The Death of Bees (19 page)

We limp home in the rain, it didn't stop for almost a week if memory serves.

Silly boy. All this over a few sweets.

Marnie

I
wanted Kirkland to mean it and when I knew he didn't I still wanted to give in to it, I thought if I had five more minutes with him it would be enough to change everything, but nothing would have changed and if Izzy and Gene taught me anything it was to recognize poison when you see it, but still, I was drawn to the weakness in him and kissed him. It was the last kiss, I didn't know that then, no one knows when it's their last kiss with someone who wants to leave them and if you asked them now, years later, they probably wouldn't even remember, unless they were one of those saddos who asked for one. Watching Nelly on the roundabout made me feel stupid for wanting to taste him again but he seemed stronger than before, although it was a lie. When he finally asked for his prescription I felt bad for letting Nelly's chicken soup down. She'd tried so hard to protect me from this. Of course every girl wishes she could be one of those pop star babes who wave their hands in the air yelling about being survivors but when love sits on one side of you and loneliness on the other, it's hard to stop the touching and the kissing. I suppose this is what it means when it's over, when you don't want it to be and when you want to start from the beginning and make it all right again.

At least I walked away. Don't know how, but I did, maybe because Nelly was waiting for me, I couldn't exactly leave her in the park, could I? Of course maybe she was the one who couldn't leave me in the park. She's become quite the grown-up recently. I'm glad for it.

Despite the rain we were home in no time. I had a scraped knee and wet hair. I also had Lennie asking where the hell we'd been.

“It's movie night,” he says. And it was. He'd made popcorn.

Nelly

O
ne feels quite at home wandering across the marble flooring of the Mitchell Library. If you didn't know where you were going you could get quite lost in such an ornate building, but I do know where I am going, I am going everywhere and can spend hours waltzing from one place to another. I have no particular destination in mind, I may pick up a newspaper in one room, I may seek out the past in another. I feel at ease in the library.

Except today.

I smelled him first, a souring odor of sneaky cigarettes amidst woodchip and oak. I couldn't believe he'd found me and in the most precious of places. Obviously there was no running to be done, not here and most certainly no shouting. There was just Robert T. Macdonald and myself.

“What are you doing here, you scoundrel?”

I closed my book while a fellow reader looked up from his paper, annoyance in his eyes.

“I want to go and find her,” he said suddenly. “And I want you to come with me.”

“Outside,” I whispered.

My heart was beating fast. He was closing in on us. I could feel it.

“I will do no such thing,” I told him.

“Why?” he asked.

I had to find an answer. Any answer.

“Because I don't care where she is,” I spluttered.

“Speak to Marnie. I think the both of you should come. We'll find her together. I know we will.”

He seemed desperate.

“I'm going home,” I told him. I had to escape him.

“Home? To Lennie the Queer. I don't know how you can. The Bible says it's wrong.”

“I will thank you to keep such remarks to oneself,” I whisper.

“If I can't find my daughter then things are going to change around here. So you better get your suitcase handy. I'm done chasing you around the block, and that goes for your sister too.”

He walked away, leaving me alone on the staircase, and I must admit I was rather afraid.

Marnie

V
lado suggests a bike run. “It will keep you fit and focused,” he says.

In other words it will take my mind off Kirkland. I say okay and take Gene's bike. Hard to imagine he had a bike, but not hard to imagine he stole it.

It's a hot summer's day so no one's out looking for trouble, just some sunshine, maybe a wee tan, which usually turns red and reaches the front cover of the
Daily Record
with a shocker headline about burned skin, sometimes cancer. Riding past on your bike boys will give you the once-over and someone might whistle, but mostly no one cares about a girl riding her bike, it's too hot, they just want to be still and bask a little. They want to stretch out on the grass and listen to some music. They want to pull out the paddling pools for the weans and sit with their babies and their girlfriends and some want to do their washing, but mostly they want to love. Snogging and sunshine go hand in hand in good weather, so does shagging under a blanket and come winter there will be a lot of lassies with big bellies. Glaswegians don't need the darkness of a nightclub to live it up or get it up; consequences are words for teachers and lawyers, sometimes judges.

Fish suppers and ice cream do well on a day like this and if you're really posh a barbecue. Gene tried to do it once and almost burned the house down. I've never had a real one but I hear they're fantastic. Lennie is doing one tonight. I can't wait.

Eventually we reach the pub and Vlado gets me a Coke. He gets himself a Guinness of which he knows an abundance of facts having traveled as far as Dublin.

He wants to talk to me about something serious I can tell, but he stops himself and instead talks of his daughter.

“Sabina liked to cycle, you know this?”

“All girls like to. It's good for the bum.”

He laughs.

Sitting on the grass the women around me stare. They assume we are father and daughter. I feel proud and want it to be so.

“She cycled all over the place,” he continues. “Even when she was small, I remember her little legs pushing fast the pedals and all over the house, scraping on the floors, bumping into walls. She would yell for me to push her sometimes, she would want to be pushed fast all day long, but it was too much and I would say, ‘No, Sabina. Enough,' and she would cry. When a child dies it takes a long time to remember all the good things you did for them. Sometimes I think if she had cycled to school that day she would have been too fast for the bullet, but I walked to appease my wife, to assure her it was safe when it wasn't.”

I don't say anything. It was a lot to take in.

“You have no words of comfort?”

“I don't know what to say.”

“Then this I take.”

“Is there anything about me that reminds you of Sabina?”

I redden.

“You would be the same age.”

“Is this why you want to save me?”

“I want to help you, teach you. I am a teacher. I was a teacher.”

“Then why are you selling drugs?”

“They won't let me teach and I won't beg.”

“You know the kids you want to teach, they get the drugs you supplied to Mick. They're like Sabina.”

