The Insect Rosary (4 page)

‘You can't run in wellies!' shouted Nancy.

I could try. I stopped, went back to her and dug into my pocket.

‘Sister Agatha gave me this for you.' I held out the beads.

‘Wow.' Nancy pulled hers from the bag and dangled them from one finger. ‘Thanks. Hide yours so she doesn't make us do any praying.'

Now

It was a much longer walk to the village than Nancy remembered. Even Elian, who often walked to work on a Friday instead of paying for the gym, was tired.

‘Are you sure it's only two and a half miles?' he said, twice. He frequently took his phone from his pocket to check for reception, even though Nancy had told him it was unlikely. They kept to the wet grass of the roadside although there were few cars, as when they came there was little time to jump out of the way. Their shoes were still damp from the day before anyway. The roads curved around, almost back on themselves, and Hurley was the only one of them who seemed to accept it as a walk. Both Elian and Nancy wanted more from it, both scanning the landscape for interesting things to point out. They found little to say.

They crossed the river Bann over the narrow stone bridge and arrived in the village. Nancy headed for the nearest shop, a convenience store, she wanted to call it.

‘Is this it?' asked Elian. ‘Isn't this the outskirts?'

‘This is it. Just don't chat to anyone about anything other than the weather.'

‘I got it last night. No religion, no politics. Agatha brought up religion, not me.'

‘She asked if you were planning on going to mass, not what you thought about the different denominations and their role in the world.'

Elian sighed and looked around. A couple of roads of black and grey buildings, the police station which still, even now, looked like a well-defended fort in which secret and terrible things happened – this was it.

‘I'll just go for a wander,' said Elian.

Nancy felt like saying, don't bother. The word village isn't a promise that it will look like some pretty and abandoned town of yokels in Somerset, or poets in the Lake District. Sometimes a village is small because no-one else wants to move there.

She nodded and took Hurley inside. She remembered this shop being the most exciting place in the world. They would test run sweets and fizzy drinks in Northern Ireland before deciding to roll them out in England. She liked being part of this early wave of people who got to decide things. Now, at home, she got all of these American products before they were introduced here, but that wasn't really the same. She looked around, but she didn't really know now what sweets were new and what were already sold in every newsagent in the UK. There was little that Hurley recognised but she'd long told him that English chocolate was much better than American. Sweeter and paler and easier to eat more of in one go, but she didn't say the last bit.

‘Choose something,' she said, ‘just remember it won't be exactly the same as at home.'

She looked around for food to add a little variety to what Agatha fed them at the strict mealtimes. She had a feeling that Agatha would disapprove of any eating outside of these times, but she was also sure that life would be easier if Elian and Hurley could be occasionally lifted by a change. A change back to what they recognised as normal, in a way. Not that their kitchen was full of chocolate or crisps. It wasn't very processed, very American at all. The doctors had all agreed on the importance of Hurley's diet being simple and lacking in colours and other additives. It was their last chance to show that he didn't need any medication, that his diet could eliminate the worst excesses of his behaviour. In fact, she thought, Agatha's plain cooking was probably exactly what Hurley needed. She just wanted to add a few different vegetables and fruit, that was all. And some chocolate to hide in the suitcase, under her clothes. And beer for Elian, who fetishized European lager in the way Budweiser used to be cool in England. She chose one with monks on the front as it seemed to be even more European, although she'd never have thought that when she lived here.

Hurley had a Snicker and dropped it into the basket.

‘Half today and half tomorrow, OK?' she said.

He shrugged and went to look at the magazines. She chose eight bottles of beer from the alcohol aisle and then put two back. They had to carry whatever they bought. When they brought the car they could get more.

Hurley appeared at her side again. ‘That man was talking but I don't know what he said.'

Nancy looked over his shoulder. The man looked cross and was putting a magazine back into its slot.

‘Never mind,' said Nancy, ‘he was probably just being friendly.'

They took the basket to the counter and paid, Nancy looking at each note carefully to make sure she gave the right amount. She could have used her card but wanted the familiarity of the money, the thick, colourful notes and different shaped coins. It made her think of pocket money and how much she used to value pound coins, and weren't all the silver coins smaller, somehow thinner?

