“Perhaps they don’t want to live in a hive that looks like a house,” suggested Rory thoughtfully.
“What makes you say that?” Esme asked, watching him watch the bees.
“Perhaps they want to live in a hive like in Pooh Bear,” he said. “You know, sort of shaped like a pinecone but with ridges going around.” He looked balefully up at her. “They might not know that that’s their home. They might think they’re lost.” He looked again at the angry bees. “Or kidnapped.”
Esme looked at his little pale face with its screwed up frown. His freckles seemed enormous, as though they were floating in clear water above his skin. Would she ever know what was going on in that dear, sweet little head of his? Would she ever stop fearing for him? The love she felt for him, and the flicker of anguish that always accompanied it, vibrated right through her.
“I don’t think bees have very big brains, darling,” she said warmly, resisting the urge to squeeze him, knowing he hated it. “In fact, I am sure I have read somewhere that kidnapping is definitely not an issue in the bee kingdom. Actually, I believe bees don’t even have a word for it. Did you know that? But you could be right about the hive. Perhaps we should try and find a pinecone-shaped one. What do you think?”
Rory handed her back the jar and spoon.
“Don’t care,” he said. “Don’t like honey anyway.” This was true. He never had liked honey. He only came with her because he didn’t want to miss another major attack. Please, Esme silently begged the bees, please just calm down and let us come close. Please let something go right for me today. But somehow the buzzy little bodies sensed that most of the family preferred marmalade and so stayed irate.
Rory turned and started toward the house, but before he got far, thought of something else and turned back to her, Brown as ever glued to his side. “It’s not true,” he said, with a slightly accusatory tone, “about bees not having very big brains. They haven’t got very big bodies and their brains actually take up quite a lot of room.” He squinted at her and stuck out his jaw slightly, as if waiting for her to argue with him even though he was plainly right.
“When you were little, you used to believe everything I said,” Esme heard herself say petulantly.
“Henry got me a book on bees from the library,” her son answered. “I know stuff for myself now.”
“Yes, well, I’m right about them not having a word for kidnapping,” Esme called after his small retreating back. He was going, she knew, to seek out Henry, who might be permanently grumpy with her but was the picture of patience and devotion with Rory, who in turn adored him. She supposed she should feel grateful, and she did, mostly.
She traipsed up the stairs to make sure her son and father-in-law found each other, then snatched the Sunday Times from the kitchen floor and tripped back down to Granny Mac’s room, only remembering to clench her buttocks on the last five steps.
The stench of Embassy Regal hit her the moment she opened the door into the gloom; Rod was waking up Maggie May because he thought he had something to say to her.
“I haven’t got long,” she said, taking up her position on the end of the bed. “You would not believe what a disgusting mess Rory’s room is and I haven’t done any laundry for days. There’s a pile on our floor that looks like something from an old episode of Dr. Who, Granny Mac. It’s practically composting. As for the garden, well, the veggie patch needs napalming and I am long overdue for goat-pooh patrol. That wretched thing has the fastest bowels of any creature I know, including my husband and son and that’s saying something.”
“Well, if you can’t squeeze me into your busy schedule . . .” Granny Mac huffed.
“Don’t be silly,” protested Esme. “I’ll always make time for you, goose. Look.” She rustled the newspaper. “Jemima Jones’s first column. She’s got a boy called Cosmo who’s asked her if all the other mothers are as beautiful as she is.”
“Gay,” Granny Mac said matter-of-factly. “Gay, gay, gay. What else does she say?”
“‘Juggling family and career is an issue with which many British families struggle,’” Esme read in a simpering voice, “‘and we are certainly no exception. The only difference for us, really, is that our children are quite mature and of above average intelligence in their demograph so we can explain to them, without tears or tantrums, why Daddy never comes home before bedtime and often still isn’t there in the morning.’ Oh, that sounds healthy.
“‘But back to our precious little four-year-old’—he’s only four?—‘and his adorable question. When we got home from the Dorchester, where can I just say Camilla was looking positively glowing (what is it that Charles gives her?), I snuck into his room and looked at him curled up in his tiny replica of Michael Schumacher’s Ferrari.’ Oh, couldn’t afford the real thing, then?
