The Insect Rosary (8 page)

‘Why doesn't Dad come for longer?' I said.

She blinked and then looked at me. ‘He only has a week's holiday. He spends the weekend driving up and then has five days to get ready to zoom us back home again. Assuming the car makes it.' She smiled. ‘I'm kidding. He misses you too, you know.'

‘I know.' I imagined him getting into his car and speeding around London before releasing the brakes and flinging himself right up the country in one go. ‘It's quicker flying. One year can we fly instead of taking the ferry?'

‘Maybe. He likes to drive us back. And it's good to have our own car that last week.'

Nancy snorted, ‘Only if you like stones.'

‘Well, I do like stones, Nancy. So that's lucky.' Mum wiped Florence's mouth. ‘We'd better head back before the weather breaks.'

I thought about Ryan, about Tommy. His hands over his face. Could he have been sad? Was it even possible?

‘Mum?' I said.

It must have been something in the way I looked or the way I said it, but she shook her head and didn't answer me.

‘Mum, I forgot to use the front door.'

She put her face in her hands and then slapped her palms on the table.

‘One thing, Bernadette! I asked you to do one thing!' She rubbed her forehead. ‘I'll have to go round.'

‘No, Mum, you can't!'

‘Bernadette!' She put one finger to her lips. ‘I'm thinking.'

‘Do we have to go back? Can't we stay here for a few days? A hotel?'

She stared at me and shook her head. ‘Never look like you're running, Bernadette. Ever.'

She paid up and I unpeeled myself from the plastic seats, seeing how much sand I'd left behind. We crossed back to the car.

‘Can I sit in the front this time?' I asked.

‘Yes, that's fine. No talking, though, I need to concentrate.'

‘I'm the oldest,' said Nancy.

‘And that's why it would be better if you looked after Florence.'

I settled down in my seat. Out of the corner of my eye I could see Nancy frowning. I knew Mum just didn't want me to talk to her but I would have to eventually.

Now

Nancy was tired of everyone making pronouncements on Hurley but this was the only conversation that Bernie wanted to have. One mention of the trip to the doctor about his leg and every professional, like Bernie, wanted to discuss his life history. Nancy was used to people assuming they knew more about her son than she did. She reacted how she always did and shut down, listening to the noises in the background. The problem was that, however much they said they weren't judging her, she knew they were. She did her own research, anticipated their suggestions so she had her own list to give them.

‘No, he doesn't eat processed food more than once a week.'

‘No, he doesn't watch TV. He doesn't have any screen time at all, no violent video games.'

‘No, he has a regular bedtime and doesn't get up until the morning.'

They had their suggestions, she'd followed them and now there were only a couple of options left. Ritalin or a special school, whatever they wanted to call it.

‘So you're saying there's nothing wrong with him?' she asked Bernie.

‘No, I'm saying there's nothing unusual about him.'

‘At least once a week he has a violent tantrum. It isn't that usual.'

Bernadette started to look away. ‘I'm interested in child-centred therapies, not ones that put the needs of the parents and teachers first.' She looked back, ‘You really can't think of any specific triggers?'

Nancy could. People were a trigger. The main and only trigger. ‘No. I can't think of anything.'

Bernadette sat back in her chair and tapped the table. ‘He's been fine around the girls.'

‘They haven't even spoken to him. They leave him alone and that's how he likes it.'

‘Oh, I'm sure they have spoken to him a little bit.'

Nancy caught the slight blush to Bernadette's cheek.

‘No. Not a word.'

Bernadette poured some more wine into her glass. The sun was setting over the other side of the house. Although they'd discovered that the best room was no longer locked to them they still chose to sit at the parlour table, where their aunts and great-aunts had sat and bickered like small children.

Bernadette looked out of the window as she gave her verdict. ‘The problem is that the more rules he encounters, the more labelled he gets. The more labelled, the less taught he is. The less taught, the less learning he has. And then the rules become even more problematic and he becomes more challenging. Children don't want to get things wrong, they don't want to antagonise people. They'd much rather get everything right, and you have to behave as if they're trying to.'

Nancy leaned over to help herself to the bottle and topped up her glass too. ‘Can you talk to Elian about it? He's entirely behind the pill route and this summer has been his cut off. Can't you tell him there are other priorities than getting him through a few exams?'

‘Nancy, don't be ridiculous. He's your husband. You talk to him.'

Their first proper conversation by themselves, and Nancy felt as if she'd failed.

