The Insect Rosary

by Sarah Armstrong

  Nancy felt the rain run down her back. ‘I know your daughter talked to him. I know that’s how you know his name.’

  ‘Do you know there are some far flung people who believe you have power over someone just by knowing their name? And it’s true. Just imagine this.’ He leaned over a little further and dropped his voice. ‘You’re crossing the road. You’ve waited until there’s a space and it’s safe to cross. So off you trot. And you’re halfway across when someone shouts your name. Really shouts, and you know it’s just for you. Now, do you wait to look until you’re safely over the other side? You do not. You stop and look right then and for as long as that person shouts,’ he whispered, ‘they’ve got you.’

  Nancy shuddered.

  ‘Now some people are more easily led than others. And I hear that your boy, Hurley, over there, is, well . . .’

  ‘Is what?’

  Tommy smiled, straightened up and touched two fingers to his forehead, like a salute.

  ‘Is what?’ said Nancy.

  He turned and walked slowly towards the lane.

  ‘Is what, you coward?’ shouted Nancy.

  She felt hands on her shoulders and span round. Bernie was pale. Adrian, Elian and the children had already gone.

  ‘Let’s go in,’ Bernie said.

  Nancy nodded and let her lead the way around the debris which filled the path. Bernie stopped.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Look.’ Bernie pointed.

  It wasn’t white, more browny grey, but it was recognisably a bone. Nancy felt faint. Bernie knelt down in the mud and began to wipe the mud away. She took small handfuls and threw them behind her. Nancy held her arms across her chest as Bernie gently followed the line of the body. So many tiny bones, then larger ones, began to make a rib cage. Nancy felt sick. She turned away, focused on the blue door and the empty gate and the missing glass from the windows and the door to the first floor which had no reason to be there. She heard Bernie’s small cry above the blood rushing in her ears.

  Bernie was sitting back on her heels, her hands loose on her knees. Her head was bowed and she was crying quietly. Nancy forced herself to look down at the corpse.

  ‘It’s Bruce.’ Nancy knelt down too. Bruce, buried with the rocks and concrete and metal and bits of rubbish from decades of waste.

  ‘We’re not going to find anything, are we?’ said Bernie. ‘Nothing I can take away with me.’

  ‘I don’t think so.’ Nancy looked at the bones. ‘Are you going to be okay?’

  ‘I’ll have to be.’

  But the way Bernie looked at her made Nancy anxious.

  29

  Then

  The farm was a funny mix of old and really old. The thing that Donn went on about most was how right they’d been not to allow pylons onto the farmland, preserving the landscape and its value. My mother groaned when she remembered how long they’d waited for electricity to arrive as a result. Not quite in time for the moon landings, not that they had a telly to watch it on. That didn’t arrive until the seventies. And I thought waiting till 1980 for a colour telly was bad.

  ‘What did you do?’ I asked.

  ‘Read books and worked hard.’

  To get to go somewhere else, I thought. So many of them, their brothers and sisters and aunts and uncles, had left for other continents. I thought Ireland grew so many people that they had to fill up other countries. I liked it at the farm. To me it was a different continent from the south London suburb where I lived. We even had to take a boat to get here, like it was a million miles away.

  When Dad brought the car when he came to collect us we would be free to travel around the countryside. Dad showed us a different Ireland to the one we saw for those first weeks of the holiday. Where Mum would drive us to the seaside, or Sister Agatha might agree to an outing to churches with holy springs and wells, he might take us to the same places and their pagan springs and wells. He always had a compass with him and sometimes included it in the photos so he could orient himself with the maps at home.

  Nancy hated going to the stones, but I didn’t. The Giant’s Ring and the Giant’s Grave were places I could understand. One time I picked up the largest quartz stones from the driveway and made my own stone circle on the edge of the driveway, where I’d trimmed away the longer grass with the kitchen scissors. I took Mum’s camera from her suitcase and tried to take a close up but it was probably going to turn out blurry. Most small things I tried to photograph big turned out fuzzy blobs on a shiny new photo. Mum would pick up the packet from Boots and complain about the number of bad photos. I said she could always get me my own camera. She said I’d have to pay for them to be developed and she’d think about it. I waited, and used hers while I waited.

