“Poor
creatures,” he sighed, hooking his thumbs into the pockets of his waistcoat. “I
do wish we could do something for them, Penelope.”
Penelope
grunted. Charles cast a glance over his shoulder and saw she was on her usual
perch, vulture-beak stuffed into a book. It really did spoil the aesthetics of
the library shelves when books were removed.
He turned
back to the window. Rain was spattering the outside of the glass, droplets
running across his view of south London. Why the government had seen fit to
build all those tenement blocks in view of his house he could not fathom, but
the Prime Minister would certainly be hearing about it.
He
recovered his train of thought. “But Penny, the poor little Bees live like animals.
There must be something we can do.”
“Don’t
call me Penny,” she said.
“I don’t
know, perhaps we could bring a few here—”
“Ha!” she
squawked. “Haha! Charles, you do have the most singular ideas. Perhaps you could start an apiary.”
“Now,
Penny, they may live like animals but calling them apes is a bit strong.”
She
squawked again. He saw her shake her head and turn back to her book.
Charles
returned to his window-gazing, worrying his bow tie now between thumb and
forefinger. Here I am trying to make a little difference to those less
fortune, and all she can do is sit there and make that carrion-bird laugh of
hers.
His eyes
alighted on the front garden, where the sickly grass fought for sunlight
against strangling weeds. A plastic bag had blown through the iron gates and
attached itself like a wind sock to the spines of a solitary rose bush. There
were no roses.
“It is
such a shame that the garden never blooms,” he said.
“Yes,
Charles, why is that?” she said. “It’s getting plenty of water, I don’t
see what the plants have to complain about.”
“Not
enough Bees,” he said quietly. “Not enough Bees.”
* * *
Dear
reader, you must be confused. I am sorry, but in the interests of the narrative
we started with a vignette, a little scene-setter. I will do my best to
elucidate the situation for you.
We, the
downtrodden, the sorry, soggy masses who have given everything so that our
masters may remain supplied with gilt and caviar, we are the Billionaires — or
the Bees, if you like your nomenclature concise. My mother told me that
billionaires used to be rich men — mostly men, yes — highly regarded, pillars
of society. Successful. I didn’t believe her at first, but I found a
book in the library called How to make a million overnight, and it
corroborated her story.
A
million! Overnight! Dear reader, I can make a million by picking a coin off the
street.
It was
the financial crisis, you see, that did for us. Or crises, rather. The
billionaires — the original ones, I mean, the men in the suits — they buggered
it all up.
The first
crisis wasn’t so bad, the Global Financial Crisis in 2008. But then there was
the Godawful Crash of 2016, and following hot on its heels was the Ghastly
Banking Conflagration of 2018, and then,
as if things weren’t messed up enough already, there was the Almightily Awful
Inflation of 2021-2030, which really did for us.
It was around
that time that the robots started taking over. Ha — no, not that kind of
taking over; there was no termination or extermination, and the elephants are
all fine. They took our jobs. Hell, I met a robot once that could debate
philosophy — try getting your average Bee to discuss the meaning of life and
you’ll see why we’re mostly unemployed.
Anyway,
the short of it is a billion ain’t worth squat these days. We’re all
billionaires, excepting the squillionaires who shut themselves in their
mansions.
I’m getting
the point, I swear.
I live —
or perhaps it would be fairer to say, lived — in Bromley, in south London. The
tower blocks of Bromley rise towards the sky like trees straining towards the
light, and Bees scurry in the streets below, trying to get to where they need
to be without being noticed.
The
aforementioned squillionaires also live nearby. London has always been a
patchwork of rich and poor, and the deep cut of social cleavages hasn’t changed
that. Every now and then you’ll find a gated oasis in the desert of high-rise
concrete, where heated swimming pools and even the odd patch of grass mark out
the haves from the have-nots.
There is
an exception though, a little known and less cared about space that is neither
crumbling tenement nor gilded mansion.
It’s a
library.
The
library, or The Library, as I like to think of it, is housed in an old stone
church with a caved-in roof. Over the years as the tower blocks grew around it
the church somehow endured, to the point where some crazy town-planner actually
built a stack of apartments in a sort of arch over the top, to avoid bulldozing
the place. The church’s roof has never been repaired because the apartments
that loom over it form a kind of concrete cave, shielding it from the elements.