“‘I had met so many women that night,’” Esme read on, “‘from all walks of life, rich and poor, short and tall, natural and frosty-tipped, and it had struck me at one point as my mind wandered while talking to Cherie (yes, that one!), that despite our differences, we are really all the same. We’re all trying to hold together the fabric that makes up our lives, be they grand or oh so simple.
“‘“Yes, Cosmo,” I whispered to my precious sleeping son. “Yes. All the other mummies are as beautiful as me. In their own special ways.”’”
Esme dropped the paper into her lap, her head thumping against the wall as she stared at the ceiling. She could read no further.
“What the hell is she on about?” asked Granny Mac. “‘The fabric that makes up our lives’? I thought it was a society column not a bloody sewing circle.”
Esme shook her head, misery seeping out of every pore.
“Esme!” Granny Mac said sharply. “What is the matter?”
“I don’t know,” Esme answered unhappily. “I just don’t know. But I feel wretched, Granny Mac. Wretched.” Her voice caught and she fought to control it. “I’ve been so good up until now. So strong.” She stopped. “And I’ve been baking again just like you told me to, which has been glorious, my goodness, just glorious. It’s made a difference. It really has. I mean the blackness has gone.”
“But?” Granny Mac prompted.
“But still I have this terrible feeling. Oh, I don’t know.” Esme sought the right words. “It’s like I’ve got a great big itch somewhere inside me but I can’t tell where so I can’t scratch it but I can’t concentrate on anything else while it’s itchy. Have you ever felt like that, Gran?”
“Well, I had flea bites once,” Granny Mac retorted, “from a particularly unpleasant cat called Pam that came with your Granddad Mac. Calamine lotion was the thing back then, I believe.”
“I’m trying to tell you my deepest darkest thoughts and calamine lotion is the best you can do?”
“And you think your deepest darkest thoughts are so fascinating? I’ve not a clue what you’re on about with your scratching and your itching, Esme. If you want me to help you, you have got to help yourself, and spouting nonsense about bloody eczema for God’s sake is getting us nowhere.”
It was no wonder Rory liked Shrek, Esme thought. The caustic green ogre probably reminded the poor child of his great-grandmother. She abandoned any attempt at argument.
“I just want to be the old me,” she said, simply, instead. “I want to go to charity dos at the Dorchester and drink fru-fru cocktails with Cherie Blair and have good old-fashioned uncomplicated fun.” She sighed. “But everything is just so horribly tainted with what’s happened to us that I can’t imagine ever escaping it. I can’t imagine ever being that old uncomplicated Esme ever again.”
“Och, Esme.” Her grandmother was not entirely sympathetic. “She wasn’t so hot, that girl.”
“Granny Mac!”
“Well, it’s time you started facing facts, lassie. You can’t be her again. She’s gone. It’s true, what’s happened to you has made you a different person. We none of us can go back and undo what’s been done, Esme. We just have to live with t
he consequences and find a way to move forward despite them.”
“Well, don’t you think I have been doing that, these past two years?” Esme was stunned. “Other people would have just melted into the ground and disappeared and God knows most of the time that’s what I wanted to do but I didn’t. I have moved forward, I have kept moving forward.”
“And this past month?”
“This past month is your fault,” Esme cried. “You know it is. I can’t do it on my own. It’s too hard. It’s too lonely.”
“Oh, not doing enough for you, am I? Well, I’ll get up and dance a highland fling then, how about that? Never mind two strokes and the recent devastation of pneumonia.”
Esme ignored this, rustling the Sunday Times furiously instead. “Well, Jemima Jones isn’t helping, I can tell you that for nothing. Turning up with three delightful children, a brand-new career and not a single bloody crow’s-foot in sight.”
“You’re going to blame this conniption on Jemima Jones?” Granny Mac asked incredulously. “Oh yes, that works. That works really well. Good job. Brilliant.” A deep sigh permeated the room. “You know, you can point your finger any which way you like, Esme, but I think you know that if your bread isn’t rising, you need to look at your ingredients.”
