The Insect Rosary

by Sarah Armstrong

  ‘You’re not going?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘Where are you going to go? After it’s sold.’

  He shrugged, ‘My cousin still has a small farm. His wife died. Not so much to do and a bit of company.’ He drummed his fingers on the wheels. ‘It’ll do.’

  ‘Do you have to leave now, soon?’

  ‘Have to? In a way.’ He looked into the parlour.

  ‘Is he making you? Is it something to do with Tommy?’

  ‘No.’ He turned to her. ‘And don’t you be saying otherwise.’

  It began to rain hard, hitting the puddles with such force that the water splashed straight out of them. The guttering along the kitchen extension dribbled out right in front of the window and joined the brown stain which worked its way up from the cracked concrete. The metal circle topping the well made the occasional clanging noise as if being pelted by gravel.

  ‘Time to go in,’ said Donn.

  19

  Then

  Nancy kept disappearing. I’d checked all over the house and in the front, right down to the gate. Mum and Agatha thought she was with me. I checked the yard and then went down to the hay loft. She never went there without me. Sometimes I thought that she really did believe it was full of rats. She liked me to go in first and always stayed near the open edge. Today she was sitting as far in as I’d ever seen her, legs dangling off a bale, and she wasn’t on her own.

  ‘You’re growing up into quite a lady,’ said Tommy. ‘The boys must be chasing you.’

  He was leaning against a stack of hay, pulling strands out with his fingers. Most he dropped but one he placed in her hair. She moved away from him a little, but not much.

  I was going to run up to her and stand beside her when I realised that she wasn’t scared. She was smiling. Not a proper smile, like she found something funny or nice, but a smile that she gave to boys. Boys that she liked.

  His hair had hay in it and looked messed up. Despite the hay in Nancy’s hair, it still looked brushed, still in a ponytail. He leaned towards her to talk quietly so that she had to lean towards him too.

  ‘Your Mammy probably wouldn’t let you come out tonight, no?’

  Nancy shook her head.

  ‘Shall we ask her?’

  ‘No, don’t do that!’ Nancy looked around and saw me standing by the gate. She hesitated for a moment and then decided to ignore me. I thought she got more cocky after that. I made her feel safe.

  ‘Would you be ashamed to be seen with me?’

  Tommy’s mock annoyance made her do this stupid giggle.

  ‘I thought you didn’t like me,’ she said.

  ‘I like you, all right. It’s that bratty wee sister that gets on my nerves.’

  Her smile faltered and her eyes slid over to me. He looked too.

  ‘Well, look who it is.’

  I cleared my throat. ‘Nancy, Mum says to come in.’

  Tommy turned to Nancy. ‘Does she always spoil your fun like that?’

  ‘Yes.’ Nancy slid off the bale. ‘I’d better go in though.’

  Tommy took her hand, bowed and kissed her fingers. ‘See you soon. I’ll let you know about the car, OK?’

  Nancy blushed and rushed past me towards the house. To me he lifted two fingers to his head and saluted. I ran after her.

  In the lobby we stopped to catch our breath and I stood in front of the kitchen door.

  ‘What are you doing?’ I asked. ‘Why were you talking to him again?’

  Nancy stroked her hair, catching the piece of hay sticking out. ‘I thought Mum wanted me.’ She pulled out the hay and held on to it.

  ‘Well, she doesn’t.’ I crossed my arms. ‘You’re not allowed to talk to him.’

  ‘He’s Donn’s friend. He talks to him. He can’t think he’s so bad.’

  She kicked off her wellies, keeping her toes on the heel of each boot. I had to use my hands because my boots were a bit too small but I had to wait for Nancy to grow out of hers before I got the bigger ones.

  I stood by the sink. ‘I’ll tell Mum.’

  She stood close to me and put one finger up to my chest. ‘Oh no, you won’t, Bernadette. He’s promised to teach me to drive and you’re not going to say anything.’

  I slapped her finger away. ‘That’s stupid. You can’t, you’re not allowed.’

  ‘What’s it to you? If he thinks I can, then I can.’ She looked smug. ‘He says I’m to keep an eye on you.’

