The Death of Bees

by Lisa O'Donnell

  Nelly

  There was no plan, we would simply leave in the night and catch a bus as far as Inverness. We were taking the dog. Marnie was reluctant but conceded it would have been Lennie’s final wish that his Bobby stay with his girls, as opposed to a raving lunatic with a penchant for whiskey (and no glass according to Marnie).

  I didn’t pack much in my rucksack. They had to be small enough to fit under our beds. It wasn’t a very big bag sadly and though I was able to squash a box of cornflakes into it and various undergarments, not to mention a few cans of Coke, Marnie was absolutely livid. She said they weren’t essentials but I closed my ears and shook my head and not wanting to upset me any further she permitted me to take my nourishments, though she didn’t talk to me for the rest of the day and complained of having to take extra things for me in her bag. What she didn’t know is that I was also wearing five T-shirts and two jerseys. I was boiling.

  Marnie

  And so the rabid chitchat begins again. She wouldn’t stop.

  “Where are we going? How will we get there? How much is a ticket? How long is the journey? What will we eat? Can you fish? Lennie said to stay away from the mushrooms. Do you know how to light a fire? How will we do laundry? What about electricity or is it gas he has? I can’t remember. Do we have milk?”

  I could have screamed, but not wanting to ruffle her feathers I find an answer for her every concern.

  She wanted to take everything including the pillow Izzy had suffocated Gene with. Sick. I said no and she let it go. She wanted to take her cornflakes, however, and cans of Coke for her ridiculous cereal. I hope to God they’d be easy to locate in Firemore. She’ll have a fit if all we have is porridge. It was a little bit of a setback the demand for cornflakes and Coke; I thought she was getting over these things. She seems to have slowed down in recent weeks, bordering on being normal to tell the truth, it must be the stress of running away fueling the nuttiness in her. Maybe it’s time to tell her about the money.

  Nelly

  Marnie has a bag of money, all of it tainted with misery and other people’s undoings. I don’t want to take it and urge her to leave it behind. She uses expletives and I am without words.

  “We won’t survive without cash. Hard cash.”

  “It’s not right, Marnie. It’s not right,” I tell her.

  “What’s not right?” she says.

  “You know very well.”

  “Yes I know, but what do you know?”

  “Nothing, nothing at all.”

  “You sure?” she says. “You can say it you know. Drug money. D-R-U-G-S.”

  “I don’t want to know.”

  “You never want to know anything real, do you? And to think you were doing so well recently. Thought you were finally growing up.”

  “It’s not right,” I say.

  “You know what’s not right, starving. We have to take this money.”

  “I don’t want to,” I say.

  “Think of it this way. This is every penny and every pound Izzy and Gene stole from us to buy drugs. We’re just taking it back and with a little bit of interest. It’s fair, Nelly.”

  “I’m not sure,” I say.

  “Think of what we can buy with this money. Safety and security. You want to send it back to the dealers to buy more drugs and hurt more people like you and me or do you want to take it and start a new life somewhere else?”

  When she put it like that there was no arguing with her. Morally it is wrong but ethically it is correct and so the money comes with us and I’ve never seen so much of it in my life.

  Marnie

  We’ve come a long way, Nelly and I, but sometimes I forget what a giant fanny my sister can be. She wanted to leave the money behind. She wants to go to Firemore and catch fish and eat leaves. She wants to grow cucumbers and tomatoes and in these climates. She is the world’s greatest plum. I want to slap her but I don’t. I need her focused on getting out of here and not afraid of her sister smacking her face in.

  Robert T. Macdonald continues to make my life hell and on our last weekend together he takes us to the cemetery where Izzy and Gene are buried. The tombstone is ready and he wants us to stand in front of it and cry. We are thinking of nothing except getting away. The tombstone is bullshit and implies Gene and Izzy were married. He even changes her name to Gene’s name. It’s so wrong. The marble tells the story of two people who are “Dearly missed,” who are “Beloved” and who have been “Taken but not forgotten.” I want to spit at it, just like they do in the movies. Nelly starts to cry but she’s hushed by Robert T. Macdonald.

  “No tears please. Just play something nice.”

  She doesn’t want to but she has to and gives us a little Bach, but he hates it and asks her to choose something more celestial and so she plays “Amazing Grace” as best she can. He is close to tears and I realize he likes to grieve. This is a place where he can actually be a father to Izzy because all he has to do is show up with flowers and twine and when people pass him by and see him digging around the grave they won’t know any difference. They’ll glance across the tomb and feel pity for a man who lost his daughter three times and they really shouldn’t.

  Nelly

  We crept slowly down the stairs and crossed the living room to the front door. Fortunately the stairs don’t creak and so we were spared the amplified noises one imagines when one is making a break for it. The only real noise was coming from the rain outside and how it rattled at the windows. I felt positively tormented.

