The cleft of a hill blocks a miserly sun, rising slow and lazy. Her thin smock clings chill and comfortless and yet she does not move. The cold wraps around her goosepimpled skin, blue, tightwoven. And in her clenched hand the phone is buzzing. She holds it tighter to feel its motion and moves deeper into the undergrowth. Scratches are innumerable, skin tingling with pain, blood and water. Sleepy birds an anxious rustling somewhere deeper in. She shivers and cleaves tight to the ground no longer certain that this is any fun.
Am I scaring you yet? The message from an unknown but known sender. It’s been going on all night this game, this cat and mouse thing. Touch table tennis, dirty words and dirt all over her body, her mind satiated with shifting equilibriums. Fear. Focus. Shared imperatives to arouse and thrill, but going too far now. Is it becoming murderous or is that just more of the resonance?
She can’t get out. He knows she is there, huddled in her dirty damp dress, shivering under the shrubs. Sparrows are starting to chatter, the slope still blocks the light, but light is coming stealthy and toxic. Sparrows and light together they betray her. Dress rending a sad small cry as she creeps slowly higher and sees a crouched form. It creeps menacing slow in the paling darkness as the night gently seeps away. A rock and a break in the shrubs to her right and she reaches out and throws herself into the open.
He sees only a screaming banshee as she jumps down from her small vantage point, unseen rock in hand. The blood seeps slowly into his eyes as he cries out but he cannot remember the safe word. She raises her hand again and brings down the rock hard so close, its mass splitting her nails and grazing his head. He looks up at her fury, mouth gaping and lap wet. Into his open maw she drops a handful of stones and damp earth. From his open hand she takes the car key and walks out into the rising sun.
His car parked careless and crooked. He notices he’s left it on double yellow lines as he gets out and hurries into the newsagents. A dingy dusk is slowly coming on. Autumn’s stealth reaching out. Summer’s languid sprawl stifled. As he shuts the shop door behind him, the radio is playing Bye Bye Baby, a thin print baffled sound. The racks of magazines and newspapers are silent, unperused witnesses. At the counter he says “twenty Rothmans” fingering the change in his rough and calloused hand and finding a fifty pence piece. Slaps it down “there you go”. And she doesn’t flinch at the sharp bang but instead slides her eyes over him, bold and blatant. There’s a moment of sullen stillness, before she slowly turns her back.
When she reaches for the cigarettes high on the shelf behind her, he notices how her shirt rises, just above the top of her jeans. An edge of flesh. He can see painted nails only slightly chipped, imagines soft smelling hair, moist open mouths. A fascination that should have been momentary persists. The Bay City Rollers are singing “she’s got me but I’m not free”. As the chorus cuts in, she hands over the few pence of change. There’s the glimmer of a smirk as if she’s made some decision. He tries and fails to stare down her brittle stonebound eyes. He sees some decision that could be in his favour, or perhaps not. By the time he’s pocketed the change, she’s pasted on a real smile, doing her best against the odds to be winsome. “You’re not from around here are you?” “No” he says scooping up his cigarettes. “Thanks”. And he hurries back to the double yellow lines. As he leaves the shop, he notices the sign with its hours dangling and bouncing on the moving door, opening and closing, opening and closing. Six o’clock he thinks. Not so far away. Unbidden the thought. “Maybe I’ll pop back.” And he glances over his shoulder, lazy hand raised.
The hotel is only a short distance up the slowly clogging road. He has a map and directions, and the journey was simple enough. He’s already followed most of it, not counting the unscheduled stop for smokes. Frowning out from tall and dreary undergrowth the downtrodden hotel is hard to see from the road. But he sees the tired sign and pulls in. He gets his tatty bag from the backseat, and picks up the cigarettes from the front. In reception he opens the pack and deep delicious that first long lungful. He signs his name and takes the key on its heavy fob. He turns towards the musty stairwell and takes the stairs two at a time in a lanky, uneven stride. The cigarette’s in a corner of his mouth and thoughts of her are in his jeans. The room is small, colourless, and growing greyer with night now fully formed. Bed. Wardrobe. Chest of drawers with a rusting Teasmaid and ancient biscuits plastic wrapped and dusty. He throws his bag down on the single bed and looks at his watch. It’s nearly twenty to six.
Stubbing out the cigarette in the ashtray on the bedside table he looks again. Still twenty to six. He lies down watching grey spirals rise slowly towards the ceiling, fading to tar. What next between now in this gloomy room full of unspecified browns and his job interview in the morning. As if he didn’t know. Hours and hours in the room’s soulsapping shadows, or at the hotel’s little bar also washed with unspecified browns, peppered with unspecified men like him. On the road looking for something else. Something else maybe at six o’clock. Another cigarette. He’d run out as he had passed the racecourse on the A19 into York. He knew he should cut down as he crawled in traffic through Fulford and had even pondered using this trip as an excuse to give up; a sort of marker between where he’s been and where he’s going. Who he was and who he thinks he should be. From the dismal to the thrill of the unknown. All he had to do was get through the traffic and turn right into Heslington Lane to Egbert’s Hotel. Get to his interview in the morning and his life would change. No more fags, no more birds. No more picking winners that didn’t win. Tomorrow they’d love him. Tomorrow he’ll be the winner. The one. Bye Bye Baby. Then he’d seen the corner shop, a beacon in the drear. With singular determination and no will power at all, he had lurched the car onto the yellow lines and gone inside for Rothmans.
Mika had watched him with narrowing eyes. Thin, wirey, old. He’s really old she said to herself, proper wrinkly. Might make a change. They say at school that older men are better at it, slower. She’s not sure what slower or better might mean, but the wrinkles would be a first. From his sharp blue eyes to his neck, the visible lines mapped a life and told old stories. She didn’t care much about what he had to say, but what would the rest look like? She pondered this as the lights were coming on out in the street and the traffic was thickening and slowing. She called up the stairs “I’m going now. Don’t forget to lock up.” A grunt and a foot on the stair and Mika flipped the lightswitch and stepped out into the faceless evening. She had homework she was supposed to do. She had promised to do it, but it was boring. And there was no one at home until her Mum got back from the dogtrack later. Should she linger? It’s cold and starting to rain. Was he likely to come back? Would she dare if he did?
At school next morning all the talk was of the corpse found in Egberts Hotel, stretched out, bound to the bed and strangled. Sixteen Rothmans in a pack on the bedside table and an empty ashtray the only clue.
Watching our hens is one of my favourite time-wasters. I call it thinking about stuff, but really it’s just mindless voyeurism. Seeing them peck and scratch about takes the mind into another realm, a much simpler one where the range of decisions to be made is limited. It’s like watching television where you are basically watching other people work, so it’s restful.
Today my favourite hen to ponder is Dahlia Lamé, so named because of her long neck and heavy fringe which makes her look like a llama. She is golden, silky and might be related to the Dalai Lama (not really). In the world of Dahlia Lamé, food is the top priority. She’s usually first out of the chicken coop in the morning, as long as she manages to elbow (do chickens have elbows)? her way past Marlena, who’s about twice her size and black with copper overtones. Dahlia Lamé makes straight for the feeder and pecks aggressively and noisily at the food for much longer than the other hens or our feisty little Peking Bantam cockerel. That might be because the cockerel usually has sex on his mind first thing in the morning. But he struggles to get out of bed, is sleepy and prone to laziness and as he is too small to reach Marlena, he soon gives up. He’s usually distracted by Dahlia Lamé’s urgent peck, peck, pecking so he joins her for breakfast. The cockerel is called Mustapha and his plumage looks at first glance to be black, but it is far from black. It ranges from iridescent greens and purples to white when the wind blows up beneath his underskirts. Mustapha’s really quite a magnificent little fellow.