  ‘You won’t tell him anything?’

  ‘Bernadette, you’re such a child. You make up stories and think they’ll scare me. A blanket means nothing.’

  She opened the kitchen door and swept through it. She’d left wet sock prints on the floor. I could hear her talking to Mum but I stayed out in the lobby. She knew that Tommy didn’t like us and I couldn’t understand why she believed he’d changed his mind. She wasn’t that old that she could believe he was interested, but she seemed to believe that he would let her drive. I couldn’t imagine Nancy behind the wheel of a car. She was nearly five foot, but she wouldn’t be able to use the pedals. Or maybe she could. Maybe here, in the middle of nowhere, children did drive so they could use the tractors. Maybe it was normal. But I couldn’t tell Mum without ruining everything. I had to let her know some other way.

  I heard Donn in the yard, talking to Bruce, and went back outside. His head was inside the open bonnet of the car and it was starting to drizzle.

  ‘Donn, how old do you have to be to drive here?’

  He didn’t look up from the engine. ‘Same age as where you’re from.’

  ‘So, seventeen?’

  He didn’t answer. He often seemed to think that questions weren’t worth answering.

  ‘What about tractors?’

  ‘I’m not letting you on my tractor.’

  ‘I didn’t ask to go on your tractor. I asked how old you’d have to be.’

  He stood up with the oil dipstick in one hand.

  ‘On private land you can drive at any age you like. The law only applies to the public roads.’ He slid the stick back in to the engine. ‘And it’s still a no.’

  I walked up to him so we were standing next to each other. The engine was black and sticky with grease and there was a smell of petrol stations. I looked at him and waited for him to look at me so that I could speak as quietly as I could. He looked, eyebrows raised.

  ‘You know Tommy –’

  He held up a finger. ‘Don’t.’

  ‘Don’t what?’

  ‘Just don’t.’

  ‘But –’

  He shook his head and I crossed my arms. Donn unclipped the stick holding up the bonnet, made me stand back and let it fall into place. He got into the car and whistled for Bruce who jumped over him and into the passenger seat. He backed out of the yard, turned and sped off down the lane.

  Maybe it wouldn’t be too bad if Nancy was just to drive down the driveway. Maybe even she could make a couple of turns without crashing the car into a rhododendron. But I had a feeling that Tommy wouldn’t do it in the drive where Mum could see him. He’d take Nancy off somewhere and then what?

  I was tired of Nancy ignoring me and so bored that when Agatha got her shopping bags together I begged to go with her. I couldn’t think of anything to do except stroke Bruce’s tummy, but he was still off with Donn.

  ‘I’m bored,’ I said to Mum.

  ‘Not bored enough or you’d have found something to do.’

  It was always the stupidest thing she said, but she said it all the time.

  ‘But I am bored. Can I go with her?’

  ‘What did she say?’

  ‘That I had to ask you.’ I hated it when you had to go from adult to adult, all asking what the other adults had said.

  ‘Go on, then. Just don’t be a nuisance.’

  I ran to catch Agatha. ‘She says I can.’

  ‘Right, get in the back then.’

  She never let me sit in the front. I wanted to ask her about Donn and
Tommy, and Nancy and Tommy, but we drove the short distance to the village in silence. The engine was making strange squealing noises and I thought maybe Agatha was listening to that.

  She parked up in the main street and picked up her handbag and shopping bags from the front seat. She turned round to stop me undoing my seat belt.

  ‘You can stay in the car,’ she said.

  ‘Why? I thought you were shopping and I was helping?’

  ‘I am shopping and you are helping. If you stay in the car, no-one will put a bomb underneath it.’ She smiled thinly, reached across and locked the passenger and back doors, closed her door and locked the car.

