The Insect Rosary

by Sarah Armstrong

  ‘So? I’d like to see them now.’

  ‘All that time I wasted looking at them. There’s a whole modern country here and he wasn’t interested in anything built less than a thousand years ago. We’ll go off somewhere else. Maybe see what’s on at the cinema in Belfast.’

  Nancy saw her look sideways at Hurley. She was clearly conscious that it might upset him, but was it a deliberate or accidental clumsiness? Bernie hadn’t looked Nancy in the eye since she failed her test.

  ‘I’d really like our families to spend some time together.’ Nancy waited. ‘Maybe another day we can plan something.’ She turned to Donn. ‘Can we borrow the car?’

  ‘You can,’ he said. ‘I don’t need it today.’

  ‘Are you insured?’ asked Bernie.

  ‘I’m sure we’ll be fine.’ Nancy hadn’t talked to Elian about not having any insurance and assumed he had weighed up the option of staying in or risking it. She wasn’t going to bring it up if he didn’t.

  Hurley said, ‘Mom, Donn said I could work with him today.’

  ‘Donn works every day. He’ll still have work for you tomorrow.’

  Hurley looked at Donn, who nodded.

  ‘Always more to do tomorrow,’ he said.

  ‘And you should wait a couple more days before you get really dirty. The bandage is off but it isn’t quite healed.’ Nancy picked up her bag from the table and looked at Bernie. ‘Have a good time.’

  Bernie nodded. Elian and Hurley followed Nancy out to the yard.

  ‘Got the map?’ she asked.

  Elian rolled his eyes. ‘Map. I haven’t had to find my way by map for how many years? What kind of country doesn’t have proper mobile coverage? GPS isn’t some strange new-fangled idea, it’s vital to all sorts of things.’

  Nancy sighed. ‘Do you have the map?’

  ‘Yes, yes, I do.’ Elian lifted it from the floor of the car and slowly began to open the pages with a rough flick.

  ‘Do you know where we are?’

  ‘Yeah.’ He kept on flicking.

  Nancy started the car and pulled out of the yard.

  ‘We’ll be near enough to Belfast to get some reception, I guess. You can get all of your emails through in one go, and I bet there won’t be more than one that’s worth replying to.’ She stopped at the end of the lane. ‘I’m turning right, if you want to find us on the map.’

  ‘Great.’

  ‘I’ll just wait till you’re sure.’

  Hurley sighed, ‘Can we just go?’

  She pulled away. The sky was bright, although there were thin clouds, and the wet roads shone. At the end of the road she turned right again, not bothering to check with Elian. She knew the way to Belfast roughly and hoped that their destination would be signposted so that she didn’t have to ask him anyway. He was flicking randomly through the pages now. It covered all of Great Britain and she was pretty sure that he was in Scotland, now Northumberland. She tried not to look, tried to keep her eyes on the road. Drive on the left. The hills swelled and subsided to the right, mists formed and cloud shadows thickened. It was green, as Elian said whenever anyone asked him how he was finding it. Very green.

  Hurley was slumped against the window, looking up at the sky. What would he say? Very grey, it’s all very grey. It was good how he’d started to talk to Donn. He hadn’t exchanged a word with the girls and seemed to take all of Bernie’s questions as part of a test he couldn’t possibly pass so wouldn’t bother. Nancy didn’t blame him. He was fine though. He seemed fine. At home there was so much tension, so many questions to ask him at the end of every day – did you get in trouble, did you manage to stay in class for a whole lesson? It was nice not having to check on him, but she felt as if she didn’t really have anything to say either.

  School was stressful and knowing that he had no friends made her cry at night. Doctors and behavioural therapists and educational psychologists made up the majority of her contacts. Work had slipped from her mind and she sat for days at the workbench without picking up a pencil or a pair of scissors. Her ambitions had become fuzzy and the less she talked about it the less Elian remembered that she had a job too.

  ‘No, I can’t take him for that appointment. And it’s not like you’re busy.’

  I am, she wanted to protest, I am busy. There’s so much to do and organise and I’m disappearing into the role of carer.

