The Insect Rosary

by Sarah Armstrong

  Then

  I was given the job of making afters for tomorrow by Sister Agatha. I wasn’t happy about being so close to Cassie’s room but couldn’t get out of it. And it was my favourite. At home I always begged to make the jelly. I loved the feeling of breaking off each slippery cube and dropping it into the bowl. One always got sneaked back to my mouth, and I had to chew it too quickly so Sister Agatha didn’t notice.

  She brought the boiled kettle over to fill the bowl and I stirred until the cubes were cherry globes and then peas and then sherbet pips. I wiped my hands on my jeans but it didn’t quite get rid of the film of strawberry. I tasted a finger, but only the smell was still there.

  When I went back through Catriona had just arrived and we were sent up to bed.

  ‘Second visit in a week,’ muttered Sister Agatha.

  Nancy tried to argue to stay up later but Mum wasn’t going to shift, even after Catriona took Nancy’s side. She didn’t argue for me. I don’t think she even looked at me to say goodnight, but Nancy got a promise of some makeup.

  ‘We’ll see,’ said Mum.

  Catriona tossed her thick, brushed hair and made a sad face at Nancy. Her lipstick glistened. Nancy lowered her eyes and punched me on the way up the stairs.

  ‘It’s all your fault. I’m sick of babysitting you.’

  Nancy got ready first and by the time I’d finished brushing my teeth she was in bed reading.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘I got it from the drawers.’ She turned the cover towards me. Jaws. She was actually reading it.

  I lay back on my pillow and pulled the sheets and blankets up to my neck. Nancy had passed some marker I couldn’t see. Catriona liked her. She was ready to read scary books. I tipped my head back to look up at an upside down Jesus with glowing heart and sighed.

  ‘Shut up,’ she said.

  ‘Can I read it after you?’

  ‘It’s way too scary for you.’

  The end of the sunshine, filtered through leaves and twigs, was making the curtains glow. I could hear distant words from the kitchen and the flicking of pages. Florence shifted in her bed.

  Sometimes the dusk was full of the shudder of shotguns. The dawn too. Rooks roosted in the trees in the front of this farm and every other, and they were bad, we were told. Like dark, evil spirits, they would peck out the eyes of the new-born lambs and eat them. I hated that image, the small boiled eggs of eyes leaving bloody holes in the heads of the fluffy lambs. We were never here for lambing, but I felt as if I’d seen it. The sudden bangs in the evening made me jump and in the morning they woke me with a jolt. Mum hated the noise of the rooks coming home in the evening and cawing at each other across the treetops. I didn’t mind it like I minded the shooting. After we heard them we’d hunt for the cartridges in the grass and leaves and sometimes we’d find live ones. Mum or Sister Agatha would take them off us and tell us off for picking them up, and then we’d look for more.

  ‘Nancy?’

  She didn’t answer.

  ‘Do you want to listen from the stairs?’

  ‘No,’ she said, as if it was the silliest thing I’d yet come up with.

  I closed my eyes. A low sound made me open them in time to see lights crossing the ceiling. Bruce barked a couple of times and I imagined the reckless race he ran against the car wheels. My heart began to beat fast and I raised myself to look at Nancy.

  ‘Is Tommy coming?’

  She shrugged, but put her book on her chest to listen. The car went quiet and the door closed with a dull slam. Then the footsteps, kicking up stones, came to the doorstep and the front door opened. We never heard the knock from up here, but he always did that. I lay down again and pulled up the sheet. The kitchen door opening let voices out. They were suddenly quiet and a number of footsteps went to the front door which closed with a bang.

  They were out the front now, kicking stones towards the car. Nancy picked up her book again but I knew she wasn’t reading it. I listened for a sign that they were leaving. It went on too long.

  I peeled back the blankets and began to creep towards the window.

  ‘Get back into bed,’ hissed Nancy.

  ‘You just don’t want Catriona to see you.’

  I reached the curtains and began to edge away the material from the far left corner. It was quite dark in the sky, but the light from the front room lit them up – Tommy, Donn, Catriona and, a few steps back from them, my Mum stroking Bruce’s head. They were looking at something in the boot of Tommy’s car. Their voices were low and I couldn’t really catch anything. Tommy, as usual, was doing most of the talking. At one point he took something long from the back seat of the car and hit it into the boot really hard.

