‘Me and Lady Georgina looking after pigs and milking cows!’ She laughed heartily. ‘Now that’s a funny thought.’
When Freddie and Grace arrived at the house Mr Swift, the keeper, was waiting for them with the new head gardener, Mr Heath. Mr Swift had known Arthur for years and when he saw Grace he smiled affectionately. ‘Ah, Grace, not a moment too soon. Her ladyship has withdrawn inside.’ He chuckled, for Mr Swift was a wise and mellow man, as Arthur had been. ‘You’d have thought the Germans had invaded,’ he said in a quiet voice. ‘A lot of fuss about nothing, if you ask me.’
‘You’d better come round to the back of the house, Mrs Valentine,’ said Mr Heath, his country accent wrapping itself around his vowels like soft squirrels’ tails. ‘There’s a cloud of bees. A black cloud. Swarming all over the garden. Quite a sight, it is. Don’t know what you’re going to do with them.’
‘Let’s have a look and I’ll tell you,’ Grace replied.
Freddie disappeared to the farm and Grace followed the two men round to the back of the house. The gardens looked splendid. Fat flowers shone in the sunshine and the leaves on the trees were still a bright, phosphorescent green. The lawn had recently been cut, and cat’s ear and chickweed grew among blue cranesbill and white campions on the bank leading up to the paddock. For a moment she forgot her purpose and slowed down to admire the magnificence of the gardens which had once been her father’s domain.
At the back of the house was a large terrace where Lady Georgina had clearly been sitting only minutes before, for her magazines were strewn on the table along with a pretty china teapot, a delicate cup with its saucer and a little jug for milk, while the cushions had been placed on all the chairs and benches for her comfort. Music still resounded through the house from a gramophone inside, but the record was stuck and the notes kept repeating themselves.
The cloud of bees was still swarming in front of the wall where purple clematis grew in abundance and honeysuckle infused the air with its warm and fruity perfume. Grace put her hands on her hips and looked up to a place just below the second-floor windows. There, as she had anticipated, was a bundle of bees about the size of a rugby ball. To the untrained eye they looked as if they were simply climbing on top of each other in a desperate struggle to get inside the bricks, but Grace knew better. ‘They’re protecting the queen, trying to find a new nest for her,’ she told the men. ‘She’ll be beneath that cluster.’
‘Lady Penselwood won’t want a nest in her wall, Grace,’ said Mr Swift. ‘You’ll have to get rid of them somehow.’
‘Lady Melville won’t come outside until they’re gone,’ added Mr Heath. ‘She’s right scared of bees.’
Mr Swift took off his cap and raked his weathered fingers through grey woolly hair. ‘They don’t look like they’re planning on going anywhere tonight.’ He replaced his hat. ‘So, what are you going to do, Grace?’
‘I could do two things. I could rattle some tins to drown out the sound of the queen, which would make them all disperse. But I think I’ll go home and return at sunset with my protective clothing. By then they will have formed a big ball of sleepy bees and I’ll simply swipe them off the wall and put them in a basket. I might see if I can make a new hive. Just depends what sort of bees they are. We’ll soon find out.’ She remembered one of her father’s sayings: A swarm in May is worth a load of hay. A swarm in June is worth a silver spoon. A swarm in July isn’t worth a fly. In which case the swarm would take to their new home very happily.
‘Right, I’ll tell Lady Melville,’ said Mr Swift.
‘She won’t be coming out again this afternoon,’ Mr Heath added.
‘Then you can tell the maid that it’s perfectly safe to come outside to clear away the tea. They’re not going to sting anyone. They’re far too busy with their nest,’ said Grace. ‘Right, I’ll make my way home and return when it starts to get dark.’
Grace walked with Mr Heath back to her bicycle. ‘Your father was a gifted man,’ he told her gravely. ‘I have great admiration for him.’
‘Thank you, Mr Heath. He loved this place.’
‘I can tell. The gardens have been cherished, that’s for sure.’
‘I’m the gardener at home now. Dad taught me well, but I’ve still much to learn.’
‘If you’d like to come up here from time to time, I’d be happy to give you advice. What with the war coming and everything, the young men will be going off to fight and we’ll be short of gardeners. I’ll be grateful for your help as well.’
