The Insect Rosary

by Sarah Armstrong

  She shook her head too hard. I saw her cheeks start to redden.

  ‘No bogey stories to keep you up, no?’

  His eyes had moved to me now and I felt the blush heat my own cheeks.

  ‘That’s enough teasing, Tommy,’ said Donn.

  Tommy stood to the side for Donn to talk to us.

  ‘Good girls. I’ll see you in the morning.’

  Tommy said nothing more to us, but closed the door hard. We knew he hadn’t moved away. He was listening for us to go upstairs. We trod on each step as heavily as we could and sat at the foot of our bed without getting undressed. The massive picture of Jesus, with his red heart hovering outside his body, hung above our bed. The heart had a cross stuck right through the middle of it. There was a golden halo around his head and he looked up to heaven without lifting his head, so there was lots of white in his eyes. I wondered whether Sister Agatha had put it here, and the statue of Mary on the bedside table and the cross on the mantelpiece, just for us, or if they were here before her.

  We got into bed without brushing our teeth because we didn’t want to get caught on the landing. My teeth felt furry and I knew Mum would be cross if she found out. I promised myself to brush twice as long in the morning. I wished she was back. The sheets felt uncomfortable and I spent ages trying to straighten out the wrinkled blankets on top. I lay down but couldn’t settle. I turned towards Nancy but she didn’t look at me.

  ‘You won’t ever, ever tell him that I said anything, will you?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘Do you really think Ryan is okay?’

  She closed her eyes and faced away from me. I turned the other way and looked at the fireless fireplace. I wished there was a fire now, but there had never been any fires upstairs. If I could watch the flames I might go to sleep. I thought about the way Father Christmas always knew how to find us even though we didn’t really live here. It always amazed me, but Nancy wouldn’t talk about him anymore. She just smirked when I said anything.

  Neither of us said anything now. We were too busy listening and waiting for Tommy to leave.

  ‘Stay awake, won’t you Bernie?’ whispered Nancy.

  I nodded. She went to sleep before me, her head angled up against my back.

  14

  Now

  ‘I heard from Agatha today. Well, she mentioned me in a note to Donn. She wanted me to give you her address.’

  ‘Yes, Beth gave it to me too.’ Her mother sighed. ‘That means she wants letters, doesn’t it? I can’t remember how to write a letter any more. Can’t you tell her just to go on Facebook?’

  Nancy laughed feebly and rubbed her temple. ‘Yeah, right.’

  ‘Have you . . . Has . . .’ She heard her mother inhale, ‘How’s things?’

  ‘Difficult.’ Nancy lifted the phone base from the table, sat on the floor and placed it next to her.

  ‘Is it Bernadette?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Is she there?’

  Nancy looked up to the landing, checked the doors off the hall were all closed. ‘Somewhere. Around.’ She lowered her voice, ‘She’s pretty much avoiding me. I didn’t say what she wanted, it seems.’

  Her mother didn’t say anything. She heard her moving things, the slide and click of something hundreds of miles away. There were birds in the background. Her mother could have the window in the front room open, or maybe she was in the garden. The joys of a cordless phone. What she wasn’t doing was squatting by the stairs in a dark hallway. The meagre glow from the skylight was sickly.

  Her mother cleared her throat. ‘This is your only chance to ever sort it out. You’ll go back over there, she’ll come back over here and this opportunity will be lost forever.’

  ‘Mum, what does she need to hear? Do you know?’

  ‘No, I don’t know for sure. You know her, she’s had a lot of odd ideas over the years.’

  Nancy didn’t believe her. There was something strained in her tone.

  ‘Just try, Nancy. Try to make it all right.’

  ‘I don’t know if I can, Mum. I think she really hates me. I can’t work out what I need to say and she won’t forgive me until I do. It’s an impossible situation. I can’t win.’

  Nancy heard a sob.

  ‘I want all three daughters at my funeral, Nancy. I’ve given up on hoping that I’ll see you all at a birthday or a wedding. I’ve given up hoping that your father will see all of his grandchildren –’

  ‘We’ll visit –’

  Her strained voice was high, ‘You have to sort it out.’

