The Beloved Girls

by Harriet Evans

  ‘Oh,’ I said, chastened.

  I wanted to ask more, but I was aching as we sat there. I wanted him to do things to me; the thrill of huddling together there, unseen by the house, whose inhabitants were, I assumed, in bed asleep or at least inside – as so often at Vanes, much was left unsaid.

  ‘Yes,’ said Joss, and there was a strange quality to his voice – uncertainty, or nerves. ‘You hear the song everyone sings, just once a year, and when you hear it, your neck starts to prickle . . . you know you’re there, in that moment.’

  ‘A bit like Christmas carols.’

  ‘Maybe. But not really. It’s only us, you see. Only us in the whole world. The Times wanted to do a piece on it once, Daddy said no, quite right too. It’s our tradition. And it’s not a big deal. It’s just something we . . . we do.’

  ‘It’s very interesting,’ I lied, and I nestled my head in his shoulder, gently pushing myself against him; he only needed the smallest of signals. His hands ran inside my bare thigh, up over my T-shirt; we kissed, gently, as we had done a couple of times.

  ‘I want to do it to you,’ he murmured, his voice thick. ‘You’re – you’re so remote. I can’t work you out. Like the guy says, Full beautiful, a faery’s child.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said, awfully pleased that what I believed to be my dull drabness was reclassed as some mysterious quality. It was thrilling, all of it.

  ‘You’ll love the Collecting, Janey,’ he said, and our fingers touched again, and I shivered, in the cool, starry night, unable to believe that I was living this, that it was me. ‘You’ll see. It’s something very special. It’s what makes our family. And you’re part of it, this year.’

  ‘I am?’

  ‘You’ll see,’ he said, and kissed me again, and I tried to forget everything else.

  For a brief period I could, but I kept remembering the discarded rubbish bag of leftover fish and chips. How it would get caught on the brambles, how long it would take to decompose. Such a tiny thing.

  And yet again I felt sick, as the oily taste of frying rose in my mouth. Suddenly all I could think about was Daddy’s last birthday, how he and I had been to see Indiana Jones together, and got an ice cream, and sat outside. It was March, the first lovely spring day. ‘Everything’s all right, when the sun shines, isn’t it, darling?’ Daddy kept saying. ‘Everything’s all right.’ He’d reached over, and patted my hand. ‘We’re all right, aren’t we? Aren’t we!’

  He killed himself eight days later. So obviously not. But I know he was happy that day. We had a little cake in the evening – thirty candles, as many as I could cram onto the cake. I bought five flimsy little packets of striped candles from Woolworths, because I knew how much he loved them. And he had cards, as usual, from our neighbours, from old friends, even from Mum. Sylvia sent him a card, with a long message. I knew this because he propped it up on the mantelpiece, but he must have taken it down afterwards; I couldn’t find it after he’d died.

  Later, turning around in bed, alive with the feeling of Joss’s touch still on me, wired with the memory of that day, and Daddy’s birthday, I couldn’t sleep. It struck me how strange Charles’s birthday was – no cake, no happy birthday, no cards. Daddy, on the verge of ending his life, had a better birthday, but then it didn’t matter, made no difference.

  Chapter Fifteen

  A few days later, I met the bees.

  I was by the pool, in the early evening, with Joss. Charles and Sylvia had eaten earlier than us and were upstairs, but we had gone to the pool with some sandwiches – it was still light. Merry was in the water, determinedly swimming up and down, singing loudly. I think she felt awkward.

  ‘Do the Locomotion! The Locomotion!’

  Joss and I were sitting close together, faces turned towards the setting sun. The outline of the old chapel was a black silhouette edged with flame. Our arms were almost touching. I was very aware of my body, in the bright peach bikini that Sylvia had made for me, of my pale limbs that were gradually turning golden after days in the sun. My face glowed in the evenings when I cleaned my teeth. My head had a soft regrowth of baby-fine light hair and it made me feel much better, as well as the headscarves, which I loved wearing, like I was a fifties heroine. As if I was assuming my own identity, playing a part of the person I wanted to be.

  The space between me and Joss was nothing. I wanted to reach over, to kiss him, taste his lips. He was delicious, that Joss. He was unlike anyone else I had met – shy, handsome Paul Rolles and I had never got off the ground, much less got off with each other. But, with Joss, it felt as though anything, everything, could explode between us.

