Tell it to the Bees by Fiona Shaw

himself to be patient, to wait it out till tonight.
    Charlie told his mother he had tripped on the steps to the river, where the stone never dried and it was green and slippery. But she didn’t believe him.
    â€˜You don’t get ribs that sore by falling on the steps. Not at your age, Charlie.’
    He shrugged and she tried again.
    â€˜Will you tell me? What happened?’
    She waited; her eyes on her needle as she stitched at the tear in his shirt. Charlie didn’t reply.
    â€˜You’re going to see the doctor tomorrow morning,’ she said.
    â€˜But you’ve got to go to work.’
    â€˜Your father’s taking you.’
    He looked at her; alarmed or angry, she couldn’t tell.
    â€˜Not Dad. Please will you take me?’
    â€˜He can take the time. I can’t.’
    â€˜Then couldn’t Annie?’
    â€˜She’s at work too now. Remember?’
    â€˜Please, Mum.’
    She shook her head. Charlie willed her to look at him, but she kept her eyes fixed on the sewing.
    He didn’t blame the boy. Fred Dawson. It was the girls had done it with their skipping. He wouldn’t think about it and he wouldn’t answer his mum, so he might as well keep quiet as make something up for her.
    Dinnertimes, he and Bobby had a place they went to between the boys’ and the girls’ playgrounds, down the side of the school. It was narrow there, and often windy; the sun didn’t get in till nearly summertime. The school seemed to reach to the sky if you looked straight up.
    It made Charlie dizzy, leaning his head that far back, and he’d put a hand to the bricks to steady himself. When it was summer the bricks were warm. But not the day he hurt his ribs and when he lifted his hand, his palm was cold and gritty. A drainpipe dropped the full height of the building down to a gutter channel, and sometimes there’d be foam there, left high and dry, to be flecked up by the wind across your face and arms.
    The building stepped in behind the gutter so there was a space where the boys could be hidden, and mostly they were left alone. They played marbles, heads squinting in concentration over cat’s-eyes and bombsies in the dust, and Charlie would tell himself that if he could just roll his marble the closest to the lag line, or win Bobby’s favourite cat’s-eye, then he’d get home without any trouble, or there’d be treacle pudding for tea.
    Sometimes they hunched back against the school wall and made up stories. Bobby’s about war or cowboys, andCharlie’s about masterful criminals outwitted by masterful detectives, always in fedoras and smoking Pall Malls.
    Yesterday they’d been playing for keeps, and Bobby had been winning.
    He didn’t listen to the girls. They weren’t singing at him. They were skipping, the rope swinging high and hard, with a
whoosh
and then a whip across the ground with a tight, neat crack.
Whoosh
crack –
whoosh
crack – and the girls beating out the rhythm with dancing feet.
    Down in the valley where the green grass grows,
    There sat Biddy pretty as a rose
.
    Up came Johnny and kissed her on the cheek,
    How many kisses did she get this week?
    One, two, three, four …
    Bobby was hunched forward, his attention focused on the colours in the dust.
    â€˜I’ve got you on the run, Charlie. Four that was, out of the ring.’
    The girls’ rhymes, swung with the rope, were as familiar a drone of girl-sound to Charlie as the small, shrill shouts thrown out by the boys playing football. They stopped and then started again.
    Down in the valley where the green grass grows,
    There sat Irene pretty as a rose
.
    Up came Robert and kissed her on the cheek,
    How many kisses did she get this week?
    Charlie looked down at the circle. The marbles waited in their pools of dust. Bobby waited. The girls started again, but it was different this time. Their voices were sneery and knowing. This time they sang it