the air steward jumped up,
waved his hands
in admonishment.
‘Back to your seat, madam. Back to your seat.’
I only saw the woman from behind, head bowed.
‘It’s really bad. I have to go. I have to go,’ she said.
The steward was crimson.
The seatbelt sign was on. Rules were rules.
‘We’re on the runway, you have to sit down.’
The woman pleaded.
‘It’s really bad. It’s really bad.’
The steward grabbed a phone,
waved it at her like a loaded weapon.
‘Sit. Down.’
She had two humiliations to choose between,
repeated, ‘It’s really bad. It’s really bad.’
‘Let her use the toilet, you barbarian,’ Nora snarled.
She was in sunglasses,
swigging on flat Coke.
Passengers shifted like they understood the woman
and understood the steward,
knew desperation
but respected rules.
The sign was on.
We were about to take off.
What would happen if we did?
Watching her standing in her shame,
begging and trembling,
I was so grateful
this woman wasn’t me,
and felt lucky that all my wrongdoing
was unknown.
Nora unclipped her belt.
‘She’s gonna shit herself, you dickwit.’
‘And I’m going to call security,’ the steward said.
‘Both of you, sit down.’
‘It’s OK. It’s OK.’
The woman turned to face every sitting passenger
and went back to her seat.
Nora sat down too.
‘I think I might be dying,’ she murmured.
The plane juddered, roared, and up we swept,
along with the starlings.
Mum is in the garden,
a glass of Pinot Grigio in one hand,
a can of Vapo in the other,
spraying away wasps.
‘Just come inside,’ I say.
‘And let the little pricks win?’
She keeps her finger on the trigger.
‘Can I get a top-up, pet?’
‘It’s eleven o’clock, Mum.
Wait until after the party.’
She holds her glass aloft.
‘Come on, be a good girl.’
The wasps advance. I pour more.
‘Nothing else until later,’ I tell her.
Mum sprays the air and coughs.
‘You always do what you’re told.
That’s why you’re my favourite,’ she says.
You called when you could have emailed.
‘Just a quick question about trustees.
Is it a good idea to have a backup?
In case of illness or something?’
The question was inane.
The answer was yes.
I clicked off the time clock
and enquired about your boys,
had you remind me of their names –
Jamie (lovely), David (right), Ned (oh yes) –
and their ages –
five, eight, twelve.
I was silent on the well-being of
Rebecca.
And then it was on to your lingering insomnia
since the boys were babies,
and my work-induced exhaustion.
You recommended a meditation app,
I recommended a podcast.
We agreed beer was a good cure for both
and decided a drink
soon was sensible.
‘For health reasons,’ you said.
‘Let’s expense it to Bupa,’ I replied.
You laughed
and I wanted to sharpen all my words against you,
test how they sounded.
And when I laughed,
it rang around the room,
something rare and tempting.
No one made me laugh like that
or cared to try.
From then on,
we enjoyed one another.
Completely.
Nora says, ‘You’re emaciated.’
Mum says, ‘She looks grand, stop it.’
Nora says, ‘Fiona hates the birdfeeder.’
I say, ‘I gave her a tenner too,’
although it disappeared
in foam and bubbles almost as soon
as I’d handed it over.
Nora offers me a plate of sausage rolls.
‘Dad’s engaged to a Russian.
She’s twenty-six – apparently the age
men most desire.’
Mum sniffs.
‘When I was twenty-six he fancied Thelma Scott.
When I was twenty-seven it was Rachel O’Brien.
He’s had more crushes than a … ’
She hasn’t the patience for a metaphor
and begins unwrapping jam sandwiches,
shooing children away from the
plate of pink wafer biscuits.
I last saw my father at my graduation,
a man smaller than I’d remembered,
with uncontrolled facial hair
and big white teeth
that looked like they belonged in a Shetland pony.
‘Nice one, Ana,’ he’d said,
handing me a box.
Inside was a pearl
which, drunk,
I pressed into a stranger’s hand later that evening.
It was a black pearl
no bigger than a pea
that I discarded like a copper coin.
It can’t have been worth a lot.
‘The cake is lovely, Ana,’ Mum says.
‘I specifically asked for a cat,’ Nora complains.
‘The baker was busy. Butterflies was all Ocado had,’ I say.
The entertainer is loud, old,
dressed like a teenage skateboarder:
baggy three-quarter-length combats
and stripy odd socks.
His balloon hats keep bursting.
The hall jangles with crying.
