‘But I don’t know the first thing about beekeeping.’
‘You don’t need to – you’ve got me. I’ll be the brains and you can be the brawn, as it were. And Butler can watch from a safe distance. He is embittered by past traumatic experiences. He got thrice stung up the scut, you see. He went into a kind of trance. It was most peculiar.’
The dog was indeed well out of the way, only his large head and ears visible from the cottage’s porch.
‘I had to pick the stings out,’ Dulcie added wistfully.
I did not move. The collective hum of the swarm was, to me, a malevolent one; I had been stung enough times to know the pain bees could inflict. A sting on the thin, fat-free skin of the scalp was particularly bad, like a hammer blow.
‘What do we do?’
‘Precisely nothing for now. We let them settle in for a nice little rest after an arduous journey, then when their hands are behind their heads and they’re wiggling their toes we’ll scoop them up and give them a nice new home. The rent will be minimal: a little honey paid to us now and then, as and when.’
‘Where will they stay?’
‘In one of the hives, of course.’
‘Which hives?’
‘My old bee metropolis down at the bottom of the meadow, by the brambles. Haven’t you seen them?’
While Dulcie busied herself with preparations, I hastily cleared the patch of brambles, and sure enough there were half-a-dozen old hives in the undergrowth. I made just enough space to access the nearest one, removed the lid and then removed the frames one by one, as Dulcie had instructed, and then carried them back to hose them. She appeared with a sheet, a cardboard box, secateurs and a small piece of wood.
‘This will do it.’
‘How will you get them in there?’
‘How will you get them in there, I think you mean. Here. Put this on.’ She passed me a white beekeeper’s suit.
‘But what if they get angry?’
‘You’ll be fine. Just stand still and stay calm. Or step into the shade – bees rarely bother you in the shade.’
‘Really?’
She shrugged. ‘Probably. Just remember you’re bigger than them.’
‘But you’re bigger than me,’ I countered.
‘Exactly – and I’m not afraid of you, so you shouldn’t be of them. Now go and welcome our new neighbours. There’s the entire population of an entire bee city just awaiting a new honey factory to occupy.’
‘I might get stung.’
‘Yes, you might.’
‘But doesn’t it hurt?’
‘The taste of the honey soon makes you forget that. Anyway, you’re probably thinking of wasps. And if they didn’t sting we might as well be boxing up bluebottles, and where’s the fun in that? Look: the scout bees are doing a waggle dance. They must have been out searching for a new home. The timing is perfect. I’ll instruct you.’
I reluctantly stepped into the suit and Dulcie helped affix the mesh-masked headpiece. She stood back and surveyed me. ‘Yes, that’ll do. How do you feel in there?’
‘Trapped.’
‘Ah, but it bears repeating: nothing tastes as good as honey made by bees that feed on the heather of the North Yorkshire moors, Robert. You’ll see. Trust me. I’d trade a ton of steak tartare and a barrowload of beluga for a jar or two of homespun honey. Do you know why?’
‘Because you like eating?’
‘Because honey is liquid poetry. It’s like a slice of sun spread on your bread. It’s the very essence of the natural world – of land and insect and man, or woman, working in perfect harmony. Bees are wonders, they really are, the way they motor along, turning pollen into gold. And the harmonious organisation of their societies is something we can surely learn from: “From their bellies comes / a drink of varying colours / containing healing for mankind.” Do you know who said that?’
Distracted, I pulled on the protective gloves. ‘Was it your friend Lawrence?’
‘Not even close. It’s from the Qur’an, written a good deal earlier than that most holy of bibles – though I prefer to call it the Holy Bibble – and only a marginally less dry read, though both need a damn good editor. Here – ’ She passed me the secateurs. ‘Right, then. These bees won’t box themselves.’
I edged over to the pendulous, crawling mass and when I turned back I saw that Dulcie had moved further away and from this safe distance was urging me forward with gestures. Beads of sweat gathered on my brow and at my temples. Still haunted by memories of being stung in unexpected places, Butler too had retreated even further.
