The Death of Bees (10 page)

First question.

“So, what school do you go to, Marnie?”

The rudest question you'll ever be asked in Glasgow, along with “Where do you live?” 'cause saying Maryhill is way too vague. Believe it or not there are nice parts of Maryhill, but I don't live in those parts. Should be enough to just say Maryhill but it won't be, my answer will permit or negate the judgment they've already bestowed upon me. I decide to get my own back, let them sweat it.

I move closer to Kirkland and decide to act like I am his girlfriend and put my hand next to his hand, touching him barely but enough to get the effect I need from Mr. and Mrs. Not so Liberal as They Like to Think. Then I go in for the kill.

“I live in Sighthill, Gus, but I'm currently attending Maryhill Academy.”

“That's quite a trek,” he says.

“It's a good school,” I say. “That's important, no?”

Obviously I don't live in Sighthill, I just want to rattle his cage a wee bit and as expected something flickers across both their faces.

Now for a question he won't ask.

How the fuck did my son meet a slag from Sighthill?

Some questions she won't ask.

Are you a drug addict? A whore?

The tension in the room is well tasty unlike the green tea they're serving in this tiny wee teapot with matching egg cups. They're dying for me to ask about it so they can babble about their halcyon days living in Tibet. Five minutes in the room and these people are seriously giving me the dry boke; so is their fucking tea.

To ease the atmosphere Kirkland tells them I go to school with Lorna. Fiona likes Lorna. Feels safe with her name in the room, even calls her talented. Apparently Lorna plays guitar. They love that shit, and we start talking about the enrichment programs at Maryhill. Susie's doing that program, the drama one. Then they bitch about Lorna's Conservative parents but only to illuminate how
right on
they think they are. Next thing they're on at Kirkland about being a doctor and going to Africa and that throws me 'cause I didn't know he wanted to go into medicine or go to Africa. Then Kirkland goes, “I told you, I don't want to be a doctor.”

Fiona says, “Course you do.”

Kirkland says, “Naw I don't.”

“Don't say naw to your maw, it's no,” says Gus.

“I'm just saying I'm not going to be a doctor.”

“You used to want to be a doctor,” says Fiona.

“Do you want him to be a doctor?” I ask.

Fiona gives me the dirtiest look I've ever seen, then she says, “Kirkland's been very blessed in life. We all have. It's important to give back to the world. It's what we believe. We're Buddhists.”

I'm not remotely thrown by that, of course they're Buddhists. I look around, and sure enough there's the bronze fat guy where a fireplace used to be. Wee water feature nearby.

“So, you think he can save the world or something?” I say.

“Kirkland can do anything he sets his mind to,” nips Gus.

“Doesn't have to be the third world or anything, you don't even have to be a doctor, just make a contribution to the Universe, develop a world beyond your own, son. Engineering, perhaps.”

“I'll give it some thought,” says Kirkland, who won't give it any thought and not 'cause he doesn't care but because they're telling him who to be and no one knows that at sixteen.

“What about you, Marnie? Do you have plans for the future?”

“Hairdressing,” I say. “But not in the third world. Maybe Byres Road.” Obviously they expected nothing less and who am I to disappoint. Anyway, telling them I want to be a lawyer would please them, make them all comfy and they don't deserve it.

I reach for the tiny teapot, not 'cause I like their rotten tea but because I've already worked out Fiona is totally anal and the action of helping myself, even though I've been listening to them going on about the virtues of global sharing, makes Fiona nervous.

“Let me get that for you,” she says. I make a big show of drinking it and make lots of yummy slurping sounds, like my whole life will change because my tea is green.

Eventually they get off their arses and make me lunch. Paninis. Everything vegetarian and organic of course. Must have cost a fortune. I want to reject the food just to piss them off, but I don't. I'm starvin' like Marvin. Then they start going on about cancer and how organic living is the way forward, totally ignoring how expensive it is to be organic and that there are a lot of people out there grateful if they can afford regular living. I can hardly swallow.

