The Death of Bees: A Novel

by Lisa O'Donnell

  Marnie

  Jesus, Lennie let me have it the other night and has been a little cool with me since I smacked Nelly. I told him I was sorry, but I don’t know if it was enough. I was so embarrassed in the morning and went home for a liquid brunch. Voddy with cranberry juice. Take the edge off. Asked Susie to join me but she was rehearsing at Drama Club and Kimbo was in Partick looking for a flat with Lorna. Lorna’s parents have asked her to move out. They sent her to a psychiatrist recently, but it totally backfired ’cause after two sessions he wanted to counsel the whole family. Her mum and dad fired the guy. Poor Lorna, I thought she had everything, but it turns out she’s as neglected as the rest of us. They’re quite sweet together, Lorna and Kimbo. Lorna likes to lie with her head on Kimbo’s lap and Kimbo likes to play with her hair. I think they’re in love. Susie hates it and thinks Kimbo isn’t taking her meds and being gay is some kind of symptom. She actually said their relationship was abnormal, this from a girl who has spent many a Saturday night on her knees and with guys she hardly knows, although not so much recently. She’s like a nun this weather, less slutty than usual, but what a mood she’s in.

  Seeing Mick tonight. He’s really pissed off right now. He thinks I’m hiding something about Gene; I am, but not in the way he thinks. He’s super-anxious and always on the phone to Julie, they owe a lot of money. She’s going nuts over it and won’t leave him alone. We work till two in the morning some nights and so far no one has quizzed the ice cream van selling cones into the early hours of the morning. It seems I’m working for Vlado these days and I always make sure I’m looking my best, but he’s still looking at me like I’m shit.

  Gene and Izzy had their benefits stopped ages ago ’cause they weren’t around to sign on. The money working the van was enough in the beginning, but then the Housing Association canceled the rent checks and now we’re totally fucked. Moving isn’t an option for obvious reasons and so one way or another the rent has to be paid. Delivering for Mick gets me around £150 a week. He also gives me a few tabs when I need them. I prefer a drink to be honest and so I sell them on to Kirkland mostly.

  It was so nice at Lennie’s the other night. I know he was pissed off at me, but he soon simmered down and brought me milk and shortbread. It’s all it takes sometimes, something sweet. He’s also agreed to go to school and sort the truancy notice Nelly got. He’s been a real lifeline to us and we’d be nowhere without him.

  After the shortbread and milk I went straight to sleep, but then I woke up and the agitation started. I felt like I had to get away from all the comforts and kindness, I’m not used to it and it makes me scared. He’s making it too easy to stay and this makes it harder not to tell him what we’re hiding in the garden.

  Lennie

  Nelly’s still having nightmares. I can hear her through the wall. I gave her the spare room. She doesn’t like to be alone in her house. I don’t blame her, it’s a tip. No wonder Marnie’s always out with her friends. One of them is a dyke, which rather surprised me. They’re all so very sexually assertive these days and at such a young age. Kim’s her name. To be honest I can’t be doing with the lesbians. They can be very difficult. Always seem to be in a rage about one thing or another, I suppose in a lot of respects it’s easier to be a gay man than a gay woman, so much expected of women. I imagine your average straight man feels if women aren’t women then how can they be men. They’re very hard on the lesbians, the straight men; gay men are just irritated by them. I found it amusing the way Kim talked to me, like we were gay comrades, like we were men almost. I was pleasant enough about it but desperately wanted to remind her she was a woman and tell her it’s okay to be feminine and gay, of course some of them feel safer occupying a more masculine role in life. Kim’s certainly close to Marnie and probably loves her. Wants her. You never know the basis of a friendship when you’re dealing with your differences, you know, in the beginning, when you start to realize who you are. I remember attaching myself to a boy named Toby, we were fairly pally for a while, but I didn’t like him much. I just wanted to touch him. He married an old sack called Lillie in the end. I don’t know what happened to him after that.

  Nelly is the one I worry for, always crying through the nighttime, like you did when your brother died. Poor David, such a young man. Climbing in Milngavie. Not even that old and in his fifties. The wife followed soon after. Cancer.

