The Insect Rosary Read online

  Sarah Armstrong is an Associate Lecturer in Creative Writing with the Open University. Her stories have been published in magazines such as Mslexia and Litro and her poem, ‘The Polesworth Pact’, is part of the Polesworth Poets Trail. The Insect Rosary is her first novel and is inspired by seventeen years of summer holidays in Northern Ireland. She lives in Colchester with her husband and four children.

  THE INSECT ROSARY

  Sarah Armstrong

  First published in Great Britain and the

  United States of America 2015

  Sandstone Press Ltd

  Dochcarty Road

  Dingwall

  Ross-shire

  IV15 9UG

  Scotland.

  www.sandstonepress.com

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form without the express written permission of the publisher.

  (c) Sarah Armstrong 2015

  Editor: Moira Forsyth

  The moral right of Sarah Armstrong to be recognised as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Design and Patent Act, 1988.

  The publisher acknowledges subsidy from Creative Scotlandtowards publication of this volume.

  ISBN: 978-1-910124-32-1

  ISBNe: 978-1-910124-33-8

  Cover design by Antigone Konstantinidou, London

  Ebook by Iolaire Typesetting, Newtonmore

  Dedicated with love to Mark, Alfred, George, Henry and Mabel and with thanks to Mark Hardie and Lucy Yates

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  July 1982

  1

  Then

  I would have been asleep except for Nancy.

  ‘Bern,’ she whispered. ‘Tell me.’

  I said nothing. I was still cross that she wouldn’t say sorry for getting me into trouble. Usually she would say something. Not sorry, but something that made me feel better. This time she just wanted to know what he’d said and I was not going to tell her. Not yet. I could still feel my fingers round the door handle to Cassie’s room and Tommy’s hand around my neck.

  ‘Just what do you think you’re doing?’ he had said.

  I turned. I couldn’t see Nancy anywhere. He shifted his hand to the front of my neck. His eyes were narrowed and he smelled of apples.

  ‘Do you not know what curiosity did to the cat, Bernadette?’

  I nodded.

  ‘Say nothing or I’ll split your tongue. I know what you’re up to all the time, and next time your hand is on this handle,’ he bent down, his mouth against my ear, ‘you’ll find yourself on Skull Lane.’ His hand released me and I ran.

  Now it was really late, and still Nancy kept trying to make friends until we saw the car lights curve across and over the ceiling.

  I could hear the door slam on his car and the crunch of his boots. It stopped. That meant he was on the doorstep and now Nancy was quiet too. Florence turned in her single bed by the window. She could ignore it. She didn’t know what he would do.

  ‘Bern,’ Nancy whispered again.

  This time I turned to her, my lips pressed together. I tried, but I could never say no to Nancy for long.

  The front door closed, then the inner porch door and then the parlour door. I could hear Nancy breathing, or was it me, and my heart banging against my ribs and the way my breath whistled through my nose because I would not open my mouth, not with him in the house, because I knew what happened to tell-tale-tits. And so did Nancy. So what did she want me to say? Right now I hated her more than him. He was trouble but she could get me into trouble. She persuaded me to do all sorts just with a little look or a blink. The killer was, ‘If you do this, Bern, I will never call you Bernadette again, cross my heart, hope to die.’ She never kept her promises but I thought that one day she might really mean it, so if I didn’t do it then, that very special one time, I’d miss the chance forever. Yes, my mum and dad would still beat out ‘Bern-a-dette’ but my big sister, the one whose voice I believed in, was the one who counted.

  She raised herself up on one elbow and bent towards me. I shook my head, knowing the words without hearing them, closed my eyes and tried to see sheep, like the ones outside only smiling and clean and, most importantly, jumping one after the other over a freshly painted fence. If I could just go to sleep she couldn’t make me. My eyes hurt from being squeezed so tight, my legs straight and stiff as a dead man. Still she whispered.

  ‘If you don’t come with me I’m going on my own.’

  I couldn’t keep my eyes closed. ‘No, don’t go.’

  ‘I am.’

  I couldn’t let her get caught alone. Even Sister Agatha told us to stay away from him and she never said bad things about people, she told us. She wasn’t allowed or she’d be thrown out of the convent before she got in. So it must be true, or God would have struck her down, like she was always inviting him to.

  Nothing was going to stop Nancy though, not God or Sister Agatha, or me. She was already out of bed and shrugging her dressing gown on. She wasn’t looking at me or saying anything else, but she was doing it all very slowly, very carefully. She was giving me time to catch her up. I knew she didn’t want to go on her own. And she knew that I wanted to be part of it, to listen and know and if she went on her own she would never tell me what happened and always, always call me Bernadette. She would let me explode with curiosity before she breathed a word. She knew how to be quiet, more than anyone.

  I sat up and the bed springs twanged underneath me. I held my hands to my mouth, as if the noise had come from there, and listened for a step on the stairs. Nancy rolled her eyes, I expect. It was too dark for me to see her expression, now she was nearly at the door. I inched my lower legs off the bed until my feet settled on the floor and pushed myself upwards. About ten bed springs went at once.

