The Rosary Garden

by Nicola White

‘I have a daughter just your age, and do you know, I’m terrified for her. Terrified. There’s so much pressure on her – from the media, from boys, from other girls even. To have sex, I mean. Tell me, as a young one yourself, how do you stand firm?’

  Ali was at a loss. She tried to imagine what Mary would say.

  ‘Maybe I don’t.’ A slight gasp came from the audience, and Gay wheeled around to look at her.

  ‘Promiscuity is hardly a solution!’ shouted Beasley.

  The woman with the question raised her voice. ‘Well, I’m glad my daughter isn’t a little slut like you,’ she said.

  ‘Ah now! There’s no need …’ said Gay, but the audience was in uproar again, everyone talking at once, Mary and Dr Beasley leaning forward to speak into their microphones. Ali caught sight of the monitor to one side of the stage and her own face was filling it – stricken eyes, flaming cheeks.

  Swan sat in his mother’s front room, disbelieving his eyes and ears. His mother was on her knees at the side of his chair, mopping up the tea he’d knocked over when Alison Hogan had appeared on the television screen.

  ‘Leave it!’ he said again.

  ‘It’s my rug and I’ll save it if I want.’

  Her grey head bobbed by his elbow. He could either argue or listen to what that little rag was saying about the case, and he should know by now that his mother was immune to argument. The innocence of the Hogan girl’s face was amazing, given her lust for the spotlight. Two days ago she’d sworn to him that she wouldn’t talk to any more journalists and he’d believed her, and now here she was, opining away about the state of the nation. She was trouble.

  Just as well Considine was already looking into the girl’s past, that other baby. With any luck it would turn out to be nothing – bad dreams, imagination.

  His mother exhaled an Oof as she got up and threw the dish-towel over onto the table, where the remains of their dinner still lay.

  ‘I’ve a lot of time for that Mary O’Shea,’ she said, settling back into her chair.

  Swan grunted assent. His mother’s appreciation was probably of a different flavour from his own. That night he was introduced to her at the theatre, he’d fluffed it. Words had failed him. He was still amazed that someone as elegant at Elizabeth had agreed to marry him; but Mary O’Shea, she was in another league entirely.

  The screen was filled with Ali Hogan’s face, a glisten of tears in her eyes, the whipped look of her. Hard to fake that.

  ‘She’s not getting an easy ride, your girl. Did you see that aul’ bitch in the audience go for her?’

  ‘No one made her go on,’ said Swan. ‘I’m not sure the nuns at her school will appreciate it.’

  ‘Pity about them.’ Mrs Swan took up the paper, folded it to the crossword page. ‘The spare bed is still made up, if you want to stay. Save you going back to an empty house.’

  ‘Ach, I shouldn’t,’ said Swan, but his attention had returned to the screen.

  Mary was saying how we would do well to listen to young people rather than old men. Dr Beasley got personally offended and started tugging at his tie.

  ‘Eh— eh— eh—’ he said, attempting to find a gap in Mary’s tirade. Gay held his hands out, one palm facing the audience, the other towards his guests.

  ‘Please.’ Silence fell at once.

  Out of the corner of her eye, Ali noticed one of the cameras rolling silently towards her.

  ‘Mary, you said back there that no one could understand what Alison had been through, and Alison herself said a curious thing. You said you thought things like this happen often. Last week wasn’t the first time you’ve seen this kind of tragedy, was it? Is that why it matters so much to you?’

  Ali looked at Mary, but Mary was just staring back at her, waiting. She remembered Seán O’Loan talking to Mary at the Shelbourne. Her mother must have told Seán what had happened in Buleen. She wouldn’t discuss it with her own daughter, but she had told Seán.

  ‘Is there anything you can tell us about that?’ Gay was in touching distance now.

  The camera moved a little closer. There was a red light beside the lens, like a little warning. She thought of all the people beyond that lens, watching her. Aunt Una and the rest them at the farmhouse.

  ‘I was very young … I can’t really remember.’

  But that was a lie. The memories were turning up in force now, pressing their noses against the glass, wanting to be let in.

