Honeybees (1974)

This is a re-write of an old short story about a young boy growing up in the Seventies in the Midlands UK; to be specific, in the "Black Country" town of West Bromwich. The story has quite a bit of local dialect but should still remain readerabl

 

Ashley Burns is good at school. But they tell me he goes wild when he gets home. Ashley’s in my class at school. That’s class Four of Lyttleton Junior school. Class Four’s the one that looks out onto the teachers car park. On the walls are all the paintings that we did of ourselves last week. You can see him for yourself, Ashley Burns’ pretty face. You can’t miss his picture, his curly brown hair just like Marc Bolan and those great big blue eyes. I like Ashley Burns. He plays football for the school .He gets top marks and a prize for best boy every year. His best friend is Ian Fraser the half-caste kid. I don’t like him he’s always hanging around Ash. There’s hundreds of Frasers and they are always fighting. Ashley never fights but we know he’s hard. Mrs Tandy our teacher likes Ashley as well. She’s always smiling at him and running her fingers through his hair. Our Shane took it out of him but Ash said he hated Tandy and all the  girls in our school. I don’t believe what our Shane says because he’s a spaz. I know Ashley likes me. He records the Top Twenty every Sunday like I do.

           

“It’s gunna be a hot one today” announces Jimmy from the radio.”

In the Burns back garden the family cat rolled on the crazy paving, the grey dust streaking its dull black fur. The plastic cherub at the centre of the ornate fishpond shot high jets of clear water into the heat haze. Bees craned and crawled over the honeysuckle bushes as Mrs.Lena Burns, dressed in a cheese cloth shirt with a butterfly collar and a pair of French-cut trousers, gently applied her watering can to the ailing flora. And then he came, dribbling the orange Wembley Trophy ball; Cruyff out to Neeskens, back off the shed and onto Johnny Rep unmarked on the edge of the box. A superb daisy-cutter of a shot, French Marigolds flew into the air in mass appreciation. Holland lead one-nil. Sepp Maier well beaten. Sepp with those huge hands does not look pleased.

            “Look what yove done ya little s**t .Just look”. The little man in his orange Adidas shirt, tilted his head back and looked up into the sun and smiled.

            The back door opened.

            “What’s gooing on ‘ere. What’s he done this time”

            “Go back in John I’ll deal with this”

            John Burns, tall and thin in his white string vest, his armpit hair apparent with the Sunday Mercury rolled up in his fist, retreated deferentially into the peace of his living room.

            “Git here now. How many bloody times have I told you not to play football ‘round the back”

            No answer. Ashley stooped down to get his ball from beneath the rose bushes. He examined the ball in his own time, squeezing his cherished possession, waiting for the familiar rush of air that told him that the afternoon would be over. But the ball was intact.

Lena stood in disbelief .Her son’s lack of manners was starting to worry her. She had repeated to Ashley over and over again that good manners cost nothing. It was expected that children should give up their seats to adults on buses. That doors should be held open for women and the elderly. That “please” and “thank you ”were the keywords from upon which all common decency founded itself.

            In total frustration she screamed “Yooooooo little…”She stopped and Ashley seized his chance and ran past her at top speed, ducking low to avoid his mother’s attempted flick at his head.

            He shouted back at her, “Ya missed Jelly Back.”

            Lena sat down on her size eighteen rump on the backdoor step. She was angry and upset. Her son had hurt her with his stubbornness and his cheek. She felt she was losing him and that the apron strings which bound her to him were loosening way too soon .He was only eleven years old and he was changing by the minute. Lena knew this but could not face it.

            The backdoor opened again and John stood over her. She sensed his cowardice. She could hear him swill the cocktail of Tia Maria and coffee around his mouth.

            “I’m worried ‘bout him John. He’s so bloody difficult”

“Doe get upset luv. He’ll grow out of it. He’s okay at the school ay he. He’s good when is’ out wi us ”

            Lena laughed. Clichés and inactivity. That’s what she thought. That was John.

“Wot are yo trying to say John. He runs riot at um but that’s okay cus he’s good at school. Christ. Ya never here. The pub, that’s all ya care about. aye it John”

John closed the door quietly and disappeared.