The rest of the girls are distracted by the corn we throw out for them every morning, so Dahlia Lamé has no competition at the feeder and can eat and eat. Mustapha is a gentleman, so whilst he joins Dahlia Lamé, he does not crowd her. She eats consistently but never seems to get any bigger, unlike her sister Lavender who’s the bravest chicken I have ever met. Plump, pale purple and very round this little bantam hen waits every morning until all the other chickens are out of the coop. She sits patiently on the perch a metre or so up from the floor of the henhouse. She waits for the perfect moment. She checks wind speed and direction, she checks possible destination points and has an eye out for any obstructions. She seems to wait for confirmation that all preflight checks are complete and satisfactory. When she has it, plus a comforting little tickle under her little chicken chin she’s suddenly and noisily aloft. Lavender mostly lands with a bump about three metres from her perch, following a relentlessly downwards trajectory. Lavender gives herself a little huffle before scampering on her feathery feet to some distant corner of the enclosure. She remembers breakfast and then scampers back to the others. By tomorrow her failure is forgotten.
Why am I telling you this? It’s because today I have to waste time, abuse it and slap it about a bit. I have to let time dissipate, melting and dribbling away, gone forever. I don’t know why, but some days are like that, some days need that. And if you are reading this, you probably understand and I am not alone after all.
An ear-biter is a special sort of US Postal Worker. Well, clearly special if ear-biting is their thing. Apparently in or around 1845 a US postal employee chewed off a man’s ear in a fight. Lovely. We don’t know if the ear-biter was male or female, but either way it must have been one hell of a brawl. And what was it about? Did the bitten one pinch the ear-biter’s stack of wafer seals? Or maybe it was sealing wax, ruby red and luscious? Maybe it was the other way around?
Just imagine the queue in the post-office, gathering and swirling next to the counter, striving to get a glimpse of the fight on the other side. The people in their complicated mid-century clothes and hats would be doing their best to crane over to get a better view. They will have seen a squirming mass of petticoats and shirt tails, eye shades askew and desperately rolling across the floor to gain the upperhand. Ineffective kicks from the ear-biter would raise up her clothes giving the fascinated onlookers more than a glimpse of intriguing multilayered fabrics. The ladies in the audience catching their breath would fleetingly look away. With her knees released and her ankles free from her underskirts, the ear-biter could then do her sweaty best to get him in the goolies. But he was too strong and heavy for her. Despite her wiry youth and his paunchy impairments he gradually pinned her down. It was his moment of triumph and it looked like it was all over, until he made his fatal error.
Desperate to retrieve the sealing wax he had the idea that he could use one forearm and his heavy bulk to hold her still, while with the other he could reach out to get the sealing wax. He had forgotten that he would have to turn his head to get sight of it. Big mistake. Still clutching the sealing wax tight and aloft the ear-biter saw her chance. She wrenched her head up and clamped her sharp young teeth on her enemy’s grubby ear. With sublime focus, she clenched her jaws and ignored the warm blood soon flowing into her nostrils and mouth. Her opponent’s primordial roar of pain did not distract her. Nor the scent of stale US Postal Service coffee breath or the sense of rancid spittle in her hair. She clung tight to the sealing wax and the ear as she struggled to get even more of a leg out of the petticoats to land an effective kick.
The collective gasps and cries from onlookers and their fellow postal workers did nothing to slow either protagonist. The agony of the bite was making him dizzy and yet he did not shift position or loosen his grip on the woman. Roaring in pain and anger he could not do anything other than double down, reinforcing his hold on her and stretching even further to reach his sealing wax. His mind was approaching a delirium of agony, but somewhere in the pain he wondered why he had lent it to her in the first place. He should have known that coquettish smile and the downcast eyes were not to be trusted. He should have known that her dainty touch on his arm was about nothing more than stealing his sealing wax. It was so very red and luscious after all.
And then the collosal agony of her pointy toed shoe hitting his most tender parts forced a paroxysm of limbs and all thoughts turned to starry. His no longer outstretched hand clutched down to comfort and cradle his very source, as the stars blossomed and his breath seized up. Sensing victory, she held fast his ear which both of them could feel slowly tearing away from his head. An immense sob was welling up inside him hard on the heels of his agonised squeals. At this point his post office colleagues reckoned things had gone far enough. They starting hauling him off of her prone and dishevelled form, pulling down her skirts to protect her frail female modesty. But this effort to part the pair only made things worse, on account of the ear. Bellowing as another renewed flight of pain sped through him, he felt the remnants of his ear’s attaching tissues fully separate from his skull. He had an amplified awareness of pain. Excess noise confused him. Stinging surges of cold air hit parts of his auditory canal not previously exposed and now bereft of protection.
She scrambled to her feet and stood with arms raised up. One fist bore a half-chewed ear and the other its previous owner’s sealing wax. Panting she stared at the onlookers wild-eyed, hair a mess and someone else’s blood dripping from her chin. Victorious.
It was hot. The air shimmered with noise, sweat, heat, and cigarette smoke hung languid in the air. Summer Saturday. 1962. Protest march. Protest celebration. Camping. They were talking just a metre or two away, laughing, looking in the direction of the television camera, but not into it. Oozing youth, novel, fresh. The sound guy’s got his hand up high and the furry microphone is swaying just above their heads. They don’t stop their chat. They don’t bother. Music chat matters more.
It was humid. The air dripped wet and warm and all around the people were pressing in and trying to get closer to the two men. Two men who had just been on the bandstand inside the tent. The two men who might be famous. The taller of the pair was smoking and smirking, scanning the crowd. The other was just smiling guileless and happy, pleased to be playing with this great man. Young. He wasn’t tired or hot or scanning the crowd. He was just excited to be there. Excited to be playing, to be heard. Excited to be with the others supporting the movement. The movement. It was movement everywhere. Swarms of people there for the politics, there for the music. Television crews there to fill their channels. Disarmament. Ban the bomb. Peace. And there were those who came only to be entertained, to dance, to get legless, to have a tale to tell on Monday at the office. The long day and evening and night stretched ahead, sliding along an open road. Time was moving too.
It was anxious. An atmosphere crackling with energies, bouncing and absorbing sound and light. Unseen, unrecognised, unacknowledged desire simmered. Watching the two musicians a young woman with a gap in her front teeth and a mass of swept back dark hair. She was struggling trying to work out how to talk to them. She wanted to tell them how much she liked their music. Truly. She wanted to say how much she admired their trumpeting and drumming. Truly. She wanted just to say. Truly. But each time she started coming forward, trying to frame the words with her worried lips and dry tongue, she somehow got stuck. No sound came out. Truly.
It was temptation. Her hand raised to her mouth, fingers pulling softly on her lower lip, and still they two stood chatting and oblivious. At least one was oblivious. She could hear them going on about one of the numbers, a solo here, a rim shot there and what the rest of the set should look like. Who should go first. When. The signal. And no words for her even though she was so close. But a sly glance as a cigarette is puffed. She didn’t see it through the smoke and the short cough that followed. She felt her wedding ring heavy on her hand as her fingers worked some more at her lip. The shimmer of someone else’s gold mingling with the warm air’s golden shimmer and the light that shone on the two men in front of her.
It was noisy. From the tent behind her she could hear musicians tuning up again, running through random bits of scales, strumming and plinky plonking on an ancient upright. They were getting ready for the next set and the two men lifted their chins ever so slightly, aware of their own absences. She must do it now, must move forward, must take control of her nerves and somehow tell them how much she loves what they do, how much she wants to be part of it. Truly. And how much it matters that they share so much of themselves. And how her love and adulation is crushing her. Truly.
