In the Rosary Garden

by Nicola White

  Most of the mourners had regrouped around the Dempsey family, queuing to shake hands and express their sympathies. Ivor was standing beside his mother, his tallness marking him out. Ali wanted to leave, but she knew the right thing was to pay her respects, to let him know she had shown up. She pulled her damp cardigan around her and pressed into the thickest part of the gathering.

  She was an arm’s length away from him before he noticed her, his eyes locking onto hers as he reached for her hand, pulling her close.

  ‘You. You’re here,’ said Ivor.

  ‘I’m so sorry –’

  An old man pushed in beside her and started to talk close into Ivor’s face. He was saying how Joan was in a better place now and Ivor was answering, but his fingers held Ali’s firmly, keeping her close to him. On the other side of Ivor stood his mother, her eyes bloodshot, her expression congested with grief. A woman was talking to her, head nodding sadly, yet Joan’s mother suddenly turned as if Ali had called her name and looked straight into her eyes, then down to where Ivor’s fingers were entwined with hers. Mrs. Dempsey’s mouth opened, lips wavering.

  Ali tried to pull her hand from Ivor’s, but he would not let go. The old man moved on and Ivor bent his head to her ear.

  ‘I couldn’t find her,’ he said, his voice cracking.

  He released her hand and she sank back into the crowd. She had no right to be upsetting these people. No right to push herself into their lives. If she hadn’t taken Joan out of Damascus House… hadn’t brought up the idea of the lost baby… Tears blurred her view as she hurried down the wet path to the cemetery gate.

  She walked away from the town, over the bridge and out towards Caherbawn. The rain blew off. She didn’t want to go back to the farm, she wanted to go somewhere she could be alone, where she could try to forgive herself. A beam of sun caught the tops of the trees beyond the farm and she remembered the ruined cottage, the place where Joan had been full of hope and Ivor had smiled his gold-flecked smile.

  TWENTY - EIGHT

  There wasn’t a living creature to be seen on the streets of Buleen. Swan finally spotted the blue Garda sign over one of the doors on the main street. The station was locked. A handwritten note simply said that Garda Fitzmaurice would be back after the funeral.

  He walked along the wide pavement, peering at the few dark shops until he came to the doctor’s surgery. Doctor Nolan was not in residence, another door locked against him. It must be a popular funeral. Then Swan remembered the Hogan girl distressed about the woman who had drowned herself. That must be it. A tragedy would always fetch a crowd.

  Patience, he told himself. The previous evening, Garda Fitzmaurice had confirmed by phone that Peggy Nolan was in Buleen with her family – Where else would she be? – there was no reason to think she’d fly the nest. And, no, there was no sign of a baby.

  He walked all the way down one side of the street and up the other. He noted the press of cars around the ugly pink church.

  That was all the patience he could tolerate. He needed a phone. In the comfortable-looking hotel, Swan asked for the use of a room. The German proprietor showed no particular surprise, just walked him upstairs to a high, simple bedroom whose two windows overlooked the main street. With this view, he’d be able to see Garda Fitzmaurice return. Swan picked up the telephone in one hand and leaned against the window casing.

  Barrett was in the office. He said Sister Bernadette had not turned up yet. He also said that Considine was on her way, that she would arrive at noon at Birdhill.

  ‘Birdhill?’

  ‘There wasn’t a car to spare. Kavanagh’s on an efficiency drive – he told her to get a train…’

  ‘How the hell would that be efficient?’ Swan said.

  ‘It wasn’t me told her!’

  ‘Just tell me how to get to this Birdhill place. Never heard of it.’

  Swan hung on the line while Barrett consulted a map. Down in the street, men in sombre clothes gathered outside a pub. The funeral aftermath. He leaned closer to the glass, looked sideways. The cars were gone from outside the church. Below him, a dark-clad figure appeared around the corner, arms wrapped around herself, hair bedraggled.

  Swan cursed, hung up and ran downstairs. He arrived on the pavement in time to touch her shoulder as she passed.

