In the Rosary Garden

by Nicola White

  ‘Do you know cats, detective?’ she said.

  ‘I have one who abuses my hospitality, yes.’ He thought of Benny, curled tight as a snail on Elizabeth’s side of the bed, even when it was empty of her.

  ‘Well you’ll know how they sneak away to a dark place when they’re sick or giving birth. My garden is a place like that. I think it was a local girl or woman who sought it out by instinct.’

  ‘Is the shed ever locked?’

  ‘No. Though Bernadette says we must do that, from now on.’

  ‘Sounds like Sister Bernadette might be a bit stricter than you.’

  ‘I don’t like expecting the worst. Not that Bernadette does, that’s not what I’m saying. She’s out in the world more than I am. It’s a different perspective.’

  ‘We’ll be talking to Sister Bernadette later,’ said Barrett.

  ‘Oh, I thought she’d be at St. Jude’s, it’s a Saturday today, isn’t it?’

  Barrett drew himself up in his chair, moved a sleeve over his doodle. ‘We stipulated that all the nuns be here today to talk to us, sister, I believe Sister Bernadette has agreed to that demand.’

  Sister O’Dwyer raised her eyebrows and gave one slow nod of her head to Barrett, acknowledging or perhaps mocking his great power.

  ‘What’s St. Jude’s?’ asked Swan. He should be winding this up, they had more nuns to see.

  ‘It was where I trained as a novice, detective, before the order moved out here to the suburbs. A lovely house by the canal, on Percy Place. It was once the home of a famous writer – now was it Gogarty or Synge… ? Are you fond of reading?’

  ‘Enormously. What is the house used for now?’

  ‘Oh…’ the nun looked confused for a moment, losing focus, ‘I believe it’s a… community project.’ She said the phrase triumphantly as if she had retrieved it against the odds. But the light drained from her suddenly and she looked even smaller than when she came in. Swan tried to calculate her age as Barrett went through the rigmarole of giving her a card and asking her to get in touch if anything etcetera. More than eighty, certainly. Possibly in her nineties. She asked Barrett to ring a bell beside the fireplace. Within moments, the young Sister Dreyfus appeared to help Sister O’Dwyer out of her chair and guide her to wherever she spent her daytime hours. Swan hoped it was somewhere comfortable, light-filled.

  Swan asked Sister Dreyfus to send Sister Bernadette to them.

  As they waited, Swan sneaked a look at the day’s Independent. The public hand-wringing went on. The Rosary Baby was being dragged into expositions on the family, the decline of religion, the promiscuity and ignorance of the young. There was no editorial that couldn’t be spiced up with an innocent dying for society’s many sins. Only the banal or brutal truth would put an end to it. Kavanagh was pressing him for results, but all the technical personnel and most of the Murder Squad had been diverted to work on an armed robbery at a creamery outside Dundalk where a woman office worker and an off-duty Garda had been shot dead. What kind of cheapjack set up was it when the country could only deal with one murder at a time?

  ‘Shall I get us a coffee, boss?’ asked Barrett.

  ‘Yea, see if you can whistle up a cup.’

  Barrett was gone only a minute when the parlour door opened and Sister Bernadette walked in. She wore a veil that reached just past her shoulders and what looked like a black pinafore over a longish black dress. She reminded Swan somehow of that picture of Alice in Wonderland after she had drunk the bottle that made her grow. She was so long and pale and had an odd way of stretching the back of her neck up when she looked at you.

  ‘Please sit down sister. I know we talked at the station, but now we’re building a fuller picture of events.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘And you’ll have had time to gather your thoughts.’

  Sister Bernadette walked over to the table, pulled the chair back and sat in front of him. The action was compliant, the face wasn’t. It was the face of someone willing to endure something unpleasant for God’s sake.

  ‘My colleague has gone to fetch coffee. We’ll have to wait for him to get back.’

  She acknowledged his statement with only a bat of her pale lashes. There was no question that she was a striking woman, even in that get-up and with the veil covering her hair. Red hair it was, he could see peeks of it at her temples. But she wasn’t freckled at all. She had this amazing pale skin, like a lily, he thought, before catching himself. She’s a nun, jaysus, man. But he kept looking – the violet shadows under her eyes intrigued him. Had they been there on Monday?