It was beginning. “What’s this bird doing? Hovering, what? Do you think she’s after a fag?” talking over her, to her, at her. And as the taller one turns to offer her a lighted cigarette she’s turning, head down, faced flushed and gone. As she hurries anxious fingers shift the gold band around and around. As she twists and twists she finds the golden band sliding off into her open palm and as sudden she turns back to the two men. She slips the ring into her handbag, reaching in one smooth movement for the cigarette. “Don’t mind if I do. Maureen.” “Tony.” And as his young colleague’s eyes grow wider, Tony takes Maureen by the arm and heads towards the tent where the sound of the music is getting more insistent. “Come on. We’re on. Let me get you a drink before we start.” He looks back over his shoulder with a leer and a wink and he drops an arm over her shoulder, a shadow in the sunshine. She stares up wide-eyed, blushing, her fingers once again on her lip. Her intentions shifting. As Tony and Maureen move away and disappear, the producer approaches the camera and the sound man lowers his boom. “That’s a wrap. I’ll show it to her later. That’ll be an interesting one eh?” he jokes. The smiling drummer looks at his shoes and wonders what the two others are talking about. He hears the scales getting louder and the banging of drums, his drums, call him back. Alarmed for his music he hurries away. He gives the woman no thought and is already immersed. But on the bandstand he sees her sip her cider and watch a trumpet player who’s mind he can hear is elsewhere.
The sisters were waiting. And Curly was keeping his head as still as he could, standing as straight as he could, eyes fixed and antennae up ,and listening as hard as he could. He tried not to tremble and tried to imagine he was his brother Burly, lost somewhere in a summer’s haze. A single whisper was passing around the colony as the bees drew in closer. They were waiting, waiting and alert keen to hear Curly’s plan for their survival.
With Burly in his mind’s eye, Curly stood up even straighter, moved his head from one side to the other and started to outline his plan. He began with a grateful acknowledgement of the priviledge he had been given, honour, blah blah until he became aware of a cacaphony of blah blah blahing. He stopped ostensibly to clear his throat. “Just get to the point would you?” and his friendly messenger bee raised her head as her six sisters nodded in agreement and mutterings about drones wittering on, better off without them, better off alone, are we sure we want to do this? This last an alarming suggestion that brought Curly straight to his plan.
Few sights are as distressing to a beekeeper as that of a dead colony at the end of winter. Image courtesy of The Animal and Plant Health Agency (APHA), Crown Copyright
“Right. Our objective is survival. We must keep Mother and the nest warm, but not as warm as summer as there isn’t so much brood to care for. We need the nest ready for when Mother feels it’s right to start laying again. I can’t tell you when that is, but she will know. All I can tell you is that we must be ready.” This last Curly said with some urgency, as it had only just occured to him that indeed if the darkness and cold continue to grow, the colony will soon be dangerously low on everything: food, water, brood and bees. Any mistake, any miscalculation will mean the end. He noted with some satisfaction that all around the bees were watching and murmuring agreement with his explanation of the objective. Recognition and agreement of the objective was the first step.
“The plan I have devised is one you can follow every time the dark and cold come. We know from Mother that this thing called winter comes every year and that every year it is different, but eventually spring comes and the sun starts shining once again and we can stay warm. Now it’s getting colder so we need to cluster around the nest so that Mother survives and will start laying again in the spring. We’ll only have a few days between her laying and the birth of new bees who can help nurse the eggs and grubs as they come along. They’ll also help us with the warmth, but in the meantime we need to cluster, we must cluster.” “We know that you fool of a drone” came an angry voice from somewhere out on the edge. “We know that, yes,” Curly hesitated and tweetled his antennae anxiously before adding “but it doesn’t always work does it? We don’t always survive the night and we know that we lose sisters when it gets really cold and the grey light turns black quicker and lasts longer. We know only this much.” A general bee-harumphing rippled through the assembled bees and a small voice, that of a bee only recently born could be heard to whisper “I don’t want to die before I’ve lived”.
Curly’s plan was bouncing around his head and he was struggling to control the conversation. Too fast and they wouldn’t believe him, too slow and they would think he was making it up as he went along. He remembered Burly and his habit of stroking his antennae and mandibles, and followed the model as best he could, while the hubbub lessened and the young sister was comforted by some of her siblings. Curly heard with some concern, “at least you’re not a drone, at least you know we’ll take care of you”. Judging the time to be right Curly started to outline his plan. He knew he had to be completely clear, leave no possibility of misunderstanding or doubt, and to make sure that there was just enough concern about the plan to ensure that the Seven Sisters would not trust themselves to pull it off without Curly.
“We cluster like we always do, but we don’t just clump up around the nest. We do follow the principles of clumping, keeping Mother and the brood safe and warm in the middle.” “What’s he talking about? Swarming? We only swarm when the weather’s hot and the hive is too full and when Mother gets the hint that it’s time for new blood?” Curly did his best to nod in wise agreement, slow and careful and continued with his plan. “We use scouts to check how cold people are getting on the outside of the clump, they can crawl into the centre and as they go tell the sisters to prepare to move back from where they are, and out towards the periphery. The scouts will need to move slowly to conserve energy, but their movement will generate heat. It might balance out.” At this point 30,000 bee brains were whirring at the idea that they would rotate in layers from the centre of the nest out to the external layers of clustered bees. It was a lot to take in, but Curly had his senses closely tuned to those of the Seven Sisters who were not communicating. He took this as a good sign, a sign that each of the seven was thinking hard and that none had made any judgement about his plan, at least not yet.
“With every rotation we minimise the loss of bees on the outside to the cold. You all know what happens to us when the temperature drops to 9º. We stop moving and we gradually atrophy and die. We drop to the floor and wait to for the end. I know because I’ve seen it, I know because it’s what happens if a bee isn’t lucky enough that the sun comes to warm her up again before she has to die.”
Curly then explained how he had survived following the drone massacre some weeks earlier. He explained how he had hidden during the day in a tiny space pulled together from disused and empty comb. He explained how he had been lucky that the small corner of the hive where he had been lodged happened to be the part of the hive where the sun hit first, so the cold did not last as long. He told them how he moved about the hive at night, only sipping uncapped honey and only where there were sleeping bees. And this is how he found out about them dying in the cold. “I saw with my own eyes how once chilled a bee has no chance of survival without help.” Survival, he explained can only happen if the colony follows the plan.
Curly could sense that the Seven Sisters were communicating, not visibly or with much intensity but there was something going on and he could see the old drone patrol getting into position. He noted there were some new members in the group, replacing those who had died off since their prevention convention. Curly pulled himself up to be as tall as he could manage, and did his best to adopt an air of nonchalant authority. If he had had fingernails he would have been studying them as he waited for some response. None being forthcoming he asked in as casual a tone as he could muster, “any questions? Or are you all happy with the plan? It means you can live longer than usual in the cold and dark, and it means Mother and the babies will survive too.” At this Curly noticed the Seven Sisters and drone patrol rearranging themselves one on either side of him, to form a sort of channel or corridor. Curly soon realised that this was in fact an aisle and that Mother, her retinue in train, was slowly coming towards him. He looked anxiously from side to side at the drone patrol standing to attention and at the Seven Sisters as they bowed in reverence to the Queen. Their reverence was more for the benefit of the colony than in deference to her Majesty and as a one they were sighing with some annoyance at this unprecedented overstep of the usual boundaries. What was she doing interfering in the business of the colony? The Queen’s only function is to mate and lay eggs and her involvement in big decisions is nil. Curly bowed as low as he could manage without tipping over and said “Your Majesty” in a grovelling tone as he did so. He could see the Seven Sisters antennae working furiously and understood that this was not so bad.
“Your Majesty has arrived just in time to hear our decision and the plan of this remnant drone to help us survive the winter.” The Queen looked up absent mindedly. Her intention had never been to get involved with whatever it was that was going on, here so close to the middle of her nest. She was confused and leant her head on one side with a view to taking a nap instead. One of her retinue tidied the drooping antennae and positioned the Queen close to some empty honeycomb cells so that she could doze more comfortably. To the surrounding bees this all looked suitably majestic and grand, but mainly because a Queen bee is so much larger than all the other bees, and so elegantly put together with a long pointed torso and huge hairy eyes. She is also constantly fed and groomed so her appearance has none of the scant lankiness of the other girls. A gentle snoring soon proceeded and the ranks of the drone patrol and the Seven Sisters closed around Curly, slightly irritated at the distraction of the Queen’s random and unintentional visit.