  They’ve asked me to see Nelly’s headmaster Monday, they want me to pose as an uncle. She’s been skipping school apparently. Marnie agrees the pretense is necessary but I’m worried about the consequences. What if someone were to recognize me? I could get into a lot of trouble. A lot of trouble.

  Nelly

  I sleep as sound as a pound most nights, but last night, what a racket there was, a lot of shouting and jeering on our doorstep. I couldn’t make out what they were yelling, I really couldn’t; drunks no doubt. At first I wondered if the truth had been discovered, I wondered if they were coming to incarcerate us for our wrongdoings, but no, they were simply disturbers of the peace, people with no regard for the slumber of others. I ought to have called the police but one didn’t want to waken Lennie.

  The next morning when I woke (and a little later than I intended) I found Lennie painting at his fence and his door. He’s such a meticulous man but I can’t deny the smell pained me somewhat, but if it needs doing it needs doing and there’s nothing more to be said. Cleanliness is next to godliness after all and we all have to be clean, don’t we.

  Marnie

  Lennie’s been getting shit recently from the locals. Truth is he’s always getting shit but last night there was some abuse in the early hours and then someone spray-painted his door and his fence. He just got up next morning and painted over it and even though he knew that I’d seen it he never mentioned it to me and so I said nothing about it either. I don’t have a clue what Nelly made of it, probably what she wanted to. She’s over at Lennie’s all the time these days. She lives there and creeps in through the back almost every day and eats his food, sleeps in his spare room, and plays her violin. He loves it of course, having someone to take care of and for obvious reasons Nelly loves it too.

  I suppose it’s hard taking care of yourself at her age. You try not to think about it and pretend you’re like everyone else who’s twelve, but deep down you know you’re not. You’re alone. You need to heat your own home and pay your own bills, wash your own clothes and dry your own tears. No wonder she seeks this old granddad with his house smelling of baked bread. Lennie loves her like a granddaughter. She needs that, affection, warmth and not in a house smelling of bleach and death. The other day I actually chastised myself for leaving Gene in the house for a week before burying him, it was like a postscript to self. Bury people immediately.

  Lennie’s starting to suspect something and so is his stupid dog. He’s always sniffing about the flower beds. I caught him the other day frantically flinging dirt between his paws, he actually pulled up Gene’s arm, just like that, and I totally shat myself. Fortunately no one was around and I was able to replant the arm. I gave Lennie’s dog a well-earned kick up the arse for that. He gave a wee yelp and Lennie appeared from his kitchen holding a dish towel. I don’t think he saw.

  “All right, Marnie?”

  “Bobby’s digging at the lavender. Lennie, can you call him?”

  Despite a boot in the hole I find the little shit sniffing about the shed where Izzy is, but then Lennie calls him and he trots off. Disappears through Lennie’s French windows.

  “Dinner at five, Marnie?”

  I nod, I love his dinners, but still, I might have to kill his dog.

  Lennie

  I went to the school posing as Uncle Leonard. There I met some woman with bad teeth. Mrs. MacLeod. Lots of ethnic jewelry. Wood and turquoise all over the place. She wears that patchouli oil and smelled like a bloody church. She was all smiles of course and very keen to support the girls on their “educational journey.” The shite they talk in schools these days, it
beggars belief. We discussed Nelly’s truancy of course, which I assured her wouldn’t happen again. She can’t be missing school. Absolutely not. School is the one thing these girls have got going for them. Anyway we agreed on one week of detention for Nelly, which I felt badly for afterward but if it keeps her in school then it has to be done. She’s also to report to this Mrs. MacLeod every morning. She won’t like that much, but what can you do? If she doesn’t stay in school it’ll be the Social Work Department turning up at the door wanting to know the reason why and not this Mrs. MacLeod. No one will want to talk to Uncle Leonard then, that’s for sure.

