In the Rosary Garden

by Nicola White

  Before Christmas, she wondered whether she would get more presents that year because of her Daddy dying. It just came into her mind, but she feared that Santy knew. You shouldn’t think that kind of thing.

  She sidled up to her mother’s chair.

  ‘Does Santy come again if he’s forgotten to bring something?’

  Ma laughed but it wasn’t a kind laugh. It was sharp and drew the attention of the other grownups to her.

  ‘What are they like these days? No, he doesn’t.’ Ma had a tiny glass in one hand. A tissue poked out of the fist of the other. Ali moved away, slipped into the hall and made her way up to the back bedroom.

  She hadn’t been snooping, not really, although that’s what Aunt Una said afterwards, angry with her. It was just that her cousin Roisín had told her about the big wardrobe upstairs. That she had seen presents hidden there. That Santy didn’t exist.

  The wardrobe was huge, separating two single beds. It had a mirror on its front and she watched herself approach, her moon face looming above the velvet party frock that was painfully tight around her ribs that year, and so short that she could see her bare knees.

  As she opened the door, her reflection slipped sideways and away in a shard of light. A smell of mould rose to greet her. She parted the heavy clothes that hung there, looked down among the wire hangers and shoes scattered across the bottom. There was no present. When she stepped back from the wardrobe, she saw there was a shelf above the clothes rail, and could make out some folded blankets there, but no glint or flash of wrapping paper. Still, she felt a high shelf was the very place you would hide something if you wanted to keep it away from children, and it was also the kind of place where a present might get shoved to the back, might get accidentally forgotten in the rush.

  She was looking all around the room for something to stand on when she found the box.

  It was under the left hand bed, right up against the wall. It was larger than a shoebox. It was the size of a doll box. A box that someone had forgotten to wrap and had forgotten was under the bed. Ali lay flat on the lino and slid under, through a thick layer of dust, to pull the box out to the light. There was a curly pattern on the top and she could read well enough to make out the words ‘Baby Joy’.

  Her heart beat fast as she lifted the cardboard lid and saw a crumpled yellow towel covering the doll, its sleeping face just visible through a gap in the folds. She had been right all along, and that sense of rightness was stronger than any scratchings of doubt about the griminess of its wrapping or the odd appearance of the doll.

  Baby Joy was supposed to look a little ugly, Maura Griffin said so.

  Ali moved the towel. The doll’s chest and shoulders were naked, and the colour of the body was strangely mottled, like the skin of her legs when they had been too close to the fire; and though the doll was sleeping, it had a kind of annoyed expression too, as if the dream it was dreaming was something uncomfortable which called for huge concentration. Ali put a hand to the shallow valley on the front of its chest. Cold softness. Not plastic, more like rubber.

  She would bring it down and show her Mammy.

 

  Ali scrubbed at her face with the towel until it stung, and flung the cloth on top of others discarded in a basket under the counter.

  For twelve years she’d put it out of her mind. If she thought of that box at all, it was as some sort of a bad dream. But now it was back with her, as real as what she had seen in the shed.

  She should go back and find Mary. Try to limit the damage. Tell her not to mention the bruising, say she might have been mistaken.

  There was no one in the back bar, just their two abandoned glasses, conspiratorial on the table. But Mary hadn’t gone far – she was in a window seat in the lounge, leaning forward to talk to a man in a grey suit. Ali walked towards her, and the man turned in his seat as he saw Mary’s attention shift. Ali knew him. It was her mother’s friend Sean O’Loan, a chubby man whose straggly moustache looked like it was trying to crawl inside his mouth.

  Sean showed no surprise to see her there. He stood to shake her hand and kiss her cheek with a wet tickle.

  ‘Ali, pet. So sorry for what you’ve been through.’

  He put a hand on her shoulder and squeezed. Ali made a mumble of thanks.

  ‘Fate’s very cruel. It was the last thing you needed.’