A spokesperson for the Seven Sisters came forward and the drone patrol ensured she had space and the attention of the whole colony, apart from that of the Queen who was now deep asleep. “Well thank you drone for this illuminating plan. If it works, your idea will help us we are certain. We are not certain of how much it will help us, or if we can train scouts in time or if we can organise them properly. But that is another matter, another task for you, another task that you must undertake straightaway. We’ll follow your plan and we will let you stay to see it is properly done. The drone patrol is dismissed and you are now an honorary guest in our home. If this works and we are most of us still when the winter ends, you will indeed be called Curly the Wise.”
Curly stared back at his sister and nodded slowly, his antennae alert to any signs of disagreement or dissent within the ranks of bees surrounding him. There were none and Curly was gradually aware that the bees were gradually moving back to their various tasks. Outside the wind had dropped and foragers were setting off to gather the last of the autumn’s nectar from late flowering ivy creeping up and around the trees surrounding the hive. Curly watched as bees capped honey and fed the few grubs that were expected to add to the colony’s numbers over the coming weeks. He moved away to his little corner and started working the numbers. How many bees in each layer, how often the rotations would have to happen, how cold it would get, how many babies would be born, how he himself would survive, and for how much longer. At least he had had this one more day he smiled to himself and slowly drifted off to sleep. zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.
When he woke up Curly was extremely cold, much colder than he had ever been before. Alone and almost immobile he was afraid. But he could feel the rising sun warming the walls and roof of the hive and slowly he found he could move a little bit, then more as his body temperature rose above 9º. Curly had spent the night quietly creeping as close as he dared towards the middle of the hive. He had moved cautiously amongst the almost sleeping bees, gleaning meagre warmth as he went. The scent of propolis was calming and he could take sips of honey from uncapped cells as he moved cautiously amongst dozing workers. They noticed his slow comings and goings not at all. Back in his hiding place and as the sun rose higher, Curly watched the worker bees heading for the exit. He noticed that fewer than usual were going out to forage and wondered what was happening in his home.
Bees can only survive the winter if they can keep the hive’s temperature at around 32-34º Centigrade. This they can only do if there are enough bees. Weak colonies rarely survive the winter.
Curly chewed on a sliver of propolis that he’d found on the floor during one of his nocturnal rambles. Sticky with honey it must’ve been broken off from somewhere when they were murdering the drones. “Wondering is what you do best,” he whispered to himself. “…it’s your strength, your power. It’s the only thing no other bee in this colony can do the way you do.” Then as an afterthought he said aloud ”and it’s what you must do now.” Curly thought the propolis might be useful for defence if the workers found him, so he tucked it under a forelimb. It was somehow comforting. “Foolish boy” he said resuming his conversation with himself. “I’d have no chance. Propolis stick or not. I must understand what is going on and why everything seems to be slowing down.” Curly got himself in tight behind the broken and overhanging comb that had been his camp for the night to think it all through. He noted the facts: drones evicted from the hive, drones with their wings snipped off, drones going out and not coming home again. What could it mean, why were they not staying in the hive, especially now it was getting cold. Then he understood. They were being discarded. Curly didn’t understand why, but he did understand that drones still around once summer was over were somehow surplus to requirements.
Curly was hungry again, but didn’t dare move. He sucked on the no longer sticky propolis, wondering why he felt so hungry when surely sleepy would have been more likely. Food. Food was obsessing him and his supply was strictly limited to the oversucked piece of old propolis. It’s flavour reminded Curly of his younger days as a newly hatched drone, days when the sun warmed the hive all day long and darkness came only once he and his brothers were safe and asleep. Darkness and food, the one too much of and the other too little of, and the traffic in the hive getting thinner and the drone population collapsed to nothing, soon only to him and only then if he could stay hidden. Curly could hear them, still shoving out drones. Soon he sensed a new instruction to a platoon of workers. They were moving to the warmest part of the hive, in the middle where Mother and most of the brood were. They were charged with routing out any remaining drones still hiding in the hive. “Their surplus to requirements, get them out.”
Numbers were not Curly’s strong suit, he was after all just a bee and a male bee at that. But he did understand the workings of his home, and that everything had purpose and function, and that everything contributed to the well-being of the colony. The purpose of drones was to do something on the outside, something that only the best of drones could do. For the rest of them, they had no further role in the hive so they were dispensable. It was just a matter of time before the drone patrol found him, or he became immobilised and died as the temperature fell. He had managed to keep moving by stealth in the night, but that was never going to work long term. He was already exhausted. Curly understood that there were two options: die of starvation and cold, cowering in a secret corner of the hive, or let the drone patrol find and mutilate him before tossing him from the hive.
But there must be some other possibility, he thought to himself. That possibility could lie in some sort of negotiation. “I’ll talk to them” he said shivering as the chill sunk into his joints, slowing his blood, softening his senses. But who should he talk to? Who is in charge of the drone patrol and why? Who decides that the drones must go? Curly crept out from his sticky shelter and started cleaning off the honey, not just because he was hungry and it was so very tasty. He wanted to look his best, his most impressive, big, strong, smart. His antennae were droopy though and he was overwhelmed with apathy, a laziness in his body that his sleepy mind struggled to overcome. As he moved he felt warmer, but he could only move slowly through the crowds of workers. He did his best to move as he and his brothers used to move: with confidence and self-assurance, fearless. Only the drone patrols knew that they were to catch drones, so the rest of the bees kept busy with their various tasks. The reasoning was sound and Curly soon found himself in the midst of a mass of workers, struggling to get to a group of hungry grubs. Curly passed over numerous cells wherein he could see tiny specks, eggs, eggs that had only recently been laid soon to be nurtured into grubs and hatch as fully formed bees.
Then he had it. “Mother” he said aloud and twittered his antennae in response to the added buzz of a few hundred workers, turning their antennae towards him. It took no more than a few seconds for a bossy worker bee to signal to Mother, although what the signal meant baffled Curly because Mother did not appear. Instead a group of seven, slightly rough looking bees approached him. Curly knew that as soon as the seven sisters recognised him as a drone, he would have to talk fast. He sensed that the drone patrol was already coming for him, and quickly. Best to start the conversation immediately before the seven or the patrol reached him. “You need me” he said, watching the movement of their antennaee, trying to divine what they were thinking. The movements were subtle, invisible almost. Slightly louder and with more patience he called to them “Mother needs me. You all need me, because I am bigger than you but don’t need so much food”. Curly had no idea where that had come from, nor did he really understand what he was saying. The seven sisters had Curly in a tight ring, antennae now straight up and forward, faces expressionless, forelimbs interlinked. They did not speak, they just held him there, penned and waiting for the drone patrol to arrive. Curly could see Mother coming slowly closer, her entourage fussing, cleaning, feeding, grooming her as the small group approached the seven sisters. Curly heard a lazy drawl “what is it, what do you want now, isn’t it enough that these cells are all full of my lovely eggs, of lovely grubs. What else do you want?” “Take her away” Curly heard a nearby voice growl. It came from the ring of bees around him, but none of them appeared to have spoken. “Now” a hiss came from another direction, as Mother drifted off to sleep a hindleg dipped into an empty cell. The group of courtiers, gave her a little shove and then a couple of kicks to get the massive bee moving on, as instructed. Curly was speaking fast, desperate to convince the seven to call off the patrol. “I can help with the cold. I can help keep her warm, and the brood. I can. I can keep her laying. You need me. I can help the colony survive. It’s getting colder, you know this. You need me.”
Curly felt his voice rising and struggled to keep it below the pitch of a squeak, tried to pretend he was Burly, big, strong and handsome. He watched and the seven sisters remained still, implacable. Curly had the sense that some other communication, something beyond the pheromone transmissions, beyond clicking mandibles or antennae was going on. It was just a thickening of the air, a pause in breathing perhaps, but then Curly understood that he should continue. He squared his little shoulders and held his antennae steady, still. He said “I can help keep you warm, Mother, the brood, the brood, I can help the brood.” Mother’s entourage were still pulling her leg from the honey cell, and as it dribbled out Curly heard her sigh as she slowly turned to face him, head lolling, her attendants frantically cleaning the honey from her wayward leg.
