Being Bee by Catherine Bateson Page A

inside. So now we congratulate?’
    â€˜Yes,’ Uncle Rob said quickly, ‘now is a good time to congratulate Jazzi and Nick on their good fortune in finding each other. To Jazzi and Nick!’
    Everyone raised their glasses and murmured, ‘To Jazzi and Nick.’
    â€˜Nick the worrier,’ Harley said. ‘I can see which one he is. Hello, Nick the someone, not the everyone.’
    I was scared that Dad would be confused and saythe wrong thing, but he was paying attention for once.
    â€˜Hello, Harley, I am pleased to meet you,’ he said and smiled one of his best smiles that went right from his eyes down practically to his chin.
    â€˜It isn’t often I meet Jasmine’s friends,’ Harley said. ‘We should have toasts to that, too.’
    â€˜To meeting friends,’ Dad said, raising his glass again.
    â€˜Oh yes,’ Stan said, ‘and another toast, to Patreecia and me. Patreecia has consented to come with me on a ... what do you call it?’
    â€˜A holiday, Stan,’ Nanna said. ‘That’s what we’re calling it.’
    â€˜No, no. There is a better word. It is on the tip of my tongue. Yes – a road trip. We are going on a road trip of nostalgia, back to Lake Jindabyne and Eucumbene where I worked when I was a young man new to this country.’
    â€˜A road trip?’ Dad looked at Nanna.
    â€˜A holiday,’ Nanna said firmly. ‘Stan and I are going on a holiday.’
    â€˜Together?’
    â€˜A romantic road trip.’ Stan beamed at us all. ‘Romantic and nostalgic.’
    â€˜To Stan and Patreecia!’ Harley said, sounding out Nanna’s name the same way Stan had.
    â€˜You don’t need to say it like that,’ I told him quietly,after we’d all had more sips. I didn’t want Stan thinking Harley was having a go at him. ‘It’s just Patricia really.’
    â€˜I like Patreecia,’ Harley said.
    Really, I couldn’t see why Jazzi had made such a fuss over Harley coming. Apart from the Patreecia-thing, and rearranging everything on the table to show Uncle Rob and Dad just how he’d walked from his house to our place – not far at all and I thought it was pretty neat the way the salt shaker became the postbox at the corner and the salad bowl became the playground – and apart from calling Jazzi’s beautiful profiterole tower ‘profit rolls’ and refusing to eat them because they were part of the conspiracy, Harley seemed fine.
    I suppose Jazzi was put out when he lay down on the couch without taking his shoes off, but he did explain that his feet ponged. I know she felt it wasn’t particularly polite the way he went to sleep and, yes, he did snore very loudly, but she said herself it was the tablets he had to take. We couldn’t wake him up, so he stayed there all night. Jazzi threw a blanket over him and tucked a pillow under his head.
    â€˜I’m sorry about this, Nick,’ she kept saying, but Dad didn’t mind and everyone else just stayed sitting around the table talking. After all, people go to sleep on couches all the time. What else is a couch for?
    In the morning, we all walked Harley home and Jazzi seemed happier somehow. She smiled more andeven laughed at a long, not very funny joke Harley told. She held Dad’s hand and every so often I’d see them look at each other and it made me feel as though I’d overheard a secret whispered by someone – a nice secret, though, not a nasty one.

Harley’s butterflies

    I wanted to be happy because Dad was happy and Nanna told me to be happy and even I could see that Jazzi had brought some good things into our life. There was the bread she made almost every day so we had fresh stuff, whereas before I always had to check for mould, because Dad forgot sometimes. There was my scarf which Jazzi fixed for me by making some big wool flowers which we sewed to the narrow end bit. They were a