Dessert is served with coffee, except it's not coffee, it's espresso and like their daft tea it's served in egg cups. I decide to get Kirkland a huge fuck-off mug for Christmas to dwarf all these tiny wee dishes his mum's got. Fiona gives me a huge slice of cake, but remains unable to mask her discomfort, basically she wants me to fuck off and never come back and is totally shiting it in case I drag her son off to Sighthill and start injecting him with heroin.

Out of nowhere Gus announces he's from Sighthill. He doesn't elaborate or anything but he's obviously embarrassed. I don't ask too many questions though I'm dying to know how someone from Sighthill ends up in a town house in Kelvinside, while Gus is wondering how a girl from Sighthill ended up in his designer kitchen.

“Meeting Fiona saved my life.” He puts his hand on her hand, she cooperates but she really wants him to shut the fuck up about their business so she changes the subject pronto.

“So, Marnie, what does your father do?”

“He's a stockbroker at LGL, Fiona.”

“Really,” she says.

“Naw. He's an alkie, left when I was wee.”

The room freezes. I want to laugh so hard, I mean it's mostly true, except he's not going anywhere, not in the state he's in.

“Sorry to hear that, Marnie,” says Gus.

“Marn,” I correct even though it's not what I'm called and it doesn't have any ring to it.

“Right, Marn.” He doesn't think it has a ring to it either.

Then Gus says, “I know what you're going through, what it's like to live with people like that.”

He's totally softened, Fiona just about disappears up her own arse when he confides this.

“My da was a drinker, but then he stopped. Came back into my life and tried to make amends for the things he'd done, you know, but it was too late. He died last year,” he says.

“And your mum?” I ask.

“Cancer,” he says. “Been gone ten years now.”

I want to say I'm sorry but I don't get a chance. Fiona says, “More coffee?” to indicate the end of lunch and my imminent departure.

“I'm fine. Not really into espresso,” I say.

“Let's go, Marn!” says Kirkland, emphatic on the Marn.

“Nice meeting you,” I say to Gus and Fiona, but to be honest it was only nice meeting Gus, now that I've got to know him and all that.

Before I leave we go to Kirkland's room to get my coat, but really to sell Kirkland two jellies courtesy of Mick. Kirkland loves jellies. Now I know why.

Lennie

H
is name's Robert Macdonald and he abandoned his wife and his daughter. He tells me that he was an alcoholic and of his shame for beating Isabel and her mother. I don't know what to make of it all. He tells us Isabel was ten years old when he left her. He talks of his regrets and his need to say sorry to a woman who has in fact abandoned her own children. He says he's been looking for Isabel for a long time. Robert T. Macdonald is a craftsman now and looking to make amends. He makes rocking chairs and sells them on the Internet, to Americans mostly. He wants to impress Nelly by how changed he is, but Nelly seems afraid of such assertions and not sure what they mean from someone who is nothing more than a stranger.

He possesses an incautious honesty and I can't deny I'm intrigued by the eyes belonging to the younger of his grandchildren. I tell him Isabel and Gene are in Turkey. We just want him to go away. I tell him I'm closely acquainted with his daughter and assure him she won't be back until September, I say she's an artist and paints landscapes. He likes this story, as does Nelly. It makes him relieved in a way, lessens his remorse slightly for a life he imagines went on in spite of him and not because of him. If only that were true. At that moment I want to tell him the truth, he deserves it.
Your whore daughter could be anywhere
. Obviously I don't say that. He's a very big man. Hands like shovels.

When he leaves he thanks me for the tea and the lemon loaf I baked the night before. Personally I thought it was a little dry, but he had two slices, which was very good of him. Anyway he hands me a picture of his child and immediately I am struck by how like Marnie she is. Robert asks me to give Isabel the picture, it has a number inked on the back, an old snap, faded in places, and a much younger man I suppose to be him holding tight a child I know to be Isabel. The picture leaves Nelly shaken. She grabs it and won't let it go. He sees this and our eyes lock. This is when Marnie arrives, just flings open the door and there she is, soaked to the bone.

“Isabel,” he says.

Nelly

A
graying fellow who said he was our grandfather, the father of our mother.

Lennie was a gentleman as always, able to ignore his admissions of violence but I was frightened by them.

