‘You see,’ she murmured. ‘It’s no good. She won’t have it.’
She held the bottle up to the light, squinting at the calibrations.
‘One ounce again. That’s all she’s taken. No – it isn’t even that. It’s only three-quarters. It’s not enough to keep body and soul together, Albert, it really isn’t. It worries me to death.’
‘I know,’ he said.
‘If only they could find out what was wrong.’
‘There’s nothing wrong, Mabel. It’s just a matter of time.’
‘Of course there’s something wrong.’
‘Dr Robinson says no.’
‘Look,’ she said, standing up. ‘You can’t tell me it’s natural for a six-weeks-old child to weigh less, less by more than two whole pounds than she did when she was born! Just look at those legs! They’re nothing but skin and bone!’
The tiny baby lay limply on her arm, not moving.
‘Dr Robinson said you was to stop worrying, Mabel. So did that other one.’
‘Ha!’ she said. ‘Isn’t that wonderful! I’m to stop worrying!’
‘Now, Mabel.’
‘What does he want me to do? Treat it as some sort of a joke?’
‘He didn’t say that.’
‘I hate doctors! I hate them all!’ she cried, and she swung away from him and walked quickly out of the room towards the stairs, carrying the baby with her.
Albert Taylor stayed where he was and let her go.
In a little while he heard her moving about in the bedroom directly over his head, quick nervous footsteps going tap tap tap on the linoleum above. Soon the footsteps would stop, and then he would have to get up and follow her, and when he went into the bedroom he would find her sitting beside the cot as usual, staring at the child and crying softly to herself and refusing to move.
‘She’s starving, Albert,’ she would say.
‘Of course she’s not starving.’
‘She is starving. I know she is. And Albert?’
‘Yes?’
‘I believe you know it too, but you won’t admit it. Isn’t that right?’
Every night now it was like this.
Last week they had taken the child back to the hospital, and the doctor had examined it carefully and told them that there was nothing the matter.
‘It took us nine years to get this baby, Doctor,’ Mabel had said. ‘I think it would kill me if anything should happen to her.’
That was six days ago and since then it had lost another five ounces.
But worrying about it wasn’t going to help anybody, Albert Taylor told himself. One simply had to trust the doctor on a thing like this. He picked up the magazine that was still lying on his lap and glanced idly down the list of contents to see what it had to offer this week:
Among the Bees in May
Honey Cookery
The Bee Farmer and the B. Pharm.
Experiences in the Control of Nosema
The Latest on Royal Jelly
This Week in the Apiary
The Healing Power of Propolis
Regurgitations
British Beekeepers Annual Dinner
Association News
All his life Albert Taylor had been fascinated by anything that had to do with bees. As a small boy he used often to catch them in his bare hands and go running with them into the house to show to his mother, and sometimes he would put them on his face and let them crawl about over his cheeks and neck, and the astonishing thing about it all was that he never got stung. On the contrary, the bees seemed to enjoy being with him. They never tried to fly away, and to get rid of them he would have to brush them off gently with his fingers. Even then they would frequently return and settle again on his arm or hand or knee, any place where the skin was bare.
His father, who was a bricklayer, said there must be some witch’s stench about the boy, something noxious that came oozing out through the pores of the skin, and that no good would ever come of it, hypnotizing insects like that. But the mother said it was a gift given him by God, and even went so far as to compare him with St Francis and the birds.
As he grew older, Albert Taylor’s fascination with bees developed into an obsession, and by the time he was twelve he had built his first hive. The following summer he had captured his first swarm. Two years later, at the age of fourteen, he had no less than five hives standing neatly in a row against the fence in his father’s small back yard, and already – apart from the normal task of producing honey – he was practising the delicate and complicated business of rearing his own queens, grafting larvae into artificial cell cups, and all the rest of it.
He never had to use smoke when there was work to do inside a hive, and he never wore gloves on his hands or a net over his head. Clearly there was some strange sympathy between this boy and the bees, and down in the village, in the shops and pubs, they began to speak about him with a certain kind of respect, and people started coming up to the house to buy his honey.