The Boy Who Taught the Beekeeper to Read: And Other Stories Read online

  In the city the dog led, crossing at traffic junctions, turning on a command – for he held the map of the place in his head, together with the list of his calls in their order, and at every shop and department store he was punctual, for the time ticked within him like a second heart. He set out his samples and displayed the socks and stockings by stretching them carefully over his hand.

  ‘Burnt sand,’ he said. ‘Camel’, ‘Blush’, ‘Regulation Navy’, ‘Waverley – a more subtle blue.’ He remembered the words of colours, but no one could know whether what he saw within, behind his sightlessness, in any way corresponded now to the reality, whether blue was indeed blue.

  They gave him the orders. ‘One dozen grey gents’ half-hose. Size 9–11. Two dozen navy. Size eight. A dozen boys’, aged nine to ten. Fifty pairs of thirty denier, seam-free. Fifty pairs of silk sheer, Blush. Medium.’ Trainees, new to hosiery, would remark that Mr Burgage never took out an order book, never wrote anything down at all in any way, but the question that might have followed was not asked – though later, in the staff cloakroom, they might whisper among themselves. And it was remarkable, for no order was ever wrong, there was never a mistake.

  The evening paper was handed to him by another seller, on another corner, but this one he did not open on the train, it was carried home pristine and unfolded, for Elsa, and given to the dog as they reached the gate, to carry in to her.

  In the bungalow the routine was always the same. The names and the figures waited, arranged as they had been entered, in the order book of his head. She had a tray of tea ready, and he drank two cups at once, and set a third on the arm of the chair; then, he began to speak, head back against the moquette, lids half-closed over unfocused eyes. The order was transferred, in Elsa’s oblique writing, onto the pad.

  ‘One dozen grey gents’ half-hose. Size 9–11. Two dozen navy. Size eight. A dozen boys’, aged nine to ten. Fifty pairs of thirty denier, seam-free. Fifty pairs of silk sheer. Blush. Medium.’ His concentration must not be interrupted, the child had been told, she must never speak a word during this time, never distract either of them or the order would fall into disorder, the figures fly about anyhow from his head to Elsa’s page and never be correctly rearranged again. And so she would sit under the dining table, her own legs pressed against the dark wooden legs, or else behind the sofa holding a book. But she was never reading, only listening, listening. ‘One dozen grey gents’ half-hose, size eleven. Two dozen navy, size 9–11.’

  In forty years his routine had not altered. In forty years, it was said, he had never made a mistake.

  On Friday nights he went to the Masonic Lodge.

  ‘Never ask questions. Never speak to him about it,’ the child was told. ‘Those are secret matters.’

  They walked on the beach to a point parallel with the seafront houses, and then turned, and he knew precisely where to turn, she did not have to stop or prompt him, which was a miracle to her, and yet, by now, one that was quite taken for granted. The dog went on running about at the edge of the water, busy with seagulls, though it turned when they did and ran about again, going the other way, and the sea never came nearer. People rode racehorses through the shallows.

  He talked to her. He was always gnawing over something, Elsa said. Why men wanted to fly – how it had always been an instinct, an impossible, physical desire, how they had flown in dreams, and legend and early art. Whether there was really any such thing as the Blood Royal. What was the point or purpose of the migration of hirondines. He taught her to pronounce the word carefully – ‘Hirondine’.

  ‘A wonder of the world, some would say, and proof as to the existence of a Creator.’ He had stopped and begun to dig a neat little hole in the sand with the ferrule of his stick. ‘It seems to me no such thing.’ She went close and looked down, as the hole filled up with water.

  ‘Think of the waste.’ He turned on her so that she started. She tried to see into his eyes, which were looking about anyhow, wildly, in his anger.

  ‘A waste of effort, without any point or purpose. See those sand worms?’ The ferrule dabbed down, here and there, pointing at the small, grainy coils. To her that was a proof, the fact that he knew their whereabouts exactly, sightlessly.

  The wind blew, ripping hard over the open sand, and the dog came running in towards them.

  At Pitt’s Café, they always had the same order, and that was another ritual – a slice of apple pie and a slice of treacle tart, a pot of tea, a milky cocoa, and a bowl of water for the dog. She slipped the pie crust to it under the table, feeling the slippery nose and mouth cold against her fingers.

