It was autumn and a cold wind swept over the water. Her father was at the airport to pick her up. She kissed him and noticed how gaunt he had become, as if it were
his
body being ravaged by cancer. She bitterly regretted not having come home more often. ‘Your mother doesn’t want any fuss,’ he said. ‘You know what she’s like. The last thing she wants is everyone walking around with long faces.’
‘Is there nothing that can be done?’ she asked.
‘Only a miracle will save her now.’ He turned his eyes away. ‘So, pray for one.’
They drove up the cobbled streets of pretty grey-shingled houses where trees had begun to shed their orange and yellow leaves like tears, and Trixie felt a rush of nostalgia for her childhood, when her heart was full of optimism. She watched the people wandering contentedly up the pavement, laughing in the soft evening sunshine, walking dogs on leads, holding the hands of small children, and she ached for what might have been. She gazed into the shop windows of the boutiques and imagined the serene, trouble-free lives of the shopkeepers. She’d spent so much time in New York she had forgotten how seductive Tekanasset was.
Her mother was in her cluttered sitting room lying beneath a blanket on the sofa. The fire was lit and classical music resounded from the CD player. Flowers adorned every surface and their perfume saturated the air with summer, long gone. Her dog lay at her feet, snoozing peacefully. When Grace saw her daughter, she reached out happily and smiled. ‘Darling, what a lovely surprise!’ Trixie bent down and gave her mother a kiss. She didn’t look as bad as she had feared. In fact, her father looked much worse. Grace just looked older.
‘You should have told me . . .’
Her mother cut her off. ‘Really, it’s not so bad.’ But the weary resignation behind her smile betrayed the gravity of her illness.
‘What wonderful flowers!’ Trixie exclaimed, forcing back her tears.
Grace was happy to change the subject. ‘Aren’t they lovely? Of course, the biggest bouquet is from Big. She’s been wonderful. Everyone’s been very kind.’ She smiled mischievously at Trixie. ‘Evelyn has offered to lend me one of her cooks. Fancy that, eh? Of course I declined.’
‘Silly woman. I imagine she wants to be chief mourner,’ said Trixie.
‘Well, she certainly wants to be in the know about everything.’
‘So she can pass it on to everybody else.’
Grace suddenly looked a little tired. ‘Darling, it’s lovely to see you. How well you look. How long are you staying?’
‘I’ve taken a week off. I’ve brought my laptop so I can work here.’
‘That’s good. I need help with the bees. We must put them to bed for the winter and I don’t think I’m strong enough to do it on my own.’
Trixie’s heart lifted at the thought of being useful. She had always loved helping her mother with the bees as a child and Grace had made an extra-small beekeeper’s suit especially. ‘I’d love to,’ she replied enthusiastically. ‘We need to watch out for wax moths and check that they have sufficient stores.’
Grace smiled, pleased. ‘Darling, you
were
listening!’
Trixie grinned sheepishly. ‘A little. I only wish I had listened more.’
In the next few days Trixie helped her mother with the bees. In case Trixie had forgotten, Grace explained why it was important to check the hives regularly to see if the bees were storing pollen and nectar, whether the queen was healthy and laying eggs, whether the bees were crowded, or if they looked likely to swarm. She spoke in a patient, tender voice, as if she were talking about her children, and it brought a lump to Trixie’s throat to see how much it mattered to her that the bees would be taken care of in the event of her death. ‘You can’t learn about beekeeping from books, Trixie,’ said Grace. ‘You have to watch an experienced beekeeper and learn that way, like I learned from my dad. It’s all about keeping the bees happy. The way to do that is to disturb them as little as possible. You have to have a gentle touch. They’re little characters, bees, and some of the older ones are very troublesome. You have to keep them especially happy.’
Trixie noticed that Grace was weak and tired easily. But she always smiled to mask any discomfort and her bees seemed to give her more pleasure than anything else. It was only when she took an insufferable amount of pills in the morning that Trixie realized how sick she was. Without them, she wondered whether Grace would be able to function at all.