  My mother shouted, ‘No!’

  I couldn’t hear the impact so thought it might be something soft. Then he pulled it out again, leant on it and I recognised it as a shotgun.

  Tommy walked up to my mother and spoke quietly. He turned away and slammed the boot shut. I looked to see what my mother was doing and saw that she was looking straight at me. She looked away. I let the curtain slip back into place and ran back to bed.

  I let Nancy pretend to read for a bit longer, breathing slowly to calm my heart down. She flicked another page.

  ‘Who’s out there, then?’

  I turned onto my side, away from her. ‘Go and see for yourself.’

  I felt like crying. What if it was Ryan? I thought Ryan was in Cassie’s room, but maybe Mum had let Tommy take him, which was bad, but he was alive, and that might be good. But if Mum had let him that would be the worst. Maybe Catriona had smiled and told her that she was brilliant too and gave her lipstick to stain her mouth. Mum wouldn’t do that. She wasn’t as silly as Nancy.

  They were still outside. There was a bang, a shotgun. It didn’t sound right outside but, from the way the blood was pumping inside my ears, I couldn’t be sure. Nancy shook my shoulder and I sat up.

  ‘Who is outside?’

  ‘You’ll tell Tommy if I say anything, you said so.’

  ‘I won’t, I swear.’

  I lay back down. I hadn’t seen what it was or who it was. She wouldn’t be able to either. But I thought if I said it anyway it could be the thing that made her stay away from Tommy.

  ‘You have to actually swear not to tell Tommy this time, Nancy. And if you break it I will never forgive you, not ever.’

  She paused, but then she said it. ‘I swear.’

  ‘Tommy put Ryan in the boot. I saw him. Definitely.’ I leaned across, ‘And he’s got a shotgun.’

  Nancy bit her lip. ‘Turn the light off. Quick!’

  I turned it off and we lay side by side, listening for everything outside, hoping it would stay outside. I began to believe that I’d actually seen Ryan for real.

  ‘I told you,’ I said. ‘He’s been in Cassie’s room all this time.’

  ‘It can’t be him,’ whispered Nancy. ‘He left. He was only here for a couple of hours and he left. Mum said.’

  I didn’t feel like arguing. I was just glad she was talking to me.

  I wondered where Sister Agatha was. She could have been standing on the doorstep, I wouldn’t have seen her, but I became convinced that she was standing outside our room. We weren’t the only ones who knew which steps made a sound and which didn’t. I wanted to sit up and look for feet shadows under the door, but I didn’t want to see that they were there, only that they weren’t there. So I didn’t look at all. After a while the car started up, but it only sounded as if he drove through the archway and paused. There was the loud squeak of the gate into the yard and then it drove off again.

  No-one ever used that gate to drive through. The tractors always came up from the bottom, next to the silo. I didn’t think it even opened more than the width of a person.

  I felt sick. I wanted Bruce. I’d let him into the lobby and the kitchen, but never any further. I wanted him to lie down here in the bed, or I’d lie next to him on the floor next to the fireplace that
never had a fire in it. I bundled some blanket into my arms and made believe until I could feel his doggy breath on my face.

  28

  Now

  ‘There’s really nothing you can do to help,’ said Bernie.

  ‘But it looks fun. We’re bored.’

  ‘Not bored enough,’ said Bernie. ‘It’s raining. You hate the rain.’

  ‘No, we don’t!’

  Nancy watched the to and fro of the argument knowing full well, as her children clearly did, that Bernie would back down. She admired their persistence and Bernie’s self-delusion. Adrian and Elian didn’t look keen on an afternoon in the rain and said nothing. Hurley said nothing but Nancy knew it was because he didn’t want to ruin their chances. He was no good at arguing.

  ‘I think,’ said Bernie, ‘that you lot should go off in the car and do something fun, while me and Nancy just do some tidying up for Donn.’

  ‘No!’

  ‘You can tidy inside.’

  ‘No!’

  Hurley cleared his throat. ‘Please can I help?’

