The Insect Rosary

by Sarah Armstrong

  ‘I still need to know,’ said Bernie.

  Nancy sighed. ‘What’s if it’s not what you need to hear? When it’s said, I can’t take it back.’

  Bernie stopped. ‘I’ll live.’

  ‘When did you last hear from Mum?’

  ‘Not for a while.’

  ‘Is she sick? Is she –’

  Bernie looked at Nancy. ‘She hasn’t said anything. But I’ve wondered. Adrian says she doesn’t look good. I’ve tried to ask and she puts me off. I thought she might have said something to you.’

  Nancy carried on walking. ‘Maybe Florence knows.’

  ‘Maybe.’

  Nancy sat at the kitchen window after dinner. Bernie kept looking at her. Waiting. Saying nothing.

  35

  Then

  Tommy wants to see me. It ran through my head as I ate my breakfast, brushed my teeth and hung close to Mum.

  Nancy didn’t disappear. She kept looking at me and saying things like, ‘Want to go out the front, Bern? Want to look at the sheep, Bern?’

  ‘Go on,’ said Mum, ‘why are you hanging around here?’

  ‘I still don’t feel well,’ I said.

  ‘You’ll feel better for a bit of fresh air.’

  I followed Nancy through the hall and the kitchen, and took as long as I could pulling my wellies on. She smiled at me and that made me nervous. Donn was out so Bruce wasn’t there. I called him anyway. We walked through the yard and she pointed at the small pile of drying peat.

  ‘Donn’s cutting more turf.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Where shall we go? The hay barn?’

  I shook my head. I wasn’t going to walk past those dark windows and sticking doors. I wasn’t going to walk anywhere near where Tommy might be hiding.

  ‘He’s not there, you know. He’s gone to Dublin today.’ She looked as if she was telling the truth.

  ‘I just don’t want to. It’s not raining.’

  ‘How about –’

  I took a couple of steps back to the house, ‘Look, you’re going to take me to him. I don’t care what you say. You’re on his side.’

  ‘He’s not even here, you idiot!’ She laughed.

  ‘Don’t laugh at me. You just fancy him. You’re the idiot.’

  She blushed scarlet and turned away. I walked to the archway at the side of the house and then stopped. She was kicking at the gravel. Like she was actually upset by what I’d said. I watched her walk away, not looking back at me. I didn’t want to go back in the house or follow her. I wished I could just sit where I was and have no-one notice, waiting until Dad arrived and it was safe again. The back door opened and I saw Sister Agatha come out. I ran after Nancy.

  She was back in the rhododendrons with the bows and the arrows that never flew, snapping them into pieces. I sat down on a lump of tyre and grass and watched her. She sneered at me.

  ‘I don’t fancy him.’

  ‘Yeah, right.’

  She snapped the final arrow and threw all the pieces into the mass of twigs under one of the bushes. She picked a long piece of grass and began to shred it with her fingernail.

  ‘Want to look for some cartridges?’ I said.

  She shrugged, and we wandered out into the trees. I found one, not live, and she found two. I walked down to the gate and stood on the bottom fence strut. She straddled the fence and sat on the top one. I leaned my arms over and balanced with my legs out so all my weight was on my armpits. That really hurt quite quickly and I stood up again.

  Nancy looked posed as she pulled out her hairband. She’d been brushing again, her long hair shiny.

  ‘What does he talk about with you?’

  ‘Grown-up things.’

  ‘What, like, “Nancy you’re so lovely”?’

  ‘Like politics, actually.’

  I could hear a tractor further up the road and watched for it, but it must have pulled into a field. I felt watched. I scanned the trees, the fields across the road, but there was nothing moving.

  ‘How would you feel,’ Nancy said, ‘if where you lived was full of soldiers, pointing their guns at you? Not being able to drive without being stopped and searched all the time, like a criminal.’

  I laughed. ‘You have been driving as a criminal. You don’t have a licence.’

  She sneered. ‘You’re so childish. Remember how you felt in the village. Not being able to do your shopping without having to look at machine guns.’

  I shivered.

  ‘We’re part of the occupation.’ Nancy, straight backed and solemn, sounded like him.