  Dad’s stones were bigger, much bigger than him sometimes. They would sit on top of each other, looking like strange airy houses. They didn’t look safe to me, but as long as he went in I would follow him. He would call them tombs but they weren’t anything like what I thought of as a tomb. Tombs were in churches with statues of sleeping dead people and metal fences around them to make sure no-one mistook them for seats. Or they were miniature houses in the biggest graveyards with roofs and doors even, but I didn’t want to think of who might want to use the doors. I could see how those house tombs looked a bit like his stone tombs, but I just thought of them as special quiet places. Usually we were the only people there. Sometimes they were circles of standing stones called things like Ossian’s grave and he encouraged us to sit and sketch them in the drizzle while he took photographs of them and sometimes measured them.

  The Giant’s Ring was Dad’s favourite and he used to complain, to me, to the air, that it should be as well known as Avebury. He also complained that I was usually the only one who had agreed to go. It was a bowl in the earth with steep sides and Dad liked to sit there and try to find evidence of holes where stones had been.

  If we weren’t out, finding stones, he was in the house, reading or drawing. He had so much he wanted to do that those last few days of the holiday when he’d arrived went past the quickest. They seemed quieter too. What I liked best was that he seemed to keep Tommy away. No-one even mentioned his name and I never had to listen out for his car in the dark. Books and stones and quiet and no Tommy.

  On our last holiday Dad had made tracings on greaseproof paper of some old maps he found in Coleraine library of the land where the farm now stood. He spent ages matching up rivers and tracks and then took out his pencil to find other markers to look for. The stones near the Coleraine road, the bridge that led to the village. He smiled as he found matches, getting closer and closer to where the farm had been built, until he arrived at the fields either side.

  Nodding to himself he rolled up the combined maps and waited for Donn to come in. Sister Agatha was there, but Dad waited for Donn. I didn’t know whether it was Donn’s farm or belonged to both of them, but I wouldn’t have tried to ask her either. She didn’t like questions.

  I was sitting by the fire when Dad called Donn to the table. He rolled out one map, then another, my father in his slippers which he always brought with him, and Donn in his socks stained brown by overspills into his wellies.

  ‘You have to tell someone so they can research it. It could be a really important discovery.’ He waved a book at Donn, ‘I haven’t read anything about a cairn in this area. Not ever.’

  ‘No. It’s a working farm, nothing more than that.’

  ‘Can I just tell the University in Belfast? They’d just take some measurements.’

  ‘No way.’

  ‘But why not?’

  ‘Not everything has to be measured. It’s my field and I’m not moving the sheep.’

  ‘What harm could it do? I can think of all the benefits, the way it could expand prehistoric knowledge of the area.’

  Donn nodded outside. ‘I don’t care about that. I’m not having strangers trampling round my farm.’

  ‘I do care.’

  ‘Shame it’s not you
r pile of stones then.’

  ‘In a way it isn’t yours either. It belongs to everyone, the world, as a little piece of the puzzle of all of us.’

  ‘If you, or anyone else, tell anyone about that cairn, whatever you want to call it,’ he lowered his voice and raised his hand, ‘I can’t answer for what will happen. You know what I mean, I hope.’

  My father drew back and then flushed red. ‘No, Donn. I don’t. You’ll have to spell it out to me because all I know is that an ancient and possibly sacred site is going ignored.’

  Donn walked out of the room.

  ‘It’s wilful ignorance!’ my father shouted after him, but he didn’t turn back. Dad slapped the book against his thigh and sat down again.

  Sister Agatha came out of the kitchen with a pile of plates. ‘Sacred,’ she spat, shoving his papers and books to one side. ‘You wouldn’t know sacred if God himself spoke to you from a burning bush.’ She stomped away.

  I could see Dad’s expression, eyebrows raised and mouth open, and started to giggle. I forced two fingers between my teeth and bit down hard. Dad talking to a bush! It was too funny. He looked at me and rolled his eyes. I took my fingers out and let myself laugh properly.

