The Honey People

About fifteen years ago I met a couple. D was a tall thin sinewy man with grey stubble. He stuttered every time he spoke to me. His wife M, was not a very tall woman but she was as wide as a fridge.

For the past two days I have had them in my thoughts, not sure why, because I have not had any contact with them in years.

D had strange hobbies. He enjoyed stitching leather, I am not sure what he made but he was always looking for strong needles and thread suitable to do this job. It was a second marriage for both of them.

M was not a refined woman; at times she was quite crass and liked to order D around. M also had a terrible personal hygiene problem. She would go out in public with a T-shirt which she had obviously worn for a whole week. Rumpled by regular naps and stained down the front by regular snacks but the shocking part was the enormous yellow sweat stains underneath each arm.

I guess they were both in retirement living on a plot of land just on the outskirts of town. I always tried to be polite and I guess they thought I was fond of them when in actual fact I really wanted to avoid them.

There was one part of our conversations which I always dreaded. As soon as the usual pleasantries of greeting and catching up on general news was over D would say “have you read the book How to make friends and influence people?” and my answer would each time be the same “no I have not” and then he would stutter and try and describe a part in the book which really meant nothing to me. Not only did I not get the point he was trying to make, I had more important things on my mind and now fifteen years later I still can’t tell anyone what the point of it all was.

One time, when I saw them, D told me about his bee farming. He would take his hives to other provinces where there are citrus groves and he would offer the services of his bees to the citrus farmer. D thought that I would be interested in trying some of their honey, bottled by his own hands. He even suggested that I try and sell some for them.

M would send him to the shops so that we could gossip and then she would tell us how furious she was with him for taking her plastic kitchen bowls and funnels out of the house to bottle the honey.

I had nightmarish thoughts of him out in a grimy shed, holding a jar with his black fingernails and using her filthy kitchen utensils to mould the honey into the jar (Oh shivers down my spine).

One evening, I went out one evening and when I turned around there D was standing behind me staring and he rushed up to me. I decide then that I really did not want anything more to do with this couple. I felt that D had followed me and was trying to get me alone. I moved to a new house and he showed up one day out of the blue. I asked my mom to get rid of him. We never heard from them again.