  I felt my chest, rising and falling, at the thought of him, if he were to lean over now, his damp, cold skin fresh from the lime-green pool on my warm, dry body, his wet hair dripping onto me . . .

  ‘The only way is UP! BAB—argh!’

  Merry ran, and jumped into the pool, skidding slightly, tumbling in at the last moment and falling backwards into the water. We looked up in alarm, and I gave a small cry of distress. ‘Joss –’

  ‘She’s fine,’ he said, but he stood up, though as he did so Merry reappeared, a minute later, black head moving towards us. ‘I’m OK!’

  We smiled, adults together, as she turned back, swimming away from us.

  ‘She’d always have been OK,’ murmured Joss, sitting back down, a little closer than before, and as there was no way she could see us, he turned towards me, putting one hand on the other side of my hips, so he was leaning over me. I sat up, a little, and we kissed again, and I held his head in my hands.

  ‘Your hair is growing back much lighter,’ he said. ‘Look.’ He moved his hands up, towards my headscarf – I put them on my breasts, and he gave a small giggle.

  ‘You’re the only girl I know who’d rather I touched her tits than her head,’ he said, and he carried on kissing me.

  ‘I’m self-conscious about it,’ I said.

  ‘No one cares as much as you do,’ he murmured, squeezing my breasts, inexpertly, like they were oranges. I caught one hand, reshaping it over my left breast, showing him how I liked it. I didn’t know how, only that this was what I wanted. The gate behind the little pool house jangled, and we sprang apart – I leaned back.

  ‘Where’s Kitty?’ said Charles, a figure in shadow, as we squinted at him.

  ‘She went into the village. Band practice.’

  ‘She walked?’

  ‘Giles picked her up.’

  Charles clicked his tongue. I pulled my T-shirt dress over my head. ‘She should tell us when she goes out.’

  ‘You were busy,’ said Joss, flatly, and I noticed Merry stopped swimming, watching too. Joss never talked back to his father.

  ‘She needs to plan her day. That’s her trouble. Instead of lazing around reading and waiting for boys who don’t call her.’ Charles was getting worked up. ‘She should be helping her mother in the kitchen, being polite to our guest.’ But he didn’t look at me.

  ‘I’ll tell her, PF.’

  ‘Yes. Well, make sure you do. It’s two weeks to go, after all, her last ceremony.’ He flicked his head almost imperceptibly towards me. ‘Ready?’

  And he turned and left.

  ‘He means you,’ said Joss. I scrambled into my flipflops, feeling Joss’s hand on my wrist, pulling me down for one more kiss, and one more intense, supercharged stare into each other’s eyes.

  I felt wanton, loose, open, a creature of myth and mystery, as I scurried across the lawn, catching sight of my shadow against the grass. Kitty had said I would never belong here but she was wrong, I knew she was wrong. I was me, Janey Lestrange, in my short, clinging T-shirt dress, wet with the imprint of Joss’s skin on mine, as I walked towards the bees.

  The sun cast fire over the side of the chapel; it illuminated the curved wall of the boundary as I passed through the gate onto the other side.

  ‘You should always visit them in the evening,’ Charles said. ‘They’re calmer then. We all are.’

>   It was a still evening, no wind. Above us, the sky was royal blue, the stars already out though it was still light. On the little path that wound down through the woods to Larcombe were the first blackberries, and early rose hips. The ivy along the boundary edge bloomed its pale-green flowers, and the once blowsy elderflowers were now tight, blood-red berries; Joss had pointed them all out to me, earlier that day. Summer was edging towards its close.

  Suddenly I did not want to step outside the threshold of Vanes. I felt safe there, not here, on the edge of the darkness. I looked up at Charles, remembering how much my father disliked him.

  Rescue Sylvia.

  Charles couldn’t work the lock, and had to wiggle the key several times. Eventually it opened, with a cracking sound, as if something was breaking. ‘Stupid thing,’ Charles said, viciously. He kicked the door open. ‘Come in, then.’

  I followed him in, unwillingly. The interior was dark, even though the roof was partially missing. The place smelled of damp and incense – why on earth, when no one used it as a place of worship, I didn’t stop to consider. I could hear the roar of the sea, amplified in the silence of the echoing chamber.

