The Insect Rosary

by Sarah Armstrong

  ‘And how are they all?’

  ‘Grand, grand. You’ll be wanting tea, I suppose?’

  ‘Only if you’re making some,’ said Nancy.

  ‘Youse sit yourselves down. Don’t worry about me.’

  Beth gestured towards the front room with its three sofas and went off to the kitchen. Nancy sat Hurley down and headed towards the mantelpiece. She tried to spot which were her cousins and which were their spouses but it was pure guess work. She decided not to try to name even Sinead. The mouse, she sniggered. Each of them seemed to have at least three children each.

  Beth came in with a tray.

  ‘You’ve got plenty of grandchildren, Beth.’

  ‘Not like your poor mother. Three girls and only three grandchildren to show for it. It’s a crying shame.’ She placed the tray on the coffee table and gestured to the cake and biscuits. ‘If I’d had a bit of warning I could have got something in, but this was all I had,’ she said sadly.

  ‘That’s more than enough, but thank you.’ Nancy sat next to Hurley on the sofa which was surprisingly rigid.

  ‘So, you’re the American,’ Beth said to Elian.

  ‘I’m afraid so,’ he smiled.

  ‘It’s nothing to smile about, as far as I can tell. All those poor wee brown babies in Iraq,’ she shook her head, ‘not to mention Vietnam and all those other poor wee brown babies.’ She shook herself. ‘You can pour.’

  Elian was unsure what she meant by this, whether he was still being insulted, and looked at Nancy.

  ‘Pour the tea,’ she said.

  Beth raised her eyebrows. ‘Does he need translations? And I thought they spoke English over there, of sorts.’ She snorted. ‘So, just the one baby?’

  ‘Sorry?’

  Beth spoke more slowly, ‘You only had the one baby?’

  ‘Yes.’ Nancy thought quickly to see if she could think of a valid reason and failed.

  ‘And I hear he doesn’t talk.’ She looked at Hurley. ‘Do you not talk, no?’

  Hurley looked at Nancy who placed her hand on his.

  ‘So,’ said Nancy, ‘tell me about what Sinead is up to.’

  ‘Och, she’s a wee pet. She’s always round, can’t do enough for me, and her with the three weans. You’d learn a thing or two from her, I can tell you.’

  ‘No doubt.’

  Elian was handing the tea cups around and caught Nancy’s eye as he gave her a cup. He rolled his eyes and she caught her laugh as it bubbled up and pressed her lips together.

  ‘Your sister now, well she’s got those two wee brats, but she keeps in touch with her mother. Not your da, of course, not with everything. I don’t suppose they’ve spoken yet?’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  Beth leaned forward and spoke quietly. ‘And there wasn’t anything in it, of course?’

  ‘No. There wasn’t.’

  ‘The things she said. I’m sure I only heard the half of it.’

  ‘She didn’t just say things about him, but about Mum and me as well.’

  ‘Yes, but we all knew those things about your ma weren’t true.’ Beth settled back, all hope of gossip and contradiction lost. ‘Yes, Bernie’s got the right idea. She’d not leave your poor mother to pine away, now. But I suppose you’ve got your own problems.’ She looked at Hurley again.

  Nancy sipped her tea. She was overly pleased at the description of Bernie’s kids, but didn’t dare look at Elian again in case she couldn’t hold the laugh down next time. It was like being in church and being so conscious of Bernie wanting to make her laugh that she nearly laughed anyway.

  ‘And,’ Beth went on, ‘you’re not going to church anymore? Didn’t even get married in church, I hear, like your sister.’ She looked at Elian. ‘Your fault, was it?’

  ‘Yes, I expect so,’ he said. ‘Most things seem to be, Auntie Beth.’

  ‘Auntie!’ she squeaked. ‘God bless us.’ She crossed herself again.

  Nancy would not catch Elian’s eye, she refused. He would make her laugh and she needed to talk seriously to Beth. Hurley sighed and twisted on the hard sofa. Nancy patted his leg, noticing Beth watching her hand, watching Hurley.

  ‘So, how is the farm?’ Beth said.

  ‘I wanted to talk to you about that, Beth.’ Nancy sat forward and said, ‘You know that Donn is selling up?’