  Ali Hogan jumped at the contact, and the face she turned to him was full of fear.

  ‘Aren’t you supposed to be in Dublin?’ he said.

  ‘Have you come to get me?’

  ‘Get you for what?’

  ‘I don’t know…’

  Clots of cobweb adhered to the sleeves of her cardigan and the front of her skirt was streaked with mud and grass stains.

  ‘Are you alright?’

  She looked down at herself, started to wipe ineffectually at the stains on her skirt.

  ‘I – I was in the woods. There’s an old cottage – I think I found something. Will you come with me?’

  ‘I’m waiting to meet up with someone.’

  ‘Oh.’ She didn’t seem curious about what had brought him there, caught up in her own drama.

  ‘What was it you found?’

  She shortened the distance between them, looked full into his face and said, ‘I think it’s a grave.’

  The Garda station was still closed, Considine wasn’t due for an hour and a half.

  ‘Is it far, this place?’

  ‘Not very.’

  ‘I’ve a car near here.’

  ‘It’s just a walk.’

  Swan followed the girl back over an old bridge and out of the town, towards scattered houses and patches of woodland. He should have insisted on the car.

  ‘Does your mother know you’re here?’

  An impatient nod. He took in her black clothing. A car came towards them, and they stepped onto the grass verge.

  ‘Were you at the funeral?’

  ‘Yea.’ She stepped back onto the tarmac and walked off at a lick. Swan hurried after, regretful now about this country detour, unsure of how to manage the girl.

  She led him up a rough track that cut through pine woods, then along a path to where the remains of a cottage stood in a mossy clearing. It looked like it had been abandoned before the trees had been planted around it. A few jagged stubs of beam were all that was left of the roof, the walls were starting to fall in.

  Swan followed Ali into this derelict enclosure. The girl stood in the middle and started to talk.

  ‘This was where Joan brought me the day she got out – so I came back to remember her because we were happy that day and I was looking at that hut that she said Ivor built and I noticed that there was a bit on the end that was planked up, and I don’t know why but I just thought I’d have a look, and the planks came away…’

  As she spoke, Swan walked over to the bit that she had described as a ‘hut’. It was just a lean-to of corrugated iron and wood cladding resting against an end wall. The kind of thing you would build to shelter a few sheep or some fodder.

  One end was open, and a filthy mattress lay inside, as repulsive as a carcass.

  ‘ –they used to stay here, the two of them, she said, when there was trouble at home. It was their place, so she must have made the grave too, don’t you think?’

  Swan stooped and made blinkers with his hands to see better into the dark. Beyond the head of the mattress was a wall made of short lengths of horizontal planks. He stood and cast his eye over the outside of the shelter. Sure enough, it was longer than the space he had just looked into. Ali waited for him at the other end.

  The boards that clad the outside of that end were vertical, and two of them were now lying on a flattened area of nettles and grass, leaving a gap into the dark space.

  ‘They were loose,’ Ali was saying, ‘I just put a hand to them…’

  Kneeling on the bruised ground, Swan twi
sted his shoulders and pushed his head through the gap. The air was colder inside, heavy with the smell of damp clay. The space was small as a cupboard, no more than three foot deep, and empty.

  Light crept in over his shoulder and his eyes adjusted. He hadn’t noticed the slate propped against the cottage wall. It was an ordinary slate, might have been part of the cottage’s roof once, but the bottom of it was embedded in the earth. As he tipped his head nearer, a little light struck it and he could see marks scratched into it – the spidery double outline of a cross, and beneath it a heart. The ground in front was just slightly mounded.

  He pulled back out of the small gap and started to wrench away the other planks. They came easily, the old wood crumbling away under force.

  ‘And what exactly do you think is in here?’

  ‘I think it’s Joan’s baby, it must be,’ said Ali.

  Swan thought they were more likely to find someone’s dog or kitten beneath the slate than a child.

  He was so close to solving the mystery of one dead baby, but had somehow let himself get diverted into this other tale. The wise thing would be to leave this little slate as it was, get on with the matter at hand. Fitzmaurice could come and check it out another day.