 

Next door to Lena at 121B lived the Reece family. Lena was quick to remind the neighbours that she lived at number 121A and that A was before B and that her house was the first and the real 121. The B abode was a second class house and the family that occupied it were also of that ilk. To Lena the B house was for the B******s whilst her own house of A was for the Angels.

The Reece family comprised of Maria and her common law husband Ronnie, and their children, Robert and Deidre. Ronnie was Maria’s second husband. Her first was Ray, a foundry worker. He was an iron-horse of a man, a mighty shire who kept on going through the unregulated heat of the furnaces and the deafening strikes of the drop-hammer .Ray’s world was the inferno and the great burning fires. Sparks had rained on him and burnt his flesh. Pieces of cast had fell into his boots and cut his feet. Yet he stayed upright. And if the Unions called “out”, he went with them. If management wanted more, he would produce more.

Ray did what he thought was right for everyone. He worked and earned. Maria had the children, so she should rear them. Maria never forgot the night when he set her gender for her. Their relationship was now solid and hard. There was no flex in it whatsoever. Their marriage crawled along. The last summer holiday they spent together in South Devon, did not provide Maria with any respite. The children had bickered, Ray drank and she fretted to a point where she longed to be back at home. However, home was soon to become a grave. On an airless evening in late June, Ray lifted a sack of bone meal to feed his roses and suffered a massive heart attack and died instantly. The furnace was cold but Maria Reece was getting hotter.

            For two years Maria took widowhood seriously. She was offish and distant. But there was no depth in her grief. She repeatedly questioned whether she had ever loved Ray. She

 struggled with widowhood. She had the children to care for but they were teenagers and breaking away from her maternity. Robert was sixteen and Deidre was fourteen. Gaps had began to appear in her life and things were unfolding. She began to live a little more freely. She wore bright clothes and make-up. She looked at men. and fantasised about chance meetings that would provide laughter and conversation. And ultimately, sex and love.

            Ronnie Round was the kid who delivered the pop on Friday afternoons. Ronnie brought the bottles of multi-coloured Alpine fizzy pop to the front door and he did it with

panache and style. He had red cropped hair, blue eyes, and an ever present smile irrelevant

of the weather and the glum faces that would greet him upon his knock. He was a master of

sexual innuendo and their were few women who could resist the quick flirt and there were others who went a lot further and took him behind the front door. And that is what Maria did. It was lust and then love. Maria was ten years older than Ronnie but that did not

matter. They were as complementary as nicotine and alcohol are to each other and within months Ronnie had moved into 121B.

 

It was now midday on a Sunday at 121B and the curtains were still drawn. Deidre stood at the open door to the living room in her baby doll nightdress. The mess was terrible. Pure detritus. Empty brown bottles were strewn all over the floor, ashtrays full of lunar ash, plates patterned with  footprints all over the floor. Someone’s underwear that was caught cold and frigid crawling down on the back of a dirty chair. Deidre had grown accustomed to this Sunday scene. She picked up a clutch of empty bottles and holding them to her developing breasts, wove a twisted course to the kitchen bin. However, after only one careful step she had to stop. She had trod on something cold and gelatinous. She bent down to look. She had seen one of these before, Ian Fraser had chased her with one on the end of a stick in the park. This one was pink and someone had tied a knot in it. The liquid that had gather in the end looked bad.

           

Ian Fraser sat on the wall outside of Ashley Burns house. Skinny, green eyed with a helmet of Afro hair he bounced his power ball high into the blue sky and let it land and bounce away down the quiet main road. Then off he ran, with his loping gait zigzagging

over the cracked pavement, all the time tracking the bouncing dot that accelerated further into the distance. “Fraser, Fraser”, a boy called. He turned to see Ashley Burns jumping up and down. Fraser turned and looked into the distance abandoning his power ball.

            “Ashley, she’s let ya out”. Fraser laughed.

            “Shut it fuzzy I do woh a’f*****g like”.

            “Na ya white honky, yome mommy’s little helper”. Fraser laughed again but even harder.