  ‘I escort Hurley and I justify Hurley and I apologise for Hurley, but there are other things that I want to be doing.’

  ‘But they can wait, can’t they? If I don’t go to work we don’t eat. That’s what it comes down to.’

  Soon she needed the car so much that she had to drive Elian to work, Hurley to school, pick him up and drive him to one appointment or another, and then collect Elian, who was too tired to cook, again. Her time, the time that really belonged to her, had shrunk back and back until she didn’t know what to do with it anymore. She was just a facilitator for their lives.

  They walked across to the Giant’s Ring from the car park. Elian read aloud to Hurley from a brochure he’d borrowed from Bernie.

  ‘It’s about two hundred metres across with an internal ditch. That’s what makes it a henge, Hurley. Late Neolithic or Early Bronze Age. What does that mean? How old is that, Nancy?’

  Nancy walked away. ‘Same as Stonehenge.’

  ‘When was that though?’ Elian shouted after her, ‘It’s your history! How would I know?’

  Take away his phone and suddenly Elian’s stupidity was revealed. It reminded her of the days before smartphones. What was that? When did that happen? Strings of questions emerged which Nancy wouldn’t have minded answering so much if she had any certainty that he would remember the answers. Instead the same question came up again and again.

  ‘You’ve asked me that,’ she’d say.

  ‘No, I don’t think I have,’ he’d reply, quite certain.

  He clearly hadn’t had any questions to ask at the farm, his mind stilled with Bernie’s noise, Bernie’s children. Now he started on Hurley.

  ‘Surely you’ve done this period at school, Hurley.’

  Hurley shrugged. ‘No.’

  ‘You must know. The Neolithic, what do you think? You’ve heard of Stonehenge, right?’

  Hurley shrugged again.

  Nancy walked towards the stones to get out of hearing. She could picture the pages her father had shown her, of the wooden posts driven into the ground in circles around the stones. Two hundred and fifty trees, making a new, manmade forest to denote new, manmade ideas. Maybe they would have made a ritual pathway and instead of jogging for the stones as she was now, the approach would be made indirect, respectfully circling them before arrival.

  She touched the stones. There was nothing magical in the contact, it was just an acknowledgement of their age and her presence. This is why she would never return to Stonehenge, fenced off, precious, but would willingly go back to Avebury. It wasn’t communion or prayer or magnetic powers, but just being through touching.

  She walked around the side of the chamber. She could probably fit in there, between the stones. The thought of hiding from Elian, watching him look around for her with increasing anxiety made her giggle. When she crawled out or, worse, was found, she’d feel bad, though. Especially if Hurley was worried. She didn’t think Hurley would be worried. She turned to watch him now, leaning with her back against one of the upright stones. He was separate from Elian who was holding his phone above his head, as if it would be any use to get a signal so high that he couldn’t read what was on it. Hurley was walking the embankment, slowly as if he was the only person there. He was, she supposed, as far as he was concerned.

  Nancy ran her hands over the rock and laid her head against it. She remembered this silent touching from other stones she’d visited, other outings she’d been dragged to, complaining that ‘stones are all the same’. She missed this random and thoughtless history when she was in America. They despised ageing and erased it, claiming newer was bigge
r and better. It wasn’t. How long would her house last when they left it? A decade or so, and then the nineties would become a vilified period and the new thirties or forties would offer something more sprawling or more compact, more insulated or weather resistant. She would never get used to the lack of bricks in their houses, those strange American people she was still bewildered by. The thunderstorms shook the walls and the roof jumped as the massive raindrops hammered against it. It was a house that denied the outside. The windows weren’t designed to open – that’s what air conditioning was for. She’d set up her separate space in the basement, refusing all of Elian’s desires for a rumpus room for the boys. Elian built a man-shed instead.

