Ned Kelly and the City of Bees Read online

  “There you are,” said Apis. “You are now a bee of my hive. You can get past the sentries at the gateway. And inside, everyone will shake you by the hand. So to speak. Hee-yup!”

  Apis squatted so that I could climb on her back. “Hang on to my armor,” she said, “don’t take handfuls of my hair. Miss Nancy Clancy does that.”

  Above us Miss Nancy Clancy muttered dreamily. “Handfuls of hair, up in the air.” It was a childish rhyme, and I don’t think she meant us to hear it.

  “I wish you’d stop,” Apis told her.

  I climbed on Apis’s back. Underneath her fur was a sort of coat of armor. I dug my hands into a chink in this armor. “That’s right,” she said. My legs dangled beside her middle legs.

  And then she flew. I had never been on a ferris wheel, let alone in a plane. That flight from the bed to the window sill was the first and the best flight of my life. With a hard little clicking sound, Apis landed beside Miss Nancy Clancy. “Remember, no handfuls of hair. Here, or up in the air.”

  “As you say,” said Miss Nancy Clancy. And squeezed aboard Apis’s back and straight away took two handfuls of the fur on the bee’s neck.

  “Can’t you understand plain radio talk?” the bee asked her.

  “If I put my hands down in your chinks,” Miss Nancy Clancy explained, “I get wax all over them.”

  “And I get a headache if you don’t. Ned, could you hang on to Miss Nancy Clancy around the waist.

  I did this.

  “Easy,” Nancy Clancy said.

  “Not so squeezy.

  It isn’t good taste

  To maul a lady’s waist.”

  “God help us,” said Apis and instantly flew out the window.

  For a whole minute, while I clung to Apis’s back, I don’t think I breathed at all. It was not just that I was flying, even though that was exciting. But the outside world had changed as well. The bushes in the hospital garden now seemed taller than mountain cedars, and the gum trees themselves looked higher than any mountain I’d ever seen. Apis seemed to be flying straight for the giant black top of Doctor Morgan’s Ford motor car. The sunlight flashed off the shiny paintwork of the car and blinded me. “Watch out!” I called to Apis. Now that I was bee-size, I didn’t want to collide with an automobile. When I got my breath I began laughing. Nancy Clancy looked over her shoulder at me as if she was an adult and I was a child. “You’ll get used to it,” she told me. “You’ll settle down.”

  I could see the flowers in the hospital flower beds below me. They were now as big as table tops. And something else. The giant daisies below me weren’t white any more. They were a strange violet.

  “Hey,” I called to Nancy Clancy. “The daisies are violet.”

  She gave a loud sigh. I could hear it above the flutter of Apis’s wings. She said,

  “Now you see,

  like a bee.

  What was once whi-olet

  is now violet.”

  Like Apis, I was getting sick of all her rhymes. For a second, I wanted to reach out and pull one of her corkscrew curls. But I thought I’d better not do that yet. I was a guest. I needed both my hands as well.

  I got used to seeing giant violet flowers where once there were small white ones. We flew along the river bank. There were gum trees with blossoms on their branches, and I could see bees as large as Apis working amongst the blossoms. Their noses were deep in the flowers, sucking up nectar. I could see the yellow pollen of the flowers caught in hairy baskets on their back legs. “Tch, tch!” said Apis. “Some of them do seven trips a day. I don’t know who they’re trying to impress. First bit of cold weather in the autumn and they turn over on their backs and die from over work. I think three trips a day is enough for any sensible bee.”

  “Three trips to the flowers,” said Nancy Clancy,

  “And three trips to Mrs Abey’s at radio hours.”

  Apis turned towards a great tree. I didn’t know then that it would be my home for the summer. “See,” she called. “That hole in the trunk. Straight ahead. That’s home and hive.”

  I could see ahead of us a hole like the mouth of a cave, right there in the wood of the big mountain ash tree.

  “It’s perfect,” Apis continued, praising her home. “See, the tree has grown so that there’s a level place outside the mouth of the hive. That’s where we’ll land. Look, you can see the sentries there.”

