The Rosary Garden

by Nicola White

  He leaned forward over the desk and pointed. ‘Down the corridor, up the end stairs, turn right and she should be somewhere around the west wing.’

  ‘Is there a room number or something?’

  ‘Well, she won’t be in it. She busies herself about the place. A busy bee.’ He looked down at the empty desk in front of him. ‘Don’t know what I’m going to do now,’ he said pleasantly.

  Ali walked down the wide corridor, her sandals chirping on the vinyl. There were doors on either side, all identical, with small windows of gridded glass beside each handle. One door was open and as she passed she caught sight of someone lying on a bed, an arm flung over her eyes, body covered with a flowery duvet.

  As she climbed the stairs, she grew fearful again. It was very likely that Joan wouldn’t know her, or wouldn’t welcome her if she did. A woman in a white overall banged through the fire doors at the top of the stairs, her head tilted to one side to see past an armload of sheets. She passed Ali without acknowledgement. Ali went through the doors and found herself looking down another corridor. On either side were large wards where people sat on beds or circulated slowly in dressing gowns. It looked like an ordinary hospital. She wanted to ask someone where to go, but the only official person she could see was a woman mopping the corridor ahead.

  The woman was facing away from her, wearing ordinary clothes: pale tight jeans and a baggy jumper. She was humming a song, something just beyond naming, but familiar.

  Maybe it was the tune, or something in the way she moved, or the way her curly hair piled together in defiance of gravity, but before she was within ten feet of her, Ali experienced a rush of recognition, like a blast of hot water from her heart. She stood still and watched the woman move the mop to create shining figures-of-eight across the sea-green linoleum.

  ‘Joan?’

  The mop turned first, skimming round in a semicircle, Joan turning neatly behind it as if executing some kind of dance step.

  ‘It’s you.’ Joan smiled and fine lines radiated from the sides of her eyes and bracketed her thin mouth. Otherwise she seemed not much changed. Smaller, certainly. Ali was more than a head taller than her now.

  ‘I didn’t think you’d know me.’

  ‘Didn’t I see you the other night?’

  ‘You haven’t seen me in years …’

  ‘You were with that man – Gay Byrne.’ Joan’s smile faded and her eyes grew wide. ‘Oh God.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Something bad happened to you. I forgot.’

  ‘You saw me on the telly – is that it?’

  ‘The telly. Yes.’

  ‘I’m visiting Buleen, so I thought I’d come and see you. Is that all right?’

  ‘I suppose I can finish this later.’

  Joan put the bucket and mop away in a cupboard, and led Ali to a large room full of vinyl armchairs and smoke, occupied by half a dozen people. A woman was lying on the floor. Sleeping, Ali presumed, since no one seemed concerned about her. Two men in shirt sleeves were hunched over a card game. Joan proudly showed Ali a big television that was set into a cabinet in the corner.

  ‘That’s what I saw you on.’

  ‘I’m still amazed you knew me. It’s been so many years.’

  ‘She’s on the telly!’ Joan announced to the room at large. Heads turned to them and quickly away. The woman on the floor slept on.

  The lounge felt like a cross between a youth club and an old folks’ home. There was a pool table on one side of the room, but no sign of any cues or balls. Instead, the surface was covered with boxes of jigsaws and piles of scuffed magazines.

  ‘Do you have a job here, Joan?’

  ‘I like to help out.’

  ‘But you stay here all the time, do you? As a …’ Ali searched for the right word. Patient or inmate seemed too direct.

  ‘Oh yes, full-time.’ Then, in a low voice, looking round as if worried the others would hear, ‘They take care of me.’

  ‘So you do want to be here?’

  Joan ignored her. ‘What’s Gay like? Is he very short?’

  ‘He’s normal-sized, I guess, and very like himself.’

  ‘He looks short on the telly. Have you got cigarettes?’

  Ali reached into her jeans pocket and pulled out her packet of Silk Cut. ‘I don’t think I have a light.’

  ‘I can get you a light,’ said a voice behind her. She looked round to see that a young man with a straight fringe had crept up on them. Weaver appears mistily, she thought. Other faces had perked up hopefully around the room. More impressive to have cigarettes than to be on the telly. She gave the boy a cigarette, then one to Joan and took another for herself. The boy walked over to the card game.