We must lie to the chap, this much I am sure of. Telling the truth doesn't matter to a stranger for he knows little and can judge nothing.

Mother has gone and there is nothing to be done and the man who eats practically
all
of Lennie's cake must leave and before Marnie returns for she will positively faint at the sight of him.

Marnie

H
e says he was in Barcelona, Seville, Morocco, and Egypt. He seeks out carpentry designs from other lands. Furniture. Talks about chairs for a while. I want to douse myself in petrol and light a fag. He's boring. Very boring. Drones an entire life at me. I look at the photograph of Izzy as a child holding tight her father's hand and I want to throw something at him. I imagine the pain she'd feel looking at the picture, I imagine her recalling a life beyond the photograph, and I imagine her heartbreak. She told us how he beat her, how he beat her mother and though he's sorry for his sins it's too late to atone for them, except he doesn't know that and I do, so does Nelly. It's pathetic and sad, but not for him. For his daughter, dead and not quite buried. I want to drink and smoke and feel like I can't. I just want him to leave and there's Lennie passing out cups and saucers, lighters and ashtrays. I decide fuck it and pull out a cigarette, see what Grandpa will do and he flinches a little, I offer him one but he refuses, says he stopped when he found Jesus.

I smoke my cigarettes, staring into his eyes, it feels like we're cowboys on a dusty trail sizing each other up before we shoot each other. My gun is loaded. I don't have to check, the bullet is a dead daughter. I don't know what his bullet is.

“She told us you were dead.”

“Well I'm not,” he says.

“Obviously,” I say back.

“This cake is divine Lennie, truly it is,” says Nelly, lightening the atmosphere except she doesn't. “You're quite the chef, old man. Isn't he a find, Mr. Macdonald?”

He doesn't say anything for a minute, like everyone else who meets Nelly for the first time, he's stunned and silent. Absorbing, not comprehending. He nods.

“It's fantastic,” he tells Lennie.

Nelly smiles at me, a knowing look in her eye. We will never tell this stranger where Izzy is. We are keeping our secret and we are keeping it from everyone.

Lennie

W
hen the girls woke up and found him on the sofa they weren't best pleased and when I say “they” I mean Marnie, but it's my house and I can invite who I like. Anyway he was sickly and almost passed out on the floor at the sight of her. She is so like Isabel as a child it frightened him half to death and rather surprised me for they look nothing like one another, not now. We spent the evening talking is all. I needed to get the measure of him. Protect them. He's not all there. I can see it in his eyes.

First thing I do is the politics conversation. He's a staunch Conservative and very religious. Then he starts a conversation about his travels, obviously he thought it would fascinate me, but I've done some traveling in my own life and wasn't too impressed. I found him broken in places, hidden places. I found him dull.

He makes quite a bit of money doing what he does and was very candid about his earnings. He plans to offer much of it to his lost daughter and probably thinks it will make a difference, perhaps change her, but it won't and anyway it's not that kind of money. He'll definitely be comfortable, be able to keep a house and live out his years. He has a stall at the Barrowland, a busy workshop, and an apprentice he's proud of, a young lad he found on the streets, he says. He pays him a small wage for minding the stall and is teaching him the trade. The lad lives in Robert's workshop. Robert says he's a born carpenter. It's a marvelous thing to have done for a child and this I was impressed by, but the rest of him? I suppose he's amiable enough, but there's an edge to the man, I can feel it, something sour and it's vexing. He says he has a Web site and calls himself the Tartan Craftsman. The Americans flock to him, but he'll need more than a catchy title to get the attentions of his grandchildren, that much I do know.

He's obviously interested in the girls, though he certainly wasn't prepared for Nelly, and you could see Marnie's smoking rattled his cage. Of course he wants to know all about Isabel, but I don't have a great deal to tell him about his daughter and what I do know he won't want to hear. He is full of remorse and shame and told me stories of her mother, his ex-wife, which filled me with pity for the girl, but then an image of Izzy in a shopping trolley, legs akimbo, swilling back the Buckfast emerged and my sympathy was somewhat diluted.