Song of Bees

by Andrea Hicks

  ‘Leave me, Cecily. I want to hear this.’

  ‘But, Michael...’ She looks over to me and I shrug my indifference. He is the least of my concerns.

  Cecily and Edward Spencer leave the room, and Cecily closes the double doors, throwing a concerned glance towards my father as she draws the doors together. I sit again and face my parents, wondering who will begin the conversation, the most difficult I’m ever likely to have.

  ‘Don’t hate us, Nina.’ The wondering is over. My father has thrown his hat into the ring and kicked things off. ‘We never intended for it to end up the way it did.’

  ‘It, being.’

  ‘I...everything I did, I did for you. I wanted to protect you, and your mother, to stop you from being dragged into this.’

  ‘Into what?’

  ‘Your blood. You know about your blood.’

  ‘I know you used me as a guinea pig when I was a kid. I know you injected me with the vaccine you were developing with Michael Finch when you found it had other properties. That those properties meant that someone treated with a vaccine made from blood like mine could recover from terrible diseases, as long as the trigger was present. I know that you’re the only person who knows what the trigger is.’

  He glances across to my mother who has her face in her hands. When she pulls them away her cheeks are wet with tears, her eyes red in a pale face. Tendrils of her hair that was beautifully styled, are clinging to her cheeks. When I first entered the room, it had occurred to me how poised she looked, more so than I ever remember. Now I believe it was an act because her shoulders are slumped forwards and she looks beaten. I have seen her look like this before, when money was short, or when she was missing Dad and she thought I wasn’t looking.

  ‘Oh, Nina,’ she says, her voice wobbling as she wipes the tears from her cheeks with manicured fingers. ‘Haven’t you worked it out? Haven’t you guessed, sweetheart?’

  ‘Jesus! Guessed what? What should I have guessed? Can you just tell me why you left me? At least that. Just that, if it’s all you want to tell me. I don’t care about the other stuff. I couldn’t care less about blood, or Plan Bee, or that you gave me a vaccine to test it out. Honestly, I don’t care. But it’s the other stuff that hurts so much. You’re my parents. I’m your only child. What was it about me that made me so easy to leave behind?’

  ‘Our love for you.’ Mum looks at me with kind eyes that exude warmth. ‘We love you so much we had to take the only action we could. We wanted you to have an ordinary life, a family life. If we had stayed together you would never have known what it was like to live within a normal family unit. It’s why we named Rochelle in our wills as your guardian. It’s why you went to live with her.’

  ‘She knows about this?’

  ‘No,’ my father answers. ‘She, like you, thinks I disappeared, or was “disappeared”. She believed in your mother’s death, as you did. We couldn’t tell her the truth about why we had to leave, but similarly we didn’t know how her life was going to turn out. She met an unsuitable man who relieved her of the funds we’d set aside for your upbringing and schooling. We were devastated but there was nothing we could do. If we’d shown our hand our whereabouts would have been discovered and it would have put you in grave danger. We have been hiding in plain sight for years under assumed names. When you were taken to hospital and then to Plan Bee, I had to make it possible for you to find us. It’s why I changed my name to Gourriel. Fortunately, your friends unwittingly pointed you in the right direction, and the grit and determination we were led to believe you possessed stood you in good stead.’

  ‘And we know what happened to you, sweetie. At university.’ Mum’s face is still pale. She looks desolate, diminished somehow from the woman I saw less than an hour ago. ‘We’re so sorry, Nina. We knew about Hikaru. Michael was beside himself that he’d raised a boy who could do something so evil.’

  I glance across at Michael Finch who so far has said nothing but has listened quietly to our conversation. His face is heavily lined but tanned and he is smartly dressed. That he was once a handsome man is easy to see. He clearly isn’t as affected by dementia as Cain led me to believe. Or, perhaps he’s having a better day. When he speaks his voice is strong and clear.