  ‘I’m not part of anything.’ I jumped backwards and began to walk away.

  ‘Tommy says he’ll let you look at the stones, but not in the daytime because he doesn’t want anyone seeing you there.’

  ‘They’re not his stones. What’s it got to do with him?’

  ‘Donn wants to keep them a secret. Tommy understands that, which is more than you do. So he’ll let you see them tonight.’

  ‘No, thanks. I saw them.’

  Nancy ran to catch me up. ‘He wants you to be the only person that knows their true history. He chose you, Bern.’ Her eyes sparkled. ‘You need to prove that you have the right blood.’

  That word reminded me of the smell in Cassie’s room, the smell of warm copper coins, the smell of meat before it was cooked.

  ‘I hate him. No way am I going to look at anything with him.’

  ‘Dad would love to know though, wouldn’t he? He loves stones and history. If there is a story and you could tell him, imagine what he’d say.’

  I folded my arms. ‘So Tommy would tell me a secret that I was allowed to tell Dad? Not very secret after all.’

  Nancy frowned and grabbed my left arm. ‘You’d have to swear Dad to not tell, like I’m swearing you, Bern.’

  ‘I haven’t sworn. I’m going to tell Mum.’ I whipped my arm from her hand and ran to the house. Mum was in the kitchen, making a pot of tea. Florence wasn’t with her, for once.

  ‘Look at your wellies! You didn’t come through the house, did you? Agatha will kill you.’

  I didn’t look at my wellies. ‘Mum, the other night, when Tommy came and Catriona was here, what was in his car?’

  ‘Oh, Bernie, you don’t want to know that,’ she said. She stroked my head, ‘Forget about it.’

  ‘I do want to know, really.’ I shook her arm. ‘Please.’

  She bent down and spoke quietly. ‘He’d shot a dog that was worrying his sheep and thought Donn might know whose dog it was. OK? Don’t tell the others.’

  My hand fell away.

  ‘He lost two. It’s important. They’re not pets, Bernie, it’s his job.’

  I looked at the door to Cassie’s room. It might have been an animal I heard. It might have been anything.

  ‘What do you think of Tommy?’ I asked.

  She shook her head and poured some boiled water into the tea pot, swirled it and emptied it. She put the loose tea in and filled it up again. When she looked back I was still waiting.

  ‘Your dad is coming tomorrow,’ she said, trying to smile. ‘It will be nice to see him, won’t it?’

  I nodded and went out to the lobby to take my wellies off. Nancy was waiting for me. She’d been listening.

  ‘He’ll be waiting for you after midnight.’

  ‘I’m not going out in the dark with him on my own.’

  ‘I’ll come with you, silly,’ she said, her eyes sliding to the door. ‘We can take Bruce as well. It will be the best adventure yet.’

  I hesitated. ‘I’ll think about it.’

  ‘Come on Bern, let’s go back outside. I want to go to the hay loft before Dad gets here. We never have any time once he’s got his list of places to go.’

  I nodded. She opened the back door as Donn came into the yard with Bruce. Donn went inside and Bruce came with us. I caught a glimpse of Mum standing at the kitchen window, watching.

  Nancy said nothing else about Tommy for the rest of the afte
rnoon and I started to relax. It was like before, bad singing, stories about Sandra and her hair, looking out for rats and stroking Bruce.

  After all, I could just say no.

  36

  Now

  Each time she woke, panicked and breathless, she remembered images from the last nightmare.

  Pursued by the devil through rhododendrons with flowers that burst open at enormous speed and smelled of apples.

  Hurley standing in the road, listening to her call his name over and over.

  Trembling at the top of the stairs, knowing something was coming and she wouldn’t see it until it was there.

  Bernie whispering, ‘Knots undo themselves when I’m not looking.’

  Agatha, by the fire, knitting thick black tights with four straight needles, then pulling each one from the loop of stitches and stabbing them into her chest.

  Bernie and Tommy, white eyed, turned to stone and crumbling.

  ‘I don’t want to remember,’ she murmured to herself. Elian grumbled.