Fiona tugs on my hand.
‘Uncle Paul says I can give you back the birdcage
and you’ll give me twenty pounds.’
‘It’s not a cage,’ I explain.
‘And you’re not getting any more money.’
Paul waves from the corner of the hall,
where he is watching
Aston Villa versus Liverpool
on his phone.
Jon is asleep on his knee.
Nora leans into me.
‘He’s great, your Paul, isn’t he?’
‘Dad took Mary Sands on the very same cruise
we took together a year before,’ Mum says.
‘First proper holiday I’d ever been on.
The gall of the man.’
I have repeatedly heard this story,
how Dad was caught
because he failed to remove the foreign currencies
from his wallet.
He couldn’t pretend the Turkish lira
had been in there all year –
he’d been gifted the wallet that Christmas.
Nora waves at the entertainer,
who announces it is feeding time.
I check my phone in the kitchen.
WhatsApp reminds me you haven’t
been seen online for weeks.
No one has bothered to take down your picture,
the one of you on a boat –
your first experience sailing.
It gives me half a second of hope
that you are not dead.
Nora pokes her head through the hatch.
‘Hand over that bottle of squash.
But why are you so thin?’
‘Did Dad ever love us?’ I ask.
Nora rolls her eyes.
‘Please have a sausage roll.’
I was only on my first drink
and there it was.
‘Do you love me?’
I could have been eleven years old
for all the sense that question made.
I’d known you two months;
you still addressed me as Ms Kelly in emails;
we hadn’t even kissed.
‘Sexually?’ you said.
There was fear and a lack of preparation on your part.
What had I expected but a defence?
We were in Gertie Browne’s again,
debating the Troubles, Alastair Campbell, Brexit.
How no one seemed to give a damn
about the Irish any more.
Outside it was raining.
‘I don’t know.
Just. Do you love me?’
I hadn’t realised I needed an
answer to this question until the words were loose.
‘Well.’ You looked at the door.
‘I think about you when we aren’t together.’
You didn’t pretend not to understand.
You weren’t that sort of man.
‘Is that enough?’
I should have made a joke of it.
How different everything
would have been if I’d retreated.
‘I need to know this thing isn’t in my head,’ I said.
I flipped my beer mat.
You downed your drink.
‘It’s late. I should go.’
You didn’t touch me at all, but said gently,
‘You haven’t imagined it.’
Inside they are singing ‘Happy Birthday’.
Candles flicker and melt, are blown out,
the warbling ends.
‘Hello?’ Mark says, answering the phone.
My number is unknown.
‘It’s Ana Kelly.
I wondered if you’d thought about meeting me.’
‘Couldn’t you text?
Wait a sec.’
Even when I was a child and the celebration was mine
I hated children’s parties:
the screaming, chasing,
music that guaranteed parents would dance,
jammy dodgers, cartons of orange,
everyone sent home with cake wrapped in soggy napkins.
Now I avoid them because
they are too early in the day to justify booze.
‘Hey. I’m here.’ He pauses.
‘Hi. So … ?’
I am as tentative as I was with you at first.
Afraid to say what I wanted,
tiptoeing into audacity.
‘Come to Brighton for a few hours.
I’m between projects the next few days.’
I turn. Paul is at the window, watching.
I wave.
But I have been caught and we both know it.
‘I’ll do that,’ I say.
‘Why don’t you text me a day and time?’
‘Yeah. Bye.’
He ends the call.
I keep the phone to my ear, mouth words,
nod,
roll my eyes a little,
anything to appear business-like.
Eventually Paul steps away from the window.
I have missed my niece blowing out her candles.
I am standing in drizzle.
He disapproves.
The irony: now he is jealous.
‘You’re married,’ you said.
I wiggled the fourth finger on my left hand,
showing off the gold wedding ring.
‘I forget to wear it,’ I said.
‘Right,’ you said. ‘Yes,’ you said. ‘You forget,’ you said.
‘And you also forget to talk about him. At all. Bit weird.’
‘That’s because we always talk about you,’ I said.
You were not happy.
The first of many betrayals.
Paul slams down a mug of camomile tea
in front of me.
Its slimy bag floats to the surface.
‘You’re always working.’
He has been hostile since we left the party,
and though he hasn’t mentioned the call
it is there between us,
reminding him of everything I am not.
You aren’t like other women,
Paul used to say, and still does sometimes,
though
the meaning has changed.
‘The partners are down my neck.
Give me a break.’
