The Death of Bees (20 page)
Authors: Lisa O'Donnell
“Wish I was.” He takes another slug.
“Where you going to stay?” I ask.
“With my ma. She's impressed by my recent acquaintance with God and hopes to nurture it. It's a bed, isn't it?”
“I suppose,” I say.
“So where you going with the dog?” he asks.
“Taking it for a walk.”
“Where?” he asks.
“Drymen.”
“Drymen's fucking miles away, Marnie.”
“Thought he could do with a change of scenery.”
That's when Bobby found his way to Sandy's legs. Bobby was all over him, and Sandy being Sandy liked it.
“Nice wee thing, isn't he?” he says.
“Yeah, he is.” I give Bobby a wee pat and he licks my hand. I feel terrible about that because I know I'm about to lose him in the middle of nowhere.
“Want some of this?” Sandy asks Bobby, pouring booze into the cup of his hand.
“Don't, Sandy,” I say.
“What you talking about?”
Bobby laps it up and I get the guilts, but then I think a drunken dog might be easier to lose than a sober one and he certainly liked the drink.
“All right,” I say. “But just a wee bit.”
Bobby drinks like a pro.
“Good boy,” says Sandy.
“You're mad,” I tell him.
He rings the bell. “This is my stop.”
He finishes his bottle and then rolls it under the seat. It rattles from side to side. Then he smells his breath against the palm of his hand.
“Can you smell the drink off me?” he asks.
“A wee bit,” I say. “Get some mints,” I advise.
“I will,” he agrees.
“Hope everything works out with your ma,” I say.
“Hope so.”
He pats Bobby. “Good luck, wee man,” he says, and I feel bad again because I know I'm about to abandon Bobby in a place called Drymen and that's exactly what I do. Obviously I worried about what would happen to him. I worried he'd starve, but what could I do? There was too much at stake and he just wouldn't leave the garden alone. I had no choice and so I let him go and cried all the way home. I couldn't help it.
B
reakfast was quite the affair this morning. There were the usual requests for milk to be passed and Coke for cornflakes. Marnie also had a cup of tea and some toast, which I was very pleased about, I love to see the girl eat, but all the time I am thinking,
How on earth did your parents end up under the flower beds?
And you want to ask but you daren't.
“All right, Lennie?” says Marnie.
“Fine, love. And you?”
“No more than usual.”
And there it was. Right there. I don't know how I could have missed it. Watching their earnest little faces digging into cereals and breads I return to the shadows they carry in their eyes and reflect on the long gazes they have shared, a gentle hand quietly urging silence upon a shoulder, a cough to interrupt a careless thought hastily replaced with another. I think of their walks by the sea, the quiet arguments and the uncomfortable glances across the dinner table. Mostly I think of them keeping this secret all this time and the burden they have walked with every single day since they have lived here. I think on the parents and wonder what on earth they could have done to end up dead and buried in their own garden but in my soul I know whatever it might have been, they deserved it.
I want to help the girls and I want to shout it out loud but as I am silent on the matter of my own grave I will be silent on the matter of the graves they have kept hidden in their garden.
H
e was polishing the altar and arsing about with flower arrangements. I wanted it to be a quick trip so I didn't beat about the bush.
“If you want to go and look for Izzy that's fine but we're not coming with you. We don't care where she is. So leave us alone.”
I turned on my heel, but as I'm walking away I can hear footsteps moving fast behind me, suddenly he has me by the shoulders and he's pushing me against the wall.
“Who the bloody hell do you think you are, little miss, eh? You think you can come in here and tell me what's what, you cheeky little . . .”
He loosens his grip, but my lips have whitened and I am visibly afraid.
“You don't decide anything from now on. I do.”
He lets go of me and walks to the altar, he kneels and then crosses himself. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.
T
he police found her in Vlado's apartment washing dishes. Turns out
he's
an illegal immigrant supplying drugs and perhaps responsible for the ice cream vendor's disappearance. I had no idea. Obviously they questioned her but realizing she was of little use to them they sent her on her way.
Of course I didn't expect Vlado to show up here. I gave him a right telling off.
“Selling drugs,” I exclaimed.
“Supplying drugs,” he said.
“And what difference does that make?”
He wasn't sure, I could tell from his face.
“I must live,” he whispered.
“I'm disgusted,” I told him.
“You are disgusted? A man who picks up boys in parks.”
“He was a prostitute.”
“And what difference does that make?”
Not a great deal, I realized.
“We are in this together,” he reminded me. “You have forgotten what we have done?”
Of course I hadn't. We had come together for the girls. We had come together to protect them and that meant protecting Vlado and so I gave him whatever money I had on me, my car, and a place to hide.
Marnie will have a fit when she hears Vlado's gone. He meant the world to her. She loved him, but he can't stay.
I like to think I've helped these girls somewhat. I like to think they know it. It makes my conscience clean for all the wrongs I've done in this life, a little clean. Oh Joseph, God has punished me hard for what I've done in this world and for what I've loved and I fear hell more than any man I know.
H
e left it on the fridge. My wages for the week and a letter telling me he'd fucked off, that's when the police arrived. They let me keep my salary but took the letter. Pigs are like that.
Â
Dear Marnie
Â
I have an emergency in my life and I must go.
You are very young Marnie and it is precious to be young, it slips away from you soon enough and I wish not you should regret lost days, it brings many tears.
Love to you Marnie, love to Nelly and all my respects to Lennie.
Â
Vlado
Â
Another one for the absent people file. I'm going to run out of space soon.
W
hen Lennie poured a cup of tea last Wednesday he didn't stop when he got to the rim like a normal person might, he kept pouring until it was all over the table. One had to grab his hand.