  ‘I can only apologise, Nina, although I know my apology will never make up for what happened to you. Hikaru was a bad lot. While he was with us he struggled to remain within the confines of what is expected in a family. You would think that bearing in mind we adopted him and his brother as babies we would have had more influence on his development. He...hated living in the rules of a normal household where respectful treatment of siblings and parents is expected. His life ended as it began, surrounded by violence. He was born to a drug dealer and his young girlfriend. Neither had the love or capability to care for two young children. We thought we’d rescued them from their terrible beginnings but it would seem that in Hikaru’s case, nature won out over nurture. Cecily and I are truly sorry.’

  An apology at last, and from an unexpected source. ‘You can’t be held responsible for what he did. He was old enough to make his own decisions, even at university, but he was never punished for ruining my life. His identity was kept a secret whereas mine seemed to leak out somehow. I suffered because of it.’

  With gargantuan effort he turns his wheelchair away from the bay window and wheels it towards my parents and me. ‘That was not my doing. I wanted him to face the punishment he deserved, but your university was against it, clearly worried about the bad publicity and bringing the establishment into disrepute. Cecily’s hand is in there somewhere too.’ He gives a wry smile but looks contrite.

  ‘Punishment might have saved his life in the long run.’

  He nods sagely and looks at my parents. ‘You have a good girl here. I understand your desire to protect her, but she needs to know the truth. You must do the right thing.’

  I turn to them and raise my eyebrows. ‘That’s all I want. The truth. It’s what I came for.’

  Michael Finch stares hard at my parents, his eyes unblinking as if to convey his message with even more clarity. ‘Will you tell her...or shall I?’

  ‘I will,’ my father answers.

  He takes a breath and swallows which as far as my knowledge of body language goes, indicates his nervousness, but there’s no way I’m letting it go now. He must tell me.

  ‘I didn’t give you the vaccine, Nina. I took it from you.’

  I frown my incomprehension. Shaking my head my voice comes out in a whisper. ‘I don’t understand.’ I want to call him “Dad”, but something stops me. Calling someone Dad is an intimate, loving thing. For some reason I don’t feel I can. Maybe I’m just not ready. ‘How could you take it from me if I hadn’t been given it in the first place?’

  ‘There was no need to give it to you, Nina. You already had it within you. You are the key. Your blood is the trigger.’

  The shock is indescribable. This is nothing like I thought I would hear. I...am the trigger. I am. Then I think of Cain. At this moment. He would love to be here right now.

  ‘Why is my blood the trigger?’

  Another deep breath. ‘When you were born I did your blood tests. The laboratory was unaware I was your father so I just carried out the normal tests that are carried out on the blood of newborn babies. There’s nothing particularly special about the process...at least there wasn’t until I tested your blood and I realised there were anomalies. Over the years I tested and retested, and then I became involved with the CF programme, the quest to find a vaccine for those suffering with cystic fibrosis and their families who generally have one or two carriers, or maybe more. The disease is devastating, and Michael and I got together to find one. His adopted son, Hikaru’s brother, Katsuru was a sufferer who unfortunately lost his life to CF when he was a teenager. They waited for a heart and lung transplant but it didn’t come in time. We thought we’d found a vaccine but it only worked on a certain percentage of sufferers, so we went with that, but whe
n I put it together with your blood which I’d frozen because of its qualities, something happened. Antibodies kept multiplying, almost out of control. I looked at the antibodies and matched them with other diseases, and the antibodies killed the diseases, one hundred percent. It was then I knew I had something. I discussed it with Michael. We weren’t sure if what I’d found would be the saviour of the human race, or Armageddon. Either way, what I had in my hands was incendiary.’

  ‘So you told your wife,’ I said, looking at Michael.

  He nods. ‘Yes, because I knew what Tate had found was bigger than just science. Cecily had just joined MI5 and asked to head up the Chamber of Eugenics. The diminution of the bee population was of great concern, still is, and it was in her power to make and put into operation decisions with regard to the country’s population and the protection of it. Her contemporaries in other countries were running their own programmes.’

  ‘But what about the others. There are others with blood like me.’