Grace’s face lit up. ‘I’d love to. Do you really mean that?’
‘I really do,’ he replied with a smile. ‘Me, Mr Garner and Mr Swift will be the only men around, being old and not fit to fight.’
‘I would think that was a blessing.’
‘I fought in the Great War, Mrs Valentine, and I wouldn’t want to fight in another, but my heart cries out for those young men who don’t know the horrors of it, blind with patriotism and a misguided sense of romance. There’s nothing romantic about war.’
‘I’m afraid my Freddie is one of those young men.’
‘I hope he has an angel watching over him, then.’
‘So do I, Mr Heath.’
As she took up her bicycle once again her mind turned to Rufus and she wondered where he was. She thought of him going off to fight and her heart contracted with fear. It wasn’t so very long ago that they had chatted on the lawn. He had called her Little Bee. She remembered now.
Later, when Grace returned in her protective clothing carrying a woven skep, she noticed Rufus’s Alfa Romeo on the gravel at the front of the house and her stomach flipped over like a pancake. She hoped someone would tell him she was outside with the bees and perhaps he’d be inspired to come out and talk to her. With that thought, she almost skipped round to the back of the house.
No one had cleared away Lady Georgina’s magazines or her tea, but they had stopped the music. It was dusk now. The air was balmy and heavily scented with all the sweet-smelling flowers in the garden. Mr Heath had taken it upon himself to bring round a ladder but there was no one ready to hold it for her. Until Rufus appeared like a phantom and then, suddenly, nothing else seemed important any more. Not the bees, not Lady Georgina’s fear, not war.
‘Well, you do look scary in that costume,’ he said, chuckling softly as the end of his cigarette blazed scarlet in the half-light.
‘It’s my beekeeping costume,’ she replied, heart pounding at the sight of him, so tall and elegant in a velvet dinner jacket and velvet slippers embroidered with the crest of the lion and dragon.
‘Of course. You’re the beekeeper.’
‘There’s a swarm.’
‘So Georgie tells me.’ He looked up at the roof. ‘They seem to have gone to bed now.’
‘Which is why I’m here to take them to their new home. I have a hive ready for them at the cottage.’
‘You clever thing! How are you going to do that?’
‘By putting on my hat, taking this skep here and literally wiping them off the wall. They’ll come away in a ball.’
‘And how are you proposing to take them back to their hive?’
‘I was going to walk.’
‘You were going to walk? In the dark?’ He arched an eyebrow.
‘It’s not dark yet. I was hoping to get home before it’s dark.’
He smiled and his teeth shone white against skin made brown by the impending night. ‘But now you’re talking to me.’
She laughed nervously. ‘Yes, that might delay me a little.’
‘So, if you’re delayed because of me it’ll be my duty to drive you home.’
‘Really . . .’ she began.
‘I insist,’ he interrupted crisply, then sighed wearily. ‘Anything to avoid going into the drawing room. Mama and Georgie are having a heated discussion about what they’re going to do when war is announced. It’s very tiresome. Pigs or goats or sheep or cows? Neither of them knows one end of a cow from the other, so really it’s a case of the b
lind leading the blind. Papa is in his study, building a model boat, and me: well, I can hardly stay listening to those two geese, can I? Not without losing my mind. So here I am, at the service of the beekeeper and very happy about it, too. Tell me how I can help? Perhaps I can delay you a little longer with my ineptitude.’ His soliloquy had rendered her speechless. She stared at him, her face full of astonishment. ‘You do need help, you know. If only to hold the ladder as you climb its dizzy heights.’ He threw the remains of his cigarette into the hellebores.
‘Yes, the ladder,’ she replied at last. ‘Goodness, you sound desperate.’
‘I am, Grace. If Grandmama were still alive I’d have sought refuge with her. She would have understood.’
‘I’m sorry about your grandmother.’
‘So am I. Very sorry. I miss her every day. I imagine you miss your father, too.’
‘Yes, I do. I visit him as often as I can.’
His face softened and he looked at her intently. ‘Do you? Do you really?’
‘Yes. He’s only in the churchyard.’
