Darius Bell and the Crystal Bees (3 page)

‘There won't be any this year,' said Darius.

Mrs Simpson looked at him in surprise.

‘The hive that produces it swarmed. They flew away to start another hive.'

‘Really?'

‘You know what they say, Mrs Simpson,' said Paul. ‘If you've got to go, you've got to go.'

Paul thought he could probably just about manage another slice now and took the pumpkin-flower jar out of Darius's hand. Mrs Simpson took it out of his hands. ‘We might just keep this one, I think,' she said, and handed Paul a different jar.

Paul shrugged. He took a big spoonful of the honey Mrs Simpson had given him and spread it over his bread.

Mrs Simpson looked back at Darius. ‘Were the Deavers expecting the bees to fly away?'

‘No,' said Darius. ‘It's quite common, but they know how to stop it. The last one that swarmed was six years ago, which is pretty good, apparently. They asked if I'd seen where the swarm had gone.'

‘And had you?'

Darius shook his head. ‘Have you, Mrs Simpson? They said you might notice bees flying in and out of a chimney or under a roof.'

‘No.' Mrs Simpson thought about it for a moment, then shrugged. ‘Well, if bees do swarm, I suppose even the Deavers can't stop it a hundred per cent of the time. It will happen, I suppose.'

‘I suppose it will,' said Darius.

It will – but it hadn't. Not this time. The Deavers were wrong. The hive in the pumpkin field hadn't swarmed. Something else entirely had happened, but it would be another two weeks before Darius discovered it.

Every year, the mayor held a competition for all the schools in the city. The Mayor's Prize, as it was called, had a different theme each time, and each school was represented by one of its classes. In the past the schools had been required to provide a concert, a piece of drama, a gymnastics display, an array of sand sculptures, and various other things. This year, the mayor had decided that the prize would go to the school whose representative class put on the best display of costumes.

Darius and his friends went to the Viglen School, which was named after a greengrocer called Horace Olaf Viglen who had received an award for bravery for supplying vegetables to the army during a long- forgotten battle in a long-forgotten war. Viglen School had never won the Mayor's Prize, or even come close. The Prize always went to one of the schools attended by the rich kids in the city. In order to make the competition fair, there was supposedly a rule that only the teachers and the students of the school could be involved in the contest, and help couldn't be sought from parents, friends, relatives or anyone else. But that didn't stop the rich schools. Strange things would happen in those schools during the months before the Mayor's Prize. New ‘teachers' would turn up, ‘teachers' who happened to be famous conductors if the Prize involved putting on a concert, or theatre producers if it involved putting on a drama, or Olympic gymnasts if it involved gym- nastics. Sometimes new ‘students' would appear as well, ‘students' who looked a lot older than they claimed and who just happened to be extremely gifted in the relevant skill. Needless to say, after the Prize was awarded, those ‘teachers' and ‘students' would be gone as quickly and mysteriously as they had appeared.

Viglen didn't have the money for special teachers and students, and consequently usually finished somewhere near the bottom, together with all the other schools who couldn't afford them. Mrs Lightman, the prin- cipal, normally took little interest in the competition, leaving it to one of the other teachers to bear the annual humiliation. But this year was different. This year, Mrs Lightman was overseeing everything personally. This year, Mrs Lightman thought they had a chance – because of Darius.

Mrs Lightman had got the idea in her head that somewhere in the rambling wings and dusty rooms of Bell House – which were rumoured to be full of old bits of furniture, tapestries, paintings and the various remains of two hundred years of residence, most of it from a time when the Bell family had been the wealthiest in the city – must be cupboards and cupboards full of ancient clothes for men and women, boys and girls, and those clothes even now must be sumptuous, rich and dazzling. Hats, gloves, shoes, boots, bodices, waistcoats, skirts, pantaloons, bonnets, braces, coats and cloaks – Mrs Lightman's imagination filled imaginary cupboards with imaginary clothing of unprecedented magnificence that would ensure the Mayor's Prize was hers. She imagined her class of students marching past the mayor in the finery of ancient times, like a historical tableau charting the fashions of the past two centuries. Compared with that, how could anyone possibly prefer the home-made cardboard alligators, cockatoos or marsupials that would inevitably feature among the other poor schools?

