Tales of the Unexpected Read online

  ‘It’s pretty hard to believe,’ she said, ‘that a food can do all that.’

  ‘Of course it’s hard to believe. It’s another of the miracles of the hive. In fact it’s the biggest ruddy miracle of them all. It’s such a hell of a big miracle that it’s baffled the greatest men of science for hundreds of years. Wait a moment. Stay there. Don’t move.’

  Again he jumped up and went over to the bookcase and started rummaging among the books and magazines.

  ‘I’m going to find you a few of the reports. Here we are. Here’s one of them. Listen to this.’ He started reading aloud from a copy of the American Bee Journal:

  ‘ “Living in Toronto at the head of a fine research laboratory given to him by the people of Canada in recognition of his truly great contribution to humanity in the discovery of insulin, Dr Frederick A. Banting became curious about royal jelly. He requested his staff to do a basic fractional analysis…” ’

  He paused.

  ‘Well, there’s no need to read it all, but here’s what happened. Dr Banting and his people took some royal jelly from queen cells that contained two-day-old larvae, and then they started analysing it. And what d’you think they found?

  ‘They found,’ he said, ‘that royal jelly contained phenols, sterols, glycerils, dextrose, and – now here it comes – and eighty to eighty-five per cent unidentified acids!’

  He stood beside the bookcase with the magazine in his hand, smiling a funny little furtive smile of triumph, and his wife watched him, bewildered.

  He was not a tall man; he had a thick plump pulpy-looking body that was built close to the ground on abbreviated legs. The legs were slightly bowed. The head was huge and round, covered with bristly short-cut hair, and the greater part of the face – now that he had given up shaving altogether – was hidden by a brownish yellow fuzz about an inch long. In one way and another, he was rather grotesque to look at, there was no denying that.

  ‘Eighty to eighty-five per cent,’ he said, ‘unidentified acids. Isn’t that fantastic?’ He turned back to the bookshelf and began hunting through the other magazines.

  ‘What does it mean, unidentified acids?’

  ‘That’s the whole point! No one knows! Not even Banting could find out. You’ve heard of Banting?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘He just happens to be about the most famous living doctor in the world today, that’s all.’

  Looking at him now as he buzzed around in front of the bookcase with his bristly head and his hairy face and his plump pulpy body, she couldn’t help thinking that somehow, in some curious way, there was a touch of the bee about this man. She had often seen women grow to look like the horses that they rode, and she had noticed that people who bred birds or bull terriers or pomeranians frequently resembled in some small but startling manner the creature of their choice. But up until now it had never occurred to her that her husband might look like a bee. It shocked her a bit.

  ‘And did Banting ever try to eat it,’ she asked, ‘this royal jelly?’

  ‘Of course he didn’t eat it, Mabel. He didn’t have enough for that. It’s too precious.’

  ‘You know something?’ she said, staring at him but smiling a little all the same. ‘You’re getting to look just a teeny bit like a bee yourself, did you know that?’

  He turned and looked at her.

  ‘I suppose it’s the beard mostly,’ she said. ‘I do wish you’d stop wearing it. Even the colour is sort of bee-ish, don’t you think?’

  ‘What the hell are you talking about, Mabel?’

  ‘Albert,’ she said. ‘Your language.’

  ‘Do you want to hear any more of this or don’t you?’

  ‘Yes, dear, I’m sorry. I was only joking. Do go on.’

  He turned away again and pulled another magazine out of the bookcase and began leafing through the pages. ‘Now just listen to this, Mabel. “In 1939, Heyl experimented with twenty-one-day-old rats, injecting them with royal jelly in varying amounts. As a result, he found a precocious follicular development of the ovaries directly in proportion to the quantity of royal jelly injected.” ’

  ‘There!’ she cried. ‘I knew it!’

  ‘Knew what?’

  ‘I knew something terrible would happen.’

  ‘Nonsense. There’s nothing wrong with that. Now here’s another, Mabel. “Still and Burdett found that a male rat which hitherto had been unable to breed, upon receiving a minute daily dose of royal jelly, became a father many times over.” ’

  ‘Albert,’ she cried, ‘this stuff is much too strong to give to a baby! I don’t like it at all.’

  ‘Nonsense, Mabel.’

  ‘Then why do they only try it out on rats, tell me that? Why don’t some of these famous scientists take it themselves? They’re too clever, that’s why. Do you think Dr Banting is going to risk finishing up with precious ovaries? Not him.’

  ‘But they have given it to people, Mabel. Here’s a whole article about it. Listen.’ He turned the page and again began reading from the magazine. ‘ “In Mexico, in 1953, a group of enlightened physicians began prescribing minute doses of royal jelly for such things as cerebral neuritis, arthritis, diabetes, autointoxication from tobacco, impotence in men, asthma, croup, and gout… There are stacks of signed testimonials… A celebrated stockbroker in Mexico City contracted a particularly stubborn case of psoriasis. He became physically unattractive. His clients began to forsake him. His business began to suffer. In desperation he turned to royal jelly – one drop with every meal – and presto! – he was cured in a fortnight. A waiter in the Café Jena, also in Mexico City, reported that his father, after taking minute doses of this wonder substance in capsule form, sired a healthy boy child at the age of ninety. A bullfight promoter in Acapulco, finding himself landed with a rather lethargic-looking bull, injected it with one gramme of royal jelly (an excessive dose) just before it entered the arena. Thereupon, the beast became so swift and savage that it promptly dispatched two picadors, three horses, and a matador, and finally…” ’

  ‘Listen!’ Mrs Taylor said, interrupting him. ‘I think the baby’s crying.’

  Albert glanced up from his reading. Sure enough, a lusty yelling noise was coming from the bedroom above.

  ‘She must be hungry,’ he said.

  His wife looked at the clock. ‘Good gracious me!’ she cried, jumping up. ‘It’s past her time again already! You mix the feed, Albert, quickly, while I bring her down! But hurry! I don’t want to keep her waiting.’

  In half a minute, Mrs Taylor was back, carrying the screaming infant in her arms. She was flustered now, still quite unaccustomed to the ghastly non-stop racket that a healthy baby makes when it wants its food. ‘Do be quick, Albert!’ she called, settling herself in the armchair and arranging the child on her lap. ‘Please hurry!’

  Albert entered from the kitchen and handed her the bottle of warm milk. ‘It’s just right,’ he said. ‘You don’t have to test it.’

  She hitched the baby’s head a little higher in the crook of her arm, then pushed the rubber teat straight into the wide-open yelling mouth. The baby grabbed the teat and began to suck. The yelling stopped. Mrs Taylor relaxed.

  ‘Oh, Albert, isn’t she lovely?’

  ‘She’s terrific, Mabel – thanks to royal jelly.’

  ‘Now, dear, I don’t want to hear another word about that nasty stuff. It frightens me to death.’

  ‘You’re making a big mistake,’ he said.

  ‘We’ll see about that.’

  The baby went on sucking the bottle.

  ‘I do believe she’s going to finish the whole lot again, Albert.’

  ‘I’m sure she is,’ he said.

  And a few minutes later, the milk was all gone.

  ‘Oh, what a good girl you are!’ Mrs Taylor cried, as very gently she started to withdraw the nipple. The baby sensed what she was doing and sucked harder, trying to hold on. The woman gave a quick little tug, and plop, out it came.

  ‘Waa! Wa