In the Rosary Garden

by Nicola White

  ‘They’ll be here next week. I can’t believe it. Do you want to meet up? We could go into town…’

  Ali imagined sitting with Fitz on a red settee in Bewleys, eating almond buns, laughing about nothing and watching university boys go by.

  ‘I can’t go out, Fitz, I can’t see anyone.’

  ‘I guess I could come over here… maybe.’

  ‘Don’t worry about it. You go out. I’ll phone you.’

  ‘Do that.’

  Ali walked her to the door.

  When Fitz reached the bottom of the steps she turned and cocked her hand like a gun. ‘Ciao baby. Don’t take any shit.’

  Ali stood for a while with her forehead against the closed door. She missed the way they’d been.

  She went back into Davy’s room. She missed him too. Maybe when all this was past, he would come back and get a proper job in Dublin. Anyone could see there was nothing for him in Buleen, just an ugly half-finished bungalow. And the place did something bad to him, made his humour bitter and careless. She stood and looked at the pictures he’d put on the wall until her mother called her to the kitchen.

  Ali sat and ate the soup her mother put in front of her. Tomato, sweet and bland.

  ‘I talked to Una on the phone just now. She says Joan’s funeral is tomorrow. So quick. But I don’t think she was suggesting we should go.’

  Joan’s funeral. Coming back to Dublin had been forced on her. She should be in Buleen, should be there to acknowledge all that she hadn’t done for Joan.

  ‘I think I need to be there, Ma. I spent time with Joan in Buleen. I even spoke to her that night she died.’

  ‘I’m concerned about you, pet. You’ve been involved in too much – too much grimness.’

  ‘We could go together. You haven’t been back in a long time.’

  ‘Hah!’ said her mother, ‘I don’t care if I never see that hole again.’ She quickly put her hand up to her mouth. Ali stared back at her. It had never occurred to her that her mother didn’t love the place she came from.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know, lots of things. Bad associations. Do you remember your Granddad at all?’

  ‘Sort of.’ What Ali remembered was an old red-faced man propped in an easy chair in Una’s front room. His stillness and silence had been frightening.

  ‘He was fairly diminished when you knew him. When I was a girl, he was a bit of a brute to be honest. No affection. Thought a father’s role was to toughen you up.’

  Her mother pushed her half-finished plate of soup away to one side.

  ‘I remember once – I’ll never forget it – he had this notion that being able to deliver a good death to a beast was an essential skill. He thought the whole family should know how to do it, even his children.’

  Ali put her spoon down. She wanted to tell her mother to stop talking, but no words came.

  ‘One of the cats brought a bird into the kitchen, maimed. It was a little wren, hopping around under the table with it wing sticking out. I was only five or six. My father fetches a bucket from the scullery, fills it with water. Then he bends down and catches the bird, calls me to him. I thought he was going to mend it somehow, so I wasn’t scared until he presses the little thing into my hand, tells me to hold it under the water. I wouldn’t do it, no matter how he argues that it’s the right thing, the kindest thing.

  ‘So he puts his hand around mine and forces them both into the bucket, and I can feel the little thing fluttering inside my fingers, panicking, but I can’t open my hand. Finally it stops moving, and I look at my father. He takes our hands out of the bucket, pulls my fingers apart, and the bird is stretching out in my hand, its little claws uncurling.

  ‘ “See,” says my Da, “You’ve stopped the suffering.” And although it’s dead, I know it’s looking at me with its black eye and it knows that I caused it to suffer something worse than a maiming. In his book it was the right thing to do, but, you know, I don’t think I ever felt the same about him after.’

  ‘Did he make the others do that?’

  ‘Oh yes. He made Una kill a lamb that was ailing, but she would have done anything for her Daddy. Davy went trapping rabbits with him from the time he could walk, learned how to dispatch them. A chop to the back of the neck. But it was different for him.’

  ‘How different?