  ‘God help me, I shouldn’t have let her do this.’

  ‘Jesus,’ said Davy. ‘He’s meaning what happened at the farm. Isn’t he?’

  Ali’s shocked face appeared in close-up on the old black-and-white screen at the foot of Deirdre Hogan’s bed.

  I was very young … I can’t really remember. Her voice as thin as wire from the little speaker.

  Gay moved the discussion back to Mary O’Shea, then rounded it up without going back to Ali. As the cameras drew back for the endshot, they could see she was looking at her knees, not up at the cameras like the others.

  ‘She was so excited – I should have stopped her.’

  ‘Well, you didn’t.’ Davy got up from a little armchair draped in clothes and leaned over the end of the bed to reach the set. ‘Do you want me to turn it off?’

  ‘No, just turn the sound down.’

  ‘You should never have told that policeman about Buleen,’ he said with his face turned from her. He heard her sigh.

  ‘Well, it was just so weird – you know, happening again. You remember it, don’t you?’

  ‘Not much …’

  ‘Ach, you were practically a child yourself.’

  ‘I was sixteen.’

  Davy left his sister to her regrets and went down to the big sparse room he’d been using as his own. He pulled a suitcase from under the single bed. It was an old case that Una had turned up from somewhere in the farmhouse, made out of cardboardy stuff and reinforced with metal corners and clasps, sandy with corrosion. He dragged a pile of his things out of a corner cupboard, started throwing them into the case.

  He surveyed the room, then snapped the clasps shut.

  The only thing left in the cupboard was that cheap bottle of whiskey, plenty left. He grabbed it and spun the top off with a swipe of his hand. He remembered that Christmas all right, much better than his sister ever could.

  The farmhouse had been full to bursting. Una’s four kids were home from school, and Deirdre and Ali were staying with them, ever since Ciaran’s funeral. The only peace he could get was late at night. He’d go down to the kitchen, drink a coffee, listen to the big radio. He could tune in to a foreign station and pretend he was somewhere else – somewhere with pavement cafés and jazz clubs, not a bog-hole in the middle of nowhere.

  On Christmas Eve, it was, he’d gone downstairs at about two. The light over the range was on, as usual. There were presents for the kids on the table, some wrapped, some not. He didn’t even notice her at first. He filled the kettle at the tap and stepped over the dog on the way to the range.

  ‘You get up on the sofa, boy, I’ll tell no one.’

  But the dog stayed where he was, his eyes fixed on the heap of rugs on the sofa, like he was scared of it, his tail sweeping slowly across the flagstones. The heap gave a groan and Davy nearly jumped out of his skin. A glob of water hopped from the kettle spout and hissed on the hot plate.

  He’d felt annoyed. He couldn’t have his peace with her sleeping there. Why couldn’t she go home? She groaned again – deep, like a cow lowing – and the dog moved a step closer, keeping his belly to the floor.

  She must have known he was there, but wouldn’t let on, her face turned to the sofa back. When he’d asked her about her condition before, asked her straight, she’d denied it, wearing a big man’s jumper to cover it, struggling to bend or rise.

  He took the dog by the scruff and led him out to his kennel in the yard. Then he stood by the kitchen window and looked back in at her. She threw the blanket off after a time, and he could see ev
erything: the sweat on her, the strain in her bare legs. It was a cold night and he wasn’t dressed for it, but he couldn’t go back in. The moon gleamed off the pig-shed roofs and frost whitened the upper field.

  Eventually she heaved herself off the sofa and squatted beside it, hanging on to the arm, looking down into herself. She was huffing and grunting, the hair plastered to her skull. Somewhere in the middle of it she turned her head and looked at the window, looked right through him.

  He remembered the awful streaks of blood on her haunches as something bulged and slithered from them and onto the heaped blanket she had put beneath her. She was bent over the mite, arse in the air, pulling at the cord that joined them. He saw a puny arm rise from the rug – trembling with anger was what it looked like, shaking its little knot of fist in the air – and he felt exultant, something bursting in his chest, coming from nothing and filling him full.

  9

  When Ali got to the bus stop outside the television studio there was a group of people already gathered there. Several turned to look at her.