“They are nothing like my Sabina. My girl came from good home. She cared for herself, we cared for her. She did good in school and had never been kissed. She liked to pretend she had a horse, girls in this country they want to pretend they are forty.”

“Addiction is arbitrary. There are tons of junkies that come from good homes. You can color it any way you like. You supply drugs and it's wrong, and worse than that you know it's wrong.”

“I want to live, what do you want from me?” he snaps.

“I want to live too,” I tell him.

“The Russians they have a saying: ‘The future belongs to him who knows how to wait!' Why won't you wait?”

“There's no waiting here, only surviving. You think I didn't want a childhood?”

“And so you fly from it with the speed of a little bee in your tiny golden pumps.” He was laughing at me again.

“They're the fashion,” I tell him. “Everyone's wearing them. Not that you'd know anything about it in your cowboy boots.”

“Let's go,” he says.

We ride fast on the way back and it creates a perfect breeze. It makes us laugh, we can't help it. He looks back at me and tells me to catch up. I feel bad we talked like we did but a smile from Vlado reassures me that everything is going to be okay and I smile back.

Vlado stays for dinner and Lennie is delighted. It has been a great day and though I think of Kirkland from time to time, I almost forget there's an Izzy or a Gene.

After we've eaten, Vlado asks a sulky Nelly to play something, preferring a new energy to adorn the garden, and with Bach's help that's exactly what she does, albeit reluctantly, God only knows what's wrong with her now.

Lennie

H
e told her I was a queer and when she acted like she didn't know I have to say I was a little taken aback.

“You know about the boy in the park, don't you?”

She shrugged her shoulders.

“I know you know, Nelly,” I whisper. “You've heard them shout in the night and you must have seen the graffiti on the door.”

Her face went as red as beetroot.

“I made a mistake. A dreadful mistake and I can't undo it now. I wish to God I could. Do you understand?” I ask.

“I don't want to hear.” She hushes me and puts her hands on her ears. I grab them from her head and grip tight.

“I am a man who likes other men. I like to be with them sexually and I like to be with them romantically and Joseph who lived here with me for so many years, you remember Joseph, don't you?”

She shakes her head and won't stop shaking it.

“He was my lover and when he died my heart was broken. My heart is still broken.” I weep.

She is suddenly silent and I let her go. I am exhausted.

“I'm sorry, Lennie,” she cries and we hold one another.

“It's okay,” I tell her. “It's okay.” I stroke her hair.

“I remember Joseph,” she whispers. “I remember him, Lennie.”

“Thank you,” I say.

Marnie

I
t was raining hard when Robert T. Macdonald rolled down his window and told me to get into his car.

“You're soaked to the bone, lassie,” he says.

“I don't care. I'd catch pneumonia before I'd sit next to you.”

“That's not very nice,” he remarks.

“You're not very nice,” I remind him.

“It's not safe to be walking home on your own,” he says.

“I know what you mean, all kinds of nut jobs spooking about.” I say this and stare at him.

“I'll follow you in the car.”

“I don't want you to follow me.”

He ignores me and drives behind until I'm at Lennie's house. As soon as I'm inside, the mobile rings. It's Robert T. Macdonald. I send him to voice mail and then I listen to the message.

“Just checking to see you got home safely,” he says and then click, he's gone.

When I tell Nelly she pales and tells me about the library. He wants all of us to go and look for Izzy. I make up my mind to go and talk to him. Nelly and I don't need to look for Izzy. We know exactly where she is.

Lennie

A
foot and right under the dining room table. Bobby brought it in from the garden. Obviously I thought it was the bone I got him from the butcher the other day but on closer examination I could see it wasn't.

I didn't know what to do with it to be honest, I certainly didn't want it on any of my clean surfaces and so I put it on the sofa with the plastic covering.

When Vlado rings the doorbell looking for Marnie I think about chasing him but then I invite him in; I clearly need advice.

“You won't believe what the dog brought in,” I say and take him to the sofa.

He comes in and of course he sees the foot.

“So, what do you think of that then?” I say.

“It is a foot,” he says.

“I can see that,” I say.

“Where did it come from?” he asks.

I shrug my shoulders. “The dog must have brought it in.”

“Where is the dog?” asks Vlado.

“Out back.”

We go to the garden and find Bobby sniffing at the flower beds with the lavender and running down the side of the girls' house, but this time he brings someone's limb. We can't decide if it's an arm or a leg. Further investigation is carried out and we find them. Izzy Macdonald and Eugene Doyle in a couple of shallow graves. I almost fainted.

“What have they done?” I gasp.

Vlado, as shocked as I am, sighs, and it's a mighty sound.

“I cannot be involved.” He turns to leave.

“We have to help them,” I say.

“No, you have to call the police. I cannot stay.”

“But they'd get into so much trouble. And for these two shits it's hardly worth the bother.”

He sighs again.

“Then what will we do, Lennie? Tell me,” asks Vlado and with anger in his voice.

“Whatever we must,” I reply.

Marnie

H
e was drunk and at the back of the bus, slurping booze from a brown paper bag.

“Marnie baby!” he yells.

“Sandy,” I say.

“Cute dog,” he goes.

“Thanks,” I say.

Bobby's tail wags and his entire backside sways from left to right, causing a breeze of activity around my legs. I took him when Lennie wasn't looking and it was my intention to go as far as Drymen and let the dog go. He was constantly in our yard and it was making Nelly and me very nervous. We actually considered poisoning him, but he's such a sweet dog we couldn't bring ourselves to do it, losing him in the middle of nowhere was the only alternative.

“What happened to your face?” I ask Sandy. It was black and blue.

“Your grandpa threw me out on my ear, didn't he. Found out about my checkered past as a rent boy and told me to leave.”

“You're kidding,” I say.