She observed the gentle way her father looked after her mother. He had always been cold and aloof, but now, at seventy-three, he was thawing and a warm affection was growing between them, like blossom after a hard winter. She caught him gazing at her mother with a wistful expression on his face and his eyes were full of sorrow and regret. Having wondered what it was that had drawn her two very different parents together all those years ago, she now knew the answer. Love. Nothing else mattered.
‘Mum, what is it about bees that fascinates you so much?’ Trixie asked on the third evening, after they had lifted the lids on the hives and Grace had explained all the things a beekeeper has to look out for before putting them to bed until spring.
‘Let’s go and sit on the beach, shall we?’ Grace suggested. ‘I love sitting on the dunes and gazing out to sea. Come, we’ll take a couple of blankets and we won’t tell your father because he’ll only worry.’
A cold wind swept up the beach and the sea was dark and agitated. Clouds raced across the sky, playing hide-and-seek with the stars. They positioned themselves on a grassy dune and wrapped the blankets around their shoulders. Trixie lit a cigarette. Grace gazed out to the end of the world and wondered what happened on the other side. What came after?
‘You know what fascinates me about bees, Trixie? Life. That’s what’s astonishing about them. Their God-given creativity. Human beings can build cars and planes and fly to the moon. But it’s an intelligence beyond our understanding that makes the body work. Scientists could probably create a body and a brain but they couldn’t create intelligence, they couldn’t bring the body to life. It’s an intelligence beyond our understanding that governs the bees and their intricate way of life as well. We couldn’t produce honey, but these tiny little creatures make enough for themselves and for us and don’t complain. I find that extraordinary.’ She turned to her daughter and smiled sadly. ‘And it connects me to my youth and my father, who I loved so much.’
‘Did he approve of Dad?’
‘He loved Freddie. He knew Freddie was right for me long before I did.’ She chuckled. ‘He told me not to be so far-sighted that I’d miss what was under my nose. He was right, of course. I’d known Freddie all my life. We were very close, but I’d never thought of him in that way. He’d always been more like a brother.’
‘You’ve been married about fifty-five years, Mom. That’s quite an achievement.’
‘Yes, it is,’ she replied softly.
‘Dad’s always been remote, you know, hard to get close to. I think he’s mellowing with age.’
‘He’s a sweet and kind man underneath.’
‘That’s what you always say.’
‘Because I know him.’
‘And because you love him?’
‘Yes, I love him. We’ve been through tough times but I never contemplated leaving him. Your generation gives up the moment things get difficult. We have a sense of duty you don’t have. Even when . . .’ She hesitated, and her gaze was swallowed into the night. ‘Even when things got very hard, I never, ever contemplated leaving him.’ Her voice rose in a question, as if she couldn’t quite believe it. As if she had only just realized what that meant.
Trixie watched her closely. She knew so little of their past because they never talked about it. But that sentence was heavy with suggestion, opening a crack in a door through which Trixie glimpsed the allusion to a secret life.
‘I wish you would find someone to share your life with, Trixie,’ said Grace. ‘I’d feel happier going if I knew you were settled.’
‘Mom, happiness isn’t all about finding a man, you know. I don’t need a husband and children to make me happy. I have my job and my friends. I’m very content.’
Grace looked at her daughter gravely. ‘Listen to me, darling. Life is nothing if you don’t love.’
‘I love
you
,’ she replied with a shrug, and tears stung behind her eyes.
‘I know you do, darling,
and
you love Jasper.’
Trixie stubbed out her cigarette in the sand. ‘That was a long time ago,’ she answered quietly.
‘Darling, love doesn’t necessarily diminish over time and your first love is sometimes the strongest. But you have to let him go. You can’t let a heartbreak in the past ruin your chances in the present.’ She closed her eyes and laughed bitterly. It was a lesson her father might have tried to teach
her
, had he lived.
‘No one comes close to Jasper, Mom. That’s the truth. No one.’ Trixie’s eyes glittered in the flame as she cupped her hands around her lighter. ‘There, I’ve said it out loud. No one can compare to him.’ She looked defeated. Small, suddenly, and lost.
Grace put her arm around her daughter and drew her close. She pressed her cheek against her hair and sighed. ‘I can’t tell you who to love. The heart chooses for you and there’s nothing anybody can do about that. I love you, Trixie. You’ll always be my little girl even though you’re grown-up now with a life that’s independent of me. I’m proud of you.’ She squeezed her eyes shut, unable to bear the thought of parting. ‘I just want to be reassured that you’re all right.’