  The room was deathly cold and I was suddenly worried I didn’t have enough clothes with me and so I decided Marnie was right and returned the cornflakes and Coke to the kitchen, I would need at least another pair of jeans and some tops. I went back to my room.

  “Where the fuck are you going?” whispers Marnie.

  “I won’t be a minute,” I tell her and so I return to my room and fill my bag with more appropriate attire. I go back downstairs to where an irate Marnie awaits me.

  “Are you with me or not?” she asks.

  “Why, with you of course,” I say.

  Our escape was within our reach and as we crept closer to our dream it seemed impossible we would find it behind a closed door and down a lane, on a bus and then on a train. It just felt too easy and I was filled with trepidation.

  Marnie

  I reach quickly for the key hanging in the lock and frantically push at the door handle. It opens and we are free to leave, until I knock into Robert T. Macdonald, standing stiff across the threshold. He pushes me backward. I stumble to the floor. Nelly rushes to my side while he slams the door into its frame. The room shakes.

  He drags me to my feet and shoves me onto a nearby chair. Nelly doesn’t need to be pushed, she finds her own chair.

  “You think I’m an idiot, don’t you?” He is looking at me.

  We shake our heads. We are afraid.

  “You think I didn’t know about this? About the money in the bag?”

  I pale.

  “I see you, Miss Marnie. I see you,” he whispers.

  “What about you, Nelly? You think I’m stupid?”

  She shakes her head.

  “Go up to your room,” he instructs us. She doesn’t want to.

  “Get up to your fucking room!” he screams. She runs.

  I am still and wait eagerly for a lecture, but he doesn’t reach for a bible, not this time, he reaches for the cuffs at the end of his sleeves and pulls them over his elbows. He cracks his knuckles and moves closer to the chair. He grabs me by the collar and then tautens his arm like an elastic band, ready to throw his fist into my face, and were it not for Mick standing behind him and pushing a gun into the back of his head that’s exactly what he would have done.

  Nelly

  I sat at the top of the stairs and good golly it was the ice cream vendor and holding a gun of all things. Fortunately he went straight for Robert T. Macdonald and I have to say I was rather relieved.

  “Help me with him,” he says
to Marnie. She was only too delighted.

  “What do you want me to do?” Marnie asks.

  “Tie him up with this.” He throws her a rope.

  It must have been very empowering tying Robert T. Macdonald up and with an ice cream vendor waving a gun in his face. She must have been thrilled to bits. I know I was. Marnie finds some masking tape. The captive was babbling all kinds of threats and warnings. It was imperative he be silenced. He might alert the ice cream vendor to my presence for example and that wouldn’t do at all.

  Once she was done the ice cream vendor became rather serious.

  “Marnie,” he says. “I’m only going to ask you this one more time. Where’s my money?”

  “I don’t know. I told you.”

  He fired a bullet into the wall above her head. It was a confounded muddle.

  “Gene and Izzy are dead!” she screamed. “They could have moved it anywhere.” She really wanted that money and would die before handing it over to a cad selling ice cream and all kinds of confectionery. It was quite the pickle.

  He points the gun at Robert T. Macdonald, who starts to whimper.

  “Then how about I kill this guy,” says Mick.

  “I don’t care,” she says.

  Robert T. Macdonald seemed pained. He starts to moan. Mick takes the gun and places it on his temple. He pulls on the trigger.

  “Don’t,” says Marnie. “It’s over there in the black tool bag.”

  Robert T. Macdonald blanked at her, he seemed confused, as I myself was. Why didn’t she want him dead?

  The ice cream vendor wandered over to the bag, all the while waving a gun at Marnie and Robert T. Macdonald.

  The ice cream vendor opened the bag.

  “My fucking money,” he exclaimed. “How long have you had this bag, you little bitch?”

  “Found it in the toolshed after you left,” she says.

  “Sure you did,” he says.

  He stopped waving the gun then and knelt to count his cash.

  “It’s all there.” He smiled.

  Marnie looked dejected while Robert T. Macdonald looked red and raging.

  Mick sits next to Marnie.

  “You know, Marnie, I didn’t mean to be so hard on you back then.”

  He takes the gun and strokes her legs with it.

  “What say you and me go upstairs and hang out for a while? Grandpa’s not going anywhere. What do you think?”

  Marnie smiles and follows him upstairs. I hide under the bed.

  Marnie

  I don’t know what to do and so I give up the cash. I don’t want to be around any more dead bodies and so I let Robert T. Macdonald live. Mick wants to fuck me and so I let him take me upstairs. I knew Nelly was there and hoped to God she wouldn’t see. I hoped he’d take pity on us and give us a few pounds anyway, if only to get away from R. T. Macdonald.