She bagged up the shopping in parachute thin plastic bags and left the shop. Elian was waiting outside.

‘I finally found some reception and then my phone died.'

‘I told you to turn it off. Looking for reception wears down the battery.'

‘There's no point repeating it, is there? I just told you what happened.'

‘I got you some beer.' She looked at him. ‘Where's the backpack?'

‘I thought you were bringing it.'

‘Where,' she tried to flap her arms, ‘exactly would I have hidden that?' She held out one bag to him.

‘Don't they have any paper bags?'

‘Why don't you go in and ask them if they supply paper bags for American tourists?'

‘Well, ten thousand Elvis impersonators can't be wrong.' He looked at the bag. ‘This is really going to hurt my hand.'

Hurley searched in Elian's bag and then Nancy's bag for the Snicker.

‘And you thought that was a good idea?' Elian continued.

‘Yes, I did.'

‘Didn't the dietician –'

‘Yes, I know.'

They set off back down the road.

 

Nearly back at the house, a plastic bag stripe scoring her palm, Nancy remembered the stones in the field. She assumed they were still there, but hadn't checked from her bedroom window. Elian and Hurley wouldn't have known, even if they were there, from the road. The hedges that lined the field either side of the gate were thick and varied. The concrete posts which secured either side of the gate didn't look like the entrance to a historical anomaly. She remembered that her father had loved these stones, had studied them and then been banned from ever coming near them.

They placed their feet carefully, crossing the cattle grid, but Elian slipped and there was a crack. Beer began to drip from the holes in the bottom of the plastic bag.

‘Brilliant,' he said.

‘See if there are any left.'

He lowered the bag to the ground and pulled the handles apart. ‘Three down, one left.'

Nancy groaned. ‘I've still got two.'

Elian pulled out a large piece of brown glass and looked around for somewhere to put it.

‘You can't leave it lying around. It all has to come inside.'

He put it back in the bag and carried it at arm's length so the drips didn't land on his shoes. She went in the front door and held her hand up.

‘You can't drip it through the house.'

‘But, what about the dog?'

‘It's a sheepdog. You're not a sheep. Just pretend that you're in charge.'

He went around the house and she took her bag to the parlour and sat down in Agatha's chair. Elian was exhausting. She assumed Hurley had gone upstairs. Nancy heard the dog barking, but the dog was always barking at birds, at visitors, at the weather. The dog stopped barking, and there was a moment of silence. That's when the screaming started. She hadn't heard Hurley scream like that, not as a toddler, not in one of his most recent tantrums. He screamed now and, tasting copper at the back of her mouth, she ran.

‘It just attacked him,' said Elian, kneeling by Hurley, his hands clasped together.

Her hands slipped against the door handles, her knees buckled at the step and she half fell towards Hurley. He held his hand towards her and she smiled, for some reason, smiled with her mouth but her eyes kept sliding away from the blood. She could smell it, like a handful of copper coins held in a child's palm for too long, that stink of blood she carried with her. She shrugged her cardigan off, her elbows getting caught, and gently wrapped his leg in the green wool thinking, this isn't good for the wound, this is even worse for my cardigan, but her brain preferred the cool mint to the scarlet lacerations and she managed to block out Hurley for a few seconds to think, where is the dog?

The dog that didn't deserve a name was back below the decaying staircase, hunched down as if it was waiting for them to move. Its mouth was curled upwards and its nose looked wet. It eyed them both, it seemed. Nancy began to walk Hurley towards Donn's car. The keys were in the ignition, as usual.

‘Elian, tell Donn I'm taking the car. Tell them we've gone to hospital.'

‘I want to come,' said Elian.

She half saw him closing the door behind him. The ordered way they were discussing this, somehow hearing each other's enunciations above and beyond Hurley's cries suddenly struck Nancy as funny. She kept her eyes on the dog as she opened the rear door and guided Hurley through the gap. Elian got in beside him.

