The Beekeeper's Daughter A Novel

by Santa Montefiore

  ‘I prefer the British way, if that’s the case. If people have something to say, they should say it to your face and not behind your back. They should have the courage of their convictions or not speak out at all. Evelyn Durlacher is a terrible old wooden spoon and I’m quite prepared to tell her so. She should be ashamed of some of the trouble she’s caused on this island with her stirring. It’s as if she goes around looking for things to gossip about. The smugness of the woman is intolerable. She has placed herself so high on her pedestal, the fall will be devastating.’

  The waiter placed their cocktails on the table with a china bowl of nuts. Big thrust her fat, bejewelled fingers into the bowl and grabbed a fistful of pistachios. Her face was deceptively gentle, with a wide forehead, full, smiling lips and spongy chins that gave her the look of a gentle grandmother, but her eyes were the colour of steel and could harden in a moment, turning the unlucky recipient of her displeasure into a pillar of salt. When she looked at Grace, however, she did so with surprising tenderness. ‘So, what’s Trixie up to, then? I imagine Evelyn has exaggerated the story for her own ends – anything to make her Lucy look good.’ Big inhaled through her nostrils and the steel in her eyes briefly glinted. ‘If she knew half of what her Lucy gets up to, she’d keep her mouth shut.’

  Grace sighed. ‘I’m afraid Evelyn’s probably right. Trixie has fallen for a young man who plays in a band. I don’t mind that, he’s perfectly nice, I’m sure, but . . .’

  ‘You haven’t met him?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘She told me she was going to stay the weekend in Cape Cod with her friend Suzie . . .’

  Big raised her eyebrows cynically. ‘Suzie Redford! That girl’s trouble, and wherever there’s trouble, she’s in the middle of it.’

  ‘I would honestly say they’re as bad as each other.’ Grace smiled indulgently. ‘But they’re having fun, Big, and Trixie’s in love for the first time.’

  Big looked at Grace’s gentle face, her soft hazel eyes and soft windblown hair, and shook her head at the sheer softness of the woman. ‘What am I going to do with you, Grace? You’re much too kind-hearted. So, tell me, where did they really go?’

  ‘With the band.’

  ‘Where, with the band?’

  ‘To a private concert they were giving in Cape Cod for a friend of Joe Hornby, who’s in the industry.’

  Big sipped her cocktail thoughtfully. ‘But she was found out.’

  ‘Yes, Lucy saw them all returning on a boat this morning and told her mother. Now, I imagine the whole island is talking about it. Trixie came clean before she went off to work. You know she’s got a summer job at Captain Jack’s. Anyway, I didn’t have time to talk to her. In spite of her rebelliousness, Big, she’s a good girl at heart. She confessed, at least.’

  ‘Only because she was spotted by Lucy. I’m sure she wouldn’t have told you if she thought she had got away with it. I’m afraid she’s a disgrace, my dear, and you should ground her for the rest of the holidays. In my day I would have been beaten for less.’

  ‘But it’s not your day, Big, and it’s not my day, either. Times are changing. Young people are freer than we ever were and perhaps it’s a good thing. We can disapprove of the music they listen to and the inappropriate clothes they wear, but they’re young and full of passion. They demonstrate against inequality and war – goodness, you only have to look at my poor Freddie with his one eye and that terrible scar down his face to know that there are no winners in war. They’re brave and outspoken and I rather admire them for that.’ She pressed her rough fingers against the bee brooch on her shirt. ‘They’re idealistic and foolish, perhaps, but they realize that love is the only thing that really matters.’ She turned her hazel eyes to the sea and smiled pensively. ‘I think I’d like to be young now with my whole life ahead of me.’

  Big sipped her cocktail. ‘Heavens, Grace, you baffle me sometimes. When everyone else is pulling in the reins, you’re letting them out. Is that a British trait, I wonder? Or are you just contrary? Tell me, does Freddie know about Trixie’s little adventure?’

  The mention of her husband cast a shadow over Grace’s face. ‘I haven’t told him yet,’ she replied quietly.

  ‘But you will?’

  ‘I don’t want to. He’ll be furious. But I’ll have to. Otherwise he’ll hear it from someone else. Bill Durlacher teeing off at the fifth hole, most likely!’ She laughed out of anxiety rather than merriment.