  The phone call went dead. Nancy held the handset and imagined her mother crying in her front room or the garden, just quickly, before wiping her eyes and pushing it all back down again. That’s what she’d seen before she left, that’s what she’d seen in her mind during every phone call.

  She heard a voice and put the phone back to her ear.

  ‘The other person has cleared. The other person has cleared. The other person has cleared.’

  Nancy put the phone back and placed it back on the table next to the same oriental vase with the same silk flowers and peacock feathers next to the same grey phone and small lamp that had always been there. The Bakelite door handles and finger-plates, white on the hall side and black on the room side. Empty locks with swinging covers to stop spying eyes, all the keys lost except the one for the best room. The same house that it had always been. And different.

  She pushed up from the floor, leaned back against the stairs and looked up at the skylight. She saw the thick banisters and could almost hear small footsteps avoiding the squeaky boards, hugging the dark corners. Bernadette had been the braver, had never said no to anything. Nancy had been egged on by this knowledge time and again to try harder, do more, fear less. She could follow in her path and Bernie would still think that Nancy was the leader. Surely it had been both of them together giving each other the confidence to try everything? But now Bernie and her mother were making it entirely Nancy’s responsibility.

  She heard movement in the lobby and the parlour and ran upstairs. Her hand was on the handle to her bedroom when she noticed Bernie’s door was open and the room quiet. She looked around and then went in there instead. She wouldn’t be long. Someone was bound to come up soon.

  From the way clothes were thrown on the floor and beds it was clear Adrian was sleeping in the single, Bernie and the girls in the double bed. She was pleased by this. It was still a bed for girls to whisper in at night and make unsuitable plans.

  Nancy saw that Jesus with the glowing heart was still hanging above the headrest, solemn Mary was still on the mantelpiece. She’d imagined that Bernie would have hidden them somewhere out of sight. She walked to the fireplace and sat on the bed. This had been Bernie’s side and she had envied it during the day, and then been grateful at night that she was that little bit further away to the gaping hole in the wall, the shadowy chimney. One night a bird had become stuck inside and sent soot ghosting around the room. Nancy had screamed. Bernie had covered her mouth and frozen upright. Nancy had teased Bernie about it later, about how it was a banshee trying to get in, even though they’d both seen Agatha pull the dead bird out in the morning, her arm blackened and her dress made grey by the ash. Nancy didn’t look but Bernie did, and it was only then that she cried. She’d got into Florence’s bed for a few nights after that until Nancy refused to go to bed at all because she didn’t want to be closest to the chimney and whatever might come down it.

  Nancy looked at the single bed. Bernie had often ended up with Florence when she was upset or scared. She’d always thought of her and Bernie being much closer than Bernie and Florence, but when it came down to it she suspected Florence was Bernie’s favourite. And Bernie was Mum’s favourite as a child, with her blue eyes and infectious laugh that triggered something in everyone, except Agatha. And there, behind her, Nancy had been pushing her, provoking her to create new boundaries and new levels of naughtiness that she could hide behind.

&nbs
p; She stood up and noticed the small enamel pot still on the mantelpiece beside Mary. She lifted the lid to see half a dozen tiny shells, the ones that Bernie was so good at finding. She lifted one out but couldn’t tell if they’d been found last week or thirty years ago. Some things didn’t age.

  She touched the bell push on the wall next to the fireplace and turned to leave. Bernie made her jump.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  Nancy thought of the shells, the bird, the nights of whispering.

  ‘I don’t know really. Thinking about what things were like, before.’

  Bernie closed the door, ‘Before what?’

  Nancy walked to the window. ‘Before. When we were small. This room is one of my strongest memories but we can’t have spent that much time in here. We were always outside.’ She looked down the drive. ‘I still expect to see Bruce.’

  Bernie sat on the end of the single bed and said nothing.

  ‘Remember how we’d feed him Sugar Puffs in the parlour? That must have been terrible for his teeth. And he stank, greasy like a sheep, but it didn’t bother us at all.’ Nancy rubbed her hands, thinking of how she could roll off his dirt in ribbons, but not the smell.