  In the basement the only electric outlet fed a single lamp, angled over her workbench, and a radio tape deck. That was it – no TV, no fridge for beers and no pool table. No rumpus. If it was hot she opened the window and if it was cold she wrapped up. If it was really cold, as those Michigan winters often were, she might swap the radio for a small electric heater, but usually she moved her current projects to the kitchen table where they could be examined better. Only since all the trouble with Hurley, there hadn’t been many projects. Her source of ideas, her love of shape and colour, had faded into ideas that were half formed and then discarded. The thought of planning ahead, crafts for Easter at Christmas, for summer at Easter, for Halloween and Thanksgiving and Christmas in the summer, made her feel vertiginous. She began to dream of falling, uncontrollable plummets into nothingness. And all the time, the thought, what do I do next, what can I do next, what comes next?

  The plan for this trip came out of that, if she was honest. Maybe she needed to see trees that weren’t pruned, grass that was not cut. Maybe she needed to walk out of her house and keep on walking without being made to feel odd or weird or some kind of socially incompetent reject. They’d been for drives in the countryside when she first met Elian and she thought he was joking when they didn’t arrive anywhere, but home. A ‘road trip’ was just that, a trip along roads, to look at what they passed, like the buffalo. She asked if they could go somewhere and get out of the car. He drove her down the I-96 to Canada and let her get out of the car just long enough to realise how much more she liked Canada than the US. He hadn’t told her that she needed a passport to get back into America until this point because ‘he’d never been stopped, not once’. And they had ended up in the only queue that was being stopped and she had to attempt an American accent. Elian laughed all the way home and she thought she would never forgive him.

  Another time, when Hurley was a baby, they took the I-96 in the other direction. At Lake Michigan they stood on the shore, and that’s when she realised it. There was nothing she wanted to see here. The land around the lake was flat, the view went on for miles. Behind her were forests and swamps all the way to Canada. She was with a man who thought a fun day out involved cruise control and seat-belts that rode over her to do themselves up. I have no choices, she thought. I want to go home. Elian told her that would be the worst time to go home, that she had to ride it out and wait until it didn’t seem home anymore.

  For a while she clung to the way she initially liked the weirdness of drive-in banks and sushi and massive shopping malls bordered by even larger car parks. She’d liked the way that everything in America was exactly how she expected it to look from watching TV, all the low slung eateries along the endless straight roads. By the time Hurley was three she found herself paralysed in supermarkets unable to buy any food because the choices seemed too many. An hour and thirty minutes were wasted in front of the milk aisle, trying to find a bottle that didn’t have added vitamins or reduced fat or extra cream. She was still standing there when Elian arrived. She never found out who’d phoned him to tell him where she was.

  ‘I’m allergic to America,’ she said.

  ‘Don’t worry, we have pills for that,’ she heard.

  The noise of children drew her back. Hurley had left the wall and was heading towards her. A group of boys headed over the embankment and formed goalposts with their jackets. She shivered to see their bare arms. Now she saw, too, the half dozen dog walkers and the child climbing up the stones behind her. Elian was still waving his phone at the clouds.

  ‘Shall we go?’ she said to Hurley, head bent down to his chest. He nodded. He was so quiet, so calm. She could relax and just like him here. This place suited him. She wanted it to last forever. With or without Elian.

  13

  Then

  Donn did make tea, kind of. Ham sandwiches weren’t quite the same as what we normally ate, and I wondered what Bruce would eat if there were no leftovers. He looked quite pleased with himself until he got the phone call about six o’clock from my mother.

  ‘She says the baby is taking ages and you all have to put each other to bed.’

  ‘Are you sure she didn’t say you should put us to bed?’ I asked.

  ‘No.’ Donn was a terrible liar. ‘Youse two have to put the wee one to bed, and then Nancy has to put you to bed.’

  ‘Mum would never say that, not in a million years!’

  Nancy smugly agreed with him. ‘We can do that.’

  ‘And who puts Nancy to bed?’ I demanded.

  ‘Your mammy says she’s quite old enough.’

  ‘That is completely unfair.’ I stamped as I jumped off the chair and folded my arms.

  ‘Shall I call her back?’ asked Donn.

  ‘At the hospital? You can’t.’

  ‘Oh yes I can, because I forgot to ask whether I was allowed to smack anyone who was really naughty.’

  I examined his face. Sometimes he lied so badly it was almost like he was telling the truth.