  Big’s large bosom expanded over the table at the thought of Bill Durlacher gossiping on the golf course. ‘Bill’s as bad as his wife,’ she retorted. ‘But you’re right to tell Freddie. He won’t want to be the last person on the island to know.’

  ‘He’ll be horrified, Big. He’ll give her a lecture on discipline and probably put her under house arrest for the remainder of the summer. Then she’ll spend all her time finding ways to see this boy behind our backs.’ She chuckled. ‘I know Trixie. She’s got more of me in her than she knows.’

  Big looked surprised. ‘I can’t imagine you breaking any rules, Grace.’

  ‘Oh, I wasn’t always so well-behaved.’ She smiled wistfully at the memory of the girl she used to be. ‘Once I was even quite rebellious. But that was a long time ago.’ She turned her gaze to the sea again.

  ‘What whipped you into shape?’ Big asked.

  ‘My conscience,’ Grace replied with a frown.

  ‘Then you would have done the right thing, for certain.’

  ‘Yes, I suppose so.’ Grace sighed heavily and there was a hint of defeat in it as well as regret.

  ‘Do you want the advice of an old matron who’s seen it all?’ Big asked.

  Grace drew her mind back to the present. ‘Yes, please.’

  Big wriggled in her chair like the nesting hen of her own description. ‘You go home now and have stern words with Trixie. Tell her she’s not to deceive you like that again. It’s important that you know where she is and who she’s with, for her safety as well as your peace of mind. You also tell her that she’s not to leave the island again for the rest of the summer and it’s non-negotiable. You have to make it very clear, Grace. Can you do that?’

  ‘Yes, I can,’ Grace replied half-heartedly.

  ‘It’s a matter of respect, Grace,’ Big stated firmly. ‘Really, my dear, you need to toughen up if you wish to assert any control over your child, before it’s too late.’ She took a moment to sip her cocktail, then resumed. ‘When her father arrives, you tell him what happened but inform him that you’ve reprimanded her and that the business is done and dusted. Period. You think he’ll drop it?’

  ‘I don’t know. He’ll be very cross. You know how he likes everything to be in order.’ She shrugged. ‘I could play it down . . .’

  ‘You mustn’t lie to him, Grace. That’s important. You two have to stick together. You’re a soft-hearted woman and I know you want to support Trixie, but you chose your husband first and it’s your duty as a wife to stand by his side on all matters.’

  Grace looked beaten. ‘Duty,’ she muttered and Big detected a bitter edge to her voice. ‘I do hate that word.’

  ‘Duty is what makes us civilized, Grace. Doing the right thing and not always thinking of ourselves is vital if we don’t want society to fall apart at the seams. The young have no sense of duty, and by the sound of things they don’t have much respect, either. I fear the future is a place with no morals and a distorted sense of what’s important. But I’m not here to preach to you. I’m here to support you.’

  ‘Thank you, Big. Your support means a lot to me.’

  ‘We’ve been friends for almost thirty years, Grace. That’s a long time. Ever since you came to Tekanasset and turned my backyard into a beautiful paradise. Perhaps we bonded because you never knew your mother and I never had any children.’ She smiled and took another handful of nuts. ‘And everyone sucks up to me but you,’ she said with a chuckle. ‘You’re a gentle creature but an honest one. I don’t believe
you’d ever agree with me just because I’m as rich as Croesus, as old as the Ark and as big as a whale.’

  ‘Oh, really, Big!’ Grace laughed incredulously. ‘You might be as rich as Croesus but you’re not as old as the Ark and you’re certainly not a whale!’

  ‘Bless you for lying. My dear, when it’s a matter of age and size I give you my full permission to lie through your teeth.’

  When Grace returned to her home on Sunset Slip the sun had turned the sea to gold. She wandered onto the veranda with her two retrievers and gazed out across the wild grasses to the beach and glittering water beyond. She soaked up the tranquil scene thirstily. The sound that soothed her more than anything else, however, was the low murmur of bees. It filled her heart with melancholy, and yet that wasn’t an unpleasant feeling. In a strange way it gave her pleasure to remember the past, as if through the pain she remained in touch with the woman she had once been and left behind when she had set out for America all those years ago.