Ever since Curly, Burly and Twirly had been born all those weeks ago, Curly had noticed that the most important things in his colony were keeping Mother laying, and raising her brood which involved constant attention, recipe finessing and work. It was the brood that grew into worker bees or drones, depending on the diet the nursing bees fed them. It was the brood that would matter most if the hive continued to get colder and darker as the days progressed. Now he was hearing or sensing that what mattered most in what Curly had said was the word “brood”. He continued without really knowing what he was talking about, repeating and repeating that “I can help keep the brood warm, keep them safe. I am a drone that can do more than any other drone, a drone to help the brood.” As he said this the drone patrol arrived and immediately halted some few honeycomb cells away from Curly’s circle of seven sisters. He could sense some hesitation, some sudden reluctance to get closer to the circle. And then the seven moved away and the drone patrol surrounded Curly. His heart was pumping and he instinctively tucked in his wings as tight as they would go as the circle drew tighter, and then inexplicably the bees turned their backs on him. As one, they turned to face away, drawing up their antennae and tightening the ring around Curly. They locked arms.
Curly’s first instinct was to panic and reach for his propolis stick, but then he reasoned, “why are they facing away from me, blocking me in yes, but attacking me, no. And my stick is stuck to my abdomen. And they are locked, so I cannot get away, but I am also protected.” As he mulled over what this meant for his future health and well-being, Curly saw the seven sisters unbundle from their huddle and move in his direction. The platoon ring opened to form a horseshoe and the sisters approached. They bowed their antennae in polite greeting and Curly understood that he had to explain what he meant by keeping safe the brood. The platoon had turned around again and were facing towards him, their eyes brimming with unspoken menace. “You need bees to keep the hive warm. You need the brood at the heart of the nest and insulation against the cold. You need to know when it’s too cold at the outer layer, so you can move bees in and get new ones at the edge and you need to do that before they are immobilised with the cold.” “The cold? What’s the cold got to do with it. We keep them warm until the next group of bees comes to keep the brood warm.”
Up to this point Curly had been guessing that the only way the brood could survive the cold is if the bees somehow block the cold air so that it didn’t reach the brood. But his night in his chilly corner had taught him that at a certain point, lethargy and tiredness threaten to take over. Many times when he had tried to move he had found it almost impossible, despite his every effort. Eventually he had worked out that there was a certain point of coldness at which his body became immobile. The bees were waiting. “You see,” said Curly with increasing confidence, “The bees in the outer layer, might not always be able to move inwards, they might leave it too late, forget, or doze off. When that happens they die and you lose bees that might otherwise help keep the brood warm. I know when they should move. I can tell them, warn them that it’s time to go in closer to the heart of the nest to recover from the cold.” The seven sisters were silent, antennae still eyes searching to see some trick or secret, but there was none. There was just a clever drone, explaining something that they previously had never understood: why did so many of their sisters die when the cold came, even if they were chatting energetically shortly before they fell to the floor of the hive, alive but silent and immobile. They were always dead soon after. Curly stood up a little prouder, a little more himself and added “All I ask is to be allowed to help save the brood, if the cold and the darkness get worse.” He looked at each of the seven earnestly before adding: “All I need is enough food to survive and a place to stay, but not outside.” “Then I can manage the changeovers so that you get the best possible protection as a colony, as guardians of Mother and the brood, when the cold comes.”
The seven sisters turned their heads and formed a tight circle. Antennae were bristling, hind legs scratching backs and wings lifting and falling as they considered Curly’s proposal. They understood that they had little to lose. There were plenty of stores and the Giant Grub had put a lump of sugar paste at the top of the hive, just under the roof. Food wasn’t a problem. The concern was the efficiency of what Curly was proposing. “Wise one, we understand” Curly heard and awash with a new sensation he understood too, as did the drone patrol and all the workers in the hive. Mother even understood. Curly the Wise One could keep his wings and stay. In the muddle of bees he found himself alone. No drone patrol, no council of seven sisters, just the normal business of the hive. He found an uncapped honey cell and feasted until he could eat no more. Then Curly found a quiet corner underneath a well-stocked frame of honeycomb and fell deep asleep. zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
Did it begin with an egg and spoon race, that hate? Or was it bean bags on the head? Or both perhaps? Or neither. A sports day at the end of the summer term, when the weather was golden soft and not too hot and the day all summer light and trivial chat. The cries of small children mostly excited, some tearful. Little sweaty hands clutching prizes, eyes bright. Now the mums and dads were on.
Bean bags. Ian Caithness was the man who would win the dad’s race. Knife-edge keen. Polluted with ambition, always ready to keep on proving more. More wins, more competition, more of whatever that fuel was that made him. Always and only more, ruthless ambition. His was the tallest building, the most tenants, the biggest of risks, that wealth. That vanity. His power consumed him. Almost, but for her.
And she. She hated him. She hated his greed, his lust, his limitless ego and his killing charm, the feel of his skin damp and warm. Her hate was power and it too was all-consuming. She hated her own ambition, that she believed beauty was enough to midwife her happiness. But who wants to be happy, if they’re rich. She says this a lot. Money matters more. Beauty had taken her far, all the way to this beanbag on the top of a loathesome man’s head. Did it matter?
She told herself daily that Veronica Caithness was born to enthrall, seduce, tempt and please, that she was made to sustain, to be decorative, a woman entitled. She achieved all of that. Beauty and its rewards were enough. She had six children, three miscarriages and one abortion behind her. She had an uncanny ability to ignore reality and forgot too often that sex generally leads to babies. After the last child, Ian had gone for the snip, the ultimate control. But whose?
She watched her husband with his teeth clenched, his fists and elbows tense, as he ran spiderlike up the stretch of lawn, careful not to go too far off horizontal, with that ridiculous bean bag on his head. He won, of course, with a glint in his eye carefully overshadowed by the selfdeprecating charm of an engaging and apparently gentle smile. He won of course.
From inner city redevelopment projects and commercial property to bean bags at the children’s sports day. He won and she simmered. That is until the day after sports day when everything changed, the day the weatherman said rain was coming.
In the midst of squabbling and toast and cereals, of finding shoes and piano music, of swimming kit and the constant sound of his voice on the phone, she heard his aside to warn her. The garden was littered with the sort of stuff that shouldn’t be out in the rain. She knew it wasn’t the stuff that mattered, it was the instruction, the bossing, the deliberate reminder that she was incapable of managing herself or her family. The diminishing. The children had been building camps, settlements of small carpets and cushions, a muddle of blankets and pillows on the lawn. “Get that stuff in before it starts to rain.” Kissing random heads and reaching for his bag he had shouted to her as he left: “the flight won’t get in until after midnight, so I’ll ring you in the morning from Barcelona”. As if she cared about his day or where he would go that evening. And the door banged shut and final as she shivvied the children to get them into shoes and out of the house and into the car. The journey to school as always noisy and fretful, a host of misrememberings and the forgotten remnants of yesterday. Part of the familiar noise of her day. She could usually shut it off. “Dad won” she heard amidst the babble, and she scowled. Another day like this day the same, the same. But this day was not to be the same.
When she had left the four youngest children at school, a sort of silence embraced her. The car smooth and softly purring and the road a gentle tease to tempt her elsewhere. The unspoken beckoning of possibilities reached closer. But there was the rain coming and yesterday’s cushions to collect, so dismissing the demons of temptation she simply went home. And then straight outside to gather up yesterday’s camps under an overcast sky, chill and detached, despising her obedience, her lazy compliance.
And when the vet came to the door she didn’t hear. Nor did she notice when he came around the side of the house and into the garden. When he spoke she thought it was a voice from somewhere inside her head, and a voice she had heard sometimes before. The reality of it was quite a shock. The unexpected moment held her fixed and entranced as she looked down at the short and rather ugly man standing before her. He said in tones unEnglish: “is this your dog? I found it by the road. It’s hurt, but not very badly.” She stared down at him and at Lolla dazed and panting and whose paw was bleeding bright and shiney red against the grass. Confused thank yous and dropped cushions as she knelt beside the dog to look at the wound. The wound she barely saw as a strange sensation, an awareness that through this man’s ugliness she could feel of something more, something that called her. She frowned as she became aware of his scent, unfamiliar and intriguing. She felt her breath start to seize up. A peculiar warmth tingled at the back of her neck.