  ‘I’ll run back and get more help,’ said Ali.

  A fuss was the last thing he wanted. He was only a couple of hours away from moving in on the Nolan girl.

  A flat stone lay in the weeds beside him, the size of his palm. He picked it up and started to scratch experimentally at the earth in front of the little slate.

  ‘I can’t watch.’ Ali walked away.

  Hopefully there would be nothing at all here, thought Swan, scraping methodically now. He was only an inch down when his makeshift spade encountered a small, pliable obstruction, a pale nub that had an odd pinkish tinge to it. He put aside the stone and took his penknife out of his coat pocket. By prodding about, he loosened the earth about this small protrusion and brushed it away in one movement. There, in the scooped out hollow, a perfect little hand emerged.

  Swan’s heart missed a beat. Each wormish finger was less than an inch long. Tiny pricks of clay filled a row of four dimples on the back of the palm. Warm relief trickled through him as he made sense of it. He pushed a finger against the flesh-toned – it was obvious now – plastic.

  As he started to dig out the rest of the doll, he called Ali to him.

  ‘It’s only a doll.’

  She came to kneel beside him as he uncovered the whole arm, and next to it a forehead started to emerge. Here and there the plastic was marked with bright yellow streaks, some kind of aging. Once the head was free, he prised the rest of it from the soil, shook it free of insects and dirt and handed to her. The body felt heavier than it should, as if soil had gradually sifted inside during the time it lay in the ground. The doll had a flannel nappy still wrapped around its bottom, a filthy scrap.

  Swan poked around below where the doll had lain to check there was nothing else there. Behind him, Ali muttered something.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Baby Joy,’ she repeated, ‘this is Baby Joy.’

  ‘Was it yours?’

  ‘No, but it was supposed to be.’ Ali brought the grubby body up to her chest, embraced it. He should get her back to her family. The girl wasn’t right, it was plain.

  ‘I need to get on,’ he said, ‘I’ll walk you back to town, to where you’re staying.’

  ‘My aunt’s house is just down the road.’

  ‘I’ll walk you to that, then.’

  He was glad to get away from the desolate cottage. As they walked, he rubbed his hands together to get rid of the soil that stuck to them. His trousers were mucky too. He offered to take the doll, to get rid of it for her, but Ali wouldn’t give it up.

  Half way down the forestry track, Ali stopped still.

  ‘Have you come here because of Joan?’

  ‘Joan? No.’

  ‘You have, haven’t you?’

  ‘I don’t know your Joan, Ali. I’m still after the mother of the Rosary Garden baby.’

  ‘So what are you doing here?’

  Swan hooked his hand into the crook of Ali’s arm, forced her to carry on walking.

  ‘There’s someone here we need to talk to.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Ali, looking down at the movement of her feet. Then she said in a small voice, ‘Is it Sister Bernadette?’

  ‘What about Sister Bernadette?’

  ‘I saw her this morning.’

  It was Swan’s turn to stop walking.

  ‘She’s here?’

  ‘Yea, it’s stupid, but I never realised before that she’s from here – I even met her when I was small, only then she was called Antoinette Nolan.’

  ‘Antoinette Nolan. With a sister called Peggy?’

  ‘You know Peggy?’

  ‘Not yet,’ said Swan.

  Now it made sense. Nuns had families, you forget that. Mother Mary Paul even talked to him about nuns taking new names. And families had their loyalties; a girl in trouble would naturally seek out her sister.

  Garda Fitzmaurice must be back at station by now. They needed to make a plan for handling the whole Nolan family, get in some extra guards from Kinmore. And there was Considine to collect.

  ‘Is your aunt’s house near?’ They had reached the roadside, and the town was in sight.

  Ali nodded, raised a hand slightly from her side to indicate something not far away. The other arm still cradled the filthy doll. She looked a forlorn sight.

  ‘A bath is very good for the spirits,’ he said, hurrying away, ‘ask your aunt to run you a bath.’

