Ned Kelly and the City of Bees

by Thomas Keneally

  But Mr Horne’s cuffs would not melt and the policeman led the two men out, and only Mr Morrison and the bull were left in the living room of the old house. The farmer looked over his shoulder and gave one angry shiver. I thought he might know we were watching him. Or perhaps he thought the unhappy ghost of Major Steel was in that very room. Anyhow he dragged Fred’s rope and left as soon as he could, which wasn’t very fast, since Fred got stuck in the door.

  Nancy Clancy and I looked down at the empty room. I was feeling something I’d never known before—the desire to be amongst my own kind of people. Amongst humans. If Mr Horne was to go to Grafton jail, I wanted to be close to his daughter Kate and his son Jack, and I couldn’t be close while I stayed in the hive.

  I heard the noises of the hive behind me, and I knew it wasn’t my sound.

  “I think I might go home,” I said.

  “Oh?” said Nancy Clancy.

  “Yes. That man who stole the bull. His kids are my best friends.”

  “Oh. Your best friends?”

  “My best friends apart from you,” I rushed to say.

  “Oh … well. If you feel you ought to go back … then you should.”

  But I could see she wanted me to stay and couldn’t make herself say it. I was pulled from one direction by Kate and Jack Horne, from the other by Miss Nancy Clancy. That was the first time anything like that had happened to me, too.

  “Well,” I said after a while. “I suppose I ought to stay here a bit longer. I’m having so much fun.”

  Miss Nancy Clancy smiled at me. “I spy with my little eye,” she said, “something beginning with B.M.”

  “B.M.,” I said, looking round the hive. “I give in.”

  “Bull’s manure,” she said with a broad grin.

  17

  Autumn Rains

  And so I stayed on for the whole summer. Playing games with Nancy Clancy. Flying with Apis. Listening to Romeo’s bad jokes. Watching the bees work indoors and out.

  And I got very used to the hive. Even to the days when wasps came. Sometimes I didn’t know until the wasp battle was over that it had even been going on at the main doorway of the hive. One day a trapdoor spider stumbled into the place and was stung and dragged away, and I saw nothing of it.

  We thought the hot, hot summer would never end. No more villains came to Major Steel’s house and although Miss Nancy Clancy and I sat up trembling one night, we never saw Major Steel’s ghost. Our summer lives were spent half in the dark of the hive, half in the bright outdoors, and yet we never noticed that the summer was passing. The autumn rain that lashed Major Steel’s house one morning told us that more clearly than anything. The golden summer is finished, said the rain.

  When the long rains began Basil and his few friends came to the cell Nancy Clancy and I shared and clustered round our door. Their big drone eyes looked dull.

  “It’s started,” said Basil.

  “What?” I asked.

  “We weren’t given any honey this morning. We went up to the workers to be fed with honey as usual and weren’t given a drop to eat.” Nancy Clancy made a sad mouth, as if Basil’s story wasn’t a surprise to her. To take Basil’s mind off his hunger, she began to read from one of her books. The noise of the rain forced her to read very loudly, and even the drones, who could not understand what she was saying, seemed to be comforted by her voice.

  She was half way through The Grasshopper’s Feast when Selma and her courtiers passed below us. We could see Romeo trying to keep up with them and squeaking, “What’s the difference between a postage stamp and a woman?”

  “I don’t want to hear,” Selma told him.

  “Your Majesty, please try to guess …”

  “What? What did you say? Are you trying to give me orders?”

  “I was suggesting,” said Romeo, “that you might try to guess what the difference is between a postage stamp and a woman?”

  “You were suggesting? Does it at all seem likely to you that I mightn’t be interested in what the difference is?”

  “Ah … well …”

  “I’m trying to say, Sir Romeo, our time together is over. It’s all very well to listen to jokes in the summer, but the autumn rains are here, and the autumn rains are a grim time.”

  “But I don’t …” said Romeo. “I’ve got lots of …”

  “I’m not saying I didn’t enjoy your company,” Selma explained. “But all that is finished now. Goodbye, Sir Romeo.”