  ‘Not quite,’ my father answers. ‘We know about them, who and where they are, and the biological make up of their blood. Yes, they have anomalies which could be used in some vaccines or treatments for some diseases, but no one else on the planet has blood like yours. You are the only one. Your blood is the only one which will trigger the wiping out of all known diseases, and possibly some we have yet to encounter, like viruses and bacterial diseases arising from certain events.’

  I turn to Michael Finch. ‘What about Cain? He knows where they are too.’

  He smiles a lop-sided smile. The poor man must have experienced a stroke at some time in his life. His suffering must be unbearable. ‘Well, he would know. Cecily decided to give him the responsibility of tracking them. We have to know where they are. It was the least damaging thing we could give him to do. We have indulged him...too much. Cecily has indulged him to a faulty degree. It hasn’t helped, but she did it with the best of intentions. A mother. It’s what they do, isn’t it?’

  I glance at my mother and she looks away. ‘But he thinks I’m like them.’

  He smiles again. ‘Yes, he does. He has assumed that Tate has the trigger. That he is the only person with that knowledge. We have allowed him to assume it. The hunt for Tate and for the trigger is his quest. That he had you and the trigger within his grasp a number of times is ironic, almost humorous, don’t you agree?’

  ‘Don’t you like him?’ I ask quietly.

  ‘His mother and I adore him, but he’s not very bright. He thinks he’s cleverer than he actually is. And when he was a boy we had to smooth the way for his new siblings, pandered to him I suppose, which unfortunately continued as he got older. When you were in his company we were all anxious, but we kept our nerve and he did what we thought he would do, that is, took you back to Plan Bee to use you as bait. His resources had been depleted by that time. He had called in all his favours, and his contact at MI5 had given up on him, deciding his ideas were too out there to take him seriously, but thanks to her and the pressure we put on her, we had the information we needed about his proposed plans. We wanted you in Downing Street, at No.12, near your father’s cousin, Edward Spencer, which is why you and your friends were so swiftly released from Plan Bee. We felt even your time with the hapless Dylan was safer for you than being with your parents.’

  ‘Is he okay? I’ve been worried about him.’

  ‘Back with his parents who have been instructed that if he steps out of line he’ll go to prison. It’s the best we could do for him. He’s currently on a drug recovery programme although only the good Lord knows whether it will work for him. He seems unenthusiastic.’ I can’t help chuckling. Dylan lives for his fix.

  I turn to my parents. My mother has said nothing. I think I’m beginning to realise what she had to give up, but I can’t help wondering if I would have done the same, why another way wasn’t found. ‘What about all this. This house, the car, the clothes. You haven’t exactly been living in poverty.’

  She suddenly sits up, like a switch has been clicked. ‘No, Nina,’ she says in a small quiet voice, ‘but none of this makes up for not being with you. We have missed out on so much of your life. The guilt has been almost impossible to bear. I have tried to reconcile it with the reason why we left you with Rochelle. Your father is a hunted man, and because I’m his wife I’m a hunted woman. You were unaware, but when we lived in the flat I was constantly being followed, notes were put through the door, threats, every day, bribes even, from other countries, their MI5s and MI6s. I was offered thousands of pounds to provide information to pharmaceutical companies and science departments.’ She begins to laugh. ‘I was even offered a professorship...a professorship?, me, a girl who barely scraped through with a handful of low-grade GCSE’s, simply because in the absence of Tate who had “disappeared” by that time, they wanted me to give symposiums on his work. As if I knew anything about it? I was as much in the dark as I ever was. All I knew was that he had discovered something that could change the world. And it seemed that they knew that anyway. What did they need me for?’

  ‘They thought you knew the secret. And they wanted it.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And did you?’

  She nods sadly. ‘Yes, and it was why I needed to get out of your life and let you go. It’s the hardest most heart-breaking thing I’ve ever done, but there was no choice. I could see no other option. I’m your mother. My job was to keep you safe. They had begun to threaten your safety, and I knew if they got wind of your involvement, that you were the trigger, you were as good as dead. They would have used you, broken your body and ruined your life. And my disappearance had to be convincing. Cecily had someone on the inside of the hospital who set it all up. They did a good job.’

  I feel my face darken and tears threaten. ‘You had me fooled.’

