Darius Bell and the Crystal Bees (2 page)

‘Personally,' said Darius, ‘if it's any help, I don't think walnut-flower honey is so great.'

The Deavers didn't look as if they agreed.

Darius sighed. Well, it wouldn't be a disaster if they didn't have any pumpkin honey this year, he thought. It wasn't his favourite. That would probably be the honey that came from plum blossoms. Or maybe the honey from blueberry flowers. Or maybe . . . But pumpkin-flower honey
was
nice. It had a light brown colour, like toast, a medium consistency, and a slight, almost unnoticeable burnt flavour that would have been unpleasant if it was any stronger, but was actually quite interesting. Darius's father used it for dipping pistachios and dates, which he tended to do on afternoons when he wasn't making much progress in the short stories he was always writing, which was often. On weekends or in the holidays Darius sometimes joined him and they would sit in his writing room and dip pistachios and dates in pumpkin-flower honey, washing them down with small glasses of mint tea. Mrs Simpson, the Bell family cook, also made pumpkin honey cake, which was dark, sweet and rich, although now that he thought about it Darius wasn't sure if the name meant she used pumpkin and honey – or honey from pumpkin flowers – or both. It was one of those names that meant one thing until something made you think about it and suddenly you realised it could mean something else.

Mr Deaver had put the top back on the box. The two beekeepers went off to check their next hive. Darius walked back to the drive to pick up his bag. He hoped the Deavers would decide to move one of the other hives, the one near the walnut trees, or the bean field, or even the strawberry field. Strawberry-flower honey, in Darius's opinion, was far too simple and sweet, without any of the interesting flavour that pumpkin honey had.

On the other hand, thought Darius as he crunched up the drive, there were plenty of honeys that he did like. If there was no pumpkin-flower honey for the next year, it wouldn't be a disaster, would it?

At school the next day, Darius told his two best friends, Paul Klasky and Oliver Roberts, about the empty hive. Paul never believed anything the first time, or the second time, and often not even the third time you told him, even when he knew nothing at all about it and had no good reason to doubt you. On the other hand, once he decided that he did believe something, it was virtually impossible to persuade him otherwise.

Needless to say, a conversation that should have taken thirty seconds on the way from the playground into school turned into an argument that took a lot longer.

‘That can't be right!' said Paul, stopping and putting his hands on his hips. ‘An empty hive? Suddenly? Just like that? No.'

Oliver glanced at Darius and rolled his eyes.

‘I told you,' said Darius. ‘They swarmed.'

‘Why should they?'

‘To start another hive.'

Paul gazed at him doubtfully. Then he folded his arms. ‘Ridiculous! Why would they leave? How would they know where they were going? Why would they take the chance? You know what they say, Darius. The better the devil you know than the devil you don't.'

‘What devil?' said Oliver.

‘The devil! Any devil. Any one you want.' Paul had a habit of repeating the sayings he heard from his father, who was fond of proverbs, without necessarily making sure that he understood them first. And two sayings, in Paul's opinion, were always better than one. ‘And you know what else they say – the early bird catches the worm.'

‘What are you
talking
about?' demanded Oliver in exasperation.

‘Look, Paul,' said Darius. ‘Bees swarm. It's a fact.'

‘They do,' said Oliver. ‘I remember seeing something about that once.'

Paul narrowed his eyes. ‘Are you sure?'

Oliver nodded.

Paul frowned, glancing at Oliver and Darius in turn. Suddenly he nodded. ‘Well, you know what they say – the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence. And you don't know what you've got until it's gone. And . . . when you've got to go, you've got to go!'

‘Go where?'

They looked around to find that everyone else had gone inside and they were the only ones left in the schoolyard – except for Mr Beale, their science teacher, who was standing in front of them.

‘Go where, gentlemen?' said Mr Beale, who had a habit of calling the boys ‘gentlemen', and the girls ‘ladies', on the grounds that if you called someone by a certain name, they were likely to behave in the appropriate way, even though the children never did anything to prove him right, and quite a few things, it seemed to Darius, to prove him wrong. ‘Well, gentlemen?'

‘To class,' said Darius.

‘I suspect that isn't what you were talking about,' said Mr Beale.

‘Well . . . not specifically,' said Darius, ‘but we would have, in another minute. Gone to class, I mean.'