The very ugly little man knelt beside her inadvertently touching her, knee to knee. He reached out to gently probe the edges of the wound on the dog’s pad, in case there was a splinter or shard. “It looks like she’s caught it on a nail or something, maybe trying to get back into the garden. It’s not deep, just a cut.” Their knees and her sudden realisation of touch as Lolla struggled to get up but was held fast. Veronica stood up suddenly, feeling slightly anxious and shaking back her hair. Sandalwood floating. Clearing her throat she said again an unsteady thank you. Then she tried to say “I’ll take it from here,” but instead heard some other voice trying hard not to be flirty, “I’m Veronica and this is Lolla. Thanks so much for bringing her in. I’ll ring the vet’s. Can I get you a cup of tea or coffee perhaps?” The words all came out in a rush and hanging in the air sounded so banal. She blushed and let her hair drop over her face. It got worse when he said, “no thanks, but if you’ve some gauze and tape I can dress this wound for you. I’m a vet. I’m from Italy, here on a driving holiday to see your lovely country. I have time.” Those words and she caught her breath hearing her heart pounding as her blood pressure rose. That strange warmth at the back of her neck was spreading. She put her hand under her hair and flicked it up, forgetting the power of the gesture. More sandalwood wafting. But the vet did not seem to notice, instead gently cradling the dog in his arms and smiling up at her. Eye to eye. And she wondered how ridiculous this all was, and then unbidden an image of how far it might go.
Behind them an empty house called, above them a frowning sky filled its face with greys and chrome-edged clouds; billowing winds pushed curious whispers across the garden. Leaves danced and birds headed for cover from the approaching storm. The Italian vet’s accent was mellow and soft and kind. His small sharp eyes peered out from under a heavy brow and his facial hair reached almost to his eye sockets. He was slightly balding. His ears were large and also hairy, but his hands were unexpectedly smooth, with short fat fingers and thick wrists. He wore no rings. He in turn saw the honied slender hands with their long fingers and the large white gold and diamond cluster. He noted the slightly tatty ethic skirt and the bangles, the curve of her shoulder. And he wondered. Laden with cushions she bustled into the kitchen, dog and vet in tow, hearing herself squeak out an awkward “Are you really? How convenient”. She dropped the cushions then pulled on a drawer to find gauze and tape, as he sat gently down beside the dog, one hand holding her still and the other reaching up to Veronica.
And so it began. An ordinary encounter, small talk and storm clouds, an empty space in two peoples’ days. Then no more chit chat. There were a couple of return visits to check the wounds. No more than a brief affair that after those first tingling moments under a passionate sky, meant nothing to her or to him. He went on his way, far away. She enjoyed the memory of her deceit. The thrill had been in it’s unexpectedness, the suddenness, the shallow shared secrecy. No one ever knew. It was not sordid or sleazy, just the casual release two strangers shared.
It only became sleazy and sordid some four months later in a hotel room, with Ian and Veronica on holiday. Quite gracelessly she told Ian she needed an abortion. She had watched him with the eyes of a cobra before it strikes, wide, focused, cold. As she uttered the words she watched his glinting eye, and saw his mammoth ego, his everything start to splinter into lethal sharp shards. She could almost hear the cracks. And she waited, silent. Then senseless and impotent his mouth formed, the word “how” and from a long way away he heard her say “I fucked the vet”. A love he never really understood but recognised as his only weakness was slowly cracking like ice under too much weight, its chill rendering his every sense numb. He was a blank, a man humiliated, a man who didn’t even know there had been a vet to fuck. His world spun out, she fell from his heaven to demolish the flawless perfection of his love for her. This man whom she had grown so to hate, she destroyed utterly with one small and trivial act, so meaningless and pointless, so tiny and so deadly. Yet so vicious and terrible, its destruction irretrievable. The ultimate power.
“Still no sign of him?” whispered Twirly to Curly who was struggling to come awake after his long night’s vigil and final collapse into sleep. It was chilly so the two hungry drones huddled together, waiting for the temperature to rise as the sun broke through clouds scudding high in the sky in a rising wind. Curly watched carefully as a couple of his sisters worked away blocking a random gap between their set of honeycomb frames and the edges of one above. The three bees had never been into that one because the absent Burly, and Curly and Twirly were all too big to get through the grill between the two sections. Nor was Mother small enough to get upstairs, only the worker bees could squeeze in. Curly watched as more and more bees went up, their honey stomachs full of nectar. They never stopped to feed the drones who were left to their own devices these days. Curly listened to his little brother twittering on about Burly and about how Twirly didn’t much want to go in search of breakfast without him. “I can’t manage to push through the crowds, what with my dodgy legs. I need Burly to shove everyone out of the way and hold me in position to slurp at the honey you see.” Twirly continued in this conversational vein, encouraged by Curly’s wise nodding and occasional straightening of his antennae to express interest.
Once the mating season is done, drone honeybees are surplus to requirements and get ejected from the colony.
But Curly’s mind was elsewhere. He had a sense of change in the hive, not least because the wind was blowing stronger and the propolis work seemed to be accelerating. More and more of his sisters were working on the gaps in the hive walls, sticking frames hard into place, gluing up the layers, bridging frames with honeycomb and fixing the end frames to the hive walls. Curly was becoming anxious. This was not just about blocking drafts, this was about more than the weather.
He linked a foreleg into one of Twirly’s feeble limbs and moved along the edge of the hive to where a handful of drones were gathered sipping at breakfast and trying to keep out of the way of the worker bees. They chatted amongst themselves between sips as their sisters crawled over them. They were nursing bees moving to and fro between brood cells, pollen stores and honey stores to feed the grubs. After many weeks of observation, Curly understood the nursing bees were preparing to seal the grubs into their cells, so that they could grow into baby bees in the coming days. This was normally a restful process to watch. But it seemed to Curly that the hive’s mood was becoming increasingly impatient. And something else was odd, these brood cells were uniform in size, all quite small with no larger cells for drones or giant queen cells for new princesses. Odd.
Curly remembered the day when he and his closest brothers were born. Along with countless other drone honeybees they had chewed their ways out of the oversized cells. Burly had shoved his way out of his cell, rather than chew his way out. The wax wasn’t very tasty Curly had agreed and yes it did make quite a mess of one’s jaws and hair. Curly had to admit that once Burly had squeezed his way out he was a magnificent specimen. When Twirly was being born though something had gone wrong, a fall of comb it might have been. Curly couldn’t remember, but it had meant that Twirly’s little legs and wings had been damaged, and reshaped they were not very strong. Since then Twirly had depended on Burly for muscle and Curly for guidance. Twirly’s nerves were extremely fragile. Daily existence was drama enough for him. When Burly set off out into the light the first time, Twirly had gabbled and squeaked for the whole day until Burly returned along with a gaggle of other dazed drones. When Burly had set off the second time Twirly had been less worried. Curly knew he believed that Burly would return. Maybe he would, but listening to other drones running through the names of the missing, Curly was unconvinced.
Twirly was still going on about how important Burly was and how much he missed him when Curly noticed a small group of bees heading towards them. He instinctively steered Twirly away and under an outcrop of comb. “Shut up would you. Would you just shut up” Curly hisssed giving his brother a firm push. “Ow” said Twirly. “What are you doing, we haven’t had enough breakfast and we could have asked those lads if they’ve seen Burly anywhere.” Rubbing at his bruised thorax Twirly moved towards Curly who was peering out and who immediately shoved Twirly back. Curly was staring in horror at a group of bee vandals attacking one of the drones. Twirly and Curly had just now been chatting with him and now the drone was surrounded by a group of aggressive and violent worker bees. The drone was crying out in terror “let me go, let me go”, but his sisters muffled his sound as they held him down. Curly watched as two bees positioned themselves on either side of the drone and each ripped at a wing with jaw and claw. They soon finished their gruesome task and turned the wingless drone over to a couple of other workers who led him away from the group. In soothing tones they were saying “there, there. It’s all over now. No need to fret. You’re alright. It’s done. Don’t think any more about it. It’s finished, there there.”
