by Nicola White
Three dark torpedo shapes moved in the depths. Joan was suddenly gleeful – clenching and unclenching her hands as if she wanted to clap, urging Ali to go in and try to catch one. Ali laughed and shook her head, but to please Joan she bundled up her skirt in one hand and tiptoed back into the water, trying to move her feet as smoothly as possible. As her shadow fell over the trout, they shot off downriver, scarcely moving a fin to do so. They were there, and then they were gone. But the mood had lightened, and they returned to their picnic as if starting over.
Ali had forgotten to bring a knife and they had to squash the pink and yellow cake into slices with a thin driftwood stick. They passed the bottle of lemonade between them. Joan told proud stories now about her three brothers – how they could tickle trout with their hands, how the youngest had tamed a crow to sit on his shoulder. Later on, Ali tried to swing on the decaying rope swing, pressing her feet tight against the knot at the bottom, leaning back to get it moving, imagining her cousins all playing here, while she was stuck on her own in Dublin.
Every so often, Joan would ask what time it was.
‘What does it matter what the time is?’ Ali said finally. ‘You said the doors don’t close until eight.’
‘No, really, what time is it?’
‘Quarter to three.’
‘I’ve got to go.’
Joan went over to get her jacket and the sports bag that she had brought with her. When Ali had gone to pick her up from Damascus House she was sitting in the foyer with the bag between her feet. Ali thought Joan might have brought some picnic things of her own, but she had just dumped it on the grass. Now she put the jacket on, picked up the bag and headed back through the field. Ali shouted after her to wait, but she kept on going, leaving Ali to bundle the picnic things into her basket and buckle her sandals before setting off in pursuit. As she ran towards the road, she thought she saw something moving behind one of the bedroom windows at Caherbawn, but when she stopped to look properly, there was nothing there, just darkness.
She caught up with Joan at the field gate.
‘Wait for me.’
‘I’m not going back,’ Joan said, ‘and don’t worry, I’m not going to hang around your neck neither.’
‘But the people at the hospital… I signed my name in the book!’
Joan laughed and reached up to touch Ali’s hair. ‘You’re awful chicken for such a big girl.’
They walked along the verge, past the entrance for Davy’s bungalow and on until they came to a forestry road. Entering the shade of the trees, Ali immediately felt chilly. She followed Joan uphill on the yellow clay track, trying to think of ways to talk her round, to get her back to Kinmore. Little stones kept flicking into her sandals, and she had to stop and shake them out while Joan kept walking further ahead. One time, she looked up and Joan was gone.
She called her name and listened to the sound die in the trees. There was only the creaking of boughs and the dull wave of a car engine passing on the road behind. It was tempting to go back, to leave Joan in the woods, but the moment Ali thought it she felt ashamed. She hurried towards the spot where she had last seen Joan.
The trees thinned to the left of the track and tire marks led off into what looked like a clearing. She could see far ahead on the forestry road, and it was empty. Joan must have turned off here. Ali hurried down the new path, passing a tumbled wall of mossy stones. She entered a clearing where a ruined, roofless cottage stood among rusting bracken. There was someone talking inside the ruin, it was Joan’s voice. Moving towards the cottage, Ali noticed a blue van parked at the back of the building. Sunshine still caught on the tops of the trees, but at ground level the air was shaded, almost foggy.
As Ali stepped through the entrance her eyes took in several things at once; that there was an odd little corrugated shelter at one end of the enclosure, and that Joan was not alone and raving but chatting happily to a young man who was sitting on the sill of a gaping window, a can of lager in his hand.
‘Ivor wouldn’t mind a sandwich if we have one left,’ said Joan.
The boy nodded at her. She had seen him before, outside Melody’s on Sunday, the one she thought looked like a viking. Joan was talking about Ivor at the river. The little brother that had tamed the crow was now six feet tall, incongruously large beside his sister. Ali unwrapped a sandwich for him and handed it over, not knowing what to say.
He offered her a drink from his can. She shook her head.
‘I’ll have some,’ said Joan.
‘You won’t,’ said Ivor, ‘God knows what kind of drugs they’ve been giving you up in that place.’
Joan looked delighted at his bossiness. Ali took out the lemonade and passed it to her.
‘I’m going to stay with Ivor.’
‘You can’t stay in this place,’ said Ali, looking at the rusting patchwork of the lean-to hut.
Joan goggled like Ali was the one who was crazy.
‘No, in the village! Ivor’s got a flat above the garage. I’m going to look after it for him and cook.’
‘Do you think I look like I live in this dump?’ said Ivor.
Ali stuttered. ‘Sorry. No offence.’
‘It’s true we used to stay here the odd night when we were young. This was our grandad’s place, before the Forestry bought the land.’
‘Ivor was only ten when he put that shelter together,’ said Joan. ‘He was always good with his hands.’
‘When times got a bit wild up at our house, Joanie would take me down here. Going camping she’d call it.’
He smiled then, a brief flash of sunshine across the dour plains of his face, revealing one gold incisor among the white of his teeth.