Mr Beale stood watching them, eyebrows raised sceptically.

‘Bees,' said Paul. ‘We were talking—
Ow!'
he cried, as both Darius and Oliver elbowed him in the ribs.

Mr Beale looked at them with interest. ‘What about bees?'

Paul pressed his lips tight, glancing at Darius.

‘Darius,' said Mr Beale. ‘What about bees?'

Darius hesitated. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Oliver shaking his head. Mr Beale was always looking for ways to make science ‘real'. He was always saying science wasn't something you learned from books, it was something you could see and hear and touch and smell and taste every day in every place in the world around you. He loved using examples from things that his students experienced, in the belief that this would get them as excited about science as he was. The lenses on someone's spectacles fogging up when they came into the warmth of the classroom on a frosty winter's morning would set him off teaching about condensation, freezing, melting and various other allegedly fascinating qualities of water. Or someone missing class because they had to go to the dentist for a filling would provoke a lesson on the structure of teeth, which would somehow lead to a lesson about nerves, which would lead to lessons about muscles, joints and bones. Mr Beale didn't worry about the syllabus – he only wanted to get his students interested in science. He was always on the lookout for something to use.

‘Darius,' he said slowly, ‘what about bees?'

‘Nothing, Mr Beale,' said Darius.

Mr Beale looked at him knowingly. ‘We're not going anywhere, Darius, until you tell me. Not unless you want to go and see Mrs Lightman. And I wouldn't recommend that.'

Darius wouldn't either. Mrs Lightman, the school principal, didn't look kindly on students who were brought to see her. As far as Darius was aware, she didn't look kindly on anything.

‘Darius?' said Mr Beale.

Darius glanced at Oliver helplessly. Oliver winced.

‘Swarming,' said Darius to the science teacher. ‘We were talking about bees swarming.'

That afternoon, Mr Beale made Darius stand up in front of the class and describe the empty hive in the pumpkin field. He made him describe the protective clothes Mr and Mrs Deaver had worn and the smoke-can Mrs Deaver had used. He made him explain what he knew about swarming. For the rest of the week after that, they studied bees: the way they fly, the way they find nectar in flowers, the way they transfer pollen from one flower to the next. They studied the way bees dance so they can tell other bees where to go to get more nectar, and Mr Beale demonstrated the swaying, wiggling dance himself and then made everyone stand up and do it, which was actually quite good fun, although a few desks were knocked over in the process. They studied the way bees construct their hives, the way their colonies work, and of course the way they swarm. Mr Beale even brought in three types of honey and plastic spoons so everyone could taste the differences that result when bees gather honey from different types of flowers. It wasn't often you got to eat as part of a science lesson! Some kids double-dipped with their spoons, which made other kids refuse to taste the honey because it was unhygienic, and as a result there were a number of fights, but Mr Beale did a reasonable job of controlling the class and some of the kids said they really could taste the difference between the honeys, which made Mr Beale beam with delight.

Darius didn't point out that three different honeys was barely the beginning. Mr Beale seemed so happy with the response he'd achieved that Darius didn't want to spoil it for him. But the Deavers produced a lot more than three types from the hives on the Bell estate. Part of their great skill as beekeepers, in addition to stopping their hives from swarming, was to make sure the bees produced their honey from specific varieties of flowers with a purity that other honey producers struggled to achieve. Another one of their skills was not only to produce pure honeys, but also to blend them in ways that enhanced the qualities of each. The third element that made their honey so highly prized was the quality of the flowers themselves – the carefully selected and nurtured varieties on the Bell estate that produced the exquisitely flavoured, succulent fruits and vegetables for which Mr Fisher was famed. The Deavers labelled their jars with special bell-shaped labels, each personally signed, and honey-lovers waited excitedly for the Bell-labelled jars to appear each year at the market, searching anxiously for the honey variety they particularly loved – almond, plum, cherry, blueberry, cucumber, or a carefully designed mixture of types – and paying far more than they were prepared to pay for anyone else's.

Darius began to wonder exactly how many types the Deavers did produce, and so did Paul and Oliver once he mentioned it to them. They agreed it was important not only to know about them, but to taste them as well. After school Darius took them back to Bell House and they went straight down to the kitchen. Mrs Simpson, the Bell family cook, was making walnut cakes that her husband was going to sell to the cafes in town. Darius counted ten already cooling on the kitchen bench and suspected there were more in the oven.