That night Trixie couldn’t sleep. She went downstairs and sat smoking on the swing chair, gazing out over the gardens and the sea beyond. She remembered love and what it had felt like. As much as she told herself she didn’t care about marriage and a family, in truth she cared very much. She didn’t yearn for children, but she yearned for someone to love. She longed to put her arms around a man and know that he loved her back. Her thoughts turned to Jasper, as they always did when she drank too much and grew morose. She wondered what he was doing now. Whether he had married and had children. Whether he was still playing the guitar, or whether he had lost it along with her and Tekanasset.
As she allowed her thoughts to wander she caught sight of a shadow by the bees. At first she thought it was her mother, but she was asleep upstairs and for some reason she sensed the presence was a man. She stood and walked around the side of the house. There was no one there, just the hives and the cold wind that blew in off the ocean. She remained a moment, listening to the waves and the slow rhythm of her breathing. She couldn’t see anyone but she still felt as if she wasn’t alone. A cold shiver rippled over her skin. She inhaled a final puff and threw her cigarette into the grass. As she did so her attention was drawn to the shed at the bottom of the garden. It was as if someone had tapped her shoulder and pointed. As if someone
wanted
her to look at the door, which was now ajar and rattling softly in the wind.
Slowly she wandered down the path. It was dark but for the silver light of the moon that caught the damp branches of leafless shrubs and glistened. She pushed open the door and stepped inside. In all the years she had lived in this house she had never set foot in her mother’s garden shed. There had never been any reason to. Now she switched on the bulb that hung from a wire on the ceiling and looked about her. Her heart began to thump guiltily as she realized this was her mother’s private place. Like Grace’s sitting room, the shed was disorderly. There were gardening tools, packets of fertilizer and seed, boxes of dry bulbs, equipment for the hives, empty honey jars and old, disused crownboards and frames. It smelt sweet and musty. She glanced about, not sure what she was meant to be looking for.
Once again she felt the very strong presence of someone nearby. She glanced over her shoulder to find nothing but the draught blowing in through the door. She took a deep breath and silently asked, ‘What do you want me to find?’ She stood waiting a moment, expecting to be told. But no one answered. The door rattled, causing her to jump. Then her eyes lifted to a mahogany box on the shelf above the door frame. It was the last place she would have looked, being above her head and hidden beneath a pile of gardening books. Her heart rate accelerated as she reached up and brought it down. Hastily she lifted the lid. She gasped as she discovered within two thick piles of airmail letters tied up with string.
She lifted the first and saw that they were addressed to Miss Bernadette Short at the Beekeeper’s Cottage in Walbridge. Her heart stumbled. Walbridge:
that
was where Jasper came from. Trembling, she looked at the address on the other bundle of letters. Captain Rufus Melville, written in her mother’s distinctive hand, to the British Forces Post Office. She didn’t recognize that name and had never heard her mother speak of him. At the bottom of the box were two other letters in the same handwriting as the ones to Bernadette, addressed simply to Miss Grace Hamblin. On the back of the envelopes was the family crest of lion and dragon that had been on the back of Jasper’s envelopes. The blood pulsated in her temples. She couldn’t ask her mother what it all meant because if she had wanted her to know, she would have told her.
She sank to the floor and read the two to Miss Grace Hamblin first. One was a letter written after her father’s death, the other a note wishing her luck on her wedding day. Both were signed Rufus and had an embossed
R
at the top of the page, like the
J
on Jasper’s. They must be related, but how? One was called Duncliffe, the other Melville.
Confused, she untied the bundle of letters addressed to Bernadette, which was loosely bound with garden string. She realized immediately that ‘little B’ was not Bernadette at all but Grace, and that they had devised the false name to avoid being discovered. By the dirty stains and creases on the paper, she presumed her mother must have read them many times over the years.
Rufus Melville’s letters were romantic and sweet, with sketches of bees haphazardly placed among the words. He wrote profusely about the war and his experiences, and the ferocity of his love. He repeated his desire for a future together in every letter. The last one was dated September 1942.