  She went round to the three hives she kept along the side of the house, sheltered from the winds and sun by hemlock planted for the purpose, and lifted one of the lids for a routine check. She didn’t mind getting stung occasionally. She wasn’t afraid, either, but it caused her distress to think that, on stinging, the bee was sacrificing her own life to protect the hive.

  Arthur Hamblin had taught his daughter everything he knew about bees, from their daily care to the tinctures of propolis he made to cure sore throats and other complaints. Beekeeping had been their shared love and tending the hives and extracting the honey had brought them close, compounded by the fact that they only had each other in the world. Grace remembered her father fondly every time she saw a bee. His kind face would surface in her mind with the gentle humming of the creatures he had so loved, and sometimes she could even hear his voice as if he were whispering into her ear: ‘Don’t forget to check that the bees are capping off honey in the lower supers.’ Or: ‘Can you see the bees guarding the entrance? There must be a threat. Wasps or robber bees perhaps. I wonder which it is.’ Arthur Hamblin could talk about bees for hours and barely draw breath. Often he would talk to them, reciting his favourite poem, which Grace had heard so often she knew it by heart: Marriage, birth or buryin’, News across the seas, All you’re sad or merry in, You must tell the bees.

  Now as Grace looked inside the hive, the bees were settling in for the night. The temperature had dropped and they were sleepy. She smiled fondly and allowed her memories to ebb and flow like a vast sea of images and emotions. Time with her bees was time to be herself again, and time to remember.

  As she replaced the lid she sensed the familiar presence of someone standing close. She knew not to turn around, because the many times she had glanced behind her had revealed nothing but the wind and her own bewilderment. She knew to sense it and not to analyse it; after all, hers was an old house and Tekanasset was an island well known for ghosts. Even Big had stories to tell. The presence didn’t frighten her; in fact, she felt strangely reassured, as if she had a secret friend no one else knew about. When she was younger she had confided in her mother, who she hoped was able to listen to her from Heaven. Nowadays, when she felt low or lonely, she’d come and talk to the bees and feel comforted by this ghost who gave out a loving energy and was perhaps as lonely as she was.

  Recently she had begun to sink more often into her former life. It was as if with the passing of the years her regrets grew stronger and her attachment to her memories more desperate. For the last twenty-odd years she had thrown herself into motherhood, but Trixie was growing up and soon she would move away, and Grace would be left alone with Freddie and the fragile remains of their marriage.

  ‘Hello, old friend,’ she said and smiled at the absurdity of talking to someone she couldn’t see.

  Chapter 2

  Trixie Valentine stood in nothing but a diaphanous floral sarong outside old Joe Hornby’s boathouse. Inside, her lover reclined in the fishing boat with his guitar across his knee, strumming the tune he had composed that morning. He trained his eyes on the entrance. First, a slender white arm appeared around the wall and long fingers splayed against the wood. Next, a shapely leg followed suit. It bent at the knee and positioned itself diagonally, pointing its shell-pink toes to the ground. Trixie paused like that for dramatic effect before changing position and appearing slowly to lean back against the door frame, one leg up, arms extended behind her, palms flat against the wall. She looked at him from beneath a thick, sun-bleached fringe, cut into a severe line just above her eyes, and held his stare for a tantalizing moment. Then she parted her lips, revealing two slightly crooked eye teeth, and her smile was full of promise. Jasper watched her pull at the knot behind her neck and let the sarong float to the ground, where it formed a puddle at her feet. She stood naked, silhouetted against the ocean background, the curve of her waist catching the last golden light that bounced off the water.

  Jasper Duncliffe gazed at her admiringly. Everything about Trixie fascinated him. She was unpredictable, spontaneous, fun-loving and wild. She was also beautiful, with wide indigo eyes and curves in all the right places. She approached him, without taking her gaze off him, and he put his guitar aside and felt himself straining his jeans with desire.