  His pouchy eyes were trying to dig into hers. The hand on her shoulder was a clamp. Sean’s attention was beyond plain sympathy.

  ‘The girl probably needs to get home, Sean’ said Mary.

  Alison took her chance to escape. She had no doubt that they’d been discussing her just before she appeared.

  SEVEN

  The nun who opened the convent door was dark and nervy. Swan’s eyes moved automatically to her belly. Too skinny, he figured. But how could you be sure?

  The entrance hall that she led TP Murphy and him into was a double height space with a grand wooden staircase rising up from the centre and dividing into two so that you had a choice of route to the railed gallery that ran around three sides of the upper area. A glass cupola brought light to the gallery, but it had lost most of its brightness by the time it fell to where they stood. The nun pointed at a row of ecclesiastical chairs against the wall. They were the least comfortable looking furniture Swan had ever seen outside of a designer showroom.

  ‘Please, if you wait here,’ said the nun, and he sat. TP Murphy eased himself into the next chair with a suppressed groan. The nun was clipping up the stairs now, leaving them to the gloom. Like Pavlov’s dogs they were, at the sight of a habit.

  Murphy was not Swan’s first choice of partner for a case like this, or any case. But he was the only other Murder Squad detective available, since all the rest were up in Dundalk for a double shooting. TP was not only a leadswinger and a slipstreamer, he looked like a right throwback too, with those sideburns and aviator specs, not to mention the wide tie just hiding the gaps between his strained shirt buttons. The best you could say for him was that he didn’t take anything too seriously.

  Swan stood again, stretched his arms out unnecessarily and strolled about. The walls were crowded with paintings, a variety of saints suffering or beseeching behind layers of amber varnish. Only a few bright details shone out – the flash of an angel’s wing, the white of an eye rolled heavenward, the glint of sword. There were also portraits of nuns sitting at their desks with a bible in handy reach or praying on their knees, their plain, redoubtable faces framed by elaborate arrangements of stiff white cloth.

  He hated this atmosphere, the varnish and cold tile incarceration of it. Clearing out the attic that spring, he had come across a picture of himself in altar boy’s vestments. Ten years old or so. The pious solemnity of his younger face, his small unlined hands pressed together and pointing skywards. Before he knew what he was doing, he’d torn the photograph to confetti.

  The first stages of the investigation had turned up nothing. All the babies born in hospitals and registered maternity homes had been accounted for. A few tip offs were being followed up – a travellers’ camp by the Dodder, a hippy commune in some old mansion. Most likely the mother was local and had given birth in secret. That was the simplest explanation, and Swan liked to keep things simple until he was forced to complicate them.

  A small, precise cough drew their attention upwards. The nun had returned, and was gesturing for them.

  They climbed up into the light. She led them down a series of corridors featuring the same orange-coloured wood everywhere, shiny panelling and rails and doors and benches. They finally stopped at the end of a wide corridor lined on one side with glass cases. Another row of straight-backed chairs stood to one side of the door and a small card on the door read Reverend Mother in crabbed gothic calligraphy. It was hard not to imagine a line of fretful small girls sitting there, awaiting punishment.

  The nun took it upon
herself to knock and a voice within called ‘Come!’

  Swan had been expecting Mother Mary Paul to be alone, so he did not welcome the sight of her sitting shoulder to shoulder behind her desk with a priest. The man was wearing a well-cut black suit and a dog collar. A gold chain with plain cross added to the elegant effect. He had close-cropped hair at the sides and a polished baldness on top. Maybe the nuns had given his pate a rub of the cloth in passing.

  ‘This is Monsignor Kelly,’ said Mother Mary Paul. ‘The archbishop has been good enough to take a special interest in this tragic event, and has sent the monsignor to assist us. Monsignor Kelly is trained in law.’

  The priest offered Swan a thin smile, verifying confidence in his qualifications.

