Wasp Season

Chapter 1

Chapter One

A European wasp landed on Beth’s kitchen windowsill.

She stopped washing dishes in the sink and studied the resting insect. It was bright and boldly coloured – striped like a tiger and really quite beautiful. Yes, the European wasp was an imported pest. Yes, it was a nuisance to picnickers and campers. However, as with all introduced species, the wasp itself was blameless, simply striving to survive in an alien world. Its presence was due to human interference in the natural scheme of things.

The wasp buzzed off the sill and disappeared into the garden.

As she gazed after it, another wasp flew into view. This one carried something in its strong jaws. Straight away, Beth recognised the wasp’s prey – a fat emperor gum moth caterpillar. It struggled desperately, resplendent in emerald green coat and bright red standards.

Beth caught a horrified breath.

A vivid memory catapulted her back to childhood. She could see the ancient peppercorn trees standing firmly between the family’s weatherboard house and the noise of the train line.

Adapting to a lack of gum trees, inner-city emperor gum moths laid their eggs on the peppercorn leaves. As a little girl, Beth had been intrigued by them. The bench seats of the old tramcar in her backyard were cluttered with jars containing sprigs of freshly picked peppercorn, laden with eggs and hungry caterpillars at different stages of their life cycle. Nurturing them had inspired in Beth a lifelong reverence for the natural world.

The wasp lost hold of its struggling prey. With heart in mouth, Beth rushed outside to find the caterpillar lying on the path. But the determined wasp wasn’t done yet. It dived down to renew the attack. Only after several angry swipes from Beth did it abandon its plump prize.

She turned her attention to rescuing the caterpillar. Rearing on fleshy hind legs, it brandished its mandibles to confront this new threat. Green blood seeped from where the wasp’s powerful jaws had tried to crush its head. Beth carried the injured caterpillar to the edge of her garden, placed it on a young ironbark tree and wished it luck.

She wandered back through the fragrant garden. How glorious it was in springtime, crammed with flowers and a riot of colour. It framed the house, making it look like a picture postcard. Beth caught a fleeting glimpse of another wasp hovering among the scarlet blooms of a bottlebrush. The sight caused her an unexpected chill. Time to go inside and do some research.

Beth loved her home, a large and comfortable two-storey dwelling of cream weatherboards. Upon the walls, photographs of her children hung beside Tom Roberts prints and various landscape paintings that she’d found in second-hand shops. The floor was scuffed parquet, a blend of deep browns. Walls of forest green met high white skirting boards. The house had been built in the 1950s and although old-fashioned, was warm and welcoming and full of charm.

Beth had fallen in love with this house in the mountains several years ago. She and her husband, Mark, had purchased it as a country getaway, along with a few acres of paddocks and bushland. Beth named the property Benbullen, an indigenous word for quiet high place. She’d hoped it would provide Mark with some respite from the stress of his city accounting practice; help him to see that there was more to life than fat bonuses and corner offices and runaway ambition.

But it hadn’t worked out that way. Beth could count on one hand the number of times they’d spent an entire weekend together at Benbullen. Mark was too caught up in the professional rat-race to be able to slow down and enjoy the peace. Even so, he’d been a good husband in the early years. They’d enjoyed a secure and loving marriage, punctuated by the birth of Sarah and then Rick, two years later.

Motherhood had come to Beth as an unexpected, blinding joy. Mark, on the other hand, experienced little of the happiness she felt. An ever-increasing workload meant he spent less and less time with his young family, and Beth watched with dismay as her husband became increasingly absorbed in his frantic climb up the career ladder. Inevitably they grew apart and Beth had moved permanently to Benbullen with the children.

Their breakup had been messy and painful, but it had not left Beth broken-hearted. Her marriage had been a lonely place for too long. She told herself that being single again at thirty-five wasn’t the end of the world; that it gave her a chance to rediscover herself and what mattered in life. She’d begun by having her long red hair cut into a short, stylish bob. She lived in jeans and T-shirts instead of the fashionable clothes that Mark had loved her to wear; clothes that showed off her tall slender figure. Yes, there were times when she still felt lonely, but Beth liked who she was becoming. She could even say that she was happy again, at least happier than she’d been for a long time,

She wouldn’t be happy if wasps took over her garden, though. Beth did a quick google of European wasps on her laptop and was disturbed by what she found. They could cause a lot of damage to the local habitat. She’d have to drive into town and buy a wasp trap. Beth tugged a comb through her hair and went out the back way, tired of dodging the bees swarming the rambling roses near the front door.