Esme was silent.
“There are weevils in your flour, lassie.”
“There’s nothing in my flour, Granny Mac.”
“I’m telling you, there are weevils.”
“This has nothing to do with weevils!”
“It’s all about weevils.”
“Well, I don’t want to talk about weevils.”
“Well, you shouldn’t expect to start feeling better until you do talk about weevils, Esme, and in the meantime don’t come in here wasting my time with your incessant moaning.”
The room pinged with unfamiliar tension. Rod’s “Sailing” faded into the background and the smell of cigarettes slithered out through the cracks in the wallpaper.
The br-rr-ing of the telephone upstairs shattered the ensuing quiet and Esme pushed herself shakily off the bed, landing with a thump on the floor. She snatched the Sunday Times and fled the room without a backward glance.
“Don’t worry, Henry,” she called, taking the stairs two at a time. “I’ll get it.”
She slid into the sitting room on the third floor—the spilled vase water from the quince incident had rendered the ground floor phone line unusable—and grabbed the receiver on the eighth ring, gasping into it: “Esme Stack!”
“I will never get used to that ridiculous name,” a voice crackled down the line. “Really, Es. There was nothing wrong with MacDougall.”
“Charlie!” Esme cried, delighted. “My God, I can’t believe it. Where are you?”
“Still in Honkers, darling, but not for much bloody longer. I’m on my way home—can you believe it? Never mind SARS, I never did get the hang of chopsticks, confounded things, although I’ve developed quite a taste for snake meat. And skin for that matter. I’m practically all reptile these days, inside and out.”
Esme laughed as Charlie’s nonsense washed over her. “Oh, Charlie, it’s so good to hear from you, I can’t tell you,” she said. “I really can’t.”
“Well, seeing me in the flesh ought to give you even more of a thrill,” he said modestly. “I’m flying in on Tuesday and I thought I might come out to the deepest, darkest countryside for the weekend and stay. Check out the good life, Felicity Kendal and all that. Eat some organic wasabe or whatever it is you have there and maybe grab a glass or six of dandelion wine.”
Esme assured him she could provide alcohol from a totally synthetic source and food that had definitely been genetically modified and put the phone down, tingling with anticipation at the thought of his visit. Something had gone right! Charlie did not have a sensitive bone in his body but had been blessed with the gift of good timing. If one needed a shoulder to cry on, he was no help at all, but if one needed someone to make them laugh and forget for a moment that they needed a shoulder to cry on, he was.
She heard voices on the floor below her, followed by Henry’s tapping and shuffling.
“We’re going outside,” he called in his gruff voice.
“Right-oh,” Esme called back. She flopped back in her overstuffed armchair and contemplated the Style section, yet again. Could she stomach more Jemima? Could she keep away? Why did she feel so drawn to details of a life that only made her feel more inadequate than ever about her own? It was sick.
She turned to page two. What was little Cosmo doing now? she wondered. Bringing peace to the Middle East and curing cancer?
“Oh, fuck you, you silly cow!” she said churlishly, throwing the paper on the floor and kicking it away.
“I beg your pardon?” a voice said from the doorway. It was, of course, Henry, with Rory standing beside him.
“She said ‘bitch’ before, too,” Rory informed his grandfather.
“That’s entrapment,” protested Esme. “I thought you were outside! A person can swear to themselves, can’t they?” Henry and Rory looked at each other but said nothing. Esme rolled her eyes. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry. What’s up?”
“Hugo has suggested a walk on the beach before lunch,” Henry said in his tight, clipped voice.
“What a good idea,” Esme said, going over and ruffling Rory’s curls and throwing a smile at her father-in-law in hope of defrosting him. “I’ll have the bread baked and the soup heated and sitting downstairs in the garden by the time you come back.” Rory shot her a strange look, then picked up his grandfather’s hand and led him downstairs.