  ‘Your aunt doesn’t know about this, and your mother would call it very common.’ She waited for him to tap the side of his nose and to wink, an odd, clumsy wink that did not completely come down over his eye. Then, across the green plastic table, she would try again to look into his eyes, at the milky surface which was faded and grey. The eyes never focused on her; there was no one there. She did not understand how people were said not to know about the blindness.

  ‘What are you staring at?’

  They left, taking a snicket between the café and the public conveniences, back towards the town. She came four times a year, with the seasons, and they took the same way whatever the weather, and the only difference was that in December and April, they saw no one else, and the sands were pale and bare as a desert, under the enormous sky.

  The last time came abruptly. It was October. The dog was called Shep, and the best one ever, he said. The seagulls were strung out like pearls along the water’s edge, hundreds of them, and Shep raced to flurry and scatter them.

  At first, the week had seemed no different. When they had walked into the bungalow, at five o’clock in the afternoon, it had smelled the same, the smell she dreamed of sometimes when she was at home, an intense, many-layered smell, and each room had a slight variation – in the bathroom, traces of antiseptic from the solution in which Elsa’s syringes were steeped, in the front room, a faint staleness, and the clothiness of the moquette.

  He came home at twenty past six, the dog Shep running in with the newspaper, and the tea was on the table, and she must be silent. There was the recitation of that day’s order.

  ‘Less again,’ Elsa said.

  He did not reply.

  ‘Weren’t you expecting the new samples to have come?’

  He did not reply.

  Later, she realised that the knowledge of what had happened had been hovering in the air at that moment, and had brushed against her, and that there was an unease in his silence.

  ‘Your books came. Nothing else.’

  The books were not ordinary books, they were gramophone recordings that came in flat, heavy boxes, tied with leather straps, and were exchanged for a new set every other week. He listened to them for an hour each evening, and sometimes the child listened with him, to The History of the Second World War by Winston Churchill, and the diaries of statesmen, and the lives of kings. Travellers read of journeys and philosophers asked the questions which she herself asked constantly. What is the world? What is real? Who am I? But their answers were intricate, incomprehensible. He listened to the novels of Charles Dickens and Arnold Bennett, and the plays of Shakespeare. When she was not there, he listened alone. Elsa took her book into the stuffiness of the front room, preferring to hear words in silence, in her own head.

  The new book was The Origin of Species. She stayed listening with him for a short time only. His eyes were closed. She scrutinised his face, the thick folds from nose to chin, and the flesh of his neck; he was a heavy man, and almost bald. She tried to slide the door open soundlessly but it brushed along the carpet.

  ‘Ten tomorrow,’ he said. ‘All set?’

  ‘All set.’

  It would be Saturday. ‘All set’ was what they always said.

  But it was different, from the beginning, though she could not say why. There was simply an unease.

  The sun shone, reflecting on the flat surfac
e of the water, and there was a little warmth in it. He talked, but not as usual; today, there were not the problems about the ordering of the universe. Instead, he spoke in odd, disjointed sentences, about trivial things.

  ‘Arthur Jenkins – he travels up on the same train, same compartment, wife’s a sister of the Grand Master. Arthur Jenkins dropped his spectacles on the rails, down the edge of the platform. They held us up for fifteen minutes, but they fished them out, do you know. Shep has fleas. Do you think Shep has fleas? Better get some powder. Better tell your aunt, she can’t stand a dog that scratches. Do you know that tea-set, the one with the tree – “Tree of Life”, they call the design? She was given that, on a Masonic Ladies’ night. We look after the wives. Marry into the Masons and you’ll be taken care of. She’s no need to worry. Do they use lard or margarine, for the pastry in these pies? It tasted of lard the last time. It’s different today. My mother would never have anything but butter. I wonder they use lard. Could be pork lard, and they do have Jews in. Do you know about Jews? Jews have been some of my best customers.’

  After they had eaten at the café, they always went back to the bungalow over the level crossing, where they waited by the gates for the London train to go through. The only people they saw were in the shops of the Parade, where they went if the aunt had given them an errand. But today was different. There was a tight, pinching feeling inside her.