  ‘For God’s sake, Bernadette!’ she hissed.

  I scowled at her, although I was facing the chimney breast, and then pulled my dressing gown on.

  ‘Are you putting your slippers on?’ I whispered.

  She tutted at me, like Mum does. I looked at Florence asleep in her bed. Maybe I could poke her. She’d cry, someone would come and I could be back under the covers. Even Nancy wouldn’t dare twice in one night.

  Nancy caught my arm with one hand and gently turned the squeaking door handle with the other. The light from the landing seeped and then poured into the bedroom. I squinted against it, painful like a torch shone right in my eyes, and then we were out of the room and creeping along the carpet to the top of the stairs. Her long blonde hair was matted at the back. I tried to keep my hair in a plait, hoping for curly hair like hers instead of wavy, but it had always
fallen out by morning.

  I could hear a blur of loud voices as I held onto the dark wood of the stair spindles. I couldn’t get both hands to meet around the fattest part, but one hand could span the thinnest. Nancy had made it down to the lower landing, outside the bathroom. She hadn’t made a single sound on the three steps down to it, but I didn’t trust myself to copy this feat. I sat on the top of those steps and listened.

  Someone was angry, but it wasn’t Tommy. It was a woman shouting but one man, no two men, were laughing.

  ‘What’s she saying?’ I whispered.

  Nancy hissed, ‘Shhh.’

  I leaned my head against the banister and yawned. Crying always made me tired. The shouting turned to a short scream and the kitchen door opened and banged against the wall.

  ‘Dirty traitor!’ Tommy shouted. ‘You’re just a slut, Eithne!’ The door slammed.

  We scrambled for our bedroom, not caring about the noise for fear of being caught. I got to the door last, even though I’d been in front. Mum saw me, but was crying so hard she didn’t even say anything. I wished she had.

  We were back under the blankets before we said anything else. I didn’t want to talk, I wanted to listen out for his footsteps, but I had to.

  ‘Why did he call Mum a traitor?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ I could hear a shake in Nancy’s voice.

  ‘Why does he come here? I hate him. I don’t know why Donn invites him. He must do. He just walks in whenever he likes.’

  Nancy said nothing but her breathing sounded weird. For days we wouldn’t see him, nearly forgot about him, and then he’d be back. But never when Dad was here.

  I said, ‘I wish Dad would come.’

  ‘Oh, shut up, Bernadette,’ she whispered, but I could hear that she’d started crying and I didn’t say anything back.

  If he made Mum cry that meant she must be scared of him too. I turned my back on Nancy and, to stop myself imagining Tommy coming up the stairs instead of Mum, I picked out the shape of my little pot on the mantelpiece, full of special shells.

  2

  Now

  Her uncle pulled up in the back yard and let himself in by the back door. Elian had been trying to catch her eye the whole journey, but now he looked back from the front seat with mock surprise.

  ‘He does talk, right?’ he said. ‘He didn’t say a word!’

  Nancy snapped, ‘Not everyone has to fill every second with words. Everything you were asking was a yes or no question anyway.’

  ‘I thought it seemed safer.’ Elian opened the door and stretched his arms above his head. He looked around. ‘So, we’re here.’

  Nancy groaned. ‘Really?’

  She opened her door and looked around the yard. She couldn’t spot anything different at all, but then she hadn’t expected the concrete to be painted with anything but mud, or the ravaged garage doors to be anything but stuck open, not quite flush to the wall, forever. The well was still locked with a padlock that also served as a major tripping hazard, right at the bottom of the wooden steps to one of the many high barns that no-one risked entering even when she was a child. She couldn’t believe that they still looked like steps, that they hadn’t crumbled through lack of use into kindling. And under the steps, where there are used to be one sheepdog, was another. Another black and white border collie. She wished Donn was there to tell her its name. It lifted its head, yawned and stood up, shaking out his fur.

  ‘Come here, boy,’ she said, stretching her hand out. Dogs were always boys, even when they turned out to be girls. The dog didn’t move.

  Elian opened Hurley’s door for him and walked around to the rear of the car.

  ‘Dog, eh?’ he said. ‘That’s great, isn’t it Hurley?’

  Hurley was still in the car.

  Elian struggled to work the lock and Nancy opened the boot for him. He stood with a case in his hand, uncertain where to place it. He decided against putting it down anywhere and carried it to the back door where he left it on the step. He came back for the other case and Hurley’s backpack and banged the boot back down. It sprang up again, and again, until it caught the third time.

  ‘Goddamn it! What is wrong with this trunk?’

  Nancy winced and hoped Agatha hadn’t heard.

  ‘Could take your damn head off. Remind me again why we didn’t hire a car,’ he said. ‘A shiny, clean one.’

  Nancy didn’t remind him of the reasons she’d given him, sensible ones about being unused to driving on the left and insurance. She hadn’t wanted a car because she didn’t want this to turn into a touring holiday, a jumping off point for more interesting places. She wanted Hurley to have a holiday like she’d had, of boredom leading to investigation, of imagination.