  We talked about Marnie next. She was especially keen in this respect. She even went to the trouble of showing me Marnie’s school work. All As and A pluses. Can’t say I wasn’t shocked. I haven’t seen the girl study once, come to think about it I’ve never seen her so much as hold a book, just that bony wee arse of hers running to catch buses or jumping into the back of an ice cream van. The teacher said Marnie has an attitude problem and I’m thinking who the bloody hell cares. With grades like that she can be an armed robber. I don’t know why the woman should give two hoots about the girl’s temperament, but it’s all very different in the schools today. Personality, cultural diversity, they even teach Gaelic, though I can’t see what bloody use they’ll have for it, not a great deal of Gaelic spoken in Scotland these days. They should be making them learn Spanish and French, German even, world languages, exciting them to participate in real causes, world causes, to confidently travel abroad and be able to ask for a bacon butty in Peru, but that’s Scotland for you, always waddling about in the muds of yesterday, a parliament prioritizing a language spoken in places without work opportunities, wee islands where they raise cows and marry their relatives. I don’t know. You can bring the horse to the water, Joseph, but you can’t make it drink. Anyway the teacher then asked where the parental scum are and I tell her they’re on holiday, then she wanted to know how I was related to the family and I told her I was the mother’s uncle through marriage, twice removed. She seemed to accept it. There was lots of smiling.

  It was an hour before she let me go, I had to sign something to say we’d had our “conference,” the “conference” being a meet and greet in a musty old classroom smelling of felt-tips. Did I mention they’re not using blackboards anymore? They use “whiteboards” now and they scribble on them with these big thick markers. Must cost a bloody fortune in pens.

  On my way out I got a chance to wander the corridors. School smells never change, do they? Disinfectant and gym shoes is the stink they’re possessed of, but no chalk smells, shame. I saw the fourth-year art display, a lot of jugs with apples, a pair of ballet slippers with a rose, and a nice tapestry of a ladybug. To tell the truth I was glad to get out of the place and when I did I saw this huge poster of a carving knife with a cross through it. NO WEAPONS, it said. Then another, like a traffic sign: NO DRUGS ON SCHOOL PREMISES, with a picture of pills and needles and a cigarette burning. Honest to God, it would make your head spin off its shoulders.

  I wonder about these kids. Take that Kim for instance. She’s gay and not even eighteen and has freedoms I could only dream of. I could never have told my parents I was gay at eighteen, they’d have died of shame, it was information trickled toward them and over many years. As for her schoolteachers, she’s in a gay support group and they meet after PE.

  Marnie is obviously someone of importance in their little pack, all of them attracted to the damage they share and the pains they’ve known. Urban living has certainly hardened them. The neglect and the poverty, it steals so much from children, forcing them to snatch whatever’s offered them—and how they grab at the things put upon them by strangers, the unnatural comforts and abhorrent cruelties.

  I’d like to take Marnie and Nelly far from here, but they don’t even own a passport, it’s like they’re stuck on this irascible road until Marnie turns sixteen, but then what? A legal entitlement to a life on welfare. It’s not to be leaned on, nor aspired to, there is more to them than that and if God grants me the time to make amends for an unfortunate boy set upon by me, I hope to show them.

  Nelly

  I curl up in a ball and scream. Mr. Domble doesn’t know what to do with me and fetches the nurse. I silently fold the agony inside. They fetch Marnie. I grab for her, pulling at her shoulders, stretching at her V-neck. She grabs for my hands and pushes them away. She tells me to calm down. I feel a sop and a baby. I try to forget about them in the garden, really I do, but I can’t, they live always in my head and so vividly. I see Izzy over Marnie’s shoulder and I see Gene. I want to scream, but Marnie’s eyes forbid it. She pulls me to my feet and we are allowed to go home.

  “Lennie is asking questions,” I tell her.

  She ignores me and it fills me with fear.

  “Lennie wishes to know their whereabouts,” I persist. “But how can I tell him when he is teaching me Chopin?”

  “You keep throwing fits like that then everyone is going to find out,” she barks.

  Our life is a calamity and I feel so damn angry these days. Perhaps on account of the things that cannot be ignored, deeds forced upon me by others. Oh damn Marnie, damn her to hell with her temper. I am thoroughly pained.

  Marnie

  She’d had a fit in the library and I had to take her home. She looked a right tit. She almost pulled my jersey off. I lifted her from the floor and nervously wiped her dress down. It was dusty. Mrs. MacLeod let us leave early.