Full of purpose, she drove to her local hardware store. There were several brands of trap that all worked on the same principle – a chamber to fill with bait, and an entrance that wouldn’t be an obvious escape route for the insects. Beth made her choice, bought some punnets of vegetable seedlings and drove straight home. When in town she usually stopped to do some shopping or have a coffee at the corner cafe. Not today. Today she felt oddly single-minded.

Back at home, Beth considered possible baits. They could apparently be sweet or savoury. Sugar, honey, or jam in a little water. Wine or orange juice left to ferment. Dog food straight from the can. She settled on honey-water, hung the trap on the lasiandra tree outside the kitchen window, then returned inside.

As she waited and watched, Beth let her thoughts wander. The family relied on rainwater tanks. Sometimes they bucketed bathwater onto the garden and into the stock troughs. She’d done so that very morning. The water troughs were a gathering place for throngs of shining dragonflies, darting to and fro on rainbow wings. But that morning, these aerial acrobats were joined by the odd tiger-striped wasp. Their presence deepened her sense of unease.

With one eye on her new trap, Beth finished washing the dishes in the kitchen sink. Not a wasp in sight. She felt a pang of disappointment. The ringing phone startled her. ‘Hello, Mark. Yes, they’ll be ready by five o’clock.’

Despite their two-year separation, for some reason neither she nor Mark had sought a divorce. However, that hadn’t stopped Mark from moving on, and quickly. He no longer lived alone in their inner-city townhouse. His girlfriend Lena, short for Helena, and their new baby lived there too.

Mark’s rebound family, as Beth called it, hadn’t disrupted the friendly custody arrangements regarding their children – Sarah who was twelve and Rick who was ten. Mark was due to pick the kids up that evening for a regular weekend access visit.

Beth frowned. That morning Rick had said he didn’t want to go. When she’d asked him why, he muttered something about his dad having ‘lost the plot’. What on earth did that mean? Sarah though, would be as delighted as ever – a real daddy’s little girl, that one. In addition, baby Chance was a delightful novelty for her, and his mother, Lena, loved to spoil Sarah.

Lena had been Mark’s personal assistant before the separation. Beth suspected that Lena’s relationship with Mark overlapped her own at some point, but what did it matter now? At twenty-five, the girl was younger than Mark by more than a decade, and Beth found it hard to take her seriously. Although she was grateful that Lena always seemed to make her kids feel welcome.

Beth busied herself packing the children’s things. It was the start of a long weekend, and they wouldn’t be home until Monday night. She was looking forward to a few lazy days. Each time she passed through the kitchen, she glanced at the trap. Still no wasps.

When the kids tumbled in the front door after school, Beth had their bags packed and ready. Sarah searched through hers, then gave her mother a reproachful pout. ‘You forgot Timmy.’

Timmy was Sarah’s threadbare puppy dog pyjama case. Generations of children in the family had stuffed their pyjamas into Timmy’s zippered tummy, Beth included. ‘You said you were too old for Timmy.’

Sarah gave a little eye roll. ‘He’s not for me, Mum. He’s for the baby. Timmy helps Chance go to sleep.’

Beth smiled and went upstairs to fetch the toy for Sarah. Such a sweet girl, always trying her best to keep the peace within her divided family. Beth found Timmy on Sarah’s pillow. She stopped to look at a photo of Sarah and her pony that had been made into a poster. People said Sarah was the image of her mother, with her red hair, pale skin, and freckled nose. Her eyes too were like Beth’s – serious, green eyes that observed the world from beneath her straight fringe.

Beth viewed Sarah’s valiant attempts to keep everybody happy with a mixture of admiration and gentle amusement. The only person Sarah had no patience with was her brother. Rick was small for his ten years, with blond, curly hair and melting brown eyes like his father’s. Emotional and highly imaginative, Rick was inclined to get himself into trouble by speaking his mind no matter where he was. He remained a source of constant embarrassment to his polite sister.

Beth came downstairs to find Sarah stuffing more and more things into her bulging overnight bag: an extra top and pair of jeans, a bead kit for making jewellery, more books. Beth added Timmy to the pile.

Rick seemed to have overcome his reluctance to go to his father’s. ‘I’m hungry,’ he announced, and followed his mother to the kitchen. ‘What’s that?’ He pointed to the transparent plastic orb hanging outside the window.

At first, Rick was intrigued by the idea of the trap and watched it while Beth made a sandwich. However, no wasps quickly led to no interest.

Not so with Beth. She wanted to observe the first contact and continued to gaze at the trap long after Mark had picked up the children. Only the fading light drove her from the window.