Sarah Armstrong’s debut novel, The Insect Rosary, was published by Sandstone Press in 2015. Her short stories have been published in Mslexia and Litro, and she teaches undergraduate and postgraduate creative writing for the Open University. Sarah lives in Essex with her husband and four children.
By the same author
The Insect Rosary
First published in Great Britain
Sandstone Press Ltd
Dochcarty Road
Dingwall
Ross-shire
IV15 9UG
Scotland
www.sandstonepress.com
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored or transmitted in any form without the express
written permission of the publisher.
© Sarah Armstrong 2017
Editor: K.A. Farrell
The moral right of Sarah Armstrong to be recognised as the
author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Design and Patent Act, 1988.
The publisher acknowledges subsidy from
Creative Scotland towards publication of this volume.
ISBN: 978-1-910985-54-0
ISBNe: 978-1-910985-55-7
Cover design by Antigone Konstantinidou
Ebook compilation by Iolaire Typesetting, Newtonmore
For Claire Armstrong and Steven Digby
Contents
Title Page
Prologue
1
2
3
Greta
4
5
6
Greta
7
8
9
Greta
10
11
12
Greta
13
14
15
Greta
16
17
18
Greta
19
20
21
Greta
PROLOGUE
Greta
The priest told them to run and leave the room full of blood behind them. He said it was to save the rest of the village, that they had brought it on themselves.
The snow clagged around their boots and around the wheels of the cart. My great-grandfather hauled it by hand, piled with a mattress and a chest of drawers still with the clothes in it. Next to this Edith, my grandmother, crouched, just five years old, clutching her two-year-old brother. A fall onto the bitter ground would kill them and do the devil’s work for him. And he was the reason they were running, away from his hoof prints and the blood he’d spilled. No-one ever talked about what happened in that room.
My great-grandmother had to walk, forty-seven and pregnant again. A family curse. No woman gave birth before her forties, not her daughter or her granddaughter. We all had one girl and one boy. Her pregnancy only held until Bath, where they were going to settle, but the stories kept coming. The hoof prints which had ended at their door had been seen in Exmouth, Torquay, Weymouth and Lincoln. They hadn’t got far enough away. The mark was on them and they had to keep running. They knew that the same snow which held the prints of the devil’s hooves also held their own tracks.
Once my great-grandmother could walk, after the loss of the baby, they put everything back in the handcart. What my grandmother most remembered was how the tears froze to her cheeks, the holes in her shawl and the gaps in her boots, which ate the snow when she had to walk. She always made sure she had a good pair of boots and a thick shawl after that, just in case, and she would stand in the snow and wait. I would watch her from the window, staying close to the fire. When it was my mother standing out there in her good winter coat and thick leather boots, I knew it would be my turn one day.
They left Totnes on the 9th of February 1855, fleeing eastwards, and there was still snow on the ground when they arrived in Essex. They were heading to Suffolk, the land of Our Lady, but they stopped short somehow, their tracks leading to Coggeshall. My great-grandmother was thought nearest to death, but in fact my great-grandfather was the one to go. If he hadn’t died, maybe my grandmother would have waited until two boys, or three, had asked for a kiss and made a choice between them, the only choice she would ever be given. But she didn’t have the luxury of choice, neither did my mother and nor did I.
On my eighth birthday my father was out, as usual. He drank, like my grandfather, and it did for him in the end too. My mother sat me down at the table and frowned, just a little, to show she was being serious.
‘Make a fist,’ she said, and she made one too. My hand was smooth like a sea-worn rock. Each of her knuckles looked like a cracked walnut. ‘Now, starting with the little finger lift each one to the sky in turn.’
I did it with the first, but the second finger got stuck halfway.
‘I can’t,’ I said.
‘Really try,’ she said.
‘I am trying.’ My finger ached but it wouldn’t rise above an awkward arch without pulling the other fingers with it.
‘Now, this is how things are supposed to be,’ she said. ‘The middle finger is God and the laws of nature. The little finger is society and the laws of man. The second finger is you. You should never do anything that isn’t right in the eyes of God or man, do you understand?’
My finger still hurt but I nodded.
She continued, ‘Most importantly, if you ever meet anyone who can move every finger independently I want you to run faster than you ever believed you could. Understand?’
I thought I did. In any case, I nodded.
She stood up and sighed. ‘And never marry a man who refuses a drink.’
All the men in my family were born or became alcoholics. This sounded like a terrible rule to follow. I nodded again, and decided to ignore all of her advice.
I’ve thought about how I should have had the same mother–daughter conversation with Shona, but instead I tried to explain it all. She never needed another reason to laugh at me. And listening didn’t do me any good.
My mother loved stories. She went to the pictures at the Regal and Empire in Colchester and sometimes bought magazines with pictures of film stars. She even named me after Greta Garbo. My mother told me fairy tales too, about the green children of Woolpit, strange and small creatures who camouflaged themselves in the trees and grass, the giant of Brockford, the merman of Orford and the dragons of Wormingford.