  Swan introduced TP, and they sat down on their side of the desk. Swan had hoped for an informal, wide-ranging chat. With God’s lawyer present, he doubted if there would be much in the way of that. The monsignor already had a pen in his hand, poised over what looked like a typed list of names.

  ‘I think it would help, detectives, to get us off the ground as it were, if you’d outline the scope of your investigation so far – and perhaps indicate which areas you think we might assist with, and we can take it from there.’

  TP looked at Swan and crossed his arms. He was on his own.

  A knock sounded on the door, and the dark nun entered with a tea tray. No one spoke as she settled the tray on the desk, filled four cups and handed them around.

  ‘Thank you, Sister Dreyfus,’ said Reverend Mother as the nun exited backwards, the empty tray held to her chest like a shield.

  Once the door had closed, Swan looked to the head nun. ‘Sister Dreyfus?’ He had decided to ignore the monsignor.

  ‘It’s an unusual name in these parts,’ agreed Mother Mary Paul. She dropped her voice, and leaned towards him. ‘Family came here in the war. Converted.’

  ‘Yes,’ said the monsignor, ‘perhaps we could – ’

  ‘Tell me, Mother,’ said Swan, riding over him, ‘why is it that some nuns have Christian names after the ‘Sister’ and others have family names?’

  Mary Paul stroked her veil as he had seen other women smooth their hair.

  ‘Well, it varies from order to order. In the Sisters of the Annunciation, both apply. Nuns like Sister Dreyfus keep their family names while nuns such as myself and Sister Bernadette who you’ve… em… met, were moved to adopt the names of saints or holy people who had particular meaning for them. I took the name of our founder – Blessed Mary Paul Grammaticus.’

  ‘I never realised that.’

  ‘Most interesting,’ said Monsignor Kelly without a shred of sincerity, ‘but I’m eager to know, detectives, whether you’ve identified who the poor child was.’

  Swan let TP waffle on a bit about the case, how everything that could be done was being done and so on. He told them the enquiries were concentrating on the community surrounding the convent grounds.

  ‘I wish now that we had put gates across the back lane,’ said the nun, ‘but we’ve never been in the habit of locking our doors to the world.’

  ‘That may have to change,’ said Monsignor Kelly.

  ‘It’s difficult to lock the world out entirely,’ said Swan. ‘Besides, gates wouldn’t necessarily have prevented this from happening, just meant it happened elsewhere. Unless the baby was already in the convent. In that case, our task might be narrower in scope’

  The monsignor and the reverend mother stiffened.

  ‘It’s a theory I have to consider.’

  ‘That isn’t possible.’ The nun was adamant.

  ‘How can you be sure? This is a very large establishment, Mother.’ Swan suddenly realised how odd, and somehow disloyal, it was to be calling an acquaintance mother.

  ‘Out of term time it’s a very quiet place. We nuns live together in a community with just a few lay helpers for the grounds. We eat and pray together every day. Not much goes by me.’

  ‘So there’s been nothing different?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘I’ll bear that in mind when I speak individually to the nuns.’

  The monsignor and Mother Mary Paul exchanged a glance.

  ‘Is it necessary at this stage?’ asked the monsignor, ‘The disruption and anxiety have taken their toll on these women already.’ Mother Mary Paul looked annoyed for an instant, but worked her face into an expression of passivity. Not a women that cared to be patronised, even by a monsignor.

  ‘I wouldn’t be doing my job if I didn’t interview the nuns. There is no accusation to be inferred – it’s simply procedure.’

  Monsignor Kelly sighed, but didn’t press the matter further.

  ‘I’ll need a list of all the nuns, even if they weren’t here on Monday, and also names and telephone numbers of the hired staff that you mentioned.’

  Mary Paul jotted some notes.

  ‘We’ll need that today, Mother,’ said TP, ‘and it would benefit us if you could include each woman’s age?’

  The nun looked up. ‘Their age?’

  Swan’s patience vanished.

  ‘Look, we’re not suggesting a strip search,’ he said, ‘We just need to know the age.’