  Sister Bernadette kept her face turned from him, to all appearances fascinated by the view out the window. He remembered a film he’d seen at the IFT, something arty Elizabeth had dragged him to. Arty? Debauched more like, with Vanessa Redgrave as a nun and Oliver Reed as a priest – I ask you – and all of them rutting away, rolling their eyes. But that was all made-up stuff, wasn’t it? He once attended a raid on an illegal sauna near the quays where they found two nuns’ habits among the French maid and nurse outfits that the girls wore. What a country.

  This silence was becoming uncomfortable.

  ‘We’re grateful you could spare the time for us. Sister O’Dwyer said you usually spend weekends at St. Jude’s, was it?’

  The pale hazel eyes flicked to his instantly, then away. He had only been making conversation, but had somehow hit a nerve.

  ‘What sort of place is that, now?’

  ‘It’s one of our projects. Community work.’

  Her voice was stiff and two pink spots were emerging through the paleness of her cheeks. She had that kind of complexion. Volatile.

  ‘That’s interesting. What do you do there exactly?’

  ‘Oh. I couldn’t… I do some admin, help with maintenance, boring stuff. We have many different projects around Dublin – we help run a nursery in Sherriff Street, you know.’

  He loved this. He wasn’t sure what she was trying to hide, but he was going to have it.

  ‘I hear a famous writer once lived there – in the Percy Place house.’ She met his eye, offering nothing. ‘This famous writer, do you think he’d happy about his home being turned into a… a…’ He circled his hand at her lightly, cueing her to supply the missing word.

  The door banged open and Barrett appeared with a tray, looking flustered. Swan lifted his hand from the table to signal him to wait, but Barrett barged across the carpet, his tray dripping at one corner. The nun was immediately out of her chair, ushering him over to a side table, helping to mop the spill with a lacy cloth.

  Swan kept his seat as the two of them fussed about. When Sister Bernadette finally handed him a cup and saucer, he said ‘thank you’ with a deliberate evenness to convey that he had lost none of his focus during Barrett’s comedy entrance.

  When Barrett sat down, Swan resumed.

  ‘Sister Bernadette here has been telling me about some of her community work. You have to excuse my ignorance of these things, sister, but who is it that you’re serving at St. Jude’s – is it, like, an old folks home?’

  ‘No’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Its… a drop-in centre.’

  ‘For women?’

  She nodded, looked down at her lap. She had a rope of wooden rosary beads attached to her belt, and was spinning one of the beads between forefinger and thumb.

  ‘Is it for battered women, domestic stuff?’

  She raised her head, something firmer in the set of her jaw.

  ‘Not really. It’s for the working women in the area.’

  His mother, who was into any left-wing cause, had told him about radical nuns. He’d seen a few on CND marches, their faces painted white as skulls, but he hadn’t yet come across the ones that she claimed were working with street prostitutes along the canal, giving them food and check ups and running the
risk of the church’s wrath by – it was rumoured – ensuring they used condoms.

  That would account for her discomfort.

  ‘I think you probably do a great deal of good out there. It’s a dangerous scene now with the drugs.’

  ‘Fair play to you, sister,’ said Barrett.

  She received their regard passively for a minute, running the beads through her hands, and dropped them abruptly.

  ‘I thought you had further questions about the child,’ she said.

  Swan drew out a sheaf of papers from his folder.

  ‘A few things that came up from your statement… can you confirm that when you came upon it, the child was naked inside a paper bag?’

  ‘Is that what I said?’

  ‘It is.’

  ‘Well, then…’

  ‘Not a white cloth?’

  ‘… I don’t recall one.’ She sounded less certain than in her statement.

  ‘We found a piece of white clothing in the shed, sister, and one of the other witnesses said the baby was wrapped in white when she saw it.’

  ‘Are you asking me to change my statement for neatness sake?’

  ‘It’s a curious anomaly, that’s all.’