  She unwrapped the sheet from round her arm, untucked the blankets from round her legs and watched the breeze slip past the edges of the curtains. The windows were as closed as they got, but the rain smattered against the glass so loudly that she wondered if they had been opened and forgotten. She was hot and cold, as if she had a fever. She knew what she had to say but she couldn’t admit it to Bernie. She tried to keep awake but each time was dragged under again.

  Bernie, mouth a foot wide, eating the post as it came though the letter box – letters, parcels, guns.

  37

  Then

  I never could say no to Nancy for long.

  The dark was total when we first went out, but after a while I could make out the lines of the hedge against the sky, the white gravel against the dark grass. I looked back to the house, and slapped my hand on my thigh again.

  ‘Stop it!’ hissed Nancy.

  ‘I want Bruce to come with us.’

  ‘He must be asleep.’

  We followed the drive under the trees and I couldn’t see her very well. I wanted to hold her hand but didn’t dare. I listened out for the rooks above but heard nothing above me, only in the bushes either side of the drive. I shuddered.

  My bare feet were cold inside my plimsolls, my arms so covered in goose bumps that they were tender against my jumper. The rosary beads were hard against my chest. We came out from under the trees and I stopped at the gate, my arms crossed over.

  ‘I don’t want to go.’

  ‘Don’t be silly, Bernie, he’s waiting.’

  ‘I don’t like him. This is crazy.’

  ‘I had no idea you were such a baby, Bernadette.’ She carefully crossed the cattle grid and waited on the other side. Her hands glowed white against her black cardigan, her hair brushed to one side made her face look alien, lopsided.

  I looked behind me again. I didn’t want to walk back under the trees on my own. I could see only glimpses of the house through the leaves. I heard a bark to my left.

  ‘See?’ she said. ‘Bruce is already there.’

  I balanced on the cow grid and made it across without slipping over. We walked around to the road gate and Nancy opened it. The stones seemed to glow too, although they were a dull grey in the daytime. Bruce was sitting beside them and he stood up and wagged his tail. The gate clanged as Nancy closed it.

  Tommy walked around the stones towards us.

  ‘Hello, gorgeous.’

  He wasn’t talking to me. I looked up the field towards the puffs of sheep while he kissed her on the cheek and then, after looking at me, on the lips.

  ‘Hands up,’ he told me.

  I put them shoulder high. I watched him pull a handgun from the back of his trousers and hand it to Nancy. It hung heavily in her hand.

  ‘You have to point it,’ he said. ‘It’s no good there.’

  ‘Please don’t, Nancy,’ I said. ‘This isn’t funny.’

  I saw a frown cross her face as she thought of saying no, and then she did it. She pointed at my face. She didn’t look at me though, just slightly to my left. Her hand was shaking a little.

  ‘Now click it like I showed you.’

  Nancy looked at him and then at the gun. Slowly she moved her grip until her thumb caught the safety catch. I shook my head and lowered my hands.

  ‘Nancy?’ I whispered.

  Tommy looked from Nancy to me and back again.

  ‘Good girl.’ He took the gun from her and her hands fell to her sides. ‘You can leave us to it.’

  ‘No!’ I looked at Nancy, ‘You promised!’

  ‘I promised I’d come with you.’ She didn’t look at me, but bent down to stroke Bruce.

  ‘Take the dog, too,’ he said.

  I didn’t believe she’d go. She was still scared of the dark. There was no way she’d walk back to the house without me.

  ‘Come on, Bruce,’ she said, and walked to the gate. He left me too.

  ‘Nancy!’

  She didn’t turn, not even a little. Tommy grabbed my arm and squeezed it.

  He whispered with hardly more noise than a breath. ‘Shut up.’

  I watched her go with the dog and looked up at the blue eyes Nancy had fallen in love with. He was smiling, in a way. He kept quite still and I heard her scrabble over the cattle grid and each step on the gravel until there weren’t any more. I hoped that Bruce would come back for me. When she went inside he’d come back. I listened for his quick feet coming back down the gravel but there was no sound at all.

  ‘I have a problem,’ said Tommy.