  3

  Romeo Drone and Landing

  Apis started buzzing and dropped down towards the doorway of her home and its sentry bees. But before we could land another bee butted past us. Its wings brushed my leg. “Rotten drone!” said Apis.

  This bee was nearly twice as big as Apis, certainly twice as fat.

  “Romeo!” said Apis. “It’s that Romeo.”

  “Romeo the drone-ee-oh!” said Nancy Clancy.

  Apis stood still in the air flapping her wings, delaying our landing. “Romeo is a fat drone from another hive. He’s in love with our Queen. Always trying to sneak in to see her. I hope the girls on the gate are awake.”

  Romeo landed on the ledge outside the doorway of the hive. At first it seemed that the sentry bees were asleep, for they let him waddle up the ledge. He was nearly through the doorway when three sentries shook themselves, and ran to stop him. They dragged and pushed at his fat body, trying to push him on his back. But he kept dragging away from them. At last two of them got their heads under his belly and lifted. The lovesick Romeo went over on his side. Two more sentries now rushed up and began to drag him by the hind legs. “Easy, easy!” we heard him say in a squawky voice.

  “He watches serials too,” Miss Nancy Clancy explained. “He listens to When a Girl Marries at Mrs Maguire’s. That’s what makes him carry on so stupid.”

  Five sentries had now pushed and pulled Romeo to the rim of the ledge. They rocked him there a few times, just like workmen getting ready to roll a rock off a cliff. Then, with one last heave-ho, they pushed him over the edge. “Oh no!” we heard him call as he fell.

  We saw him fall all the way to grass. He landed with a jolt on his back. “He must be dead!” I said, feeling sorry for the fat drone.

  “Him?” asked Apis and snorted. And, looking again, I saw Romeo heave himself off his back, waggle the feelers of his pleasant face, check his body all over with his front and hind legs, and fly away slowly towards his own hive.

  “And don’t come back!” called Apis after him.

  A second later we landed on the platform from which the sentries had just slung Romeo. I was nervous at the idea of being flung off the landing as Romeo had been and I noticed Nancy Clancy was quiet too. After their success with Romeo, the sentries were very excited and came straight up to us.

  “Now just relax,” Apis told us. “Talk if you like. But softly.”

  Five sentries peered at Apis with their large eyes, then at us. They felt along Apis’s back with their feelers. These feelers tickled Nancy Clancy through her dress and she laughed.

  “Not so hard with those smelly feelers,” she muttered, “The Clancy’s are a race of squealers.”

  “They’re smelling us and feeling us at the same time,” Apis went on chatting as the sentries felt us all over. “We’re rather luckier than some people. We can smell through our feelers. Our touchers and our sniffers aren’t miles apart. As with some animals I could name.”

  “She means us,” said Nancy Clancy, and poked her tongue out at one of the sentries, who took no notice.

  “It’s going to be all right,” Apis went on, “because you have the right smell for our nest. Now if you didn’t, the sentries would roll you over and slip a sting in you. It’s different with Romeo, Romeo’s just a nuisance drone, they let him go. But anyone else … You might fight them, but in the end they’d get you. In would go the sting, and in a little while, you wouldn’t be breathing. Take my meaning?”

  “Say you are an ant,” said Nancy Clancy, “They’d really make you pant.”

  “They also sting people w
ho make bad poetry,” Apis said with a little laugh.

  “That’s a lie,” the girl said.

  At last the sentries decided we belonged to the hive. They backed away from us and began to frisk a returning bee who had just landed behind us.

  Now Apis walked forward to the mouth of the hive. A great cave seemed to open up inside this gateway. I could at first see nothing in there. It was all dimness. But there was plenty to hear. There was loud buzzing, the flapping of wings, the clip-clop of the feet of working bees. Then my eyes got used to the dark. I saw half a dozen eager-looking bees rushing towards us. “They’re the young workers,” groaned Apis. “They think I’ve got a load of pollen and nectar. As if three loads a day isn’t enough.” She stared at the young bees. They seemed to frown and stand still. “Clear out!” she told them. “Clear out!”