            Ashley sniffed up a hay fevery dribble.

            “Lets goo then. Off up the railway”, directed Fraser.

            So off they went in perpetual conflict, walking across each others paths as they attempted to trip each other up while. Having reached their destination they perched on the wall that separated the road from the disused track. Quiet in thought for a minute, and with fizz-bombs effervescent in their mouths, they got ready to alight. They dropped from the wall like frogmen going overboard. And so they fell, down onto the dusty loose shale, their black trainers turning grey, as they tried to brake on their steep descent. They were down at the bottom of the track now, beneath a canopy of thick ivy that covered the fields of high bamboo-like weeds that lined the embankment. The kids had done a great job. Tens of little workmen came down every Summer and hacked away at the stalks, creating a labyrinth of green corridors and anterooms. They played for hours in an underworld of weeds, sheltered from the rain and shaded from the sun. It was only when the first frosts of Autumn came and the ivy began to die, that the kids began to re-surface. The place that they had created would be bare by December and already in deep hibernation to ready to rise again next Summer.

            Ashley sneezed violently and rocked back on his heels to absorb the recoil. He caught the green mucous in his cupped hands and wiped the snot on a large green dock leaf.

            “You riffy b*****d Ash. Doe yoe come near me with that.”

            They moved on through the shady tunnels.

            “Hey, Ian look in here. Sum’ons, bin sleeping ‘ere.”

Ashley kicked up the ashes of a long dead fire.

“I bet he lives ‘ere,” said Ashley turning to Fraser.

“Who d’ya mean,” said Fraser puzzled.

“Yoe noe.The dratsab.The tramp. Yoe’m thick Fraser.”

There was a rustle and a slight waver in the stalks. They stood rapt for a second and then they fled like frightened rabbits, excited and afraid by the old slow dog at their tail. Away they flew up the shale incline and back onto the road and into the sun.

“Yoe do that agen Ash and I’ll kill ya.I will.I eh loffing.Ya white b*****d”

 

Deidre lay on her bed in her pink nylon nightdress. In the bedroom next door, Ronnie and Maria re-positioned themselves beneath the sheets. From beneath her bed Deidre retrieved her white jewellery box. She opened its lid and the little figure of the ballerina began to rotate. She took the pink rubber from her box of curios. It was rigid and twisted like a dead fish. She held it up to the light and pinched and pulled it between her fingers until all the fluid had collected in its teat.

 

Fraser and Ashley stood together outside of 121A.

“See you later Fuzz”

“I’ll call for ya ‘bout three. After “Star Soccer”, Ian Fraser pleaded. However, Ashley knew Ian would not be around later.

There was a house full of Frasers; one for every year between the ages of one and seventeen. That’s how Ian saw it .There was no point in going home. So he sprinted off, rounding the bend in the street like Borzov; racing away to another place and to another friend.

 

Ashley rapped on the big bay window and stared through the thick net curtain. He watched ashamed as she separated her bulk from the soft settee. That was his mother, big and fat. She did not look good to him. Nowhere near as good as the woman next door.

“Weer yoe bin?” his mother asked.

“Wot’s for dinna?” he asked.

“I’m spaking ta ya.” Her voice began to rise.

“Weer’s Dad?,” he asked.

“Weer d’ya think.” There was frustration in her voice.

“When’ll he be back,” he asked.

“Doe be saft, when it closes” she snarled.

Lena marched off into the kitchen to turn the cabbage down. Ashley sat in his Dad’s armchair breathing in his father’s smell. The odours of stale tobacco, foundry dirt, hair tonic

and spilt beer that had impregnated and settled into every corner and hole of the big chair. Ashley knew this was his father’s place and that he should not be there. And yet his impudence and his love for his father meant he could sit there and no-one could disturb him.

            Ashley’s eyes were sticky and inflamed. He rubbed and teased, trying desperately to release the sticky strands of mucous that webbed his sight. His nose itched and his throat was raw dry. He swallowed in involuntary gulps that made a clacking sound. And then he sneezed over and over again. Lena knew exactly what she needed to do. She poured him a glass of cream soda and placed the anti-histamine pill between two spoons and crushed it into a fine claret and blue powder. The boy took the drug without question. Lena went back to the kitchen and turned the boiling vegetables down. When she came back her son was passive and lank.