‘How sweet you are, Grace,’ he said gently.
‘Don’t you visit your grandmother?’
‘Not since her funeral.’
‘Why not?’
‘I’ve been busy in Bovington, I suppose.’ He looked at his feet. ‘I don’t like churches or graveyards, Grace. That’s the truth. I find death appalling.’ He raised his eyes and smiled at her sadly. ‘Am I a brute for not going to visit her?’
‘Of course you aren’t. She’s not there anyway.’
‘Really? Then where is she?’
‘With you.’
‘I admire your certainty. I do hope you’re right, Grace.’
‘I’m sure Dad is with me. I like to think of him in our garden or with the hives. I’m sure he’s in all the places he loved the most.’
‘You married,’ he said suddenly.
‘Yes. Thank you for the flowers. It was really very kind of you.’
‘I’m glad you got them. Were they big enough?’
‘They were enormous.’
He beamed, pleased. ‘Good.’
‘And for your letter when my father died. Really, you’re much too attentive. I don’t feel I can give anything back.’
‘I don’t want anything back, Grace.’
‘Well, it’s terribly kind of you, anyhow.’ There was an awkward pause, but Grace was quick to fill it. ‘You married, too. I forgot to congratulate you. Silly of me.’
‘Yes, we’re both married.’
Grace was sure she sensed a heaviness in those words. ‘Yes, isn’t it lovely,’ she replied, ashamed that her voice sounded flat.
He looked at her with affection, as if her naïvety amused him. ‘So, tell me what to do. I’m your assistant now. The ladder? I suppose there’s no stopping you scaling it like a squirrel.’
‘Yes, the ladder. I need to climb it to get to the bees.’
‘Then I’ll hold it for you so it doesn’t wobble. Nothing worse than a wobbly ladder when one’s at the top of it.’ He chuckled and bent down to lift it off the grass. Once he had set it securely against the wall of the house, as near to the bees as possible without disturbing them, he turned to Grace triumphantly. ‘How’s this for service?’
‘It’s perfect.’
‘Are you going to climb with that basket – or skep, as you call it? Shouldn’t I hold it for you until you’ve reached the top?’
‘I can manage, thank you.’ With that she stepped closer and put her foot on the first rung. Rufus was right beside her now. She could smell the lime scent of his cologne and the tobacco on his breath.
‘Do be careful up there,’ he said.
She began to climb. Rufus held the bottom of the ladder and watched her as she ascended towards the ball of sleeping bees. ‘Are you there yet?’ he asked. ‘Don’t fall, I can’t promise I’d catch you, though I’d try my damnedest.’ When she reached the bees, she steadied herself, placed the basket beneath them, then swept them deftly off the wall with the other hand. Rufus watched her take both hands off the ladder and held onto the bottom of it with all his strength. ‘Grace, you’re making me very uneasy down here. What the devil is Mr Heath doing, leaving you to risk your life like this? Hurry up and come down. I insist. I won’t have you up there a minute longer.’
When Grace reached the bottom she was laughing so much that her stomach was hurting.
‘What are you laughing at?’ he asked indignantly.
‘You,’ she replied. ‘You were going on and on . . .’ She laughed again.
‘Well, you worried me, that’s all.’ He watched her put the lid on the basket. ‘Did you get them all?’
‘All of them.’ She took off her hat. ‘Thank you, Lord Melville.’
‘Rufus. Dear God, we know each other well enough to use our first names. I told you to call me Rufus six years ago. Besides, I can’t call you Mrs Valentine. That’s absurd. I’ve just saved your life.’ Now he smiled with her. ‘You’re mocking me, Grace.’
‘You should hear yourself.’
‘I’m showing you concern. You should be grateful.’
‘I am, very grateful. You’ve made my day.’ He couldn’t know how true that was. They both laughed together.
‘Come, I’ll drive you home.’
‘Hadn’t you better tell someone where you’re going?’
‘Oh, they’ll be drinking champagne and discussing cows for a good while yet. Besides, I told Johnson I was coming out to help with the bees.’ He put his hand in the small of her back and guided her through the garden.