  I wondered if she was joking, although this had never happened before, and I watched her walk away, expecting her to come back for me. She went inside the butcher’s and that was it. I was guarding the car. I looked across the road to the police station, barricaded and greyer than all the other buildings. Men with machine guns walked up and down the road outside it. I couldn’t tell if their uniforms were army or police. I wanted to watch them, but didn’t want them to see me watching in case that was suspicious, so I tried to look around in a natural way. That gave me a sore neck and I shrank back in my seat. I didn’t know why anyone would want to put a bomb under the car anyway. I wasn’t important, the car was rubbish and Sister Agatha was partly a nun. Maybe it was because she’d parked next to the police station, but she’d done that on purpose. She could have parked up the road and I could have got out.

  Then I realised she just didn’t want me with her. Sister Agatha had secrets. That was quite an exciting thought, but it didn’t quite ring true. Why would she bring me here if she didn’t want me?

  Sister Agatha didn’t tend to talk about the stuff going on, other than to say ‘the Troubles’ occasionally and shake her head. I hadn’t heard Donn say anything either, but he was friends with Tommy who said horrible things about the English all the time. But now he’d started thinking that Nancy was brilliant or beautiful or worse. I didn’t know what could be worse, but I was sure it would come to me.

  Nothing made sense as I sat in the back of that car, left to see off the bombers and police and everyone else by myself. I watched Sister Agatha go from the butcher’s into a couple more shops, deliberately missing out others with a turn of her head. She understood how it worked. She seemed to instinctively know who was what by how they looked or how they said certain words.

  Eventually she came back to the car.

  ‘Still in one piece?’

  I didn’t think that was funny, but she handed me a packet of salt and vinegar crisps so I shrugged and didn’t say anything.

  When she started the car this time the noise was even louder. The squealing carried on at the front, but something seemed to have come loose at the back and the exhaust roared. The soldier police all turned to look at us. I cringed in my seat. Sister Agatha stared back at them before doing the worst three point turn ever, which took about four minutes and the end of which actually made some people outside the shops clap.

  She roared off past the police station and back onto the road out of town. All the time she muttered to herself, but I didn’t catch a single word. I didn’t start to eat my crisps until we were on our road and then I ate them really quickly so I didn’t have to share them. I made a sharp corner with my nails and tipped the crumbs onto my mouth.

  Sister Agatha tutted. ‘Gluttony is a sin, you know.’

  Auntie Beth would have said to leave the crumbs for the fairies.

  Mum would have said to eat up everything because there were starving children.

  Dad would have stolen two crisps and eaten the crumbs, given a chance.

  Nancy would have said I’d get fat from eating one crisp and spotty from eating a whole packet.

  Everyone thinks they’re right. I just ate the crisps.

  20

  Now

  Nancy kept calm, like the books said. ‘Did you hit her?’

  Hurley held his clenched fists, like pollarded trees, by his sides and avoided eye contact. ‘No, I told you, I didn’t do anything!’

  ‘I’m just asking for your perspective, not accusing you.’ Nancy made sure her hands were loosely resting on her lap and not clenched. ‘You need to stop shouting now.’

  Hurley stood up and paced his bedroom. ‘You need to fuck off!’

  ‘OK. Time out.’ Nancy got up from his bed and closed the door behind her. She thought of all the things in the room she should have taken out. The statues, the mirror, the brick hard enamel hairbrush. All normal. All dangerous.

  Punishing Hurley was a tricky manoeuvre and one best left until he’d forgotten what had made him angry. But then those girls had their own responsibility for what had gone on and all they were getting was hair strokes and chocolate biscuits.

  Bernie was waiting outside her bedroom door. Maeve was still crying and she could hear Adrian comforting her.

  ‘Is that it?’ she said.

  ‘No,’ said Nancy, ‘he’s going to blow. I need to wait until later.’

  ‘Don’t you think that treating him like he’s different is counter-productive?’

  ‘I think that he really doesn’t like hearing people talk about him. He’s not deaf.’

  There was a bang from inside his room.

  ‘Let’s go downstairs,’ said Nancy.

  Nancy meant to go into the front room but walked straight out of the front door. She needed air. She needed to control her breathing.

  ‘So? Tell me what happened, Bernie.’ She walked down the drive.

  ‘We were watching TV –’

  ‘All of you? Hurley too?’