  She stepped into the boat. It rocked gently but not enough to unbalance her. Both knew there was a danger of being discovered, but for two people flouting the rules at every turn, the thought of being caught only heightened their excitement. She sat astride him and put her hands on the sides of the boat to steady herself. Then she lowered her face and placed her lips on his, her long hair forming a curtain around them that smelt of the sea. ‘You’re all mine,’ she breathed and he felt her smile against his face. It was true; he couldn’t move much, pinned to the boat. He slid his hands around her neck and caressed her jaw with his thumbs.

  ‘You can have me body and soul, Trixie,’ he whispered. ‘As often as you like.’

  ‘I love the way you speak, Jasper.’

  ‘Why? You said your parents are English.’ He moved his hands down to her breasts and lightly brushed her nipples.

  Catching her breath, she arched her back like a cat. ‘But they don’t talk like you do. I like the way you talk.’

  He pulled her head down and kissed her passionately. Impatient to feel him inside her, she fumbled with his belt and released him. He let out a deep groan as he was swallowed into her warm body. She moved on top of him without inhibition, tossing her head and flicking her hair as the desire built and she lost herself. He held her hips but was unable to control her. At last he grabbed a fistful of hair and pulled her face down to his. ‘Not so fast,’ he said. ‘If you’re going to be on top you must do as I say.’

  ‘I like your assertiveness, Mr Duncliffe.’

  He laughed. ‘I like the sound of that.’

  ‘What? Mr Duncliffe. Sounds very ordinary to me.’

  ‘That’s why I like it.’ He pressed his mouth to hers before she could distract him further, and kissed her deeply.

  Some time later they sat in the boat sharing a joint of marijuana. It was now twilight. The sun had sunk behind the horizon and the sea was calm. Trixie was feeling pleasantly lightheaded and relaxed. ‘I like this time of day, don’t you?’

  ‘Sure, it’s beautiful,’ Jasper replied. She fed him the joint and he took a long drag. ‘Shouldn’t you be getting home?’

  ‘Not yet. I’m already in trouble, a little more won’t hurt.’

  ‘What’ll you tell her?’

  ‘Mom?’ She shrugged. ‘She’s a romantic. I’ll tell her all about you and that will distract her from the fact that I lied about the weekend with Suzie and spent it with you.’

  ‘You’re nineteen, Trixie. You have a job. You’re earning your own money. You’re independent. I’d say you can do as you please.’

  ‘Sure, but she’s very conservative. She grew up in a little town in England, fell in love with Dad when they were in their teens and married just as war bro
ke out. She’s never been with anyone else. She expects me to do the same, but look at me, having sex before marriage with a rock star – and a rock star is not what most mothers want for their daughters.’

  ‘A rock star,’ he chuckled sceptically. ‘You flatter me.’

  Her eyes blazed with confidence. ‘You’re going to be a big star, Jasper. I can tell. You’re fine-looking, talented and everyone loves your music. I have a nose for success and I can smell it all over you.’ She took another drag and grinned at him through the smoke. ‘And I’ll be there, clapping in the wings, having known you before you became a millionaire, with thousands of fans shouting your name and singing your songs, selling records all over the world.’

  ‘I love your enthusiasm, Trixie. We’re doing our best.’

  ‘What do they think of you in England?’

  ‘Not enough.’

  ‘So that’s why you came here?’

  ‘Of course. Everyone wants to make it in America.’

  She laughed. ‘Not everyone wants to make it in Tekanasset!’

  ‘I have a connection to this place. My grandparents had a house here. A long time ago. It seemed a good place to start.’

  ‘Why not make it in England first, like the Beatles did? Don’t you want to be big in your own country?’

  He sighed and looked pained. ‘Because my mother would murder me for the shame.’

  Trixie screwed up her nose. ‘You’re kidding, right?’ He shook his head. ‘Your mother disapproves?’

  ‘Of course she does.’

  ‘And your father?’

  ‘Dead.’

  ‘Oh, sorry.’

  ‘Don’t be. We didn’t have the best relationship. He was a military man, as was his father before him. He didn’t understand music: at least, not my sort of music’

  ‘How narrow-minded! He should have been proud of your talent.’

  ‘He saw no talent in me, Trixie. But that’s OK. I’m the second son. All the responsibility sits on my brother’s shoulders, and fortunately he’s big enough and conventional enough to carry it.’