Ali wanted to see him smile again, just to see the flash of gold. She talked about their picnic at the river, making fool of her own attempts at paddling and swinging, claiming she had stolen the picnic food from under her aunt’s nose. Every time he smiled, she felt she had won something.
Ivor finished the last swig of his can and threw it in the fireplace where it joined a heap of other cans and a mess of ash and twisted wire. Ali noticed that Joan looked exhausted, had been quiet for some time.
‘Sorry. You’ll be wanting to get on to your new home, and I’ve been prattling on.’
Joan came over and hugged her, the top of her head bumping off Ali’s chin.
‘You were good to take me out. I couldn’t have done it myself, and Ivor won’t go near the place.’
‘They might keep me,’ he said.
‘I said to myself you coming was like a sign.’
‘I’m sorry I upset you,’ said Ali.
Joan’s eyes shifted briefly to Ivor, then back. ‘We’ll not mention it again,’ she said quietly, then lifted her voice, ‘There’s a marquee dance on by the school tomorrow night, Ivor says. Maybe I’ll go. Maybe I’ll see you there.’
‘Oh, I’ll be there,’ said Ali, ‘Brendan’s doing the disco.’
Ivor rose from the windowsill and brushed invisible crumbs from the front of his thighs. He gave his sister a little smile and she returned it and lifted her sports bag. Now that Ali realised it was all that Joan packed for her new life, it seemed terribly small.
At the doorway, Ivor hesitated, waited till Joan went on, then came back to stand in front of Ali. The blazing sky cast him in silhouette, the edges of his crinkly hair on fire, his face unreadable.
‘Who’s taking you to the dance?’ he demanded.
‘I’m taking myself to the dance. It’s the twentieth century.’
He just looked at her for a moment, not saying anything. She held a hand up to shade her eyes, to try and read his expression, but he was already leaving.
She listened to the van fire up and drive away, wondering why he had sounded angry.
The lean-to was a strange little construction, a bit like a metal tent. She strol
led over to an open end and saw an old mattress lying there, smeared with mud on top and a blue bloom of damp rising up its sides. Some animal had been chewing at a corner. She hoped it had been nicer back when Joan and Ivor used to camp here.
She threaded her way to the forestry road, glad that Joan would be living in the world again, but worried about her own name lying in the register at Damascus House.
As she walked on, she found herself wondering what Joan meant when she said her baby was taken away. Who took it? Why was it under a bed?
A gust of wind nudged her and she walked faster, forcing herself forward, back to Caherbawn. Crows argued above her. She told herself to stop fretting at it.
EIGHTEEN
The security guard at the back gate of Trinity College examined Swan’s ID carefully before waving them through. They controlled the most desirable car park in the city centre, but did they have to be quite so up themselves? Those porters with their stupid frock coats and riding hats, like they were off to a hunt, when they were from the same plebeian stock as himself. Never so much as sniffed a horse, except for the ones that pulled the knacker’s carts.
‘Boss?’ said Barrett.
Swan realised he had been muttering. He pulled into a parking space near the cricket pavilion. Sports fields spread out in front of them, and beyond, the stately quadrangles and cobbles that featured in a hundred thousand postcards.
‘Why weren’t we born to this, Barrett?’
‘Did you apply, boss?’
‘Did I biffo. My parents wouldn’t hear of such a thing, and the bishop’s ban was still in force. I hear its mostly southside types now, the cream of young Ireland’
‘I got in. Did a year of economic and social studies. Loved it.’
Swan carried on as smoothly as he could manage, ‘Why didn’t you graduate, so?’
Barrett shrugged, looked at his watch. ‘Circumstances. The need to get a job. I think we’re a bit late.’
Swan let it alone. A rustle of applause greeted them as they got out of the car. Young ones sat about on the steps of the pavilion, at their ease, drinking, watching lean boys in whites play cricket. They couldn’t even play an Irish game here, loping around like Brideshead fops with their little red ball. God, he was getting like his father, disgusted at whatever was put in front of him.
They passed behind the pavilion and entered a nondescript building that was part of the science department. Four flights up was the office of the State Pathologist, a man who combined an academic career with intimate examination of the country’s dead. He was a well-known figure throughout Ireland, striding across newspaper photographs – out of court, into court, or entering a tented area in some newly blighted place.
The room they entered hummed with fridges, freezers and extractor fans. The whiff of formalin brought Swan’s nostrils to attention. The muddle of the place reminding him of Deirdre Hogan’s, but here the clutter was elevated to a professional level. Slide carousels, files, shelves of reference books, microscopes and other precise-looking instruments he couldn’t put a name to crammed the room. Stacks of tupperware boxes filtered the light from the attic windows. Of course it probably had a different name when put to scientific use – plasticeptacle or polyquarinator or something.
Among this attic of delights stood the Edwardian figure of the pathologist, leaning on his knuckles over one of the island counters that sliced the room, half moon glasses balanced mid-nose as he stared at something in a white plastic box in front of him. He wore his lab coat open, displaying a tweed suit, check shirt and knit tie. He looked like a man who might go and shoot some grouse when the office day ended.
As they approached he pulled a lid onto the box and pushed it to one side. While they made their pleasantries Swan eyes kept wandering towards it, imagining lurid contents – a severed body part or some naked, quivering organ.