  Beth made no sign that she had or hadn’t.

  ‘I’d be really interested in keeping it in the family.’

  Elian’s head snapped towards her. Beth looked at her fingers.

  ‘Only he seems to have promised it to Tommy.’

  Beth looked away.

  ‘Do you know why? He won’t talk about it. I tried to talk to Tommy but that didn’t go well. Do you think you could talk to Donn? I know how important family is to you.’

  Beth laid her hands in her lap. ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Tommy has been good to us. He is family, Sinead’s godfather in fact. I’m not going to be interfering in their arrangement.’

  ‘Godfather?’

  ‘Will you have some cake?’ she asked Hurley.

  He nodded and reached forward.

  ‘I’ll do it.’ She put a slice of sponge cake on a plate and sat it on his lap. ‘Do you need a fork?’

  He shook his head.

  Nancy said, ‘Say thank you.’

  ‘Thanks,’ he croaked. He began to eat it and a crumb fell to the floor. Beth’s eyes became fixed on it.

  ‘I hope,’ she said, ‘that Bernadette hasn’t been carrying on her nonsense. She’ll be locked up again.’

  ‘What nonsense?’ asked Nancy.

  ‘He’s always been very good to us.’ Beth pressed her lips together. ‘He always was. Even when wee strumpets threw themselves at him, he had nothing to be ashamed of there. Nothing. If only we could all say the same, Nancy. We are all tested and only some of us can look God in the eye.’

  Nancy shuddered. Hurley put the plate back on the table.

  Nancy cleared her throat. ‘I think we’ll have to make a move, Auntie Beth.’

  Beth stared at Hurley. ‘Why? What might he do?’

  ‘Nothing. He’s just tired. We’ve been walking around all morning. Busy, busy.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Beth. ‘Maybe you’d be better off visiting a church or two.’ She stood up and brushed her skirt down, ‘Well, that wasn’t much of a visit after all these years, was it? But you were never much for family, were you Nancy? For all Bernie’s faults, at least she knows where she came from and who to thank for it.’

  ‘You could always visit both of us at the farm, while we’re here.’

  ‘I don’t drive.’

  ‘Maybe one of your children could drive you.’

  ‘Maybe,’ Beth said, looking from Elian to Hurley, ‘we’ll have to see how it goes.’

  She herded them out of the door and closed it before they got into the car.

  ‘Jeez,’ said Elian, ‘no wonder you never came back. Agatha and Donn were bad enough, but compared to her . . . Are they all like that?’

  ‘I like Donn,’ said Nancy, clicking in the seatbelt. ‘I don’t remember many of the others. They all emigrated when I was quite small.’

  ‘Are you surprised? This country,’ Elian shook his head, ‘there’s nothing here. No wonder they go on about how green it is. That’s the only nice thing to say, and it’s not even that nice. It’s just an observation. The towns are grey, the houses have those weird bobbles on them, there’s two tourist attractions and one of those is outside so it’s a misery. And,’ he turned to Nancy, ‘I’m not counting the rope bridge. Crazy.’ He turned back to watch the road. ‘If it was in America the Giant’s Causeway would have some great acrylic sheeting to encourage people to go and see it. It wouldn’t disturb the view at all, but you’d be able to enjoy it. There’d be a nice bar so you could sit on the rocks all day, instead of having to race out and try not to slip into the Atlantic.’

  Nancy checked the road
at the end of the drive and pulled out slightly too quickly.

  ‘Is that a bit of an exaggeration? And I suppose they’d just recreate the sand dunes inside a heated building with a heated, more Mediterranean sea?’

  Elian smiled and rested his head back. ‘Now I could spend a day there. The rain, the bloody endless rain, that’s what does for the place. Anywhere that could be half decent, not from any effort from the people that live here, and the freezing cold rain gets you.’ He raised his head and shivered.

  ‘It’s not raining now.’

  He looked up at the sky. ‘Give it half an hour.’

  ‘But what about the prehistoric stones and graves and the history? You’ve nothing like that. Michigan was pulled from the marshes about fifty years ago.’

