Wondering whether it might be an old weather station, or perhaps some kind of security device, she walks towards it, but halfway there she notices the bees swirling around it.
Suddenly worried she is trespassing she glances around. Reassured that she is alone, she moves forward to stand beside the tree. The hive is old, its white paint chipped and peeling, the grass around its base long. Despite the breeze the bees are active, circling the hive, crawling in and out, the sound of them frowzy and warm. When one buzzes past her face she lifts a hand and ducks, but almost immediately another lands on her sleeve.
This time she doesn’t brush it off but instead pauses, struck by the improbable, clumsy way it moves, legs twitching, wings ready to take off again. It is beautiful, not just as a thing in itself but for the small wonder of its presence, its strange mixture of the alien and the familiar. Extending a finger she touches the fabric in front of it, observing the way it pulls back, the flash of aggression before it launches itself into the air, circling past her face so that she must duck once more.
Moving quietly she retreats a short distance, flicks on her overlays to check for tags on this location. Surprised to find there aren’t any, she searches references to bees nearby, this time bringing up a few links for shops selling honey, together with a testimonial for the market a few kilometres up the road from her house. But no mention of apiarists or local production.
She finds two more hives on the walk back, both placed in such a way that they are unlikely to be noticed from the valley below. As with the first, they have been there long enough for the grass to grow up around their bases, but not long enough for anybody to have tagged them or attached any information about who owns them or what they’re doing there.
It is after lunch by the time she gets back, and she is hot and sweaty and tired. She takes down her teapot and finds herself thinking again of the bee on her sleeve, its awkward movement and stumpy body, as she pours the water, lets the leaves release their fragrance.
The next morning she heads up to the hives again. She is not entirely sure what it is she is looking for, only that there is something about the bees she needs to explore further.
It is almost ten by the time she reaches the first of them and the bees are already active, bumping busily through the surrounding scrub and congregating on the blossom of the yellow box. Several times one swerves past her head, or circles around her and then veers away.
Once she is close enough she puts down her bag, and taking out a jar begins circling the yellow box tree beside her, trying to choose a bee to catch. Eventually she decides on a clump of flowers, and lifting the jar towards it chivvies one of the bees off the blossom and into its mouth. But as she closes the lid she hears movement behind her. Startled, she turns to find a man standing there.
‘What are you doing?’ he asks.
‘Catching a bee,’ she says, rising to her full height.
He looks at the jar in her hand and then at her face. He is about her age, black hair turning grey, and while his clothes are cheap and probably second-hand, he holds himself with a confidence that belies them.
‘And why are you doing that?’
This time she hears the trace of an accent in his voice. Indian, perhaps Pakistani.
Realising how peculiar the truth will sound – that she wanted the bee to study and photograph – she slips the jar into her bag.
‘Are they yours?’ she asks. ‘The hives, I mean?’
The man considers her for a second or two. ‘They are.’
‘All of them?’
‘Are you from the government?’
Thrown off balance by the question, Ellie laughs. ‘No,’ she says. ‘I’m an artist.’
He seems confused. ‘An artist?’
She nods. ‘I just moved in nearby, but nobody told me about the hives.’
Although she had meant her words to be reassuring, he looks uncomfortable.
‘You aren’t going to report them?’
Now it is her turn to be confused. ‘Report them? Why would I do that?’
When he doesn’t answer she takes a step away. ‘I should be going,’ she says.
The beekeeper still doesn’t reply but neither does he attempt to prevent her leaving. When she looks back he is staring after her, arms by his side, his face not hostile but somehow anxious.
She walks home briskly, fighting the urge to break into a run, but by the time she reaches the house the encounter at the hive has already begun to seem curious rather than unsettling. Extracting the jar from her bag she carries it through to her studio and sets it on the windowsill, then sits down to examine her captive. Where a fly would be still, the bee crawls and bumps about with such persistence she finds herself wondering how it stores enough energy to keep going. About its thorax and head the orange-brown fur is thicker than she had imagined; coupled with the glistening architecture of the wings, its softness lends the tiny creature a curiously archaic quality, somehow blurring the boundaries between insect and mammal.
Turning to her screen she asks it to locate some information about bee physiology, and for a few minutes she listens to it read out excerpts, feeling the ideas coalescing in her mind. It is often like this for her, the shape of a project coming before she has the detail, as if the idea were already present, inchoate; she has learned to trust this feeling, to give the connections time to form.
The next morning, she packs a bag and retraces her tracks to the hives a second time. When she arrives she is relieved to find the beekeeper absent, and putting down her bag she seats herself on a fallen trunk to watch the bees and listen to their heavy sound. Overnight she has been reading about the cultivation of bees in Egypt and Sumer, and the evidence from rock art and elsewhere of the harvesting of wild honey in Mesolithic times; in the silence of the hillside she finds herself reminded of this history, the idea that humans have shared the world with these creatures for so long filling her with something that is not quite wonder, not quite grief, but somehow both.
