golden line of honey as thin as a silk thread, flow lethargically into the waiting bowl.
Grace liked how beekeeping required dexterity, holding the frame in one hand, scraping the honey off with a knife with the other. Slowness was needed, so as not to alarm the bees and make them swarm, as was patience. Slowness and patience were lovely qualities though she struggled to have them herself. She felt not much could go wrong in a world that was slow and patient.
She liked being in the garden and spent many spring mornings tending to the white peonies, irises and foxgloves and lightly trimming the old, woody lavender. The lavender was the most important plant: bees flocked to it. Tomorrow she would filter the pale spring honey through muslin then pour it into sterilised jamjars, labelling them: Lavender honey, Narberth, Spring 1924. She wasn’t sure why Mother told her to date the jars, as honey didn’t spoil: it would last an eternity, as far as anyone knew. The honey that was buried with Tutankhamun and had been unearthed two years ago was still fresh and edible. Later she would take the honey to Mrs Annie Evans at the Conduit Stores where it would be sold. She liked to keep herself busy, she didn’t want time to think.
The hum of the hive made a soft sound. The bees were calm and drowsy now: that was the effect of the smoke. They hovered lazily or flew slowly. She wondered, when they were married, if Wilfred would like to do beekeeping with her. It was now almost a week since she had last seen him, six days since he proposed to her. She wondered what he was doing and what he was thinking; whether everything was all right. The relief she had felt at his proposal was beginning to fray. She had expected him to send a postcard or even use his telephone asking her to meet, but there had been nothing. She could use her father’s surgery telephone to call him, however. She knew his number, had memorized it from his weekly advertisement in the Narberth & Whitland Observer:
Telephone number for all inquiries:
Narberth 103.
But her mother would be appalled at the thought of Grace approaching Wilfred. ‘Too modern,’ she would admonish. Mrs Reece would consider telephoning a gentleman, even if he were one’s fiancé, extremely forward. And perhaps it was, thought Grace.
Nine days later, Grace still hadn’t heard from Wilfred. She stood on Mrs Prout’s doorstep, rang the brass doorbell and heard it trill sharply. Waiting on Mrs Prout’s doorstep, Grace realized there was nothing obviously strange about the house: it was like many houses in Narberth – symmetrical with lime-washed walls a foot thick – but it had an eeriness to it that she could feel even when walking past. And the vicar would dislike her coming here, she was certain, because he had preached against it at the end of October, the Sunday before Hallowe’en; the Revd Waldo Williams MA knew his congregation.
‘Necromancy is very wrong – evil. It is the work of the Devil, of Lucifer himself,’ he announced, and he had read a lengthy passage – twenty-two verses – from the Book of Deuteronomy. He laid his gnarled hand on the open page of the Bible and intoned magisterially the words of Moses to his flock, ‘“There shall not be found among you any one that maketh his son or his daughter to pass through the fire or that useth divination, or an observer of time, or an enchanter or a witch. Or a charmer or a consulter with familiar spirits, or a wizard or a necromancer”.’ Then the Revd Waldo Williams MA, his voice rising to so great a pitch that his throat was strained, proclaimed, ‘“FOR ALL THAT DO THESE ARE AN A-BOM-IN-ATION TOTHELORD”. Deuteronomy. Deuteronomy.’ Then, just before Handel Evans struck up on the organ, the Reverend added in a breathy whisper, ‘We should be like the fowls of the air or the lilies of the valley: they don’t worry. No, no.’ But the Revd Waldo Williams’s words wouldn’t stop Grace: she was fond of the Reverend but this was far more important than chapel. Grace had to know.
Mrs Hilda Prout threw open the door, looked Grace up and down and stated, ‘You’ll have come with a question.’
‘Yes,’ Grace said, taken aback by Mrs Prout’s abruptness. ‘There is something I’d like to ask, if you don’t mind.’
‘Well,’ said Mrs Hilda Prout, ‘every question has an answer.