

Rachel could hear the phone ringing inside, but she just could not find her door key. Which pocket? Brrring brrrring. Flat little Yale thing. Where’s it gone? Brrring brrrring. Trouble is, she’d lost weight and her jeans were nearly hanging off and all bunched up and she couldn’t get to the bottom of the pockets. It wasn’t that she was grief-stricken. Well. Perhaps not only because of the grief. It was more that when Chris left, although she pretty much held most aspects of home life together, the whole diurnal meal routine system thing instantly fell apart. Brrring brrrring. She would not, in other areas, put her estimation of self at “low”—Aha! Found it!—but the facts spoke for themselves: an evening with her and Chris and they always went in for two courses, set places and a modicum of culinary excitement. Now she was on her own, it was a bowl of Alpen and a Kit-Kat.

She burst through the door, tripped on a cardboard box and lunged for the phone. Just in time.

Oh.

“Yeah. Hi, Mum.”

It should not be this bad when her mother rang. She should just tuck the handset into her neck, go about her business and say yes from time to time. That was all that was required. Simple. And yet…Though Rachel knew and accepted herself to be a forty-year-old woman, when the phone began to trill, just the sound of her mother’s voice—the very words “It’s only me”—and she was magically transported back to her own difficult, challenging, recalcitrant adolescence.

“I had coffee with Mary yesterday.” Rachel went upstairs to gather the latest thrilling installment of dirty clothes. “Her nephew—you know the one that went to Canada—it’s all going
brilliantly
for them.” Neh neh neh, mimed Rachel, pulling an unattractive face. She trotted back down the uneven cottage stairs—

“The schools are wonderful, apparently.”

—and tripped over another cardboard box at the bottom.

“And they say his
daughter
is a
marvel
on the ice rink…”

Big deal. Rachel filled the washing machine. “Well I’m sorry if Josh fractured his wrist the first and only time he went ice-skating. And I’m sorry he wouldn’t go back again so that you could boast away to Mary. Or Torvill. Or Dean.”

“Oh really, Rachel. You know I wasn’t saying…”

Yeah. She was going round the sink now with a scourer. She did know her mum wasn’t saying that. But the trouble was, Rachel wasn’t quite sure what she
was
saying yet. Where exactly were they going with this? Their “little chats” always followed this familiar path: her mum led her down these twisting, turning conversational alleyways that seemed to be leading nowhere, until Rachel was completely lost, partially blind, limping and then bam! The real stuff, the subtext, the subject that her mum really wanted to get on to leapt out of some shadowy doorway and hit her in the face. Rachel’s only method of self-defense was to fight her all the way.

She had no idea as yet where the riveting topic of Mary’s Canadian nephew was leading her. She was pretty sure that her mum didn’t want them all to emigrate. And it didn’t seem to be about ice-skating in their lives, the lack thereof…

“But poor girl, she has to be at the rink at five every morning, to practice before school. I think it’s monstrous…”

OK, so it wasn’t a campaign for her children to do more extracurricular stuff.

“As I said to Mary, ‘She’s lucky she’s got two parents,’ I said. ‘Rachel couldn’t manage anything like that.
Now she’s on her own
…’”

There: ambush. It was a
divorce
conversation.

“Josh and Poppy have two parents, Mum. As it happens. In fact, I do believe you’ve even met the other one. Remember? That guy? At my wedding?”

“Well in the past I have, yes. But a long time ago…”

“He only left—we only decided to separate—last month.” She started to mumble, “Or month before last…” Christ, it was actually coming on for three.

“And he’s certainly not been as
around
as I’m sure he made out he would be.”

“He’s always around!” Brilliant. How had this happened? Rachel was suddenly the chief cheerleader of the Chris Mason Fan Club. Always around? Hilarious. “He took Josh to the football only the other night.” The week before last, actually.

“How nice. And Poppy? Hmm? When did he last see his daughter?”

Good question.

“He’s got them both for the entire weekend!” She could barely believe the triumph in her own voice. Listen to it! Her children’s father was finally getting it together to have them for the first time since the summer, and suddenly he was Brad bloody Pitt.

“Well I don’t see how he’s going to manage it, if he hasn’t got them any beds…”

“He’s getting beds this week!” Hurrah hurrah for him. Let us all worship the Great One who provideth beds even unto his own children.

“Yes, well, he won’t, will he? Anyway. I was wondering if you could pop over and help me some time.”

“Sure. Hey. I’m only a struggling single mother.” She hated herself as she said it. “All the time in the world. What can I do for you?”

Her mum ignored that one.

“It’s my bees. I need to open them up and I don’t really like being out there with them on my own…”

So here was something else that Chris had dumped her with: her mother’s permanent quest for self-sufficiency that seemed to suck in the energies of everyone around her. Rachel turned her back to the sink and slumped against it in defeat. It was a mystery of physics, as yet unexplained, that the longer she had to get used to her husband’s absence the larger became the hole he had left behind. While it had registered the departure of her co-parent and her lover—and how—her brain had, until that very moment, failed to compute what was going on at the peripheries. Like the fact that her mum had lost a son-in-law in the process. A son-in-law who, she had to admit, was remarkably good-humored about popping round there whenever summoned by Her Imperial Highness.

So she must miss him too, then. Rachel hadn’t thought of that.

“Yeah. OK. But I’m working all this week.”

“Oh yes. Of course. Your ‘job.’” Her mum always somehow contrived to convey vocally those inverted commas: it was still a struggle for her to equate drawing pictures with earning a living.

“Yes. My ‘job.’ It’s very ‘busy.’ I’ll come at the weekend.”

She hung up, and her head started to clear. Her arsey, difficult fourteen-year-old self shimmered, faded away and was replaced with an entirely reasonable adult once again. Poppy the
Doctor Who
expert would be fascinated: it was a transmutation worthy of a pretty convincing alien.

Rachel would go round on Sunday and, she vowed, be as nice as pie. But now she must get down to some work. She sat down at the table, put a pencil in her mouth with one hand and smoothed the other over the blank paper in front of her, and then her mobile chirruped. Oh God, she thought. A text. Her stomach clenched. A bloody text. It ripped her apart that all communication with the man to whom she was technically still married was reduced to a sequence of electronic messages. Presumably before the invention of the mobile phone, separating couples actually had to talk to one another to make arrangements about the kids. And presumably, occasionally, a conversation might erupt about something other than arrangements about the kids. And presumably, more than once, that might have led to something else: peace, harmony. Dinner. Bed. Perhaps that’s why the divorce rate was lower back then.

Please let this one not be from…She opened the message. And of course: it was from the all-round great bloke, the merciful provider, the Pitt-alike himself. Now what?

“Got to work Sat. Soz. Will get kids Sun a.m. OK? Cheers.”

Heather, thrusting her trolley before her, strode up the aisle towards Baking Accompaniments. She was fresh out of the gym, due shortly at Colette’s and, while her pulse might not be exactly racing, it was certainly going at a brisk little jog. She stood in front of the self-rising flour. The trouble was, it was so hard to know how many cakes she should make herself. She took two kilos. Would anyone respond to her posters and make any more? She plucked down another two. And how many cars would come? Or what Bea called “punters,” doing that inverted-comma thing with her fingers? Six in total, that should cover it. She threw into the trolley the same amount of caster and icing sugars, grabbed three dozen eggs and marched off to Dairy.