by Nicola White
‘Yeah, 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 her neck up when she looked at you.
‘Please sit down. 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.
‘My colleague’s 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 gaze averted, to all appearances fascinated by the view out the window. He remembered a film he’d seen at the IFT, something arty that 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. Irish solutions to Irish problems.
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 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 do some admin, help with maintenance, boring stuff. We have many different projects around Dublin – we help run a nursery in Sheriff 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 be 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?’
‘It’s … 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 firm in the set of her jaw. ‘We try to help all women in need. My focus is on the working women in the area.’
Swan’s 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 Sister Bernadette’s 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 praise indifferently, running the beads through her hands, then dropping 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 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 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 the sake of neatness?’
‘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 white wrapping 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 hazily 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 him.
13
The bell jingled, a cue to kneel; on either side of Ali, Aunt Una and Uncle Joe pulled themselves forward onto the padded kneeler. Ali never went to mass in Dublin. She wondered whether to stay sitting, to separate herself from the rigmarole. People were 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 Ali 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, and 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 the large wooden box being trolleyed up the centre aisle.
After mass, the congregation milled around in the bright morning, a busy crush between railings and church front. Car engines revved as 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 Ali and held a hand out for her to shake. Was it her imagination, or was the crowd thicker around them than in other parts of the churchyard?
‘You remember Dr Nolan,’ said Una as Ali surrendered her hand. She recognised 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 – Dr Nolan standing in the doorway of the living room, holding a gift wrapped in shining red paper. He had visited that Christmas Day – yes. With some children.
Dr Nolan turned to talk to her aunt. A finger tapped hard on Ali’s shoulder. She 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 metal 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. Just being welcoming.’ 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 the woman’s 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 – the medal was so 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 that woman in the headscarf?’
‘She’s a religious nut. Don’t mind her.’ It seemed that, in Uncle Joe’s mind, there was a subtle but important 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 woman 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, it’s 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. Roisín had recently upped the stakes by marrying a handsome GAA captain, Colman Carroll, and soon after, baby Emer arrived.
As they drove, Roisín 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. Ali always thought Roisín wasn’t bothered about what anyone thought of her, but something had changed.
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, no more than a rutted lane between high hedges. Fuchsia branches skittered against the car windows. 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 inside 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.
She took Ali on a brief tour of her new home. Ali nodded at the two bedrooms, feigned amazement at the plumbed-in bathroom with its tiny pink bath. She said that it was a lot better than Davy’s house, and Roisín laughed.
‘They’re no better than apes, those boys.’
‘I didn’t even know Davy had a house.’
‘Well – I think he’s a bit embarrassed by it …’
‘Why?’
‘He thought he was going to be setting up a little home, didn’t he, but nothing came of it, of course.’
‘A little home with who?’ she managed to keep her voice conversational.
‘You wouldn’t know her. Girl called Valerie. She only moved here a couple of years ago.’
‘Oh.’ Ali walked away to look at a picture of a football team over the decorative mantelpiece. It made her feel foolish not to know something so important about Davy’s life. It made her feel like she hadn’t been paying proper attention.
‘I’ll make us coffee. You go to Ali, Emer.’ Roisín handed her the baby and went to busy herself in the kitchen area.
Ali held Emer at arm’s length for a moment, unsure of herself. The baby looked unsure of her too. Her brow started to pucker, so Ali brought her into her chest for a cuddle. Emer capitulated, slipping one plum
p fist into the opening of Ali’s blouse to come to rest stickily against her collarbone, just above her heart. Then she laid her cheek on the curve of Ali’s shoulder, stuffed her thumb in her mouth and sucked on it reflectively. Ali walked away to the front of the caravan, where a wide window brought in the view of the lake.
The baby was limp in her arms. Ali hummed a made-up tune and stroked the hot little back, her palm tickled by the intricate pattern of her cardigan. The fingers under Ali’s shirt flexed and curled in time with the thumb-sucking. Emer’s hair was pale and fine, growing here and there in curls on her shell-pink scalp. With a jolt, Ali realised what it was she was holding – this was what was lost, this.
Her stomach gave an awful lurch. She wanted to sit down, but all her concentration was needed for holding onto the baby.
She must have made some kind of sound, because Roisín was hurrying towards her.
‘Are you okay?’
Ali nodded, but it felt like the child could slip through her arms. She looked down. Emer gazed up at her, steady and accusatory. Roisín was by her side now, the baby being taken from her grip.
‘I’m sorry,’ said Roisín, ‘I didn’t think. It’s upset you.’
Ali wanted to protest that she was fine – fine – but no words would come out. She went to sit on the sofa while Roisín put Emer back into her playpen.
They drank the coffee and Ali asked her cousin normal, boring questions, about her job, about the wedding, about Colman. But Roisín was incapable of finishing a whole sentence without her eyes sliding over to Emer, her conversation fragmented with little bursts of baby-talk directed at the lobster pot.
‘An odd woman came up to me after mass today,’ said Ali, ‘gave me a medal. Your dad said it was Joan’s mother – Joan Dempsey.’
‘Oh yeah? Seemed like they were all gawping at you.’
‘I didn’t see Joan there.’
‘Well, you wouldn’t,’ Roisín said. ‘She’s in the hospital – that mental place in Kinmore: the big building on the road into town.’
‘Yeah, my mother told me. That’s awful. I remember her well from the time we stayed with you.’