  I forget what it’s like to be with Mick. He orders me to take off my clothes and starts taking off his own. He makes me lie on the bed. He thinks this is romantic. He tells me to spread my legs and kneels on the bottom of the bed. He flexes his muscles, he always flexed his muscles. He makes me think of Kirkland and I think I’m going to cry, but then Nelly shows up and smacks him on the head with a poker and he falls on top of me. I quickly crawl to the top of the bed.

  “Gimme my clothes.” She gathers them from the floor. I find an item of his clothing mixed up with mine and throw it away. I can’t stop crying.

  “Stop looking at me,” I tell Nelly. She’s seen me naked a thousand times but this was different. I felt ashamed.

  She turns away and looks to Mick’s body. He’s still breathing. She gives him a kick in the stomach.

  “For my sister,” she spits.

  “Thanks,” I say.

  “We’ll lock him in here,” she says, remembering Robert T. Macdonald has an outside lock on my door.

  I grab for my money and we head downstairs.

  Nelly

  The ice cream vendor is quick to wake and is banging with a vengeance on Marnie’s bedroom door. She tightens Robert T. Macdonald’s rope and leaves the gun in the kitchen.

  “I could have had Mick kill you but I didn’t. Remember that about me.”

  She produces pictures. His pictures. Pictures of Izzy mostly.

  “I’m taking a few of these with me. They’re half mine anyway and I’ll be keeping the wedding picture of you and my grandmother. You don’t deserve to own it.”

  She shoves the pictures in her rucksack.

  “I’m sure you have things to say but since I don’t care what those things might be I guess you’re going to have to listen to what I have to say. Lennie didn’t murder Izzy and Gene. Izzy suffocated Gene with a cushion and then hanged herself in the shed. She committed suicide. It was Nelly and I who buried them in the garden, we didn’t want to go into care and so we hid them. It had nothing to do with Lennie, not in the beginning. He found out what we did much later and when we weren’t looking he moved their bodies under his rosebushes. He was trying to save us. You ever had a friend like that?”

  She stands to leave.

  “It’s small consolation but if Izzy hadn’t killed herself I know she’d have welcomed you into her arms. She was weak like that.”

  When we have gathered all our belongings it is time to leave. It feels wrong to simply walk away.

  “Toodle-oo, Gramps,” I tell him and put a lead on the dog.

  He moans behind the tape. He struggles with the rope, he tries to scream, but it is too late, the door is closed and we are on our way.

  Marnie

  It’s a long journey to Firemore, especially with a dog, but when we get to the cottage we find Lennie’s car in the driveway and a tall dark stranger we know to be Vlado.

  How we welcomed the safety of his arms and how he welcomed the children of Lennie who wanted nothing more than to be held and cared for by the sea.

  Later we slide rocks across the waters, bouncing them as far as we can throw. We eat fish and bread. We read books and watch a video about the queen of England. We sleep long and rise to sunshine and salt.

  Over dinner I can see Vlado seeks a different kind of solace by the sea and the next morning I watch him race to the water until he is as far as a star and facing his own skies.

  There is much to let go of in our hearts and, overwhelmed, Nelly and I also run to the water’s edge and do not stop running until we have collected all of our griefs and secrets and sunk them far beneath the ocean. When I take my sister back to dry land we are wet and holding hands. Vlado brings us towels and laughter, so much laughter. I hope to know it always.

  Acknowledgments

  So many people supported the writing of The Death of Bees and I will be forever grateful. Alex Christofi, my hardworking motivated agent at Conville and Walsh. The late John McGrath, who encouraged my voice and gave me confidence where there was none. Writer Sergio Casci, who read the first screenplay I ever wrote, placing me on a path that changed my life. Moonstone International 1999, where I was mentored by the finest of writers. The team at William Heinemann for their faith and enthusiasm. Michael Signorelli for his zealous commitment. Everyone at HarperCollins for their efficiency and support.

  About the Author

  Lisa O’Donnell won the Orange Screenwriting Prize in 2000 for The Wedding Gift and, in the same year, was nominated for the Dennis Potter New Screenwriters Award. A native of Scotland, she is now a full-time writer and lives in Los Angeles with her two children. The Death of Bees is her first novel.

  Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins authors.

  Books by Lisa O'Donnell

  Closed Doors

  The Death of Bees

  Credits

  Cover design and illustration by Richard Ljoenes

  Clip art elements from iStockphoto

  Copyright

  This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagin
ation and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  THE DEATH OF BEES. Copyright © 2013 by Lisa O’Donnell. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

  Originally published in Great Britain in 2012 by William Heinemann, an imprint of the Random House Group.

  FIRST U.S. EDITION

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data has been applied for.

  ISBN 978-0-06-220984-9

  EPub Edition © JANUARY 2013 ISBN: 9780062209863

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