  He was talking quietly but each word vibrated in my head. He let go of me but I wasn’t running. I could barely get any air in and out and wrapped my arms around my chest as if to hold my lungs together.

  ‘I’m on a mission. The blacks are fighting for their rights, the French are rioting in Paris. I’m part of a revolution where violence is the only way to bring about justice.’

  ‘No, it isn’t.’ I felt I had been holding my breath and it had all left me at once.

  ‘Yes, it is. Who would have listened to the suffragettes if the suffragists hadn’t bombed libraries? They fought their war and then the politicians came in, revoked violence and everyone was so relieved they gave women the vote. Before the ballot, the bullet. But, for that to happen,’ he leaned in towards me, ‘you have to really frighten people. And we’ve got most of them frightened and when they’re frightened it gets really nasty. House searches, roadblocks, hunger strikers, stop and search, rubber bullets, plastic bullets, shoot to kill and no-one is safe. An eleven year old boy gets shot in the back of the head with a plastic bullet just last April. How old are you again?’

  I kept my lips together.

  ‘No answer, blue eyes?’ he pointed to the stones, to the gap underneath. ‘Have a look down there.’

  He pushed me forward and I stumbled onto my hands and knees. I looked down. The blanket that I’d seen on the floor in the kitchen next to the green bag. I could see his hair. I closed my eyes so I couldn’t see anything else. I thought he’d got away. I wasn’t going to get away either. I sank back onto my calves.

  ‘I told you what happened to tell tales.’ He laughed. ‘He had blue eyes too, didn’t he?’

  He pulled me up by my right arm and I staggered to my feet. I heard him unclick the gun.

  ‘Come on,’ he said.

  I looked at the gate and took a tiny step backwards. He grabbed my arm again. This time we didn’t stand still. He marched me up the field, through the sheep, past my mother’s window. He opened the gate at the top of the field and pulled me through it. I gasped, tripped and found my feet somehow on the mud. He didn’t loosen his grip. Outside the barn with the Tardis blue door he stopped and turned to face the scrubby square of metal and tyres. He let go now and looked up and down from one gate by the yard to the other by the silo. He gestured with the gun.

  ‘Welcome to Skull Lane.’ He pushed me down to my knees and held the gun to the back of
my neck. ‘Is there anything else you want to know? Because after tonight you don’t get to say anything at all. You don’t ask anything, you don’t talk about anything. Got it?’

  I heard a click on the gun again and nodded.

  ‘Look in front of you.’

  All I could see were bits of tractor and spikes of metal.

  ‘That’s where the people who talk go, under the soil and the rubbish. Out of sight, out of mind. There’s plenty of space for a wee thing like you. But I want you to think about who’s really responsible for this. Your da, the Englishman who never gets his hands dirty, who turns a blind eye, who doesn’t care about people dying, only stones and fame. Your da who showed you the stones and encouraged you to go where you shouldn’t. Your da who is never here. You’ve been warned too many times now and this is it. Get in the barn.’

  I stumbled to my feet and tugged at the door of the barn, my barn, and waited.

  ‘Inside and kneel down.’

  I knelt next to the spiders and couldn’t feel the beads against my chest anymore. I thought they’d gone, fallen somewhere. I moved a hand to check.

  ‘The second you move, you’re dead.’

  My hand froze.

  ‘It might not be me, it could be anyone. We are all watching you, Bernadette.’

  I heard the gun click again and closed my eyes, but all I heard were his footsteps and the bang of a door. I stayed as still as I could, my knees pressing into stones, but somehow my hands clasped themselves together in front of my chest as if they were tied. I didn’t know if he was coming back. I opened my eyes. The sky seemed brighter. I wondered if the angels were coming to get me. I couldn’t see him, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t there. I wasn’t going to turn, I wasn’t going to move. I listened for the sound of Tommy coming to find me. I listened for the spiders and beetles.

  Blue eyes.

  He knew I wasn’t one of them. They wouldn’t miss me as much as Nancy or even stupid little Florence.

  Everything began to hurt now, my arm, my legs, my knees. I let myself cry for my knees. I quickly pulled the beads from around my neck and held them in front of me.