  Walking beside him towards the town, along back streets she did not know, away from the level crossing and the Parade, she avoided the cracks in the paving slabs with particular care. The voice in her head asked, What is life? Is it a waste of effort that birds migrate? What are light and darkness? When I am dead, will I know it?

  The week had not been the same.

  The dog Shep was uncertain here and did not trot ahead, and once the uncle confused the way, so that they found themselves on wasteground near the coal tips.

  ‘Drunk again,’ he said. They doubled back.

  There was a door in the side of a warehouse they came to, with an engraved plate. She had not liked the change in their routine, and the feeling she had within her now was fear.

  ‘Elsa has that dressing-table set, the comb and brushes and mirror, with the mother-of-pearl backs. You know them. They’re very high quality. They came from here.’

  A cubby-hole office with glass sides looked into the body of the warehouse, which had metal shelving like Meccano, stacked with boxes, and crates on the floor.

  ‘This friend’s a Jew.’

  She wondered what a Jew would be, but he was just a man like any other, small, with a moustache and an overall the colour of cardboard.

  ‘This is the young lady,’ the uncle said. The man put out his hand to her to shake, and as she did so, in that precise moment she felt that the world took a lurch forward, pushing her closer to adult life. She was like a snake inside the beginnings of a new skin, and the strangeness of it troubled her.

  She was to choose a present for herself. That was why they were here. A chair with a hooped back was set for her, and then trays of jewellery came out, brooches and necklaces and small bangles and pins, attached to black velvet pads.

  She was completely free to choose.

  The dog Shep lapped noisily from the dish of water they had brought.

  There were questions she could not ask. Why were they here, now, today, to give her a present? How should she choose? How much was the present to cost? And what her mother would say bubbled inside her head.

  ‘Expensive presents are always bribes.’

  ‘No one can buy affection.’

  ‘Jewellery that draws attention to itself is vulgar.’

  The things were of emeralds and sapphires, silver and gold. But what she liked best and wanted she had seen at once. It was a brooch of a small poodle dog, with a sparkling body of diamonds and studded red rubies in a pattern for the collar and the eyes.

  ‘Take your time,’ he said. They were talking, and out of politeness, she looked at other brooches, at a bracelet, beaded with coral, and a pearl rose pin, resting on her palm. But she wanted the diamond dog.

  ‘Has that caught the young lady’s fancy? The little doggy brooch?’

  Hearing it, and feeling her own flush of immediate anger at the words, addressed as if to a baby, she knew that she had been right, that things were different, and she was no longer a child.

  She stood up. The brooch lay apart from the rest of the jewellery, on the table, the ruby eye gleaming as the sun caught it, through the skylight.

  ‘We seem to have made our selection.’

  She loathed him. He was on one side, and she and the uncle on another.

  ‘Dolly has always been proud,’ Elsa had once said.

  She understood what it meant now.

  He picked up the brooch.

  ‘Very nice choice,’ he said, ‘very suitable,’ and held it up, not to her, but in front of her uncle’s face.

  ‘Isn’t that pretty? Isn’t that a nice choice for a young lady? See? Can you see it at all?’ He pushed it right up, under the uncle’s nose.

  So it was not true that people did not know. The blindness was obvious, she saw that now.

  ‘Very nice,’ he said. ‘Very nice.’

  The place was hateful to her, suffocating, she wanted to be outside. But they must wait for the brooch to be put into a padded box, and the box wrapped and tied with fine string and made into a little handle, which the man set to dangle on her forefinger, and that was how she carried it, holding it up so that it swung a little.

  It had begun to rain. In the alleyway leading from the warehouse the cobblestones were greasy. She wanted to thank him, but for a moment could not speak, only held the parcel, and felt disbelief that it contained the diamond dog with the ruby collar and eyes, and that the dog was hers. He fumbled with his stick and Shep’s lead. The rain beaded the sleeves of his coat and the beads gleamed.

  ‘The dog brooch is so beautiful.’ She heard her own voice sounding odd, clear and high and formal, as if she were speaking to a stranger, some friend of her mother to whom she must be polite.