  Elian deposited the second case next to the first, both newly acquired for the biggest journey of his life. It had taken months to persuade him and she could feel the last of his enthusiasm shrivel up. But they were there now. What could he do?

  She smiled and walked towards the dog. ‘Come on boy.’

  The sheepdog didn’t look upwards for affirmation, like Bruce used to. It stared straight at them in turn before fixing on Hurley who hadn’t moved from the side of the car.

  ‘Ah, it’s smiling at you,’ said Elian.

  ‘No, it isn’t,’ said Nancy, putting a protective arm around Hurley. ‘Sit!’

  The dog turned its attention to her. The slender muzzle grew large with teeth and it barked before resuming that smile of domination.

  ‘Let’s get inside,’ said Nancy, the tremor in her voice causing Hurley and Elian to scramble for the door. She didn’t turn her back on it, but edged away, avoiding eye contact. Hurley hadn’t encountered more than two dogs in his life, but she was surprised at Elian running like that. She picked up the cases and backpack and took them into the lobby.

  ‘Don’t put them down in here,’ said Elian, ‘it’s even muddier than outside.’

  ‘Don’t worry about me.’ She put the cases down hard and handed the bag to Hurley. ‘Don’t you know you shouldn’t show a dog that you’re scared?’

  Elian picked the cases up as she closed the back door. The round handle needed to be turned both ways until it hitched closed. The lobby. She couldn’t remember whether that was what they’d called it or what her mother had called it. The black and white tiles were uniformly grey, the deep sink chipped and the taps rusted red around the base. There was a selection of rainproof jackets and stinking hats hanging from hooks on the wall, steel capped boots and wellingtons on the floor. She sighed. Why hadn’t Donn allowed them to come in the front? That would have impressed Elian, the double frontage and front door so big it was two doors. The hallway, the wide staircase, that would have made him feel that he was having a historical experience rather than a grimly farming one.

  ‘Okay,’ Nancy lightened her voice, pointed to the right and smiled for Hurley, ‘that is the downstairs toilet, and this is the parlour. Like a big kitchen, but not a kitchen. Well it used to be. Anyway.’ She opened the door on the left, waited for them to enter and closed the door behind them. ‘You need to remember to keep all the doors closed to keep the heat in and the animals out, OK?’

  They turned to the fireplace.

  ‘And this is my aunt, Agatha.’

  Agatha put her tea cup on the side table and stood. Elian walked over and shook her hand.

  ‘It’s so good to meet you. How are you? I’m Elian, this is Hurley.’

  ‘Hello.’ She sat back down again. ‘He’s tall for ten.’

  Elian said, ‘He’s fourteen. Might explain it.’ He smiled.

  ‘Small for fourteen,’ said Agatha.

  Elian opened his mouth, closed it and turned breezily around. ‘Wow, what a room. High ceilings.’

  Agatha picked up her tea cup again. Donn came into the parlour with a single cup and poured himself tea from the pot on the table by the window.

  ‘Help yourself,’ he said to Nancy.

  ‘Thanks. A cup of tea would be
lovely.’

  Donn sat in the matching armchair to Agatha’s in front of the fireplace and Nancy took three cups from the cupboard in the small kitchen and used the strainer while pouring from the pot.

  ‘It’s been a long trip.’ Elian was still addressing Agatha. ‘But it’s super to be here. It’s so green. It’s just so . . . green.’

  She nodded.

  ‘And after all the troubles, it’s great to be here. I’ve read up on it all.’

  Nancy looked away. ‘Elian.’

  ‘All that bombing and everything, I wasn’t sure if there’d be anything left.’

  ‘Elian.’

  ‘But you always had our support in the US. Any oppressed people get our support. And there have always been great ties between the US and Ireland, all the presidents and stuff. Kennedy is a good Irish name, isn’t it?’

  Nancy shouted, ‘Elian, come and get your cup!’ He came to the table and Nancy hissed, ‘Stop talking. Please. Don’t say anything until you’re asked. And then just one word will do.’

  He frowned and whispered, ‘They’re so quiet it’s making me anxious.’ He took the tea and raised his voice again. ‘You’re not going to give Hurley tea are you? I don’t think caffeine will do him any good.’

  ‘I’ll ask him.’ She turned to him, ‘Hurley?’ He edged away from the door towards the table, ‘Would you like to try some tea, or would you prefer water?’

  He shrugged, dragged a chair from beneath the table and slumped so he could look out of the window. His bag was on his lap. Nancy poured him a cup with lots of milk and placed it on a saucer in front of him.

  She bent down to whisper, ‘Don’t drink it right to the bottom. It has leaves.’

  ‘So, it’s been a long trip,’ Donn said.

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Elian. ‘We left Detroit yesterday. Was it yesterday? Tuesday, whenever that was. Then we changed in London, which was great, really great. Nice airport.’

  ‘Did you call on Nancy’s family?’ asked Agatha.

  Elian, delighted to be having a conversation at last, set his cup down and pulled a chair up in between Agatha and Donn.