  They ran away into the dark. “That crowd doesn’t know how to relax,” Apis told us.

  Nancy Clancy nudged me. “Look!” She pointed above her head. I looked. Rising high above us were great walls of beeswax. In the walls were doorways, some of them shut up with beeswax, some of them open. Many bees were crawling up and down these walls, walking in and out of the doorways, working in the various apartments. Because the whole thing was like a great apartment building, except that these apartments were not built from the ground up, but were hung from the roof! Looking up at them, I could understand why Apis was so proud of her hive.

  “I’ll take you straight to Miss Nancy Clancy’s room,” said Apis. “You’re probably still tired, after that hospital.”

  “Where is the joy?” asked Miss Nancy Clancy. “In sharing my room with a boy?”

  “You know how things are, Miss Clancy,” Apis said. “We need every room we have to store food and hatch the babies in. So don’t argue. Ned will stay with you.”

  Straight away Apis began climbing the walls of one of the apartments houses. Now I really had to hang on. I hugged her plump waist to stop myself from slipping off her back and falling to the bottom of the hive.

  Apis stopped at a cell door that was like all the other cell doors.

  “Here we are,” she said.

  All the apartments or cells we had passed were six-sided. This might have suited bees, but I knew it would not suit Nancy Clancy and me. As Apis tumbled us into Nancy Clancy’s cell I saw that the girl had a feather bed with legs of different lengths to fit the strange floor. She had a table and chair cut the same way. On the table stood a candle and some old-fashioned children’s books.

  4

  One Hundred and Twenty Year Old Girl

  “If you’ll excuse me,” said the bee, after I’d had a good stare at Miss Clancy’s apartment, “I think I’ll go and rest. Just be careful though with that candle.”

  Now Miss Nancy Clancy and I were alone. She pulled out her chair, sat on it, took one of her old-fashioned books and began to read. I sat on the bed.

  After a while I said, “What’s the name of the book?”

  “The Butterfly Ball and the Grasshopper’s Feast,” she said.

  “What’s it like?”

  “Boring. I’ve been reading it for a hundred and ten years.”

  “Did you say a hundred and ten years?”

  “I did.”

  “That’s not true.”

  “How would you know?” she asked me, lifting her head proudly.

  “No one’s a child for a hundred and ten years.”

  “You are suggesting I’m a liar?” she asked me, slamming the book down with a bang.

  Before I could answer, a strange bee poked it’s head into Miss Nancy Clancy’s apartment. “Dinner time,” said the girl. She picked up an old china cup that stood beside her books. She walked to the bee. From the end of its nose hung a great golden glob. Miss Nancy Clancy neatly collected it in her cup, bowed to the bee, who then disappeared, and walked back to her chair. She began to feed herself the golden food with a spoon. “This is food and this is drink. This is royal jelly. You can have a little even if you do think I’m a liar.”

  I ate it and it was wonderful.

  “They feed the babies on that,” said Nancy Clancy. “They think we’re babies, that’s why they feed it to us. When they’re raising a baby to be queen, they feed her nothing else.”

  “Why don’t you talk in rhymes any more?” I asked her.

  “Oh, I only do that to annoy Apis.”

  Just then a further bee appeared at Miss Clancy’s doorway. This one had a ball of purple and gold held in its front legs. Seeing it, Miss Nancy jumped up and waved her arms. “No thanks, no thanks, no thanks!”

  At last the bee shook its head and vanished.

  “They think we need pollen too,” she told me. “Can you imagine sitting up eating a ball of pollen? Ugh!”

  I ate up the royal jelly quickly. When it was all gone I felt tired. I yawned. “But you aren’t a hundred and ten years old.”

  “Actually, I’m a hundred and twenty,” said Nancy. “I didn’t take to this hive-life till I was ten years old.” Before I could go on arguing, we had yet another visitor. This time it was Apis. It was easy to tell her slightly shaggier hair, her soft eyes, the shape of her head from those of the young workers who had fed us earlier.

  “Excuse me,” she said. “Does Ned know there is a bucket at the rear of this apartment in case he needs …?”

