“You do realize, do you, Roger, that for all these years I thought that it had been me who had killed Harriet?” The expression on his face suggested no proper comprehension of the real import of my question; as though I had asked him to describe the taste of a strawberry.
“I thought you knew I had done it, and have been looking after me.”
“I have been looking after you, Roger,” I said. For a long time I looked at my older brother, my lovely older brother Roger, the friend and companion I have spent my life with, the warmest, most gentle, most loyal and loving person I have ever known. The creator of my universe, and the person who had killed my wife. “I have been looking after you, Roger, but equally, my friend, it seems that you have been looking after me.”
Once again we both sat quietly, each with our own thoughts. I considered the secret lives that we all lead inside our minds, the thoughts we have which remain unknown to those around us as we go about our business. How I could have managed to live my life, apparently an average and normal sort of guy, and all the while with the concealed belief that I was a killer. And I was at a loss to know how my brother, so close to me and so open in so many ways, could have retained so huge a secret in that space just behind his eyes.
“You must have wondered,” he said at last.
“Wondered? Wondered what?”
“I thought you must have wondered what became of her.”
Of course I had wondered. I had wondered about it many times, and indeed had asked him many times, but had never managed to get an answer. Always he had responded with a total blank, or instantly had changed the subject to something completely unrelated. Now though, my older brother Roger stood up and went inside the shed, emerging only a few seconds later carrying a brown heavy-duty cardboard container, about the size of a large matchbox, which he handed to me. It was damp and discoloured, and had signs of having been delivered by Air Mail. I slid my spectacles into place from their usual resting place on my forehead and screwed up my eyes to read the label, turning it into the light. My mouth shaped the words as I deciphered them. “Fragile. With care. Live specimens. Genus Osedax.”
“They are found in the area of Monterey Bay near San Francisco,” said Roger. For a moment I thought we were experiencing another example of Roger changing the subject completely when confronted with a question he preferred not to deal with. No doubt the expression on my face indicated clearly that I had no idea what he was talking about, or what could be the relevance of his words. Then he spoke again, slowly, distinctly and, not for the first time, in a tone which suggested that he was speaking to an idiot. “I sent off for them just a few days after the last time we saw Harriet. They are the only species of beetle on the planet which eats bones.”
In the space of a few seconds, the intervening years of ignorance and confusion were swept away like the seed heads of a dandelion blown into the wind. I remembered one Sunday in the flat when the two detectives had called unexpectedly, and I had been worried about Roger’s reaction to news that Harriet was missing. All he had seemed to care about on that morning was whether a particular parcel had arrived. I recalled the day when Wallace and Pascoe had turned up at the insect farm, and the alacrity with which Roger had shown them the crate in which Harriet’s body had been buried in soil. All the time he had known that this was her burial ground, but that by that moment there would be no evidence of her. “Amazing creatures,” he was saying, “Seventeen different species, all with no eyes or digestive system, but they land on a skeleton and insert little appendages like roots down into the bone, and then suck out the organic material. After a few days, the whole thing disintegrates and there is literally not a trace left.” He paused again. “They can be handy things, these insect farms.”
Roger remained still for a while, and once again he seemed to be thinking, as I was thinking. I looked at the face I knew so well and, for the ten thousandth time, I tried to imagine what it must be like inside his head. How he might be processing the life-changing words and meanings we had just shared. For a moment I thought he was about to say something more, a further revelation about the death of Harriet. Then he stopped himself and seemed to consider for a few more seconds before he spoke.
“And now may I ask you a question, Jonathan?”
“Of course you can, Roger. What is it?”
“You won’t be cross?”
“No, Roger” – and in the light of what he had just been telling me, I wondered what he could possibly be intending to ask me that he feared might make me cross – “you can ask me anything and I promise that I won’t be cross.”
“Tomorrow,” he said, “could we have something different for our breakfast?”
Chapter Thirty
In the many years since those seismic events which shaped so much of the remainder of my life, I have made a number of attempts to write down some of what happened. I thought that the process of organizing the story into a continuous account might help me to come to terms with it all. I am not sure whether it did or did not, but when we got back to our house on the day of my birthday, I went straight to my desk to pull together the various starts I had made over the years. Somehow it seemed to me that these extraordinary revelations from Roger at last offered an opportunity for what I have sometimes heard referred to as “closure”.
I have of course spent the days and nights since then turning over questions in my head. So many questions but, chief among them, how it was that Roger – my older brother, who has so many problems and handicaps – could have done everything he did and still managed to keep his secrets for all these years.
I have also thought much more in recent weeks about the insect farm and the implications for Roger of his role as its creator. It was he who had dreamt up and built this amazing universe, and he who was ultimate controller of everything that took place within it. Perhaps his omnipotence in this environment helps to explain why Roger felt it to be within his power to control events as he had in our world too. He, it turned out, was the silent and invisible mover behind what happened on the insect farm, but also in the lives of Harriet, himself and me.
I have no way to know whether any of these thoughts will help me to get a perspective on all that has happened, but one thing has become completely clear to me. It is that all the while the insect farm is a part of our lives, I will be destined to remained plagued by these events every single day. Again and again I have turned over everything in my mind, and what keeps coming back to me is that the insect farm has been a hidden player in so much that has happened – the continuing thread running behind so many of the milestones along the way.
It was Roger’s place of hiding when our parents died in the fire; it was the place where I hid Harriet’s body on that terrible night; it was the place where every last trace of her was consumed; and the place where I came within a hair’s breadth of being arrested as Harriet’s killer. It has taken me some while and a lot of agonizing to reach this conclusion, but to me it now seems perfectly obvious that there can be no chance of moving on – for me or indeed for Roger – while the insect farm remains in existence. It has become my firm resolve that we must finally be rid of it.
I realize that I will have to think very carefully about how to break this news to Roger. I do not underestimate that it will be very difficult for him. His first reaction could well be anger and confusion, and I must not forget how violently he responded when I hinted all those years ago that Dad had wanted to close it down. But I believe that in the end I will be able to make him understand why it is necessary. After all, as Harriet was the first to point out, Roger would do anything for me.
Anyway, that’s a job for tomorrow.
Acknowledgements
The author would like to thank Alessandro Gallenzi, Elisabetta Minervini, Christian Müller and Clémentine Koenig at Alma Books. Also everyone at Curtis Brown, but especially Gordon Wise and Richard Pike. And of course Emily Banyard, Annabel Robinson and Fiona McMorrough at FMCM.
Apart
from being one of the leading broadcasters and producers of his generation, STUART PREBBLE is an acclaimed writer of fiction and non-fiction. Among his publications are two novels, five comedy books based on the Grumpy Old Men TV series which he produced and, more recently, a book about the Falklands War, Secrets of the Conqueror, published by Faber and Faber in 2012. The Insect Farm is his latest novel.
www.almabooks.com
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Contents
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Acknowledgements
The Insect Farm Page 29