Coffin Road by Peter May Read Free Book Online Page B

Christ,’ I hear Sally say, the words whipped from her mouth as she speaks them. Below us, completely hidden from view, and as protected from the elements as might ever be possible in this brutal environment, stands a large collection of bee hives. Square, boxlike hives, two and three levels high, some painted orange, others simply weathered, silver wood. They appear to have been positioned arbitrarily, raised off the ground on wooden pallets, roped down and weighted with small boulders on top. I do a quick count. There are eighteen, and I’m not sure that I have ever seen anything quite so unexpectedly incongruous in my life.
    *
    It takes us just a few minutes to scramble down into the hollow, and we wander among the hives like warriors walking among the dead of some battle fought long before our arrival.
    ‘I don’t understand,’ Sally says. ‘Who put them here? Was it you?’
    I feel a strange calm descend on me, and I stop by one of the hives. ‘They call this a National,’ I say. ‘Well, a Modified National, because it was modified from the original Langstroth hive, combs set on hanging frames. Pretty much universal in Britain.’ And with an expertise that seems to come from race memory rather than conscious recollection, I lift the stones from its roof and untie the hive, taking away the roof itself to reveal what I know to be called the crown board. But it is no normal crown board. Clear plastic allows us to peer into the hive.
    I am aware of Sally at my side as we look in on a burst-open pack of white sugar sitting on top of the eleven honeycomb frames that hang from rebates along either side. Bees are gathered together here on the right, between two or three of the frames, crawling over each other. Small, brownish, faintly striped. ‘What are they doing?’ she asks.
    ‘Clustering for warmth. Apis mellifera . Honey bees. This is their brood chamber. There will be anything up to sixty thousand bees in here.’ I have no idea where any of this is coming from. ‘To collect honey, you would have another chamber on top, a super, with a queen excluder, to prevent her from laying eggs in it. But it’s the end of the season. The honey will have been harvested.’
    ‘What’s the sugar for?’
    ‘To feed the bees across the winter, since we’ve stolen most of the honey they would normally feed on.’ I replace the roof, carefully tying it down, then adding the weight of the stones. ‘There’s still pollen around in the heather, but they’ll not venture out on a day like this. The only real forage up here is the heather itself. But in the spring the machair will be covered with wild flowers. Not too far for the bees to fly, and a veritable feast of pollen and nectar.’
    I stand back to find her staring at me. Curiosity and confusion, and more than a hint of distrust in her eyes. ‘You remember all this stuff,’ she says. ‘And yet you don’t remember who you are. Or me.’
    I shrug. I can’t explain it.
    ‘These are yours, aren’t they? These hives.’
    ‘I’m guessing they must be.’
    ‘But you never told me about them. In all the time we’ve spent together, all those intimate moments, and you never once thought to say that you kept bees. You didn’t want me to know, did you?’ There is more than a hint of accusation in this.
    I allow my eyes to wander over the hives, and then lift them to the boulders that stand around this tiny clearing, like so many silent witnesses. ‘It seems to me I didn’t want anyone to know. They are completely hidden here. God knows how many walkers trek across the coffin road during the summer months, but not one of them would have had the least idea that there were hives beyond these rocks.’
    ‘But why?’ I see doubt in her eyes. Suspicion. Though there is nothing I can say to allay that.
    I very nearly shout at her, ‘I don’t know!’ And she takes a half-step back. Bran barks, wondering why I have raised my voice.
    *
    The rain has stopped as we walk