  ‘Tony, can I have a light?’

  Tony took a lighter from his jeans pocket and, as he did so, Ali noticed the bunch of keys hooked to his belt. He winked at her as he struck the flame.

  Over by the window, a girl her own age with a bad complexion was staring. Ali waved the packet of cigarettes in her direction and the girl approached with all the brash confidence of a woodland creature. They lit their cigarettes one by one from the boy’s fag, drawing in deeply to make the glow catch across. The timid girl pressed the lit cigarette to her own so hard that the tip of the lit one became unhinged. The boy grabbed it from her, cursing.

  ‘Watch it, Peter,’ said Tony, never lifting his eyes from the cards. The boy shuffled off to sulk in a corner, holding the cigarette pointed to the ceiling. The timid girl sat in the chair beside Ali, a little smile on her face. Ali smiled back awkwardly.

  Joan leaned across and poked the girl’s knee. ‘Go on with you.’

  The girl moved away, and Joan leaned closer to Ali.

  ‘You’ve gotten very tall. Have you heels on?’

  Ali showed her the flat soles of her sandals. ‘My dad was tall.’

  Joan bit her lip and put her hand to her chest. ‘Your poor daddy. God, I remember you coming to Caherbawn with your mammy, and the tears still wet on your cheeks.’ She looked as though she would cry herself.

  ‘You weren’t too happy either, were you, Joan?’

  Joan shot a look around, settling on the card players.

  ‘I have to be careful. They rely on me to be cheerful.’

  Joan picked up an ashtray and motioned to the window with a jog of her head, and they strolled over with exaggerated nonchalance. Outside, the sun beat down on a brutish tarmac yard stretching away from the back of the hospital. Cars were parked along its far edge, where it butted up to a field dotted with black cattle.

  ‘Do you remember me finding something that Christmas Day?’ ventured Ali.

  Joan shook her head, looked out at the hot cars.

  Ali moved an inch closer. ‘There was a baby. It wasn’t alive. It was in a box, up in the back bedroom. And I wondered, was it yours?’

  ‘You found a baby in Dublin. I’ve never even been to Dublin.’ Joan wouldn’t look at her. As she lifted her cigarette to her mouth, Ali noticed a tremor in her hand.

  ‘I’m talking about before.’

  ‘Boxes. Bedrooms. I don’t know what you’re on about.’

  ‘You were expecting, weren’t you?’

  There was a tiny flicker from Joan, a tightening of the corner of her mouth.

  ‘’Twas a miscarriage.’ She hissed the word out.

  Ali looked out the window. What she had seen couldn’t be a miscarriage, could it? A miscarriage would be unformed, would look like something from that abortion film the nuns had shown them, with the bin full of discarded foetuses; a red galaxy swirling with the soft outlines of frog legs and newt palms among nameless clots of matter. Girls had fled the assembly hall, retching as they went.

  Joan flicked rhythmically at the cigarette butt with her fingernail. Ash flakes sprinkled the windowsill.

  ‘The baby was wrapped in a towel,’ Ali persisted. ‘It was a small baby, but it looked perfect.’

  On the word perfect, Joan froze. She addresse
d the windowpane.

  ‘Not a miscarriage, the other thing. When it doesn’t live. A stone birth – I mean still birth – that’s what they call it. Your aunt said that there would be other babies. But she was wrong; I tried and no others came. I gave myself to men I didn’t even like.’ Joan’s voice grew unsteady. ‘Sometimes I think God must hate me. He just hates me.’ She put her forehead against the windowpane.

  Ali wished she hadn’t mentioned the baby. She had prised open a whole world of upset. What right had she to come here, bothering Joan? If the people who ran this place knew what she was at, they would keep her in – her and her dead babies. And Tony would wink at her as he tucked her up in her narrow bed, keys jingling at his hip.

  ‘I’m sorry, Joan. Nobody ever explained what happened. I’m just trying to make sense of it.’

  ‘You said it was perfect. Was it really?’

  Ali nodded, put an arm round Joan’s waist. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘What did your aunt tell you?’

  ‘I didn’t ask her.’

  Ali had never sung songs with Una, never run her hands through Una’s hair. She couldn’t ever remember speaking to her aunt when there weren’t other people present.