  ‘Ach, he’s a boy, it doesn’t seem to go so hard with them. He was never upset about it. Anyway, it was enough to give me a stomach full. I never miss the place at all. But if you want to go back, I won’t stop you.’

  Ali went upstairs to pack. As she changed her clothes, she spotted the little Lourdes medal on the floor. She picked it up it and put it in her shirt pocket, happy to take any protection that was going. From somewhere in the chest of drawers she found a black skirt to wear for the funeral.

  ‘There’s a train in an hour.’ Her mother was standing at the phone. She put the receiver down and turned to take Ali into her arms for the first time in years. Ali hugged back.

  ‘Be careful,’ said Ma. The phone started to ring again. Neither moved to answer it.

  ‘If my Leaving results come,’ said Ali, ‘don’t open them. Wait till I get back and we can open them together.’

  TWENTY - SIX

  Swan took his badge from his inside pocket and held it out towards the pregnant girl. She squinted and shook her head. It was too far away. Swan went down to her, could hardly ask her to climb the steps for him.

  ‘Someone was supposed to meet me here,’ he lied. ‘I need to take a quick look round. Are any staff about?’

  ‘One of the nuns’ll be coming to make the dinner, but there’s nobody here now. Never is on a Sunday.’ Her accent wasn’t Dublin, more southerly – somewhere near Cork. She inspected his ID diligently and smiled a cheeky smile.

  ‘I’m not in trouble am I?’ Flirty, despite her condition. Swan held his tongue.

  He stepped towards the open basement door, peered in – he could see a washing machine and a chest freezer.

  ‘Can I just–?’

  ‘I suppose its alright – but don’t go into any of the girls rooms, they’re private.’

  ‘How many?’

  ‘Many what?’

  ‘Girls are staying at the moment?’

  ‘There’s three of us.’

  Swan followed her into the house, through a large functional-looking kitchen. Beyond that there was a sitting room. The curtains had been drawn to block the light from the TV screen, but even in the blue-washed gloom, the pregnant state of the two young women slumped on the sofa was the first thing he noticed. They were planted deep in the cushions as if their distended bellies had fallen on them and rooted them there. The girls stirred at his entrance, and one drew a hand up over her stomach in a protective gesture.

  ‘He’s just having a look round,’ said the crop-haired girl and shot him a grin as though his motives were slightly suspect. She went over to an armchair and descended into it slowly, taking the strain on her arms. It seemed he was free to wander. Through the next doorway a staircase led up to the rest of the tall house.

  On the floor above, next to the main entrance, he found two nicely proportioned rooms furnished with bland desks and filing cabinets and those low easy chairs with no arms – perhaps this was the drop-in centre that Sister Bernadette had mentioned, but the two floors above that looked like an upmarket B&B – nice carpet, another living room or parlour and a series of gleaming doors with numbers on them and tiny brass frames below. A few of the frames held yellow cards with names inked on them in cramped gothic calligraphy – Jenny Mooney, Esther McDaid, Sharon O’Higgins – just like the writing on the Reverend Mother’s door back at the convent.

  He tried a door with no name on it and peeked into a simple bedroom. The single bed was stripped back to its floral mattress. The white wardrobe and matchi
ng bedside and dressing table all had the same gold squiggly handles. If not exactly luxurious, it was comfortable and fresh, a lot better than most charity gaffs.

  What were those bloody nuns at – not telling them about this place? He was sure it hadn’t turned up in their checks of maternity homes.

  ‘Are you finished yet?’ The girl had come to keep an eye on him.

  ‘Seems a nice place.’

  She made a non-committal noise and leant a shoulder against the wall. She didn’t seem worried by him, more curious.

  ‘Are you from round here?’ asked Swan.

  ‘Naw. I’m from Clonakilty.’

  ‘How are you liking Dublin?’

  ‘We don’t go out much. They think someone might spot us. From home.’

  ‘Which one are you?’ Swan pointed to the doors with names on them.

  ‘Esther McDaid. No longer a maid.’ She gave a little laugh. ‘You got any money?’