She is turning these thoughts over in her mind when she catches sight of the beekeeper heading down the slope towards her. Suddenly struck by the thought that he may have some kind of surveillance nearby, she glances around for a camera, but nothing is visible.
‘Hello again,’ she says as he reaches the clearing.
He has a backpack slung over one shoulder but otherwise is dressed as before.
‘Hello,’ he replies, eyeing her carefully as he sets his backpack down.
‘I’m sorry about yesterday,’ she says. ‘I didn’t mean ––’
‘You’ve not been at other hives?’ he asks brusquely.
‘No. Why?’
‘It’s important,’ he says, coming closer. ‘You’re sure?’
‘Of course,’ she says. ‘Why would I lie about it?’
He considers her for a few seconds. Then, quite abruptly, he relaxes. ‘Okay,’ he says. ‘I’m sorry, I don’t mean to be rude.’
‘Don’t worry about it. Although I don’t understand why it would matter.’
‘ACCD,’ he says.
‘I’m sorry?’
He looks at her sharply. ‘Accelerated colony collapse disorder. Bee colonies dying.’
‘I thought the collapses slowed down back in the twenties, after they banned the insecticides that were causing them?’
‘They did. But in the past couple of years they’ve started again, worse than ever. People have been trying to quarantine the hives, but it doesn’t seem to work.’
He seems to be scrutinising her. When he finally speaks again his voice is gentler, less confrontational. ‘The other day you said you are an artist.’
‘That’s right.’
‘And why are you interested in my bees?’
‘I’m not exactly sure yet. I have an idea for a project involving them, but I’m still thinking it through.’
Again he seems to consider his next move. ‘Please,’ he says after a few seconds. ‘Watch this.’
Ope
ning his bag he takes out heavy gloves and a hat with a gauze veil and puts them on, adjusting the gloves so they seal about his sleeves. Once he is done he lights a small device, pumping the handle so smoke emerges. Then, pulling down his veil, he advances on the hive and removes the top. The bees rise, swirling around him, their buzzing louder, more agitated. Setting the lid down he picks up the smoker, scattering the bees with the coils of grey smoke.
Inside the hive are a line of frames; drawing out the first he turns it on its side, revealing the golden comb, a few bees still moving on it. Setting the frame upon a tray he clears the last of the bees with the smoker, then takes a metal scraper and slides it down the face of the frame. Viscous honey oozes lumpily into the tray.
Replacing the frame, he draws out the next and repeats the process, and then again, until the hive has been cleared. Then he locks the lid in place and makes his way back to Ellie, bees still swirling around him.
She waits until he removes his mask to approach him.
‘Do they ever sting you?’
‘Of course,’ he says, folding his mask away. ‘But not often. I think they know me.’
Perhaps she looks sceptical because he smiles. ‘You think that is ridiculous?’
She shrugs. ‘Maybe.’
‘They know things, bees. They become used to you. The hives live and last. It is not so unreasonable to think they might have memories.’ He smiles once more. ‘But they still sting me sometimes.’
‘I’ve never seen honey harvested before,’ Ellie says.
‘No?’ He uncovers the tray and takes a spoon from his bag. ‘Here,’ he says.
She takes the spoon carefully, cupping her other hand beneath it. The honey is thick and gold, so dark it is almost brown, with lumps of wax and comb still visible here and there. Closing her mouth around the spoon she finds the taste so sweet and rich and impossibly deep that without thinking she closes her eyes. When she opens them he is watching her.
‘It is good?’
‘It’s amazing. Is it always like this?’
‘Sometimes. It depends on the season, on which flowers are nearby.’
She nods, the spiced sweetness of the honey still burning in her nostrils. There is something fascinating about the idea of a substance that changes with the seasons in this way, a reminder of a time when the planet still moved to its own cycles.
Taking the tray he begins to transfer the honey into a plastic container. When he is done he slips it into his backpack and stands up. ‘Perhaps you can tell me something of this project you are thinking about?’
As they make their way down the ridge she tells him the little she has mapped out already. That she would like to take photos of the bees and the interior of the hives in close-up, and possibly build models of them both; that she has an image of bees alive and moving as well. He listens quietly and attentively, only interrupting when they reach the road.
‘This would be online?’ he asks. ‘Or in a gallery somewhere?’
She hesitates. ‘Virtual, I think.’
‘Perhaps we should talk about it some more later. My name is Amir.’
‘Ellie,’ she says, and pings her number to him. ‘And yes, I’d like that.’
Back home she checks her messages, several of which are from Adam regarding Noah, whom she is minding later in the week, an arrangement she is, as usual, simultaneously looking forward to and apprehensive about.
When she first learned of the boy’s existence twelve months before, she had felt physically ill, the fact of Summer’s decision to conceal Noah from them throwing her completely off balance for weeks.
It didn’t help that the world seemed to be falling apart as well, the floods in England followed by deluges in northern Europe and Burma, the escalation of the war in the Middle East and the horrors in Chicago. In the weeks following Adam’s call from London, and the struggle to get Noah evacuated to Australia, she lurched uncontrollably between anger and regret for her failures as a parent.