As for the wealthier schools, Mrs Lightman's plan accounted for them as well. She knew they would each choose an extravagant theme and produce a fabulous display of specially tailored clothes. The Haversham School, she heard, was basing its display on ancient Rome and had bought three hundred metres of purple silk to make togas for everyone. Another school was basing its theme on heaven and hell, with angels and demons, and had hired a new ‘teacher' who was an ex-bishop to advise on the correct attire. All the rich schools would plan something spectacular, spying on each other and trying to outdo what they saw. None of them would bother spying on Viglen. So while the rich schools egged each other on to displays that were ever more exotic and outlandish, Mrs Lightman's display would stay close to home, basing itself on their own city – and that was what she considered to be the masterstroke at the heart of her plan. The mayor, who would personally judge the competition, was insanely proud of the city and its history. A self-made man, he was constantly telling people what a marvellous place it was and how anyone could succeed here if only they had ambition, desire and a willingness to work. He genuinely believed it was the greatest place on earth. And what clothes would the Viglen children be wearing? Real clothes that had actually been worn in the city's earlier days. Their display would be a display of its own history. Mrs Lightman was gambling that the mayor would prefer that over any number of Romans in togas or angels and devils or any other weird apparitions, no matter how splendid, in costumes that were based on clothes that had been worn somewhere else.

And if Viglen won, well, who could tell what would happen then? Maybe she could get a job at one of the rich schools, where she had always dreamed of working. Someone who had won the Mayor's Prize with such a poor school . . . why
wouldn't
they want her?

Since Darius supposedly had the costumes that she needed, Mrs Lightman had nominated his class as the representative for the school. A couple of weeks after Mr Beale had made them study everything there was to know about bees, they were told to assemble on Friday after school in the gymnasium with whatever clothes they could bring. There was a month to go before the Prize. When they came into the gymnasium two teachers were already waiting at a pair of sewing machines, ready to begin altering the clothes to fit the children.

The teachers told the children to line up and take the clothes they had brought out of their bags and put them on the floor in front of them. A few minutes later Mrs Lightman walked in. She headed straight for Darius. She looked at the clothes at his feet, prodded them with one foot, and then stared at him.

‘Is that all you've brought?' she demanded. Mrs Lightman turned over the clothes with her foot again. All she could see was a faded blue jacket that had lost its buttons, coarse grey trousers, and an old pair of laceless boots. Not a hint of the sumptuous garments she had imagined. ‘What's this supposed to be?'

Darius shrugged. He had found the clothes in a cupboard near the old servants' entrance. ‘I think they're a workman's clothes.'

‘What else have you got?'

‘Nothing.'

Mrs Lightman glanced along the line of children. The rubbish they had brought along was hardly worth looking at. She turned back to Darius.

‘Do you care about this school, Darius?' she asked abruptly.

Darius frowned. He cared, but probably not as much as he was meant to from the tone of Mrs Lightman's question.

‘Does it mean anything to you if Viglen does well in the Mayor's Prize?'

Not really, thought Darius.

‘Would it mean anything to you if Viglen
won
?'

Not as much as it would obviously mean to Mrs Lightman.

‘
Would
it? Answer me!'

‘Yes,' said Darius, since that was apparently the only way he was going to stop the questions.

‘Then look around you, Darius. Count! Count the children in your class!'

Darius didn't need to count. There were thirty-two.

‘Everyone needs a costume, Darius.'

‘I know that. That's why I brought one for myself.'

‘No,
everyone
needs one. Do you understand? Everyone. And not just the first set of rags you happen to find.' Mrs Lightman kicked away the clothes in front of Darius. ‘Go back and look, Darius. Look in that house of yours. I want to see you back here on Monday with costumes for everyone. You've got the weekend to find them. That's the deal, Darius. You bring the costumes, and this school wins the Mayor's Prize.' She paused. ‘You will do what I say. Disobedience is not an option.' Mrs Lightman looked around to make sure everyone had heard the last couple of sentences, which were her catchphrase. Then she threw a last glance at Darius. ‘Monday,' she said. ‘Make it worth our while having a Bell here, for once.' And she walked out.