  Sister Agatha came back empty handed and picked up the maps as if tidying them away. She slapped away Dad’s hand as he tried to re-roll them. I stopped laughing. Holding them all in one hand she placed them in the centre of the fire. Dad stood beside me, his hand on my head, as we watched them burn.

  If my dad had protested, Sister Agatha might have beaten him around the head with her leather bible. She’d threatened me with it enough times. That’s maybe why they didn’t speak other than around the dinner table, although that could be a dangerous place with all those knives. He read everything differently and if I wanted a clear answer on the bogs and stones and flags and kerbs I had to wait until he got there. He was the only person who would tell me what things meant, and he knew because he was always looking. He looked for markings in the ground on aerial maps, he looked for stones in groups, or on their own if they were big enough.

  That last year I’d found something amazing for him and I waited four weeks for his arrival and didn’t even tell Nancy. In the white, angular gravel at the front of the house I found fossils. Loads of fossils, but my favourite was the heavy ammonite, maybe because I knew the name for that one. It sat heavily, too big for my palm, half excavated from the stone in which it sat. It was a dull grey in the quartz-like gravel and the first one I saw. I felt like my dad as I looked for more, and found them.

  In bed at night I imagined scouring the whole driveway with my dad, cataloguing our finds. So far I hadn’t found any more than a foot away from the house, but as a team we could look properly. I thought up how it had arrived in the driveway, how in mining the gravel the diggers had hit a seam of fossil rich rock and not noticed, just emptying it all the way from the large white gates to the large white house.

  When he turned up in our car I ran out and grabbed him first. I sat on the steps to the house with him and handed him my finds one at a time and showed him where I found them. By this time my mother and sisters and Sister Agatha were all on the steps too.

  ‘Do you know why you found them there?’ said Sister Agatha. ‘It’s because that’s where they landed when I threw them out the window.’ She laughed to herself and went inside.

  I watched her go and then looked at the window. Dad tried to make me feel better by saying what a brilliant collection it was, and it didn’t matter how they’d got there, but it did to me.

  I walked around through the garage to the cow shed and pulled myself up on the gate. It swung a little, but the blue nylon stopped it from opening. I could see the dip of the land, but not the stones. I climbed higher and had one leg over the top bar when I heard a man’s voice. I couldn’t hear what he said, and I couldn’t tell if he was talking to me, but I scrambled back to the cow shed and ran back through passage to the yard.

  Sister Agatha caught me.

  30

  Now

  ‘Nancy!’

  It sounded like the last in a line of shouts, exasperated.

  Elian was at the bedroom door. ‘Your mother wants to talk to you.’

  Nancy looked away from the window, confused. ‘She’s here?’

  ‘No, on the phone.’

  She went down the stairs and rubbed her face before picking up the phone.

  ‘Mum?’

  ‘What’s going on, Nancy?’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Then she realised. Donn had told her.

  ‘Why are you doing what you’re doing, that’s what I mean.’

  Nancy closed the parlour door behind her and stood awkwardly. She tried to think of what to say. Why was she doing what she was doing?

  ‘It’s Bernadette.’

  ‘I realise that, but I didn’t think you’d encourage her, let alone help. This could set her back years. Why are you attracting attention to yourselves?’

  Nancy took a deep breath. ‘You told me to sort it out with Bernadette. I’m sorting it out.’

  ‘Not like this! Nancy,’ her mother spoke loudly and clearly, ‘go and see Agatha. Don’t do anything else, just talk to Agatha. Promise me.’

  Nancy carefully placed the phone back in the cradle. It dinged. She remembered hearing that ding from the other end, how abrupt and rude it was.

  She opened the parlour door.

  ‘Are we going?’ asked Erin.

  Nancy paused. The phone started ringing again.

  ‘Yes, let’s go. I can phone whoever back later.’

  Bernie followed her to the hall.

  Nancy sighed, ‘Can you guess what Mum wanted?’

  ‘Bernie’s mad, stop facilitating her delusions?’

  ‘Something like that. Not quite that bad.’

