Completely Unexpected Tales Read online

  ‘Yes, it did.’

  ‘Magnificent quality,’ he said. ‘Fine colour, too. You know something, my dear? I reckon a piece like this would cost you two or three hundred dollars at least if you had to buy it in a shop.’

  ‘I don’t doubt it.’

  There were two skins, two narrow mangy-looking skins with their heads still on them and glass beads in their eye sockets and little paws hanging down. One of them had the rear end of the other in its mouth, biting it.

  ‘Here,’ he said. ‘Try it on.’ He leaned forward and draped the thing around her neck, then stepped back to admire. ‘It’s perfect. It really suits you. It isn’t everyone who has mink, my dear.’

  ‘No, it isn’t.’

  ‘Better leave it behind when you go shopping or they’ll all think we’re millionaires and start charging us double.’

  ‘I’ll try to remember that, Cyril.’

  ‘I’m afraid you mustn’t expect anything else for Christmas. Fifty dollars was rather more than I was going to spend anyway.’

  He turned away and went over to the basin and began washing his hands. ‘Run along now, my dear, and buy yourself a nice lunch. I’d take you out myself but I’ve got old man Gorman in the waiting-room with a broken clasp on his denture.’

  Mrs Bixby moved towards the door.

  I’m going to kill that pawnbroker, she told herself. I’m going right back there to the shop this very minute and I’m going to throw this filthy neckpiece right in his face and if he refuses to give me back my coat I’m going to kill him.

  ‘Did I tell you I was going to be late home tonight?’ Cyril Bixby said, still washing his hands.

  ‘No.’

  ‘It’ll probably be at least eight-thirty the way things look at the moment. It may even be nine.’

  ‘Yes, all right. Good-bye.’ Mrs Bixby went out, slamming the door behind her.

  At that precise moment, Miss Pulteney, the secretary-assistant, came sailing past her down the corridor on her way to lunch.

  ‘Isn’t it a gorgeous day?’ Miss Pulteney said as she went by, flashing a smile. There was lilt in her walk, a little whiff of perfume attending her, and she looked like a queen, just exactly like a queen in the beautiful black mink coat that the Colonel had given to Mrs Bixby.

  Royal Jelly

  ‘It worries me to death, Albert, it really does,’ Mrs Taylor said.

  She kept her eyes fixed on the baby who was now lying absolutely motionless in the crook of her left arm.

  ‘I just know there’s something wrong.’

  The skin on the baby’s face had a pearly translucent quality and was stretched very tightly over the bones.

  ‘Try again,’ Albert Taylor said.

  ‘It won’t do any good.’

  ‘You have to keep trying, Mabel,’ he said.

  She lifted the bottle out of the saucepan of hot water and shook a few drops of milk on to the inside of her wrist, testing for temperature.

  ‘Come on,’ she whispered. ‘Come on, my baby. Wake up and take a bit more of this.’

  There was a small lamp on the table close by that made a soft yellow glow all around her.

  ‘Please,’ she said. ‘Take just a weeny bit more.’

  The husband watched her over the top of his magazine. She was half dead with exhaustion, he could see that, and the pale oval face, usually so grave and serene, had taken on a kind of pinched and desperate look. But even so, the drop of her head as she gazed down at the child was curiously beautiful.

  ‘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! Tm 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 prod