  ‘Don’t they drop you home in a limo?’ said one woman.

  They were from the audience. Ali looked at her watch and walked away from the bus stop as if she simply didn’t have the time to wait. Maybe there really was a limo – she hadn’t stuck around to find out. Now she’d have to walk home.

  She could hardly believe how her mouth had run away with her. Imagine talking about sex like she knew what she was on about. She had had sex. A couple of times, with the flirtatious brother of a school friend, but it wasn’t what she thought it would be; it was clumsy and mystifying.

  Ali walked up Eglinton Road, limping in her high heels now, but halfway home. A car drove by slowly and came to a halt in front of her, brake lights glowing. She moved closer to the houses on her left and looked away from the car as she passed it. It slid into motion and kept pace with her for an awful minute before suddenly accelerating off. She remembered the heavy make-up she was still wearing, the heels, no coat – she must look a sight. She stopped and unbuckled the straps of her shoes. Better barefoot than hobbled. She kept her eyes on the pavement ahead for streams of liquid or glints of glass.

  Why had her mother never discussed the first baby with her, never tried to explain things, let her believe it was in her head? Her aunt and uncle, they’d seen it too, but no one ever spoke of it. Someone must know who that baby was, where it came from. She suddenly recalled her mother lying in bed all those winter days, crying and crying.

  ‘You okay?’

  Ali was standing at the edge of a road crossing. She might have been standing there for some time. A girl had drawn level to wait for the light, hand-in-hand with a sullen man. She craned her neck to look into Ali’s face.

  ‘Okay?’ she asked again, but her boyfriend tugged her onwards, away from involvement.

  ‘Fine …’ Ali managed and trotted across behind them.

  She was glad to see the pool of light that fell on the pavement from the all-night shop called The Cottage. Her home was behind the shop. After her father died, Ma sold their little bungalow and bought a tall terraced house full of sitting tenants, and a shop built in the former front garden. It was the practical thing to do, she explained.

  Ali walked up the narrow passage beside the shop and through a small yard filled with bread trays and stacks of flattened boxes. The house rose like a cliff in front of her, stone steps leading up to the front door. Above it, her mother’s bedroom light shone through the gap in her curtains.

  Ali opened and shut the front door quietly. There were no signs of life downstairs, but she could hear the muffled sound of the television above. She went up and knocked as she entered.

  Her mother’s unerring eye went straight to the shoes in her hand, then took in her grimy bare feet. ‘Did you not get a taxi, like I said?’

  Ali pretended she hadn’t heard.

  Her mother’s room was large, stretching across the front of the house. It functioned as a workroom as well as a bedroom, now that her mother had taken up mending china as another way to make a bit of money. An old dining table filled one side of the room, covered with broken things – dishes, vases, a massive soup tureen decorated with pink scallop shells, and dozens of ornaments missing vital pieces. Saucers of glue and paint sat along the edge, and jam jars stuffed with wooden sticks and brushes.

  On the other side was her mother’s ornate bed, hemmed in by draped chairs and small tables toppling with books and lamps. In the middle of this jumble, like a hen on her nest, her hair loose over her shoulders, her mother waited. The awful topic to be broached hanging in the air.

  Ali sat on the edge of the bed. A film with subtitles was playing on the TV; a beautiful woman in a tight dress leaned, smoking, against a wall while a man remonstrated with her. Ali promised herself a cigarette once she’d got this over with.

  ‘You watched it, I presume.’

  ‘Your dress looked nice …’ said her mother.

  ‘Jesus, my dress?’

  Ma looked away, blinked quickly. Ali took a breath, tried to keep her voice steady.

  ‘You told Seán O’Loan, didn’t you? About what happened in Buleen.’

  ‘I was upset that night. It just came out. I’m sorry. And I should have stopped you going on that.’ Her mother pointed at the television.

  ‘You have to explain it to me, Ma.’

  ‘I wasn’t even sure you remembered – you never mention it.’

  After all these years they were talking about it. The thing that couldn’t be spoken had re-entered the world.