As the months passed she regained a degree of equilibrium. She can still become angry if she thinks about it, but her initial sense of betrayal has lessened, displaced by the reality of the present and, increasingly, a deeper grief about Summer. It never fails to surprise her how easily and irrevocably the present replaces the past, how what had seemed immovable, permanent, simply fades and vanishes.
This change in her feelings also applies to Noah himself. Before she met him she was apprehensive, alarmed by Adam’s description of his disorder, and this clouded her early encounters with him, keeping her hyper-alert to unusual or unpredictable behaviour. But while there is no question the boy can be difficult, that his refusal to sleep at regular hours and his sudden, unpredictable bouts of anxiety and agitation are unnerving and exhausting, he also has an intelligence and gentleness she has come to love.
Because this visit is his first to her new home, the plan is for Adam to stay for the afternoon, only leaving once Noah feels comfortable. It is an arrangement that was reached after some negotiation between Adam and her – a process, she thinks ruefully, they might have done well to master sooner.
The appointed day dawns wet, cloud from a cyclone in the north bringing torrential rain, meaning Adam is an hour late when he pulls into the driveway. Ellie watches him lean across to open the door for Noah before leaping out himself, an umbrella over his head, and running to the passenger door. But Noah doesn’t move, just sits staring forward, hands clutching the seat. Holding the umbrella higher, Adam crouches to say something, his words inaudible over the rain, and Noah shakes his head.
Glancing up, Adam points towards Ellie and the boy turns to look at her. She waves in welcome, struck by the way his face has changed in the fortnight since she saw him last, the sudden glimpse of the adult he will become.
Finally Noah consents to get out of the car, and huddled together under the umbrella the two of them cross the yard slowly, Adam trying in vain to hurry the boy up.
‘Hi Noah,’ she says once they are inside, kneeling down beside him and holding out a hand. Once, he would have shied away from her but now he places his hand in hers, lets her kiss his cheek.
‘It’s raining,’ he says. ‘That means we can’t use the telescope.’
‘It does, although perhaps we’ll be able to use it tomorrow.’
‘Is it set up?’ he asks.
‘Out the back,’ she says, pointing the way, but Noah is already moving past her.
‘What was that all about?’ she asks once she and Adam are alone.
He shakes his head. ‘I told him he couldn’t use his lenses in the car.’
‘Ah.’ Looking out at the rain, she says, ‘Have you got bags?’
Adam looks out with her and smiles. ‘I think I might wait.’
In the kitchen she makes tea while Adam brushes water off his shoulders.
‘How’s he been?’ she asks as she hands him his cup.
‘Good, I think. School seems to be going better. And he’s been excited about coming here.’
‘And you?’
‘I’m good as well. Busy.’
An awkwardness descends, the mention of Adam’s work, of their separate lives, reminding them of a past neither is quite ready to discuss.
‘What are you working on?’ he asks.
She is about to try to explain her interest in the bees, tell him about finding the hives, when she sees she has a voice call. Excusing herself to Adam she picks up her earpiece.
‘Hello,’ says an accented voice, ‘is this Ellie? This is Amir.’
She surprises herself by smiling. ‘Yes, Amir.’
‘I’m not interrupting, am I?’
‘No, no, not at all. I’m glad you called,’ she says. Giving Adam an apologetic glance she stands up and steps into the next room.
‘You talked about an exhibition. I thought perhaps I would like to know more.’
‘Yes,’ she says, ‘of course. I can’t talk now, but perhaps we could meet. Is there a time that would suit
you?’
‘Maybe the day after tomorrow?’
‘Could you come here?’
‘If you would like that.’
Through the door she can see Adam staring out the window.
‘Let me send you my address,’ she says.
The next two days pass slowly. Although she has had Noah before, it is always a shock to be reminded of the effort involved in minding a child full-time, especially one like Noah. While Adam has hired a carer to help him with the boy, when he stays with her they are alone together, meaning she is hostage to his wakefulness in the evenings and his relentless focus on particular activities.
She has grown better at accommodating him, but it is not always easy, and on the second night she loses her temper with him several times, frustrated with his constant circling through the kitchen and the living room and back again, his obsessive questions about when the weather will clear. As always at such moments she regrets her irritation almost immediately. And she is also reminded of what it must have been like for Summer, alone with him all that time.
On the morning of the day Amir is due to visit she rises early to find Noah already up, his lenses on, absorbed in exploring one of the virtual worlds he spends hours in every day. Deciding there is no need to disturb him she makes his breakfast, assembling the food the only way he will eat it – white toast with the crusts removed and a boiled egg – and setting it down in front of him she heads out to her studio to begin organising her materials in preparation for Amir’s visit.
Although she has had little time to think about it over the past couple of days, Ellie has become convinced the project will be substantial, that the bees and their presence contain some implication she can work with. Knowing Noah will be content in his virch for as long as he is left undisturbed, she begins mapping new ideas, only looking up when her system reminds her it is almost ten and Amir is due in fifteen minutes.
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