The Insect Rosary (3 page)

‘What's going on, Mum?' said Nancy, and she felt the knot build in her throat again. ‘What have you done?'

‘I'm fine, Nancy, thanks for asking. So you arrived.'

‘Mum, they say that Bernadette is coming.' Nancy waited. ‘Is she?'

‘Bernie will be there.'

Nancy closed her eyes. ‘When? When we've gone, yeah?'

Her mother sighed. ‘You're the two who should be close and aren't. All my brothers and sisters who emigrated and I never bothered to write to more than once a year, I can't tell you how much I regret that.' Her mother breathed in to force out a fake laugh, ‘Think of all those fantastic holidays we could have had.'

‘You arranged this so Bernie could have a cheap holiday to the States?'

‘No. You know why. Just sort it out, love, for everyone. Time goes too quickly.'

She could hear her mother's voice breaking so made hers very light.

‘Agatha's not pleased to have us here. It's difficult.'

‘Don't worry about that. You know what she's like. She'll be off soon enough.'

Nancy blinked back the ache in her eyes. ‘Elian hates it, Mum.'

‘This isn't for Elian. It's for you and Bernadette. Family needs to be close enough to say things that need to be said.'

‘Elian is my family.'

‘Then he'll understand.'

‘But you never –' Nancy bit her lip.

Her mum coughed and then her voice was clearer. ‘Bernie is coming in two days. Just hold tight and rest up. See Agatha off and then put Hurley in her room. Don't ask her, just stick him in there.'

‘But, what if . . .'

‘Move anything breakable, obviously. It's going to be fine, and if it isn't fine, it'll be worth it in any case.'

Nancy finally let the tears fall. ‘I wish we'd come to stay with you instead.'

‘I'll be over in the autumn again. Just, please, Nancy, please make it up with Bernie.'

‘I don't know if I can.'

‘Try.'

‘I will try.'

‘And tell her we still love her and always will. She can call anytime. She knows that, but tell her anyway.'

‘See you soon, Mum.'

‘Tell her we miss her.'

The phone tinged as she replaced the receiver. She rubbed her face with her sleeves, took a deep breath and joined them all in the front room. Just the same. Brown flowers on the wall above the dado rail, the piano against one wall, dining table in the large bay window, the settee long ways across the middle of the room so you could walk right around it, and the lace antimacassars still in place on the headrests.

She'd clearly entered after one of Elian's anecdotes as he was saying, ‘Ten thousand Elvis impersonators can't be wrong.' Neither Agatha nor Donn were looking at him.

The fire was burning peat bricks and Nancy sat on the rug in front of it, exactly where she used to sit with Bernie. Donn was in the armchair, Agatha and Elian sat at far ends of the settee. There were no curtains as there were no neighbours. She shivered.

‘Sit here, Nance,' Elian said, patting the gap between him and Agatha.

She sat down between them and he took her hand in his.

‘I forgot to check on Hurley,' she said.

‘He'll be OK.' Elian's grip started to hurt.

Then

At home we never had potatoes like we did here. Mum always peeled them, huge flakes of red or brown skin sticking to the sink. Here they were boiled in their skins for hours, or at least until the insides were fluffy with air. You had to weigh them down with butter balls before they disintegrated in a small breeze. I had finished washing the potatoes, but not to Sister Agatha's satisfaction. I was glad to put off the butter balls, made by rolling a spoonful between large cross hatched wooden paddles to pattern them. I could remember eating a number of butter balls, one after the other, until I threw up.

‘That'll teach you,' said Mum. And I never touched butter again. My potatoes were always in danger of floating away when a door was opened.

Sister Agatha inspected my work. ‘I need eight apples for the pie.'

I froze. ‘Where from?'

‘Where do you think? Cassie's room.'

My hands clasped each other. ‘I'm not allowed in there.'

‘You are when you're sent there.'

I walked slowly into the parlour and looked at the door, the pair to the larder with the glacé cherries. I'd heard things behind this door. Maybe this was my real punishment. It was waiting for me behind this door. I rubbed my hands together.

‘Hurry up!'

I wasn't going to get away with it by postponing it. I reached out for the handle.

‘What's keeping you?'

I opened the door and breathed out. It was how it always looked when I was allowed in. There were boxes of apples piled up in a corner, a sack of potatoes and a box of crisps that had been bought for our stay, even though we weren't allowed more than one packet every two days. We'd never finish them in time.

I stepped forward into the room that was always the coldest in a very cold house. There was a tiny window, and it was right behind the kitchen fireplace, but it never got any warmer. I crooked my sore arm and laid the apples along it, apart from three which I carried in my other, upturned hand. I became aware of a smell and stood, trying to place it. The closest I could get was the smell of a handful of coppers when you've been holding them too long. But there was something else, which kept sliding away, something I should remember but couldn't.

