The Rosary Garden

by Nicola White

  ‘When times got a bit wild up at our house, Joanie would take me down here. Going camping, she’d call it.’

  He smiled then, a brief wave of sunshine across the dour plains of his face, revealing one gold incisor among the white of his teeth.

  Ali wanted to see him smile again, just to see the flash of gold. She talked about their picnic at the river, making a fool of her own attempts at paddling and swinging, claiming she had stolen the picnic food from under her aunt’s nose. Every time he smiled, she felt she had won something.

  Ivor finished the last swig of his can and threw it in the old hearth, where it joined a heap of other cans and a mess of ash and twisted wire. Ali noticed that Joan looked exhausted, and had been quiet for some time.

  ‘Sorry. You’ll be wanting to get on, and I’ve been prattling.’

  Joan came over and hugged her, the top of her head bumping off Ali’s chin.

  ‘You were good to take me out. I couldn’t have done it on my own, and Ivor won’t go near the place.’

  ‘They might keep me in,’ he said.

  ‘I said to myself you coming was like a sign.’

  ‘I’m sorry I upset you,’ said Ali.

  Joan’s eyes shifted briefly to Ivor, then back. ‘We’ll not mention it again,’ she said, then lifted her voice. ‘There’s a marquee dance on by the school tomorrow night, Ivor says. Maybe I’ll go. Maybe I’ll see you there.’

  ‘Oh, I’ll be there all right,’ said Ali. ‘Brendan’s doing the disco.’

  Ivor rose from the windowsill and brushed invisible crumbs from the front of his thighs. He gave his sister a little smile and she returned it and lifted her sports bag. Now that Ali realised it held all that Joan had packed for her new life, it seemed terribly small.

  At the doorway Ivor hesitated, waited till Joan went on, then came back to stand in front of Ali. The blazing sky cast him in silhouette, the edges of his crinkly hair on fire, his face unreadable.

  ‘Who’s taking you to the dance?’ he demanded.

  ‘I’m taking myself to the dance. It’s the twentieth century.’

  He looked at her for a moment, not saying anything. She held up a hand to shade her eyes, to try and read his expression, but he was already leaving.

  She listened to the van fire up and drive away, wondering why he’d been so nosy.

  The lean-to was a strange little construction, a bit like a metal tent. She strolled over to an open end and saw an old mattress lying inside, smeared with mud on top, with a blue bloom of damp rising up its sides. Some animal had been chewing at a corner. She hoped it had been nicer back when Joan and Ivor used to camp here.

  Ali threaded her way back to the forestry track, glad that Joan would be living in the world again, but worried about her own name lying in the register at Damascus House.

  As she walked on, she found herself wondering what Joan meant when she said they took her baby away. Did she mean after its time in the box? Why did she deny that she hid it?

  A gust of wind nudged her and Ali walked faster, forcing herself forward, back to Caherbawn. Crows argued above her. She told herself to stop fretting at it. It was a long time ago, and memories often differed.

  18

  The security guard at the back gate of Trinity College examined Swan’s ID carefully before waving them through. The university controlled the most desirable car park in the city centre, but did they have to be quite so up themselves? Those college porters with their stupid frock coats and riding hats, like they were off to a hunt, when they were from the same plebeian stock as himself. Never so much as sniffed a horse, except for the ones that pulled the knacker’s carts.

  ‘Boss?’ said Considine.

  Swan realised he’d been muttering. He pulled into a parking space near the cricket pavilion. Sports fields spread out in front of them and, beyond, the stately quadrangles and cobbles that featured in a hundred thousand postcards.

  ‘Why weren’t we born to this, Gina?’

  ‘Did you apply, boss?’

  ‘Did I, biffo. My parents wouldn’t hear of such a thing, and the bishop’s ban was still in force. I hear its mostly southside types now, the cream of young Ireland.’

  ‘I got in. Did a year of economic and social studies. Loved it.’

  Swan carried on as smoothly as he could manage. ‘Why didn’t you graduate, so?’

  Considine shrugged, looked at her watch. ‘Circumstances. The need to get a job.’

  ‘You’re full of surprises.’

