The Insect Rosary

by Sarah Armstrong

  ‘Donn! You frightened me.’

  ‘Sorry. I was just going to tell you that Hurley had gone to bed. He said to tell you.’

  ‘Oh. He could have said goodnight.’

  ‘He’s not one for unnecessary words.’

  ‘Or politeness.’

  ‘Or pulling the plug out.’ Donn smiled and sat down at the other end of the table.

  ‘Were you talking to him?’

  Donn nodded. ‘He’s a good boy.’

  Nancy sighed, ‘I know.’

  Donn shook his head. ‘I’ve seen the way you watch him.’

  ‘I stand up for him,’ said Nancy. ‘I find it difficult. Trying to keep him in school, trying to make him . . .’

  Donn looked at her, and then away across the darkness. Nancy watched him.

  ‘You were quiet, but you had friends. I remember people being here.’

  Donn nodded. ‘Yes, I’m sure you do remember people. They weren’t always friends.’

  Nancy looked away. Their reflections were bright now against the black night glass. Nancy never looked out like this at home. She had the feeling that bad things happened in dark gardens. The larger the garden, the bigger the secret. But there were no people here. It made it feel safer to look.

  ‘Have you any idea when Agatha will be back?’

  He shook his head. ‘She’s not coming back. There won’t be anywhere to come back to, anyway. Most of its sold already and someone’s interested in the land that’s left. They’ll probably knock down the house. Who knows?’

  ‘It’s so sad.’

  He looked at her and said nothing.

  ‘Where will Agatha go? Is she staying at the convent?’

  ‘Yes. It’s not a retreat. She’s becoming a nun. Again.’

  ‘Why didn’t she say?’

  ‘You didn’t ask.’

  ‘She wanted her room kept for her. Why would I ask?’

  Nancy watched him watching the night. All she could see was their reflections.

  ‘I’ll go up, too.’ He pushed his chair away from the table and walked away.

  She watched him climb the stairs slowly and her eyes filled with tears. This always happened. She moved somewhere and the local shop closed. She joined a group and it folded within weeks. She came back to her family farm just as it was being sold. She was always just too late, always lacking the timing of other people. But this must be why Mum had pushed for her to come back this summer, not next, or the one after. She’d known it would go, but hadn’t realised how it would feel.

  One tear fell and she swallowed the rest back until her throat was sore. She needed to check on Hurley, remove electronic items from the girls. The NBs she thought. What would Bernie say if she were to call them that?

  Standing, she rubbed her face and walked purposefully upstairs. If the girls had heard her they hadn’t cared and, again, she had to unarm them. She held out her hand for their handsets.

  ‘We’ll tell,’ said Erin.

  ‘Brush your teeth and get ready for bed.’

  ‘We did brush our teeth,’ smirked Erin.

  ‘Then do it again so I know you have.’

  They looked at Nancy as she left the room, and left the door open, and she heard them whispering as she crossed the landing to her room. With the door open she made it clear that she was prepared to wait until they had done as she said. Eventually they had each changed and each visited the bathroom.

  ‘Goodnight,’ she said, switching their light off and closing the door. She heard the pause before they switched the light back on. She opened the door and switched it off again.

  ‘We have the light on,’ said Maeve.

  ‘Goodnight.’

  She waited until they had started to be rude about her before she crept away. She realised that she was avoiding the centre of the landing and stairs, in the same way as she had as a child. So many times she had not wanted to be heard. She had been too young and scared of being caught. Now she was too old, and determined to make herself seem omnipresent. She opened the door to Hurley’s room and peeped in. She’d moved all the crosses and Mary and Jesus statues to the wardrobe. It smelled of Agatha and, she suspected, always would.

  ‘Book down and light off, Hurley.’

  He placed the book by the light before clicking the switch. He didn’t say goodnight either, but wriggled down beneath the sheets and woollen blankets until she could only see his hair. She paused on the small landing by the bathroom and Donn’s bedroom, listening, and then sat on the top stair, consoles on her lap. She should have asked how long they had left. There were lots of things she should have asked.