            When Ashley awoke he knew that Ian Fraser had come and gone. The box room in which Ashley slept was hot and airless. He shuffled off the Aztec-patterned blanket and

opened the window .His nose twitched and he sneezed but this time it was not the hay fever

that was irritating his nostrils. During last Winter the factory that sat at the back of both Maria’s and Lena’s homes had caught fire. Ashley had been woken by the sirens and his mother’s screaming. He went down the stairs as his mother ran up to rescue any valuables from the intent that she saw in the fire. Ashley  stood in the garden in his tartan pyjamas, immune to the cold and fascinated by the big black cloud that had begun to eat up

the sky. He watched longingly as they ran around in their blue uniforms as they mounted the platform of the crane. He watched in awe as the men in blue sprayed water from the heavens onto the fires below. From the age of ten he knew what he wanted to do when he left school.

The remains of the fire were quickly removed by the local authority. The whole factory was flattened and yet its presence had remained with a stench that contrived to keep the day of its destruction alive. Throughout the hot summer, the ground had burned and cracked and the factory had breathed out relentlessly.

 

            Bobby Reece sat on his backdoor step; shaven-headed, thin and pale, he looked up to Ashley’s window. Ashley moved behind the curtain. Bobby continued to clean his air rifle. Very slowly the skinhead rose and released his trouser braces. He pushed the rifle butt hard to his shoulder and took aim at the birds that were resting in the willow tree at the bottom of the garden. Ping. One shot and the birds flew in all directions, except for the one that fell vertically into the long grass. Ashley wanted to stand in his bedroom window and applaud Bobby’s shooting but he couldn’t do that because would kill him; boot him to death with his cherry red Doc Martens. He began to sweat fear. He and Fraser had got run by a gang only a week ago on a Saturday afternoon. Ian had later explained to Ashley that these were Notts Forrest fans on their way to the game at the Hawthorns. Ashley had already began to hate football and skinheads.

            Ashley watched as Bobby fired pellet after pellet into the wood of next door’s shed door. Suddenly, the gun was trained on him.Bobby Reece smiled and a small red dart hit Ashley’s curtain and dropped harmlessly down onto his window sill.

           

Outside John Burns was feeding the fish with ants eggs. He threw the eggs leisurely to all corners of the miniature pond and watched as one fish after another emerged gracefully

to accept their offerings. The fish rose and fell from the surface of the pond, mesmerising John Burns, cutting him free from all ties that bound together the worries of work, money and yes; even death. Everyone thought that he was a boozer and they were right but he was not an idiot, he knew exactly where he was going and how quickly he would get there. He sparked-up a cigarette and thought about the pub.

“Dad, Dad, thay’m shooting at us,” Ashley cried from his bedroom window.

John was growing sick of his son.

“Who’dya mean?”

“Next doors Dad, ar’m gooing ta’ get Mom.”

Lena Burns was stretched full out her double bed snoring. Ashley leant over her and pushed the wobbly flesh at her shoulder. He could not rouse her from her sleep. She was like a block of concrete immoveable and fixed in the centre of the bed. He felt like pulling her hair or biting her. This was important but no one cared. It was Sunday a sad and quiet day.

 

Ashley sat upon the backdoor step and listened to Deidre and Bobby Reece row about who was going to make the tea. The Reece’s back door slammed shut and a girls voice screamed,

“Let me in ya b*****d”

And then whack. The door shook on its hinges. Whack and someone bounced off the door. Ashley found a slit in the fence and watched intently as the girl hammered on the door.

Deidre turned and caught him spying.

            “Wot yoe staring at”. She stood defiant with her hands on her hips and a scowl on her face. Ashley’s cheeks burned and his body went wet.

            “I cun see ya, yoe dum or summat”

            She walked towards the fence, all legs and gravy brown eyes with her hair in pony tails. Ashley backed off. She peered at him through the spy hole.

            “Yo luk sick, yoe do”.

            Ashley rubbed his eyes and she scratched her head.