  ‘It was your baby, wasn’t it?’ Ali made her voice soft.

  ‘What? – no!’

  ‘It would have been my brother or sister.’

  Her mother put a quick hand to Ali’s shoulder. ‘Really, it wasn’t. God, things were bad enough, but no, not that. I can’t believe you thought that.’

  Ali looked back at her. ‘Then who?’

  Ma hesitated. ‘It’s funny, I never really asked Una about it. It was such an odd time. All I could think about was losing your father – I’d nothing to spare for someone else’s troubles. I always presumed it was Joan’s. Do you remember Joan?’

  She did. Freckle-faced Joan, who did all the cooking at her uncle’s farm. She had been timid in company, but sweet and funny when the two of them were alone in that big kitchen. Joan sang her silly songs, and let Ali help hold the big knife to mark the cross on the brown bread before it went into the range.

  Her mother reached for the glass on her bedside table. ‘She came from an odd family, you know. I’m not sure what went on there. I’d no idea she was pregnant. She still comes to the farm sometimes, Una says, looking for her job back – though she’s been in and out of hospital mostly. Damascus House – you know, psychiatric.’

  ‘Because of what happened to her baby?’

  ‘Well, she was always a bit not-there, a bit wandering. I really did think you’d forgotten.’

  Ali stood up and wandered over to the work table. ‘Some of these things have been here for ever,’ said Ali. ‘If you can’t mend them, you should get rid of them.’

  ‘Hey,’ said Ma, ‘what’s all this about you campaigning for better sex education?’

  ‘That’s not what I said.’

  ‘Or more contraception, or something.’

  ‘Don’t remind me. I feel such a fool.’

  A raucous burst of Italian came from the TV. Ali lifted her eyes. A young man was being chased through a market, but he was laughing as he ran. She wished she could run with him.

  ‘Mary O’Shea wants me to go on her radio show to talk about it again.’

  Her mother tilted her head, then quickly shook it. ‘I’m not sure that’s—’

  ‘I don’t want to – I’m never leaving this house again.’

  ‘Don’t be melodramatic.’

  Ali ran her finger down the sharp chalky edge of the broken soup tureen.

  ‘Leave it, please,’ said Ma. ‘I d
id buy you that doll, you know.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The doll you were looking for. Baby Tears or whatever it was called, but I couldn’t find it to wrap it for you. I thought I was going mad … Well, I was going mad, those days.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘You should go to bed, love. It’ll feel better in the morning.’

  Ali went over and bent to kiss her mother goodnight. She could hardly bear the intimacy of the smell of her warm bed.

  She didn’t go up to her room, but crept downstairs to stand outside Davy’s door. No light shone from under it. Ali pressed her ear to the yellowed paint of one panel and listened hard. There was a gently whooshing sound that could have been his breathing, deep in sleep, but might just as well have been the sound of her own blood circulating.

  ‘Davy?’ She spoke quietly into the crack of the door jamb.

  ‘Yeah?’ She jumped as the reply came from behind her. Davy emerged from the dark of the back hall, grinning, a glass in hand.

  ‘You bastard.’

  She followed him back to the kitchen and turned on the small light over the cooker. On the table stood a bottle with a yellow label – Queen Anne Whiskey emblazoned in garish script.

  ‘What are you doing drinking in the dark?’

  ‘Pull up a pew. I’m having a wake.’

  Davy was drinking from the glass with The Flintstones drawings on it, one she loved when she was a kid. She fetched a glass from the draining board – a fancy-looking stemmed one from a petrol-station giveaway.

  ‘What are we having a wake for – my reputation?’

  ‘Nobody made you do it.’

  ‘I don’t remember half of what I said. It was a nightmare.’

  The whiskey was harsh and smelt of disinfectant. She went to the sink and diluted it.

  ‘Some other shite will come along and eclipse it soon enough. That’s my philosophy.’

  She sat across from him, took her packet of ten out of her dress pocket and lit a cigarette. ‘So, what are you celebrating?’

  ‘“Celebrate” is too strong a word,’ said Davy, flapping his hand to divert the smoke. ‘More of an ending. My family needs me, it seems.’