  She turned her back on the poor romantic drone and walked away. Romeo tried to catch up but Selma’s guards and fanners and escorts closed in around her and pushed him away. Still Romeo kept struggling to get close to Selma until a few of the escorts buzzed at him in a way that said, “Do you want to see our stings, mister?” Romeo staggered away, moaning.

  “Don’t cry,” Nancy Clancy called to him. “Here. Come up here. We’re reading.”

  All his dreams of knighthood gone, Romeo could hardly climb, but at last he reached us. Though he was a drone bee and Mr Horne was human, he reminded me of Mr Horne staggering along handcuffed.

  “I am reading The Grasshopper’s Feast,” Miss Nancy Clancy told him grandly. “Want to listen?”

  He slumped down beside Basil. By the time Nancy stopped reading, all the drones were asleep.

  18

  The Drones are Expelled

  “No, I can’t do it,” Apis told us. “There’s no way in which I can feed Basil and Romeo and all those others.”

  “Why ever not?” asked Miss Nancy Clancy.

  “You shouldn’t have to ask that. It’s because. Because,” groaned Apis. “Look, it’s like this. One day on the radio at Mrs Abey’s place or Mrs Maguire’s, I heard that a man had found a lump of amber, and in the amber was the body of a worker bee, and the bee and the amber were forty-three million years old. Now that bee never fed drones once the autumn came. For forty-three million years there’s never been a worker bee who fed a drone once the rains came down or the snow began. And you want me to start. To take the precious honey that we’ll need all winter and give it to drones who never did anything to earn it. I like Romeo. I even like Basil, but liking has nothing to do with it.”

  I saw that Apis was making the same sort of speech that Sergeant Kennedy had weeks ago, “I like Jimmy Horne, I even like Clarence Abey. But liking has nothing to do with it.”

  But I didn’t tell her she reminded me of Sergeant Kennedy.

  “Besides,” she said, “when I fly in with nectar I have to give it over to the hive workers, so that they can run round with it drying it and turning it to honey. You can’t ask me to behave like a human, because I’m not. I’ve got two stomachs. Did you even know that? I have a stomach for myself and a second one for carrying nectar for the hive. The second one doesn’t belong to me, it belongs to the hive, and the nectar I carry in it, and the honey I make in it, that all belongs to the hive. Tell me this, can a bank manager, the manager of the National Bank in Northtown say, can he take money out of the bank’s safe and go down to the corner of Smith Street and hand it out to anyone he likes?”

  “I wish he could,” I said, thinking of the Hornes, thinking of my parents too, who were always worrying about money.

  “But can he?” said Apis.

  “No,” I admitted.

  “And you would put him in jail if he did. Wouldn’t you? You wonderful humans? You’d put him behind bars?”

  “I … yes. He’d go to jail.”

  “There!” said Apis.

  Just the same, that afternoon Apis climbed in amongst the drones. “Get in a circle,” she told them, “so no one else can see.” When they had, she began feeding each of them a small drop of honey from her honey stomach. Some of the drones pushed and struggled to be fed first and Apis roared at them.

  “So kind, so kind,” said Romeo, taking his honey.

  “It’s not kind,” Apis snarled. “It’s stupid. It isn’t enough to keep you strong, I can’t get enough to keep you strong. So I’m only
dragging out the pain.”

  “Just the same,” said Basil, “just the same, thank you.”

  Poor Basil had changed. He didn’t make speeches any more. He was weak but he had what people call dignity.

  As Apis left, I asked her. “Why do we still get fed?”

  “It’s different,” she said. “You aren’t drones.”

  The next day Nancy Clancy and I offered some of our breakfast to the drones, but they were already too weak to eat. They staggered down to the doorway of the hive as if they needed air and sat there panting. Nancy Clancy and I watched them, angry with ourselves for not being able to help. As the rain boomed down, workers crept up on the drones. Six workers grabbed Basil and began to drag him out of doors. He struggled to stay, his feet clicking against the hard stone of the doorway as the small, well-fed workers hauled him away. They got him over the edge of the door, but he still hung on, staring in at the hive, the home where he wanted to stay all winter. “Selma,” he yelled. “Selma!” But Selma didn’t answer. With three tough workers grabbing his belly he slid off the rim of the doorway. The other drones lay about, flat on their stomachs, knowing their turn was next, not being able to do anything.