  ‘Yeah, yeah.’ Elian turned to look at her, his voice low. ‘Nancy, I don’t know why you keep talking about the farm. And what the hell was that about it staying in the family? The country is terrible and I haven’t even started on the glum people. What is wrong with them? I thought they drank to excess and were merry while they did it. Is that just in the South? All the people I’ve met, I wouldn’t want to see them drunk. They’d chase me down for being an American or a Jew or too short or too tall. I’ve never felt so completely unwelcome anywhere I’ve ever been.’

  ‘You’ve never been outside the States.’

  ‘So? That makes it even sadder. I can’t go back and tell my friends that this is what Europe is like.’ He turned in his seat. ‘What do you think of it, Hurley?’

  Nancy shifted her head to look at him in the rear view mirror.

  ‘I like it here.’ He was looking out of the window, not at them. ‘I like the quiet and I like the fact there’s no people.’

  When they talked about place, Elian was talking about the strange abbreviated country of Northern Ireland. When Nancy thought of it, and clearly Hurley too, they thought of the farm. They didn’t need anyone else when they were there. It wasn’t a plain, white house in the middle of a green landscape, but an entire world by itself. People who didn’t feel that, most of her mother’s generation, fled from it given half a chance. She could see her dad living here though. He’d have been happy.

  ‘And what,’ said Elian, ‘was that about strumpets? What is a strumpet?’

  Nancy looked at Hurley in the mirror. ‘A loose woman.’

  Oh,’ Elian laughed. ‘She sounded like she meant you. You got anything to confess, Nancy?’

  ‘Here,’ Nancy reached into the foot well, ‘take the map. I know the way from here. Choose some other places you’d like to visit.’

  Elian took it. ‘I don’t know why it’s such a big book. They could have just filled it with plain green pages and no one would notice.’

  Nancy glanced at him. His bottom lip had started to push out into a sullen pout. Any bond that they’d drawn in opposition to Beth had been broken. Elian liked to have people on his side, agreeing with him. Nancy and Hurley were having a different experience to him and he hated to feel left out. After a few flicks he pushed the book back down by his feet.

  Strumpet, she thought. She’d been twelve. Two years younger than Hurley. Nancy bit her bottom lip. She shook it off.

  Maybe she should pick up some wine on the way back and something nice to cook. Hurley could build up the fire. Hopefully Bernie wouldn’t be back for hours. Then, holding Elian’s hand, she would lean across to him and say, in a way which allowed him to reform it as his own idea, ‘This place is great for Hurley. One bad day in a couple of weeks is something we haven’t enjoyed for years. He’s happy and we can all be happy. How can we not buy the farm?’

  23

  Then

  Nancy had been gone about half an hour. I watched her run down the back lane to the road but I didn’t see her get into the car. Sister Agatha came in the kitchen and I had to look away and pretend I wasn’t watching anything at all.

  ‘You can clean those potatoes for me,’ she said.

  I tried to think of an excuse but Nancy wasn’t there to help me and I took them, one by one, and scraped the dirt off them with the nail brush. The water came through strong and freezing my fingertips.

  ‘You can fill the sink, rather than waste the water, Bernadette.’

  ‘But it comes from the well. You can’t run out of water.’

  ‘God hates waste.’

  And cleanliness is next to godliness, I thought, but I didn’t say it.

  ‘I’m going to pick some cauliflower,’ she said.

  My heart sank. She overcooked a cauliflower worse than anything else. I stuck the hard rubber plug into the bottom of the sink and scrubbed as it filled. One of my disappeared uncles had connected a pipe to the well years ago so that they didn’t have to use a bucket any more to pull the water out. My mother always said how much nicer this water was than the tap water at home, full of chemicals, but it scared me a little bubbling up under the house. I thought I heard the sound of Sister Agatha coming back, but she didn’t come in.

  I thought of the water welling up beneath us into the hole I could see because it was covered with the brittle metal sheet, but where was the rest coming up? The country was so wet that maybe all you needed to do was dig down a couple of feet anywhere you liked and you’d have a brand new well. This was different, Mum said, it was tested and safe and came through rocks not soil. Still, I felt the water make my hands numb and thought about it reaching up from the depths of the earth.