‘Vincent, do you bring me news or are you wanting something from me?’
‘I had a question,’ said Swan, ‘It’s going to sound a bit naïve.’
The State Pathologist folded his arms and leaned back in readiness. ‘It’s the simple ones are the tough ones,’ he said, ‘Who made the world and all that.’
‘How can you tell if a woman has carried a child? Internally, I mean.’
Swan got a smile for his effort.
‘Hmmm… pregnancy shifts the pelvic girdle, widening and loosening the joints to a certain degree. It also stretches the womb, naturally enough, and even though it contracts again, you can tell the difference at post mortem if the deceased is still of child bearing age. After the menopause it’s a bit more difficult. Of course in cases where there was a subsequent hysterectomy, the difficulty is obvious – just the bone girdle to go by.’
‘What if the woman is still alive?’
‘I don’t get you.’
‘If she’s walking about saying that she hasn’t had a baby at all, can you prove she has?’
‘There would commonly be signs from such a major event, of course, trauma… scarring… suchlike… It depends on how much time had passed between delivery and examination.’
The pathologist reached over and pulled the plastic box an inch towards his body, then poked it so it lay exactly parallel to the desk edge. Swan felt the silence between them like a great fog of uncertainty. Three men talking wombs.
‘I think you should be talking to an obstetrician about this,’ said the pathologist, ‘but I imagine the accessible signs to look for are stretching of the skin, scar tissue from tearing at the mouth of the vagina and changes in the os.’
‘The what?’
‘The os. The opening in the cervix – becomes distended into a line rather than a dot. And a scan would probably reveal womb changes.’
Barrett had pulled out his notebook, was writing ‘OZ?’ on a blank page.
‘What about the psychological effect? Do you think it would be possible for a woman or girl to deliver a baby and then sort of forget about it? Or not really forget about it, in the ordinary sense, but blank it, act as if nothing at all had happened. Even tell herself that nothing had happened?’
The pathologist pulled over a stool and sat down.
‘Psychology’s not my field. But I remember a case in England, about eight years ago, still sticks with me. A young guest at a wedding delivered herself in a toilet cubicle during the reception, then placed the baby and the afterbirth in the sanitary bin and rejoined the party. People were coming and going all the time, and one witness saw the girl retouch her makeup before leaving the Ladies. And none of her friends or even her boyfriend admitted to noticing she was pregnant.’
‘Complete denial?’
‘Yes, or at least a sense of putting things back to how they should be, sans baby.’
‘And just carry on normally.’
‘Exactly. Unless you’ve come across yet another dead infant, I presume we are still discussing your Rosary baby?’
Swan nodded.
‘In cases of denial you don’t take the time to wash, feed and clothe your baby before killing it. Though you might take into account the possibility of puerperal psychosis – there is often a strong urge to harm the child, which is why we separate infanticide from murder.’
‘Do you think its possible for a girl to deliver and look after a baby on her own, to keep its existence from anyone else?’
‘I’m flattered that you seek my opinion on such a wide range of things.’
‘Have a go –’
‘Probably. Maybe. Women have delivered on their own throughout history, I’m sure they still do, though few would actually choose it. There’s a good man at Holles Street I can recommend for all this stuff.’
Barrett wrote the good man’s name in his book. The pathologist reached out for his plastic box again, pulling it directly in front of him and pausing to look at them with his thumbs hooked under the li
p of the lid.
They said their thanks and goodbyes quickly.
In the stairwell, Barrett started to pester him.
‘You’ve got a theory, haven’t you? Is it the Hogan girl? The blouse you gave me for forensics, it was from her house, wasn’t it?’
Swan didn’t answer, just led the way back to the car. They stood on either side of it, looking at each other across the roof.
‘If it was her, how could she act so cool?’ Swan offered.
‘Cool indeed,’ said Barrett, ‘one of the guards said she asked for a last look at the baby when they were taking it from the garden. Did you know that?’
‘I didn’t… that bag of hers that was in the shed – bring it up to forensics for a check on the inside. And ask Considine to get in touch with her friend again, Carmen Fitzgerald. Have a little chat. ’
Barrett looked happy as Larry then, jiggling his knees all the way back along the quays, eager to get on with his messages.
As Swan drove across the Liffey, Barrett turned abruptly to him.
‘What the hell was in that box?’
NINETEEN
Their footsteps boomed on the wooden floor of the empty marquee. Davy did a little run around the pillars with the loaded trolley; brumpa brumpa brumpa across the boards. Ali thought this was hilarious and probably would have been pretty funny even without the cans of cider they had shared in the van.
‘Watch out for the whirly light cupboard thing,’ she said.
‘Oh we wouldn’t drop the whirly light cupboard,’ Brendan said from the empty stage, and Ali bent over, jack-knifed on a wave of giggling that was almost annoying in its intensity, like being tickled by someone who wouldn’t stop. Brendan jumped down and patted her head in passing, dislodging one of the combs that held her hair in a whirl on top of her head. A hank of it fell over one eye. She cursed, he laughed.