  ‘I can’t swear I noticed the exact nature of the wrappings, it was the child I was thinking of – the possibility that something could be done.’

  If Ali Hogan was telling the truth, someone had removed the blouse and tried to hide it in the sling of the deckchair. Both girls said they hadn’t touched the baby, so either Sister Bernadette was that person, or someone else was on the scene.

  ‘You were walking in the grounds for some time – I think you said ten minutes – before the girls found you. Thinking back now, did you see anyone else about during that time? Or anyone in the garden?’

  ‘You asked me that before.’

  Swan was getting irritated with the ice queen act.

  ‘Yes or no?’

  She gave him a look of forced patience. ‘No. I saw no one in the grounds.’

  They went over a few more details, but Sister Bernadette would give them nothing useful or new.

  As he waited for Barrett to bring in the next nun, Swan looked out of the parlour window at the mountains rising hazy beyond the empty hockey pitches, beyond the avenue of horse chestnuts that curved up from the main road. For all their talk of community projects, these rich acres were lying unused, while inner city kids played in the summer traffic. Withholding. That’s what they were good at. Even if one of these holy women had seen something, he was not convinced they would tell it to him.

  THIRTEEN

  The bell jingled, a cue to kneel; Ali never went to mass in Dublin. On either side of her, Aunt Una and Uncle Joe pulled themselves forward onto the padded kneeler. She wondered whether to stay sitting, to separate herself from the rigmarole. There were people kneeling close behind her – she could feel someone’s breath on her neck. She moved forward onto her knees and Una gave a tiny, satisfied hum as she drew level.

  She had been woken early by her aunt, with a mug of tea and a slice of fruit bread, flicking the curtains open and saying that it would be a good thing if Ali came with her to ten o’clock mass. People could get a good look at her, Una said, and having seen her, wouldn’t be bothering the family with nosy questions. Ali still felt guilty about being late for dinner. Una said they’d be leaving in fifteen minutes.

  A clinking of coins at the end of the aisle announced the collection. A couple of gaunt men supervised the safe passage of baskets through the congregation. Una brought her handbag to her knee and pulled out a pre-folded note. Ali passed the wicker bowl across her lap, a weighty nest of money. The organist filled the hiatus with a swirling noise that suggested a tune might emerge by and by. Against this wash of sound individual noises rose to the curved roof – someone at the back suppressing a chesty cough, a toddler whining, the occasional jackpot jangle as the collectors poured the takings into a large wooden box being trolleyed up the centre aisle.

  Afterwards, the congregation milled around in the bright morning, a busy crush between railings and church front. Car engines revved and the road was filled with a sudden traffic jam. Up the street, some people were heading into pubs for an après-mass pint. A striking man with thick white hair and glasses moved in front of her and held out a hand for her to shake. Was it her imagination, or was the crowd thicker around them than in other parts of the churchyard?

  ‘You remember Doctor Nolan,’ said Una as Ali surrendered her hand. She remembered him, but his hair had been dark back then. He asked politely after her mother and her own prospects. A picture of him from long ago bloomed in her head – Doctor Nolan standing in the doorway of the living room, holding a gift wrapped in shining red paper. It must have been Christmas Day.

  Doctor Nolan turned to talk to her aunt. A finger tapped hard on her shoulder.

  Ali looked round to find a large florid-faced man smiling at her.

  ‘I saw ye on The Late Late,’ he said, as if claiming kinship. ‘I thought ye were great.’

  ‘Thanks very much.’

  ‘And that Mary O’Shea, she’s great too, though I wouldn’t want to be married to her.’ He laughed, and two other young men who had drifted over to flank him joined in. Ali was distracted by a glint on the big man’s lapel. A familiar gold badge – two golden beans each topped by five pinhead dots – the footprints of a foetus, the tiny soles of the endangered womb dweller. It was a badge to signal that its wearer was a dedicated pro-lifer, a man unashamed to defend theoretical babies.

  ‘Would you like to come for a drink with us sometime?’ His companions exchanged a delighted glance.

  ‘Go on with you, Cathal,’ said Uncle Joe, appearing beside her.

