That was how Janet thought of it, though in fact Mrs Hutchence kept up a continuous slow talk – it was the only time she did – which was not meant to tell you things – that was all by-the-way – or to do anything at all in fact but be a soothing noise in which the bees, Mrs Hutchence herself, and she as Mrs Hutchence’s helper, were gathered in a single breath into an activity that required this overriding soft babble to contain and settle them. Mrs Hutchence would have been surprised if you had told her: ‘That was a funny story – the one about the Chinese pirate.’ She would have denied she had ever told it, and wonder, perhaps, how it had got across from her head, since the event or the memory of it might indeed have been hanging about there, into yours. When she was silent she often thought she had said something – it could cause difficulties that, Leona certainly thought so – but when she had said something she was, as often as not, unaware of it. This business with the bees was like no other.
