The Umbrella Man and Other Stories Read online

  When he was eighteen, he had rented one acre of rough pasture alongside a cherry orchard down the valley about a mile from the village, and there he had set out to establish his own business. Now, eleven years later, he was still in the same spot, but he had six acres of ground instead of one, two hundred and forty well-stocked hives, and a small house he’d built mainly with his own hands. He had married at the age of twenty and that, apart from the fact that it had taken them over nine years to get a child, had also been a success. In fact, everything had gone pretty well for Albert until this strange little baby girl came along and started frightening them out of their wits by refusing to eat properly and losing weight every day.

  He looked up from the magazine and began thinking about his daughter.

  That evening, for instance, when she had opened her eyes at the beginning of the feed, he had gazed into them and seen something that frightened him to death—a kind of misty vacant stare, as though the eyes themselves were not connected to the brain at all but were just lying loose in their sockets like a couple of small grey marbles.

  Did those doctors really know what they were talking about?

  He reached for an ashtray and started slowly picking the ashes out from the bowl of his pipe with a matchstick.

  One could always take her along to another hospital, somewhere in Oxford perhaps. He might suggest that to Mabel when he went upstairs.

  He could still hear her moving around in the bedroom, but she must have taken off her shoes now and put on slippers because the noise was very faint.

  He switched his attention back to the magazine and went on with his reading. He finished the article called “Experiences in the Control of Nosema,” then turned over the page and began reading the next one, “The Latest on Royal Jelly.” He doubted very much whether there would be anything in this that he didn’t know already:

  What is this wonderful substance called royal jelly?

  He reached for the tin of tobacco on the table beside him and began filling his pipe, still reading.

  Royal jelly is a glandular secretion produced by the nurse bees to feed the larvae immediately they have hatched from the egg. The pharyngeal glands of bees produce this substance in much the same way as the mammary glands of vertebrates produce milk. The fact is of great biological interest because no other insects in the world are known to have evolved such a process.

  All old stuff, he told himself, but for want of anything better to do, he continued to read.

  Royal jelly is fed in concentrated form to all bee larvae for the first three days after hatching from the egg; but beyond that point, for all those who are destined to become drones or workers, this precious food is greatly diluted with honey and pollen. On the other hand, the larvae which are destined to become queens are fed throughout the whole of their larval period on a concentrated diet of pure royal jelly. Hence the name.

  Above him, up in the bedroom, the noise of the footsteps had stopped altogether. The house was quiet. He struck a match and put it to his pipe.

  Royal jelly must be a substance of tremendous nourishing power, for on this diet alone, the honey-bee larva increases in weight fifteen hundred times in five days.

  That was probably about right, he thought, although for some reason it had never occurred to him to consider larval growth in terms of weight before.

  This is as if a seven-and-a-half-pound baby should increase in that time to five tons.

  Albert Taylor stopped and read that sentence again. He read it a third time.

  This is as if a seven-and-a-half-pound baby . . .

  “Mabel!” he cried, jumping up from his chair. “Mabel! Come here!”

  He went out into the hall and stood at the foot of the stairs calling for her to come down.

  There was no answer.

  He ran up the stairs and switched on the light on the landing. The bedroom door was closed. He crossed the landing and opened it and stood in the doorway looking into the dark room. “Mabel,” he said. “Come downstairs a moment, will you please? I’ve just had a bit of an idea. It’s about the baby.”

  The light from the landing behind him cast a faint glow over the bed and he could see her dimly now, lying on her stomach with her face buried in the pillow and her arms up over her head. She was crying again.

  “Mabel,” he said, going over to her, touching her shoulder. “Please come down a moment. This may be important.”

  “Go away,” she said “Leave me alone.”

  “Don’t you want to hear about my idea?”

  “Oh, Albert, I’m tired,” she sobbed. “I’m so tired I don’t know what I’m doing anymore. I don’t think I can go on. I don’t think I can stand it.”

  There was a pause. Albert Taylor turned away from her and walked slowly over to the cradle where the baby was lying, and peered in. It was too dark for him to see the child’s face, but when he bent down close he could hear the sound of breathing, very faint and quick. “What time is the next feed?” he asked.

  “Two o’clock, I suppose.”

  “And the one after that?”

  “Six in the morning.”

  “I’ll do them both,” he said. “You go to sleep.”

  She didn’t answer.

  “You get properly into bed, Mabel, and go straight to sleep, you understand? And stop worrying. I’m taking over completely for the next twelve hours. You’ll give yourself a nervous breakdown going on like this.”

  “Yes,” she said. “I know.”

  “I’m taking the nipper and myself and the alarm clock into the spare room this very moment, so you just lie down and relax and forget all about us. Right?” Already he was pushing the cradle out through the door.

  “Oh, Albert,” she sobbed.

  “Don’t you worry about a thing. Leave it to me.”

  “Albert . . . ”

  “Yes?”

  “I love you, Albert.”

  “I love you too, Mabel. Now go to sleep.”

  Albert Taylor didn’t see his wife again until nearly eleven o’clock the next morning.

  “Good gracious me!” she cried, rushing down the stairs in dressing gown and slippers. “Albert! Just look at the time! I must have slept twelve hours at least! Is everything all right? What happened?”

  He was sitting quietly in his armchair, smoking a pipe and reading the morning paper. The baby was in a sort of carry-cot on the floor at his feet, sleeping.

  “Hallo, dear,” he said, smiling.

  She ran over to the cot and looked in. “Did she take anything, Albert? How many times have you fed her? She was due for another one at ten o’clock, did you know that?”

  Albert Taylor folded the newspaper neatly into a square and put it away on the side table. “I fed her at two in the morning,” he said, “and she took about half an ounce, no more. I fed her again at six and she did a bit better that time, two ounces . . . ”

  “Two ounces! Oh, Albert, that’s marvellous!”

  “And we just finished the last feed ten minutes ago. There’s the bottle on the mantelpiece. Only one ounce left. She drank three. How’s that?” He was grinning proudly, delighted with his achievement.

  The woman quickly got down on her knees and peered at the baby.

  “Don’t she look better?” he asked eagerly. “Don’t she look fatter in the face?”

  “It may sound silly,” the wife said, “but I actually think she does. Oh, Albert, you’re a marvel! How did you do it?”

  “She’s turning the corner,” he said. “That’s all it is. Just like the doctor prophesied, she’s turning the corner.”

  “I pray to God you’re right, Albert.”

  “Of course I’m right. From now on, you watch her go.”

  The woman was gazing lovingly at the baby.

  “You look a lot better yourself too, Mabel.”

  “I feel wonderful. I’m sorry about last night.”

  “Let’s keep it this way,” he said. “I’ll do all the night feeds in future.