Between
the church’s chilly walls, a temple of faith has been transformed into a temple
of knowledge. A few of the pews still remain, dark and polished by countless
pairs of devout buttocks, but most have been replaced with bookshelves. The
grey light of Outside is filtered into kaleidoscopic hues as it slants through
the stained glass windows, and up the front the issues desk has been plonked
irreverently where the altar used to sit.
The
Library is rarely full, by which I mean always empty. Who reads paper books
these days? You have to go through the — ugh — palaver, not to mention mortal
peril, of lifting and turning those nasty blade-like pages, plus having to
haul the great bookish bricks around with you the whole time. Even the Bees can
read electronic books if the mood takes them, not that it often does.
Some of
us, though, like paper.
Now, the
Library has always been a sanctuary, but back in the days of yore, two years
ago, it was also a training field for yours truly and Marcus and Daisy. We
called ourselves, not without reason, the Intelligentsia.
Alone in
our fortress but for Morgan, the swivel-eyed librarian, we read the paper
books, storming through great piles of the things: books on politics and
history and economics; novels about strange creatures and the struggles of
underdogs and the Power of Love (blurgh). We pored over atlases and peered at
dog-eared collections of photos showing what life was like Before It All Went
Tits Up.
Even then
we had some sense that we were preparing. We sharpened our weapons and practised
our drills. We bowled ideas at one another and swatted them aside like
cricketers. We play-fought like lion cubs, keeping our claws sheathed but
knowing with an almost animal instinct that it would not be long before the
games became serious and real.
* * *
I’m
running out of paper, so let me tell you about the man and his bees.
I was
sixteen when the Beekeeper began to walk the streets of Bromley. No one we met
actually seemed to have seen him first-hand, but everyone knew a friend of a
friend who definitely had. People told of a man in a purple velvet
waistcoat; gold watch chain; top hat; cane. Some said the cane was a sword
stick. Some said he had a wooden leg. Some said the ostrich feather thrust
through the band of his hat had a razor-sharp quill that was dipped in a poison
so virulent that the merest prick would make you shrivel up and your eyes pop
out.
Probably
not true, that last one. But all Marcus and Daisy and me knew for sure was that
people were going missing.
Kids
stopped turning up at school. Some that did turn up were missing a parent, or
an aunt or an uncle. The youngest victim I heard of was a five-year-old girl.
The oldest, a man in his fifties.
They said
the Beekeeper lured you in with whatever you wanted most. For hungry kids, chocolate
or sweets did the trick; for hungry adults, work. The lonely were promised
company. The sick, health. The frightened, safety. Could you have resisted him,
dear reader?
Rescuer, I heard
people call him, wide-eyed like startled deer.
The
stories went on for a number of months, and all the while fear and suspicion
gripped us by the throat. Eventually new rumours began to circulate. People
whispered that in a part of town flowers had started to bloom in the tenement
block desert. For a while we dismissed the rumours as daft — who’s ever seen a
flower in London? — but eventually the sheer weight of suggestion prodded us
into action.
Marcus,
Daisy and me organised an Expedition. We packed some lunch and set off down the
dark paths that run between the tenements.
Sure
enough, there were flowers. We had only walked for an hour or so when we found
a small cluster of shoots that had pushed their heads through the tarmac. We
quickly found more — and more. Colours erupted from the pavement. As we homed
in on the source, creepers crawled over the ground and saplings raced each
other upwards towards the light. The foliage reached waist height, then head
height.
Pushing
deeper, we saw that the prodigious growth centred on a mansion guarded by spiky
gates and a high wall. The gates were wound around with green ropes of climbing
ivy, and flowers overflowed across the tops of the walls in great pillowy
tangles.
We crept
to the gates and peered through. Marcus let out a little gasp.
The
grounds had been manicured to within an inch of their lives, borders trimmed
surgically and pale gravel paths laid in intricate geometric shapes between
regimented rose beds. Trees stood to attention, marked out by the razor sharp
edges of ankle-height box hedges. The lawn was the length of a soldier’s
buzz-cut. There was not a stray leaf, not a dropped blossom or errant twig.
