IT WAS AS IF I WERE LOOKING INTO THE GARDEN OF EDEN, except that Winnie and Tom weren’t naked, of course.
They were wearing long-sleeved white linen shirts, and hoses tucked into their boots, and gloves, and white veils. Close together they stood beside the covered hive, so caught up with each other and what they were doing that they didn’t see me, in the middle of the orchard. I leaned into the apple-tree trunk and watched them.
The eighth day of April in the year of Our Lord 1203. Lady Anne’s orchard was humming and whirring, unfolding in the sunlight. Everything looked new, each grass blade, each leaf. Around me were clumps of primroses, white violets, and I could smell the damp scent of young horsemint.
All at once Winnie giggled and pushed Tom, and ran off. Around the orchard they gamboled, Winnie squealing, Tom yelling, and then he caught her, and they threw back their heads and laughed, and he marched her back to the hive.
They were so free. So…at ease. They don’t know how people tear each other to pieces. They haven’t smelled death. They don’t have nightmares that ride you when you sleep.
Winnie and Tom: They looked so young!
I wished I could be like them.
I wished I could just go away.
Tom was Adam and Winnie was Eve and I was the apple of the knowledge of good and evil, and I thought if only I could go away, and not trouble them with love and pain and guilt, they could stay in the orchard blind and innocent and delighted, and live forever.
“Come on, then!” said Winnie. “Let’s open it!”
She and Tom pulled and lifted the hive’s weather-beaten old canvas cover and at once the air around them grew hot and blurred with indignant bees.
Winnie and Tom raised their arms, pulled their veils over their faces, and stumbled towards me.
I didn’t even notice the bee until I felt it sting me. On my right wrist.
I yelped, and Winnie and Tom heard me and pulled back their veils and stared at me, amazed.
“I’ve been stung!” I said.
Neither of them was sure it was really me. They floated around me.
“I’m not a ghost,” I said. “It’s you who look like ghosts.”
“Arthur!” cried Winnie.
“Arthur!” said Tom, and he came and hugged me, and then Winnie put her arms round us both.
“I didn’t know you were coming back,” Winnie said, breathless and accusing, as if it were my fault. “I thought…”
“This hurts,” I said.
“I’ll pop it out!” said Winnie. “Have you got a knife, Tom?”
“I’ll do it,” I said.
Winnie grasped my wrist. “I can see the black point,” she said. “Tom!”
“I’ll do it myself,” I told her. I unsheathed my jackknife and scraped the blade towards the sting. The third time, it popped out.
“Sore,” said Tom.