‘Sorry, I just thought you'd be able to put it in the right way.'

‘Because he thinks I'm some mental health expert?'

Nancy winced. ‘Did he bring it up?'

‘Just a bit.'

‘Sorry.' Nancy drank half her glass down.

Bernie gave a weak smile. ‘My past means I don't deserve privacy, apparently.'

‘It's my past too. He's my husband. Of course I'm going to talk about my childhood.'

‘Funny, because you've never spoken to me about it no matter how many times I begged.' Bernadette's eyes slid from Nancy. ‘There are things I need to know.'

Nancy faced the window, still open although the meagre heat of the day had already gone. The wine warmed her though. She could feel a flush on her cheeks. Nancy looked out at the barn, at the steps, at the roof, at the open forever garage doors until she gave in and looked at Bernie. She was making an effort to think of her as Bernie, rather than Bernadette. Adrian called her Bernie. Even Elian did now. Saying Bernadette had started to sound like a rebuke.

Bernie's eyes had glazed over. She faced the door to Cassie's room and seemed to be looking through it to the room, to the window, to Bryn's Field beyond. Nancy turned to stare at the door too and started to become aware that she felt someone was going to open it. Someone was going to walk through it and into the parlour, and the thought terrified her. She quickly looked at Bernie who was already looking at her.

‘Everything that happened to me, what do you put that down to? Before the therapy messed everything up.'

‘The car.' Nancy tried to look definite. ‘It was the shock and trauma of what happened in the car with Dad.'

‘It was before that. It all happened right in front of you. What about before?'

‘I know nothing more than you. We can't talk about it.'

‘You don't know or you can't talk about it? Which one?' Bernie leaned over, ‘We can go somewhere else. Anywhere. It doesn't have to be here.'

Nancy shook her head. ‘There's nothing to say.'

‘We were all guilty, Nancy, one way or another. I knew, everyone knew what was happening.'

Nancy made her voice light. ‘So I don't need to say anything. Do I?'

Bernie sighed. ‘What do you remember about Cassie's room?'

Nancy looked back at the door. ‘Nothing much. We weren't allowed in there.' She twirled her glass and looked back to Bernie. ‘What do you remember?'

Bernie looked down at the table. ‘Doesn't matter.'

Nancy spread her hands out. ‘I really don't remember.'

‘Try.'

Nancy felt that this was a test. If she passed, a little bit of Bernie would be hers. She turned her seat to face the door. It was painted white, about a dozen times like every other door, so that there was a fat bulkiness to it. The outside handle was white.

‘There's no inside handle,' Nancy said.

The doorframe was slightly lower and narrower than the other doors because it matched the cupboard door on the other side of the fireplace. It was a pretend door in a way that she'd liked as a child. It looked like a cupboard but wasn't. It was like the bell pushes in each room that looked as if they would ring like a bell, but they'd all been disconnected and didn't make any sound anywhere. She still liked to push them.

She thought her way into the room. About eight foot long by six foot across, a tiny window near the top of the far wall, no fireplace. Apart from the new little kitchen and the lobby it must be the only room without a fireplace downstairs.

‘There were always boxes of crisps in there and it smelled of apples, even when they'd all been eaten. Sacks of potatoes. I think there'd been meat in there once. Did it get used as a cold store for meat?'

Bernie had looked away now, her mouth covered by a hand. She was blinking a lot, as if there was a light shining into her eyes, but the sun had even left the rooftops now.

‘Are you crying?'

‘Go in the room.'

Nancy scraped her chair back, opened the door and walked into the room. It still smelled of apples.

‘You don't remember anything do you?' said Bernie.

Nancy shook her head, ‘Nothing else. I really don't, except it was kept locked a lot.' She didn't think that she'd ever looked out of the window. She'd never been tall enough. She walked across now and saw the vegetable bed, overgrown with tassels of fennel, in front of the hedge. A sparrow flew out, tweeting. In Michigan she'd been astonished by scarlet blackbirds, black squirrels and actual chipmunks which ran across the ground in front of you. She'd forgotten how pretty a sparrow was.

She turned back to the table. Bernie had gone, but that didn't surprise her. She became overwhelmed by the fear that Bernie was standing on the other side of the door, ready to close it on her. There was no door handle after all. She lunged for the doorway and stepped through with a sense of relief but, as she shut the door on the icy room, she realised that she must have forgotten something about that room. Something had made her not want to get shut in.