  Bernie pointed down. ‘Why do you let Hurley out by himself?’

  ‘He’s fourteen. He can’t walk around where we live. There’s nowhere to walk to and he hasn’t got any friends to visit. I like it that he wants to.’

  ‘There are murderers here, bodies right here.’

  Nancy watched her rub her hands against each other. What would happen if Bernie fell into madness again? Would Adrian wait for her or take her children?

  ‘Bern, everything’s fine. Hurley’s quite safe.’

  ‘He got away with it again and again because no-one listened and no-one saw and no-one said.’

  ‘Bern, Dad didn’t do anything. You have to accept that.’

  Bernie snapped round. ‘Not him. Tommy.’

  The sound of footsteps on the stairs made them both jump. Erin and Maeve ran in, slammed the door open and then stopped when they saw Nancy. Nancy looked at Bernie. Her face had changed, become relaxed and normal.

  ‘Everything all right, girls?’

  Nancy walked past the girls and noticed them edge away from her. She started shaking as she got to her bedroom. She lay down and stared at the ceiling. She felt around Tommy’s image, dark hair and blue eyes, always in dark blue jeans. He’d been kind to Nancy, but she remembered being anxious around him too. But then, she usually had been anxious around boys she fancied. He was older, too old than would be normal now to be spending time with a girl of eleven, twelve, but not a murderer. Not him.

  Elian came in and closed the door. Nancy bolted upright.

  ‘Jesus! Don’t creep up on me.’

  He looked confused. ‘I didn’t.’

  ‘Sorry.’ She covered her face. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘I think Bernie might be having another breakdown. She’s talking about bodies. She’s going to start accusing someone else, of murder this time. I don’t know what to do. Should I phone someone?’

  ‘Just talk to Adrian. If anyone will know she’s in trouble, it’s him.’

  She nodded. ‘You’re right.’

  But she knew she couldn’t talk to Adrian about it.

  15

  Then

  On the roof of the kitchen extension, a cold, big larder where the turkey was always left, no feathers but head still on, there were two kittens. We were desperate to coax them down. Donn was at the kitchen table, talking to Sister Agatha. If he caught our eye he would point at the kittens and shake his head. We put our heads down, walked over to Bruce and carefully ignored the kittens until we were sure he’d looked away again.

  Then we made squeaky noises and clicked our fingers together and did everything but try and pull them down by their tails.

  ‘It’s your fault,’ said Nancy, ‘you’re being too noisy. Just let me do it.’

  I stood still. I wanted to stroke them more.

  ‘Stand over there.’ She pointed to the garage doors. I took a small step backwards, then another.

  Nancy had no more luck than we’d had together and I was glad. She would never have let me have a go. Donn rapped on the window and signalled for her to go to the garage doors. She stood beside me and glared at him. The kittens stayed where they were.

  Bruce was also unhappy about this and more persistent in distracting us than Donn. While the sulky, squealing kittens ignored us, he sat at our feet waiting for a sign that we still loved him. I gave in first, sat on the back doorstep and he came over. With a relieved sigh he flipped himself onto his back, two legs in the air, and closed his eyes. I began to tickle his tummy, his chest, back to his tummy where I found that bit that made his legs shake. It always made me feel that he was laughing. The fur underneath was softer than the wiry fur on his back, but it felt just as greasy. There were lumps of mud hanging from the softest fur at the top of his legs.

  I paused to watch Nancy and he lifted his head. It was all right, there were still two kittens on the roof and none in her arms. I went back to Bruce and he laid his head back down.

  Donn had given up telling us that Bruce was a working dog and not a pet. He’d had to accept that, for six weeks in the summer, Bruce was both. He never said Bruce might bite like the cows or the sheep or the pigs. I didn’t believe him, not really, but even my mum backed him up on that one, which she didn’t always. I hadn’t stroked the pigs, and couldn’t get anywhere near the sheep, only the cow and her calf in their special barn. I didn’t know why they weren’t in a field, like the other cows. Donn said they were a special kind of cow, but I would have thought that meant they needed a special kind of field. Maybe he was scared they’d be stolen if someone spotted them. Maybe they glowed in the dark.