  A rustle of far-off applause greeted them as they got out of the car. Young ones sat about on the steps of the pavilion, drinking, watching lean boys in whites play cricket. They couldn’t even play an Irish game here, loping around like Brideshead aristocrats with their little red ball. God, he was getting like his father – disgust as a first resort.

  They passed behind the pavilion and entered a nondescript building that was part of the science department. Four flights up was the office of the chief pathologist, a man who combined an academic career with intimate examination of the country’s dead. He was a well-known figure throughout Ireland, striding across newspaper photographs – out of court, into court or entering a tented area in some newly blighted place.

  The room they entered hummed with fridges, freezers and extractor fans, and the whiff of formalin brought Swan’s nostrils to attention. The muddle of the place reminded him of Deirdre Hogan’s house, but here the clutter was elevated to a professional level. Slide carousels, files, shelves of reference books, microscopes and other precise-looking instruments he couldn’t put a name to crammed the room. Stacks of Tupperware boxes filtered the light from the attic windows. Of course it probably had a different name when put to scientific use – plasticeptacle or polyquarinator or something.

  Among this attic of delights stood the Edwardian figure of the pathologist, leaning on his knuckles over one of the island counters that sliced the room, half-moon glasses balanced mid-nose as he stared at something in a white plastic box in front of him. His open lab coat revealed a tweed suit, check shirt and knit tie. He looked like a man who might go and shoot some grouse when the office day ended.

  As they approached, he pulled a lid onto the box and pushed it to one side. While they made pleasantries, Swan’s eyes kept wandering towards it, imagining lurid contents – a severed body part or some naked, quivering organ.

  ‘Vincent, do you bring me news or are you wanting something from me?’

  ‘I had a question,’ said Swan. ‘It’s going to sound a bit naïve.’

  The pathologist folded his arms and leaned back in readiness. ‘It’s the simple ones that are the tough ones,’ he said. ‘Who made the world? and all that.’

  ‘How can you tell if a woman has carried a child? Internally, I mean.’

  Swan got a smile for his effort.

  ‘Hmm … pregnancy shifts the pelvic girdle, widening and loosening the joints to a certain degree. It also stretches the womb, naturally enough, and even though it contracts again, you can tell the difference at post-mortem if the deceased is still of child-bearing age. After the menopause it’s a bit more difficult. Of course in cases where there was a subsequent hysterectomy, the difficulty is obvious – just the bone girdle to go by.’

  ‘What if the woman is still alive?’

  ‘I don’t get you.’

  ‘If she’s walking about saying that she hasn’t had a baby at all, can you prove she has?’

  ‘There would commonly be signs from such a major event, of course: trauma … scarring from tears likely – a lot depends on how much time had passed between delivery and examination.’

  The pathologist reached over and pulled the plastic box an inch towards his body, then poked it so it lay exactly parallel to the desk edge. Swan felt the silence between them like a great fog of uncertainty.

  The pathologist looked at Considine. ‘Any insight you would care to offer?’

  Gina’s face darkened and she flashed a quick look at Swan. �
��I’ve never been pregnant.’

  ‘I think you should be talking to an obstetrician about this,’ said the pathologist, addressing Swan once more. ‘But I imagine the accessible signs to look for are stretching of the skin, scar tissue from tearing at the mouth of the vagina and changes in the os.’

  ‘The what?’

  ‘The os. The opening in the cervix – it becomes distended into a line rather than a dot. And a scan would probably reveal womb changes.’

  Considine had pulled out her notebook, was writing ‘OZ?’ on a blank page, head bent.

  ‘What about the psychological effect? Do you think it would be possible for a woman or girl to deliver a baby and then sort of forget about it? Or not really forget about it, in the ordinary sense, but blank it, act as if nothing at all had happened. Even tell herself that nothing had happened?’

  The pathologist pulled over a stool and sat down. ‘Psychology’s not my field. But I remember a case in England, about eight years ago, still sticks with me. A young guest at a wedding delivered herself in a toilet cubicle during the reception, then placed the baby and the afterbirth in the sanitary bin and re-joined the party. People were coming and going all the time, and one witness saw the girl retouch her make-up before leaving the Ladies. And none of her friends or even her boyfriend admitted to noticing she was pregnant.’