The two teachers at the sewing machines got up.

‘Out!' one of them said. ‘And take your clothes with you! I don't want anything left behind.'

The kids picked up their clothes, stuffed them in their bags and filed out.

Some of them were waiting when Darius emerged, the ones who were the type to get excited about school competitions. They quickly surrounded him.

‘You'd better get us some costumes, Darius,' said a whiny boy called Stephen Pintel. ‘We all heard what Mrs Lightman said. If we don't win this, it'll be your fault.'

‘It's got nothing to do with me,' said Darius.

‘It'll be your fault!' said a girl called Evelina Williams, and the others around them repeated it or something similar.

‘I never said I was going to bring costumes for everyone.'

‘Mrs Lightman said you were!'

‘She never asked me.'

‘Doesn't matter!'

‘Leave him alone!' said Oliver Roberts, pushing through the ring of kids to stand with Darius.

‘Yeah!' said Paul Klasky from further away.

‘It'll be his fault, Oliver,' whined Stephen Pintel. ‘You'd better bring those clothes next week, Darius.'

‘Yeah, and you'd better start looking for your own,' retorted Darius, and he pushed his way out.

He walked quickly away. Oliver and Paul went with him.

They walked down a couple of streets to the corner where they normally separated. Bell House was to the right, and Oliver and Paul went left to go home.

‘What are you going to do?' asked Oliver.

‘I don't care about the Mayor's Prize,' muttered Darius. ‘The mayor hates my family. Why would I want his prize?'

‘Maybe it would be nice to
show
him,' said Paul.

‘Show him what?'

‘I don't know. You know what they say – don't look a gift horse in the mouth.'

‘I don't want anything from the mayor,' said Darius, ‘including his stupid prize. Besides, he'd never let us win. As soon as he sees I'm part of the class, that's it. There's no way we'll win.'

‘Does he really hate you that much?' asked Oliver.

‘He hates all the Bells.'

‘Do you think Mrs Lightman knows?'

Darius shook his head.

‘You know what they say,' said Paul. ‘What she doesn't know won't hurt her.'

‘Actually, Paul,' said Oliver, ‘I think in this case it's the opposite.'

Paul frowned. ‘Really? Well, it's the exception that proves the rule.'

‘You always say that when you get your sayings wrong.'

‘Exactly!' said Paul brightly. ‘You know what they say – to thyself be true.'

Oliver groaned. Other kids from school walked past, throwing glances at them. Oliver waited until they had gone, then turned to Darius again. ‘Do you think you could actually find clothes for everyone if you wanted to?'

Darius shrugged. The only ancient clothes he knew about in Bell House were a scarlet cape and a couple of other items that for some reason had been in the drawer of an old chest in the green drawing room for as long as he could remember. But there were cupboards in the House he had never opened and there were probably rooms within rooms that he didn't even know about, and who knew what they might contain? It was possible that somewhere, hidden across the House, were the clothes Mrs Lightman wanted. But Darius doubted it. Over the years, as the previous generations of Bells had got poorer, almost anything of value had been sold, and Darius didn't see why that wouldn't have included clothes. And even if they hadn't been sold, he didn't see what right Mrs Lightman had to demand that he bring them for all thirty-two kids in his class. He didn't know what kind of a deal that was, as Mrs Lightman had described it. A deal, as far as he knew, was when both sides agreed to do something – not when one side was forced by the other.

‘What are you going to do?' asked Oliver.

‘I don't know.'

More kids came towards them. Marguerite Fisher, the gardener's daughter, was among them

Paul Klasky grinned. ‘Maybe
she
can tell you.'

‘Very funny,' said Darius.

‘Marguerite!' called Paul. ‘Darius has a question—
Ow!
' he cried as Darius elbowed him in the ribs.

Marguerite separated from her friends.

‘I'll see you tomorrow,' said Darius to Oliver and Paul.

Darius and Marguerite turned towards the House, conscious that everyone was watching them.

‘What was that all about?' asked Marguerite.

‘Paul was just being an idiot, as usual,' said Darius. ‘Where's Maurice?'

Marguerite shrugged. Maurice was her younger brother and went to the same school. ‘Must have already gone home.'

They walked back to the House together.