  Bernie covered up her surprise pretty quickly. ‘Sure,’ she said, caught off guard.

  And that was that.

  ‘What are we going to tell the children?’ Nancy asked.

  ‘We’ll get them to tidy up and we can get a long piece of metal and work out where it’s buried. It’s big, right?’

  Nancy nodded. ‘You know it’s probably long gone, don’t you? They won’t have left anything after all this time.’

  ‘So we don’t need to say anything.’

  The children and Adrian found boots and coats and were outside first. Nancy was surprised by Hurley’s urgency. Elian stayed inside for a while and then came out and stood on the side lines for as long as possible, but the rain was too cold to stand still for long. He soon joined Adrian and Bernie in dragging the large pieces of metal and wood to the sides of the square.

  Nancy told Hurley to look for some shears in the garage to cut back the grass and weeds. He ducked through the archway before she could stop him and came back with a scythe and a rusty pair of shears that he soon gave up on. Erin and Maeve had the job of moving whatever he cut to the gate of Bryn’s field.

  ‘Can’t we just feed it straight to the sheep?’ asked Maeve.

  ‘No, there could be weeds that are poisonous to them,’ said Hurley.

  Nancy didn’t know how he could know this. Maybe he’d spent more time with Donn than she realised. She looked round to all four gates but Donn wasn’t there. She went over to the others, nearly snapping her ankle twice, and helped them to clear the side nearest the silo around the immovable tractor.

  Elian’s jacket wasn’t even water resistant and she could see him getting increasingly grumpy. She took off her jacket.

  ‘I’m too hot,’ she said, ‘you wear it.’

  He shook his head but the next time she looked he had it on, zipped and hood up, presumably over his already wet clothes. She was so warm that the occasional trickle of rain down her spine felt quite pleasant.

  The rain was constant but not too heavy. It made a slight sound on the roofs and metal scrap, a rustling in the grass. She looked over to the kids. Hurley was sweeping the scythe, the girls either side of him. She took a breath to shout at him, but Bernie put her hand out.

  ‘Don’t. He’s fine.’

  ‘It’s dangerous. They’re standing very close.’

  ‘That’s their lookout.’

  Bernie turned back to the tyre she was rolling. Nancy watched her. She couldn’t get a handle on Bernie’s rules. The girls were never unsupervised, but she was willing for them to learn a lesson from a scythe.

  ‘He’s very careful,’ Bernie called, coming back. ‘He thinks about things.’

  Nancy tried not to look surprised. No-one said that about Hurley. They said he was too rough, too angry, too slow, too erratic.

  ‘If you’re just going to stand there . . .’ Bernie was waiting with one end of a plank lifted. Nancy took the other end. When they had come back for the next plank Bernie stamped on the ground. It sounded metallic.

  ‘There’s something buried here,’ she whispered. ‘Some kind of container.’

  Nancy shuddered.

  Bernie dropped her end of the plank and listened for the bang again. She raised her arms, stretching her spine. ‘Tea break!’

  Bernie and Elian went inside to make drinks. The children carried on. The girls were always together, she realised. Not just next to each other, but a team, supporting each other. She and Bernie had always been in competition, trying to get each other in trouble, trying to seem the best. She’d been truly horrible to Bernie, even before that summer. Nancy knew she owed her, but it could be more than she had to give.

  Nancy went up to the barn with the blue door and tried to open it again. It was still wedged closed with age and rain. The last time it had opened may have been the final time.

  Adrian said, ‘I think it’s a bit late to be looking for shelter.’ His jacket was waterproof but he’d unzipped it and the hood was back. The water on his face could have been rain or sweat but he didn’t look tired.

  ‘I can’t believe they’re all still standing, these buildings,’ she said. ‘Once the rain got in, you’d think that was it.’

  ‘They’re stone,’ he said. ‘The roof and windows will go, but there’ll be here for centuries.’

  Like the standing stones, thought Nancy, our monuments.

  The others came back and they all found a tyre to sit on.

  Nancy sipped the tea as the rain dripped into it. ‘Watery.’

  Elian sipped his. ‘I miss coffee. What this place needs is a good Starbucks.’