  Potatoes finished, and determined to avoid getting any more jobs, I walked past Cassie’s room. There was a sweeping noise inside it. I stopped and listened. It was quiet. I tried the door handle, making it squeak, and I heard the noise again. I pressed my ear against the wood and could hear brushing noises and a sound like a voice muffled by scarves. I took a step away, my heart thumping. There was someone in there, but the door was locked.

  I heard Sister Agatha’s footsteps in the hall and turned to see her come in.

  ‘All done?’ she said.

  I whispered, ‘Is something in there?’

  She didn’t even look at the door. ‘Of course there isn’t.’

  ‘A mouse?’

  ‘You and your ideas.’ She whipped past me into the kitchen. ‘Where’s that Nancy?’

  ‘Not sure.’

  ‘Are you wanting another chore?’

  ‘No.’ I shrugged, trying to look relaxed.

  Sister Agatha looked at me and shook her head. ‘Do you know, Bernadette, the wages of sin?’

  I didn’t know whether she meant me or Nancy, or the answer in either case. I held her gaze and looked at the door to Cassie’s room just long enough so that when I looked back she had looked away. Her head was lowered over the cauliflower as she trimmed away the stiff, small leaves and cut the green-white trees away. They fell into the pan with a little splash. I thought that her face looked a little red, her lip a little white from where her teeth bit into it. I thought, if I move away now and she doesn’t say anything that means it’s really bad. I took a step backwards, then another, before I turned and walked slowly from the room. When I reached the hallway and turned she rushed over, pushed me into the hallway and slammed the door.

  The door didn’t catch and bounced open a little. I could hear her moving away. I waited in the hall to see if she’d notice, but she didn’t. I crept back and looked into the parlour. The door to Cassie’s room was open and I could hear her talking quietly. She came back out and went to close it.

  ‘No!’ she said. ‘You’ve no-one to blame but yourself. You were told.’

  There was a pause.

  ‘There’s nothing I can do.’ She gently closed and locked the door and stood quite still, waiting.

  I walked away.

  I sat with Mum in the front room for a bit. She was reading a newspaper from a couple of days ago as Florence built a tilting tower of red and blue blocks. Mum put her hand on my shoulder to show she knew I was there, but then it slipped away and I held myself instead. I wanted to say, calml
y and loudly, ‘Nancy is driving a car on the road right now with Tommy.’ That would get her attention and then I’d get the blame for not telling her earlier, and then Nancy would never speak to me except to call me Bernadette for the rest of my life, and even then I wouldn’t have said anything about Cassie’s room and I could only say that to Nancy anyway. So I sat, arms around my knees, at the window in the front room and waited for Nancy to come back.

  It wasn’t until long after dinner that I got to talk to Nancy. Sister Agatha had made us do the washing up but stayed in the kitchen the whole time. Then she sat with us in the front room and made us watch the news. Finally, after we had got ready for bed, I could say something.

  ‘Nancy?’

  ‘It was brilliant.’

  ‘What was?’

  ‘Driving a car, idiot.’

  ‘I don’t care about that. Nancy, I need to tell you something. Something just between us.’

  ‘I don’t care.’

  ‘Nancy!’

  ‘If you’re going to tell me just tell me.’

  ‘I think Ryan is looked up in Cassie’s room. Will you stay up with me so we can go and see? We could put a note under the door.’

  ‘You’re such a twerp. Everyone knows he left.’ She looked at the bed. ‘I don’t want to share with you anymore. I should have the single, not Florence.’ She pointed at her, arms flung out to her sides, blankets kicked off.

  ‘I don’t want to share with her!’ I turned back to Nancy, ‘Did you hear me? Ryan is –’

  ‘Tommy says that I can be trusted.’ Nancy sat on the bed. ‘He says I know what’s what.’

  ‘What is what? What does that mean?’

  ‘He says being an adult means knowing when to ask questions and when to let things be.’

  Nancy picked up her brush and began to count strokes. I walked around to my side and knelt next to my pillow. She had to be joking. She never brushed her hair, not even when Mum sent her upstairs to do it. I just had to wait and then she’d come up with a plan. I waited and she counted. Then she got into bed.

  ‘Switch the light off, then.’

  My mouth felt dry. ‘Nancy!’