Tell it to the Bees Read Free Page A

other things understood in her family: that her grandmother had died without saying farewell to her daughter; that her mother had married beneath her; that they’d rather Jean had been born pretty than clever.
    Wheeling her bicycle the short distance to supper, Jean paced her mood against the trees spreading high over the road. Their leaves shushed her feet, brittle and soft, and the clear, darkening sky was visible through their branches. Laying down her worries like this was an old trick, learned from something Jim had told her about, a Russian who couldn’t stop remembering things and had made it into his trade. He’d remember lists of words by placing them in his mind up and down the streets of his home town, until his head was so full that he’d have to do the same thing to forget them, walking round the streets in his mind till he’d cleared the words away again.
    So Jean leaned her worries up against the trees as she walked her way to supper, and by the time she had reached the twelfth elm, she had shrugged herself free, for now.
    In the normal way of things, supper with Jim and Sarah Marston was as close to a family affair as Jean came. Jim opened the door to her before she could turn the handle, and held out a glass.
    â€˜It’s a weak one now; been waiting for you so long, the ice’s melted.’
    Jean shrugged off her coat and swapped him the glass for her bag.
    â€˜You know not to put ice in my whisky,’ she said.
    â€˜You likely to be out tonight?’
    She took a long sip. ‘No, but you never know.’ She pointed up the stairs. ‘Are they?’
    â€˜Waiting for you. Go and send them off.’
    â€˜Them or me.’ She blew him a kiss and went up the stairs.
    The children smelled sweet and warm in their beds, doeeyed with near sleep.
    â€˜Buzzz, buzzz,’ Meg murmured as Jean took the book from the shelf. She kissed each of them on the forehead and sat on the chair between the beds.
    â€˜From where we stopped before,’ she said. ‘You remember, there’s Wild Man and Wild Woman in their cave and Wild Dog has gone to them on account of the delicious smell of the mutton. You both listening?’
    The two little girls nodded their heads into their pillows, and Jean began to read:
    â€˜â€¦ Wild Horse stamped with his foot and said, “I will go and see and say why Wild Dog has not returned. Cat, come with me.”
    â€˜â€œNenni!” said the Cat. “I am the Cat who walks by himself, and all places are alike to me. I will not come.” But all the same he followed Wild Horse softly, very softly, and hid himself where he could hear everything.’
    She read on until the Cat went far, far away and then, with another light kiss for each sleeping girl, she stopped, put the book back in the shelf and turned off the light.
    â€˜Sleep tight,’ she said.
    Jim watched Jean as she told them how their children slept. She spoke to the pair of them, but in truth she spokeonly to Jim. He took his time, as she talked, watching her, gauging how she was. He saw that she had changed her clothes for the evening. She wore stern two-piece suits for doctoring, but now she wore a summer dress that Sarah would probably tell him later had gone out of fashion several years ago. She had on the earrings her grandmother had left her, and her curly hair was getting long, so that she had to push it from her eyes more than once.
    He watched her roll her shoulders and sweep her hands over her face. He noticed her put her fingers to her neck and rub. Her gestures were as familiar to him as his own children’s. He stroked the side of his glass, the smooth, sheer cool. Jean told how Emma had nuzzled into her pillow and pretended to be Wild Horse, her child’s soft hair as his wild, long mane, and he laughed, and saw how now, when Jean smiled, the wrinkles round her eyes were strong. He hadn’t noticed them before.
    â€˜Shall we eat,