  9

  Then

  Beneath the rippled tin ceiling and supporting beams, curtains of long dead spiders hung, tatty and aged by the holes of a thousand tiny creatures. It was our favourite stable, partly because of the high, weird door to nowhere and partly because I’d noticed the door was the exact blue of the Tardis. We’d brought our rosary beads with us because Nancy thought, if they looked worn, Sister Agatha might let us off praying with her. We each rubbed our beads with our t-shirts.

  ‘Has he gone again?’ I asked. ‘Ryan?’

  ‘Bern, I don’t know. Why do you always ask me?’

  I whispered, ‘Did he go with Tommy?’

  ‘How would I know? I heard the same as you.’

  ‘What do you think he did, Ryan?’

  ‘I don’t want to talk about it. Let’s play hide and seek.’

  She hung her beads on a nail and I copied her. I sat cross legged in the dust and covered my eyes. I could hear her moving things around, finding spaces.

  ‘Thirty.’

  I stood and looked around but I couldn’t see where Nancy was hiding. I heard pebbles fall onto the roof, clanging once and dribbling down until they silently dropped to the ground. I shivered, thinking that she’d found another secret way out and I was the only one in here. Could she have slid past as I counted with my eyes closed? I had been counting loudly, like she asked, but Nancy wasn’t as careful as me. She’d have kicked the rusting drinking trough or set the shovel sliding down the wall before it clanged on the ground.

  I whispered, ‘Nancy.’

  The bendy ceiling and floor made uneven by all the rubbish over it made me feel wobbly, that any movement I made could make the stable tip. I wanted to hold on to something, but didn’t dare touch the flaking wood of the stairs or the webbed walls. I reached for a metal sheet and immediately pulled my hand back. A sliver of paint had slid itself into my fingertip, right underneath my nail. I didn’t cry out, but made my way back to the door where day still came through in long lines, the planks at the bottom wide enough apart that I could pass my hand through. There was a broken dresser by the door with a dozen jam jars sitting on it, cloudy with years of waiting. Maybe this was where the spiders lived. There weren’t any alive in the webs so they must hide somewhere else, run out, spin a bit, and run back. I knew how spiders ran, flinging their too many legs around and making me shiver. I never admitted to being scared of them because that would start Nancy off and next thing I’d find one in my bed. Or more.

  I whispered again, thought I heard a smothered laugh echo back to me.

  ‘I’m going in,’ I said loudly, ‘I’m bored.’

  There was no response. I pulled the door open.

  ‘I found a spider nest in the jam jars. They’ve just hatched.’

  Silence.

  ‘See you then.’

  I pushed the door closed behind me and stood up against the wall so I couldn’t be seen through the gaps. I still wasn’t sure if she was inside or outside and I half expected Nancy to jump out at me. Inside I heard something throw itself against the door and I stood back. The jam jars began to crash on the floor and I backed away.

  ‘Bern!’

  I went back to the door and started to pull at the wood.

  ‘Bern!’

  Nancy was throwing herself against the door again, but it was caught on something.


  ‘Bern!’

  She pushed again and fell out, knocking me to the floor. Nancy was sobbing, pointing her dirty finger at me.

  ‘You locked me in there.’

  ‘There’s no lock!’

  ‘You jammed it.’

  ‘I didn’t!’

  ‘I’m telling Mum.’

  I sat up in the mud, wiping my sticky hands on my jeans. I struggled to stand up, the wellies cutting into my calves when I tried, but I finally was upright. She wouldn’t tell Mum that it was her idea to hide in one of the stables we absolutely weren’t allowed in. She’d say something that made it sound like my idea. But she’d been the one who’d shown she was scared and then she’d feel bad for lying and getting me in trouble. Later she’d be nice again, not call me Bernadette for the rest of the evening, maybe. As long as I kept my mouth shut.