  ‘Thank you very much indeed for giving it to me.’

  They stood, Shep close between them so that she smelled the doggy smell that came off him as the rain soaked his coat. Then she looked up.

  He was crying. It was not the rain. Tears were coming quite silently out of the sightless eyes and running down his fleshy, fallen cheeks.

  He said, ‘I’m a cast-off. On the scrap heap. That’s the bottom of it. I haven’t told Elsa. I’m telling you.’

  She was silent, not fully understanding, and yet appalled.

  ‘Out,’ he said, and made a gesture with his arm. ‘I’m out.’

  The rain was soaking her hair and neck, cold, bitter rain. The dog pressed closer and whimpered slightly. Behind them, the lamps set along the warehouse came on suddenly.

  Then she knew that it had indeed been different, and why. It was the last time. He had no more work. They had asked him to go. The routine of his daily life was finished. She did not know why this should make any difference to their walks on the beach, and the pies and tea and cocoa in the café, the wait to see the London train by the level crossing. That routine had nothing to do with his weekday work. But they would not go again, she knew, and the next time she came here she would be older. She was already older. That was why he had bought her the brooch.

  ‘Wait a minute, please,’ she said and, sheltering beneath the overhang of the warehouse roof, with the drops of rain rolling off it onto her shoulders, she unpicked the string handle with her fingernails, and unwrapped the paper parcel, opened the box. The diamond dog gleamed in the silvery wet afternoon light, and the collar and eyes glinted their rubies. She lifted it out and pinned it on the lapel of her woollen coat. She did not speak. Neither of them spoke, they only turned to go on, up the alleyway, the dog Shep pulling on the lead. And then, suddenly, she was afraid, because it was the end of things, because she felt unlike
herself. The ground was no longer firm beneath her. She wanted to be home, wanted warmth and to be as she had been, secure inside her old, unchanged self, wanted to be dried and petted and given hot tea, and hear some strange, sonorous voice reading from the gramophone.

  In the last long avenue, she took hold of his hand. But when they reached the bungalow, they were met with anger, because he had kept her out for so long, and it was growing dark and they were soaking wet from the rain.

  And when she showed the brooch on the lapel of her brown coat, her mother’s face pursed up in disapproval. The dog was not diamonds and the collar and eyes were not rubies. It was diamanté only, and that was common, her mother said, and quite unsuitable to give to a child.

  Antonyin’s

  Antonyin’s

  He was one of the few people who could have felt a lift of heart on seeing the buildings at Vldansk. They were ugly, and yet to him they were – not beautiful, but something that was higher than beauty: they were perfectly symmetrical. From every angle, they satisfied, but particularly on first approach, driving up the wide avenue set with fir trees regularly spaced, and he was stilled and settled by the sight of them. He would be contented here. That was now certain. Others who might have come had attachments and commitments, or did not want to put themselves out of sight and the chance of promotion. He was unattached, with only himself to satisfy, and he found his work of consuming interest. The prospect of the coming year excited him.

  There was nothing else to be enjoyed in Vldansk. The city was without charm or idiosyncrasy, raw and with no sense of a past. The oldest feature was an ornate and hideous marble horse trough, with winged warriors rearing from the sides and dating from just before the First World War. In summer horses still drank from it – they were in general use here, not only on the miles of flat surrounding fields, but in the streets themselves, pulling vegetable carts, bringing farmers into town, among the grey, sardine-can cars.

  For three weeks he lived in a hotel until the company flat was made ready for him. There was life in the place to make up for the flat beer and greasy, gristly sausages, the coarse blankets, and peculiar-smelling soap that came in little, rough sticks. When he moved into the apartment, it felt as dead as the surface of the moon. The four blocks were set down at right angles to one another, on a featureless road three miles out of the town, without any neighbourhood streets or meeting places, and completely surrounded by turnip fields, which when he arrived, were being harvested. For two weeks, the carts moved slowly up and down the rows, and there was the sight of men lifting the vegetables and slashing their tops, before hurling them up into the wagons. The horses stood, chewing on mangy-looking hay. The turnip smell, like that of unwashed feet, seeped into the flat and lingered there.