  Swan watched her write ‘AGE’ and underline it.

  ‘As you can imagine,’ said Monsignor Kelly, ‘the phones have not stopped ringing here and at the diocesan office since news of this came out. The last thing we want to do is to fan the flames of any salacious publicity. The Archbishop is concerned that the police don’t encourage this kind of insinuation by the line of their enquiries.’

  And no doubt the Archbishop had many friends in Garda HQ and in the Dáil with whom he was willing to share those concerns.

  ‘There is no insinuation, Monsignor. And for what it’s worth, flames get fanned when an investigation can’t progress quickly and the papers have to fall back on their imaginings.’

  ‘It’s confidentiality that concerns me – things leaking out.’

  ‘Not from my investigations, they don’t.’

  Sometimes Swan wondered at his own idiot reflexes.

  Monsignor Kelly smiled. ‘You haven’t seen this morning’s papers, then.’

  Swan looked at TP, who gave him back a miniscule head shake. They had been shut in the case conference, hadn’t had the time. But someone would have shown him if there was anything important.

  Swan arranged to have the list collected and said they would need to set up interviews with all of the nuns within the week.

  ‘I realise that it’s hard for you, for all the sisters, coming into contact with something like this.’

  The look she gave him was fierce.

  ‘Don’t make the mistake of thinking we sit in our holy tower arranging flowers and sweeping floors. Some of my nuns work with the least fortunate in the city. They see poverty and degradation and death.’

  ‘Point taken.’

  Swan rose to his feet, TP followed.

  ‘I just don’t want them subject to suggestions of… promiscuity or whatever. It wouldn’t be… fair.’ She reached up her sleeve for the wad of tissue. He had wondered when it would appear.

  Monsignor Kelly shifted one hand over so that it lay in front of the Reverend Mother. A restraint.

  ‘The church will assist in whatever way it can. In fact, the Reverend Mother has thoughtfully drawn up a list of girls she thought might be worth talking to for your purposes.’

  The monsignor passed the piece of paper that had been lying on the table to Swan. He sat back down to study it. It was a list of girls’ names, divided up into little sections headed ‘sixth-year’ ‘fifth-year’ and ‘fourth-year’. The second half was divided by year headings 1983, 1982, 1981. There were about thirty names in all.

  ‘It wasn’t necessary to go any younger than fourth year, I thought.’ Mother Mary Paul had rec
overed herself. ‘The others are girls who left in the last few years.’

  Swan just looked at her.

  ‘We thought it would help,’ said Monsignor Kelly, ‘if you had a list of girls who their teachers suspected may have been in intimate contact with boyfriends and the like.’

  ‘How can they tell?’ said Swan.

  ‘You can’t, for sure,’ said Mary Paul, in a reasonable tone. ‘But in every year there are always a few who test the limits, and no doubt test their parents too. They’re the risk takers, and sometimes they wind up in trouble.’

  ‘Do you have a reason to believe that any of these girls were pregnant?’

  ‘Just one for certain. Sixth year… Eileen Vaughan.’

  Swan found the name on the list.

  ‘She’s not the one you’re after though.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘She left the school in March. I’ve enquired and she was delivered back in May.’ The nun pressed her lips together.

  ‘I’ll need her address. And all these others?’

  ‘Suggestions.’

  ‘Thank you, we’ll look into it.’

  Swan took the list, folded it and put it in his inside pocket. The hypocrisy of them. It wouldn’t be right to mention sex to any of the nuns, but here’s a bunch of schoolgirls you might want to grill instead. Again he rose to his feet, and this time the nun and priest rose too. TP’s hand was on the doorknob when Mother Mary Paul’s grave voice said, ‘Perhaps a little prayer for the baby?’

  They stood with clasped hands and bowed heads while the nun led them in a Hail Mary linked to some longer bit that Swan only half-recognised. Who was the hypocrite now? He mumbled the ‘Amen’.