  Another jam jar crashed inside the stable and I pushed the door back so the ghosts and spiders would stay behind the door. I crossed the yard and climbed on the trembling aluminium gate to Bryn’s field and watched the sheep. They wouldn’t come across for grass. They didn’t really like people, as the cows did. I wasn’t allowed in this field either, but didn’t want to go in anyway. Sheep were a bit mad, flocking like birds and threatening to knock you over. Sometimes Donn would whisper to Mum or Sister Agatha that there was ‘another one’, and me and Nancy would run up to Mum’s room to spot the dead one. Once we stayed to watch him drag the dead sheep onto the trailer, but I didn’t want to see that again. I didn’t like the way its head dangled, like it was broken, and I really didn’t like the way the other sheep didn’t care. Nancy laughed at the way Donn struggled with the body, and even went out later to pick some stinking, greasy wool from the barbed wire to tease me with.

  ‘Dead sheep’s wool,’ she whispered as she left it on my shoulder, beside my plate, anywhere she could think of to make me squeal.

  I could hear Mum shouting for me now from the house. My finger, with the splinter of paint, began to throb and I squeezed it to bring tears to my eyes. I could play for sympathy too. I would need it if Mum was going to get the tweezers and needle out.

  I could have cut through the arched passage next to the garage, but that would have made things worse. You could see right through to the house but the ceiling could give way at any time, my mother said. Donn did use it, and so did Tommy, but Mum couldn’t order them about. They didn’t seem worried it would collapse, but then Donn only worried about sheep and Tommy didn’t worry about anything, I thought.

  It was probably safe enough, but this wasn’t the time to get caught trying it out. I went around the garage and came in through the gate into the yard. Mum was packing a bag on the doorstep, her sunglasses on her head.

  ‘Come on,’ she said, ‘I’ve been shouting for you.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘We’re going to the beach.’

  I must have looked surprised.

  ‘What’s the matter with you? Get your wellies off and find your costume.’

  I nodded and winced. ‘I’ve got a really bad splinter under my nail.’

  ‘It’ll probably come out in the sea. Go on, everyone’s ready.’ She picked up the big shopping bag she used for towels and put it in the boot of Donn’s car.

  ‘Is Donn coming?’

  ‘No, girls only.’

  I was going to ask about Agatha, but she pointed to the upstairs of the house.

  ‘Now, please. But, Bern,’ she held my shoulder, ‘only use the front door, OK?’

  I ran around the house, upstairs and stripped off so I could put my costume under my clothes. Nancy was just putting her t-shirt back on and stood in the doorway. She had one hand clenched hard and she shook it like it meant something, then left the room without talking to me.

  ‘I didn’t do it!’ I shouted. ‘It was stuck!’

  She slammed the door behind her. I stuck my tongue out at the door and pulled my clothes back on. My jelly shoes were under the chair by the bed and I carried them down with me. I was so cross with Nancy that I forgot. I opened the door to the parlour and stared. Tommy was at the table, his dark hair fallen over his face, his hands over his eyes. He slowly lifted his head and laid his hands down on the table.

  ‘What the fuck are you doing here?’

  I slammed the door shut, and ran out the front door.

  Mum started the car and I got in the back with Florence.

  ‘Hold on to her,’ she said, and backed out of the yard, much quicker than usual.

  I tried to forget that I’d seen the door to Cassie’s room wide open, a long green bag next to a blanket rolled up on the floor, and a gun on the table.

  Nancy was in the front of the car so no-one noticed her silence but me. She hadn’t told Mum anything about the barn, and she didn’t say anything to me until we got to the seafront.

  ‘I don’t want to swim with you, Bernadette,’ she said. That was it. I was surprised to get away with it, but she’d get me back. She always did.