She sat back at the table. She would ask Bernie but knew that she had failed the test. Elian had gone on at length about how normal Bernie had been, how he'd never have suspected, how she hid or coped with her ‘mental health problems' well. Nancy wasn't so sure. There were glimpses of that other Bernie, asking the unanswerable, disappearing from the room. She wasn't going to chase Bernie around the house.

She realised with a start that she didn't know where Hurley was. She checked the front room and the best room, then the bedrooms. From Hurley's back bedroom she saw them coming back through the archway. Hurley sat on the back door step watching Donn fill the peat basket outside the back door. Nancy exhaled and tried to relax her shoulders. She went back to the parlour trying to think about the last time she'd not consciously thought of him or been brought back to the thought of him somehow.

Nancy boiled the kettle in the kitchen and was about to offer Donn a cup of tea when she realised that Hurley and Donn were talking. Neither of them had said more than half a dozen words a day to her, or to Elian, unless they were absolutely forced to. What on earth could two such silent people have to say to each other?

She gazed out at them in surprise before finishing her own cup of tea. At the table she pulled the chair up by the window so it didn't squeak on the tiles and sat down as slowly as she could. And then she listened.

‘I was younger than you. The warts covered my knees, dozens and dozens of them. You know we had to wear short pants then, I couldn't hide them. The warts that had everyone avoiding me at school and refusing to let me play football because they said if a wart was hit it might fly off and attach itself to them.'

‘So what did she do?'

‘Every first Sunday of the month, Da had a massive steak for his dinner. It was just always that way, I don't know why. So Mammy heard from someone, it might have been Mary's Ma, that steaks got rid of warts.'

‘If you ate it?'

‘Not if you ate it. That Sunday she was supposed to cook it, she woke me early and took me downstairs and rubbed it all over my legs. It was cold and slippery and made my legs pink. Then you had to bury it, so she did, really deep so the dogs couldn't smell it. They could smell me though. Da never quite looked at her in the same way, but as if she was touched in the head.'

‘So what happened to the warts?'

‘The idea was that, as the steak rotted away, they would too.'

‘And?'

‘They did,' said Donn. ‘My legs became smooth and my knees knobbly in the normal way and I was allowed to play football. But she told everyone about the steak, my mammy. She bragged about it in the village and the news went round the parents, and round the children. And I was terrible at football. I'd never practised. When I missed the goal by a good ten feet, despite standing only two feet away, Dougal flipped.

‘“You're mammy is a witch. Tell her to glue those warts back on and fly you away on her broomstick.”

‘That then went back round the children and up to the parents and no matter how much work Mammy did for the church after that it never got any better. I wished for my bobbly legs back that everyone laughed at because it was so much better than them laughing at me.'

‘Did you have any friends?'

Donn's voice seemed to travel away from Nancy now, as if he'd sat down next to Hurley. ‘Just the one. Tommy. He'd talk to me as we walked home. You know when people are only friends with you because they want something from you? It was like that. Took me a while to realise, but.'

Nancy got up to stop them talking but then sat down again. She didn't want Hurley to know about Tommy, to even know the name. It was too late now. If she made a fuss the name would stick. It was Bernie's fault, bringing up all the silence and locked doors.

They were quiet for a bit and then Hurley spoke.

‘I haven't got any friends.'

‘Some people don't need them. Sometimes it's better not to. I wouldn't worry about it. All you need is a good dog.'

There was a long silence. Nancy put her hands on the chair to push herself up quietly. It was time to call Hurley in. Then he spoke again.

‘Do you miss your dog?'

‘That one? He was good for the sheep but I always thought – well, you know, if I keeled over in the fields I thought no-one would ever find my body.' Donn laughed.

‘You thought he'd eat you?' Hurley laughed too.

‘I did, sometimes. There won't be any more dogs, but. There won't be any more farm.'

The girls in the front room started screaming. The door opened and they were herded upstairs to get ready for bed. Nancy closed her eyes and thought, when I've finished my tea I'll get Hurley up too. Then she heard the older girl complaining that Hurley wasn't in bed and she was no way going before him, even if he was older. She was clever and better and, and, and, and Nancy decided that Hurley could stay up for as long as he liked.

Hurley spoke quietly, so that Nancy nearly missed it. ‘I like it here.'

‘It suits some,' some Donn. ‘I think it suits you.'

‘Is Tommy still your friend?'

‘He's around. I wouldn't call him a friend. He's just around.'