Hollybush Close, by Imogen Strand

An original short story extract set in the twentieth century.

Everyone on Hollybush Close agreed that Miss Varley was peculiar, though nobody could agree exactly how. She was seventy, perhaps more, and she wore her late father’s tweed jacket over a flowered summer dress whatever the season. She kept three hives at the bottom of her garden, where the rest of us had trampolines and sheds, and she spoke to her bees in a low, conversational voice, the way other people spoke to the vicar.

The morning after my grandfather died, I saw her walking down her garden with a roll of black ribbon. I climbed onto the compost bin to watch. She tied a strip round each hive, slowly, as though she were dressing a child, and then she bent close to the wooden boxes and told them.

‘Mr Dacre at number nine has gone,’ she said. ‘He grew the sweet peas you liked. You’ll want to know.’

I must have made a sound, because she looked up. I expected her to be cross. Instead she beckoned me over the fence with one gloved hand, as if I were late for an appointment.

‘They have to be told,’ she said, quite matter of fact. ‘Otherwise they take offence and leave. Come and say something, if you like. They won’t mind that you’re crying.’

I did not know what to say to a bee. She waited, humming under her breath, until I thought of something.

What impressions does the writer create of Miss Varley?

You must refer to the language used in the text to support your answer, using relevant subject terminology where appropriate.