  She stretches out her hand. ‘Nina, please...’ I feel myself sit back and l look away from her. ‘Darling, we did it because we love you. We didn’t know what would happen. No one can predict the future. Your dad wanted to do the right thing. Of course neither of us want people to suffer with diseases that could be cured, wiped out even, but there’s a bigger picture. You’re an intelligent girl, much more so than I am. You know it could have the opposite effect to the one we would want to achieve.’ I look back at her. Her cheeks glisten with tears and she looks bereft. ‘Your father and I were sent to this house and given an income, one we could only dream of. We had a trust fund set up for you in my will so you could be educated privately, but we discovered Rochelle didn’t agree with private education, so she put the money in a bank account for you. Unfortunately, her partner got his hands on it and she never saw it again. She made some bad decisions, but they were ordinary life decisions, and we felt if nothing else, you were learning how ordinary families live.’

  ‘And what about Cain? Isn’t he still a danger?’

  Michael Finch answers. ‘He’s now working with Cecily at Plan Bee, trying to discover the trigger to cure all the illnesses that plague our world. She has told him it’s his responsibility, and that if he finds it she’ll ensure he’ll get his cut and he’ll be a rich man. He knows she has that power and her power is more important to Cain than it is to anyone else, including Cecily. Cain likes to be included. We feed him enough information to keep him sated and it has worked so far. Cain loves drama, events, things to keep him occupied so he doesn’t get into trouble. It’s how we manage him.’ He turns his wheelchair towards the window. ‘Like I said, he’s not very bright.’

  ‘But he loves you. He told me how much he cares for you.’

  He glances back and meets my eyes with his own. ‘Let’s hope he will continue to love me if he ever finds out that I knew what I knew.’

  The double doors open and Cecily and Edward Spencer join the party. Cecily goes across to Michael.

  ‘Have you told her?’

  He looks out of the window again. ‘We have.’

  ‘And?’

  He shakes his head. ‘Not that. No
. We haven’t spoken about that.’

  She frowns looking disappointed. ‘But why?’

  ‘It’s not the right time, Cecily.’

  ‘What you consider the right time might be too late.’

  He tries to shrug and I see how emaciated his shoulders are. His neck doesn’t fill the collar of his shirt. I can see now why he wears such a bulky pullover. It’s to conceal his thinness. Even with his illness he still has some dignity. We all need to keep hold of our dignity. Somehow. ‘It might already be too late, my dear.’

  ‘No. She’s here now. It can be done.’

  They’re clearly discussing me. I wish they wouldn’t speak about me as though I wasn’t present. ‘What can be done?’

  Cecily jumps in before anyone else can speak. ‘We...I...want you to donate some blood for Michael. Tate is convinced your blood will give him back his faculties. Today is a good day, he’s coherent and more like how he used to be, but it’s one day out of many. Usually, he’s not like this. We’ve been to hell and back. The dementia is brutal; cruel. It has taken the man I love and drawn all the life from him. You can help him, Nina. I was sworn to not pushing you in any direction. Even when I had you within my grasp at Plan Bee I had to walk away and allow things to take their natural course. It was required of me as a human being, and as a member of MI5. But I was tempted. I wanted to take you to the laboratories and draw the blood myself...even the blood which was taken from you at Plan Bee had to be destroyed. It broke my heart.’

  ‘Did they not realise my blood was different?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why?’

  My father interjects. ‘Because they didn’t know what they were looking for. Only I know. It’s my greatest achievement and my heaviest cross to bear.’

  ‘So you want me to donate blood to Michael, to cure him of his dementia?’

  Cecily nods. ‘Yes, yes, that’s right. It would take a moment. I have all the equipment in the study.’ She runs off to fetch it but I stop her. ‘Hold on Ms Cunningham. You want me to donate blood for Dr. Finch, but you’re not sure if it should be used for the population. There are millions of people suffering with diseases all over the world, including dementia, and you’re prepared to deny them a cure. Isn’t that playing God? You don’t have the right, surely? What if my father decides to use my blood to make the formula and give it away. What would you do?’