Secrets of the Heart

coloured. ‘I mean, it’s nice.’

‘Kissing someone is not so odd, is it?’ His strange intense expression was now replaced by the more normal flush of an aroused male.

‘No.’

He defused the awkwardness that had sprung up. ‘Come on, you can’t leave Tithings without visiting the bees. This is my party piece.’

Agnes allowed herself to be drawn towards them through the scented air. ‘Quiet,’ he ordered.

She strained to hear, and rising from the hives was a murmur. ‘What is it?’

‘They’re cooling the hives. It’s hot and they’ve been making honey.’

Agnes was fascinated. ‘They are extraordinary insects. They seem to have worked out how to live with each other.’

‘At a price,’ Andrew reminded her. ‘They kill off the drones.’

‘Even so.’ Inside the hives, the bees stepped up the fanning. Higher and faster.

‘If you come closer you can smell the particular forage for the day.’

She obeyed and caught the scent of wildness. Grasses, white clover, wild thyme. There were other possibilities, she thought. Unfolding wings that could liberate her.

He cleared his throat and she sensed what was coming. ‘Stay here tonight, Agnes.’

She traced the knotty joint of his broken finger with her own and experienced the panic of making a decision for which she was not ready. ‘Could you wait before I answer,’ she said.

20

Friday.

‘Do we want the electrolysis today?’

The beautician was new to the salon in Lymouth, obviously bored and more than a little distasteful of the tasks that she was paid to perform. Kitty requested the hand mirror and scanned her top lip for any traces of unwanted hair. You could never be sure when the markers of lost youth and dwindling hormones became obvious to everyone else. Because she did not want to see, Kitty knew she must ask to be told the truth.

Yes. There was one wispy hair and she directed the beautician to run the machine. The tiny prick hurt far more than its allocated franchise of pain. It hurt Kitty because it had been necessary.

‘I think,’ said the beautician, who was reduced to a huge eye looking at Kitty through the magnifying light, ‘we should zap a few veins as well. Are you happy for me to do them?’

‘I suppose so.’

That process was far more uncomfortable, especially in areas near the nose where Kitty was sensitive. The electric current aggravated the nerves and she ended up sneezing and weeping a stream of tears. Tomorrow, she knew from experience, would be bad and her skin would be blotchy and raised. Still, the situation was manageable for Julian had rung to say that there was an emergency board meeting, which was scheduled to continue through the weekend. ‘Sorry, darling, it can’t be helped. I’ll explain when I see you.’

At first, Kitty had wanted to protest but then a great weariness with the condition of her life sapped her will. She made no comment, except to say that she was sorry and, of course, he must do as he wished.

And she should do as she wished?

Catching her at odd moments, these infant stirrings of protest were in danger of becoming the norm, and Kitty discovered that she relished them, welcomed them, even. They introduced a different note into the familiar lament in her head, of which she was growing tired. But for the irritants of the machine, the shuffle of the beautician’s clogs and the smell of burnt capillary, she was entirely at liberty to think as she wished.

She flexed her finger, and felt the slick of moisture from the cream that had been applied. What was she doing engaged in pushing back time? Perhaps… here Kitty strained for the right words… perhaps, in itself, that was a waste of time. Perhaps she was wasting time in tackling it.

‘Dear me,’ said the beautician. ‘These are toughies. Have you been sitting in the sun?’

The needle dug into the flesh of Kitty’s cheek. After all, she could choose not to engage in such a difficult – no, impossible – battle. Beauty, Kitty had learned in the hard school of survival, was in the eye of the beholder and mattered. Forget the nonsense about inner beauty, a thesis peddled only, she noticed, by those who had no pretensions to looks. Certainly, in the past, Kitty had ignored it in favour of the philosophy that worked. And yet, now that she was growing older, it was going to fail her.

Under the pink blanket, Kitty sighed and entertained the radical vision of life uncluttered by considerations of her beauty. No Friday preparations. No covert glances in the mirror. A mind washed clean and free of the tyranny of scrutiny.

Yes, she was free to be free, if she wished.

The beautician embarked on the final challenge of Kitty’s left cheek. But it was not as simple as that. Kitty loved Julian and, to be free, it would be necessary not to love him.

‘Leg wax?’ intoned the beautician.

Kitty stretched out a slim leg in the manner of the sacrificial victim.

After the session was over, she went home to hide her blotched skin. At one o’clock she switched on the radio in her kitchen and listened to the news as she spooned up very clear, ultra-slimming consomme. But it was not filling and she was still ravenous. Normally she ignored growls in her stomach – the serpent that signalled her emptiness and her struggle for mastery -but today her hand crept towards the cupboard where she kept a tin of rice pudding as an emergency for Theo. At first it felt cold and smooth in her hand but, under her prolonged handling, this way and that – shall I, shall I not? - the metal warmed up.

Flinging open the kitchen drawer, Kitty scrabbled for the tin-opener.

The rice was delicious, a taste she had forgotten. Once eaten, it sat in a nourishing heap in her body, as heavy as if she were carrying a child. When she threw away the tin the serrations on the lid caught the flesh on one of her fingers. The taste of blood as she licked it mingled with the honeyed pleasure of the rice.

When Theo arrived, he peered at Kitty, who was wrapping her finger with Elastoplast. ‘You look awful. Tell a fella.’

But she could see from the unfocused cast of Theo’s expression that he was slipping into one of his phases and, if she required his comfort (as she so often did), she must catch him quickly.

It was too late. Theo had ‘vanished’. Kitty was concerned that the warden in charge had not spotted what was happening before sending him out but at least she knew what to do. Talking softly, she prised the bag from his hands and sat him down at the table.

‘Tablets, Theo. Where are they?’ She searched in the bag and extracted a couple of bottles, read the labels, shook out the correct one and gave it to him with a glass of water. Then she stood, massaging his terrifyingly tense shoulders, muttering words of comfort, until the drug kicked in and his shoulders relaxed a fraction. On previous occasions, Theo would get up, rummage in his bag, extract the weapons – the cleaning materials – with which he managed his illness, and proceed to batter the house with dusters.

‘Battering the bastards,’ he explained. ‘The ones that live uninvited in my head.’

Kitty was proud of the way she managed Theo and, in a curious way, grateful to him for his permission to do so. It implied trust and affection. It showed her that there were possibilities in strange places. ‘Don’t let them get you, Theo,’ she cried now, her fingers kneading and soothing. She added feebly, ‘I need you.’

‘I’ll try, darl…’ Theo muttered, through the muddle in his head. For Kitty, as he had once confided, was the only person in the world he loved without reservation. By taking him on, she had rescued him at a time when he was plunging lower and lower. Kitty was the one person for whom he would make the effort to be normal.

Thank God, she had thought when, blinking hard with the effort, Theo told her how he felt. Thank God I won’t go to my grave completely untouched by unselfish love.

Still rubbing away at the tortured back muscles, she bent over Theo and smiled at him, and Theo felt cool, soft rain fall on his parched interior.

Eventually, he pulled himself upright and looked up at Kitty with reddened eyes. ‘Pass my bag, darl…’

He got up and began to attack the kitchen windows. Soon, they were glittering and shining like the most