I left the room and pushed the door closed behind me. I took Sister Agatha the apples and she sent me back to the sink to peel them. Why would you peel apples, but not potatoes? It was all upside down. I did what I was told, the smell still nagging at me to recognise it. Maybe I was just anxious because Tommy had been here last night. I usually wasn't allowed in there when he'd been in the house. I didn't want to know why that room was his room, was linked to him.

‘So,' said Sister Agatha, ‘you were one of the lucky ones in May. Tell me all about it.'

‘About what?'

She turned, her hands covered in flour. ‘About what! About seeing the Holy Father at Wembley Stadium, that's what.'

‘Oh,' I said, ‘it was good.'

‘What was he like?'

‘We were very far away from him, up the top really. I saw his little car.'

Sister Agatha shook her head. ‘Do you know how many people would have given anything to be there that day? And that's all you can say.'

She twisted back to the pastry and took her frustration out on it, the flour dusting her black clothes. I could hear her muttering to herself. It could have been a prayer or a curse.

‘Agatha, why didn't you become a nun?'

She cleared her throat, ‘It turned out not to be my calling after all. Not at that time.' She thumped the pastry.

I'd watched The Sound of Music a little while ago and I knew that nearly nuns sometimes didn't become nuns, but that seemed to be because they were summoned away by smartly dressed men to look after their children.

‘But why?'

‘“Even a fool who keeps silent is considered wise; when he closes his lips, he is deemed intelligent.'”

‘What?'

‘Sometimes it's nice to stay quiet, Bernadette. God loves silence.'

‘But, did you –'

‘I came home to look after Da. That's all there is to it. I was never a full nun and there is no mystery to it, whatever your mammy says.'

I looked away from her and out of the window. Nancy was in the yard with Bruce, throwing a stick for him to chase down the lane and return to her. There were three ways out of the yard. If you turned left you'd arrive at the front of the house through a gateway half as high as the house itself, which led you on to the driveway and out onto the road closer to the village. If you went straight on you'd arrive on the main road much quicker. If you turned right, through the gate which was shoulder height on me, you'd pass by all the stables and outhouses, right down to the silo. There you got onto a little road which you could take left, back on to the main road, or right which led to other farms. I chose to take this route in my head as I peeled the apples: past the hedges, across the bridge over the stream and running past Mary's house before her dogs smelled that I was there. I'd only been there with Donn and I wouldn't want to go without him.

I had forgotten about the dare, but now it came back to me. The best way would be to whisper her name twice and then say it louder, but that was a bit like cheating. I glanced at Sister Agatha. She always looked so cross. I wondered what it would take to make her laugh. I wondered if she'd ever laughed. Just about anything can set me off, even knowing that I really mustn't laugh can make me. School assemblies or churches are the worst, or in the middle of getting told off. And I always felt like I was getting told off by Sister Agatha even if she was just asking me if wanted a drink.

I needed to create an emergency, one where you call for help, but I'd had enough trouble today. I decided to just give it a go and then I could swear to Nancy that I tried.

‘Agatha?'

She was looking out of the little kitchen to the parlour.

‘Agatha?'

She still didn't move or answer me. I moved to the side to see what she was looking at. It was the door of Cassie's room. She hadn't heard me. I felt guilty for feeling triumphant that I could do it. It would mean something different to her, that I wanted to bring her death or the devil, but I just couldn't understand it. It was like her belief that you never turned around if you heard footsteps behind you because it might be a spirit and they can kill. To me I would just think it was a person and want to know who was going to jump out at me. And shouldn't spirits be in heaven or hell anyway?

I whispered, ‘Agatha.'

She whipped round and made me jump.

‘What?' Her eyes looked strange and she was blinking a lot.

‘I think I'm finished.'

‘Right. Off you go. Oh wait, I have a gift for you and Nancy.' She put her hand into her pocket and pulled out two little plastic bags. She handed them to me. There were two strings of rosary beads, black and shiny like a line of beetles.

‘Thank you,' I said.

‘They're to be used. They're not decorations.'

I nodded, stuffed them in my pocket and ran out to Nancy. Bruce had gone and she was sitting on the doorstep in the drizzle.

‘Let's go to the hay loft,' she said.

She jumped on a bale and pretended she was on Top of the Pops, as usual. She kept saying that she'd get there one day. Sandra's sister, a couple of years older, had gone and was going to get her in. The first our parents would know about it was when they were stunned, like the rest of the country, by her superb style and co-ordination in front of Duran Duran.

‘Not Bucks Fizz, though.' She had standards. Usually they were Sandra's standards first. They were changing all the time and Duran Duran probably wouldn't cut it by the time she got to Top of the Pops. Her latest album, taped from a turntable by placing her tape recorder in front of the speakers, was ‘Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps)'. It wasn't that new, but Sandra's new boyfriend was mad on it. Her favourite song had a tape of its own so they could practise their routine. Every time the song ended she would move the needle back and tape it again, so it filled the whole thirty minutes of that side of the tape. She played it on her Omega pretend Walkman that she bought from the market, but she was saving up for a real Walkman.