            “Goo down the bottom of the gardin weer I cun see ya”

            They met. She was tall and talkative. He was innocent, frightened and curious. How he wished Fraser was with him now. Ian knew things about girls. How they liked to be kissed, where they liked to be touched; sex and what lay between their legs. Fraser, from a big family, had been studying his older brothers and sisters for years. He saw them naked, bathing, masturbating, shagging boyfriends and girlfriends in Mom’s bed. He had

seen his brother Duane wearing his Mom’s clothes. Ashley had never seen

either his Mom or his Dad naked below the waist.

            “Yome cumming to our’ school in September, ay ya,” Her words panicked Ashley.

“Yer woe like it and doe yoe ever goo to the bogs cuz they stick ya ed da’n an flush. Julie Simmons nearly f*****g drowned”

Ashley was near to tears.

She went on, “And if they try to giya a fake, just say ya doe smoke. Anyway yome good at football so yoe’ll be alright”

Saved. Ashley began to wag his tongue.

“Yome alwis shouting at yer brother ay ya”

“Cor stand him. He’s a bloody idiot”

“He tried ta kill me. Shot at me with his air-rifle.” Ashley knew he shouldn’t of told her of this. She would use this against Bobby. And sure enough she said,

“Doe wurry I’ll tell Mom about him”

            Ashley’s head was full. He could he could not believe he was talking to a girl and an older one at that.

            “Da yoe know the Frasers,” he asked.

            She knew them all, even the one in jail. She knew all about Ian’s Dad and his drinking and all the women he had shagged. Ashley got lost at this point as she kept blowing the conversational balloon higher and higher.

            “I’ve got summat ta show ya”

            And she dashed back up the garden and through the now open back door. The door closed and Ashley thought he would never see her again but minutes later she was back.

            “Der yoe know what this is,” she asked, as she held out the emasculated sheath. Ashley stared. He knew if he wanted to be anybody in life he had to answer this question

quickly and correctly.

            “Goo on then,” she said. Her lips were set in a wide and spiteful smile.

            “Yeah,” he tried to relax but he was suffering under the weight of his embarrassment.

            She went on “doya know wot this is,” she pointed between her legs.

            “It’s ya fanny,” he spat.

            “An’ yourn, wot doya do w’yourn,” she teased.

            Ashley blushed and closed his eyes half wishing that she would disappear.

            “Chrissakes, get it owt an’I show ya.”

            “No fucken  way I ay doin that,” he shouted.

She shouted at him, scolded and ridiculed him.

“Yome a puff, mommies boy eh yer.Yoe doe know nuthin,” she hissed.

“Alrite, yoe’ll see,” he screeched.

Ashley undid the snake belt and dropped his trousers. He placed his hands on either side the elasticated waist band of his pants and pushed them down and pulled them back up

with great speed.

            Caught in that moment which Ashley would never forget; two things happened. Deidre turned pale and threw the rubber into his red face and from out of nowhere,

crossing their mutual pain, came a sound like thunder breaking, as someone rapped frenziedly upon a window pane. Lena had seen. And in the eye of the storm all the adults began to gather.

           

Lena broke the picket fence and entered into the Reece garden. Her steps were unusually light and mindful. Even amongst the rubbish of mouldy cardboard boxes,

rusty exhaust pipes and empty beer bottles, she still believed that she was trespassing. But there were no flowers her only weeds. To Lena it was a ugly place without an owner or a gardener; it really did not matter whether she was uninvited or not. They did

not care about this little lot of land so she would walk wherever she wanted to. Her anger increased, their curtains were grey. They were a disgrace. She hammered on the back door demanding a reply. She waited and then started.

“Cum on git out ‘ere. I wanna spake t’yer now. Git ya’self outa that bed ya bloody w***e”

Lena was unsure whether she was addressing the mother or the daughter and

so she changed tack and made her target obvious.