  Charles looked at his watch, then over at the furthest wall, where a stone stood. ‘The altar was there once. And behind that’s the tombs.’ He paused. ‘They’re awfully loud tonight. I don’t think they want us here.’

  Something brushed past me in the gloom, with a puckish hissing in my ear. I jerked away, swatting my neck, and realised the roaring sound wasn’t the sea, it was the bees, that they were inside here. A humming, intense sound, so close it was as though it was touching you, reverberating in your throat, your stomach. I looked around, carefully rubbing my short, soft hair. I realised that I was scared.

  ‘Right,’ said Charles. ‘Now, listen. We won’t stay long. It’s good you want to participate in the Collecting. Very pleased.’

  ‘Of course I want to,’ I said, staunchly, trying to make out I was the natural person to be asked. ‘Daddy and I used to talk about it. Wonder what it was about. It’s lovely to be asked.’

  ‘Ah. Not quite sure what your father would make of you involving yourself in it.’ He smiled, teeth shining white in the gathering dusk.

  ‘Really? Why?’

  ‘Well. He loved a bit of folklore, didn’t he, old Si? But on his own terms. Didn’t like it here. He never came to visit Sylvia, except that one time, and he was supposed to be her guardian, wasn’t he?’

  ‘Oh,’ I said. ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Well anyway. I invited him, several times. Sylvia wanted me to. He never came.’

  ‘You invited Daddy to stay?’

  ‘You too, Janey. Every summer after you’d been down. Sylvia was so keen for you and Kitty to be friends. You’d got on. But he was always busy.’

  I’d asked Daddy so many times when we’d go back. ‘Can’t I see Kitty again? Can’t we go and stay, just for a weekend?’

  But he’d always shrugged, sadly. ‘I know. I’ve written to Sylvia saying the same. I’d love to, but we can’t very well just turn up, can we?’

  So someone was lying.

  As my eyes adjusted to the gloom, I could see faint wall markings, barely visible to the naked eye, on each wall. There were four windows, two on each side, small, hive-shaped, like the gables of the house. In one side of the hexagon only there was an extra window. It was about two feet high, and only a hand’s width, filled with algae-flecked glass. I peered at it.

  ‘That’s the leper squint,’ said Charles. ‘The Reverend Diver, that fellow in the hallway, put in a window, so they could watch the service. They’d come up from the woods on Sundays. The chap over at Larcombe wouldn’t let them near his church. But everyone was welcome here. He left food out for them. Learned about the bees from them. That’s what they say. My sister wrote a decent little pamphlet about the history of it.’ He stopped, and bit his lip. ‘She was a clever thing, you see, not like me and Ros. Bit purple in places, but adds to the suspense, what?’

  ‘Was this . . .’ I screwed my eyes shut, trying to remember what Joss had told me. ‘Pammy?’

  ‘Yes.’ His face clouded over. ‘She died, young.’ He batted it away with his long fingers. ‘Don’t, please. Where was I? Read the booklet, it’s good stuff. You see, the Reds, and the Culneys, their families have been here for centuries. They know the stories. People remember what this place was like before he came.’

  ‘What was it like?’

  Charles was leaning over a box in the corner of the chapel, taking out things. He held each one up to the light. I saw candlesticks, spoons, candles, cloths.

  ‘You have to understand something, before I tell you,’ he said. ‘Listen. You come from London. You have a father who believes in noble deeds and heroic tales. Loved history, didn’t he?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, watching as he held the candlesticks up and they glinted in the gloom of the chapel. ‘Me too. We used to have these days out . . .’ I trailed off.

  ‘Well, you see that’s the trouble. He’s like lots of people. Wants history to be a – what’s it called? – a theme park, laid out for him to visit on a Sunday drive out of town. And a lot of it wasn’t his business. He didn’t understand it. Poking his nose in. I’d say to him: you can’t explain everything that’s happened in the past. It can’t all be black and white, there’s so much in between.’

  The interesting thing is Charles Hunter was right, and I came to agree with him. Not the nonsense about being from London, as if that gave me no nuance or insight into anything outside it, but the stuff about shades of grey. The joke, if it is a joke, is that he himself didn’t believe it. He’d no more have left food out for starving lepers than he would have voted Green. He believed in self-preservation, first and foremost.

