AFEW days later Margaret Cameron came to Jamie with a pair of jackets that she had fashioned from unbleached muslin. A broad band fitted neatly around his chest and fastened with flat buttons. A pair of straps, easy when sitting, sufficiently close fitting to keep the bandages in place when moving around, crossed the shoulders. When his wound was dressed and he slipped on one of these contrivances and buttoned it, he felt like a man who had just been redeemed. The bandage was so much lighter in weight, so much easier to wear than what he had carried for two years. Above all, it served his purpose and did not constantly remind him by its weight and the ceaseless chafing across his shoulders and under his arms of the fact that it was there.

For a week he and Margaret worked together, “fixing their fences,” they called it. They planned the best time of day to do the sprinkling. To the extent of the knowledge of either of them, they watched over the bees. As slowly and easily as possible Jamie went about everything that week. He kept religiously to the diet that they were working out, and every morning at ten o’clock he put on the Master’s bathing suit, and armed with an old blanket ​Page:The Keeper of the Bees.pdf/230 ​Page:The Keeper of the Bees.pdf/231 ​Page:The Keeper of the Bees.pdf/232 ​Page:The Keeper of the Bees.pdf/233 ​Page:The Keeper of the Bees.pdf/234 ​Page:The Keeper of the Bees.pdf/235 ​Page:The Keeper of the Bees.pdf/236 ​Page:The Keeper of the Bees.pdf/237 ​Page:The Keeper of the Bees.pdf/238 ​Page:The Keeper of the Bees.pdf/239 ​Page:The Keeper of the Bees.pdf/240 ​Page:The Keeper of the Bees.pdf/241 ​Page:The Keeper of the Bees.pdf/242 ​Page:The Keeper of the Bees.pdf/243 ​Page:The Keeper of the Bees.pdf/244 ​Page:The Keeper of the Bees.pdf/245 ​Page:The Keeper of the Bees.pdf/246 ​Page:The Keeper of the Bees.pdf/247 ​Page:The Keeper of the Bees.pdf/248 ​Page:The Keeper of the Bees.pdf/249 ​Page:The Keeper of the Bees.pdf/250 ​stances’ to be mitigating, and if I really turned out, say in about a year from now, to be a sound man, maybe she could overlook my scars and maybe she could explain, and maybe we could find something really beautiful in life together?”

Then the mocking bird remembered a particularly brilliant performance he had heard on a date palm down in Mexico from a bloody red bird and threw a repetition straight at Jamie’s head, “Good cheer! Good cheer! Good cheer!”

So Jamie looked at his flowers again and saw that they were beginning to droop their lovely heads. He got up and hurried to find the little copper bowl in order to put them in water. When he had very carefully arranged them in the bowl, he carried it to the bedroom and set it on the stand beside the bed that could be drawn close to his pillow.

All the rest of that day, Jamie stumbled as he walked, not because of weakness, but because he was dreaming a peculiarly absorbing dream.