  ‘Complete denial?’

  ‘Yes, or at least a sense of putting things back to how they should be, sans baby.’

  ‘And just carry on normally.’

  ‘Exactly. Unless you’ve come across yet another dead infant, I presume we are still discussing your Rosary Baby?’

  Swan nodded.

  ‘In cases of denial, you don’t take the time to wash, feed and clothe your baby before killing it. Quite the contrary.’

  ‘Yes, that’s what doesn’t fit. Given those few days that it lived – do you think it’s possible for a girl to deliver and look after a baby on her own, to keep its existence from anyone else?’

  ‘I’m flattered that you seek my opinion on such a wide range of things.’

  ‘Have a go—’

  ‘Probably. Maybe. Women have delivered on their own throughout history. I’m sure they still do, though few would actually choose to. There’s a good man at Holles Street I can recommend for all this stuff.’

  Considine wrote the good man’s name in her book. The pathologist reached out for his plastic box again, pulling it directly in front of him and pausing to look at them with his thumbs hooked under the lip of the lid. Swan braced himself. The pathologist flipped the lid off to reveal a stack of white sandwiches, then smiled a wicked smile.

  They said their thanks and goodbyes quickly. In the stairwell, Considine put her hand on his sleeve, and Swan stopped.

  ‘Why did you bring me here?’ she asked.

  ‘Because you’re working the case with me.’

  ‘Well, you could have told me what it was about.’

  ‘You can’t afford to be that sensitive.’

  ‘What’s going on in your head? Is it the Hogan girl? The blouse you gave me for forensics, it was from her house, wasn’t it?’

  Swan didn’t answer, just led the way back to the car. They stood on either side of it, looking at each other across the roof.

  ‘Say it was her, how could she act so cool?’ Swan asked.

  ‘Cool all right,’ said Considine. ‘Garda O’Malley said she asked for a last look at the baby when they were taking it from the garden. Did you know that?’

  ‘I didn’t … That bag of hers that was in the shed – bring it up to forensics for a check on the inside. And get in touch with her friend again, Carmen Fitzgerald. Have a little chat.’

  19

  Their footsteps boomed on the wooden floor of the empty marquee. Davy did a little crouching run around the pillars with the loaded trolley; brumpa-brumpa-brumpa across the boards. Ali thought this was hilarious and probably would have been pretty funny even without the cans of cider they had shared in the van.

  ‘Watch out for the whirly light-cupboard thing,’ she said.

  ‘Oh, we wouldn’t drop the whirly light cupboard,’ Brendan said from the empty stage, and Ali bent over on a wave of giggling that was almost annoying in its intensity, like being tickled by someone who wouldn’t stop. Brendan jumped down and patted her head in passing, dislodging one of the combs that held her hair in a whirl on top of her head. A hank of it fell over one eye. She cursed, he laughed.

  Father Philbin appeared at the marquee entrance and squinted across the gloom at them.

  ‘Are you not set up yet, lads? The band’s due for the sound check.’

  Not waiting for their answer, he crossed the floor and disappeared into the side tent, where refreshments would be sold. Brendan and Davy quietened and started to connect their speakers and decks. The wall of the tent behind them lifted at the bottom and a thin man in a boiler suit and flat cap crawled through, holding a cable and plug board, which he handed to Brendan.

  ‘Good man!’ Davy called after him. From outside came the wheeze and splutter of an engine cord being pulled. A low thrum started, followed by a click, and the tent was cheered with light from the strings of coloured bulbs that hung across the space.

  ‘Hey, Ali – here’s your whirlies!’ Brendan had the light box working, kaleidoscope patterns pulsing across its square screen like fast-blooming flowers. An insistent beat burst from the speakers and Ali started to move. The bass was so loud she could feel it vibrate in her kidneys. She shut her eyes and danced. She hadn’t felt this good since … she couldn’t remember. When the last bars faded away, the music seemed to drain through the floor.

  She opened her eyes to find five men in matching jackets staring at her. One of them started to clap slowly.

  ‘You the floor-show?’ said another.