  ‘This place has been handed down father to son, father to son, for over a hundred and fifty years. And that’s because we’ve kept ourselves to ourselves, and we honour the countryside, and we respect dirty old Rev. Diver and his bees, what what.’

  ‘Dirty? What do you mean?’

  ‘Oh, just rumour. It’s beside the point,’ he said, sharply. ‘We leave them alone, but for this one day, when we take the honey off their hands. We come into the chapel, and we say: thank you. Half for you, half for me. We remember Diver, and how he asked God to send believers, and how the bees came, and people came too.’

  ‘But do you have to do the Collecting now? You don’t – um.’ I didn’t know how to say it. ‘You don’t need worshippers now, do you?’

  ‘We need to Collect every year, to keep the ritual going. When you don’t, the whole edifice collapses.’

  ‘You –’ I wanted to show him I got it. ‘You – lose the house and your way of life.’

  He came towards me. It was very quiet, all of a sudden, the only sound the low, constant static of the hum. A slight breeze caused the hairs on the back of my neck and on my arms to rise. I was afraid.

  ‘It’s not about winning, or losing. The ceremony is about our relationship with our surroundings. We need the bees to survive, and they need us to survive. Once you understand that, you understand the history of Vanes, you understand our family.’ He turned away, so I couldn’t see his face. ‘It’s not a game, Janey.’ His voice was soft, the edges of his words muffled, swallowed on the breeze. It was almost hypnotic and I shook myself, wanting to break out of this reverie. ‘It’s more than that. The fabric of society. The foundations of the country. What we believe in.’

  I wanted to be one of them, to fit in, but I was also my father’s daughter, I saw then, and that meant being allergic to notions of Empire and Country and all the things that bound Charles’s life together and which Daddy had come to reject. Still. I swallowed, pushing these reservations aside.

  ‘What do you want me to do?’ I asked, quietly.

  Charles was polishing some spoons with a soft cloth. He laid them on the altar and turned back to me. ‘Do you know it? The song we sing?’

  I shook my head. ‘I
’ve heard it. I don’t know what any of it means.’

  Very softly, he began singing.

  ‘I’ll sing you twelve, O,

  Twelve come for the comb, O!

  What are your twelve, O?

  Twelve for the twelve new hunters,

  Eleven for the eleven who went to heaven,

  Ten for the ten commandments,

  Nine for the nine bright shiners,

  Eight for the Spring Collectors,

  Seven for the seven stars in the sky,

  Six for the six-sides of the comb,

  Five for the five proud walkers,

  Four for the honey makers,

  Three, three, the rivals,

  Two, two, the beloved girls,

  Clothed all in green, O,

  One is one and all alone and evermore shall be so.’

  As he started singing, it was embarrassing. Then it was almost unbearable, his reedy, light voice, floating around the small space, ringing out, into the woods. His face cleared; it was totally without expression, turned towards the stacked tombs on either side of the altar. He was holding a candlestick and one of the spoons.

  I had no idea what to do, where to look, but after a while I realised: he didn’t care whether I was there or not. He was singing to himself. It ended, and he nodded. I raised my hands to clap, believe it or not, then let them drop.

  ‘You ask what it means,’ he said. ‘The twelve hunters are locals. Eleven lepers will die in Christ if they accept the sacrament. The ten commandments are the word of God and must be obeyed even in this pagan place. Nine bright shiners are the diamonds in the family ring which Sylvia wears, and which Joss’s wife will one day wear.’ Now he was counting them off on his fingers, going faster and faster. ‘Eight open the hives in April for the spring harvest. Seven stars make up the Plough, and when it is low in the sky that means August is here and we can collect. Six sides of the chapel, six sides of the cells. Five walkers walk with the hunters to the chapel every year. Four make the honey, that’s the women’s work. Three rivals are the men, it must be men, who stand to gain the most if the pact is broken. They must be watched. Two beloved girls, dressed in green and crowned with flowers, walk behind the procession. Now, they symbolise purity.’ He gave me an odd glance. ‘That’s very important. They must be pure. Then – ah, then there’s one alone, one outsider. They are the first to be invited in, they unlock the door. They, like the lepers, are nothing, no one. They remind us how lucky we are. That one day we will all be nothing again.’