  ‘No harm, Mr Devane.’ The three men sloped off in the direction of Melody’s.

  A small woman with a headscarf scooted forward and pressed something into Ali’s hand and muttered that she would pray for her.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Ali to her departing back. ‘Do you think we can go back to the car now, Uncle Joe?’

  ‘We’re waiting for Roisín.’

  ‘We are?’

  She opened her hand to see what the woman had given her. It was a medal, light as a feather, the metal thin and chalky, a jellied pool of blue glaze on the front holding a scene of the adoration at Lourdes. Or that’s what she presumed it was – the medal was so small and crudely made that the figures looked like stalagmites in a cave. Ali slipped it into the back pocket of her jeans, her fingers brushing against Mary O’Shea’s business card.

  ‘Who’s the woman in the headscarf?’ asked Ali.

  ‘She’s a religious nut. Don’t mind her.’ It seemed that in Uncle Joe’s mind there was a subtle but impermeable barrier between the nuts and the very devout. ‘Maeve Dempsey’ he added.

  ‘Anything to Joan Dempsey?’

  ‘You’ve a good memory. Her mother.’

  There had been a passing likeness between them, the slightness and quickness of Joan turned to a kind of bony agitation in the mother.

  ‘And is Joan about?’ she tried to make the question casual, just a polite addition to what went before.

  Joe glanced past her, cupped his hands to his mouth and shouted, ‘Roisín!’

  Over by the railings, two young women were talking, small children churning around their legs. One turned at the sound of Joe’s voice. Her cousin was still beautiful, Ali thought, lean like a tennis player, her fair hair now cut into a little crop, sensible, brisk. Roisín ran over to give Ali a hug.

  ‘God its been years! I’ll bring her over to mine, Dad, and have her back to you later.’ Ali had no choice in the matter, it seemed. Like the evening before, she felt like a parcel passed from hand to hand.

  Roisín talked non-stop on the way to her car, pointing out sights that Ali already knew, asserting
her old bossiness. Her cousin had four years head start on her, a gap that presumed Ali would always be trailing behind in sophistication and experience. That was the deal between them. Recently, Roisín had upped the stakes by marrying a handsome GAA captain, Colman Carroll, and soon after, baby Emer arrived.

  Ali always thought Roisín wasn’t bothered about what anyone thought of her, but as they drove, she kept going on about how it was a mobile home – not a caravan – that they were living in, and how comfortable and convenient it was.

  The caravan site that Colman managed was half a mile outside the village, where the river ran into Lough Dreena. Roisín turned down a narrow boreen between high hedges. Half way along they pulled in to the side to let another car pass. A fuchsia bush crushed against the window beside Ali, deep pink bells with violet lips starfished against the glass.

  The road crossed a metal bridge and carried on over the brow of an open field where, all at once, the white oblongs of caravans came into view, clustered like giant cattle under the lakeshore trees. The nearest caravan was larger than the rest and was surrounded by a knee-high wooden fence. A rotary washing line trembled beside it in the breeze.

  As Roisín stopped the car, the caravan door swung open, and a well-built man with a bush of sandy hair came down the steps towards them, his face clenched.

  ‘Rowsh! I told you I had to get to the grounds by eleven. Out.’

  ‘Colman. Darlin’. This is my cousin Ali.’

  He spared Ali a quick once-over while snatching the car keys from Roisín’s hand.

  ‘You the famous one?’

  ‘I wouldn’t say that.’

  ‘Well, you’re famous here,’ he said and reversed the car off in a wide curve.

  ‘Don’t mind him,’ said Roisín, ‘Bear with a sore head. Where’s he left the child?’

  In the middle of the tiny living room was a playpen that reminded Ali of a lobster pot. Sitting in the middle of it, a tiny Buddha among soft toys, was Emer. The baby’s mouth dropped open in awe at the sight of a stranger. Then a wriggle of delight convulsed her and she lifted her chubby arms in celebration. Roisín plucked the baby up into the air, spun her around once, and brought her to rest on her hip, babbling loving nonsense all the while.