‘There’s something wonderfully alluring about the night, don’t you think?’ He inhaled the air enthusiastically. ‘All those little animals scurrying about. One doesn’t know how many pairs of eyes are watching from the bushes. Foxes, badgers, rabbits, pheasants, mice? I like the stars and the blue velvet sky. It excites me with its sense of danger and romance.’
‘I like it too,’ she agreed. ‘Most people are frightened of the dark.’
‘But not you and me, Grace. I bet you love the smells and sounds that only come out at night. Georgie has to sleep with the light on in the corridor. I find that very tiresome as I love to sleep with all the lights off and the curtains and windows wide open so I can experience the night in all its glory.’ He chuckled softly. ‘You and I are creatures of the night, perhaps. Unique in our delight and wonder.’
‘It is very mysterious,’ she agreed, intoxicated by the deep resonance of his voice. It was soft and granular, like fudge.
‘If I didn’t have to get back for dinner and you didn’t have to get back to Freddie, I’d invite you to sit on a bench with me and listen to the rustlings of the garden.’
‘I’d have liked that,’ she said.
‘I swear that one can hear the trees breathing. In the darkness our hearing is more acute because our eyes can’t see and our ears have to work so much harder. One can hear the garden breathing, in and out, in and out, and it’s the most intriguing sound in the world.’
‘Truly? Can you really hear the garden breathing?’
‘I tell you it’s true, Grace. Perhaps one night, if we find ourselves alone in this little paradise, I’ll show you.’
They reached the car at the front of the house and Rufus placed the basket carefully on the back seat. ‘I hope they don’t all wake up with the roar of the engine and swarm the car,’ he said.
‘They won’t,’ she replied. ‘They’re very dozy, and anyway, the lid is on firmly.’ He opened the passenger door and she climbed in. Once again she savoured the smell of leather and polish, barely daring to believe that she was alone with Rufus and that he was promising to show her the gardens at night.
‘So what will you do with the bees when you get them home?’ he asked, climbing in beside her.
‘I’ll put them into a new hive.’
‘Did you build it especially?’
‘No, Dad had a few hives he wasn’t using so I chose one
of those. I’m hoping they’ll like it and start producing honey.’
‘And it’ll arrive in jars on our breakfast table for our toast and tea.’ He sighed and stared at the road ahead. ‘I hope Freddie knows how lucky he is.’
‘I’m sure he does,’ she replied, then added hastily, ‘And I’m very lucky, too.’
‘Of course you are. I’m so pleased, because you’re a treasure, Grace. I hope you don’t mind me telling you that. It’s rather forward of me, I know, but I’ve never been very good at keeping things to myself. You’re a very special girl. I saw it when you were only a child and that quality hasn’t gone; in fact, it’s blossomed. You’ve grown into a very special woman and I hope Freddie sees it and appreciates it and cherishes it, because you deserve to be cherished.’
Grace had gone very hot. Her face burned and her chest was like a furnace inside her protective suit. ‘Oh, Freddie’s very loving,’ she replied, wishing he’d talk about something else.
‘I’ve embarrassed you. I’m sorry,’ he said suddenly. ‘It was wrong of me to assume that Freddie hasn’t recognized your qualities. Of course he has. He’d be blind not to. Tell me, will he help you put the bees in their new hive or can you manage on your own?’
‘I can manage on my own.’
‘Do you just pour them in like gravel?’
‘Yes.’ She giggled at his simile. Rufus had a funny way of describing things.
‘They’ll be rather disorientated when they wake up in the morning.’
‘I suspect they will. But they’ll get used to it very quickly. As long as the queen is there, they’ll know exactly what to do.’
Rufus drew up in front of her cottage. The lights were on but Freddie wasn’t home, because his bicycle wasn’t in its usual place. Grace suspected that he was still at the pub and was relieved, because she knew he’d feel jealous if he saw that Rufus had driven her home.
‘I shall send Lemon with your bicycle tomorrow.’
‘Don’t worry, I can walk round and pick it up.’
‘Why should you? If I was still going to be at home I’d insist you came to collect it, just so that I could talk to you again. But I’m leaving early in the morning for Bovington.’
The Beekeeper's Daughter A Novel Page 21