  TWENTY - NINE

  Cathal Hayes was talking on about some woman he’d met in Limerick, about the unusual sexual offers she had whispered in his ear at some drinking dive. Davy clutched his pint and watched the Dempsey family gathered on the other side of the pub, the centre of attention. It wasn’t the usual post-funeral lark of ham sandwiches and plates of biscuits in someone’s tidy front room. There was nothing to eat, and the Red Rock Saloon was the roughest of venues. Perfect for the Dempsey family. He hadn’t really meant to come, had sort of drifted in with the crowd.

  Joan’s brothers kept throwing filthy looks at him. He had the feeling that a fight was brewing, and he welcomed it.

  Some aul’ fella appeared at his side.

  ‘Your sister says can you come outside.’

  Davy squinted at him. ‘Right you are.’

  The old man moved off.

  ‘I’m thinking maybe now she was only a prostitute,’ Cathal was saying. Davy studied the crush of people around the Dempsey family, offering their words of wisdom about death. Their tiny ignorant opinions. He looked at their mouths, their flapping wet lips. He understood so much now about the rottenness of it all.

  He tipped his glass to his lips, swallowed deep. Cathal had disappeared without him noticing. He was standing alone and people were staring at him openly. The old man reappeared.

  ‘Go on now, son. You’re not wanted here.’

  Una was waiting outside in her car, clutching the wheel even though the engine was still. He walked over and put his palms on the car roof and hung down from them to peer in at her.

  ‘What’s up with you?’

  ‘You’re drunk. Get in,’ she said.

  ‘I’ve got a pint on the go.’

  ‘Please, Davy’

  ‘Oh, please, is it?’

  The man who had ushered him out of the pub was standing in the entrance way, barring it. Davy started to laugh as he made his way around to the passenger side of the car. When he got in, Una rolled her window down, as if he stank, and maybe he did. She looked all keyed up, like she could snap if you twanged her.

  ‘This feels familiar,’ said Davy.

  ‘Don’t bait me,’ said Una. �
�It’s not right for you to be in there.’

  ‘Free drink and weeping – it suits me fine.’

  ‘Who’s in there? Did anyone say anything?’

  ‘Ach… everyone’s scrambling for their bit of the blame. The Ma’s not there, but the men are. I’ll bet you a quid there’s a fight before closing.’

  ‘Do they think she jumped?’

  ‘Sure isn’t that what happened?’

  ‘Don’t mess me about.’

  ‘I wouldn’t dare mess about with you. Someone told me Ned Greevy’s saying he spotted her alone on the bridge that night. What do you make of that?’

  ‘My nerves are in bits. I didn’t push her, you know that.’

  Davy combed his hand through his fringe, cleared it from his eyes.

  ‘I was looking the other way.’

  Her mouth opened in protest, but she seemed to change her mind and swallowed it back. She turned the key and the engine shuddered into life.

  ‘Hey, let me out,’ he said.

  Una pulled out of the car park, her hand clumsy with the gears.

  ‘I can’t trust you not to say something stupid when you’re like this.’

  ‘What you going to do – kill me?’

  The old Ford barrelled up the road towards Buleen, Una’s grip on the wheel was as tight as her jaw.

  ‘Sorry. That was crude of me,’ he said. ‘You just gave a little helping hand, let’s put it that way. First the child, then the mother.’

  ‘I’ve told you before. The baby was dead when I got to the kitchen. It was Joan’s hands on it.’

  ‘Drop me at Melody’s,’ he said as they passed the church, but Una ignored him, turning down the bridge road at speed.

  ‘For fuck’s sake.’

  ‘You don’t need any more drink.’

  The car bucked over the top of the bridge. Una braked hard and pulled into the grass verge beside the old chapel. With the car stopped, she turned to face him.

  ‘Do you want me up before the guards, would that make you happy? This is serious.’

  Davy met her eyes, found himself looking at the black holes in the centre of them, the bit of someone that was supposed to show their true self. Nothing. She was staring back, right into his black holes. It was stupid to think you could know a person. The sound of the river flowing behind them grew in his ears, an unbearable noise.