  Usually by the time we got to the sea the clear skies had filled with clouds, but this was one of the magical days. Mum was distracted and said yes to everything. She even let us go on the pedal boats in the square outdoor pool. You could swim in it, but the floor was slimy with green stuff and I still had to put my feet down a lot. I preferred the boats, even if I had to share with Florence because Nancy wouldn’t go with me. I liked the weird pool. It was too difficult to get to the sea from this bit of the coast because there were loads of sharp, black rocks in the way. Sometimes we parked on the Strand up the road and went in the proper sea, but this was where the ice cream was and the boats and bright windmills to stick out of the car window and, if we were lucky, fish and chips on the way home. There was a pretend beach next to the pool where they’d dumped a load of sand for small children. Maybe they told the little ones that this was the real beach and the actual one was kept secret until they were bigger. You couldn’t even see it from here. There was a huge cliff in the way. My dad had walked around it to the Strand and back once, but my mum was angry. She said she knew someone who’d been knocked off the path and drowned, and he said it must have been a storm or high tide and don’t be such a drama queen.

  I wished he was here. I was sure I could walk round safely too. Mum stayed with Florence on the baby beach and let me and Nancy go to the rock pools with a bucket. She thought we’d stay together, but Nancy went right out and told me not to follow her.

  I didn’t care. I was much better at finding things on my own and I needed to think about what I’d seen. I felt full of words that made no sense.

  I sat on a rock and dipped my fingers into a pool, warmed like a bath by the sun. Only the pools had any warmth to them although Mum said the sea was the Atlantic and much warmer than the Irish Sea which didn’t come from America.

  I stilled my fingers. A crab came up from the sand and moved to hide beneath a stone. I waited a little and then lifted it, to watch where it would go next. There were no shells here, and I didn’t feel like putting the crab in the bucket to scare Florence.

  I climbed along to the next pool, slipping on a bit of seaweed and cracking my ankle on a knob of rock. It reminded me of my finger. I examined it, pressed against the nail. Mum was right. It had come out in the water. I smiled. No needles.

  I had reached the fifth pool before I found my first shell. There were lots of different types, but I only collected one of them. They were small, the size of my fingernail, curved underneath so the sides almost met, and on top they were ribbed like a finger print. Dad said they were called trivia, which I thought was a stupid name, but he also said they were very like cowrie shells which can be used instead of money in some places. I called mine cowries as well and thought of each one as a pound. I was good at finding them. I already had some in my pot on the mantelpiece, so if I got lost in one of those countries I’d be a millionaire eventually.

  I picked up my shell and put it in my shorts pocket. By the time I’d found six, Nancy
had realised what I was doing. She never found any. As she picked her way over to me I had to decide whether I was going to buy her silence or bank on it being too late now for her to say anything to Mum.

  ‘How many have you got?’ she shouted across to me.

  ‘Three,’ I said.

  ‘Can I have any?’

  I shrugged. She could tell me what she’d do for them first. I wanted a week off from being called Bernadette and she couldn’t tell Mum anything I did for two.

  ‘I don’t want any anyway,’ she said.

  I looked at her. She held her hand cradled in front of her and was looking into it.

  ‘Have you found one?’

  ‘I have,’ she counted, ‘eleven.’ She smiled at me, closed her hand and held it up, next to her head.

  Eleven. That was all the ones I’d found this summer.

  ‘Give them back.’ I started to scramble across the rock. ‘They’re mine.’

  ‘Stop!’ She pulled her hand back. ‘I’ll throw them.’

  ‘Nancy, please don’t.’ I felt panicky, my breath coming quickly.

  ‘Say that you’re sorry.’

  ‘I’m really sorry. I didn’t mean to shut you in, the door got stuck. Please give them back.’

  ‘How many can I keep?’

  I estimated how much it would be worth. ‘Five.’

  She turned and threw her arm forward. I saw them scatter and ping off the rocks.

  ‘You should have said six.’

  I watched her skirt around me and, once on the sand, run back to Mum. I headed over to where I thought they’d landed, but I couldn’t see any of them. My eyes filled up and I sat down on a rock, wiping my face and trying to get just one back. They were gone.