            Lena shouted at the house, “An’ doe yoe send that lazy boyfriend of yourn da’n. Bloody waster”

            The door opened and there he was the lazy b*****d, looking wan and fresh to  daylight, wearing purple Karmen Ghia cords and an orange capped sleeve tee-shirt. Lena stared at him. She was amazed but she did not know why. Was it because the enemy was at such close quarters or was it his general demeanour, a mix of arrogance and blithe. He scratched an overlong sideburn.

            “Wot der yoe want”, he said aggressively.

            “Not yoe”, Lena revealed her thoughts.

But she broke her image of him as quickly as he had created it.

“That little s**t’s corrupted my boy. I sin it all. She med him tek his pants off. That’s rape. Though wadya expect. Look at the state of yoe. Call yerself a bloody mon. Yoe lot er’all the sem we ya carryings on. But that ugly little wench, she waz aft’a his body. Yoe lot. Yoe med her like that. Ya should be bloody ashamed of yerselves. O’tell ya if I ever see her near him agin I’ ll kill her” Lena paused and gasped.

 

Ronnie coughed and looked down at Lena from the top of the back door step.

“Yoe know what, I doe give a f**k wot yoe think missuss.They doe belong ta me. They ay my family”

 

If Maria had caught Ronnie’s confession, she did not show it. She had been here before. After Ray’s death she had heard their wicked tongues working away behind her back. Whether she was shopping or just waiting for the bus, someone would stare, scuttle on and talk to Mrs so and so. Yes, they would wring their hands and pity poor old Ray. These dried up old women hated her. They would say she was loose and disrespectful even though she was no longer married. These women would burn her at the stake if they had their way. And now, one of these women was now on her door step holding her judgemental flame.

“What der you want Mrs.Burns,” asked Maria.

Lena took another step up to where Maria stood. Lena was up for this. She looked into Maria’s brown eyes and stared.

“That girl accosted ma boy. She pulled his pants down”

            There was again another heavy pause. Maria was keeping calm.

            “Don’t be saft Lena, they’re just messing about”

            “Wot”, screeched Lena, “I sinit all.That little wench is a w***e”

            “Pardon, wot did call my daughter”

            “Yoe ‘erd”, Lena teased and then shouted, “She’s a little w***e just like her mother”

            Lena’s last words echoed from house to house. A bee buzzed between the two women

and quickly disappeared to inform the estate of the latest scandal.

 

            There were screams and some undignified hair pulling and at last a result. Lena had fallen from the step and ended up in a heap crying and minus a slipper.

            Maria shook with rage. “Serves you right you bloody snob. Yome no better than me. I mean ya mother’s a b*****d ‘aint she. Did y’ever see yer Grandad. Hey, are yer listening to me”

Maria showed no mercy and sensed impending victory. But then he came, hammer poised in his hand. John Burns was one of those men who you instinctively knew could carry violence to its ultimate end. All the diffidence that had crippled him when he was around Lena could be erased in one mad act. All his frustrations, regrets and failures could be nullified in this one act. His wife lay on the floor, injured in ignominious defeat. This was his chance. Maria saw him coming. She could see the blood-streaked corneas of his eyes. He was close. She could see congealed gravy on his chin. Maria slammed the door shut. And then he went at it with the hammer, smashing the glass pane until there was nothing left but a few shards hanging from the reinforcing wires. He stopped and pondered whether he should continue. He could see into their kitchen. The urge to commit the most abysmal acts of

violence pushed him on. He look for his prone wife for approval but she had vanished

and in her place stood a very young policeman. He stopped. Blood dripped from

John Burns arms. Old man Mercer must have called the police out again.

 

            The anti-histamine chemicals were coursing through his blood. He had taken three or may be four. The shouting had stopped. Ashley did not need to go and look, intuition told him that the adults had gone mad in the way only adults can. They were sad all of them. They couldn’t handle growing up. Ashley lay back in his Dad’s chair and fell asleep.

 

            Ashley came back to school today. He’s been away for over two months. Everyone says he’s been really sick. But I dunno he looks okay to me. We’re at the Comp now. It’s a big place but you get used to it. I’m not in Ash’s class anymore but our Shane is. Shane sez Ashley won’t play football anymore, sez he’s gone right off it. But I don’t believe our Shane. He’s a liar. He says that I like Mark Smith.