Hurley was getting louder, possibly. Nancy turned the keys and backed out of the driveway, turning at the gate. She messed up her three point turn and just about missed the wall before speeding down the driveway.

Drive on the left, drive on the left, she thought, before turning right into the road. She didn't know the way to Coleraine, but she knew the general direction. With the sound of the engine making Hurley fade into the background she wondered if he had run out of fear, run out of energy or was fainting. It hadn't seemed like a lot of blood loss, but shock. Did shock kill nowadays? Elian said nothing. Maybe they should have phoned for an ambulance. She'd done it wrong, she always got it wrong. She could make it not her fault. She could, if only Hurley would stop screaming.

She drove on. Her hands started to shake as if all the action she had suppressed in front of the dog was happening all at once, the running she didn't do, the throwing things that she couldn't do. Her throat started to tighten and she counted her breaths in through the nose, out through the mouth, the techniques they'd been taught at counselling to deal with Hurley. But this wasn't him. She couldn't hear him now.

She adjusted the rear view mirror to look. His head was back on the seat, his face pale and eyes open. His chest was still going up and down. Elian was just looking at him.

A car horn blared and she swung back on to the left. Drive on the left.

‘Hurley, are you feeling any pain?' she asked.

His eyes fluttered but stayed open. If he died, if he died – then what? She would never go back to Michigan, that was for sure, and would never see Elian again either. And that thought didn't bother her one bit. She hid it and focused on the road. At least it wasn't raining.

Drive on the left.

 

The farm was lit upstairs and down when they returned. Donn and Agatha would never have as many bulbs burning at once.

Bernadette.

Elian had got Hurley through the front door and still she couldn't force her hands from their grip on the steering wheel. It was only the thought of Bernadette coming out and being trapped in the car with her that did it. She forced herself to leave the car and climb the steps to the door. Inside the house there were two girls and a man she half-recognised from photos, and Bernadette.

‘Bit of a day,' said Bernadette, and grimaced.

‘Yes,' said Nancy. She'd planned to say lots of things, nice things, about how nice it was to finally be together, planning trips and food, and now that ‘yes' had exhausted everything she wanted to say to her.

Bernadette said, ‘I'll make some tea.'

I was going to do that, thought Nancy. She bit her lip and nodded. Her nieces sat side by side on the sofa. Hurley tried to take up a place on the rug in front of the fire, but Elian slid him into place next to the oldest girl. She shifted away from him. He laid his head back on the creamy antimacassar and closed his eyes. She nudged her sister to move up, which she did, and then she moved away some more. For all that they reminded Nancy of her and Bernadette, she wanted to smack them both and send them to bed. Horrible prissy little girls. She couldn't even remember their names. She and Bern weren't ever like them. Those girls who shifted away from Hurley like he was a bad smell had no spark in their eyes at all. Their father was speaking softly to Elian, next to the piano. Nancy couldn't hear what they were saying but she understood the gestures. She looked at Hurley, eyes still closed.

‘Where's Donn?' she asked, her voice croaky.

Elian said, ‘He's just popped out.' He made a stopping motion with his hand so she didn't ask anything else. That's when she knew that he taken the dog out to shoot it. ‘Agatha's in bed.'

She wanted to go home. She just wasn't sure where she wanted that to be right now.

Bernadette came in with a tray. The teapot had been cleaned. She set it down on the dining table and sorted out the cups and handed glasses of juice to the three children. Nancy imagined how much sugar was in it, but said nothing. Hurley opened his eyes to take his and closed them again, but held onto the glass.

‘Did you have a good journey?' asked Elian.

Bernadette laughed. ‘I don't think you can ever have a good journey when it involves the Irish Sea. It was almost worth it, just so we didn't have to hire a car. I always worry about the excesses and all that nonsense. And you never know what the children are up to in the back.'

Nancy looked at Bernie's daughters. She could tell exactly what they'd be up to. Pinching, sniping and moaning. She tried to raise herself into the conversation.

‘Yes,' said Nancy, ‘a car is useful. We could all go over to Portstewart one day, maybe. Go to Morelli's and the Giant's Causeway.'