Tell it to the Bees by Fiona Shaw Page A

for him to hear, not for therope. They sang his father’s name again. They sang the other name again. The name he’d heard between his parents. The name he knew but didn’t know why.
    Down by the river where the green weeds grow,
    There sat Irene giving him a blow
.
    Up came Robert and kissed her on the bum,
    How many babies did he put in her tum?
    One, two, three, four …
    Charlie stood up, his bare knees gritty. Something was drumming inside him, drumming along with the rope turn.
    â€˜Charlie? It’s your turn.’
    Bobby was pointing. Charlie looked down, and the marbles stared up like so many eyes watching, waiting.
    Still the rope hit the ground and still the girls sang.
    Later, Charlie couldn’t remember how the fight had started, or how it had gone on. He remembered running to stop the rope swinging, to stop the girls singing, away from the marble eyes, away from his wondering friend. He remembered crossing the white line and a teacher’s voice shouting. He remembered the girls’ faces grinning as he ran at them, then shocked and surprised.
    But after that it was fragments, like a picture cut into pieces. He didn’t know how come he’d fought with this boy. The white skin of Fred’s hairline, the skew of his tie, a scab beneath his chin, bleeding from one of Charlie’s blows.
    He didn’t know he’d been hurt until the teacher stopped them. But standing in the corridor, waiting to see the headmaster, then he knew, and he moved gingerly, guarding his body against any sudden moves, anything that might take it by surprise.
    â€˜Took that like a man,’ Fred said and, to his surprise, Charlie could hear respect in his voice. ‘Your first time, seeing Mr Wilks?’
    Charlie nodded.
    â€˜He’ll go on a bit, but he doesn’t like hitting us.’ The bigger boy rubbed at his jaw. ‘Got me good and proper. You were pretty angry.’
    Charlie put a hand to his own mouth. His top lip was swollen and his mouth tasted of metal. One ear was hot, as if somebody was holding a glowing coal close up. But it was his chest and his back that felt the strangest. He put a finger to his ribcage and pressed. The pain was sharp. It made pinpricks in his scalp; it made him dizzy and he shut his eyes.
    â€˜You all right?’ Fred’s voice sounded as if it were in another room.
    Fred was right and the headmaster didn’t hit them. He was disappointed, he said, and he looked at Charlie with eyes that reminded the boy of an old dog.
    Charlie’s body ached. It hurt if he breathed in too much, and it hurt if he moved too quickly. But he didn’t want to go straight home. Fred would leave him alone, but the girls wouldn’t. They’d be looking out for him after school, so he decided to risk it and slip through the kitchen and then out past the bins. You could do it without being noticed if you were quick enough. Then he went with Bobby to the old pipe factory that lay back from the river.
    The factory had been bombed in the war, and now the low lengths of brick building stood chopped up and open to the sky. Here and there corrugated iron sheets stretched across and the wind would string itself over their ridges with a low whistling croon.
    Chunks of concrete pipe lay flung about in the weeds, some wide enough to crawl inside, and Charlie used to hope that they might find a grass snake basking in one some day.
    When darkness fell, the place belonged to courting couples. Sometimes somebody would clear a corner undera corrugated strip and sleep there for a while. There’d be the remnants of a fire, some newspaper and empty cans. But mostly, after school, the boys had it all to themselves.
    Bobby chinked the marbles in his pockets.
    â€˜I’ll give you back your best ones if you tell what happened.’
    Charlie shook his head. Bobby kicked a can against the bricks.
    â€˜If you won’t tell, I get to choose the game.’
    Charlie