The Insect Rosary (22 page)

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.

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.

I waited.

Now

She was woken by a dog barking. First she thought it was Bruce and then she thought it was Tommy coming to kill them all. It was dark but she had to do it now, with the nightmares fresh in her mind. She pulled a jumper over her pyjamas.

She crept into Bernie's room and saw her asleep on her side, next to the fireplace. She shook her gently but Bernie was awake straight away, as if she'd been waiting. She'd always been waiting. They felt their way downstairs. Neither said so, but they knew that if anyone else got up the spell would be broken, the words gone.

Nancy's feet ached on the cold floor. She opened the door to the best room and Bernie followed her inside. They sat in the paired armchairs by the fire and Nancy talked.

Bernie shook a little, her hands clasped tight.

‘I took you to Tommy knowing he was going to scare you. He said that, but I swear I didn't know how. I didn't know he was going to give me the gun and tell me to point it at you. I left you and went back to bed. In the morning I got really scared when you weren't there. We looked for you all over and I knew you might be in the stable but I didn't want to say that we'd been in there before, so I said nothing until it was nearly dark.'

Bernie leaned towards her. ‘That's not true. Only the truth, Nancy.'

Nancy nodded and started again. ‘I did know about the gun.' She paused but Bernie said nothing. ‘I didn't want to find you because you'd tell them what I did. But then it was dark and I thought he might really have hurt you, even though he said he'd only scare you. And then I pretended I heard something and opened the door and you were lying there with the rosary beads in your hands and you hadn't slept at all and only talked about angels, so I didn't mention Tommy and I didn't tell them what I did. And I'm sorry.'

‘What else did I say?'

‘You said, “Tell them what happened, Nancy. Tell them who did it.”'

‘And why didn't you say? Why did you do any of it? I don't understand.'

Nancy closed her eyes and then forced them open. ‘He gave me the gun one other time. He said, with all I'd seen, I could be one of them or their enemy. He said if I was one of them I had to learn how to shoot. He told me to aim at the blanket. He said it was full of clothes, just to give me the idea. And I did, twice. And I remember smiling because it was exciting and I was trusted and then I realised that the noise hadn't been a thud against the ground. And the blood poured out through the hole in the blanket and he pulled it back a little and I saw hair. I didn't know, I swear I didn't, but it was me.'

Bernie's eyes were glistening. That was all Nancy could see.

‘All this time I thought it was Tommy,' said Bernie. ‘And then, after talking to Tommy, I thought that you must know it was Donn. And it was you. Did Donn know?'

‘Maybe. I never told him. I never told anyone. I nearly persuaded myself that I'd imagined the blood, that it was just a trick. Just blankets. But I couldn't forget what I'd done to you. I will never forgive myself.'

Nancy had nothing else to say. She waited for Bernie to scream or shout but she just sat calmly with her head resting on the back of the chair. Eventually she spoke.

‘Why did you keep quiet?'

‘I was ashamed. I pointed a gun at you.'

‘Why did you do it?'

‘Fear. I was scared. I'd held the gun. I'd fired it. Fingerprints, guns, blood. It was all I could think about. It was all too much. I couldn't say anything. All of those people there, they were witnesses.'

‘Other people?'

‘You know those other men we'd see coming out of the barns?'

‘I remember shiny shoes.'

‘He was there. It was like Tommy was showing me off to him, a performing monkey. He's the one who gave me the gun, like it was a prize.'

‘Did he threaten you?'

‘No. he said nothing at all. I knew I'd go to prison or he'd come and shoot us all without anyone saying it.' Nancy looked at her hands. ‘And I left you with Tommy. That was worst of all. I couldn't live with anyone knowing that. I couldn't even admit it to you and just hoped, that with everything else, you'd forget. Basically I wanted us all to forget. Especially me.'

She looked up to see Bernie close her eyes.

‘Are you all right?' asked Nancy.

Bernie voice sounded thick, ‘I think so.'

Nancy waited.