Curly watched as they gently edged the wingless and traumatised drone away. Curly wanted to assume they were heading for another part of the hive, perhaps somewhere new wings could be fitted. But he couldn’t reconcile the ruthless attack, with the gentle words and the care some of those very same bees had shown to them all just a few weeks ago. In his heart of hearts, and more importantly in his brain, Curly knew the two could not be reconciled. Twirly was cross, fidgeting to get past his brother. With a clumsy shove Curly pushed him further back and watched in horror as another drone underwent the same procedure. By this time the rest of the diminishing group of drones was panicking, struggling to get away to somewhere else in the hive. But they were blocked by a second group of bees who had appeared unseen to keep the drones in place.
Curly overheard one of the reinforcements say something about needing to finish this work and get back to the nest to keep Mother and the brood warm enough. “We’re wasting too much energy on these guys. We should have taken care of it weeks ago when they first started coming back.” Curly heard an older worker answer: “They’re only good for one thing, except this lot obviously” and the air buzzed with high pitched bee tittering, and rude gestures. “I’ve seen it a few times coming back from foraging. The virgin princesses and the drones. One by one she takes them. She lets them hold her then they explode. It’s not a pretty sight” another added, “but at least they die happy hugging a queen.” And the others bee-giggled again. “Not this lot though,” said the first to more giggles. “This lot couldn’t make it, couldn’t handle it. And if they think they can stay here for the winter, they’ve another think coming.” The duty bees continued to joke, watching the wing removers and the housekeeper bees remove the amputated wings. The number of drones was falling.
“Stay here and don’t move” Curly hissed at Twirly as he started to work his way around his brother and up the honeycomb frame. Curly wanted to see where the wingless drones were being taken. “Where are you going? Don’t leave me, don’t leave me Curly I can’t manage. I can’t be by myself.” Twirly was whimpering. “I need you to be very quiet now, Twirly” Curly said. “I need you to trust me and stay here and be very, very quiet. Don’t move. On no account do you move. You stay here.” He left Twirly muttering to himself about how cold it was getting on his own and it was worse because he hadn’t had enough breakfast, and how was he expected to cope with so much excitement and so little comfort, so little food all alone. Curly had reached the top of the frame before Twirly finally stopped whining. What Curly saw turned his cold insect blood even colder. He watched a steady parade of wingless drones being taken one by one to the hive entrance. Once there guard bees roughly shoved them out onto the landing board. Curly couldn’t see what was happening but his every sense was quivering, alert to an awful terror, a sensation of horror seeping into every pore, a sensation of treachery, of betrayal. Curly shook with fear, wings quivering and antennae trembling in the morning chill. Despite the light getting stronger the hive wasn’t really getting much warmer. Curly decided to risk getting closer to the entrance to see for himself what was happening on the landing board.
Twirly hadn’t paid much attention to his brother’s instructions, being too preoccupied with his own tummy and nervy anxieties. He almost certainly didn’t catch the urgency in Curly’s voice or its intensity and Twirly was getting bored on his own. He sighed and peeped out from his honeycomb screen and saw the group of drones. A little confused because he was sure there had been more of them before he saw them chatting with a group of foragers, one of whom looked familiar. They were probably giving the drones some breakfast he thought to himself, an envious little twinge echoing in his tummy. With a sigh Twirly decided that given the short distance between him and his new friends he should rejoin them. Creeping carefully amongst worker bees too distracted to notice him, Twirly ventured a little wave with one of his feeble forelegs. The drones watched in silent, fearful horror as Twirly made his way towards them. The assassin assistants parted to usher Twirly into the group.
The new friend drones were a sorry looking bunch and Twirly, used to being the sorriest looking of all felt a curious sense of confidence. He didn’t notice their silence or their fear, so he waved again, and let his antennae stand up straight for once. He thought he could sense excitement and enthusiasm for having another drone join their group, even if Twirly wasn’t a top notch specimen. And he looked forward to a bit more breakfast.
By the time Curly was in position to see what was happening on the landing board, it was too late. Twirly, the weakest and most vulnerable of the group was inevitably next in line for wing trashing. It didn’t much hurt so Twirly decided this whole business was about refurbishment of the drones who couldn’t fly very well. Maybe he could get some new legs too. Curly’s heart almost stopped as he saw his foolish brother escorted to the hive entrance. Twirly’s companions handed him to the guards for transfer to other bees, standing at the edge of the landing board. With a sudden push one of them tipped Twirly over the edge. They watched him fall flightless and silent into the grass far below. There was no sound, no one could see Twirly’s weedy legs thrashing, or the tears flooding into sightlessness his enormous eyes. Down on the ground it was too cold for Twirly to make any sound or even to move to some unknown place of safety. Twirly felt cold and colder seeping slowly and his body slowly atrophy. He felt his heart slow and his breathing become a series of tiny gasps. As he looked around at the other dying drones he understood that there would be no new wings, no mended limbs, no more breakfast. He understood that there would be no more anything, no hope, nothing, only nothing and his vacant eyes saw greens and the blues of a windswept sky fade softly away.
Tears flooded Curly’s eyes and face, his frantic antennae were bending and flexing in terror. He hurried to hide in the farthest corner of the colony he could find. Desperate and afraid, for the first time in his bee life Curly was confused and panicked. Close to the hive wall he found a bit of broken honeycomb and chewed through the wax to the honey for more nourishment. He pushed at the sticky mess until it was wedged into a forgotten corner. There he hid exhausted, quivering fearfully, desperate to stay alert and alive. He monitored every single tremor his antennae could pick up, but he could make no sense of anything. Distraught and alone he remained hidden for the rest of the day. He tried to clean himself up and to pick up more signals. He heard the foragers returning and orders being given for the next day’s work. Propolis making. Gap sealing. Brood feeding. Foraging. Fragments of sentences, pieces of data he struggled to process. He picked up nothing about drones. “If I survive the night, I’ll think about it in the morning” he whispered but no one was there to hear zzzzzzzzzzzzzz.
The whisper went around the classroom, every time Miss turned to the board. Fight. They’re going to get him. After school. That’s what John Carter said. Little new boy‘s gonna get it. But Mrs Vurley didn’t hear it as she turned back to her year 9s and reminded them of the homework. Pointing to the board and “… by Friday no later please.” The bell rang and Mrs Vurley watched them pile out from behind their desks, rushing towards the door. She hadn’t heard the dark whispers but she watched as the new boy slunk away from her, separate from the rest. Did she see fear? “David, David? How are you settling in?” “Yes Mrs Vurley,” he mumbled. Mrs Vurly put her pencil behind her ear and looked at the boy again, eyebrows raised. She sighed. “Hurry now, it’s hometime, you’re out of here for today.” Looking up at her he said, “Yes miss, but John Carter said …” “John Carter? What about John Carter?” Mrs Vurley didn’t have a John Carter in her class. “John Carter? I don’t think I know him. What about John Carter?” “Nothing miss” said David moving quickly to the door. Delete.
Mrs Vurley looked out of her window at the usual scene of children milling towards the school gates, the lines of cars waiting for some, parents waiting for others. A few were on foot heading home or for the bus. There was only one small knot of boys, with a couple of girls in tow, lingering by the gate. She didn’t see David out by the gates and gradually the group of boys and their groupies drifted away.
When David came to school the next day as soon as his dad dropped him off he ran a gauntlet of teases and taunts. His dad smiled as he watched with fond memories of his own school days. He didn’t see what he was seeing as he drove away, lost in reveries of a super posh school for boys. Delete. He didn’t hear when they said “white boy, hey whitey, come on, come on tell us who’s in that picture. We got the picture innit. Who is she?” As he drove away his brain had the scene with his boy centre stage, but he wasn’t seeing it. Delete. His brain heard the voices, unhearing the words. Delete. He moved on and stopped thinking about his boy. Delete.
