The Flowers of the Forest

Prologue

‘Lindsay!’

She called from the drawing-room window, half open on the warm spring afternoon, looking over the dry moat and the croquet court towards the Oak Walk, a line of old trees that led away from the house towards the forests that circled it. He kept his bees there, in hives between each tree, where they faced a long slope of rough meadow that fell away to the loch and backed onto the vegetable and pleasure gardens that lay behind the house.

‘Lindsay?’

She called again, more loudly.

‘Tea-time.’

She could see the bee smoker on top of the first hive by the nearest oak tree 50 yards away, a wisp of grey trailing up into the still air. And she had seen her husband there too, ten minutes before, at an open hive using the bellows, shrouded in a black veil and a battered straw hat, tending his bees for the first time that year after the winter.

She went back to the little rosewood desk by the piano and tidied away her papers, glancing quickly through the letter she had almost finished to her daughter in London.

Glenalyth House

Bridge of Alyth

Perthshire

Scotland

Sunday, March 21

Dearest Rachel,

It was such fun having you up for the long weekend and we were both so pleased about the concert.

L has started on his bees this afternoon, it’s so fine and warm, like summer, tho’ the daffodils aren’t completely out yet and the trees are hardly in bud at all — but everything curiously still and balmy so that you can hear voices sometimes (it must be the forestry men who are here again) way across the loch on Kintyre hill. He didn’t think he’d get down to his bees before he went back to London. And now he’s been so happy getting them organised that he’ll hate to leave — and I’ll hate to see him go. I wish these bees would keep him here. Still, they will — soon. And thank goodness he doesn’t see it as ‘retiring’ — but as a start, a new start. His bees have always mattered to him as much as us, I think, though he would never admit it. And I don’t mind that at all. We have to have other things besides people in our lives. And I think perhaps L has found this more with his bees than with his real work in London. So it’s nice to think that the honey this autumn, for the first time, will be the real thing for him, a business and not just a retired old gentleman’s hobby. I’ll be down, of course, for the flower show and your birthday concert and will see you then …

She looked out on the croquet court again through the tall windows, but there was still no sign of her husband. She turned and glanced at the tea tray — oatcakes which Rosie from the village had made that morning and a brown earthenware kitchen teapot which had been brewing on the mahogany drum table for nearly ten minutes. She picked up her pen and finished the letter.

Must stop now. Tea’s getting cold and I’ll have to call him again — he’s so tied up out there puffing away with his old bellows he can’t have heard me the first time.

All love, Madeleine.

She sealed the envelope and moved to the windows once more. Still he had not come, so she went out into the big hall where she was surprised to see the front doors shut and to hear their terrier, Ratty, scratching furiously outside.

She opened half the large door and the dog looked up at her with bruised curiosity. ‘He’s not in the house, silly. He’s somewhere with his bees. Come, we’ll go and find him.’ But the dog seemed unwilling to follow her. ‘Come on, Ratty!’

She walked out onto the columned porch and round to the side of the big square fort house and stood on the croquet court.

‘Lindsay — tea-time!’

She sang the words out, shading her eyes against the afternoon sun which sloped down on her from above the rim of fir trees on a long hill away to the west of the house. The dog stood expectantly by her feet, its nose shivering minutely, smelling the air, head pointed doubtfully towards the woods.

‘Where are you?’ Madeleine called, moving on across the lawn towards the line of oak trees.

A small wind sighed, running down from the wooded hills, through the oak buds, rustling the evergreens and the dead winter grass in the meadow. A bee swung past her head, droning away towards the forest. The bellows smoked on top of the first hive and the breeze caught the smoke and spiralled it gently round her face — a long-remembered smell of corrugated paper slowly burning.

‘Lindsay?’

She moved down the row of trees and came to a hive with its roof off. She touched the felt covers and lifted one corner gently. In the new honey frames beneath she saw the bees for an instant, a furry mass, busily crushed together, starting to replenish their stores with a loud murmur. Two pigeons flapped violently out of the branches above her; a pheasant squawked somewhere in the woods nearby and the little dog whimpered at the end of the walk. It had not followed her and it fidgeted now, chasing its tail, wary of the bees and lost without its master.

She called once more. But nothing answered; no voice but hers in the loud spring.