“Oh my goodness, look what I've done here,” he said.
I mean it's only tea good golly, but how he burns and loses things. I haven't had a decent meal in days.
W
hen I went back to his flat the door was open. The pigs hadn't even closed it behind them. The whole apartment was a tip. They had ripped it apart. Picture frames on the floor, books off the shelves, and dishes everywhere. I didn't know where to start and wondered why I was bothering. I suppose I hoped he'd be back or maybe I was looking for something to tell me where he went. Mostly I wanted to tell him I'd passed my exams. He definitely knew he was leaving because the picture frames were empty. Most of his clothes and a pair of tanned cowboy boots remained in the wardrobe. I felt bad for him then because he loved the tan ones, but it also meant he was wearing the black and I don't know why but it made me feel better knowing what he was wearing.
After I tidy up I empty the bins into the rubbish bags but when I get to the one by his bed I find it is full of crumpled papers. I open them up and discover they are various drafts of the letter he left for me. In one letter he wrote I reminded him of his daughter and he loved me very much. He decided against this draft and bounced it into the bin. In another draft he told me I was a “precious” and a “special” girl. He decided against this version also. He had written almost five different letters before deciding on the one he enclosed with my wages. All of them containing words like
character
,
beauty
, and
valuable
. I kept them all. I have them all. I search the flat desperately for a picture of Vlado and find nothing and it makes me sad because I never took any. I try to remember the last time I saw him and think of him on his bike by the Clyde laughing at nothing in particular. In my mind I snap this image and store it in my memory. It's where I keep everyone who's important to me.
T
ending your grave is no easy feat. I bring scissors and twine. A bucket and a trowel. I bring a bouquet for your birthday. I have purchased a plot by your side and will call you beloved on my gravestone.
I worry for the girls. My girls. I worry for their future, but I have stayed long enough and the gloom creeps closer. I have no fight in me anymore and I am weary, but I must remain able, the girls need me and there is much to put in place. I can only hope it is enough and that my girls can stay strong a little while longer. Courage is what is needed now, courage and stealth, for there is much to fight for and much to let go.
I
mpossible to imagine that a man who liked women as Gene did should have adopted a taste for young girls. Even harder to imagine was Izzy loving a man like that, but she did, and when we were wee girls so did Nelly and I. How could we not? We were children, it's what we knew.
I remember one time coming home early from school a few weeks before Gene came into my room and I found them dancing. Izzy, slow. Gene, gentle. I suppose I was looking at the thing they were before the tearing, when she was a princess and he was a prince, defying the Furies to be together. Watching them love amidst the candles I could imagine the first moment their gaze fell upon each other and the first time they kissed. It made me understand their desperate clinging to one another. It also left me bitter being confronted by their love, for beyond it, the drugs and the hate and the infidelity, I saw an impossible reach for something else, something that had passed them. Until Gene died that is.
Thinking on Izzy clutching at Gene's cold dead body unlocked something inside me. A curiosity of sorts. I remember her breaking her heart, and though I despised her for it I couldn't quite fathom where this burst of love might have come from because she certainly didn't express such feelings while they lived. Remembering her grief I fully experienced what must have been an intense incomprehensible love once upon a time, but after years of abuse and hate how could she have summoned it to her side and so vehemently? Why had she summoned it? It was in that moment I realized the truth. Nelly had not suffocated Gene. Izzy had.
H
e called at the other door looking for Marnie. He said he'd found her dog.
“That's not Marnie's dog, son,” I told him. “That's my dog. My Bobby. Come on, boy.” Bobby leaped at me and with so much gusto I thought he'd push me over.
“Is Marnie around?” the boy asked.
“Who wants to know?” I say.
“Sandy,” he says.
He was a handsome lad about fifteen, red hair and blue eyes, maybe violet.
“I'm afraid not.” I smiled. “Can I say who's calling?”
“
Sandy
,” he said.
“You'll be looking for a reward, young man.” I beam.
I was utterly delighted to have Bobby back and so I reach into my pocket and pull out a ten-pound note.
“S'okay,” he says.
“I insist,” I say.
He takes the money like a good lad and then walks away. I give him a wave for he was a very pleasant fellow. Very pleasant indeed.
I
have come here to our garden shed to ask you if you loved me as I must love you. I have come here to ask you why you allowed me to sleep by your feet and on your lap. I have come to ask you if there was love in your heart while you stroked my hair and when you moved me sleeping in your arms to a room never painted and to a bed never made.
I have come here to ask you, Mother, about the barest of larders and why you offered me coffee for lunch.
“We just don't have the money, love” is one answer.
I try not to think of you smoking cigarettes, or your wineglass waving in the air when there was no milk or bread.
“Here's a pound, hen, take the bottles from under the sink and get yourself some chips.”
Clanking down the street with four empties and a pound coin in my pocket makes me feel cared for. I'm thinking of those chips now and how they tasted to me, better than lamb or herbed chicken and not because I was hungry but because you gave me the money to buy them.
I have come here to ask you if you loved me and if you loved Nelly.
I have come here to ask.
I have come here.
S
haron Henry wishes to be comrades of sorts. She is lonely and in need of companionship. She has friends of course but it's something deeper she seeks. She looks to be understood. I felt rather sorry for her and of course I have agreed to meet her after school on Friday. She has suggested we see a movie.
“Look nice,” she tells me.
“Nice?” I ask.
“Make an effort,” she says. “A bit of gloss maybe.”
“But I don't have gloss,” I tell her.
“Then borrow Marnie's,” she says.
“Whatever for?” I ask.