There was no happy and righteous ending to my mother’s fairy tales. No happy ending for me either. My mother knew that. It’s why she told me all the stories of the strange children of the woods and men of the sea and black devil dogs, no matter how much I begged for princesses. She was preparing me from my birth to be aware of the monsters and threats that no-one else would believe. These were the forms the devil could take as he moved among us. And I was prepared, but not convinced. I thought, if I needed to, I would be able to recognise a threat when I saw it, like a ten-foot giant or a fish-scaled dragon. I would have run from green-haired women and bull-horned men, from wizened child-like figures in the centres of thorn trees. She should have known that the devil always looks like the thing you think you want.
I didn’t think that the threat would come to me while I was listening to The Beatles in a record shop. I didn’t think it would be a nineteen-year-old boy crippled by a shy smile and a slight tremor to his hand when he held mine.
Only the craftiest devil would stammer when he asked for a kiss.
1
September 2011
Shona always felt relieved when she’d left Rob to get back to his life. She could feel herself slipping into the role of wife, rather than lover, if she stayed too lo
ng. The state of his room did make her feel better about her own house, untidy as it was. She tried to feel a little guilty for not having picked up shoes or emptied the dishwasher or, as Cerys kept pointing out, having sorted the last three weeks’ worth of washing. It would all keep. It would all need doing again tomorrow, whether or not she did it today.
She checked one last time that she had her mobile and keys, threw her leg over the bike and paused to unwind her wool scarf a little. Outside was warmer than inside, although the sky was still brutally clear. She decided to cycle the long way so she could go flat out on the fields by the school. Here, on the roads, she cycled slowly, enjoying the mild chill of the wind. There were leaves gathering in the gutters and a sense of bonfires to come, yet the schools had only just started their year. Only the week before honeysuckle had tingled in the air.
She turned into Victoria Road and stopped pedalling, putting one foot down. That boy was there again, where she’d last seen him a couple of months ago and two or three times before that. Dominic? That sounded right to her. He’d said something about the 1960s which she hadn’t quite understood. She had always regretted not telling anyone he was there. Not that she knew who to tell, but he was, maybe, sixteen – or older? It was hard to tell.
The bike wheels clicked around as she slowly coasted towards him. He didn’t look up. He was dressed in old clothes again that looked slightly too big for him, jeans and only a T-shirt. His hands were placed, palms upward, by his side, and his knees bent up as he leaned against a tree. As she got closer, she could see goose pimples on his arms and his bare feet buried slightly into the soil.
‘Hey,’ she said. ‘Are you all right?’
He opened his eyes. ‘I’ve been waiting for you.’
‘Have you?’
He nodded. ‘I’ve been waiting.’ He held his hands close to his face. ‘I think I’ve been here a while.’
‘Why are you waiting?’ she asked.
He put his hands back by his sides.
‘Is there someone I can call for you, let them know where you are? It’s Dominic, isn’t it?’
‘I have been waiting for you. I have to get my instructions.’
Shona waited to hear what they were but he carefully placed his hands on his knees and his head dropped forward. She rested her bike against the tree and crouched down next to him. There were bruises on his cheeks, cuts on the backs of his wrists, his eyelashes surprisingly long and dark.
‘Do you think that I might be the one to give you instructions?’ she asked.
Dominic lifted his face. ‘I think I need to stay with you.’
Shona bit down the automatic ‘no’. He needed help and she had to help him. It had to be a ‘yes’. Just until she found out what kind of help he needed.
She said, ‘I think you could come home with me for a little while to warm up. And we can decide what to do.’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘It is you. Meghan sent me to tell you that there’s a message for you, when you’re ready.’
Shona swallowed. ‘Meghan?’
He nodded and she waited, but he didn’t say anything more. Meghan. How would he even know her name?
She stood up and held out her hand to him but he raised himself from the missing paving stone where the tree grew. As he got up he grabbed a handful of soil and put it in his pocket.
He pointed back the way she’d come. ‘I suppose you don’t want to go the quickest way. Past his house. He might be looking.’
She looked back down the road and back to him. ‘Have you been watching me, Dominic?’
‘So many people are watching you.’
His hazel eyes blinked once and he smiled. She shuddered. She didn’t want to know what he meant by that.
‘I’m Shona. I’ll get you a cup of tea and then we’ll make some calls.’
He nodded. She wheeled her bike onto the pavement and walked home past Rob’s house, watching Dominic. He didn’t look at her or Rob’s house.
Shona walked him down the alley at the side of her house, past the recycling boxes, to the back gate. She leaned the bike against the fence and unlocked the back door.
‘Are you hungry?’ she asked. He nodded.
He sat down at the kitchen table and looked across and past her, out of the back window. She pulled things from the fridge and wondered why she had agreed to this. Dominic ate everything she put in front of him, cheese and bread and cucumber, not fast but with commitment, and then laid his head down on the table like a toddler having a nap. She remembered napping like that at primary school after drinking the milk through a stripy cardboard straw.
