The Insect Rosary (16 page)

‘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?'

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, calmly 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!'

‘What?'

I lowered my voice, ‘Someone is in Cassie's room.'

She propped herself up on an elbow. ‘I learned to drive a car today. It was the most exciting thing I've ever done. You wouldn't understand but you're trying to show off, to make out you know something you don't. Do you understand what it means if you're right?'

I shook my head.

‘Nothing. What could you do if it was true? Who are you going to tell?'

I blinked and looked down at my knees sticking out of my nightie. I needed Nancy to grow a bit more so I could have hers.

‘I could tell Dad.'

‘Tommy says he may be English but he married into this family and he knows the score. I wouldn't tell anyone, if I were you. You have no idea.'

She lay down and arranged her hair around her head. It would still be tangled in the morning. She looked at me, rolled her eyes and then closed them.

‘Light,' she said.

I edged into bed but didn't lie down just yet.

‘Nancy, did he tell you what Skull Lane was?'

She opened her eyes. ‘As a favour, I won't tell him that you said that.'

I turned off the light.

Now

Nancy found Elian lying on the bed listening to music on his phone, his face lit up by the screen. She thought about turning the light on but thought this may be a conversation best held in the twilight. She signalled for him to take the earphones out. He removed one earpiece.

‘I don't really want to say anything,' he said. ‘It's,' he made a flat movement with his hand, ‘never going to happen.' He closed his eyes.

‘I'd like to talk about it.' Nancy could hear the music still whistling from the earpiece. ‘I think there's a lot of potential here.'

‘I don't.' He pulled out the other earpiece and paused the music. ‘I hate this country and I don't intend, not in a million years, to live here. It's cold, it rains all the time. It's utterly miserable.'

Nancy bit her lip. ‘When did I agree that I would always live in your country forever and ever? I never thought that my opinion would count for so little in our marriage.'

Elian laughed. ‘What? You never said you wanted our family to emigrate. You never said, you know, one day, when we're all settled, we need to go back to the UK. I met you in the US, dated and married you there, had a kid there, and not once did you say anything like that. Now that I have spoken to Bernie and Adrian I wouldn't ever consider it. The things they say about London . . .'

‘That's just English people. They always complain about everything. It doesn't mean that they mean it. When I talk about Michigan I'm the same.'

‘Really? I've never heard you talk about home like that. Are you saying that you're miserable, that all this time you've hated our life?'

‘No. I just said, it's how English people go on.'

Nancy sat on the commode chair and Elian fiddled with his earpieces, winding them around his fingers. Nancy knew this look of his. Petulant. His wishes were being ignored and he needed to show that on his face. He did it most with his mother, his eyes filling with tears, if she wasn't totally enthusiastic about what he was saying. She never supported him, he would claim, and slump from the room. She always followed him. Nancy refused to and knew how long he could hold a grudge for. She didn't have time for that.

‘It's not just for me. Think about Hurley. Don't you think he's been a different child over here? He is really benefitting from the space and exercise. He had that one bad day, and God knows those girls are provocative.'

‘So it would be their fault?'

‘Don't change the subject.'

‘His counsellor thinks that you excuse too much of his behaviour.'

Nancy looked away.

‘You can't blame people for provoking him,' said Elian. ‘What did we do to make him smash up his room the last time? What did you say to make him skewer the TV with the baseball bat?'

‘They were problems that he brought home with him.'

Elian snorted.

‘I'm serious. He needs somewhere like this.'

Elian shuffled back up the bed, pushing the cushion behind his head. ‘There are farms in Michigan. Many more farms than here. You have to understand there is nothing special about this place, other than your connection to it.'

‘I fucking hate America. I hate the counsellors and therapy and drugs and “special ed” and politically correct ways of naming what's wrong with Hurley. What if he just needs to be away from people? Not everyone can be sociable, not everyone has to be comfortable with public speaking. What's wrong with being quiet? Being shy and awkward have become personality defects and have to be treated with drugs. Being overactive is a personality defect and that has to be treated with drugs too. The whole way of looking at people is wrong.'

Elian crossed his arms. ‘You hate America?'

‘You only hear half of what I'm saying, do you realise that? You said you hated this country, anyway. I can say it too.'

‘But you don't actually live here. You and your husband and child live in the USA.' Elian looked out of the window at the clouds, the monkey puzzle trees, the drive dwindling away between them. ‘Are you giving me some kind of ultimatum?'

‘What do you mean?'

‘When I go back home with Hurley after my,' he made quotation marks with his fingers, ‘“holiday”, are you staying here?'

She'd already said, ‘Hurley's staying with me,' before she realised how the discussion had escalated. ‘You expect me to ferry him around all the time because you're too busy. Why would that suddenly change? Maybe you could even get a transfer to Belfast. It's not far. We can get the broadband set up and you can have a whole bedroom for your office. I can have a whole bedroom for my crafting.' She remembered saying that Donn could stay on, but pushed that thought away. ‘There's plenty of room for your parents to visit. And then we can have holidays from here to all the European places you want to go. Italy and Greece and France, they're so accessible from here.'

He was staring at her but it was too late to sell him the idea. He looked almost amused.

‘He doesn't even want to sell it to you.'