  ‘Just, ah, testing the boards.’ She stomped her heels in a little tattoo, looking down at her feet to hide her embarrassment.

  The one who had clapped stepped forward. He had ink-black hair in a style that could only be described as a pageboy. The oldest pageboy in the kingdom – close up, he looked about fifty.

  ‘We’re The Corvettes,’ he said with a smile and held out his hand. He couldn’t be prouder if he was saying, ‘We’re Roxy Music.’

  More sockets and wires were brought in for The Corvettes to do their sound check. Brendan and Davy were sorting out their record boxes, so Ali stood against a pillar and watched the band run through a few numbers. What they lacked in originality, The Corvettes made up for in versatility. They raced through versions of ‘Karma Chameleon’ and ‘The Hucklebuck’, before the singer produced a bodhrán and someone else got out a fiddle and they were whooping up a jig and a reel. Two of them never even moved the fags from their lips.

  The man with the pageboy whispered closely into the mike, ‘And this one is for the be-yootiful girl in the tight red trousers’, and they swung into ‘Three Times a Lady’, before deliberately fluffing it and breaking down into a tumble a few bars in, the bass drum whacking alone into the empty tent like an amplified heart.

  Some women came in carrying crates of teacups and an urn the size of a rubbish bin. Drink wasn’t allowed at the dance, which was why Davy was now pulling Ali outside – so they could get a pint in at the Red Rock Saloon before things got busy. Brendan left a cassette of party music playing, just to fill the space.

  ‘The machine plays both sides, so we’ve got sixty minutes and counting,’ he announced, gunning the accelerator in the van.

  By those calculations, the tape ran out ten minutes before they made it back to the marquee. A dozen quite elderly people sat on the benches that lined the edge of the tent, while two children practised their spinning on the empty boards.

  Brendan hopped up on the stage, mumbling words of welcome and apology into the microphone, while shaking a twelve-inch single from its sleeve.

  ‘Here’s one I know you’re going to like.’ Bouncy electro-pop streamed out of the
speakers.

  Ali sat on the side of the stage. It was good to have a pseudo-occupation, to pass the occasional record up for Davy to pass to Brendan. Around eleven the marquee started to fill up in earnest, people drifting in, the men bowed by the weight of bottles in their jacket pockets, the girls carrying clinking shoulder bags. Ali noticed tight huddles where she could just glimpse something being added to the bottles of Fanta and Coke that everyone clutched.

  Four girls drifted out into the middle of the floor and started to dance, smiling only at each other or down at their shoes, pretending not to be aware of the crowd that now ringed the hall, three or four deep as closing pubs swelled the numbers. Brendan turned up the music to rise over the sound of the talking. In response, people raised their voices, yelling conversations into their neighbour’s ears. Ali looked round to see who she recognised; there was Roisín’s husband Colman, roaring drunk and hugging an equally red-faced buddy by the neck – Cathal, the arsehole with the foetus-feet badge. Roisín must be home with the baby. More girls were dancing now, sedate little shimmies set against the wild gestures and stumbles of the roiling crowd ringing the floor. It was either going to be a brilliant night or a riot.

  Davy hopped off the stage and grabbed her wrist, pulling Ali out into the centre of the sparsely occupied floor. He was the first man up, and what he lacked in rhythm he made up for in enthusiasm, twirling her about, playing various invisible instruments, winking at the other dancers. They danced for four songs, by which time the floor was packed. Brendan gave them a thumbs-up from the stage.

  ‘Want a mineral?’ said Ali. ‘I’m parched.’

  Davy signalled that he had another source of drink up by the decks, so she threaded her way to the refreshment tent on her own, squeezing her fingers into her pockets to find the fiver she’d stowed earlier.

  Things were quieter in the side tent. Women poured tea and offered Club biscuits or packets of crisps from big tin boxes. As she stood in line for her lemonade Ali spotted Joan standing with a couple of older women. After she bought her bottle, she wandered over, noticing as she drew close that Joan wasn’t doing any of the talking, was in fact smiling past the women’s heads at the blank wall of the tent, jiggling her head from side to side. The women eyed Ali with suspicion.