‘I thought you said they were harmless,’ I said, my voice rising slightly.
‘You’re the one in the safety suit. Besides, a lad of your size, it would take between one and one and a half thousand stings to kill you.’
‘Is that true?’
She ignored my question, a habit that I had noticed she resorted to when she couldn’t confirm the veracity of these bold declarations.
‘Now, all you need to do is carefully snip the branch to which they cling and then lower the whole lot into that cardboard box,’ Dulcie instructed. ‘It’ll be quite heavy, I’m sure, but I see that the summer has at least put some meat on your lean bones.’
I moved closer and the swarm seemed to stir at my approach, but rather than seeing it as one insidious humming mass I instead considered the bees as individuals, each one a tiny cog in the machinery of the collective.
‘Remember,’ said Dulcie, ‘no bee wants to harm you any more than you do it.’
‘I don’t want to harm them at all.’
‘Exactly my point.’
I reached out and cut the branch. Several bees took flight, but many stray ones appeared to re-join the shifting, quietly buzzing entity that I held before me. It was quite beautiful.
‘That’s it. That’s it.’
‘Your commentary is distracting,’ I said out of the side of my mouth.
‘Listen to them sing. Listen to the music they make.’
Dulcie was practically dancing with delight, yet all I could hear was a low, scratchy hum. A dry drone. I lowered the branch into the box.
‘Gently does it, now, Robert. Treat it as if it were a newborn child being delivered into the world.’
‘I don’t know how to deliver a child,’ I said, this time through gritted teeth.
‘Then apply some basic common sense, for God, Muhammad and Satan’s sake.’
I put the bees into the box.
‘What do I do now?’
‘Place the box on the ground and cover it with this.’
She tossed me the sheet.
‘Right,’ said Dulcie. ‘Good. Now we only have to – ’
‘I like that you continue to use the word “we”.’
‘And I like that you’re finally learning to answer back. That’s good. You’re finally getting some vinegar in your piss. All we have to do is flip the whole thing arse-about-tit and wedge it open an inch with a branch or stick.’
‘Won’t they escape?’
‘Robert, the bees aren’t prisoners – the whole point is that they are free to come and go of their own accord. I could never entrap a creature. Never. Not a bird or a goldfish, and even the chickens Romy and I kept had free run of the place. No, the intention is that, happy in their temporary digs, they will emit pheromone signals of such delight that their kith and kin will be alerted as one might be to a house-warming party by formal invitation. By this evening they’ll be joined by multitudes. Consider it a hotel, if you must continue to anthropomorphise the critters – and a four-star one off Mayfair, at the very least.’
I followed Dulcie’s instructions and was surprised to see that very few bees did indeed leave the box.
‘Congratulations,’ she said. ‘You are now an apiarist. Do you know, in old folklore it was always considered lucky for bees to be kept in partnership; many believed one should never be the sole owner of a hive, and a husband and wife weren’t considered much bett
er. In fact, an unattached man and woman were said to be the perfect apiarists. And here’s another, even more pertinent fact: a few years back the Ministry of Agriculture began to allow an extra ration of sugar for us beekeepers – ten pounds per colony, as I recall. The thing is, during the war some enterprising wags started siphoning off the sugar for themselves and their families – and rightly so – so then the ministry began to colour the bee rations green and soon enough the bees started to produce green honey. Have you ever heard anything so absurd?’
‘Not until I met you, no.’
‘Right, then. Lunch.’