I didn't think she got all the words right, but she swore she'd copied them into her notebook carefully.

‘I think it's “sleeping in the streets”,' I said.

‘Well, it isn't. Sandra checked the lyrics and she knows. She gets Smash Hits every week. She doesn't have to guess.'

I left her to it and climbed up three bales, challenging myself to jump off. I couldn't quite do it, two was enough, but I sat up there and pretended I wasn't scared, just sitting. Nancy was trying to do a full body jump and turn whenever she sang “do”, but wasn't quite pulling it off. David Bowie was rubbish to dance to, but Nancy said Adam Ant was silly, Madness was for babies and Captain Sensible was just awful, so I didn't say what I liked. She knew what was good because she was at Comprehensive now, and they knew all of that kind of thing. I had to pay attention, so I could tell everyone at my school what they should say. It changed all the time though and made my head hurt.

‘Sandra says she's getting her hair permed in the summer and dyed blonde.'

‘Sandra says only have sex standing up when you've got your period.'

‘Sandra says that she's going to start smoking when she's fourteen so she doesn't get fat.'

‘Sandra knows these exercises that make your boobs bigger.'

I lay back on the bale, so only my legs dangled off and listened for rustling. We weren't allowed in the hay loft really. Mum always said that it was full of rats, but if it was I would have seen them. She was probably exaggerating and it was only mice. Even Donn said the bales might fall on us and suffocate us but we were super careful and that would never happen.

Sometimes there were cows in the silo next door and we could spy on them from the bales. They didn't do much. Sometimes Bruce would sit by the gate and run up to anyone coming towards us which gave us a bit of time to pull the hay from each other's hair, but not today.

I looked at the corrugated roof and listened to Nancy. She was halfway through a fresh burst of the first chorus, out of tune because her headphones were in and so that didn't count. Then she stopped. I lifted myself onto one elbow, imagining her splayed on the ground. She was standing on the bale, though, pushing at the buttons on her stereo. Tommy was standing a couple of feet away, his arms folded.

‘All right, Nance?'

She nodded and pulled the headphones off. I shrank back, even though my legs were totally obvious if he looked up.

‘I hope you're not misbehaving.'

She shook her head.

‘Good. I'll be back tonight, so we don't want anyone creeping around when they should be in bed. Do you understand me?'

She nodded.

‘Grand,' he said. ‘I'm glad you remember our chat. Because little girls who are too curious tend to get their tongues cut out. Ask no questions and tell no tales, and stay out of my fucking way.' He looked up at me, ‘Right, Bernadette?'

I jumped and nodded a lot, so he could see me. I couldn't believe he'd used that word. Nancy had told me it was nearly the worst one ever.

‘But you're all right, aren't you Nancy?'

She nodded.

‘I like your dancing. Very sophisticated.'

Nancy blushed and looked away. He walked back to the lane and we heard his car fire up and drive away.

Nancy climbed up to sit next to me. Her cheeks were still flushed and she was blinking. She blushed a lot around him. He could be on TV, she said once. I said she fancied him and she nearly broke my arm, so I just thought it now.

‘We should have checked for cars,' I said. ‘I didn't see him come in the house.'

‘He doesn't always come in,' said Nancy. ‘He came out of one of the stables.'

‘Which one?'

‘Don't know. He wasn't on his own. There were three others with him before.'

‘Was that one with shiny shoes there?'

Nancy nodded and looked away. No-one else ever wore shoes out here, let alone shiny ones. I looked towards the barns and smirked.

‘He said you were sophisticated.'

‘Shut up.'

She blushed a bit and picked at the bale. I hugged my legs.

‘Why does he hate us?'

‘We're English.'

‘But we're Catholic too.'

‘Too English to be proper Catholics, he says.' She straightened up and tossed her hair, ‘But he said I was beautiful and if I wasn't English he'd be in love with me.'

‘But you are.'

She looked at me and then looked away.

‘Was he talking to you when I was inside?'

‘Just for a minute.'

‘He said a lot in a minute,' I said. ‘He's nicer to you than he is to me. Maybe I look more English.'

I was starting to try to get my head round what all the signs and symbols meant. The red, white and blue kerbstones, the green, white and gold flags. It was complicated, more complicated than saying you didn't like songs that you did like. It was knowing what shops you could go in and which streets were safe and making sure you said Derry when it was spelled Londonderry.

‘Everyone hates us,' I said.

Nancy shrugged and looked towards the gate. We sat quietly, listening. Tommy had left the barn but there might still be other men, even scarier men, in there now.

Nancy shivered. It was starting to rain.

‘Shall we go in?' I asked.

She nodded. We climbed down from the bales and began to pick the hay from each other, brushing it off our own clothes where we could see it. We went through the gate and walked slowly past an old tractor and the carts which weren't used any more. I started to imagine someone leaping from one of the barns and tried to run.