  “Oh,” said Miss Nancy Clancy. “If he thinks I’m not the age I say, I’ll ban him from the toilet for a year and a day. You see, my dear bee friend, this boy doesn’t believe that I’m a hundred and twenty years old. And whoever doesn’t believe I’m a hundred and twenty years old, doesn’t believe I’m Nancy Clancy.”

  “She’s Nancy Clancy,” said Apis. “And she’s a hundred and twenty years old. Please sleep well, my friends. Goodnight.”

  When Apis had gone again, Nancy Clancy went to her table, and lifted the book called The Butterfly Ball and the Grasshopper’s Feast. She showed the first page to me. By William Roscoe, it said. And underneath, London, 1807.

  She could see I was very surprised. “I’ll tell you my story,” said Miss Nancy Clancy. “Unless it’s likely to bore you.”

  “No, no,” I rushed to say, “I don’t get bored.”

  A hundred and ten years ago (said Miss Nancy Clancy), when I was ten years old, I came into this valley with my father. There was no one here then. We had a cart that was dragged by four oxen. My father had three horses, and a black man to show him the way. I didn’t have a mother, she died while I was a baby. A lot of mothers died in those days. My father was a very quiet man because he missed my mother. His only friend was the black man who brought us here. Are you interested yet or will I stop?

  All right, you’re interested. One very hot day we were traveling along the banks of this river, this very river, the one you can see from the mouth of the hive. We stopped at midday and my father’s black friend started a fire and baked some bread in the ashes. Then we all lay down under the wagon to rest. There were lots of bees along the river banks gathering pollen and nectar, even then. Soon my father and his black friend were asleep, but the bees kept me awake. I got up. I tried to read my books. Even that very book there I just showed you, The Butterfly Ball. But it wasn’t any use. So, with a book under each arm, I decided to go for a walk. And that’s how it all started.

  Now do you still want me to go on? I can see you do.

  All right. I went walking up into the hills. There were lots of trees, gum trees and mountain ash, and soon I couldn’t see the wagon any more. Half-way up the hill, I saw a fat black snake. It had a red belly. As soon as it saw me it ran away. I thought, Nancy Clancy—the great scarer of snakes.

  After a while I could tell it was time to go back to the wagon. I could tell it was about time my father and the black man would be stirring. But when I came downhill again and out of the trees, the whole river bank looked different. I’d come out at the wrong place.

  So I sat down on the river bank and waited for my father to come for m
e. All afternoon passed and he didn’t come. Then the sun went down behind the hills. No, I didn’t cry. Well, maybe a tear, or two. Children will be children, you know. I hid in the trees that night in case any of the black tribes came along the river. They like little girls with curly hair, you know. It’s said that black tribes-people used sometimes to take away little white children just because of their curly hair. I didn’t want that to happen to me, even though I like people to admire my hair.

  The next morning, as the sun came up, that old black snake with the red belly came back and sat on a rock and looked at me. I clapped my hands, but this time he didn’t blink. That old black snake wasn’t scared of Nancy Clancy any more.

  Then I walked up the river and down the river looking for my father. I got so hungry. I called. Where could he have got to? I still don’t know the answer to that. A hundred and ten years, and I still don’t know.

  In the afternoon I climbed the hill again. I thought I might be able to see the wagon from on top of the hill there. I was so hungry. I sat down under a big blue gum and cried first, yes I cried, I don’t mind admitting it, and then I slept.

  When I woke up, there were black people all around me. Black men with spears, black women with wooden dishes on one hip and a little black child on the other. I thought, here we go! They’re going to keep me prisoner for my curls. I tried to stand up and run, but my legs were too weak. I had been lost a day and a half, and had had nothing to eat. So two young black women came and helped me up, not roughly, and helped me along as the tribe marched downhill and along the river.

  In the last light of that day, the men started spearing eels in the river, and the women cooked them. Young boys made little shelters out of the bark from trees, and young girls put the roots of plants on a flat stone and pounded them to a flour with other stones held in their hands. They gave me eel and some of this flour to eat. But that night it was so cold.