  ‘Fine!’ I waited for Nancy to give me my instructions. I would memorise them and tell Mum exactly what she’d told me to do, and what I’d had to think of myself. Like brushing Florence’s teeth. I hoped she’d forget that, and then I’d be the best. ‘Now what?’

  ‘Nancy is in charge,’ said Donn.

  I mimicked him, ‘Pantsy is in charge.’

  He held a finger towards me and mimed a smack. Nancy glowed, then grabbed Florence by her arms and said, ‘Bedtime.’

  She looked surprised, and started to follow her but Nancy stopped at the door.

  She spoke hesitantly, ‘Who is going to change Florence’s nappy?’

  ‘You’re in charge, Nancy,’ said Donn.

  I hugged myself. ‘I’ll make sure she cleans her teeth.’

  Upstairs she tried every bribe she knew, names, birthday money, sweets, but none of it was worth it. I knew her. I’d be pooey, stinky, nappy hand Bernadette. She knew it and I knew it. My trump was that I could promise not to tell anyone about it.

  She did the nappy, I had to do teeth, pyjamas and stories. It was worth it.

  When Florence was in bed, not asleep, but in bed, we had a quick root around in the drawers of the dressing table. Usually when we started to do this our mum or an aunt would walk in and tell us to get out and stop being so nosy.

  The last time we’d just found some sanitary towels and neither of us knew we shouldn’t be flapping them in the air. Now Nancy had started her periods she treated them with proper reverence. Behind them were some things with American flags on, from the siblings who’d gone to America, and some with Australian flags from the other sibling.

  We vaguely remembered those lost siblings. Really we remembered how there was suddenly more space in the beds as the aunts left, and less of a feet smell by the fire when the uncles left. There were books as well, bad books. Nancy had taken Jaws out before and hidden it under her pillow, but someone found and replaced it. She didn’t really want to read it, I think, just show me the cover and then watch me run back from the sea to Mum. I did think I might have seen a fin, but it was a bit too small to be a man-eater, probably.

  After we’d had a good, thorough look, we gave the NB dire threats of punishment, and went downstairs, like the grown-ups.

  ‘You don’t have to put me to bed until
Donn tells you, really.’

  She tossed her hair back. ‘I’m not sure that’s what he meant, Bernadette. He said that I was in charge, so it’s my decision.’

  I knew I was quite safe. However much Nancy was desperate to send me to bed, I was more fun than Donn. I saw her struggle a bit with the choice though. She settled on bossing me about.

  ‘You can stay up five more minutes if you get me a biscuit. Ten minutes if you manage a slice of cake.’

  Beth’s cake that she’d brought round for the afternoon hadn’t been finished yet. Donn wouldn’t have put it away, so it would have been easier, really, than finding where Sister Agatha had hidden the biscuits this time. That just meant getting around Donn. I assumed he was in the kitchen. It was very quiet, though.

  ‘Nancy, do you think Donn knows he can’t go out and leave us on us own? You don’t think that, when he said you were in charge, that you were really in charge, do you?’

  ‘Oh, God! Did you hear him go out?’

  ‘No, I can’t hear anything. I’m scared to go in the kitchen by myself.’

  ‘Don’t be silly,’ she said, but her hand was near her mouth like she didn’t want to scream too loud.

  I said, ‘If you want some cake you have to come with me.’

  She nodded and we crept towards the parlour door. As my fingers touched the handle we heard the lobby door to the parlour close and Donn’s voice. I breathed out in relief.

  ‘Who’s he speaking to?’ asked Nancy.

  We waited for Donn to stop talking so the other one would speak.

  Donn said, ‘Just the girls.’

  Another voice said, ‘Those bitches definitely in bed?’

  Tommy’s footsteps came towards the door and we had no chance to run away. He opened it and looked down at us.

  Nancy gabbled, ‘We were just coming to tell Donn that we’re going to bed too. Florence is asleep.’

  ‘And how are you, Nancy?’

  She looked at me and then back. ‘Fine.’

  ‘Not hearing anything you shouldn’t?’