  Walking out of the school I held her hand. I couldn’t help it. I hate her when she’s like this but I feel other things too. She was shaking like a leaf and deep down I wanted to hug it all away, but the very thought made me feel uncomfortable and I was shamed by it.

  When I look up at the voices yelling from the school windows and I see Nelly’s classmates and they’re shouting out “Freak” and “Weirdo,” I am full of rage. I try to remember faces and plan to beat the offenders to a pulp. She is my sister and they have no right. When we get to Lennie’s house I put her on the sofa. I tell Lennie she’s had a fit at school. I explain to him she is prone to fits and he just accepts it, not a single question from him and I am so grateful. It’s exhausting reaching for answers all the time. Nelly falls asleep and I go back to school. It feels safer there. I can’t deal with her when she’s like this, and when she wakes up I know I’ll have nothing to say to her. It’s like that right now.

  Lennie

  Nelly bled all over the sofa. Thank God I had the plastic covering over it. Marnie had gone back to school and so I had to get the tampons on my own. I thought of going to the chemist, but they know me in there and so I went to the supermarket and hid them under a box of cornflakes. Once Nelly had calmed down, and realized she wasn’t going to drop dead, she was like a bloody budgie. Why was she bleeding? Why did her tummy hurt? How long does it last? I could have screamed. How the hell did she get to twelve, almost thirteen and not know any of this? My sisters couldn’t wait to grow up, stuffing tissue down their bras at eleven years old and utterly jubilant when the bleeding came. I gave Nelly the tampons when I got back but it was obvious she didn’t know how to use them. I didn’t know what to say. I don’t know how to use them either and so I made her some Ovaltine and gave her a chocolate digestive.

  Of course the hardest part was having to tell her about cocks and vaginas, obviously I didn’t use those particular words, but when it came to STDs and abortions I got straight to the point, especially for a girl blooming so rapidly and so beautifully. I suppose I didn’t have to tell her about abortions, but in my thinking the sooner she knows about the consequences of premarital sex the better. Perhaps I should speak to Marnie about cocks and vaginas too, what a lady should and shouldn’t be doing with them. She doesn’t know either.

  Marnie

  I couldn’t find it. Izzy made it. A photo album. She’d found all our family pictures, what there was of them and fixed them into a black binder with glue and sticky tape. I remember her put
ting it together, like a scrapbook. She kept waving baby snaps at me. There was one picture in particular taken in a park. Nelly was maybe a year old. Izzy was holding her close to her chest and Nelly was laughing and pointing at something in the distance. I was sort of pulling away from them and trying to run toward whatever Nelly was looking at beyond the camera, a slide we wanted to slip down maybe or a swing we wanted to play on. Gene was holding the camera.

  I had a vague memory of this photo being in Izzy’s hand, I remember Izzy drinking tea over it and looking sad, as if she didn’t want to see it, but couldn’t help looking at it. There was something about that picture and when I came into the room she hid it.

  Their room was freezing. We had kept their bedroom window open to rid ourselves of Gene’s smell and never closed it. Once inside I hugged myself, it was Baltic. In my head I kept seeing them, I could almost feel them, and I knew they weren’t there, but I couldn’t help thinking of them in the room. I remembered Gene sitting up in bed smoking a fag and holding a paper. He was watching Izzy from the corner of his eye changing out of jeans and into skirts, out of trainers and into shoes, attaching bobbles to her hair and spraying perfume on her wrists. And Nelly, next to Gene, a father and daughter side by side reading and that’s all. Gene reaching for a mug of tea and slurping it dry. Nelly nibbling at a biscuit and letting the crumbs fall between the pages of her book. I’m at the end of the bed, picking at a scab formed after a fall. Izzy gives me shit for it, but I tell her to fuck off, it’s just a knee. It feels like a loving time, a better time and it should comfort me, but it doesn’t, it makes me ill inside and queasy. I pull back to the chill of the room and to their cast-iron frame, a rusting skeleton where they’d once slept, their mattress gone and dumped in the nighttime, a festering stain inking its fabric. We burned it a few days later in a nearby alleyway.