Mrs Simpson was icing one of them. She slapped the thick white cream on with a spatula and then rapidly spread and smoothed it with the skill that came from having iced thousands of cakes over the years. Darius and Paul and Oliver watched silently as she worked. It took barely a minute, then a last few touches to make sure the icing was perfectly smooth, and it was done.

‘I don't suppose any of you would like a piece,' she said.

Darius smiled. He didn't suppose any of them needed to answer!

Mrs Simpson cut three large pieces from the cake. It would be one less cake for the cafes, but she didn't care. Mrs Simpson lived with her husband and three grown- up sons in the cook's quarters, which included the butler's quarters and the underbutler's quarters and the maids' quarters and the quarters of all the other staff who had once served at the House in the days when the Bells were wealthy enough to have servants, and which altogether were as big as a large family residence. Her husband used the money from selling her cakes to buy miniature ceramic jugs, which he collected. There wasn't a room in their quarters that wasn't already cluttered with them. As far as Mrs Simpson was concerned, she wouldn't mind if she didn't see another miniature ceramic jug in her life. She would much rather see Darius and his friends enjoying her cake.

Normally they would run off with their cake to wherever they were going in the House – to the echo gallery, where the floor was of a special grey stone and the walls and ceiling of a special hardened wood that perfectly reflected every sound, or to the west wing, which was even more run-down than the rest of the house and where portraits of long-dead Bells gazed on rooms full of broken furniture or to the glitter pool that had been revealed in the wood of the estate by the earth tremor that restarted the clock in the tower. But today they had other business in the kitchen, so they stayed and ate their cake right there. Mrs Simpson watched them questioningly for a moment and then went on icing the other cakes.

When they had finished, Mrs Simpson looked at them questioningly again.

‘More?' she said.

Darius frowned. The cake was really excellent, and he could easily have eaten another piece. And from the looks of Paul and Oliver, so could they. But that wasn't what they had come for – and they would need room for that.

But he didn't want Mrs Simpson to think they didn't like her cake. That could have terrible consequences for the future!

‘Would you mind if we said no?' he asked.

‘No,' said Mrs Simpson, slapping icing on to a cake. ‘Suit yourself.'

‘The reason we're here,' explained Darius, ‘is that we want to know how many types of honey we have.'

‘Mr Deaver could tell you that.'

‘We also thought we might try them,' said Darius.

‘On bread,' said Oliver.

‘With butter,' added Paul.

‘Really?' said Mrs Simpson.

‘You know what they say – if something's worth doing, it's worth doing properly.'

Mrs Simpson looked at Paul in surprise. ‘Well, Paul Klasky, for once you've come up with something I agree with!' She finished icing the cake she was working on. ‘All right. Honey it is.'

‘On bread,' said Paul.

‘With butter,' added Oliver. ‘If you have any.'

Mrs Simpson disappeared into the pantry. She came back with half a dozen big jars. She went back for more. And again. Eventually there were twenty-eight jars lined up on the kitchen bench in front of the boys, each containing a different honey and bearing a bell-shaped label with the name of the flowers from which it had come. Mrs Simpson opened a drawer and set down a pile of spoons on the bench. Then she pulled out half a loaf of white bread and cut it into slices, buttered them liberally, put them on a plate and stood back to watch.

‘Waste not, want not!' said Paul. He grabbed a piece of bread and smeared it with the closest honey, a thin, light variety labelled ‘Blackberry & Elderflower'.

Paul managed three more slices before he stopped, too full to go on, having tasted only four of the honeys. Oliver was more methodical. He cut his bread into small pieces and used one for each of the honeys, working carefully through the whole lot. His favourite was plum blossom, and at the end he made himself a whole slice with it. Paul watched him enviously, wishing he wasn't too full to work out which one he liked most and have a whole slice of that one as well.

‘You know what they say,' said Oliver smugly. ‘Look before you leap.'

‘Very funny,' muttered Paul.

Darius took a spoonful of pumpkin-flower honey and spread it over a piece of bread. He ate it thoughtfully. ‘How many more jars of this one do we have?' he asked Mrs Simpson.

‘Only one more, I think.' Mrs Simpson laughed. ‘At the rate your father eats it, that'll barely last until this year's batch is due.'