On those rare days when I woke to a sky the colour of stone, and the sea was a turbid mass of foul and foaming cream, and there was a nip in the air, or clodded clouds were folding themselves into furrowed peaks to the far blurred line of the offing, I forsook my usual ocean swim or morning dip in the stream for a different cleansing routine. Instead I rose early and walked down to the far end of the meadow, where the land dipped and the wild grass grew thick, each blade heavy with cuckoo spittle, and making sure that I could not be seen, I stripped off and lay down in the coarse carpet. I then rolled this way and that, like a dog, like a baby, making sure that my body was soaked and scratched by the rough grass, pulling out clumps and using them to scrub those parts that needed scrubbing the most. It was an enlivening routine, one that left me feeling prickled but pristine, as polished as a pearl lifted from an oyster shell.
Once or twice I even bathed there at night, with a bar of soap just as white as the moonlight that illuminated the hollow in which I wriggled and writhed, a feral beast momentarily relaxed in the safety of his staked territory, a perfectly wild creature at play.
At times like this, or when hoeing soil or sanding wood, or just sitting on a bench with my face turned to the sun, I appeared to slip out of the moment so entirely – or, conversely, perhaps was so deeply immersed in the here and now – that I forgot who I was. The slate of self was wiped. Gone were all thoughts of past and present, of the stale air of classrooms and of looming exam results, coal boards and pitheads and pension plans, as all worries and concerns were diluted away to nothingness and I drifted in and out of the day, brought back into being only when either the sky or my stomach rumbled, or birdsong broke the silence.
These were lingering states in which I was happy to revel, as night replaced day and day replaced night, and time became not a linear thing but something more elastic, stretching and contracting at will, one minute expanding into a day, one week gone in the blink of an eye. Petals unfolded, willow blossom took to the breeze and hogweed stems grew towering in the shaded dell at the bottom of the meadow, and time itself was measured only by the clock of green growth, and marked out by the simple routine of working, eating, swimming, sleeping.
As the balmy evenings extended, Butler found himself being taken on walks of ever-increasing distances. On some nights it felt as if my blood were fizzing with energy, and when it did I headed up to the moors or down bay, past where the houses ended, and along the beach amongst the bedded banks of seaweed, until the village was nothing but a dot behind me, and the hillside beyond faded in the gloom until I finally turned back to walk home, sweating, parched and exhausted, the path lit only by the radiant moon.
More days and nights passed this way as the season glided onwards and farmers spoke of the driest spell in decades, and I embraced slothfulness in the full heat.
Summer peaked.
And each evening a new poem. With the bees ensconced in their new hive home, the studio’s renovations more or less complete and as much order in the meadow as could be imposed, I spent several free days swimming and then exploring the cliffs above, to which there ran a series of steep and narrow wooded vales that were beautifully cool in muggy weather, or I wandered the smugglers’ alleyways of the bay itself. I entertained few thoughts about leaving the place. Time stood still; the calendar had been tossed to the turning tides. It was summer, and it felt as if it probably always would be. I would have bet good money against it ever ending.
After every evening meal, loose with the wine that I was getting a taste for, or oiled by the brandy that Dulcie consumed as if it were water, a freshly snipped cigar held between her fingers, I read a single poem from The Offing. With each reading I began to slowly gain a greater understanding of this woman that she had loved. Dulcie’s responses to the pieces, meanwhile, varied wildly, from disquiet to excitement, from visible grief to impassive silence, yet the next night she was always ready to receive another, just the one, to be savoured. Or perhaps that was all that her emotions would allow. It was difficult to tell, for though I was beginning to learn her strange ways, such as her linguistic dexterity, her distaste for all forms of authority and, of course, her heroic tolerance for alcohol, she seemed unknowable. A part of her was held back – that solid centre that is the irrefutable core of each and every one of us. The self.
There was only one poem from the collection, as far as I could ascertain, that was not set around the bay, and was instead composed in Italy, and even then it explored similar and now-familiar themes, and incorporated the same images that recurred again and again throughout the collection.