‘I'm very cold,' said Bernie.

‘Let's light a fire in the parlour.'

The sky was still black to the west, but in the parlour she could see the glow of day rising cold over the corrugated roofs.

‘Jesus,' she said.

Bernie made her jump. ‘Jesus what?'

‘I don't know. Jesus whatever's going to come next.'

Bernie glanced at her. ‘You look terrible.'

‘I feel terrible.' She felt that she'd welcome some purging vomiting session, that it may clear the dreams from her. She felt a sneeze build in the back of her nose. She managed to keep it down.

‘You really don't look well,' said Bernie.

‘I'm tired, that's all. I didn't sleep well.'

Bernie had rings under her eyes too.

‘I've missed you,' Nancy whispered. Bernie squeezed her hand and let go.

Bernie had the fire ready to light. Nancy sat in Agatha's chair. It was just like one of Agatha's fires, a little wigwam of kindling over barley twists of newspaper, the peat on the hearth ready.

Nancy couldn't remember seeing a paper since she'd arrived.

‘Where did you find the newspaper?'

‘Cassie's room.'

Nancy shivered.

Bernie reached up onto the mantelpiece for the long matches. She lit all the paper twists with one match. Agatha never approved of using more than one.

Nancy said, ‘Isn't it weird how the little things stick? Stupid little things like the glacé cherries in that cupboard.'

‘Shall I see if they're still there?' Bernie opened the cupboard and pulled out a plastic tub. ‘Still here. Expired . . . 1990.' She put the tub back and closed the door. The kindling had taken enough for her to put some of the peat bricks on.

Nancy thought about Elian. ‘Do you feel guilty about using peat?'

‘No. This is what it was always used for, a little at a time. Not trailer loads so people could have bigger pansies.'

Nancy smiled. That's what she'd said. They must have both heard someone else say it. Bernie sat in Donn's chair and closed her eyes. Nancy felt another sneeze building and couldn't stop it.

‘Bless you.' Bernie smiled but kept her eyes closed. ‘You'll be in bed for a couple of days with that cold. Good old summer colds. I'm sure we never got them as children and we were always out in the rain then.'

‘Not as bad as the chilblains though.'

‘God, no, they're the worst.'

Nancy smiled and waited for Bernie to open her eyes. The longer she kept them closed, the more she thought, this is it. This is the start of the breakdown. She'll never come to terms with it now. She should have been quicker, planned better. She would have to tell Adrian, warn the girls that Mummy wasn't feeling well. Should she have let her light a fire? She began to edge herself from her chair. Bernie opened her eyes.

‘Where are you going?'

‘Tea.'

Nancy made two mugs while keeping an eye on her. The rainclouds were so heavy it looked as if morning hadn't progressed any further than when she'd got up, but it was seven o'clock now. She set the mugs in front of the fire. Bernie still had her eyes open.

‘How do you feel?'

‘Quite warm now.'

‘No, about – what I said. You seem too calm.'

‘I said I needed to know. Now it makes sense. You were scared for your life too. Maybe I'd have done the same. I needed to know why and now I know.'

They were both quiet then.

‘It wasn't you that killed him, though,' Bernie said after a while. ‘It was your hand, but not your fault.'

‘I know.'

‘If he was wrapped up he was probably dead already.'

‘I tried to believe that. I don't think there would have been blood if that was true, but it kept me going for a while. It didn't feel much different, in any case. I just got really good at not thinking about it.'

Nancy gave Bernie her mug and they drank the tea. There were footsteps on the stairs and Nancy could see Bernie adjust herself.

‘So, you're OK?' Nancy said.

Bernie nodded, ‘I will be.' She turned to greet the girls.

 

Nancy watched her carefully all day. She noted what she said and what she omitted, how she explained the end of operations to the girls, and how she reworked it for Adrian. In both forms it was a victory. She had defeated evil, silence and apathy with good, shouting and action. It didn't feel so final to Nancy, more a hole that had been placed where the question was. Bernie could fill it again and again. Nancy kept quiet.