  ‘Not quite that direct, you mean?’

  ‘She loves you. She wants you to be happy and she thinks this won’t make you happy. That’s not a bad thing, or a strange thing.’

  ‘Forgetting doesn’t make people happy.’

  It did, thought Nancy. Forgetting was fine.

  The sky above Portstewart was cloudy but they hadn’t seen any rain, so that qualified as a beautiful day. The two girls sat in the rear of the car. Elian, Hurley and Nancy sat in the middle, Elian angled so he could talk continuously to Adrian.

  ‘Why Portstewart and not Portrush?’

  He’d clearly been studying the map.

  ‘Catholics go to Portstewart, Protestants to Portrush,’ said Bernie.

  ‘Are you serious?’ he said. ‘But none of you are even Catholic.’

  Bernie intoned, ‘Once a Catholic, always a Catholic. Sand or town?’

  ‘Let’s try sand first, in case it does rain,’ said Adrian.

  They took a turning to the left and drove through the dunes onto the beach, a wide arc of deep yellow sand.

  ‘Um, you’re driving on the sand,’ said Elian.

  ‘Really?’ said Adrian, and he drove on, smiling to himself.

  Elian looked at Nancy and then back out of the window.

  ‘Have you ever had to dig your way out?’

  ‘It isn’t a marsh,’ said Bernie.

  Adrian pulled up and they unloaded the blankets and buckets from the tiny boot space behind the girls’ seats. Nancy marvelled at Bernie’s preparedness. They spread out the blankets. Nancy sat down and patted a place for Hurley to sit beside her.

  ‘Want to make a sandcastle?’ she asked.

  Elian said, ‘He can come up with me and Adrian to the sand dunes.’

  ‘But he’s never made a sandcastle.’

  ‘I need to keep moving. It will be better for his leg, too, than sitting on the damp sand.’

  Elian, Hurley and Adrian strode off, up the nearest dune, and the genders were decisively split. Bernie tried to get the girls to move, pointed out that there was a tennis set and a Frisbee in the boot, but they glowered and stayed close to each other. Nancy took a bucket and spade a
nd began to make a castle.

  ‘Do you want to find me some stones or shells to decorate it?’

  Erin rolled her eyes and Nancy realised she had made it to embarrassing older relative status. Or just old.

  ‘I don’t think they’re going to be persuaded,’ said Bernie, ‘just leave them to get bored first.’

  ‘We’re already bored,’ said Maeve.

  ‘Not bored enough,’ said Nancy and Bernie simultaneously. They looked at each other and smiled.

  She finished her castle, lacking in turrets, brushed off her hands and took her phone from her pocket.

  ‘I seem to have a signal, but it thinks I’m in Eire. I’m going to look for some shells,’ Nancy said.

  She got up awkwardly, brushed off her skirt and walked down to the water. It was out a long way and the sand became too wet for her canvas shoes before she got there. She’d forgotten how far the sea retreated on this wide, flat beach. The best beach in the world, she thought, if it wasn’t for the weather. Had her dad said that? Someone said it. It reminded her of sitting in the farm parlour, warming up in front of the turf and worrying about Bruce outside.

  She couldn’t see any shells, but if she stood still too long her feet may sink down, then her legs and torso. Her arms would extend above her submerged head and her fingers would wave like discoloured seaweed.

  She exhaled and turned back to the shore. She had wandered at more of angle than she thought. She could see the blanket and the three people on it, but the three people in the dunes were hidden. That dune grass, was it razor grass, was violent. She’d had thousands of whip wounds from it as it caught her as she scrambled up or rolled down, squealing either way. Hiding at the top of the dune felt safer than in the bottom of a valley. It was possible that no-one would find her and sometimes dusty whirlwinds struck up and forced her to hide her head inside her t-shirt. Bernie was always there, though. She could hide anywhere if Bernie knew where she was because she thought she was amazing and brilliant for the longest that anyone ever had. That ended. She knew that it had, and wasn’t going to get better. But it was still twice, three times as long as Elian had thought she was flawless. It was nice to think that once she was worshipped.