  ‘What do you need money for?’

  ‘They don’t let us have any. They say it might be stolen if we had it.’

  ‘Maybe I have. Tell me, who was the last girl here to have a baby?’

  Her bold smile dimmed and she examined him closely. He stared her out, trying to look kindly, trying to hide the excitement he felt. He wondered whether he should be so blatant as to take out his wallet.

  She turned around and headed for the stairs, looked back at him over one shoulder. He followed her down. On the return of the last flight of stairs she stopped and opened a door he had presumed was a bathroom. It led to a corridor, an extension on the back of the original house. Holy pictures lined the wall, and the end of the corridor opened out into a little chapel with miniature pews for about eight people. A hanging candle in a small red glass signalled Christ’s presence. Esther bobbed a quick genuflection, leaning back to balance her heavy bump.

  She led him to the left, to a blunt little offshoot passage with a door at the end.

  ‘She stayed here, not for long. A couple of weeks ago. We weren’t even supposed to know about it, but she came out some nights and talked to us, once the nuns were gone or asleep. One day I heard a baby cry in there. She didn’t give it up. I heard her arguing with Sister Bernadette about it.’

  ‘Are you going to keep yours?’

  ‘They won’t let me. I told Bernadette it wasn’t fair, and she told me that I would spoil the baby’s life if it grew up as a bastard. She used the B word.’

  There was a name holder on this door too, but the little card was blank. Swan tried the handle. It opened into a bedroom larger than the ones upstairs, with a sofa and a double bed. The carpet that ran seamlessly between the skirting boards was a rich cornflower blue. Swan let out a whistle then walked to the centre of the room and slowly looked about. His veins hummed with excitement. There were no personal belongings, nothing that drew his eye. He opened the wardrobe door. It was empty, except for a padded plastic rectangle with teddy bears on it. Inexperienced as he was, Swan recognised it as a changing mat.

  He closed the wardrobe and looked around. Esther had disappeared. Instead, Sister Dreyfus stood there in a grey anorak, her habitually tense expression turned to frank alarm. He suppressed a terrible urge to laugh.

  ‘Can I help you, detective?’

  He backed her out of the room, closed the door behind him. Esther McDaid was sitting on one of the chapel pews, pretending to pray. He would have to remember to slip her some money. At least enough for a train fare.

  ‘I need a telephone, and then I need to see Sister Bernadette. Here. Now.’ He tried not to shout it.

 

  Mother Mary Paul was having extraordinary difficulty backing the convent’s station wagon into a quite generous space across the road from St. Jude’s. He watched her efforts through the window of the front office he had commandeered as his own.

  More than an hour had passed since he hit the phone. Sunday was a bad day for excitement – the world wasn’t geared up to cope. Considine was at home, and offered to locate Barrett and come to Percy Place as soon as they could manage. Rathmines Garda station would send two uniforms over to secure the scene. There was nobody in the technical lab, so he left a message at the duty desk. He was tempted to phone Goretti Flynn at home, but she would just tell him to lock the bedroom door and wait for morning.

  The nuns had been elusive too. Nobody answered the main phone in the convent, and it was only by bullying Sister Dreyfus for information that he managed to reach Mother Mary Paul on a private line. Mary Paul said Sister Bernadette was on retreat across the border in Newry, but she would come herself right away, didn’t bother to fake surprise or ask why. Sister Dreyfus was supposed to be downstairs making lunch for the residents, but kept appearing at his elbow with cups of tea. Hovering.

  Mother Mary Paul finally gave up her struggle with the car, leaving it at an angle to the curb. She slammed the driver’s door with surprising force and shifted her shoulders back, military style, before heading towards the house. Swan opened the front door and directed her into the front office. The cloying smell of packet minestrone permeated the hallway.

  ‘Monsignor Kelly is on his way,’ was the first thing out of her mouth.

  He was about to shut the front door when he heard a little skid of tires, and Considine jinked her mini into a small space at the kerb. Barrett was with her. Swan asked Mary Paul to wait in the office and went to fill them in.