  At last the workers threw poor Romeo out. As his body began to slide out the door, he too called to Selma.

  “I forgot to ask you, Your Majesty,” he yelled. “Who’s the oldest settler in the west?”

  No one took any notice of him. I heard him squeak out the answer as he fell. “The sun,” he called.

  When I saw him go, I looked down at the whole hive. I saw that many of the bees had not even noticed that the few drones were now gone. “I hate you!” I screamed. “I hate you, Selma. I hate all of you.”

  But no one answered me, except Nancy Clancy.

  “It always happens,” she said. “It happens every year. It’s the way things are done.”

  She sadly packed her books away and began to yawn. “Why are you yawning?” I asked her savagely. “They just threw your friend Romeo out to starve, and you’re yawning!”

  “I always yawn when the autumn rains start. It’s something I can’t help.” While I stood there trembling, Apis appeared in the doorway.

  “I want to go home,” I said.

  “I’ve come to take you home,” said Apis calmly. “Because it’s time for you to go. The rain has stopped for the moment, so it had better be now.”

  “Oh,” I said. I’d thought she would argue, that Nancy Clancy would argue. So it really was the end. They couldn’t afford honey for me either any more.

  “I’ll take you back to where I got you from,” said Apis. “Remember, the great white beds and that funny hospital smell?”

  “You come too!” I told Nancy Clancy.

  Nancy Clancy shook her head sharply. “I thought I’d made it perfectly clear that I can’t do that. What would your parents do with a hundred and twenty year old child? What class would they put me in? No, Apis will find a dry place for me to sleep the winter away, and in the spring—I’ll be collected again.”

  “But, will I ever see you?” I asked in a sudden panic. “Will I see you, Apis? Or you Nancy Clancy?”

  Apis looked away, which is hard for a bee to do, on account of its large eyes.

  “Well,” Miss Nancy Clancy admitted, “perhaps you won’t, Ned. But we … we have all these happy memories.”

  “But I want you both to …” I began.

  “Get on my back, Ned,” said Apis in a final sort of way.

  I climbed on to the place where the hair was thickest, just where the chest and stomach meet. Nancy Clancy climbed on behind me, her gingham dress rustling as always.

  “I’m just going for the ride,” she explained, tears in her eyes.

  Apis took off without any delay, without even asking Nancy Clancy not to pull her hair. I didn’t say goodbye to Selma, but I didn’t want to. And suddenly it was too late. We were out in the dark, out amongst the dripping trees. “Wait!” I called. “Wait! Romeo and Basil must still be here, somewhere.”

  Apis flapped up and down in the one place so that she could argue with me. “You don’t want to see them again,” she told me.

  “Please find them.”

  With a grunt of disapproval, Apis began flying low over the wet entangled grass and I called their names. I called Romeo. I called Basil.

  We found them close to each other, almost on their sides on the sopping ground. Apis flew in circles around them. I called to them. “Romeo, Basil, I’m going home. I can feed you honey every morning on a silver spoon. Please, get up, get up and follow.”

  They began to shake themselves. “I promise,” I told them.

  And so, as Apis and Nancy Clancy and I flew uphill and into the town, Romeo and Basil, using the last of their strength, flapped upwards into the moist air and followed us. Ahead I saw the lights of the hospital go on, and all at once it was hard to see Romeo and Basil as they struggled on behind us. I called to them, but the darkness behind me got deeper. Yet whenever I looked at the hospital, its lights hurt my eyes. “Romeo, Basil!” I kept calling.

  Not only did no answer come, but without warning Apis seemed to disappear from beneath me, and I fell spinning between the bright lights of the hospital and the deep wet night.