  Bernie snorted, ‘And a McDonalds? And maybe a drive-in movie? And,’ she added, ‘God, we’ve adopted everything else anyway. Except the drive-ins. Wrong kind of rain.’

  ‘It does rain in the US.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Bernie, ‘when it’s supposed to.’

  ‘There’s hardly a monsoon season.’

  ‘Just a tornado season.’

  ‘Not in Michigan.’

  ‘The thunderstorms are amazing though,’ said Nancy. ‘The houses shake like they’re going to collapse.’

  ‘Because they’re made of wood. Like the Americans have never read the Three Little Pigs.’

  Nancy laughed. ‘Ridiculous, isn’t it?’

  Elian smiled uncomfortably. ‘Well, ours hasn’t fallen over yet.’

  Bernie and Nancy spoke at the same time. ‘Ten thousand Elvis impersonators . . .’

  The girls were squatting under the archway. Hurley was still harvesting the weeds.

  ‘Shouldn’t we tell them they’re not allowed under there?’ asked Nancy.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because we were always told that.’

  ‘And has it fallen down yet?’

  Nancy shrugged. ‘A monument.’

  Bernie leaned over to Elian, ‘Made of stone, you see.’

  He half smiled and put his mug down on the path. He wandered off to survey their work.

  ‘Doesn’t like feeling he’s the butt, does he?’ said Bernie.

  Nancy said, ‘Americans are like that. Like to take themselves seriously. They really believe that they’re misunderstood superheroes. It’s weird. And I know it’s a big country but, I swear, one year the only news I saw about the UK was a farmer electrocuting his herd of cows. All year!’

  ‘I never heard about that. Maybe they made it up,’ said Bernie. ‘What keeps you there?’

  ‘They do.’ Nancy pointed to Hurley and then hesitated when she looked at Elian.

  Bernie raised her eyebrows. ‘Would you ever come back?’

  ‘Not on my own.’

  Adrian joined Elian.

  ‘Do they get on?’ Nancy asked.

  ‘I think so. Don’t you?’

  ‘I have no idea what they think of each other. I’ve got so used to people being polite rather than honest.’

  ‘It’s like that he
re too.’

  ‘It’s different there. It’s an art, saying just the right thing for how it sounds. I’m terrible at it. Sometimes, if people ask me how I am, I tell them.’

  Bernie laughed, ‘Social suicide.’

  ‘Not in detail. Just like, tired or not very well. And they seize up because then they feel committed to hearing all about it. And I don’t want to tell them all about it, I just want them to know I’m not great, fine or super.’

  Bernie lowered her voice, ‘You don’t have to stay there.’

  Nancy stood up. ‘I feel my options are limited.’ She peeled the t-shirt from her back and shook it. ‘Come on, then.’ She turned back to Bernie and then followed her gaze. Tommy stood at the gate nearest them, next to the silo. He had his arms crossed on the top bar and one foot resting on the lower one. A dog sat by his feet, head lowered, watching.

  Nancy whispered, ‘What do we do?’

  Bernie opened and closed her mouth. Nancy looked around but everyone else was busy looking at other things, normal things.

  Nancy said, ‘We have to say something.’

  Bernie shook her head. Nancy, stomach turning, walked around the rubble to the gate.

  ‘What do you want? I seem to remember being turfed off your farm.’

  ‘But I consider this as part of my farm and I wonder what you’re doing to it.’

  Nancy took a breath and lifted her chin. ‘We’re clearing the rubbish and sorting it out for recycling. You can get money for scrap metal and we thought Donn would appreciate it.’

  ‘And maybe my agreed price took that into account. And maybe I’ll have to lower it. Considerably.’

  Nancy crossed her arms to try to control the shivering. ‘Right, well we can leave it here if you really want it.’

  ‘You’re looking a bit cold, there.’

  ‘I’m fine.’ Nancy held his gaze.

  ‘There’s been talk of bodies, would you believe?’

  Nancy raised her eyebrows. ‘Really?’

  ‘And police. Now, that interests me and it interests my family. If you liked I could give you a few phone numbers. My brother is in the police. So are two uncles, three nieces and one of my nephews. And that doesn’t even start to cover it. Any of them, any time, would be happy to come and have a wee chat with you. You, or Hurley, over there.’