  They clustered on the pavement. He turned to Considine first, couldn’t resist a bit of finger pointing.

  ‘You were supposed to check out every lying-in home and refuge in the land. Remember this one? Run by the nuns from St. Brigid’s?’

  ‘There’s no central register, boss. This place wasn’t on the adoption board list, so they must be operating outside the system.’

  ‘Someone must have known. We’ve wasted a lot of time. I want you to go in there and talk to the residents. They’re down in the kitchen. Don’t let the nuns at them. Get me some background on the girl that stayed here two weeks ago and left with her baby.’

  ‘You’re joking,’ said Barrett, ‘fuck’s sake.’ He looked accusingly at Considine.

  Considine flared her nostrils slightly and walked stiffly up the steps while getting her notebook out of her shoulder bag. Barrett straightened his tie and followed Swan in to talk to the Reverend Mother.

  ‘So…’ Swan settled into a chair opposite the nun, ‘when were you going to let us in on this little secret?’

  ‘It wasn’t – isn’t – a secret. We’ve nothing to hide.’

  ‘Did you not think that the fact you were running a home for pregnant girls might interest us?’

  ‘It’s nothing as grand as that. The few residents here are in a fragile state, there was no point in putting them through police questioning. There’s no connection between St. Jude’s and the child in the garden, I’m perfectly satisfied with that, and you will be too.’

  Mother Mary Paul’s hand disappeared into the folds of her habit and emerged with a ring of keys. She rose and went to a quaint sideboard in an alcove beside the fireplace. She unlocked one of the cupboards. It was empty except for a couple of files, a book and what looked like a petty cash box. Mary Paul pulled out this book – a hardback black ledger, the paper dyed a rosy pink along the edges. She flicked through it, arriving at the place she wanted, handed it to Swan.

  ‘I checked this myself. Afterwards.’

  The list of names ended half-way down the left page. In the columns to the right there was the name of a town, a priest, then two columns of dates. At the top of the first column of dates it said ‘arrival’. Above the second column were the letters DLV. The most recent entries were the same names as those he had read on the doors upstairs. They only had an arrival date next to them, nothing in the column marked DLV.

  ‘The second column… ?’

  ‘T
hat’s the date of the birth.’

  The latest delivery date recorded was 3rd June 1984, more than six weeks before the Rosary baby was born. Swan flicked back through the earlier pages. The register went back seven years. The busiest year was 1978, when twelve girls stayed. Not exactly an avalanche.

  The information here seems a bit minimal, mother. What about the girl’s addresses, the details of adoption?’

  ‘We just provide a place for the girls to stay. They are referred by their parish, and all adoption details are dealt with privately.’

  ‘Privately between who?’ he asked.

  ‘I think you need to talk to Monsignor Kelly if you wish to pursue this.’

  The doorbell rang, and he answered it to two flush-faced young guards from Rathmines. Swan sent one down to the back door and told the other to stay on the steps and prevent arrivals and departures.

  He sat down again to face the nun.

  ‘The thing is, mother, a girl stayed here recently who isn’t on this register. She had her baby in her room with her, and now she’s gone. Disappeared about the time that the baby was found in your convent grounds.’

  ‘She must be on the register. Sister Bernadette wouldn’t allow it otherwise.’

  ‘Well, she’s not. It’s a pity Sister Bernadette’s not here to explain. We’ve sent a car up to Newry to collect her from the retreat house. Seems they don’t believe in answering phones there either.’

  ‘It’s a silent retreat,’ said Mary Paul. To one side of her, Barrett rolled his eyes.

  ‘I’ll leave you here with detective Barrett,’ said Swan, ‘ just in case anything pertinent comes to you.’

  In the basement kitchen, Considine sat at the table with the three pregnant girls, while Sister Dreyfus busied herself by the stove, a big blue apron practically brushing her sensible shoes. A plate of white sliced bread and some industrial-looking cheese were laid out on the table.