The catcalling was lost in the group, and no one was brave enough to be seen specifically to call out to the new boy. “Fresh off the boat are ya? Fresh from Alabammer are ya? Black Lives Matter ya know, yeah.” Fist saluting and laughing and then mocking his accent, like he was from the deep south and not from New York City. That accent was harder to copy his dad said David had told him when it first happened. And his dad, strong and tall and believing himself a streetwise New Yorker had no idea of how alone his child was. Delete. And so David didn’t speak much at school, not after the first day when he said his name in class and they were all supposed to welcome the new boy. Instead they stared at him and laughed at the way he spoke. Afterwards a couple of them had asked him his mobile number, although he didn’t know what they meant at first. “Oh, cell you mean my cell?” And that had set them off. “Yeah, your cell Yank. Give us your cell.” And they’d all laughed. David small and living in his head, processing the new country, this city school, the scale of it, the weird sports and having to read so much, write so much, confused and uncertain and very alone.
In the staff room Mrs Vurley was reminding herself of what they were supposed to look out for so that they could submit a pupil concern email. In her day bullying was just part of the day, some children were just marked out for it. Would it be how fat or thin they were, how shabby their uniform or beaten up their shoes? Would it be how clever they were or how stupid? Would it be their accent or how clean or dirty their hair was? Would it be how small or big they were, geeky, Jew, Christian or Muslim? She knew that it was impossible to predict, but that it hung on a chance moment, a thin thread and an unpredictable hook. And it was part of school life, ugly or not. Now they had guidelines and rules which at least gave an opportunity to do something. Now at the first sign they were alert and could take steps. And guidelines meant there was no need to convince sceptical staff or heads. Guidelines meant they could do something, not nothing. But guidelines and actions could also push it out of view. Delete.
It was Mrs Vurley’s day to monitor the lunch room so she made a point of watching this new boy, freshly arrived from America with his heavy accent and fretful eyes. She saw him sitting alone as two bigger boys took their places on either side of him. But she didn’t see David leaning forwards into his tray nor did she see the two boys sit closer and closer. Both had been held back from last year. Neither was bright and both were strong and confident, popular. They had pulled their chairs in close to David and were leaning into the boy. She smiled as she saw the Kendulu boy suddenly pull away and David fall sideways under the force and weight of the kid on the other side and they were laughing. Relieved Mrs Vurley turned away to deal with a fuss about mashed potato blowing up in the queue. Delete.
But her attention was soon drawn back to the boys. David’s tray had fallen sideways with him and Kendulu was no longer laughing, but up on his feet. “Look what you done man, look what you done, your shepherd’s pie is all over me trousers. Look at the mess you made!” And his friend jumped up to join in. “Look what you done to Ken’s gear man, look what you done.” They were both towering over David, hands pointing upwards, heads turning from side to side, voices rising, looking for the audience, for response. And they were laughing and patting David on the back. It was impossible to see that the pat was just that little bit too hard, lingering just a little bit too long pushing the boy down. David tried to stand but they had blocked his chair with their feet so he was stuck between the table and his chair half up half sideways and now Ken’s leg with its smears of shepherd’s pie is in David’s hair. It was time to intervene and as Mrs Vurley hoved into view both boys stood back, moving their feet and smug as David’s chair scraped unexpectedly back and he fell onto one knee, baked beans stuck to the tears and his tormentors with their hands in mock surrender. “He’s such a laugh Miss, he spilled his food on me on purpose miss. I done nothin’” and “Yeah Miss, it was on purpose, he’s bullying us, he thinks he’s cool ’cos he’s an American miss.”
As two other staff members started ushering the small audience back to their food, Mrs Vurley looked at the two boys. “What’s this about?” “David?” “Ken?” “Jason?” David said nothing, but shrank even smaller into himself. Kendulu repeated it was on purpose and that they were being picked on by this new boy, who thought he was so great because he came from America. “And you Jason, what do you have to say?” “It weren’t me miss.” The bell rang and Mrs Vurley gestured them away and the two boys sloped off leaving David alone. As he looked up to answer Mrs Vurley’s unheard question David saw Jason draw a long finger in a straight line across his throat, before turning it into a wave and a laugh as Mrs Vurley followed David’s gaze.
“David, how long have you been at this school?” Mrs Vurley was a little embarrassed that she hadn’t really noticed the boy. Delete. Embarrassed but unsurprised. He was an unprepossessing thing, quiet and withdrawn, keeping his head down, avoiding contact. “Five weeks Mrs Vurley.” “Five weeks” she repeated, ”and how long have you been friends with Kenulu and Jason?” David stared sullenly at his lunch tray and its unappealing mess. “They’re not my friends” he mumbled and tried to straighten his shoulders, tried to claw back some sense of dignity. “But they like to follow me and send me messages on FaceBook an’ all. So maybe. Dunno.” There followed a series of questions, questions that Mrs Vurley knew she should ask, even though in the back of her mind she knew the answers already.
Yes, there was harassment, although he was evasive as to its frequency and intensity. Yes there were incidents, like today only mostly unseen and yes there had been unflattering pictures posted online and shared with various school groups. Girls and some boys sent him flirty messages and then ridiculed his replies. They invited him to online chat sessions only to block him at the last minute or worse to hide behind fake accounts and make ugly threats, sometimes with pictures of cats with their throats cut, or birds with their wings ripped off but still alive and bleeding. They threatened to tell his dad that David was staying over with friends, but really they planned to kidnap him and sell him as a sextoy to white supremacists. Mrs Vurley rolled her eyes at this, but still. The digital world’s a dangerous place. “How many David? How many boys and girls are doing this to you?”
By this time David was crying and the lunch room was empty. Mrs Vulney was glad she had no lessons this afternoon and persisted. “Do you know what mobbing is David?” “No miss,” he sniffed. “Do you know how to block people on your social media accounts?” “My dad’s told me I should do that and I’ve tried. But Snapchat messages disappear straight away and they use fake names. I know it’s them, and I want to be their friend though. That’s why I kept my Facebook account after … ” “After what? After what David?” “Nothing” he mumbled drowning in their power. Delete.
As she hit send on her email and its attached Pupil of Concern form, Mrs Vurley hoped that her colleague’s initial call to the family would go somewhere. It didn’t. They laughed it off. Delete. But later Mrs Clayman tried to talk to her son, except that the talk was more a forced encounter. A bully’s privilege? “It’s gone.” “What do you mean gone, David? Are you being picked on or not. You have to tell me.” “It’s gone because it’s SnapChat. The messages disappear straightaway.” “Don’t lie to me David. That makes no sense. I know you’re hiding something from me.” Mrs Clayman didn’t know she needed to get him to take screen shots. Would he have done? Would she have looked? Delete. Mrs Clayman tried another line. “Well what about FaceBook? Show me what you’ve got on FaceBook.” Here David had more to say, “I know I should block them on FaceBook, but if I tell them I’ll block them they just laugh, ooh you know how to block do you. Then they send me notes in History saying sorry. So I unblock them, then it’s ok for a while and then it starts up again. And on Instagram they pretend to like my pictures, but they’re just mocking me. You can tell in the comments.” The tears were rolling down his cheeks as David continued: “And I tried setting WhatsApp so that no one can see my picture and status and Aunty Jean got upset, so I put it back.” David could see that she wasn’t hearing what he said, wasn’t seeing, was inhabiting her own old world. Delete.
Mrs Clayman was starting a block of her own. This was all too silly. They’re just boys being boys with the new kid. It will pass. He was still adjusting to the new life. The school had it in hand. “David, let’s keep this in perspective shall we? They’re just lads and you’re different and sensitive, you know that don’t you? Let’s not get all bent out of shape about kids at school. It’s just their way, the British way, you know that I am pretty sure. You’ll get used to it. It’ll be fine.” Delete.
Laurel Lindström, author 
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