  Joan turned away from the window, smoothed out her cheeks with her palms.

  ‘You used to drag that black kitten about – remember?’ said Joan. ‘Carried it all over the place with you like a dolly, never mind the fleas on it. You had bites all over your arms.’

  Ali smiled. ‘You put calamine lotion on them.’ Chalky streaks of it, crackling when it dried.

  So odd to think of this tiny woman taking care of her; the substantial presence of her then compared to now. Joan had been queen of the kitchen, the heart of the house for Ali, but she had just been passing through, had owned nothing but her labour.

  A woman wheeled in a trolley of blue cups and handed strong, sugary tea to everyone, Ali included. She and Joan sat in chairs near the window. The boy with the fringe turned on the television, and everyone looked at the screen for a while, supping their tea. Onscreen, a man in yellow dungarees was talking to a red-haired puppet. The card players took a break from their game. It was sort of cosy.

  ‘I went to visit, but your aunt shooed me off. They won’t give me my job back.’

  ‘It was a long time ago, Joan. More than ten years.’

  ‘Well, she used to be very good to me. And then she wasn’t.’

  ‘When you were pregnant?’

  Joan frowned and checked that no one had heard. The card players were talking. The sleeper on the floor slept on, a cup of cooling tea by her head.

  ‘You and your mammy were as bad.’

  ‘What did we do?’

  ‘You passed me on the road – me and my brother – like we were too dirty to pick up, like we were tinkers.’

  As Joan said it, Ali had a vague memory of being in her mother’s new car, starting the trip back up to Dublin, and Joan on the grass verge of the road, holding a yellow-haired boy close in to her body as their car drove past them.

  ‘Did you leave Caherbawn the same day as us?’

  ‘Thrown out, more like.’ Joan screwed the butt of her cigarette into the ashtray, mashing it.

  ‘You know, there really isn’t much of a job to do any more. There’s hardly anyone to cook for,’ said Ali.

  ‘How d’you mean?’

  ‘Roisín, the twins and Davy are gone. They have their own homes. There don’t seem to be any farmhands, either. It’s only my aunt and uncle there now. And Brendan.’

  All the anger drained from Joan’s expression, to be replaced with confusion. Ali got out of her chair and stooped down in front of her, catching Joan’s small hands together in her own. She looked over at Tony, but he didn’t seem to notice Joan’s distress. Only the shy girl was watching, scratching her cheek rhythmically.

  ‘You were very good to me,’ Ali said, searching out eye contact. ‘I remember that. You were kind.’

  Joan wouldn’t look at her.

  ‘You sang me the farting song that Auntie Una banned. You let me plait your hair, and you made me show you my Irish dancing, up on the kitchen table, and clapped out the beat for me. Do you remember?’ Joan nodded, a suggestion of a smile on her face now. ‘I didn’t come to trouble you, Joan. I’m sorry if I have.’

  ‘I can’t believe where the time goes,’ said Joan. ‘I lose track.’

  ‘Why are you in here, Joan?’

  She looked around the room and back at Ali. ‘I needed to feel safe. And then they needed me.’

  ‘Things can change.’

  ‘Will you do something for me?’

  ‘Sure,’ said Ali.

  ‘Take me out.’

  That wasn’t what Ali had been expecting. ‘I don’t know if … I wouldn’t be allowed.’

  ‘It is. We could go on a jaunt – just for an afternoon.’

  ‘Okay. If they let me.’

  Joan’s smile was broad now, and she brushed Ali’s hands away from her. ‘We’ll have a picnic.’

  ‘Let me ask at the desk if that’ll be okay, first, Joan.’

  ‘It will, it will.’

  ‘All right. If it’s allowed.’

  Tony was on the reception desk when she came down, and he said it would be fine for Ali to take Joan out on Thursday. For however long she wanted. It all seemed rather casual. It wasn’t that Ali was scared of Joan, but she wasn’t sure she wanted to be responsible for her. It served her right for walking back into her life.