And
everywhere, everywhere, Bees bent their backs, snipping and trimming and
smoothing and laying. An army of them. Hundreds.
Near
where our faces peered through the railings we watched a sallow, gaunt man in
his early thirties measuring the gaps between seedlings with a tape measure,
making a slight clucking sound with his tongue as he worked.
“Psst!”
I said. “Don’t worry, we’ll get you out of there!”
He gave
me a look of faint embarrassment and moved away, turning his back.
At that
moment, Daisy tapped me on the shoulder and pointed. “It’s him.”
It was
him. He moved among the Bees, cane and potentially lethal ostrich feather
unmistakable even at this distance. He patted heads, handed sweets to the
children, and everywhere he went faces turned to him with bovine expressions of
wonder.
“What is wrong
with them?” I muttered.
“We have
to do something,” said Marcus.
I nodded.
Turning away from the gate I examined our equipment: four peanut butter
sandwiches, a flask of tea, a book entitled SAS Survival Guide, and a
notebook, which I had labelled ‘CLUES’ in black marker pen.
“I’ve had
an idea,” I said.
I tore a
page from the notebook, wrote a few lines, and signed my name. “Sign it.”
Marcus
and Daisy read what I had written then scrawled their names at the bottom. I
folded the paper into an aeroplane, stood up and said:
“Oi!”
I hurled
the plane, and ran.
As I
turned I caught his gaze, and for a split second I glimpsed eyes that were as
blue and cold and empty as those in the head of a doll.
* * *
Two days
passed before we heard the unhurried tap…tap…tap of a cane on flagstones
and knew the Beekeeper of Bromley had arrived at the Library.
As he
came down the aisle I put down my book, stood and advanced to meet him, flanked
on either side by Marcus and Daisy.
When we
reached the mid point of the nave, both sides stopped, about the same distance
apart as fencers en garde. Sun pierced the stained glass windows on the
left of my vision.
I crossed
my arms, tilted my chin up a little.
We
examined one another.
After a
minute, he said to me: “What’s your name, girl?” His voice was soft, a little
sandpapery, but not unpleasant.
I
considered for a moment whether I should tell him the truth.
“Rousseau,”
I concluded.
He
smiled, causing his double chin to stretch sideways like limp dough. “What a
pretty name.”
I nodded.
Beside me I could feel Marcus and Daisy coiling like springs, like lions ready
to leap, claws sharp and naked.
“So, what
did you want to discuss?” he said.
So many
things. “Your slavery,” I said. “It has to stop.”
“Slavery?
I think you misunderstand, little girl. I’m helping those poor little Bees. You
do know what would happen to them if I released them into the harsh, cruel world,
don’t you?”
I set my
jaw. At my back stood a host; a legion. Locke lent me his spear, Tom Paine his
shield. Smith and Jefferson, De Tocqueville and, yes — Jean-Jacques Rousseau —
closed ranks behind me. The Mills, James and John Stuart, stood together with
Popper and De Beauvoir — an unlikely pair those last two, but deadly fighters.
Chomsky and Sen polished their spectacles at the back.
Let me
tell you, dear reader, as if you didn’t know already: no man could have stood
against them.
* * *
It has been
almost a year now since the metal door slammed shut behind me and my freedom
ended.
As you
can imagine, the commotion in the Library brought crowds running, and the
people stared as we hurled words like javelins. In the end the police broke us
up, arrested Daisy and Marcus and me on the grounds of Breaching the Peace.
Which we had done, to be fair.
I have
been in and out of the courts ever since, swapping my cell for a witness box
and then swapping back again. I can count the number of times I have seen my
family on the toes of my left foot. I haven’t seen Daisy and Marcus at all.
But, dear
reader, even a barred window lets in sunlight and air. My gaoler changed
recently, the stubbly old bugger replaced by a young man with circular
spectacles. Yesterday he slipped me a book: Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy
in America; and tucked inside were a few sheets of lined paper and a
cracked biro.
You know,
dear reader, I reckon a paper aeroplane could fly quite a long way, if thrown
with enough force between the bars of that window.
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