  19

  Home

  You won’t be surprised when I say that I opened my eyes and found that I lay in the hospital bed from which Apis had taken me at the beginning of the summer. Suddenly waking up in bed is something that happens in all stories like mine, and the only difference is that my story happened, whereas the others were dreamed up.

  The fierce Sister was looking at me through eyes that were nearly closed. She was counting and holding my wrist. The screens were still in place around my bed, as they had been all that time ago.

  “Lie still, Ned,” said the Sister. “Doctor Morgan’s going to be very happy. He’s been worried about you.”

  She went, in fact almost rushed, out through the screens. In half a minute she was back with Doctor Morgan and my mother and father. Seeing them, I knew I was back amongst my kind and a warmth as golden as any honey ran through my body.

  “Thank God,” my mother said, kissing me.

  “You had us very worried,” my father told me, while the doctor himself felt pulses in my head and asked if this or that hurt.

  “You were in what they call a coma, darling,” my mother told me. “That’s a long sleep. You slept for weeks. But you’re awake now.”

  “Have you seen a girl in a gingham dress?” I asked them, starting to cry, because I’d just understood that although I was back with my people, I’d seen Nancy Clancy and Apis for the last time ever.

  “No, no,” said my father. He asked the Sister. “Did you see a girl?”

  They tried to tell me about how sick I’d been, and how a doctor had been brought from Port Macquarie to look at me. And every time I tried to say something about Selma or Romeo or the hive they butted in and told me more about my illness and what the Port Macquarie doctor had said and how I had nothing to fear—that I’d be a normal child again. I wondered what a normal child was. Was Maurie Abey a normal child? In any case, the normal child I wanted to see was Nancy Clancy. And she was a hundred and twenty years old.

  It was when I asked them about Mr Horne that they stopped talking.

  “Did they put Mr Horne in jail?” I asked suddenly.

  There was silence. They had at last forgotten about the doctor from Port Macquarie.

  “For stealing Morrison’s prize bull?” I explained.

  “How did you know about that?” my father asked. “How did he know about that?” he asked the doctor.

  Doctor Morgan explained. “He must have overheard you talking about it here one day when you were visiting. There are different levels of coma. He must have been not quite fully unconscious for a few seconds and heard about Mr Horne that way.”

  I said, “But I saw it. I saw it from a hole in the wall at Major Steel’s old house. There
was Jimmy Horne, Clarence Abey and the bull Fred. Then Morrison and Sergeant Kennedy came and arrested them.”

  I saw the adults looking at each other in their strange adult way.

  “I sent you a letter,” I told them.

  I saw that look on their faces again.

  “A letter?” said my father.

  “I left it at Miss Such’s place for her to give you.”

  “Oh,” my mother said, “Miss Such has left here. She’s gone to England on a liner.”

  “But they all helped me write it. Nancy and Apis and Romeo and Basil’s boys …”

  My father shook his head. “We didn’t get any letter, cobber.”

  He was the first one to decide not to waste his time wondering. “Anyhow,” he said, “Morrison decided he’d let Jimmy Horne off if Jimmy and Abey worked for him free one day a week for the next five years. It’s a hard bargain, but it’s better than being in jail.”

  Soon I went to Sydney and doctors examined my head, finding nothing very wrong with it. But the life I’d lived in the hive stays with me still. Every spring I wonder if Nancy Clancy is waking and if a bee like Apis is collecting her to take her to a hive for another bee summer. Every autumn I leave out honey for drones that are thrown out of their hives but they don’t seem to eat much of it. Perhaps Apis was right, and you can’t do much about things that have been happening for forty-three million years. Whenever I see a bee working on a flower, I think of Apis, who probably did not live through that winter, for worker bees have short, hard but, I think, happy lives.

  As you can see I’ve never forgotten Apis or Romeo, Basil or Selma, and that’s why I’ve written this book. And as for Nancy Clancy: “Oh Miss Clancy, I know you’re alive, and rhyming still in some summer hive.”

  NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Australian born author Thomas Keneally has published over 25 novels, which have spanned five continents and covered topics ranging from the Armistice talks following World War I to a young woman’s flight to the Australian Outback.