She knew she should call the police or some mental health team, but she didn’t. He’d said Meghan. And she knew what the chances were, and how people were tricked into this kind of thing all the time, but she hadn’t sought him out. He’d found her. If there was even the slightest chance at all, she couldn’t ignore it. The best thing would be if he didn’t say it again and she could wave him goodbye.
She waited for a sign that he was pretending so that they could start to talk about where to go next, but he really was asleep. She sat and watched the fluctuations of his breathing, the fluid movement of his eyes beneath the lids. Finally, she forced herself away.
In the back room she turned her phone on and a found a message from her friend Mariana. She always called on Tuesday, but she’d been in Portugal for the last two weeks and Shona found it easy to fall out of a habit. Mariana was the kind of person who would know what to do. Shona phoned her back and immediately decided not to tell her. She’d come round. Any excuse.
Shona could hear Mariana’s bracelets rattling as she dramatically, but invisibly, gesticulated. She couldn’t concentrate, reciting to herself, don’t tell her, don’t tell her.
‘Are you sure you’re OK?’ Mariana was saying.
‘Yes, I’m sure. I just don’t know . . .’
‘I don’t know what? Shona?’
‘Yes?’
‘Have you collected Jude? I can’t hear him. I can usually hear him.’
Shona looked at the clock. ‘Shit!’ She disconnected. The boy was still asleep on the table. She’d have to leave him there.
She collected Jude from the school office, thirty-five minutes late on the second day of his first full week. He looked quite happy, swinging himself around in the head teacher’s chair. The head wasn’t quite so contented and made it clear that she was only postponing a pep talk about time management or consistency for five-year-olds because she wanted to go home today. Jude was smiling and pleased to see her and Shona was happy to leave.
Shona carried Jude home on her back for a treat to celebrate not getting told off. She clasped her hands under his bum as a seat but he still held on a little too tightly. By the time they got back her windpipe felt bruised.
She opened the back door and remembered. Dominic was still asleep.
Jude sat by him, as Shona had done, watching him.
‘Who is he?’
‘I’m not sure. He’s called Dominic.’
‘Are we going to keep him?’
‘He’s just going to stay for a little while.’
Jude raised his eyebrows. ‘In our room?’
‘No.’
Jude frowned. ‘Cerys’ room?’
‘No, He’s just here for a couple of hours. We haven’t got any room, have we?’
Cerys had one bedroom while Shona and Jude shared the other and the walk-in office attached to it. The locked, little-used front room downstairs belonged to her husband, Maynard. The attic had a pull down ladder and a lot of dusty rubbish.
‘He’ll go soon,’ she said. She thought again that she should phone someone, but he’d said Meghan. She needed to hear the rest of that and, when he left, that would be her chance lost. She played it back in her mind, trying to convince herself that he had said something else, but it was always Meghan.
She heard the front door close as Cerys let herself in. Dominic stretched and sat up. Shona froze
. What convinced Jude wasn’t going to work on her.
‘Mr Cartwright wants to see you last at Parents’ Evening,’ she shouted from the hall. ‘I wasn’t going to bother, but he asked. I wrote it on the sheet.’ Shona could hear the school bag drop to the floor. Cerys stopped in the doorway and stared.
She’d taken off her school tie, untucked the blouse and shaken her long brown hair free. Her skirt was rolled up at the waist, revealing thin legs with thick fist-like knees. Her nose, which seemed to have been growing out of sync with the rest of her face, was settling now, straight and pretty. Cerys still hated it.
‘Hi,’ she said. She wasn’t talking to Shona or Jude.
Shona looked at her. She hadn’t seen Cerys smile like that for years, open and happy. Dominic smiled back and Shona watched Cerys blush deep on her cheeks.
She hadn’t thought this through. She hadn’t thought what a boy like this would do to a fourteen-year-old. He was beautiful in a girlish boy band way, with large eyes and longish hair. How had she not noticed?
‘Dominic, I think I should call your parents now.’
‘There’s no need.’
‘They’ll be wondering where you are.’ Shona could sense Cerys fidgeting behind her.
‘I’m eighteen. I told them I’d be away for a while.’
‘Of course he should stay, Mum,’ said Cerys. ‘We’ve got room.’
‘Do we?’ Any minute now Dominic would start talking about instructions and Meghan, and then Cerys – what would Cerys do? Shona looked at her again. Cerys wouldn’t say a word. She was ready to jump whenever he told her.
Dominic stood and stretched again. ‘I slept on it. I’m going to stay in the shed.’
Shona thought about it, although it wasn’t a question. ‘And your parents?’
‘I’ll let them know.’
Cerys, still blushing, turned and went upstairs. Shona knew she’d be calling her friends, spreading the word. Shona knew this couldn’t really happen; she couldn’t let this boy sleep in the shed. But, to be honest, she didn’t need another fight with Cerys. She would be the one who would cause trouble over it and if it was fine with her . . . And Jude?
The Devil in the Snow Page 1