 

At dinner Bernie announced they were leaving.

‘Tomorrow?' echoed Adrian. ‘Do we have a booking?'

‘We can sort one. We can be flexible, catch a cancellation.'

‘But we're booked for the day after. I don't understand the rush. I'd rather have a booking set before we get the kids in the car, really.'

‘We'll be fine,' said Bernie, flapping one hand toward him.

Nancy looked away. There was something lighter about her as if she may drift off, untethered, a flickering sky lantern across the sea. Adrian didn't seem to notice any difference. The children probably did but would hide and deny it if asked. And Elian? He was looking at her, waiting for Nancy to catch his eye.

‘I was thinking of taking Hurley to Italy for a few days,' he said. ‘We have a couple of weeks left and things seem to be breaking up here. There are places I'd like to go, like to show him.'

Nancy nodded.

‘What do you think?' he asked.

She wasn't sure what he was asking. Was she included in this or just required to give another nod? She put a hand to her forehead.

‘I don't feel well.'

‘Have a lie down,' he said. ‘We can talk about it later.'

She stood up, steadying herself on the table. There was a movement outside in the shadows. She had seen Donn in the yard a couple of times during the day but he hadn't come inside. She wasn't sure if he had been inside at all since they started to move the scrap, other than to phone her mother. Maybe he'd been staying in one of the barns. Maybe at Tommy's. He never even looked towards the house and she felt that they'd moved in and evicted him. He must be just waiting for them to leave.

One time she saw him and ran outside to catch him, but he'd gone. The next time she looked out his car had gone. Whenever Bernie caught her eye she tried to smile, but she felt responsible. They'd ruined his life. He had nowhere to run home to.

She sneezed again. ‘I think I will just lie down for a bit.'

Nancy went upstairs and got into bed. The light through the curtains could have been from any time of day, diffused through gallons of raindrops and her lashes.

 

When she woke Elian was asleep. She was hungry now and tried to walk down the stairs in the dark but ran back to the light switch and turned in the landing one, and then the hall one and then the parlour.

Donn was sitting by the cold fireplace.

‘Sorry,' she said, ‘did I wake you?'

He shook his head. He had a blanket bunched up on his lap, his feet in their heavily darned socks crossed in front. She sat in Agatha's chair.

‘Are you OK?'

He snorted and then there was a high pitched sigh. Her throat seized. She couldn't cope with him crying. There was no sign on his face that he would. He stared into the fireplace.

‘Shall I light a fire? It's chilly.'

He shook his head. She waited for him to offer something else but he just looked at the ashes.

‘We'll clear it up before we go.'

He looked at her.

‘The fireplace.'

There was another sigh, like a whimper. This might be the last time she saw him, the last chance to ask anything. The blanket on Donn's lap stirred and the head of a border collie puppy emerged from the folds.

‘Shh, back to sleep, Bran,' he said, stroking between its ears.

He was staying. Maybe Tommy didn't want the farm any more, maybe the hold was broken. Maybe there was a price on Donn's head and the rest of them.

Nancy said, ‘I'm glad he's got a name. Will Agatha come back, now you're staying?'

‘I am selling.'

Nancy was shocked. ‘Who to?'

‘Do you really want to know?'

Nancy paused. She didn't want to have to lie to Bernie, but she didn't want to imagine Tommy owning her farm. It would always be her farm.

‘Maybe not,' she said. ‘Did you know, Donn?'

She meant about her, about Ryan, but didn't want to say. He didn't answer.

Nancy thought about getting something from the fridge and then decided she wasn't hungry anymore. She pushed herself up from the chair. At the door she turned to ask if he wanted the light off again.

‘It's someone else buying the farm,' said Donn. ‘Not Tommy.'

Nancy didn't believe him. ‘Thanks.'

‘It was only ever supposed to be guns,' he said.

Nancy switched the light off.

‘At least they told me they were guns,' he said.

‘I understand. We can only know what people want us to know.'