“She likes bread more than the beach,” he said as they crossed the lawn to Pog’s shed. “But that’s okay.” Henry said nothing.
Pog, on hearing their approach, emerged, his face falling when he saw Esme was not with them.
“She’s getting lunch,” Henry said, and the three male Stacks, along with Brown, headed out the gate and down the leafy lane toward the unnecessarily winding road that led past the Meare to the beach.
Seabury was a village made, literally, for sunny Sundays such as this one. The Meare was peppered with brightly colored boats being rowed, with varying degrees of skill, by a holidaying couple here, a squabbling family there, as the local swan population did its best to stay aloof and avoid collisions.
The sky was as clear and blue as it could possibly be, the sun warming the giant oaks around the lake and sending Chinese whispers rippling through their leaves.
“Lovely day for it.” Mrs. Coyle smiled at them as she cleared a picnic table outside the Tea Shop of scone crumbs. “Mrs. Stack not joining you, then?”
“Busy in the kitchen,” Pog said ruefully, raising his eyebrows, and the four of them turned to look at the House in the Clouds, rising out of the trees, stiff-backed and standoffish from this angle.
“No rest for the wicked, eh?” Mrs. Coyle winked. “I hear her vegetables got away on her again this year. Had a carload in here yesterday talking about them. Couldn’t shut them up!”
Pog smiled and the Stacks kept walking.
Esme was summarily regarded as the kinkiest gardener in all of East Anglia. Nothing came out the way she expected it to or even where she expected it to. Her zucchinis had scandalized Gaga and Jam-jar by all growing in the shape of giant phalluses complete with bollocks that were apparently some sort of fungal parasite. A coachload of Americans had actually stopped to take photos of them and they’d been featured on the local TV news channel. Only one artichoke out of the hundred that she planted grew, and she had been so proud she had not picked it. The Goat had got to it first, eating it in an overnight rampage that also saw one of Rory’s Wellingtons shredded and gobbled and excreted in unsightly piles around the property.
When they reached the warm pebbles of Seabury Beach, the Stack males took off their shoes and socks. Rory, thrilled by the temperate breeze, the sparkling blue ocean, the earsplitting barks of his overexcited Labrador, ran up and down splashing
in the shallow waters of the shoreline, waving his arms and shouting to himself. Henry and Pog sat on a wooden bench at the foot of the sand dunes and watched him.
“Your mother never cared for the beach,” Henry said, out of the blue, totally astonishing his son. “Made her fret. The waves, you know, coming and coming, never stopping or some such nonsense.”
She’d been gone nearly twenty years yet still it hurt Henry so much to think of Grace that usually he simply couldn’t. Usually, he kept his memories of her locked in a vault in his mind where he managed to contain all the painful emotion he preferred not to confront.
His sons, he knew, had suffered as a result of his inability to share his grief. They had lost a mother, after all, and the two of them only in their early twenties. But he had lost his wife, the love of his life, his reason for getting up in the morning. How could he console his sons when all he wanted to do was howl with rage at the injustice of it all, to shake his fists at God or whoever had planted Grace’s faulty genes? He’d left his boys to sink or swim.
Milo, his firstborn, had swum, finding strength in his career and his marriage to, rather sensibly Henry felt, a fellow broker with a no-nonsense hairdo and good childbearing hips. They were settled in America now, doing everything according to plan, safe and happy and no trouble to anyone.
Hugo was a different creature, always had been. Dreamy, soft, more like Grace, he supposed. He’d swum too but perhaps he had floundered a little, was floundering still.
Henry thought of Esme and his jaw clenched. His first impression of his daughter-in-law-to-be had not been a good one. She was right to think he considered her flighty and unsuitable. It had been a cold, winter night at his old house in Kent, and Hugo had turned up all bright-eyed and pink-cheeked with this jittery, bubbly, brassy redhead dressed ridiculously in fake fur and men’s shoes. She’d been nervous and had drunk too much champagne, embarrassing herself by blurting out, untruthfully, as it happened, that she was abandoning her so-called career in journalism to make bikinis out of run-over cat skins.