He sits in the armchair,
not next to me on the sofa,
and I am glad,
would be gladder
if he didn’t sit at all
but let me watch
David Attenborough alone.
I want to know what happens to the cubs
when a new lion enters the pride.
Will he kill them? Chase them away?
The lioness is powerless to protect her babies.
She skulks then lets the lion impale her.
‘You’re so moody,’ Paul says.
‘I’m tired,’ I tell him.
But I cannot explain how tired.
The exhaustion infects my lips, my eyelids.
Nothing twinkles or hums.
I don’t know how to make that happen any more.
Perhaps
with you gone
I should make an effort to please Paul.
He’s here
after all
and you are not.
He made me a hot drink.
My phone pings. A message from Mark.
‘I have to go in to work tomorrow actually,’ I say.
Paul frowns. ‘On Sunday?’
I sip the tea and turn up the TV
as a cub is mauled to death by her stepfather.
‘Yes. That’s what I just said.’
I took your hand
as you hailed a black cab
and without looking at me
you squeezed it and said,
‘We’ll detour via your place.
Come with me.’
In the back
we fell into each other.
‘I want you,’ I said.
‘I want you,’ you said.
Mouth on mouth
hands trembling
tongues confused.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said.
‘Me too,’ you said.
We didn’t stop.
I undid your shirt buttons.
You gripped my chin so hard it hurt.
‘Oh, God,’ I said.
‘Oh. Oh, God,’ you said.
Outside The Starting Gate,
opposite the train station,
on the road parallel to my own,
I jumped out
unwillingly,
wanting to find somewhere,
a park even,
and waved cheerfully
like kissing
was nothing of consequence.
But
I didn’t sleep all night,
lay hypnotised by the white wall
thinking
what have I done what have I done
and called in sick
the next day
thinking
what have I done what have I done.
‘Everyone loves Brighton. I don’t get it,’ I say.
Mark considers the pub,
like he might be able to explain
the merits of the city
by drawing attention to
the fruit machines.
‘People like the sea.’
I’m craving a sticky toffee pudding. Custard.
This pub looks like the place to satisfy that need,
and I am hungry for the first time in days.
Mark nods at my empty.
‘I’ll get you another.’
He
heads for the bar.
I check my phone out of habit
but you are still dead.
You will not message me again.
‘I got crisps,’ Mark says.
‘Does Donna know you met me?’ I ask.
‘Donna? Fuck, no.
She hasn’t a clue about you,
or you and Connor.
She’d call it scheming.’
‘Mark shags around a lot,’ you’d said,
likes to have women hurt him.
But a good bloke.
Loyal in other ways.
Ridiculously talented artist.’
He opens the crisps, nudges them towards me.
‘I’m not sure what we’re doing here,
to be perfectly honest.’
‘Was he ever going to leave her?’ I ask.
My question is smudged by the ping of a cash register.
Mark leans forward. ‘What?’
He has a chickenpox scar above one eyebrow,
moles on his neck.
In the breast pocket of his shirt is an assortment
of pens and pencils.
Evidence of his creativity.
‘At the funeral Rebecca was acting like a real wife.’
‘What are you talking about?’
He uses the rubbery end of one of his pencils
to remove a mark from the table.
‘Did he love her? Did he love me?’
‘He was lost, Ana. From day one
the whole thing was fucked.’
‘And by day thirty? By day seven hundred?’
I hold out my hands,
use my fingers as counters.
‘We both know it’s too late to figure it out.’
He folds his coat across his lap.
He would like to go now;
I know the signs.
‘I need the truth,’ I tell him.
Mark sighs. He is impatient,
as if we’ve known one another for years
when I have met him only twice –
once with you,
a drunken night of karaoke,
and then at your funeral.
‘You know the truth, Ana.’
But he is wrong. I know nothing.
Even now.
Why am I here and not at home?
Paul will dump me.
I will deserve it.
Mark sips his ale, touches the base of his neck.
It is an intimacy I do not need
‘You want me to say Rebecca’s the devil, is that it?’
‘How is Rebecca?’ I ask.
‘Let’s not go there,’ he says,
as you would have:
I don’t want to talk about Rebecca,
and
Can we leave my wife out of this?
and
Why does she matter so much?
and
Don’t humiliate yourself talking about her like that.
You didn’t like refereeing
between her and me,
Rebecca ignorant of her involvement in a battle.
I swirl my wine. My guts swim.
‘I just meant … ’ I begin,
Here is the Beehive Page 3