  Bernie spoke fast, leaving no gaps for interruptions. ‘I thought it would be a good way for him to bond with the girls. They’re all living here but completely separately, so I said he could watch with us. And before I knew what was happening, he’d hit Maeve.’

  ‘For no reason?’

  ‘Would a reason make it okay?’

  ‘I told you no TV. I told you no screens at all. You never listen. I told you how to handle him and you did exactly the opposite.’

  Nancy stopped at the gate and turned back towards the house. Bernie walked along the fence and leaned against it, her arms spread out and her hands holding onto it at either side.

  ‘I’ve spent enough time with parents to know that what they mean to achieve and how they act to achieve it isn’t necessarily what is best for the child. It’s much more about them.’ She leaned her head back to look up through the trees. Nancy positioned herself in front of her.

  ‘What does that mean? I’ve spent years going to a million different counsellors and they’re all like you. They all think that they’re the one with the only right answer, that if only I’d come to them first everything would have been fine. But they don’t fix it, they complicate it.’

  ‘Do you always refer to Hurley as it?’

  ‘I’m not referring to Hurley, I’m referring to the situation.’

  ‘Hurley’s situation?’

  ‘Look at me,’ said Nancy.

  Bernie lowered her head and crossed her arms. A breeze fluttered her hair forwards and she shook it back.

  ‘Don’t talk to me like I’m a case you can solve. I know that you know a lot about therapies but you don’t know a lot about Hurley.’

  Bernie tilted her head and smirked.

  ‘Yes, I know a lot about therapies,’ she mimicked. ‘Elian makes it quite clear most days how completely cool he is with the idea of spending time in a house with such severe mental health problems.’

  Nancy cringed. She should have known he couldn’t drop it. ‘I didn’t say it. Why are you speaking to me like that? You did have a lot of therapy. It isn’t my fault.’

  ‘Isn’t it?’

  Nancy crossed her arms. ‘No, it isn’t. All that stuff you said, like about Dad, that was all you.’

  ‘Oh, I’ve heard your thoughts on the subject from Elian, at length.’

  Nancy grippe
d her arms tighter.

  Bernie continued, ‘I expect he thinks he’s being open and healthy.’

  ‘He’s been in therapy too. People tend to be a little weird after that.’ Nancy let her arms fall. ‘Sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.’

  ‘It’s nothing I haven’t heard before,’ Bernie said, but she turned to look over the fence, across the road and the fields. ‘And it’s not unexpected from you. You never did stand up for me. You never said a thing.’

  ‘About what? And what was I supposed to stand up for? You destroyed any letter that arrived for me. You went through my stuff first and then everyone else’s. You lost it. You had it in for everybody. And then the stuff that the therapist made you come out with, no-one in their right mind could have supported you on that.’

  ‘You could have tried.’

  ‘Which bit? Oh, yes, the devil is definitely chasing her, doctor.’ She saw Bernie lower her head and softened her voice. ‘You know what it did to Dad. And you know what that did to Mum, and Florence and me. I know it was down to the therapist in a lot of ways, but it isn’t my fault. None of us could help you.’

  Bernie turned back. Her eyes weren’t full of tears as Nancy had expected, but her cheeks were flushed. Nancy hoped it was shame and pushed on.

  ‘Once you came out with stuff like that, really mad stuff, no-one could stand up for you.’

  Bernie took a couple of steps forward and Nancy saw that her hands were clenched into fists. ‘Before therapy, before all of that, before I was given memories that I can never shift now, whether they’re true or not, you told them I was a liar. You wouldn’t tell them about Tommy. You wouldn’t tell them about the driving, even. You made me look mad long before I was.’

  ‘I was twelve. There was nothing to tell anyway, it was all stupid stuff to get me into trouble.’

  ‘You should have got in trouble. I was ten. You were my sister, my big sister, and you could have stopped it all.’ She took another step and whispered, ‘It was your fault. You are not forgiven.’ She walked back to the drive and back towards the house.

  Nancy shouted after her, ‘Why are you here then? You hate me and you’ll never forgive me. Fine. You knew we were coming, so why did you come back now?’