‘That was written on our final trip together, shortly before all the silly bastards started battling,’ said Dulcie by way of explanation. ‘We went from Naples to wander the ruins of Pompeii, then on to Sorrento, Positano and all along the Amalfi Coast. It was a holiday, for once, rather than a working trip. What a joy it was to travel Europe and feel part of something greater, to connect with those ancient civilisations that led us to today. Romy’s black veil was descending then, and death was surely watching her from around corners and on clifftops, and in her nightmares too, but I do believe there were at least brief moments of sheer happiness during those three weeks. I have to believe that. I have to.’
Amalfi, 1939
White gulls swoop with sirens in their gullets,
their shadow shapes passing over sunken mountain ranges.
Cliffs like cremation curtains drape over lapping waters
and a clear sky catches the hot cough of sleeping Vesuvius.
A distant empty tanker sallies forth for Saudi oil
as breeze patterns play across a surface of shattered jade
and nebulous forms shapeshift in the sea’s flooded cellar.
Centreless, lacking skeletons, as broad as mastodons,
they rise from the deep to skim the spring-warmed shallows,
held in a moment by the flashbulb of the unblinking sun,
glimpsed like Ahab’s quarry before sinking to mythology,
sunken ghosts stalking the overhangs of the torrid mind.
And down at the harbour wall gannets gather
to peck at the eye of a brilliant gulping turbot.
And Europe holds her breath.
Then one night, as the bats flitted for moths that papered the sky like a child’s cut-out stars, and the bark of a fox was heard over the usual racket of owl hoots, mosquito drones and the faint sound of breaking waves, we reached the final page of Romy’s manuscript. Suddenly it was nearly over.
‘It’s the last one,’ I said.
‘Already?’
‘Yes.’
‘Are you sure?’
I held up the page. ‘Quite sure.’
Dulcie poured us each an especially large brandy. She adjusted herself in her chair and then cleared her throat.
‘Well, then. We have come this far – we must proceed, at all costs.’
I looked at the page. ‘I’m a little stuck on the title of this one. It’s in German.’
‘Read it, please.’
I broke the word down and read it slowly. ‘Überschwem-mungs-tod.’ I said it again. ‘Überschwemmungstod.’
Dulcie smiled. ‘Bless the Germans. They have a word for everything and when they don’t they craft a bastard hybrid on the spot. Many the mangled word has been grafted to another, Dr Frankenstein-like, and then reanimated into e
xistence. This is one of them.’
‘What does it mean?’
‘Überschwemmung would suggest flooding or submersion, or perhaps a deluge. And Tod is, of course, “death”. So roughly translated it means “flooding death”, or drowning.’
‘Right.’
‘It’s Romy’s little joke from beyond.’
I frowned.
‘Oh, it’s entirely in keeping with her humour, which was completely morbid and mordant too,’ said Dulcie. ‘I found it one of her most attractive qualities – that and her elusiveness. Because, you know, despite everything, I believe that Romy never fully revealed herself. Or at least not until her final act, anyway. Because there can be no greater revelation to the world than suicide, can there? It is the final ultimate outing of the cold inner truth of the tormented. The grandest gesture. A full stop forever.’
I realised then why Dulcie and Romy had gravitated to one another: it was becoming clear that they shared certain very similar character traits.
Dulcie sighed slowly and deeply.
‘I just wish I could have said goodbye. Please read it now, Robert.’
I did.
Überschwemmungstod
And now the animals are braying in the burning stable
and scorched birds plummet from the sky.
You no longer stoop to lift the gasping fish,
stranded, beached on the gravel bank,
nor falter as a foam tide brings bubbling blood,
and shrieking shapes cross the ruined sun.
You are lost in the lie of your life now.
Perhaps you were only ever a rumour of a person –
a few good lines, scratched across the page like fresh scars.
A butterfly trapped in a childhood jam jar.
You are: wet kindling, green smoke, a dead jellyfish;
your mother’s son and your father’s daughter, all fiction.
So say farewell, then, in these dying days of April,
a thin string of hollow words your worthless legacy
as you drop the final mask and make your mark on the map
sealed beneath rotting boards, a self, all out at sea.
The Offing Page 16