  I’d stopped again, without realising. Bruce was looking hopeful. I swapped hands.

  ‘They’re not coming down,’ I said. ‘You know what it’s like at Mary’s house.’ We had chased the cats in her yard for years and never, ever caught one. You had to be sure to chase the small ones because the adult ones were actually really scary, and sometimes didn’t even run but just hissed and stared you out.

  Nancy had been thinking about her response. I could tell she was trying it out on me before Donn.

  ‘But if the kittens don’t come down, Bern, they’ll starve.’

  ‘Donn got them to kill the mice. He probably won’t feed them anyway.’ I got upset when I said that and put my head down so she couldn’t see. Bruce’s leg was shaking. After this he might want a treat, even though this was absolutely not allowed. He loved them, but everyone always wondered how the Sugar Puffs emptied so quickly. Nancy knew. Sometimes we’d give him one handful each, so he liked her as much as he liked me. Sometimes, when it was both of us and we thought it was cold, we’d coax him into the house and sit by the fire. We usually got caught when we did that, but Mum wasn’t ever that cross, only Donn and Sister Agatha.

  Nancy had come up with another plan.

  ‘When they leave the kitchen, you go in and get some ham or chicken from the fridge, Bern.’

  ‘You do it,’ I said. ‘My hands smell of dog now.’

  ‘You can wash them.’

  I could, but I knew how long it took, and how much soap, to get the greasy smell of work out of my fingers. Hours afterwards, when I lifted a fork to my mouth, I’d still get a stink of Bruce. I didn’t mind, but I was sure the grumpy kittens would.

  ‘Even if you catch one it’ll just scratch you,’ I said.

  ‘Not if I feed it.’

  ‘And when we come back, they won’t remember you. Cats aren’t like dogs.’ I didn’t know if Bruce really remembered me or just looked happy and hopeful whenever anyone smaller than an adult turned up. But I thought he did. Dogs are clever. You’d never find a cat herding sheep or barking at cars. Not that there was much point to that, unless you were a burglar. Yes, Bruce was an expe
rt sheep herding, burglar scaring dog, and that’s why I didn’t mind smelling like him. Not really.

  Mum opened the parlour window and called us in. ‘There’s someone here to see you. Wash your hands first.’

  I couldn’t guess who we’d have to wash to meet, unless it was a priest, but they were always in the best room. In the front room was Auntie Beth with a blanket.

  ‘Meet your new cousin, Sinead.’

  Auntie Beth held a blanket towards us. Nancy peered into it and made a fake smile. I was more worried about what I would see and bobbed forward for a quick look.

  ‘Careful, Bernadette.’

  She pulled the baby away and made me sit down. When I was suitably pinned in with cushions she slowly placed the baby in my arms. Nancy started to back out of the room.

  Beth saw her. ‘Hold on, Nancy, your turn next.’

  Beth hovered next to me. I tried not to look down, to just hold the thing and not wake it so all its holes opened up. It moved its head and the thought of spotting a little pointed ear was nearly too much, but I had to know. I looked. A wrinkly face with small pouty mouth. It had long eyelashes and a splatter of dark hair on its head.

  ‘Does it have a tail?’ I asked.

  Beth looked confused. ‘No, Bernadette. And it’s not an it, she’s a girl.’

  I thought that girl mice had tails as well, but I nodded as if I understood.

  ‘I’ve had enough now.’

  Beth looked relieved and lifted the vague, airy weight from my arms. She called Nancy over and settled her in the same rigid position. She took up her hovering position, hands half extended.

  ‘I am twelve,’ said Nancy. ‘You don’t need to watch me like I’m a baby.’

  Beth backed away and sat on the settee next to my mother. Florence was curled on her lap, unsure about this new pet.

  I stood by the side of Nancy’s chair and had another look.

  I whispered in her ear, ‘It doesn’t look much like a mouse, Nancy. I think they’ve been given the wrong baby.’

  Nancy bit her lip and then started to shake with giggles. Beth jumped up and took the baby back.