She walked to the side window. ‘Look out here. There's a prehistoric monument that's never been excavated, right here in the field. Come and look at it.'

He wrapped the earphones around his phone and dropped his feet onto the floor with a sigh. He stood upright, stretched, and then walked around the bed and out of the door.

Nancy looked out of the window. She watched the idiotic sheep eat their way through the dusk, across the field for the twentieth, thirtieth time that day. Fucking Elian. Fucking Michigan. Fucking stupid people in general.

Somehow, accidentally, she might have just ended her marriage.

She looked around the room. If she was going to be honest with herself, she couldn't see this as her room. She couldn't see it as her house and her driveway. She couldn't buy anything without selling their house in Michigan. She had put everything on the line, maybe over the line, on an emotional whim. She was running away from being told what a bad mother she was, what an inconsiderate wife and incompetent craftswoman. She could sit in her basement for hours and come up with no ideas of her own, before trawling the internet to find other people's ideas that she could adapt.

She sat on the bed and looked at the monkey puzzle trees. Was this a mid-life crisis? Was she one of those women who went on holiday and threw everything up in the air for a sniff of youth or difference? She'd pottered along for years, doing whatever came next.

She let her body fall backwards onto the blankets, uncomfortably screwed up beneath her back. The ceiling flashed at her and she frowned, wondering what it meant, before she realised. Headlights. She could hear the car now. Donn was back. She tried to summon the energy to push herself from the bed, and failed.

Nancy heard footsteps downstairs and the patter of smaller feet up the stairs. The girls had been sent to the bedroom. More steps and a door. Hurley was in his room too. The ground floor had been cleared for the adults, just like when they were children. She closed her eyes, focusing on what she could hear, but it was all vague murmurs and slight bangs. She shivered.

She pulled a cardigan from one of the drawers and tried to shake her arms through the sleeves which were folded inside. Her hands emerged and she stood still, trying to slow her breathing. Then she knocked on Hurley's door. She waited for him to answer and then went in anyway.

‘Hi,' she said.

He was sitting on the bed, looking out of his window at the yard. She sat beside him.

‘Everything's gone a bit funny today, hasn't it?'

He tilted his head towards her, but kept his eyes on the window. ‘What have you done?'

‘After dinner I wanted to talk to everyone about buying the farm. Bernie went mad and then Dad went mad. Donn said no anyway. It's all a bit of a mess, but it'll be fine.'

He looked at her now, a strangely knowing look which let her know he knew she was lying.

‘Could you imagine living here, Hurley?'

He shrugged. She tried to think of a way of putting it which wouldn't sound leading if it was quoted back to anyone.

‘Where would you like to live, if you could live anywhere?'

He thought about it and then smiled. ‘The North Pole.'

She smiled and said, ‘OK. There's not many people there. Wouldn't you be lonely?'

‘You'd be there, and Dad.'

She put her arm around his shoulders and squeezed gently.

‘I'd better go downstairs.' She stood up. ‘There might be some shouting, but I want you to stay calm, OK? Practise your breathing exercises.'

He looked at her and nodded.

She left the room, closed the door, and walked down the stairs. She ran her hand along the banister, sticky with old varnish, and held onto the large ball at the bottom. Three deep breaths and she was ready.

When she opened the parlour door she saw only Donn and Bernie. They sat at either end of the parlour table, all the dinner plates still in front of them. She remained standing by the door, next to the grandfather clock. Someone had asked a question, someone was waiting for the other to respond. She couldn't tell which.

Bernie turned her head towards Nancy. ‘What do you want?'

‘I want answers.' She turned to Donn, ‘Is the farm for sale? And can I talk to you about buying it?'

Bernie snorted. ‘Go away, Nancy. No-one cares about what you want.'

‘It's my business too, Bern-a-dette.'

Donn shook his head.

Nancy stood firm. ‘Have you promised it to Tommy? Why him? Why didn't I know he was Sinead's godfather?'

Bernie looked back to Donn. ‘Bet you wish we were all like that, don't you? Forgetful, stupid, wilfully ignorant, whatever you want to call it.'

Nancy sighed, ‘Will you just tell me what you want me to say?'

‘I want you to tell the truth about what happened.' Bernie turned to Donn, ‘And I want you to tell me what went on in Cassie's room. Everyone clear on that?'

‘Bernie, don't.' Donn's voice cracked. ‘Don't ask me anything.'

Nancy thought he would cry. Her arms and resolve fell away. She stood by the clock, counting the ticks and squeaks, watching them do nothing. The fire was long dead and the room was cold with draughts from the doors and windows. She could hear the murmur of Elian and Adrian talking in the front room. They were entirely still, Bernie's hands clasped in front of her as she leaned into the table, Donn's hand loose in his lap as he leaned backward against his chair. Nancy wished she could sit as she shifted her weight from one foot to the other.

Nancy spoke. ‘I don't know what I can say that will make a difference. You say I didn't tell the truth. Beth says Tommy is family. Mum says nothing. Cassie's room, Bryn's field, the Tardis stable, I don't know what you need to hear.'

‘That's right, Nancy,' said Bernie, ‘it's all about you. Let's leave Donn to think, and go and prompt your memory.'