  16

  Swan drove along the north quays, then headed over the river towards Ranelagh. He wanted to drop in on the Hogan girl again, make sure she’d no more media appearances planned. Perhaps she’d still have that mortified look about her, the one she wore so well on the Late Late. That slimy doctor who spent his time teaching twelve-year-olds the facts of life – something creepy about that. If he ever had a daughter, he wouldn’t want her taught by him. A daughter. Elizabeth’s voice cut into his thoughts: If we don’t try again, we’ll never know.

  He braked as the car in front of him slowed. The traffic looked knotted all the way up Camden Street. The radio news was talking about the recession and unemployment, but it didn’t seem to stop people buying cars.

  Eventually he parked on Sandford Road and walked up the narrow passage to the Hogans’ front door. He’d been taken aback on his previous visit by the scruffiness of the place, forced to revise his notions about St Brigid’s girls and their cushy backgrounds.

  It was the kind of house he often had cause to visit: tall old terraces divided up badly into bedsits, usually home to the young and the transient. A line of plastic doorbells hung to the side of the door, the names in the little plastic windows faded to sepia scratchings, cut wires hanging below. He knocked on the blistered paint and waited some time before he heard approaching steps.

  ‘Who is it?’

  He recognised Deirdre Hogan’s voice. As soon as he announced himself, she opened it, all smiles.

  ‘You’ve good timing. Coffee’s on.’

  He followed her down to the kitchen. She seemed to still be dressed in nightclothes, but she’d mentioned before that she was some kind of artist, so perhaps she wafted around like that all day.

  ‘Is Ali at home?’

  ‘She’s not,’ she said, leaning into a cupboard for mugs, ‘but I’m sure I can help you with whatever you want.’

  Swan took a seat at the big table. Mrs Hogan reached over his shoulder to put the coffee down and a layer of silk brushed his cheek. Sometimes he found the attentions of women uncomfortable, like now – the way Deirdre Hogan was smiling at him, her head tilted away while her eyes slid back to find him. She took a chair directly opposite and leaned forward on the table so that her crossed arms framed her cleavage. It would be easy to misread the situation.

  The coffee was strong and slightly gritty.

  ‘I can guess why you’re here – it’s the Late Late, isn’t it? I’d be annoyed if I were you. I to
ld her so, but she was determined to go on.’

  ‘I take it you tried to discourage her.’

  ‘What powers have I against Mary O’Shea? Ali’s only young. Think of the excitement, the attention.’

  ‘She didn’t seem too excited by the end of it.’

  Deirdre Hogan looked uncomfortable. ‘Well, you don’t have to worry about it any more. She’s had enough attention to last her for years.’

  ‘I thought she might. Where is she?’

  Mrs Hogan opened her mouth to speak, closed it again and smiled. She gave him a look that seemed to convey a great intimacy, as if the two of them were beyond simple whys and wheres.

  ‘You know, when Ali’s dad died, my life fell apart. A heart attack. He was playing rugby at the time, only forty-two. How could you expect something like that? My sister down in Buleen took us in and I stayed there, licking my wounds, for quite a few weeks. I was so wrapped up in my own grief, I couldn’t see what Ali was going through. She was only six – she acted normally, played, laughed; I thought she hadn’t taken it in. But now I see it wasn’t the right place for her.’

  ‘I don’t understand what you’re getting at.’

  ‘Well, a farm is a harsh place, you know … Ailing lambs by the cooker, crows strung up on the barbed wire, baby pigs rolled flat by their sow. More dying.’ Mrs Hogan wiped a single tear away with the side of her palm. ‘And then that bloody box. It had to be her that found it.’ She sighed. ‘Ach, I’m indulging my own guilt, Detective.’

  ‘I just needed to have a word with her.’

  ‘That’s what I’m getting at: she’s gone down to stay with my sister.’

  ‘Right now? We’re in the middle of an investigation.’

  ‘She’s refused to go back to the farm for twelve years, wouldn’t even go into the house after her granddad’s funeral, made me drive straight back to Dublin. Now she’s somehow found the strength, and that could be a good thing. Sure, didn’t you want her out of the limelight?’

  The mother had a point. Surely the girl would cause less trouble down there. He took down the address and phone number. Caherbawn Farm, Buleen, near Kinmore. He’d need to look it up on a map – he didn’t know his own country as well as he should. His visit had been a bit of a waste. Then he thought of something Mrs Hogan could do for him.